"Here", I said to Newsnight's real life editor Peter Barron, "why don't we broadcast Newsnight from inside a computer game."

Because the virtual money inside Second Life is convertible to US dollars, and people who make things can keep the intellectual property, it is possible to run a real life business inside the game.

I got in touch with Cory Edo - real name Sara Van Gorden - who runs a business in Second Life designing avatars - the idealised 3D personas that people use as their online identities.

Cory recreated the Newsnight set, Jeremy Paxman and myself - the latter with wrinkles and stubble rendered in full 3D realism, sadly - so we could record the historic "two-way" that will go out before my piece on online games.


A side of Jeremy Paxman the viewers just don't get to see
"For the creation of photorealistic skins such as the ones that were used on the Newsnight project," says Cory, "I took the face shot that was sent to us and split it in half, pasted this into the skin grid file, and duplicated it on the other side.

"After that, it was mostly adjusting things like the nose shading and the eye placement to fit the grid, and adding additional shading around the sides."