... it is now. 00.01am British Summer Time. The seventh and last Harry Potter book has hit the shelves. Tales of excess abound, with a wave of a wand Potter mania is unleashed in all its glory. Breaking all previous records, Amazon already had 2.2m pre-orders, and many fans were found sleeping in full Potter regalia on the pavements outside the biggest book stores so as not to miss out on ... Well umm so as not to miss out on being really, really big fans I suppose. ChildLine even laid on extra staff to cope with an expected surge in calls from grief-stricken fans (rumours of Harry's death were greatly exaggerated). JK Rowling herself did a midnight reading at the Natural History Museum in London - 500 lucky fans - thousands of dissapointed ones who weren't amongst "the Chosen".
Of course the naughty New York Times and the Baltimore Sun had already broken the embargo and published reviews. Michiko Kakutani and Mary Carole McCauley couldn't wait like millions of other people. Well they're special people - critics - the laws of respect and decency don't apply to them. Besides which, they're such slow readers they needed a head start. But anyone could have read the book ahead of time, photographs of the book were posted on the net, and online filesharing networks offered downloadable files containing the full text of the novel, along with the usual viruses, worms and trojans.
I just wish I had bought shares in a witch hat factory.