This week I managed to obtain tickets to see the BBC’s filming of an episode of Room 101, in which host Frank Skinner and three panelists debate whether to banish life’s irritations into the mythical room, to be banished from blighting our daily lives for ever more.

In this series, as well as adopting a new format, they also decided to ask audience members prior to the day of filming if they had anything that they would like to exile into Room 101. I thought you’d never ask! Within, quite literally, seconds I had sent a link to my rant about mediaspeak, with a message saying that I would like to forever eliminate office jargon; so-called buzz words or phrases.

A few days later I received a call from one of the production team. He said that they liked the writing style of my blog (Oh shucks, stop it you!) and would like me to feature in the show. Finally I get the recognition I deserve… Continue reading →

We’ve all been there before. A decision we made which, with hindsight, was something that we would gladly change, should physicists stop playing particle marbles at CERN and really put their minds to inventing reliable time travel. It can’t be that difficult, Marty McFly was doing it in the 1980s.

Of course, such decisions could actually have been the result of inaction; the fear of failure or of change causing a paralysis of decisive thought. It just seemed easier to keep things as they are. Why take a chance?

Whether decisions seem more trivial or involve major shifts in circumstance, the mechanics behind our thought processes are essentially the same. It’s about balancing risk versus reward. The only difference between each of us and the paths we take in life are ultimately how accurately we judge that balance.

Maybe you still think about that partner you once had, the ‘one that got away’. If you’d have done things differently, who’s to say that you wouldn’t now be living in family bliss in a converted barn in the countryside? Although possibly you may actually have had a lucky escape from marital strife and a son who makes Bart Simpson look well-adjusted. Continue reading →

I realise that using ‘donkey’, ‘long’ and ‘kong’ in the post title may result in dubious search traffic looking for bestiality sites. Especially now that I have mentioned ‘bestiality’ in the first sentence. Oops, did it again. But this article isn’t about longing for donkeys as such. God, where am I going with this…

I am in fact referring to the retro computer game, first played in the days when you did actually need a PC to play games, before the age of consoles. But this isn’t a nerdy piece bestowing the virtues of an old computer game. It is actually about the days of yesteryear, when a little Stewie (a mere 5’11) was still living with his parents and going to school, with a mind obsessed with football and cars.

The 1980s were a time when life was simpler and fun. Ignoring recession, mass strikes, a hurricane, only four channels of TV and no internet, of course. But as a child, such negativity was soon brushed off. Continue reading →