It's not often that Playboy features on our reading list (really, it isn't), but then it's not every month that Stephen Colbert, scourge of the... well, scourge of everyone, grants the magazine a lengthy interview. A fascinating and wide-ranging conversation takes in everything from Colbert's on-screen alter ego, to L. Ron Hubbard, to Bill O'Reilly being annoyingly nice. There are even Dune references.

One snippet that caught our eye, though, concerns another movie. Colbert explains how, as an outsized Tolkien fan, he was invited onto the set of The Hobbit last year by Peter Jackson. "I flew out and watched them shoot some scenes and went to some locations," he explains of the trip. "I saw a 25-minute cut, and it was amazing. Jackson knows I’m a big fan of the films."

As any good journalist would, the interviewer wonders whether there isn't more to this than meets the eye. Could, for instance, Colbert be cameoing in the movie? "Could be," replies the comedian enigmatically.

Follow-up questions are met with only a smile, so before we start visualising a scene in which Colbert grills the Goblin King over goblin fiscal policy, this one should probably be filed firmly as "intriguing but totally, absolutely, 100% unconfirmed; in fact wild speculation until further notice".