Is Martin Veitch worth £200?

Fans of Flackenhacks' Adopt-A-Hack might have thought that the £86 bid by Paul Doran of Switch Communications for Phil Muncaster of Vnunet was the end of the story.

For most of last week, Muncaster seemed confirmed in his role as the nation's favourite tech hack.

But there's a been coda, folks -- a corollary, a pendent development. . .  involving runner-up Martin Veitch of CIO, whose auction closed last Tuesday.

In case you missed it, the best closing bid for Veitch was £82 -- made by Johnson King.

. . . But on Friday afternoon, in after-hours trading, Mike King of Johnson King dramatically upped his winning bid for Veitch to £200.

Which means that Muncaster has now been consigned to second place in the Adopt-A-Hack sweepstakes.

On Friday afternoon, Veitch was displaying his sharp elbows on Google Mail. The world's leading Geordie tech hack had this to say: "Just so long as it's made very clear that I won the race, albeit after the race had officially finished."

Uh, our tickers can hardly stand it. Here's where we're at right now:

1) Martin Veitch (CIO) -- £200.00

2) Phil Muncaster (Vnunet) -- £86.00

3) Mark Dye (Freelance) -- £36.00

4) Bryan Glick (Computing) -- £30.99

5) Mark Samuels (CIO Connect) -- £26.00

6)= Michael Dempsey -- £19.99

7)= Andy McCue -- £19.99

8)= Rupert Goodwins -- £19.99

And if your pulse isn't already racing, how about this?

We've just added auctions for Gordon Kelly (news editor at Trusted Reviews) and Tim Phillips (the freelance who has written Computing's Backbytes column for the past 12 years).

You've got 48 hours to bid on either (or both) of these blokes. Plus, of course, Jeremy Kirk, Rob Kerr, Eric Doyle and David Meyer, who will continue to twist in the wind for another day or so.

As always: low start, no reserve and 50% of whatever we raise goes to Byte Night. (Although in the case of Mike King's generous bid, we'll obviously be revising that proviso. . . )

. . . Get clicking!