There comes that moment in your relationship with any new computer when you lose a game of Freecell. No matter how well you do after that, your average will never again be 100%. Damn damn damn damn damn.

Same sort of thing today. Last week, the first postage-paid customer satisfaction postcard to be returned from our latest mailing gave the document in question 5/5. It gets no better than that. But a postcard received today for the same document merely gave it 4/5. One of the 1800 people to whom it was mailed thinks it’s only quite good. The swine.

Silly conversation of the day: a suggestion from a colleague that skyscrapers be built on hydraulic jacks, so that when a rival building beats it in height, yours can simply be jacked up a few further feet. In the same way, if a hijacked aircraft is detected in its vicinity, you let the jacks down and the aircraft misses. Same principle as Marineville, where the entire building was lowered into a bunker whenever battlestations sounded — like all the best Gerry Anderson, a tad over-engineered. It would be a lot easier to just have the headquarters in a bunker — unless (my hypothesis), due to planning restrictions, Marineville had to keep the same skyline as whatever earlier building it replaced, so they had to do it that way.

Sudden flashback by way of subject of terrorism to one of the more annoying times I’ve been badly edited. I used to write a monthly column intended to contrive humour from the content of various websites, usually where no humour was intended. One such website displayed results of a scientific survey showing that with the decline of air travel immediately following 9/11, even for a few days, the amount of vapour in the atmosphere from aircraft exhaust dropped noticeably. Important stuff, but because it was meant to be humorous I finished with what I thought a suitably flippant punchline. See if you can spot the subtle difference between what I wrote:

“Osama Bin Laden isn’t usually credited as an eco-warrior, but maybe the beard should have been a clue.”

– and their edited version:

“You have to wonder who can make scientific capital out of a tragedy like that.”

My but aren’t we righteous?

Guess who’s visiting the canteen this week? Here’s a clue on the right.

All part of Children in Need. Apparently there’ll be a Dalek turning up on Friday which you can pet in return for a donation. I doubt I’ll partake of the offer. I already have a photo of me with a Dalek, and a Cyberman (see top of page), and I have Tom Baker’s autograph. Twice. So I feel no further need to prove my sad fanboy credentials.

CiN is a worthy cause and I will probably donate. But honestly, is it any worthier than … let’s see … cancer research deaf people blind people starving people paraplegic people thalidomide victims forces veterans diseased donkeys? Actually, it is worthier than diseased donkeys but then so are the rest. And where is all the media hoo-hah about them?

What we need is a Charity Channel — non-stop wall to wall 24/7 endless charity broadcasts for those who like this sort of thing. They could still be the slick polished multimedia telethons that we know and love from CiN and Comic Relief — but they wouldn’t forcibly take up an evening’s viewing and no one who didn’t want to would cringe at the sight of worthies like Andrew Marr and Michael Buerk trying to be hip and with it. I mean, Michael Buerk! — the man whose reporting of the Ethiopian famine inspired Band Aid, who was expelled from South Africa for his anti-apartheid reporting … It breaks your heart.

The Charity Channel would be a bit like having a dedicated channel for TV sport — those who want to suffer, I mean watch, can and the rest of us can get on with our lives, giving money where it seems like a good idea. And by the way, does anyone else share my suspicion that a charity which blows its funds on pens and free keyrings may have its priorities wrong?

Apparently the new line-up for “Help, My Career’s at a Dead End and I have Insufficient Native Talent to Resurrect It” has been announced. Annoyingly, I’ve actually heard of some of the people and even have to admit some of them may have a smidgin of native talent etc. Unlike most if not all previous contestants — the ones I’ve heard of, anyway — it might actually be quite interesting to talk to some of them. Jimmy Osmond, world’s most famous teeny Mormon? I’m sure we could chat for hours.

Still no intention of watching the show, though. The embargo continues on anything with “Celebrity” in the title, at least until we get Celebrity Execution, Celebrity Autopsy and Celebrity Stargate: SG-1.

The English language badly needs a word that means what Celebrity used to.