YOU CAN ALMOST HEAR ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN'S SIGH OF RELIEF:

Rankin sorry JK joke 'got out of hand' (The Scotsman, 8/24/07)

CRIME writer Ian Rankin was joking when he said his wife had seen fellow city author JK Rowling sitting in a cafe writing a new book. [...]

"This was a joke that got out of hand," he said. "I made the comments at the Book Festival purely as a joke. There were 600 people in the audience and only one person didn't laugh."