Mail 1

Do you read the Daily Mail regularly? Does your blood pressure soar whenever you buy your copy, as that day’s headline once again bellows that everything you hold dear is under attack? Do the indignant editorials fire you with righteous rage and heartburn? Are you tired, in short, of being ANGRY?

The Daily Mail has the answer.

Balaclava

ITV Play rapped over quiz

Quiz channel ITV Play broke broadcasting rules by making its answers too obscure. Viewers complained after two answers to the question “what items might be found in a woman's handbag?” were revealed to be “balaclava” and “rawl plugs”.

Ofcom ruled the answers were unreasonable and the competition was therefore not conducted fairly. ITV Play apologised for what it described as an “exceptional one-off error of editorial judgment”.

The channel, which encourages viewers to take part in games via premium rate phone lines, has faced criticism for giving viewers little chance of getting through to a programme. But ITV Play has insisted it strives to produce popular and innovative programmes.

A spokesman said: “ITV Play aspires to be the gold standard in participation TV and ensure fair play at all levels and we take this error very seriously.” They added procedures had been tightened since the incident.

The sample answer to the handbag conundrum, given to viewers before the quiz started, was “mobile phone”, which, it could be argued—and Ofcom has—was not entirely representative of some of the higher scoring answers, such as “directions” and “dog”.

[Poll #908422]

Neighbour 1

Good thing I keep late hours. Twenty past one last night my doorbell rings loud and long. “Oh, this had better be good,” I tell the intercom.

“It’s the police,” it replies.

“Ah,” I say, and go down to let them in. They look me over, decide I’m not their quarry and storm upstairs. They bother the Finns who live there for a few minutes, persuading them to roll up their sleeves to see if they have any tattoos, then come clumping down again when one of them remembers that I mentioned a basement flat.

“Someone came out of your address,” a policewoman tells me, “and had an altercation with one of the workmen outside.” Enough of an altercation, that is, to warrant at least eight uniform and a police van. The detection side of their job has been made slightly easier by the news that the assailant is tattooed.

The workman will have been working for Tube Lines, who are given to parking their vans on the stretch of pavement outside on the odd occasion when there’s major Underground maintenance going on overnight. They had been there in force the previous night, and around midnight yesterday evening I was aware once more of the familiar revving engines and shouty banter.

The police hammer on the door of the basement flat. I hear it answered. They are instantly in no doubt: “Could we talk to you, sir?” His tattoos must be showing. Then a lot of voices talk at once, until I hear one of the men who share downstairs saying “There’s no need, I’m not under arrest,” followed shortly by an incredulous “Am I under arrest?”. He’s under arrest.

My guess is that the workmen have turned up, as has the volume for anyone whose bedroom is out front, and our hero, incredibly drunk as I have occasionally encountered him, has resented this and popped out to have “a word”. This is only wild surmise on my part, however; I wasn’t able to ask him, as he disappeared into the night in the back of a van.

(no subject)

The engaged/vacant indicator on our office toilet door (which features the actual words “engaged” and “vacant”) was mysteriously broken the other day. The man who came this morning to replace it with a simple red/white sign told us that there’s a spate of these worded indicators being unscrewed and stolen.

Anyone know why that might be? Is it like the brief 80s craze for stealing and wearing VW badges? And is it just on the parliamentary estate, or has there been an outbreak of engaged-sign stealing at your workplace, college or other daytime location? Anyone?