I went to a computer fair last night to buy a few essentials like printer ink, blank dvds etc. and noticed a none-regular stall there. Most people were also noticing, as behind the stall were two obviously carefully chosen sales staff – 2 heavily made-up and scantily clad Liverpudlian lasses. There was only one product on sale. For £5 you could buy a disk that lets you watch satellite TV (live football etc.) on your PC with no dish or receiver. They were drawing quite a bit of interest both from the droolers, footie fans and the gullible (and those that were all three). They were on hand to answer all the technical questions but the only answers I heard from them were “Yes of course it will run on your PC”, “Yes you can update it” and “Well it’s been working fine on my PC since last October.”

I wasn’t taken in by the wonders of this new snake oil. I’m dubious of buying anything from none regulars at computer fairs since about 6 years ago I stupidly bought a second-user hard drive for £10 thinking it was 2.0gig (that was big then). When I got it home it was less than 500mb (and it didn’t work!)

Anyway, why is it that the pass-out stamp they put on the back of your hand at these places is in indelible ink? I still can’t get the bloomin’ mark off!