Rob Manuel

After reading David Hepworth’s ’50 odd gigs’ I couldn’t resist trying my own list. I haven’t seen as much live music as I could have and it was a real struggle to get to fifty, and I had to be a bit cheaty and use a few festivals and support acts, but I’ve only mentioned stuff I could say something about.

1. Kunt & The Gang, in some Soho pub, 2009 – impressed that he did the entire set via plugging his iPod into the PA, and selecting each backing track with his thumb. Thereby freeing him from the expense of splitting profits with a band or hiring a van and equipment. Canny.

2. MJ Hibbett, Venue 205, 2008 – Hibbett was doing his “my exciting life in rock” autobiographical show. It was funny and great and reminded me of Guy Pratt’s book My Bass & Other Animals.

3. Seven Seconds of Love, Dublin Castle 2005 – Joel was asked by his agent’s wife why he swore so much on stage, and it was suggested that a cleaner mouthed Veitch would be more successful.

4. Youth of Britain, Dublin Castle 2005 – for the encore I shouted that they should play Beer, Beer, Beer, the track written by me and recorded by the band as a favour. Daniele Davoli, their keyboardist laughed and shouted back “fuck off Rob.”

5. Lemar, T in the Park, 2004 – did a sweetly sung version of The Darkness’s I Believe In A Thing Called Love that made me realise Justin Hawkins is a sincere little songwriter hiding behind comedy outfits.

6. Graham Coxon, Kentish Town Forum, 2004 – he played much of his “Happiness in Magazines” album and the seats were sticky. Some of his younger fans looked like members of The Libertines.

7. Miles Hunt, Resonance FM, 2003 – when we used to run B3ta radio we got Miles in with his guitar. He sang Circle Square and was very nice and mentioned his girlfriend sang my I love you kitten song on his answerphone.

8. Duran Duran, Wembly, 2003 – the reunion line-up. Guitarist Andy Taylor stands on a different part of the stage and appears to be in an entirely different band to the rest of them. And in a couple of years he is. Surly Taylor and sweaty Simon Le Bon gaves us lol fodder for literally months afterwards.

9. Sisters of Mercy, Kentish Town Forum, 2002 – Eldritch’s set consisted of dry ice, a tape recorder and two turnips throwing rock poses on guitar. A mid 20s fan, all on his own, wearing a leather jacket, one leather glove and a bandaged arm mouthed all the lyrics.

10. Pulp, Brixton, 2001 – around the time of the unconvincing “We love life” campaign. They were knackered and the fun was gone.

11. Rockbitch, London, November 2001 – naked gothy women playing bad metal. Holding guitar with your minge hanging out doesn’t make women look elegant.

12. Toby Slater, The Monarch, 2000 – Toby wore bandages over his hands which worringly suggested he’d been self harming.

13. Duran Duran, Wembley, 2000 – reduced to a duo of Simon Le Bon & Nick Rhodes it was a lacklustre affair. There were flyers up for a fan meeting called after a B-Side “Secret Oktober” which might be fun if menopausal women are your thing.

14. Robbie Williams, Wembley, 2000 – I wasn’t that bothered about going but had free tickets as I was working on his website. He made disparaging remarks about Liam Gallagher & Nicole Appleton on stage and played such a stunning gig that I left almost a fan.

15. Crispian Mills, supporting Robbie Williams, 2000 – his sound was mixed so low that I could hardly hear him. But from the look of it, he was giving it his all. Poor chap.

16. Miranda Sex Garden, The Monarch, 2000 – a reformed line up, not that it matters to me as I never knew them back in the day anyway. Singer Katharine Blake kept making references to a sugar daddy giving me the distinct impression that they can afford to put on a show thanks to the patronage of an old git she’s having sex with.

17. Beck, Reading festival, 2000 – he didn’t stop dancing. It was like watching Prince. One of the best performers I’ve seen. Shame he’s a scientologist.

18. Black Box Recorder, Reading festival, 2000 – singer Sarah Nixey had a crap barcode tattoo on her arm. I didn’t notice what Luke Haines was doing as she was quite pretty.

19. Elastica, Reading festival, 2000 – Justine hopped around trying to gee up a tired band who were having none of it.

20. 2K, Barbican centre, 1997 – every nerd in London turned up for the KLF’s comeback event. We were given t-shirts and bags and went home feeling elated but confused.

21. Hothouse Flowers, Barbican centre, 1997 – some kind of reunion gig, it might have been billed under the singer’s name – I forget now. I was dragged there by some Irish guys I once knew – Greg, if you read this, get in touch.

22. Orbital, Wolverhampton Civic, 1997 – They played a ravey version of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is A Place On Earth. The place errupted.

23. Garbage, Reading Festival, 1996 – Shirley Manson kept squatting down and grinding over her microphone, like a stripper.

24. Sonic Youth, Reading Festival, 1996, a sound like an orchestra of vacuum cleaners. I left the field before it made me go insane.

25. Kula Shaker, Reading Festival, 1996 – played a version of best Beatles b-side ever, Rain. They rocked. Not a fashionable opinion I know.

26. The Divine Comedy, Wolverhampton Civic, 1996 – after every song the crowd asked him to play the Father Ted song, “My Lovely Horse”, which he refused. The boring twat.

27. Stone Roses, Reading Festival, 1996 – final disastrous gig before they split. I witness a fan stomping his Reni hat into the mug shouting, “what the fuck has happened to the Stone Roses?”

28. The Prodigy, Reading Festival 1996 – Very stop / start with the beat.

29. Julian Cope, Reading Festival, 1996 – played a really enjoyable greatest hits set that won over an unsure crowd. Big silly hat helped.

30. Black Grape, Reading Festival 1996 – it was rumoured Shaun wouldn’t show because of a fatal overdose.

31. Marcella Detroit, Wolvestock, 1996 – an extremely out of place appearence for this ex- Shakespear’s Sister, in a free festival in Wolverhampton. She was jeered at and was a bit arsey with the crowd.

32. My Life Story, Wolvestock, 1996 – riding high on their almost hit “12 reasons why I love her” they did a lively pop show with lots of pretty girls playing violins and someone running around the stage holding up placards for the lyrics.

33. Ozric Tentacles, Wolvestock, 1996 – smelly crusties cheered. The only act playing that day that had a real following in the crowd.

34. Dinosaur JR, Wolverhampton Poly, 1995 – played so loud my teeth vibrated. Only recognised one song – their cover of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven.

35. Mega City Four, Wolves Poly, 1994 – some bloke spent the entire gig spitting at their singer Wiz.

36. The Orb, Leeds University, 1992 – There were lots of lights, and students pretending to be on pills – most of them were probably on cider – but nothing to see on stage.

37. Spiritualised, Wolverhmapton, 1992 – Their music was so slow most people sat down cross legged, except 1 guy down the front who did Bez-style baggy dancing. Future wife of Richard Ashcroft was on the keyboards, sporting, what my sister would have once called “an inverted plait”.

38. Sunscream, Leeds University, 1992 – bloke asked me after the gig what I thought of it, trying to be clever I said “about as relevant as Saxon”, chappy then tells me he’s the keyboard player and wanders off.

39. Five Thirty, Wolverhampton, 1991 – Short, wore very tight sixties style trousers and were very rock and roll.

40. Chapterhouse, 1991 – stared at their shoes and chubby teenage girls cooed at the front.

41. The Catherine Wheel, Wolverhampton, 1991 – I chatted to the singer Rob Dickinson in the loo and he said my questions were like a journalist’s. At the time I thought that was a compliment, in retrospect I could read it differently.

42. The Wonder Stuff, Aston Villa Liesure Center, 1989 – the last gig the Rob “The Bass Thing” Jones played. Miles Hunt kept hugging him during the gig – I don’t think he wanted him to leave. Jones died a few years later of a heroin overdose.

43. Wrath Child, Wolverhampton Civic, 1989 – hair metal glam rockers – they pulled some poor guy out of the audience and made him get naked. He had a very small penis.

44. PWEI, Aston Villa Liesure Center, 1989 – a member of the band had broken his leg and had this great electric chair that rose to the ceiling. That’s how to do it.

45. The Cure, Birmingham NEC, 1990 – so many people, boys and girls, dressed as Robert Smith. If I had a camera and a time machine I’d love to see a few photos of this.

46. Jesus and Mary Chain, Hummingbird, Birmingham, 1989 – I remember the intro tape better than the short set – they played the wonderous John Trubee’s Blind Man’s Penis.

47. The Perfect Disaster, Hummingbird Birmingham, 1989 – there was this song “time to kill” where every phrase was time this, and time that. Hearing the studio version for the first time today it’s a lot less goth than I remember.

48. Fields of the Nephilim, Hummingbird Birmingham, 1988 – attracted an older than I was used to crowd (I was 14) and I found it a bit frightening. Including someone with a spiders web tattoed on their face. The mosh pit was violent and people were chanting for a song called “Power” which the band refused to play.

49. Popstars R.I.P, Finchfield, 1988 – the first and only time I attempted a gig, we played a friend’s front room, I had such a panic attack, I spent the whole time tuning my guitar. Nobody ever suggested we should play again.

50. The Waterboys, Hummingbird, Birmingham, 1988 – first ever gig I went to, didn’t really know the band but a girl from school wanted to go. She wandered off when we got there and I danced alone.

Had a lovely time today, our four year old son Angus stayed with a friend and we got to lie in for once – we picked him up for lunch time (daddy! I don’t want to go!) and dragged him off to Camden Square for a quick picnic where he and his chum raced on scooters and played hide and seek.

Falling out of the picnic bag are leaflets given to us by a friend yesterday, they’re promoting National Art Hate Week 2009 at the Tate Modern – there’s a fantastic line on the back, “If a child offers you a painting during National Art Week you are to turn away in disgust.” Mind bogglingly wrongheaded, but I recognise the name of one of the artists, Billy Childish. My friend Dave once told me he’s one of the Stuckists, basically the spotty unloved friends of Damien Hurst & Tracy Emin, the ones who didn’t make loads of cash from the patronage of Charles Saatchi. They’re all extremely bitter that they’re poor.

“Oh they’re the Luke Haines of Art then?”, my wife says referring to Haines’ completely brilliant biography, “Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall.” “Exactly”, I say, “He did something similar himself once, in 2001 there was his National Pop Strike.”

My wife wants to work this afternoon, so I decide to take the elder son off to The National History Museum. I claim, “He does alright for parties and running about parks but surely he needs stuff to fill his imagination?” The truth is more that I fancy looking at some dinosaur bones.

Son is a bit weirded out by the museum. Everything in it is dead. “Why are they all dead daddy?” And most guilt making of all, “Why isn’t the panda moving daddy? Is he dead?” On seeing a baby seal he’s almost in tears, “We miss him so much.” The whole place is like a dead zoo of taxidermy.

This being less than a complete success we go into the nice bit with – thankfully alive – butterflies and learn how to tell the difference between moths and butterflies. Generally speaking, when moths land on a leaf they’ll sit with their wings spread whilst butterflies will put their wings up. Fantastic fact and if you’re reading this blog post waiting for me to stop rambling and get onto the bit where I get mugged then, sod it, enough scene setting I’ll get on with it.

6 o clock, me and my son are about 2 minutes from the house in Kentish Town and a woman calls out from a car.

“I wouldn’t normally ask a stranger but my car is nearly on empty and I need £3 to get enough petrol to get home.”

Is she a scam? I weigh her up – she’s not asking for much money and she’s also attractive and is displaying a lot of skin. I figure sod it, give her the money, if she’s a crim then I’ve got a story I can blog and if she’s not, well I’ve got a story that not everyone is a bullshit con artist.

I look in my wallet, I’ve only got £10 so I give her that. I say, “This can be an experiment in giving money to strangers. But can I take your photo?”

She doesn’t flinch. I say “smile”. I can’t stop myself grinning foolishly, I’m so going to blog this if she doesn’t turn up.

clicky for biggy

“Is coming round at 8:30 ok?” she asks and takes my business card which I’ve hastily scribbled my address on.

“Absolutely. I trust I’ll see you there.”

I get home and the first thing I do is tell my wife. “What do you think – does this photo look like a criminal?”

“She just looks normal”, my wife replies, “She’s sunburnt and yes, wearing that dress would be the best way to a pull a scam like this.”

“Worth £10 though”, I say, “Just to find out. She doesn’t look like someone who needs to be criminal to survive. I mean, she’d get a job in PR.”

“She could just be lazy”, my wife suggests, “Do this five times and you’ve got enough money to get pissed up or buy some coke. Maybe she’s been made redundant in the recession.”

I post on twitter and almost universally people think it’s a scam. There’s absolutely no way she’s turning up for 8:30

8:30 comes and I’m feeling nervous and excited. Part of me wants her to turn up to prove the twitterers wrong and part of me wants her not to turn up as this story will work so much better with the photo.

By 9 there’s no sign of her and I start writing this post and tell people I’ll post the photo if I hear nothing by 9:30. It’s now 9:39 and yes, I’ve been scammed.

I’m £10 down and I’m reminded that comedian Richard Herring recently blogged he was mugged for a £500 iphone whilst wearing a Hitler moustache and spent an alarming afternoon in the back of a police car looking for a black man whilst worrying that the police thought he was a right-wing nut case. He finished his post asking newspapers to buy his story for £10 more than he lost so that over-all he was in profit from theft.

I want to do the same thing, but at a lower scale because I’m only an internet micro celebrity and not a famous comedian. Therefore I want to raise £20 via PayPal. Give me your cash. My PayPal address is [deleted]. I promise not to spend the money on petrol, I can’t even drive.

* * *

Update: Thanks to @pretprieel for £5. You are a beautiful man and if I had breasts I’d let you take a photo of them. However – I’m still £15 off my total I require to make a profit on being scammed, so anyone for any more please? All donations, however small, gratefully received.

Update2: Thanks to Ben Gott who lives in Connecticut and writes, “Just read your post, linked from a friend on Facebook, and figured I’d throw you £5, too. This sort of stuff happens here all the time—especially at rest stops along the highway.” Huzzah! That makes me at 50% of my total. The internet WILL win this battle. (It’s really making me giggle, using this scam to basically panhandle. I’ll stop if I reach £20, I promise.)

Update 3: Ha ha – Alasdair MacLeod has given me £1.56. C’mon on internet. We can do it!

Update 4: Ah fuck it. I’m bored of asking for cash, it feels dirty. I’ve raised £11.56 which is probably slightly less than the £10 I lost once the PayPal fees are factored in. Anyway, I’ll use the money to pay for ingredients for a Spag Bog which I mentioned in a previous post and you lot were demanding my recipe.

Update 5: £1.57 from Cr3. Thanks Paul. But please stop sending me money, I’ve stopped begging now. TOTAL: £13.13

On 26th June we woke up to the news that Michael Jackson was dead. By 6pm I was standing in a crowd of nearly 2,000 people at Liverpool Street Station. One tweet made that happen. I wrote it for a laugh and the result was what the media have described as “London’s biggest ever flashmob”. Let me start at the beginning.

Jacko is dead. Blimey, this is news. Proper news. News on the scale of Die-Di-day and 9/11. My 4 year old son changes the TV channel, he’s not interested in the looped footage of an ambulance leaving Jackson’s home, but wants CBeebies. Tough. He can watch that upstairs – we want to know what happened to Jacko.

We deposit son at school and go to the local Co-op to buy supplies for lunch, and I as I do every day, walk to the newspaper stand to do a headline check. Nine headlines, one story, and again I’m reminded of Diana, I remember seeing a similar slew of headlines on that day and suddenly I regret not having a camera in 1997, and what an interesting little photo I’d missed. So, using all the power of the 21st century, I get out my phone and snap.

In the local cafe they are playing tributes to Jackson, not his songs but My Way by Frank Sinatra. It’s a fantastic and moving performance and again I’m reminded of Di-Die Day. Radio 1, if I remember rightly, appeared to spend a day playing sombre ambient house. Nothing too upbeat.

I say to my wife, “You know there’s going to be one of those internet flash mobs over this. People are going to group up and moonwalk or something.” “You should organise it”, she says. “Yeah, but I don’t really want to. I’m just saying it’s probably going to happen.”

Checking Facebook I have a message from an old school friend Joseph Lenham: “I’m disappointed at the lack of comment on tonight’s news, oh Gingermeister. I came straight to your page to hear the truth.” I’m struck that there is a weight of expectation on me – this is the kind of day people want B3ta – the site I co-founded to be doing something – and I’ve done bugger all.

I get on B3ta and check, yep people are photoshopping bad taste Jackson images, of course they are, so I quickly whip it up into a challenge and mutter that it’s my “historic duty” to collect this stuff up.

My other bastard child, Sickpedia, is where people who like sick jokes go when there’s a big news event. It crashed when Jade Goody died and it’s crashing today. I hammer F5 and eventually get a few jokes out of the smoking server. “Day 96 in Jade Goody’s Coffin. Jade has a new house-mate.”, “Gary Glitter has won the auction for Michael Jackson’s PC.” and “An English man, an Irish man and a Scottish man walk into a bar. The English man turns to the Scot and says, ‘Do you think the person reading this will really think this jokes not going to be about Michael Jackson?’”

I check Twitter – really the world is melting down with Jackson overload. One friend is writing, “remember, the dead can’t sue for libel” and I’m reminded how I once wrote something that casually referenced Jackson as a “notorious paedophile” and my boss brilliantly subbed it to “child enthusiast.” That’s not going to happen today.

My thoughts return to the flash mob idea. I’m theorise that maybe if I put the idea out there it might snowball and I won’t have to personally run around saying, “roll up! roll up! Rob is having a big naff Jackson party and you’re all invited.” Because, well, that would be completely horrific and I’d rather cut off my cock and stick it in a breville.

So I post, tentatively, “If I claimed there was a mass moonwalk being organised for 6pm at Liverpool Street Station would anyone believe me?” and sit back to see what happens next.

I’ve got about 2000 followers on Twitter, not exactly Ashton Kutcher levels, but enough people to cause trouble and the retweeting starts.

Points to note here are firstly that I’m being retweeted by a fictional character from Peep Show, he follows me, regularly retweeting my posts. I’ve found this alarming for quite a while, I like the show but err really, I can’t ever reply to you. You’re not real.

Secondly is Milo Yiannopoulos. This is a name I recogmise, he emailed me a couple of months ago to say he worked for “special projects” at The Telegraph and wanted “to discuss a potential b3ta/Telegraph blogs tie up.” This struck me as extremely unlikely to happen, as experience tells me that B3ta is far too wayward to get into bed with big business.

(Another time I’ll tell you about Disney wanting to give us a small fortune to run an image challenge to promote kids film, Chicken Little. If only that had gone ahead, it would have been LEGENDARY. Imagine, thousands of Disney’s characters, covered in photoshop cocks and Disney having to pay for the pleasure. Brilliant.)

Presumably Milo has similar thoughts and I assume I will never hear from him again, until he twitters me that is. And over the day the message is retweeted numerous times, quickly losing the “If I claimed” caveat and being presented as truth. I sit back, nervous, and watch the messages pile up. Oh my god, something really is going to happen and I’ve started it. How exciting.

At this point Milo sees an opportunity and decides to take over. He puts up a blog post with more details and a phone number and emails me to ask if I’m going to come. I’ve got no choice really.

I have stuff to do, I have a newsletter to write and a meal to cook for my wife. She’d demanded Spaghetti Bolognese and tells me, “you cook the best spag bog in North London.” She delights in calling it “bog”, it’s her reference to my Midlands origins, and she never misses an opportunity to mention it. Hence we then spend the next 30 minutes imagining a soap opera set in Birmingham called “Brummies” featuring a 38 year old bloke called Dave, who’d obsessed with Neds Atomic Dustbin and lives with his keeping-up-appearances mother. Dave has dreads, wears long shorts, and tries to be down with the kids by handing up C90s of mash-ups based upon early 90s greebo culture. You see, we were busy.

At five I get the tube to Liverpool Street Station. I read iWoz whilst traveling and think about Steve Wosniak’s almost sociopathic pranks where he spent a year interfering with the reception on a communal college TV set, making people madly bang it whenever he pressed a concealed gadget. I wonder if there’s a connection – a delight in making people dance to your own tune when in real life you feel a bit ignored.

Liverpool Street is rammed with police. Everywhere I turn there are yellow jacketed coppers talking on walkie-talkies. Suddenly I feel deeply paranoid and I do a circuit of the station and worry that I’m going to be arrested on terrorism charges. I panic and get the first train out of there – I even take the wrong line.

One stop in the wrong direction later and I feel a bit calmer. There’s no way I’m about to moonwalk in public – the horror of that literally makes sweat drip from my armpits, but maybe I can lurk to the side and noone will arrest me. Also I’m making a conscious effort to write at the moment, and if I duck out at the climax of the story, well there’s no story is there?

Back in the station I make my way to the meeting point Milo mentioned, by McDonalds, and gosh, what a huge crowd. There must be one or two thousand people here, all crushed up, all holding camera phones, all straining to see the centre of the action. I’m reminded of the passages about herd instinct in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point where if one animal looks like it’s engaged in killing something then others crowd round for scraps, as this is more efficient than hunting for food themselves. There is literally nothing to see, other than the spectacle of the crowd.

A sharp poke in my ribs and a middle aged business man shouts, “Excuse me, this is a public walkway you know.”

I drift amongst the people overhearing snippets of conversation, “Flashmob” “Michael Jackson” “Twitter” and most of all, “Do you know what’s going on?” which mostly the answer appears to be, “no.”

Media are out in force, I spy two outside broadcasting trucks and numerous self-shooters with lenses too large to be consumer equipment. I blink, all this happened, because I thought it would happen and mentioned it, and yet nobody knows who I am or (quite rightly) cares. I briefly entertain fantastical notions of grabbing one of the news crews and telling them my story, but assume they’ll just think I’m a nutter trying to claim credit, as it’s quite obvious who’s in charge – that would be the bloke in the centre holding a microphone.

Milo has organised a P.A system and occasionally says things over it, which I can’t actually make out, but people cheer. Someone mentions something about “there’s a look-a-like!” another “Michael’s in a limousine” but I can see nothing and I’m reminded of those rumours that sweep crowds at music festivals. “Shaun Ryder is dead!” or “The Beatles are playing.”

Eventually some music starts up – it’s the one Jackson tune I unequivocally love, Billie Jean. It’s the bass-line that works for me, once described by the KLF’s Bill Drummond as like a “lynx on the prowl”. It’s perfect, not a note wasted, and unlike much of Jacko’s later work it tells an engaging story, a deranged fan claiming Jackson is the father of her child.

I can’t tell if people are moonwalking or not. All I see are people holding cameras in the air and trying to photograph the middle of the crowd. This must be the real story, and I turn around and attempt to take photos of the crowd instead of the back of people’s heads. Then I feel dreadfully self conscious and worry about someone thumping me and I stop.

Getting bored now so I check twitter on my phone, hopefully someone I know is around. There’s a message saying I’ve been spotted on CNN. Ha. There’s something for the TV researchers to dig out if I ever become a serial killer or something – a fleeting glimpse in a crowd. Like that photo of Hitler standing among the crowd in Munich as war is declared in 1914.

We have four songs, and then Milo tells the crowd that the police want to all to end and everyone should go home. It’s not quite as dramatic as when the police stopped the Beatles playing on the Savile Row roof in 1969, nobody arrests Ringo or anything.

I spy Paul Carr, the only man I know to ever be sacked from a company he started himself, and he ushers me into the inner circle amongst the cops. “This would never happen in San Francisco. I mean the media wouldn’t bother turning up, we do stuff like this almost every Thursday and nobody cares”, he claims.

“You live in San Francisco?” I ask. “Yeah, but I’m back for Glastonbury.” I wonder about the great mystery of how Paul Carr funds his life, he never appears to do any real work. Maybe we can drum up a Guardian expenses scandal?

Milo is on the phone, I wave at him and I’m shushed by someone telling me, “he’s talking to the BBC”. Milo is beanpole thin, extremely tall and looks like he should be running for headboy at Hogwarts. He’s glorying in the attention, being pulled from one camera crew to another and eventually he finds time for me.

“I mentioned you three times”, he says. “I bet they cut it” I reply. “No I managed to get you mid sentence so you can’t be cut.”

I spot Alex Tew of milliondollarhomepage fame. He’s grown a beard and I ask him about his current project Popjam. “Yep it’s going great, but it’s tricky trying to compete with Facebook.” Alex asks about Sickipedia and I tell him that it’s spent most of the day crashed due to the increased traffic caused by Jackson’s death, and it’s a pig of a site because although there’s apparently limitless demand for sick jokes, it’s impossible to grow it as no advertiser will place their clients near it.

Alex suggests I get B3ta to buy advertising on it, which I suspect is the crazy accounting methods that probably caused current global economic breakdown.

I hang around a bit, realise nothing more is going to happen and decide it’s time that I get home so I can take the Spag Bog out of the oven, share a bottle of wine with my wife and tell her all about my rather odd little world.

* * *

The next day during my headline watch I notice that The Guardian is running one of the most confusingly worded headlines I’ve seen for a while. How can anyone read this and not think of Timelords?

Recently been reading Philip Norman’s “John Lennon: The Life” a fantastic autobiography that makes Lennon really come alive, especially in its depictions of his childhood, but the reference that really caught my attention was that John named his 14 month booze bender The Lost Weekend after the 1945 film of the same name.

I like addiction stories so I sought the movie out and I couldn’t help but notice the amount of places that the hero stashes drink, so in the spirit of helping any alcoholics who are still simply leaving their drinks on open display here’s how to hide your booze – a guide according to The Lost Weekend:

Underneath apples, implying you’re just shopping for healthy groceries.

On a rope hung from your apartment window.

Inside the hoover. This made me laugh out loud.

On top of the light fitting.

Or even in a special booze-hole behind the bath.

Coincidentally I was recently chatting with my chum Joel Veitch on a similar theme and he says it’s common for alcoholics to use water bottles filled with vodka so they can swig away in the office. So if you’re an alcoholic who likes to stash booze, like squirrels hiding nuts for winter, then please share your secrets here, I’m all ears.

Mostly the B3ta lot live online – a youtube video here, a flash game there, but occasionally some of them can be arsed to leave their spunk encrusted bedrooms and venture outside for a real world project.

Some such guys are John Hopkins and his friend Richard Glover, who plan to get the web to pay for a yacht so they can sail to the Edinburgh festival. The video caught my attention as it reminded me of a comment Ben Goldacre made about moving to live on a boat, “I’ll become London’s novelty shag.” And it’s got a great title: With Sails & I.

I feature the video clip in the newsletter and forget about it until one morning and I’ve got three excitable emails from Hopkins, the last one most worryingly going, “I’m about to pass out on the Hamble river.” But what really shocked me was that he phoned me at 8 the following morning – I assumed these were drunken ramblings.

Hopkins is affable and excited on the phone – he’s hasn’t got a boat yet but he’s been learning how to sail via donated lessons. “The company wants their name promoted – it’s on the side of the boat.” Ah, something for the video editors to pixel out should this ever reach TV.

He keeps stressing how foolhardy his plans to sail from the South Coast to Scotland are and how little he knows. And how likely he is to die.

The plan is to pull off a comedy fundraiser, “Like Live Aid” he says, to raise the cash needed and he invites me to attend the event.

Not a big one for nights out at the moment – two young children mean I need to be up in the mornings but I’m curious – who is this John Hopkins? My mental image is a 30 something bachelor who’s looking for the big project to make sense of his life, when probably what he really needs is good stiff talking to about family values.

I meet John at the venue – he immediately demands a bear hug which startles me a little, he’s excited and nervous, I recognise the weird flighty energy people get before going on stage, this stuff really is a drug – it’s as addictive as cocaine and makes people just as hyper. I’m bundled down the stairs and introduced to passing people, “This is Rob Manuel from B3ta” Hopkins shouts, “So that’s what you look like!”, another says. Well yes. This is what I look like.

Then a whirl of people I don’t know – an attractive blonde comes to our table, “Hi, I’m Alexa, I’m here to look after you tonight.” Awkward at being schmoozed, it’s fight or flee. What’s this all about, I think to myself. I’m Rob from some stupid website, I’m not a commissioning editor from Channel 4, he’s over there, pointing vaguely in my mind, at home watching TV. But I say nothing other than, “um yes, I can’t really refuse beer.”

“Hey Rob, I know you, I worked at Comedybox, you did a song for us – about wishing your wife was a horse. But I gave up my job to film these guys. How could I say no?”, says the camera operator. Er.. Because you were made redundant at a guess, again I mutter in my head, as who’s going to give up a proper job in the current climate?

Lenny Beige is comparing, he’s like Mike Flower’s Pops with scissor kicks. I like the scissor kicks, they’re exciting. Each time he kicks – boom – excitement. Next time I do a Power-Point presentation I’m definitely going to liven it up with a few scissor kicks.

Then our new boating heroes take the stage to do a few skits – the most amusing bit involves drinking spunk, not so much the semen itself but the apology to the girlfriend’s mother about the sketch. Aha, so he’s not a loveless bachelor then.

Other guests include um, some other guys who sing and dance a bit. My friend Mike comments, “it’s a bit like a school play isn’t it? They’re playing to their friends who already know the jokes.”

Hopkins does a series of thank-yous to people who are helping the project, “…And Rob Manuel from B3ta… Anybody know B3ta?” Tumbleweed and the longest five seconds of my life as nobody knows B3ta. My personal version of hell will have that 5 seconds played over an eternity. Thanks for that.

He also mentions that I’ve got ginger hair and it waves like the blowing wind, even when I’m inside. Glad to have made an impression.

Phill Jupitus on next and he’s a bit of a worry. With his gigantic girth and a pork-pie hat, he does the right thing and acknowledges his size this to preempt the audience,”I’m 47 years old, 22 stone and a hamburger away from a heart attack.”

A startling joke as it’s true. He needs to look after himself better. I like Phill and I don’t want him to die. We met once for working reasons and we talked about our kids, “having children is a great leveller” he said. Yes Phill, and your kids want you alive, so lay off the family pack of Kit-Kats.

Phill hasn’t done stand-up in 7 years and is anxious about it – he needn’t be, he’s great, his powerful delivery is in stark contrast to the other acts. He storms it.

He does a gag about his daughter bringing back her first boyfriend and he threatens to “cut him up if he so much as touches her… He starts crying? Sheesh – six year olds today.”

His material is 12 years old he tells us, his daughter is now a young adult who has sex with her boyfriend under his roof. The roof his comedy paid for. This makes him very angry. The joke here being presumably, that this is not a joke.

His turn finishes in 15 minutes to loud applause which he takes badly. He’s horribly self critical – he complains he doesn’t deserve it as good stand-up should be faster and it’s all about speed, then mutters something about being a “pathetic excuse for a human being” and wanders off the stage. Come now Phill, save the self-hatred for your shrink, your public loves you.

And now for a final sing song – all the comics shuffle back on to the stage and launch into a ramshackle medley that lurches between Blondie’s The Tide Is High and The Specials Message To You Rudy depending on who took the mic.

A special guest joins – it’s Pete Bennett from Big Brother. Another disturbing figure – he’s dressed in a figure hugging Lycra with S.P. emblazoned on the front. Super Pete presumably.

He does a growling ragga thing, like Shaggy toasting over a Culture Club 12″ – “I met them on a beach in BrightON. They wanted a boat that they could get ON”

Pete has an electrical energy about him, a fizzing spark, a short circuit. I worry for him – I reckon you could persuade him to do anything – the 14 year old boy who runs across a railway track because you dare him. I hope he doesn’t mix with people who do.

Wanting a big finale for filming reasons, John Hopkins apologies on stage, “we have to do this bit” and launches into Rod Stewart’s Sailing.

Some girl is plucked from the audience and suddenly she’s singing like Janis Joplin. She’s not bad and presumably is a plant.

Time to sneak off before I’m collared by Hopkins and strong-armed – in the nicest possible way of course – into promotion for his project for the rest of my natural life. However I’m interested to see where their story goes next: will they get a boat? Will the coast guards have to save them? And how many times? And will the end result have a certain story-telling charm? I think the answer to the last bit will certainly be yes.

http://www.withsailsandi.co.uk/

Recently I’ve been re-reading Douglas Adams novels, particularly enjoying his travelogue Last Chance To See, but the odd references to smoking makes me wince. Adams died of a heart attack in 2001, and as the British Heart Foundation points out, “quitting is the biggest step you can take to reduce the risk of having a heart attack.”

Two years ago I stopped smoking. The government told me to – well they banned smoking in public places and I went out to the pub for that one last time with a pint in my hand and…

I got drunk – too drunk, didn’t eat any food so I could have more room for lager and cigarettes, hence a blur of visiting the toilet every 10 minutes to piss and, well nothing. I’d drank so much my memory is blank and all I get next is a feeling of shame.

My wife woke and shouted, “What the hell are you doing?” and I looked down, saw myself pissing on the carpet and mumbled, “ugh!” and took myself to the bathroom.

Maybe this is a sign I should give up drinking, but no, I took it as the cue to give up smoking, and this wasn’t the only reason, some of the anxieties that were floating around my head at the time include:

* Brown teeth. Like most handsome young men, I’m dreadfully vain, and I was nauseated by the sight of my increasingly stained tusks. I was scared to smile and would momentarily grimace where I’d flash my teeth, worry that people would be revolted and then drop the grin and look shifty.

* Children. Nothing looks worse than trailing behind a pushchair with a fag in your gob. So I didn’t do it. Hence would find myself not smoking until the evening, finally light a cigarette and then feel a bit sick.

* Fertility. We wanted a second child and it wasn’t happening, we were due an appointment at the hospital for an investigation and I couldn’t bare the idea of being told it’s my fault. Hence if I stopped first, I couldn’t be blamed. Win. I think.

* Smell. A friend recently stopped smoking to persuade his now wife to marry him. He found a difficult time of it and made many attempts including hypnotism. After not smoking for a few days he said to me, “Rob, I never knew when I smoked, but when you go for a cig, and you think no one notices, they do, you really stink.” I hated him for a least a week after that, but he’d certainly produced a clanging bell that struck with a cracked note every time I sparked up.

So that morning I quietly decided to stop smoking, and it was very easy as I was horrifically hung over and I never feel like smoking when I’m ill anyway.

I’ve always found it easy not to smoke for a day or two, as long as I was lurking around the house and not exposed to any stress. It’s the third day that’s always more tricky when the little voice pipes up in my head going, “oh go on, you’ve been good, have a cig.”

This time it was going to be different – instead of giving in to the urge – I googled it. I decided to read as much about smoking as possible so that I’d be going into this battle armed, or more honestly, it was an excuse to immerse myself in smoking without actually putting a cigarette to my mouth.

Unsurprisingly there’s no shortage of smoking stuff online, there’s database fetish sites where every instance of an actresses lighting up is studiously recorded, there’s 80s musician Joe Jackson essay “The Smoking Issue” where he argues that the health risks of cigs have been grossly exaggerated, a furiously edited wikipedia page that helpfully points out that Nazi doctors were the first to link smoking and cancer and of course a hooky PDF copy of How To Give Up Smoking the Easy Way by Allen Carr.

Allen Carr – I have to type that carefully as it’s irresistible to confuse him with the speccy comedian with the Carry On voice Alan Carr. A confusion the comic must have noticed himself and quipped, “me? I’m not giving up fags.”

Carr’s book is repetitive and attempts to brainwash but I found it contained a few helpful ideas which I’ll paraphrase:

* Smoking is addiction to nicotine. All the stuff about needing stuff to do with your hands is nonsense. Addiction to nicotine. That’s it.

* Chewing nicotine gum is unlikely to help, that’s like trying to cure a smackhead by giving him a heroin patch.

* Smoking is a con that works via anxiety. In smoking a cig you simply top yourself up with nicotine. Every second afterwards your nicotine levels are falling and the only way to cure this feeling? Have another cigarette.

* Hence your body learns to associate the reduction of anxiety with cigarettes, yet the only true anxiety it’s resolving is your body’s need for that next cigarette.

What a con. That was the word that really stopped me in my tracks. I hate the idea of being conned. I’m cleverer than that, I like to think anyway.

So how to stop? Carr talks about an addiction monster that must die and every time it’s asking for a cigarette he’s going, “please feed me” and the only way to kill him is to not feed him. Hence every craving should be seen as a good thing, as this is your addiction monster dying.

The next few days were pretty easy, as Will Self writes, “In fact, nicotine withdrawal is a rather pleasant experience — giggly, slightly trippy, rendering the recovering smoker emotionally volatile, likely to laugh, cry or shout.” My particular version of this involved a lunch at an Italian restaurant which reminded me of the extraordinary sensations produced by eating a packet of Frutella on mushrooms.

Over the next few weeks I notice I’ve got a couple of cues for smoking.

* Phone calls to parents.
* Getting off the tube and waiting for buses.
* The pub

The first two are the easiest to deal with – I tell myself that’s the addiction monster dying and I can move on quickly – the pub is a trickier beast.

It’s not so much I want to smoke but my friends want me to smoke. One person in particular is a keen part-time smoker who relied on me to enable him to have the odd cigarette. He pressures me and is irritated when I refuse.

Two years later and it’s much much easier. I hardly think about cigarettes and I feel generally healthier. Woo hoo. And I get to feel superior to the smokers stuck outside restaurants and pubs.

If only Douglas Adams could have knocked the fags on the head then maybe we’d have a few extra books to read, or at the very least, the best ever person to follow on twitter.

Recently I’ve had a bit of a revelation when it comes to websites – many of them earn their cash by recommending other sites and collecting the ‘affiliate’ money. I.e. a kick-back for finding a new customer.

Some sites are acting reasonably responsible – for example I always stick an affiliate code on the Amazon links to the Sick Joke Book and earn an ooh 10p extra cut on each sale.

Whilst others are simply raking in the moolah.

(Naming no names, but look hard at those supermarket points websites that suggest you buy stuff via their link, and get oh-so valuable points on your card. How generous Mr Supermarket man. Cheers.)

In the process of digging about and finding out how this stuff works, I came across a site called Quidco which gives back all this money to the consumer. Feeling a little investigative, I thought I’d ask them a few questions.

WARNING: Some of this stuff is a bit wordy, and if you want to skip this bit then go-ahead. The crucial point is Quidco are legit and you will earn good money back if you use them.

Interview With Paul Nikkel, co-founder of Quidco.

What’s your background?

Paul: None of the us who founded Quidco had any commercial background, what we did have a was an interest in making a site that would work for consumers instead of against them. I don’t really like business and I think if we came from a business background we probably wouldn’t be running Quidco the way it’s run. We’re all in our mid-twenties and Sheffield based.

Rob: So, two of you run the site. What are your roles?

Paul: Actually there’s a few more than two of us running the site now. When we started in May 2005 it was myself and my wife who came up with the concept and implementation. At that point we had a friend who did the back-end programming to put things together. This stayed the same for about 10 months as we grew and then we had to take on more people. We now have a couple of programmers who work on the site as well as two other customer service people to handle member emails and transaction enquiries (when things don’t track properly etc). That’s the basic structure.

How did it all start?

Paul: I don’t know if you’ve read it but we have a little Quidco story on the site that covers that one.

The basic thrust of it is that we’re pretty savvy online shoppers and we wanted to make the kind of site we wanted to use. We knew the fundamentals of how reward schemes like Nectar e-stores work and we knew how much potential money was sitting there for consumers. So we figured let’s make a co-operative out of this where we pass on all that money as real money and give it back to the consumer. Of course we have to make something too and so we came up with the model where we hold back the first £5 a member makes in a year. That way no one is ever out of pocket, no one is ever charged a fee as we can only hold it back if you’ve actually earned it on the site.

The other fundamental aspect of it for us was that we wanted an ad/spam free site. So we don’t do any flashing ads, we don’t do banners, we don’t do email shots, we don’t sell/trade addresses, and so on. We think there’s a huge potential for any site that actually takes its members seriously and doesn’t try to push things down their throat. We’re seeing this clean/honest way of thinking more and more with the new breed of web business models but in most of online shopping there’s still this old “portal” concept with noisy ads, email shots etc. We didn’t want to be part of that.

Surely you earn more than £5 per user? There’s interest, and the people not logged in…

Paul: I think there’s a difference between how you make money on a site though, between making money as an incidental or how you make it as a business model. Our business model is built on holding back that £5 and that is what we fundamentally rely on to run the site. As incidentals there is a very small amount of money made from people who click on the red “You are not logged in and won’t earn cashback” links but I’m not sure why someone would visit a cashback site to not earn money on their purchase. We have these there so visitors understand how the site works even if they are not logged in.Also, with interest, we do not have a minimum payout, we will pay out our members each month even if they have only 1p in their account. As we are generally paid in the third week of the month we hold on to member earnings for about a week while we allocate it into their accounts. Again, if a member didn’t enter their payment details for a few months then yes we would be holding it and making interest during that time but again it’s an incidental and not a business model.

The interest one is a question of scale also, at today’s current account rates you would need an absolute pile of money before you’re going to see any kind of notable money coming in off that in a week; and the issue with scale here is that to get an absolute pile of money you would need an absolute pile of members which are going to be requiring, well, an absolute pile of administration which leaves that interest again as an incidental amount.Not to make an essay out of that but we get the question a lot and there is a distinction there I think. If a site’s model is fooling people into clicking the not logged in link, or setting minimum payout levels and extended payment periods in order to hang on to money longer then I think that would be opposite to the ethos of Quidco. As a side note here, another aspect of the co-operative is that many referral programmes are based on activity tiers so the more members we do have the more we often get on certain programmes, this is passed on to members also.

Rob: Yep, I’m not trying to catch anyone out. I’m just trying to understand the business model. I’m surprised that the earnings on the non-logged in users would be low. As a large proportion of web traffic is often simply people passing by, clicking the odd link, moving on. This sets a cookie, la la la, you know better than me how affiliates work.

So what about the suggestion that sending people to merchants in bulk, negotiates a better percentage which you don’t give back to the user?

Paul: I do get a little insulted when people make that claim. Yes we could hide things but I think the amount of programmes where we are publishing the highest tier shows that we are not out to hide anything. I would hope blog items like our eBay dilemma also show this. From the beginning the idea of climbing the tiers has been central to what the point of Quidco was as a cooperative, by pooling our earnings we climb into higher tiers.

I totally agree with you about being open with every penny and that’s what we try to do. However, we always have and always will come across people out there who refuse to believe we are running this on what we say we are. I think there is also a fair amount of bitterness from the old guard who were holding back 50% of commissions that seeps out here and there.

So you’re really earning only off that fiver? No funny business?

Paul: On a regular site you have people passing through but on Quidco they are coming specifically to shop and get cashback through partner merchants so there is little reason to be passing through otherwise.

How do you know it’s me who’s bought a tv?

Paul: We track the user to the purchases through the affiliate reporting. The member doesn’t have to do anything like submit a claim etc. As this works on cookies and such though there are some things we recommend members check like the settings on Norton Internet Security, Search and Destroy, etc. (these have settings to block third party cookies and affiliate tracking which we actually need to work in this case). As with everything there can be problems with tracking especially if a user has a lot of anti-ad software or if the merchant hasn’t set up tracking properly etc. and in that case we have to take their information manually and raise it with the merchant which is a pretty long drawn out process.

The bigger picture, what do other sites think?

Paul: I don’t have much of an idea of what our competitors think of us. I assume it’s probably the same as in any business where I doubt they love us as much as our members do.

Why no Amazon?

Paul: We’re talking with Amazon about joining Quidco. There’s a few issues with them.

Your future?

Paul: We’d like to see Quidco as the place savvy internet shoppers go when they start shopping in the UK. There’s more and more ad money coming online and it only makes sense for the smart shopper to be taking advantage of cashback.

The crucial “how much do you earn question?”

Paul: Number of users isn’t a public number sorry. I would say it’s a bit irrelevant anyway. It’s kind of like talking about website “hits”.

Rob: Ha ha. Now, don’t fob me off so. It’s nothing like the same thing. Presumably you don’t want to make that number public as people like me would times it by 5 and say “Quidco are making £x” And you’d have to say, “No. It’s more complex than that. X% of our users sign-up and never come back, hence we never get the £5″ But once the number was out there, it would be a hard thing to kill.

Paul: ;) It is more complex than that as you say. And also a lot of people count rows in their database as “members” which make it fairly irrelevant. I know it’s something everyone wants to know though. I guess I use the hits analogy as it’s often bandied about to the same effect, more to impress rather than make any sense.

If you need a number the public one we use is £26 million bought through partner merchants by Quidco members so far in 2006.

People earn money online in such weird ways…

Paul: Yup it’s very interesting. Here’s a few that get me… people will buy from merchants through quidco and then resell on ebay. They find a bargain (1. merchant makes money), go through Quidco (2. we make money), resell on ebay (3.ebay makes money and 4. they make money) and probably the user pays with Paypal thus 5. Paypal makes money. Five steps (well there’s more if you take in other spin-offs like the network makes money and the agency that deals with the network – but these are the main ones) and nothing has really happened but everyone made some money. Or how about matched betting? People placing opposing bets on various online gambling sites with slightly different odds to end up ahead…and gambling profits are tax free. The list goes on and on. There’s a lot of stones to look under online…

Is the future cashback AND price comparison?

Paul: Combining price comparison and cashback has been done/tried on both sides of the pond and is still done here and there. The problem with price comparison is that it takes massive resources and you need to use 3-5 to get a proper comparison anyway (hence why there are meta-comparison sites). It seems what happens is that you end up putting massive resources into price comparison only to have members use several others anyway. Someone like Pricerunner in the UK (valueclick company) has a large amount of staff manually inputting data as well as trying to untangle automated product feeds and databases. So far it seems better to let users find prices using whatever service is best at that time and skip on the resource loss. It is something we keep an eye on though yes.

The funny thing is the whole concept sounds too good to be true to most people.

And the world beats a path to your door…

It is a very word of mouth thing overall but I think it will always be something for people who are shopping online already. My mum really doesn’t get it for example but she doesn’t shop online and so she the reward/risk ratio doesn’t really work well for her.

So there we go. Money for old rope? Visit Quidco to find out for yourself.

Photo for illustration purposes only, this ain’t my nasty skanky-ho keyboard

Hi, I’m Rob Manuel and I’ve got a problem with keyboards. A big fucking problem. I can bore for hours on the subject, and so in the small hope that the magic of the internet will get my message to keyboard designers, here’s my rant. Hold onto your hat, it’s going to be a rough ride.

1. Numlock
What is the fucking point of numlock? Why would I ever want to use the numeric keypad as a cursor? Yes I imagine it’s some kind of gay backwards compatibility thing, but it’s just a pain in the arse. The only time I ever press it is by accident and then wonder why the number keys have stopped working.

2. Capslock
Apparently capslock was considered quite useful on typewriters. Probably because TYPING IN CAPS WAS THE ONLY WAY TO DO EMPHASIS. But we have bold now, and the only people who type in caps are the modern green-inkers who send me loony emails about their cats.

Again, it’s a key I press only by accident, normally when filling in a username / password thing, and using tab to change the form focus, missing and end-up adding robmanuelBADGERSEX to the auto-complete. Gah.

Although recently I have found a setting in the control panel to disable the damn thing. Which made me as happy as a pig in shit.

3. Multimedia keys
All those fucking keys at the top of the keyboard. They’re never built like proper keys and always look shoddy and plasticy.

But my problem is more than aesthetics. It’s standardisation. Every last damn keyboard manufacturer has a different idea of what these keys should be doing.

Hence I don’t bother using them as I swap machines a lot between home and offices and don’t want to have conflicting and non-standard keyboard information in my brain. I don’t want to on another PC and automatically stabbing the messenger button, to find it’s opened some shitty sales portal.

And the corporate ego of it all! My old HP keyboard had a internet button that opened the bloody hp.com homepage. What use is that to man or beast? I’ve already bought an HP computer; I don’t need to buy a second.

4. US keyboards
Oh jesus pillocking shit. Who thought it was a good idea to make English and American keyboards different. We speak the same bloody language for gods sake. It’s not like we need a load of twirly umlauts on the keys. The crucial and mind-boggling shit variation is the enter key. On the UK version is nice and large and shaped like an upside down Tetris L brick. The shape is distinctive to the touch and you can easily find it by feel in poor light conditions.

In USA the key is roughly the same shape as the backspace key, with the saved space being used for the backslash / pipe key. Duh, now that’s a brilliant idea isn’t it? Because normal PC operation uses those characters all the time. Probably a hang-over from DOS when your computer was controlled by an arcane series of cryptic symbols. Or small donkeys, I forget now.

5. Colour
Why colour a keyboard cream? Because the manufactures want it to get dirty and you have to buy a new one every three months? Wired magazine once memorably described the gunk as “keyboard plaque”, but the state of some keyboards I’ve seen, it’s more like “keyboard AIDS.” There should be a law that makes all keyboards black. Well, unless you’re a Steve Jobs acolyte and think white keyboards where every bastard button looks like the other is a good idea.

6. Volume control mute
Now, the volume control is one of the few keyboard advancements of recent years that’s a good idea. Using a PC has become a noisy activity, but sometimes you need to answer the phone and being able to quickly hit mute without fiddling with the mouse rocks.

But the small problem is that the mute key often works after the PC is fully booted, meaning that the system “whoosh” noise will play regardless.

Which means using my laptop late at night can wake my family. I’ve taken to keeping an old pair of broken headphones handy so that I can push the jack into the speaker socket and re-route the nasty noises.

7. Sleep button
I’m highly suspicious of the sleep button. In principle it’s great, but I had such a bad experience with the sleep mode crashing the PC and losing my work that I don’t trust it. At least on the recent Microsoft keyboards it’s in the far right corner and difficult to hit by accident. On my old HP keyboard it was place just above the ESC key and I’d hit it when trying to stop a webpage loading, and then go “Argh! My PC is going to die! Don’t die, little computer.”

8. Non-standard insert block
The Microsoft keyboard design team are clearly back on the crack pipe. First they made the insane “natural” keyboard that split the keyboard into two chunks for touch typists. And secondly they’ve recently re-designed the insert block.

Why? All it means is I’m constantly pressing the wrong keys when I try and navigate documents via pagedown and home keys.

I’m sure they did some lovely usability study and worked out it was more efficient or something, but for fucks sake, don’t muck with the standards. I know how to use the old one and don’t want to learn a new one. Haven’t you learnt anything from those crappy Dvorak keyboards that attempted to persuade people to abandon qwerty?

9. Legs
What is the point of giving a keyboard legs? Yes keyboards are more pleasant to type on with a small tilt, so why not simply make the keyboard shaped like a wedge of cheese? It’s a particular sore point for me as I’ve thrown away perfectly good keyboards after accidentally snapping one of the pathetic spindly plastic legs.

10. Function keys
Grr. Another Microsoft “innovation.” On recent keyboards they’ve move the function keys from blocks of four to blocks of three. I can see what they’re trying to achieve here. Visually three is a better shape to help aid the memory: something is either on the left, the middle or the right. However, again this move away from standards results in me pressing the wrong key. For example I regularly press F5 to refresh an internet page, which my brain has hard-wired to know it’s the first key of the second block. Microsoft has moved it to the second key of the second block, hence I now keep keep pressing F4 and wonder why nothing is happening.

… 2 Bonus reasons, there’s no stopping now …

11. F Lock
Oh damn your eyes Microsoft. Is nothing sacred any more? You’re taking my function keys and replacing them with some bollocks about “New, Open and Close”? Ok, the F Lock turns all this off and it stays off which in theory is fine. Except they’ve made the (rather useful for screen grabs) PrtScn key only work whilst F Lock is off. Hence to grab a screen now I have to press three keys instead of one. Nice one, you bunch of keyboard bastards.

12. Wireless
What’s this obsession with making everything wireless? Yes having your laptop connecting to the internet whilst you take a dump in the bog is one of the marvels of the technological age. However we don’t need wireless keyboards on the desktop. I recently was nosing around PC world and except for a shitty £5.00 made of crap thing, that’s all they were selling.

For fucks sake. It’s not an innovation to stick batteries in a keyboard. It’s a pain in the anus. I don’t want to stop typing because my keyboard is out of batteries, it’s just fucking insane.

End bit
Now that I’ve ranted, I really do feel much better. Carry on, as you were. Or why not look on Flickr for some kittens?

UPDATE - Hello to the Digg / Fark readers, and the other blogs linking my rant. BTW: I’ve got a book out, and it’s very rude.

The Beeb have launched a new comedy website, the idea is to get people creating funny stuff via the interwebs and the best stuff might end up as TV show.

They very nicely showered me with cash to write some tips.

King of Chavs TV Titles

And in other news, the Keith Allen documentary on Michael Carroll was broadcast on Channel 4 the other day. I did the titles, which you can watch here. WARNING: Contains loud swearing.

Working with the Internet my entire adult life, I’ve mostly seen Macs as a source of irritation. I’ll be working on a website and the designer gives me a bunch of files without file extensions and I have to spend half an hour working out what application will load them, or I’ll be adding two days extra development time to a project as I debug the CSS so that the site will display on IE.

Actually the largest source of irritation is file endings. I co-write the B3ta Newsletter with my friend David Stevenson, a keen Mac user, and the endless ‘fixing the line endings’ and ‘removing the curly quotes’ as we exchange drafts on email has driven me to distraction.

And yet, two weeks ago, I bought a Mac. Why?

I needed a laptop for my wife to do a bit of email, as my other PC laptop is heavy, it’s often unavailable as I’ve left it in the office.

The secret reason was a bit more boys-toys: “working out how how to use a Mac will be something to geek out on over a dull weekend.”

Scooted about on eBay and found I could buy a 2005 12″ Powerbook at around £550. As these retail new at over £1000, it felt like a bargain.

And I’ll tell you something. Over the last two weeks I’ve fallen in love with my Mac, I’ve turned into a Mac bore. So I figure I’ll just get it over and done with quickly, and instead of winding up all my PC friends by phoning them up one by one, I’ll just write something and let them ignore it in one easy go.

Ten reasons I love my Mac

• The 12″ powerbook is so small I can carry it on the tube without my shoulder hurting.
• Battery life. I get 3 to 4 hrs, meaning I can actually use it for a solid bit of work without plugging it in. Unlike my Compaq which lasts about 1 hr before plaintively bleeping that it needs more juice.
• Having a Mac is like moving to America. Everything is basically the same as the UK, but assuming you can afford it, stuff just works better.
• Tight iLife / iWorks integration. I am so in love with it. For example:
• iPhoto. This weekend a friend and her baby popped over. I took a few snaps and dropped them into a slideshow complete with a Madonna backing track via iTunes. She thought I was a genius and couldn’t believe I’d managed to achieve all that whilst holding down a conversation about prams.
• Mac users are better looking. I took my wife to the Apple store so I could buy a laptop bag and she said, “Gosh. I should send my single friends here. They could pull.” As compared to the time I dragged her to the computer fair off Tottenham Crt Rd, “These people smell. Can we leave?”
• Built-in bluetooth. I transfered my photos off my phone with no faffing about, unlike my PC where I visited a shop, bought a USB dongle and then spent two hours fighting with passkeys trying to get everything to talk to each other.
• Talking point. Last week I was working in a new office full of PC users. Everyone wanted to come over and talk to the Mac user and see how life was different on the other side. It’s a bit like being the token gay in the office. Although as I use a PC at home, it’s probably more like being secretly bisexual.
• I was up and running within minutes. I thought I’d be all twat-fingered and not being able to get stuff to work. On the day my Mac turned-up, I managed to use it to build a quick messageboard / blog website for a friend. It wasn’t any easier, but the fact that it wasn’t any harder than normal means that there’s no reason not to use a Mac as the main tool of my trade.
• It’s so small and shiny.

Ten things that have annoyed me

• No # key. I had to Google to find out how to add a hash to a document. And yet Apple think that I need a § key? Who the hell needs that?
• Bouncy dock items. It’s like having a unruly child with Attention Deficit Disorder. Yes MSN, I can see you’ve managed to sign yourself out, but why do have to keep pestering me until I get clicky on your ass?
• Line endings. Gah. All my posts on Yahoo-groups appear to have random carriage returns placed halfway through sentences. It’s making my emails look retarded.
• Smug friends, who on telling them I really like my Mac, launch into a “I’ve been using a Mac since 1984. Windows is rubbish” zealotry.
• Right click! Yes I know Windows people laugh at Macs for the right click issue, and then Mac people go, “A-ha! But you can plug in a two button one if you like.” But I don’t want to plug in a second mouse – it’s a laptop – I’m currently typing this on my lap. Where would the mouse go? On my knee?
• That six months ago I didn’t tell my mum to buy one and she’s stuck with a PC which she finds tricky to use.
• Fn / Ctrl / Alt / Option / Windows – between the Mac and the PC there are five keys that work as shortcut modifiers. How on earth am I meant to switch between the two machines and know which ones to press? Cut and paste is the worst. On the PC it’s Ctrl C whilst the Mac it’s Apple C. And the Apple key is in the same place as the ALT key on the PC. Gah, it’s slowing me down. Roll on magic keyboards of the future with mini LCDs in each key.
• You know what? I can’t find ten things that annoy me about the Mac. I’ve been racking my brains and there’s no more. In fact, I’m writing this within a web browser and I’ve just realised that there is a spellcheck built into Safari. How cool is that? Not only is it cool, it’s the same spellcheck that works in Textedit and Pages so any words I add to the dictionary are available in all aps. God damn it, I love my Mac. It’s giving me the horn.

End bit

So the question is… Do I replace my desktop with a Mac? Oh gawd, I really want to say yes, but I haven’t really got the spare cash at the moment, but every fiber in my body is going, “yes! never use a PC again. Windows is rubbish.”

And incase you’re wondering. No, my wife can’t have my lovely Mac. She can have the (actually much higher specced) PC laptop that’s currently sitting unloved on the floor.

But I’ll tell you something about this ‘switch’ business. Ex-smokers are always the most irritating type of non-smoker. Are ex-PC users the most boring type of Mac user? Er.. I suspect they are, so if you see me knocking about, remind me to shut up about Macs.