’The geeks have inherited the Earth’, wrote Sandy Starr in these pages recently, arguing that adolescent-minded, sci-fi nerds have colonised popular culture - as witnessed in the popularity of the Marvel comics, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television programme and the Lord of the Rings films. Like my fellow (but infinitely more erudite) sci-fi enthusiast, Starr, I have mixed feelings about this development.

I finally saw the last instalment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings on Saturday. I had been putting it off for months. I find films far too long these days, and most cinemas intolerably loud. But luckily, I discovered that my local art-house cinema, the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London, was showing The Return of The King at the weekend, and took in a show.

Most of my initial misgivings proved to be correct. The film was far too long. Jackson also took a fair degree of liberties with the original text. The ridiculous cockney accents of the Orcs had become even more pronounced: in The Two Towers they had sounded like extras from Minder; here they were seemingly doing a collective impression of Bob Hoskins from The Long Good Friday (’You’re messing with the big boys now Frodo - you facking slaaag!!’).

And, the Tolkien fans were a predictably sad collection, caught up, almost literally, in their own little universe. As I eavesdropped (and enjoined) their conversations at the bar I heard nothing but dorkish conversation about what Gollum’s wretched fate represents, if ’The Ring’ is a metaphor for the atomic bomb, how Tolkien was affected by the First World War, etc, etc....

The strangest part was, at a particularly sad part at the end, hearing someone four seats down from me actually start sobbing uncontrollably, and quite audibly. Others had tears streaming from their eyes. To be fair, it was a moving part of the film, and the bit from the original book I have always found most touching. One shouldn’t sneer I suppose. It’s a great compliment to a great story.

A little backward they may be, geeks are, in general, a polite and essentially amiable lot. They are much like Hobbits. I can think of worse people to inherit the Earth.