Remember that time SARS killed loads of people far away, and was definitely going to come over here and turn London into the start of 28 Days Later (the bit with the deserted streets, not the zombie apocalypse afterwards.) The papers couldn't get enough of it. SARS was going to take over the world and turn us all into coughing, sneezing death machines. It became vitally important to wear one of those masks like Michael Jackson and not go anywhere near anyone, ever. Oh, er, only in those countries that had been affected, which are thousands of miles away and about as dangerous to you here as a fart in space. But don't let that stop ...

Sunday afternoon was specifically designed for you to sit miserably in your house watching rain pissing down the windows. The shops shut early, so you have to collect all your supplies to get through the evening, or spend hours driving round looking for a petrol station that sells matches. TV stations, knowing that there's nothing else for you to do and will therefore watch whatever they throw at you, compete to show the poorest clip-show - Tramps do the Funniest Things, It Shouldn't Happen to a Neurosurgeon or The World's Funniest Cricket Pitches. For some reason, in the bottom of a cupboard in every single house in the country is a tatty, battered game of Monopoly. Never a brand new, ...

Babies are a bit shit, what with the crying, peeing and bawling all day. They can't even walk or talk. In fact, they're so stupid that people (whoever they are) have a saying that some things are so easy even a baby could do it. But there's one thing that babies can do that I can't, and that's fall asleep. I'm not as good as a four month old smelly, yelling shit-sack. Laying down in bed has this wonderful effect, where any caffeine that I've had through the day all bands together in my brain and has a disco, a big thumpy "hey you, the day's almost over, you're never getting it back. Are you pleased with ...

Beat the Star, not just Chris Brown’s favourite pass-time, but also a ridiculous game-show from ITV. Think of it as half-celebrity Krypton Factor. Not necessarily the Z-list celebrities that usually show up on anything with a ‘Celebrity’ twist, but one contestant is a celebrity, and the other… less so. Tonight we meet a bloke called Glenn, who hasn’t done anything of note in his pathetic life. He’s up against England rugby legend (they have legends in rugby, apparently) Austin Healey, who, awesomely, shares his name with a car. It’s like Mr. and Mrs. Focus calling their son Ford, or the Cooper family having a girl called Mini. What were they thinking? Vernon “£3k cheaper than Peter” Kay is in full parody ...

1989 was a simpler time, a world away. Yugoslavia won Eurovision, the other George Bush took office and Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj announced the establishment of Mongolia’s democratic movement. Sci-fi nerds across the country put their dragons back into dungeons and gathered round their primitive 1980s television sets to watch space sit-com, Red Dwarf. Over the next six years, Red Dwarf grew into a cult phenomenon, and the minutiae of each episode was discussed at face melting length in fanzines and – as though the medium was invented for it – over the internet. Then everything went wrong, as the writing team split and the series descended into rehashing of the same core jokes – Rimmer mis-remembering Space Corps directives and Kryten’s head bearing a ...

This is the worst video game I've ever played. This is World Snooker Championship 2007. I've taken the box off the shelf so I type the name exactly right, and it's made me angry just looking at it. Ronnie O'Sullivan is on the cover looking at you, saying, "what, you can't even get a break of 15? Are you an idiot?" Two other less famous snooker players are smugly thinking about all the things they can do better than you, including positioning the cue ball for a great shot on the black, and being a tremendous lover. Snooker, like that other great British pub sport darts, is about taking a skill and applying weird rules to it. Darts is accuracy, ...

A lady, sick of being in a male dominated TV production environment, sets up her own female only company. Let's see how that went down. ...employees I had headhunted to achieve my utopian dream - a female- only company with happy, harmonious workers benefiting from an absence of men. Another time, when two members of staff bought the same jeans, one proclaimed: 'They'll look better on me, because I'm a size eight and she's a ten.' Employees considered it acceptable to take time off for beauty treatments - and not out of their holiday allowance. One girl regularly came in late because she was getting her hair coloured, and when I mentioned this she blew up in outrage. Soon, arguments became a ...

“Age ain’t nothing but a number,” sang the grammatical illiterate Aaliyah. And with that double negative, she agreed with the production team behind Ten Years Younger: The Challenge. See, age is more than a number, it’s a bloody great stick that can be used to beat a drab, middle-aged lady into agreeing to have her nose caved in and sanded down all in the name of entertaining you. You turd. People have different priorities that consume their entire life, depending on which TV show they’re on. The army of bell-ends on The Apprentice are all about making money (or they were until the financial world crashed down around them) and Jeremy Kyle’s guests want everyone to know that she’s just a slag ...

Received this e-mail, and I'm still not sure what (if anything) they're trying to sell / give / take from me: The very essence of what we think of as the web is changing at a rapid pace. The battle for business has never been fiercer and today’s consumers expect to be engaged, as well as informed. This new world requires new paradigms in service models, personalization and social features. The possibilities are limitless. With this incredibly agile new world, how do you make sure that your company survives and thrives? What technologies should you be embracing and adopting? And how do you do so without breaking the bank? CoreMedia’s people-centric™ content management solutions combine mission critical stability and platform ...

Is there anything worse than people? No, people are literally the worst things ever. In the olden days of TV, when everything was rosy and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps was but a twinkle of a fart in the brain of a five-year-old, there were people called “writers”, who would sit down and put words into other people’s mouths. This was “scriptwriting” and involved planning a TV programme out in advance. In the Current Economic Climate, luxuries other than cocaine are out of the reach of most TV networks. Seriously, check out the credits of a proper TV show, and you’ll see loads of people who do jobs that you don’t really need. Art Direction? Post-production supervisor? ...

Ah, April Fools. A great day where the office wits get to make jokes about tartan paint and long weights. Where sub-editors up and down the country can hilariously claim that penguins can fly, Mars are creating left-handed Mars bars or that God exists. A day we can all come together and chuckle about the more gullible members of society. Did you know gullible has been taken out of the dictionary? Ha! No it hasn't! You're as bad as the rest of them! A brilliant, hilarious day where web-sites that specialise in trivia have to go to great pains to promise that each and every story is true, and the BBC can run their annual "ten things that ...