I have a strong feeling the first lecture I ever heard on gamma-ray bursts was by Nial Tanvir, now at the University of Leicester. I remember him explaining how in the early days of the field, astronomers studying GRBs were among the first people to get mobile phones as they needed to be told when a burst was detected. In the last few years, the advent of Swift has revolutionized the field, and I caught up with Nial in a rather echoing corridor to find out the latest news.