• Time, Thursday, April 1, 2010 10:56 AM

Stephen Fry, a self-confessed Apple "fanboy" from way back when he became the second person in Great Britain to own a Macintosh, hits the trifecta this morning in a piece in which he gets to play with an iPad at Apple HQ in Cupertino, gets the inside scoop about the device from execs Phil Schiller and Eddy Cue (vp of worldwide product marketing and vp of Internet services, respectively) as well as designer Jonathan Ive, and then -- hold that curtsey -- is ushered into an audience with the Jobs himself.

"I have met five British Prime Ministers, two American Presidents, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and the Queen," Fry writes. "My hour with Steve Jobs certainly made me more nervous than any of those encounters."

There are, in fact, reviews of the iPad in many major publications this morning. The gathering consensus seems to be, as a Fast Companyroundup leads one to conclude, that techies find all sorts of things lacking and common folk love it. But none have quite the passion as this quote from the master of spin: "When people see how immersive the experience is," Jobs says, "how directly you engage with it ... the only word is magical." Not surprisingly, perhaps, Fry concurs.

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