When trying to convey to the reader whether they may like the product one is reviewing, the very easiest way to put this across is to explain, “If you like [similar product] or [another similar product], then you’ll love [product being reviewed].” There’s a parody by which this most awful and lazy of devices is known. It is:

“If you like this sort of thing, you’ll like this sort of thing.”

Not only is there the inherent redundancy, but it’s also the most massively unhelpful sentence to read if you a) haven’t heard of the compared products, or b) don’t like them for specific reasons that may not apply to the current subject. It should never, ever be written. Ever. By no one. If you see it, write the author’s name down in a list of people you’ll roll your eyes at, or car over.

And if you’re looking for this at its absolute worst – to a point where it creates convulsions in all right-minded people – you want to make your way to the Odeon website.

Let’s have a look at some of the film descriptions for the currently showing films at the Odeon in Bath.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs:

If you liked ‘Bolt’ and ‘Finding Nemo’, you’ll love ‘Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs’.

Let’s see. There’s Disney’s Bolt, a film about a dog who believes he has super powers, but spends the movie learning that he does not. And there’s Finding Nemo, Pixar’s remarkable comedy drama about a fish separated from his father after the tragic death of his mother and hundreds of siblings. The idea of putting the two films in the same category is peculiar enough, let alone implying that liking either of them will cause you to escalate your feelings in response to the third, and most poor, Ice Age film. Two CGI children’s films were plucked out of the air, with Bolt thrown in to avoid including two Pixar choices. Perhaps, “If you liked Ice Age and Ice Age 2, you’ll love Ice Age 3″ might have been slightly more relevant.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

If you liked ‘Babe and ‘Good Boy’, you’ll love ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’.

Possibly the title alone is enough to tip you off that Beverly Hills Chihuahua isn’t reviewing all that well. The New York Post wrote, “The film is Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The audience is the fire hydrant.” So there’s a good chance that if you “love” this film, your taste in the films you “like” is going to be suspect. But what choices! Good Boy, which I’d never heard of before, is the straight-to-video tale of a dog from space visiting Earth. Babe is the vastly successful story based on Dick King-Smith’s The Sheep Pig, that saw a generation of children refuse to eat bacon for about two weeks. One’s about a dog, the other’s got, um, talking animals in it? They’re bound to lead to your enjoying the tale of a rich, spoilt LA Chihuahua lost in grubby poor people’s Mexico.

Brüno

An easy one, right? Sacha Baron-Cohen’s third film. His third film taking an old character and seeing how much trouble he can get himself in with it in America. Ali G, Borat, Brüno. It’s a simple formula.

If you liked ‘Borat’ and ‘Yes Man’, you’ll love ‘Brüno’.

Um, half way there. Yes Man is last year’s poorly received Jim Carey movie vaguely based on the idea from Danny Wallace’s book where he said yes to every offer for a year. Which has precisely what to do with Baron-Cohen pretending to be gay to aggravate rednecks, or pratting about at fashion shows?

It then gets too boring to carry on. Fans of gangster movies will love The Departed. Those who enjoy comedy films will love a comedy film. Those who like special effects will love special effects films. But then there’s one shining example of this horror hidden in the site. Not to be released at the God-forsaken Bath Odeon (lest they not be able to run Harry Potter on all seven hundred screens at once), the extremely excellent-looking Moon is due to be released this Friday. Old-school hard-scifi, with rarely more than one character present, focusing on isolation and minimalism, it brings to mind obvious comparisons such as Solaris and 2001. But not to the Odeon’s mind. Where most critics have referred to the quietness, delicate pacing and reminiscence of classic 60s and 70s science fiction. The Odeon, they say,

If you liked ‘Transformers’ and ‘Star Trek’, you’ll love ‘Moon’.

Because they’re both in space too! Apart from Transformers. Oh, they’re all about robots! Except that Moon and Star Trek feature computers. They’re both… They have… WHAT?

I’m currently in LA, in a peculiar hotel on the edge of Korea Town, a little overly filled with Korean BBQ. My life may not be well paid, but I’m certainly one lucky guy with the peculiar things I get to do. Now Valve has finally revealed the existence of Left 4 Dead 2 I can say that I’ve been in Seattle for the weekend. Life is sometimes odd, that I sometimes can’t say where I am on the planet because cunning RPS/Gamer readers will put two and two together and get a number dangerously close to four. Valve weren’t even stating they were going to E3, let alone that they’d be revealing a brand new game. I was like an international spy.

It meant there was a spare weekend in Seattle, which was filled tremendously. I ate splendid food like six-egg omelettes at Beth’s Cafe and pulled pork sandwiches from an awesome sandwich shop, visited all the right touristy places like the Space Needle and a Duck Tour, as well as the Jim Henson exhibit, and saw Up at the cinema and Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali live on stage.

Arriving in LA would have been glum, were it not for meeting up with a chum and going for Korean food, then being given an impromptu “nickel tour” of the city in her car. Another really nice evening.

It’s been a great time, with splendid people.

Tomorrow I have to start doing some proper work as E3 begins. (Well, beyond the 2000 word exclusive preview I already wrote, and so on). I’ve not been before, and it’s a daunting schedule. It’ll be interesting, at least.

And that’s all the weather.

You’d be forgiven for being confused by the name into thinking they were for marriage, but what their catchy acronym fails to encapsulate is their rather fevered specificity over the matter. Marriage is for men and women only they say because, well, common sense says so. What they mean is, their interpretation of their religious values says so. In fact, there’s a more sinister reason for the obfuscation: were they to be clear about their reasoning, it would put an even larger irony-shaped dent in their claimed position of defending “freedom of speech”. Here’s the ad:

This use of “freedom of speech”, like some sort of magical incantation that turns all argument no matter how batshit crazy into appeals for the very rights of mankind, is getting a little tired. Especially when it’s being used in the context of so desperately trying to prevent freedoms. Their position, would they only have the sprinkling of balls to state it, is they believe being gay is wrong. This position is usually built out of a combination of learned, ingrained intolerance, fear of the ‘other’, and revulsion at the idea of men’s bottoms and willies getting together. None of which, of course, has any bearing on a gay couple’s wish to be married. This leads to the wholly irrational response from the religious right (for it is always rooted in the very bowels of religiosity) that somehow “their” marriage is being taken away from them.

The advert highlights this to hilarious effect, the fear beginning with notions that somehow their own rights are being attacked in an unspecified way, and reaching psychotic paranoia that some great, thunderous evil is approaching, and it’s all because of those damned gays.

You might imagine visiting Om Nom Nom‘s website would provide at least allusions toward what these threats to marriage might be. Indeed, there’s an entire page of the site dedicated to the very subject, “The Threat to Marriage“. Except, in none of the three sections on that page do they at any point even hint at what threat there is to marriage as a result of same sex partnerships. They instead state that evil rich gays are buying politics, and that if something isn’t done right now, gay marriage will sweep across the entire nation of the United States. We’re then told that,

“NOM seeks to… educate the public about the consequences of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, especially for children and people of faith”

I’m not convinced they do seek to do this, since they appear to pathologically avoid stating exactly what these consequences are. Dig further and you’ll find the literature they wish people to pass out at their churches (and indeed synagogues).

These pdfs offer a list of reasons why marriage is beneficial to children, mixing some reasonable statements about stability with completely misunderstood statistics. None of which, of course, has any bearing on the subject, since the people they’re so furious about are trying to, er, get married. However, flip it over and finally we get to find out how gay marriage is going to destroy us all.

First there’s this excellent claim:

“Spin a globe and pick virtually any place on earth at any previous time in human history; you will find that they do marriage one way — between men and women. There may be other differences, but marriage has always required a husband and a wife.”

Presumably they use “men and women” in their plural terms on purpose, to get around the slightly awkward problem that when spinning that globe, monogamous marriage might not be what you find. Those differences there might be, eh?

But then comes their repeated refrain, this deeply strange belief that somehow gay marriage is denying children of their parents.

“A loving and compassionate society comes to the aid of motherless and fatherless children, but no compassionate society intentionally deprives children of their own mom or dad. But this is what every same-sex home does — and for no other reason but to satisfy adult desire.”

Which children? Perhaps it’s not worth trying to analyse the logic of these lunatics too closely, when their advertising warns us of impending gay doom, but how can this statement be interpreted? Do they believe that gay couples are stolen from heterosexual marriages? In the night the rich gay mafia, funded by Tim Gill, sneak into houses and steal children’s parents, forcing them into gay relationships? Or do they think that all adults who don’t breed are denying the existence of some otherwise inevitable child? Are spinsters also part of this oncoming cloud? And the infertile?

“How will my same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?” asks the pamphlet. The answer:

“Same-sex marriage advocates want to force everyone to dramatically and permanently alter our definition of marriage and family. The great, historic, cross-cultural understanding of marriage as the union of husband and wife will be called bigotry in the public square. The law will teach your children and grandchildren that there is nothing special about mothers and fathers raising children together, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot.”

But how will my same-sex marriage hurt your marriage? everyone is left asking. Because you sort of didn’t answer the question. You instead went onto more of the frothing paranoid ranting about how all straight people will go to prison. Once again, their logic is so gruesomely flawed. They wish to advocate marriage as the ideal situation for raising children, for which there’s decent evidence. But they then wish to prevent marriages. Demonstrating their remarkable inability to detect irony, the following question goes,

“Is same-sex marriage like interracial marriage? Laws against interracial marriage were about keeping two races apart, so that one race could oppress the other, and that is wrong. Marriage is about bringing male and female together, so that children have mothers and fathers, and so that women aren’t stuck with the enormous, unfair burdens of parenting alone— and that is good.”

Right, so oppressing others is “wrong“. Noted. And… single mothers have a hard time. And that has what to do with being gay? Once again we’re back to the Black Ops Gays nabbing children’s fathers and enslaving them into their evil regime. Then of course we’re told that it’s a slippery slope, what next?, polygamy? Marrying octopuses? HEROIN IN SCHOOL LUNCHES??! Churches will suffer because imposing their belief system on others will somehow become some sort of bigoted act! And what about schools?

“Consider a recent National Public Radio story from Boston. An eighth-grade teacher there teaches about gay sex “thoroughly and explicitly.” When asked if parents complained about their children learning such explicit material, this teacher said, “Give me a break. It’s legal now.” Heather and her two Mommies will become standard kindergarten fare. Our children need to hear a positive message about marriage.”

There you go! A teacher in Boston might have said something in a school (no reference is given to authenticate this story), so that’s it! Children will be forced to have gay sex in the classroom from aged 5 – it’s inevitable.

Still, I don’t seem to have learned how heterosexual marriage is going to be hurt. Which is odd. Since they promised. And finally, there’s a wonderful section on NOM’s site offering you a script for responding to the challenges from the liberal gay elite. So when someone asks you if you’re a bigot for wanting to prevent other people from having the same rights as you because of their sexuality, you just say,

“Do you really believe people like me who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids are like bigots and racists? I think that’s pretty offensive, don’t you? Particularly to the 60 percent of African-Americans who oppose same-sex marriage. Marriage as the union of husband and wife isn’t new; it’s not taking away anyone’s rights. It’s common sense.”

I’m not entirely clear how it’s offensive to black people to point out when someone’s being a homophobe, but then I’m probably not stark raving mad enough. So I’d like to apologise to sixty percent of black people when I point out how NOM are stark raving mad homophobes. I’m sorry for the offence caused. Oh, and of course, it’s “common sense”.

So there you go. There’s a terrifying homosexual storm coming, and it’s going to steal all daddies from their children, and schools are going to force children into bumming each other, and your own marriage is going to be destroyed because of common sense.

Meanwhile, here’s Funny Or Die‘s response to NOM’s commercial.

I come to this with no great passion for Doctor Who. I care little about its history – it was mostly dreadful, if fun – but when it’s good, it can be pretty special. David Tennant’s appeared in a number of such special episodes, and they’ve invariably been written by Steven Moffat, (who thank goodness takes over next year). At his worst, Davies has made Doctor Who tedious, and occasionally pathetic, but he’d previously managed nothing as monstrously dreadful as Planet of the Dead.

The checklist of lazy writing is almost obliterated for ticks. There’s a rag-tag group of what he apparently believes are ‘ordinary people’. What this means is poor and simple. Each person is given half a dimension, and is otherwise useless. One kid is so barely capable he failed to complete a GNVQ in car mechanics, lasting only two weeks, but might be able to tinker with an engine. Another kid has lost his job, and that, stunningly, that’s his personality. There’s a fluttering middle aged white woman, who schizophrenically flipflops between wimpering uselessness and simpering confidence. And then there’s the crowned queen of hateful writing, the Magical Negro. She and her husband, they only want to go home and eat their poor people’s chops. (I cannot think of anything I’ve seen more excruciatingly awful than the scene with the Doctor finding things for everyone to live for. Chops. They live for some chops.) But wait! She has magical psychic powers to go with her accent!

To say RTD borrows from Tomb Raider with Michelle Ryan’s Lady thief is to suggest the Nazis were just borrowing the Austrian’s gold. So, playing Lara Croft she steals a gold cup by using a technique Davies has seen in seven hundred cheap-n-stupid films, and thus is plucky and adorable. She’s primed to be the Doctor’s latest assistant, and making her getaway on a number 200 bus, she meets the Doctor as he pursues a rogue wormhole in – of all places – London! Who’d have thought it? Once again, Cardiff did its best London impression, because that’s where RTD’s special poor and simple people live. They go through the hole, and appear in a desert on another planet. People are surprised for a couple of seconds, but they’re simple folk and they accept their lot.

I’m not sure if Davies and co-writer Gareth Roberts had any more ideas after this, or if they just scribbled on the table with their crayons and the special effects department tried to build a plot around the wobbly lines. There’s some people with plastic fly-heads, and there’s some flying metal manta-rays, and one is coming toward the other so there’s a time limit. The story was literally: get a bus out of some sand. For an hour.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, UNIT spring into action in order to have some people hold some guns, while some other people tap on keyboards that make wormholes disappear. Sadly, the main keyboard tapping man was a disturbingly old and fat Lee Evans, whose grotesque life-long Norman Wisdom parody wearily huffed and puffed its way throughout in what you can only suppose was intended to be comic relief. His part is to eventually close the wormhole, which was portrayed by shouting gibberish down yet another magical mobile phone, and tapping at his keyboard. Because Davies hadn’t actually written a plot, or anything of any substance at any point, there could be no logic or suspense to his success or failure. Even an attempt to add suspense with his grumpy boss lady telling him he had to trap the Doctor and his companions on the other side of the wormhole came to a nonsensical climax, as he still didn’t close it when he knew the bus was safely returned. But someone held a gun to his head, so there was your drama.

The plastic fly-head people’s crashed spaceship was another set in a Davies episode to be lit fluorescent pink. You’ve got to wonder at whichever lighting technician didn’t go home and feed his exhaust into his car window the last time, and was prepared to do that again. So even if the whole thing didn’t reek of corners cut and cheap, tacky design, the pink lights sure as hell made sure it seemed that way. The opening scene in the museum as Lara Croft stole the gold cup was almost mysterious in how terrible it looked. It was a huge, impressive building, that was shot to look like it was made of cardboard. Everything in the episode was so lifeless, so flat and uninspired, and garish pink lights aren’t going to make it go away.

As ever, Tennant fought like a champion with the worst script he’s had so far, and the banter between him and Lara Croft was fun for the facial expressions, if not the half-arsed non-sentiment they were saying. Michelle Ryan did fine, once again getting to prove that she’s not the gutter-squawking ghoul she played in EastEnders, after a decent turn in Jekyll, and a less than decent turn in Bionic Woman (although that was in no way her fault). But it’s hard to believe that anyone else in the episode was auditioned. They surely must have been kidnapped from the street and forced to read out their seven lines each before they’d be released. In any of the seventeen or eighteen thousand celebration scenes in the closing ten minutes they grimaced and gurned, and managed to make clapping look like it was something they really had to think about. If there was any tension at any point, it was whether their hands would miss in the attempt.

Also unbearably incompetent was the Doctor’s refusal to take Lara Croft with him at the end. Switching moods with the skill and grace of Victoria Wood’s Dinnerladies (“Ooh, cor blimey! I’ve only gone and put the jam knife in the butter! I’m dying of cancer.”), the Doctor puts on his frown-face and tells her no, he can’t have any more of his assistants die. Then helps her escape from the police so she can run away in a flying bus. She’s the good kind of burglar, you see.

Talking of escaping on a flying bus, this is Davies’ most awful crime, and a legacy he leaves for Moffat like a dog leaves legacies in the park. He has taken the story somewhere that leaves almost no room for mystery. Ragnar Tørnquist wrote in The Longest Journey,

“Mystery is important. To know everything, to know the whole truth, is dull. There is no magic in that. Magic is not knowing, magic is wondering about what and how and where.”

This was the secret behind Doctor Who, and any number of other science fiction or fantasy stories. It’s so fundamentally obvious that it doesn’t make sense that he’d go so far into destroying it. You have mystery, and the viewer gets to know some secrets that the people outside of the protagonists’ circle do not. For decades the Doctor saved an unknowing Earth. Various members of the secret military organisations knew, as did a handful of humans he’d encountered, but the other six billion were complete unaware. It was our secret that we viewers shared with him, and it was where the fear came from.

When seeing the three suns from the desert planet this miserable exchange occurs. “Like when all those planets was up in the sky,” says one. “But it was the Earth that moved back then, wasn’t it?” responds another. There’s no mystery left for these people, there’s nothing that can shock or appal them. They’ve been on the planet when it went to the other side of the universe. They’ve seen huge spaceships destroy central London. They’ve seen behind the veil, they’ve seen the whole truth, and therefore there’s no magic left whatsoever. The whole Earth knows about monsters and aliens, and this was underlined at Christmas when Victorian England met a five hundred foot stomping robot. Daleks? Kids probably have posters of them in their bedrooms.

No one in the show’s world can wonder about what and how and where any more. Davies has made sure that’s the case, again and again and again. It is his mark on the show, his indelible fuck-up. And there’s no excuse. Even Sunnydale could go through seven years of being on a hellmouth without the locals ever cottoning on. Whedon argued this splendidly within Buffy, showing how people would rather reject what they’d seen for what they’d prefer was true. Davies hasn’t even left room for this, with an annual attack on London to make the worldwide news. The characters literally compare one impossible incident with another.

The only right thing Davies can do before he leaves is undo it all. Write an episode, no matter how badly, that undoes everything he created. Not because it was all bad – it wasn’t all bad. But because he has destroyed the mystery, and with it the potential for surprise and fear.

Although after The Planet of the Dead (which, by the way, wasn’t the damned story. The ghostly voices Mrs Magic hears at the beginning, the threat of a planet of dead people – nope. It was flying metal ray fish that we were supposed to be worried about) it’s hard to offer the suggestion he should write anything else ever again.

I loathe this ridiculous day. A day on which you can’t trust anything you read, hear or are told. What a brilliant plan it is – trusted sources of information becoming deliberately unreliable. So anything you hear on the radio, watch on TV, or read today on the BBC News site, Wikipedia front page, or whichever newspaper you pick up, is to be treated with suspicion.

The largest problem being, all these sources of news information cannot dedicate their output to half-arsed jokes. The world continues exploding, shooting at itself, and throwing all its money out a window. The inclusion of deliberate lies amongst the carnage is a knob joke at a funeral.

The aim of an April Fool is to deceive people. To trick someone into thinking something is true when it’s not. Mostly this is completely trivial, like Waitrose’s advertising “pinanas”. But while most people will look, roll their eyes, and turn the page, others will fall for it and then later feel stupid. The ultimate goal of April Fool’s Day is to make people feel stupid, to make them look like a fool. But it’s all the wrong people.

There’s an excellent purpose for making people feel stupid. It’s satire. Deliberately deceiving people into believing something that is untrue, in order to highlight hypocrisy and laziness, was once a powerful political tool. It was used to expose those in power, to ridicule in order to highlight serious problems. The last time there was anything genuinely satirical was 1997′s Brass Eye (and to a greater effect, 2001′s Brass Eye special), where politicians and celebrities – people who adopt positions of public power – were highlighted as hypocrites in elaborate and beautifully executed scams. Each scam had a greater purpose, a message to impart, and the victims were chosen for their willingness to perpetuate lies. While it’s hard to make a strong defence that Jenny Powell deserved to be picked on for not understanding science, an extremely strong defence can be made for exemplifying how celebrity endorsements of pseudo-science should be treated with great suspicion. Even at its cruellest, and it was extremely cruel, there was a reason.

April Fool’s Day lacks any purpose or reason. It’s about mocking the person who falls for the pointless lie. Ha ha, idiot! You thought the article in consumer science magazine, New Scientist, was a fact! You moron, trusting the magazine that otherwise reports developments in various fields in laymen’s terms! Ah ha ha ha! That will teach you not to check the tiny date printed on the cover before reading! (This backfired on New Scientist pretty badly one year, when their April 1st edition certainly did carry a pathetic attempt at a deceitful article, but also a completely factual one about CERN having broken the speed of light that absolutely no one believed).

The 2nd April cannot come quickly enough, so I can once again assume the lies in the news are at least not intended to be “a bit of harmless fun”, and where every other article published or broadcast isn’t designed to make gullible or poorly educated people feel stupid. I’d love to see us grow out of this, and realise that having a day of celebrated lying and deceit perhaps isn’t exactly what we need as a species. Or do I? HAHA! Maybe I’ve made all this up to trick you into thinking I don’t like April Fool’s Day! Wouldn’t that be amazingly funny?! No. No it wouldn’t.

I’ve always loved the Broken Sword games, playing the first two multiple times in my teenage years, and reviewing the third – a game I adored – for PC Gamer. Broken Sword IV I also reviewed… But that aside, it’s a great gaming series, and certainly the best British adventure series there’s been. George, a American lawyer, and Nico, a French photo-journalist, pair up in escapades linked to Templar myths, modern day conspiracies, and the only decent will-they-won’t-they running story in gaming history.

I was asked if I would be involved with the re-working of the original – a new version of Broken Sword I with a lot of new story from Nico’s perspective, reimagined for the DS and Wii – and was part of the process from the beginning. From contributing toward the original pitch, to script editing, puzzle testing, and writing some of the new content, it was a fantastic chance to get my fingers messy making the pie, rather than my more usual deciding if I like how it tastes long after.

The new story, by Cecil and co, follows Nico as she investigates previous murders by the culprit of the cafe bombing that opens the original game. It’s extremely smart. Originally you played only as George, occasionally checking in with Nico as he progressed. So now we find out what Nico was doing at the same time, meaning the events marry, alternating between each character, weaving new content with old. This means there’s lots of new puzzles, locations, and a touching look at Nico’s own life. There’s also more original artwork from Dave “Watchmen” Gibbons, with lovely close-ups of the characters on the top screen.

The biggest chunk of work I contributed is the new hint system, and the in-game diary. The former is an optional system that will prompt you when the game notices you’re stuck, with a series of increasingly unsubtle nudges toward the solution. The latter is a recording, in Nico and George’s voices, of the events that have taken place. This was especially fun to write, as it let me put words in the mouths of the two characters I’ve known for years.

Other bits and pieces that I was involved with are more complicated to explain. But I’m stating here and now that I get full credit for getting the wet towel puzzle from the original fixed. And the goat puzzle – I’d like to claim responsibility for that, but I think it was already altered before the project even began.

It was a great experience. The ever-lovely Charles Cecil is a pleasure to work with, and was extremely generous with the freedom I was given to throw out ideas. It was great fun spotting a mistake in a puzzle in one build of the game, and then seeing it fixed in the next. Reviewing is a one-way process – I see errors, and chastise games for them. Here it was a far more productive action. And it’s extremely rewarding to see things I’ve written appear in a real-life game.

Reviews are beginning to appear, and are so far positive. I’m taking this line from IGN’s review to be the first thing written about me, rather than by me, on a gaming site:

“Similarly effective in this new version are the inclusion of a story-so-far journal and on-demand help system which increase accessibility tremendously, particularly for a more casual audience.”

And this, from VideoGamer:

“I also have a lot of respect for the new hint system – slowly providing increasingly-clear pointers, and rationing the frequency with which you can ask for help. It’s quicker and easier than looking the answers up online, and it encourages the player to think their way through difficult bits.”

I think it’s pretty good. But then I would say that. It’s something I’d love to do again. Being in the position to spot the things in a game that I’d otherwise have been criticising in a review was extremely gratifying. And writing for a game series I’ve loved, and have so much respect for, was a real treat.

The most recent example comes with the announcement that the Beeb won’t let elderly, painfully infirm I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue die with any of the dignity it might have left. Instead it’s to be wired up to wheezing pumps and machines, forcing its feeble organs to keep huffing and puffing through painstakingly scripted gags, into some unspecified future. It’s presenter, Humphrey Littleton, sadly died last year, but this is apparently not recognised as a graceful opportunity to move on. So who is to replace the enormously loved Humph? Naturally, a rotating roster of guest hosts.

Stephen Fry, Jack Dee and the man almost single-handedly responsible for making QI unwatchable, Rob Brydon, will be tag-teaming the new series due to be heard this summer.

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue has remained reasonably similar over its 37 years – a series of silly rounds in which the panellists offer horrible puns, ridiculous songs, and chase down the elusive Mornington Crescent. Similar, but for the cast having aged by an enormous 37 years. What began as a reasonably smart, semi-improvised spoof of the panel game format, for the last decade has sounded like someone hid a microphone in the lounge at a palliative care home. They’re visited by grandchildren like Jeremy Hardy, Andy Hamilton and Paul Merton, who shout their modern jokes into the curly horns jutting from the ears of the surviving regulars.

It’s probably a cliché to point out that it hasn’t been the same since Willie Rushton died, but it hasn’t been the same since Willie Rushton died. His sense for nonsense balanced out the Barry Crier-bot’s ghastly mechanical joke telling, Tim Brooke-Taylor’s embarrassing, “Ummm… how about…” fake pauses before delivering his line from the piece of paper in front of him, and Graeme Garden’s sleepy indifference. Of course, what kept it all tolerable, even outweighing the braying lunacy of the audience clapping like demented seals at the sound of any English word they’d heard before, was Humph’s script. Listening to the increasingly decrepit old man saying by far the most filthy things Radio 4 would broadcast outside Woman’s Hour, was undeniably entertaining. But now, very sadly, he is dead. And with him, surely everything bearable about the programme died too.

There’s nothing wrong with Fry or Dee, obviously. Both are extremely talented and funny men. ISIHAC, however, has been a horrible ordeal for many years, and a change of host isn’t going to address that. Perhaps a complete reformat, a new regular panel that doesn’t require ablutionary changing during recording, and one, dedicated new host, would do the trick. But then that was called The 99p Challenge and went out during the 90s.

What generates this fear of inserting a new host? Perhaps it’s the fear of audience disapproval. If they were to announce that surly Jack Dee was the new presenter, there’d be outcry from a tiny group of listeners who didn’t think him wholly appropriate. Choose Fry, or Brydon, and the same thing happens. So rather than face three weeks of noise from ludicrous fusspots, there’s an attempt to placate everyone by promising it will be different next time.

If, an astonishing seven years ago, the BBC had announced that, say, Marcus Brigstock was to be the new host of Have I Got News For You, people would have clattered and moaned that they’ll never like it again, until halfway through the series when they’d forgotten it had ever been otherwise. Look at University Challenge. Paxman’s appointment occurred before Guest Host Syndrome had become endemic, and people coughed up their lungs in horror. They then promptly forgot it was ever presented by Bamber Gascoigne, and would threaten your children with a knife if you suggested taking Paxman away. Watching an old episode with the curly haired prof at the helm is faintly laughable now. He’s not sneering at them! What’s wrong with him?

This rapid desperation to appease every viewer at every moment is a feature of the ruinous anxiety disorder that’s crippling every channel from every network. They’re so overwhelmed by the belief that they’re obliged by God and government to make every single person in the country collapse in paroxysms of bliss every time they switch on a television, that they’re too frightened to do anything.

However, all evidence suggests that appointing someone, inevitably initially unpopular, is always the right answer. Never Mind The Buzzcocks came perilously close to being yet another guest host-presented BBC regular. Fortunately, before bloody Boris Johnson had his inevitable turn, Simon Amstell’s remarkable effort was apparently enough to convince someone somewhere to take the plunge. By ignoring the outcry that a very young youth TV presenter would be replacing kiwi-faced tower of hate, Mark Lamarr, it’s become the only must-watch panel show left on the channel.

We need the BBC to make decisions. We need them to act like an authority figure, the parent who knows full well we don’t want to go to bed before 9pm, but that we’ll have a much better time at the theme park tomorrow if we’ve had a good rest. These desperate attempts to placate the whining few are creating a disjointed, clumsy atmosphere. Pick a host, tell the audience to shut up and live with it, and then laugh behind your sleeves when the idiots forget it were ever otherwise.

Of course all sorts of hundreds of years old industries are running around in increasingly frantic circles, alternately pulling at their hair and letting out terrified sobs, as various electronic tools start to render them irrelevant. The music industry is suing every grandmother, child and pet kitten it can find, trying to frighten everyone out of the evil act of sharing. The film industry repeatedly assures us that watching a pirated DVD is directly funding child molesting terrorists. And now the Author’s Guild is claiming that Amazon’s latest gadget, the Kindle 2, is driving writers to bankruptcy by its ability to read the books aloud in a little computer voice.

“Kindle 2 can read books aloud,” wrote Roy Blount Jr, head of the US Author’s Guild, in an op-ed piece in The New York Times last week. “And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights.”

Let’s be clear. These are not e-books downloaded by illegal P2P filesharing. These are fully paid for, royalties passed on, legitimate purchases. You’ve paid your $10 for a digital copy of the book, it’s installed on your Kindle 2 (they currently don’t hook up to UK 3G networks, but hopefully Amazon will release a UMTS model soon – in the meantime, if you’re in the States, buy and load up while you’re there), and you take advantage of the device’s new “text-to-speech” function. A computer voice reads it out loud for you, because maybe you’re in the car, or you struggle with reading, or you’re blind. This isn’t Stephen Hawking crackling away at you like an angry toaster, but it still sounds fairly primitive. It isn’t, for instance, a satisfying substitute for an actor reading out the unabridged audio version. But do a quick price comparison. You want Orwell’s 1984 on unabridged audio from Amazon.com? That’s going to cost you $233.68. On Kindle, $9.99. Gosh, I wonder why they’re so cross.

As ludicrous as it sounds, Amazon are backing down in response. As of this weekend, publishers will now be given permission to veto their books from the text-to-speech service, effectively hobbling the tool a great many have paid for. More maddening, Amazon do this despite explicitly stating how they know they’re in the right. A statement from giant retailer explained, “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.” But in order to keep the peace, they are now handing the petulant publishers the control that’s been stomped and screamed for.

The sheer insanity of this goes beyond simple greed. It’s self-defeating greed. Amazon themselves state that customer feedback from Kindle owners suggests they purchase more books, and are believed to be more likely to seek out proper audio books. Forcing restrictions on the Kindle simply makes the piracy option more effective, and more appealing. Download the e-book illegally, and run it through speech software on your own computer – done. Or hell, just download the audio book. When paying for something decreases the product’s worth, piracy begins to offer better customer service. This isn’t smart business.

Blunt Jr scoffs at the suggestion they are implying reading aloud is an affront to author rights, and a violation of the copyright, but crucially doesn’t deny it. Because it is. We accept such ridiculous conditions in our everyday purchases, like turkeys moving our heads to make it easier for the farmer to throttle us. “For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of ‘Goodnight Moon’,” sneers Blunt as he concludes his editorial. “If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another matter.” Yeah, you bastards! Then he’ll get you!

Following on from the embarrassing fiasco of publishing the completely unfounded and nonsensical claims printed last week, where they claimed that Facebook et al would give you cancer, now social networking is damaging our brains. And on what evidence is this based?

None.

This is what is most extraordinary. There’s not even a spurious study, a misunderstood academic paper, or even a suspected case. All there is are the thoughts, whimsy and suspicions of one Susan Greenfield. Greenfield obsesses on this subject, but boasts she does not have the data to demonstrate it.

Her claims “will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day” say the Daily Mail. Well, let’s take a look at this damning evidence that merits a front page, and a deliberate attempt to frighten parents.

“But while the sites are popular – and extremely profitable – a growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists believe they may be doing more harm than good.”

None are named. None are mentioned. This is likely because a growing number are doing no such thing. As the collection of links here demonstrate, research is indicating that social networking and online communication are showing either no effect, or positive effect.

“Baroness Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, believes repeated exposure could effectively ‘rewire’ the brain.”

And how? Oh, she doesn’t find room to say.

“Computer games and fast-paced TV shows were also a factor, she said.”

Oh, so you’re saying it’s not social networking, but just stuff in general. Computer games, TV, websites… Listen carefully, here comes the science bit.

“‘We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist,’ she told the Mail yesterday. ‘My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.’”

Right. So the neuroscientist is saying that social networking (and videogames, and TV, and probably other horrid modern things) are causing the brain to regress back to infancy? That’s really quite the claim. Please note, it’s “my fear”. Her suspicion. Her worry.

“Her comments echoed those she made during a House of Lords debate earlier this month. Then she argued that exposure to computer games, instant messaging, chat rooms and social networking sites could leave a generation with poor attention spans.”

Ooh, instant messaging and chat rooms too!

“‘I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,’ she said.”

She wonders. Not only does she fear, but she wonders.

“Lady Greenfield told the Lords a teacher of 30 years had told her she had noticed a sharp decline in the ability of her pupils to understand others.”

A person getting older thought young people aren’t as good as listening as they used to be. Well then, I’m glad we have a neuroscientist to report this to us.

“‘It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations,’ she said.”

It’s hard to see! She fears, she wonders, and she finds it hard to see. This neuroscientist is a bubbling cauldron of scientific enquiry.

But then it shifts from peculiar speculation and unscientific hunches to something quite disgusting.

She pointed out that autistic people, who usually find it hard to communicate, were particularly comfortable using computers.

“‘Of course, we do not know whether the current increase in autism is due more to increased awareness and diagnosis of autism, or whether it can – if there is a true increase – be in any way linked to an increased prevalence among people of spending time in screen relationships. Surely it is a point worth considering,’ she added.”

The foul egotist. The head of the Royal Institute, member of the Lords, and scientific advisor has decided to imply, albeit astoundingly poorly, that Facebook causes autism. Good one. That’ll really scare people into taking notice of you. That will terrify parents. Autism – such a clever, and deliberate choice.

This post hoc ergo propter hoc suggestion that because autistic people engage well with computers, that computers could be causing autism, is beyond understanding. It’s despicable. It’s not something that should ever emerge from the mouth of someone who boasts that she represents “Science”, whatever on Earth that means. Nor should someone who is a member of the House of Lords, and the director of the Royal Institute, be abusing such positions to promote herself.

I’ve held off on posting this all day, because I was concerned that from my position as amateur sceptic, I’d be missing a larger picture. I wanted to know if Greenfield was good people or not – whether this was the Mail misrepresenting her in order to get their gruesome headline. My suspicions from reading about her were that she was not good people at all, but rather she has a pet theory, a complete lack of evidence, and a determination to attempt to promulgate her position wherever possible, evidence and reason be damned.

Ben Goldacre appeared on Newsnight tonight to confront her, and the incredulous Dr Aric Sigman, and has since written the following on his blog:

“It is my view that Professor Greenfield has been abusing her position as a professor, and head of the Royal Institution, for many years now, using these roles to give weight to her speculations and prejudices in a way that is entirely inappropriate.

We are all free to have fanciful ideas. Professor Greenfield’s stated aim, however, is to improve the publics understanding of science: and yet repeatedly she appears in the media making wild headling-grabbing claims, without evidence, all the while telling us repeatedly that she is a scientist. By doing this, the head of the RI grossly misrepresents what it is that scientists do, and indeed the whole notion of what it means to have empirical evidence for a claim. It makes me quite sad, when the public’s understanding of science is in such a terrible state, that this is one of our most prominent and well funded champions.”

I should learn to trust my instincts.

Update: Greenfield said the following on Newsnight, after giving her peculiar “rewiring” speech:

“There is no evidence, because it would be very hard to prove that people are different because of work with the screen. Although that’s a wonderful project that I wish the government would put some money into exploring. On the other hand, one can look at the type of features of screen life, and see that perhaps that is now mirrored in the behaviour of the upcoming generation, if you like. One might argue shorter attention span, an emphasis on process, on the experience of the moment, rather than content, of an identity that needs to be bolstered up with [grins] Twitter, and perhaps an increased recklessness.”

Let me just repeat that first part again:

“There is no evidence, because it would be very hard to prove that people are different because of work with the screen.”

She is a disgrace. That she is supposed to represent science to the public is a disgrace. Statements like the above, with an outright lie about “proof”, followed by dogged repetition of her unproven fantasy, are not acceptable.

In 2000, in a biography written by Brunel University when she was presented with an honorary degree, it was stated:

“Professor Greenfield would like to see Science as a subject and an institution become more accessible and attractive to the general population. She wants to see a society where we are all scientifically literate. To this end, she works hard at opening up a window into Science via the media.”

She absolutely does not want this. She wants to perpetuate scientific ignorance, attempting to frighten the public into believing her imagined concerns and deception, using threats against their children’s safety. She should resign from her position as the director of the Royal Institute immediately.

This came to a head today with the Daily Mail’s phenomenally silly headline, “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer“. Of course, the Daily Mail suggests that anything and everything might send our cells mutating willy nilly, possibly dragging down the value of our houses along the way. Hopefully Facebook will be suing Dacre and the Mail into a black hole over this astonishingly stupid reporting. Especially since the article the piece was based on never mentions Facebook, let alone Facebook-like sites specifically. However, the article does make the claim that online communication decreases offline communication, and this, he suggests, in turn leads to a lower quality of life and an increased risk of morbidity. It’s quite a trip from using Facebook to cancer. And it’s a trip that the Aric Sigman’s paper doesn’t manage to cite.

Reading it earlier today, it quickly became obvious this was not a scientific paper, but rather a person editorialising, supposing, based on un-cited information. While he begins with a splurge of references, these suddenly dry up when he goes on to make statements such as,

“Couples now spend less time in one another’s company and more time at work, commuting, or in the same house but in separate rooms using different electronic media devices. Parents spend less time with their children than they did only a decade ago. Britain has the lowest proportion of children in all of Europe who eat with their parents at the table. The proportion of people who work on their own at home continues to rise.”

We’re supposed to take his word on all this? These are some hefty claims to be making. (And does his house only have one plug socket per room?) In fact, it reads an awful lot like a list of things someone might have read in a paper like, for instance, the Daily Mail. He then goes on to talk about the quite separate matter of genes and loneliness and death. Fortunately for me, someone a lot smarter and informed has written a splendid piece going through the article and pointing out exactly these things, as well as highlighting when Sigman’s article is more reasoned.

What I’m interested to know is if there’s ever been any research conducted, or data published, to demonstrate that social networking/instant messaging/carrier pigeons, have any effect on the amount of face-to-face time people have. (There has, and it doesn’t support Sigman – see below.) It seems to be an assumed fact, for which I can find no evidence, and – anecdotally at least – seems completely counter-intuitive. The more time people spend in communication with each other, the more likely they are, surely, to arrange to see each other, stay in contact with more people, be invited to more things, etc. It seems a claim that’s getting made far too often without any corroborating evidence.

This claim most especially is made of teenagers, what with their WiiStation 360s and their mobile texting machines, and a TV and computer in each corner of their rooms. Teenagers, we keep being told, are spending less time in the company of their peers. Can we please put an end to this nonsense? Teenagers are forced, by law, to spend six hours a day, five days a week, in the company of many hundreds of their peers. If they went home and hunched over their computers all evening, they’d still be spending half their waking lives in a social environment. Never mind that the teenagers I’ve known and worked with have never done any such thing. They have filled in the gaps between hanging out by communicating even more, via the internet or their phones.

I have only anecdotal claims, which is why my overall cry is for some sensible research to be conducted into the effects of the internet on sociability (Sigman’s paper, amazingly, cites papers about the internet from 1998!). But in my experience, the opportunities of online communication have led to enormous numbers of opportunities to socialise in ways that would simply have never happened without the internet. I have friends on the other side of the world whom I visit every year, who without the internet I would neither have ever met, nor stayed in contact with, let alone maintained significant friendships. I have friends from my childhood, and friends from my early 20s, with whom I’m still in contact because of Facebook, Twitter, Friends Reunited (could their be a more appropriately named site for challenging the received opinion?), blogs, instant messaging and email. These are people I still see because of the communication opportunities of the internet. Then there’s my regular social groups with whom I meet up most regularly. I can think of very few real-world meetings that were not coordinated online, whether an invite to a party via Facebook (something I find abhorrent, as it happens – email ME for goodness sake, if you want me at your party), or a quick hello to arrange to go for a drink, meet for lunch, and so on. Want to get more immediate and specific? I wouldn’t have popped into my housemate Craig’s room for a chat if he hadn’t IMd me to come see something on his computer. (Sure, he could have shouted for me to come in too, but IM seems a lot more civil.)

From Facebook gatherings to Improv Everywhere stunts, online dating to the London Twestival, people meet up with people because of the internet. And I’m absolutely certain that there are also legions who stay in their rooms, never leaving, but chat online. I’d guess, without proof, that these are the people who would perhaps have stayed in on their own without chatting before. They could be a lot more social with the internet too.

But I might be quite wrong. It doesn’t seem impossible that there could be an overriding negative effect on people’s social lives. Perhaps people spend less time in company because they rush home to chat to others online. Perhaps people do less to counter feelings of loneliness if they can hold back the worst of it with electronic chatting. I don’t know. And I don’t know because you never hear about any serious investigations into this. Which leads to unsubstantiated nonsense like the suggestion Facebook gives you cancer.

EDIT: Well, look, there is some evidence! This fantastic post on Mind Hacks tears the Sigman paper a new one, and links to studies that have shown the positive social effects of Facebook. There’s a bunch more links on there. Found via Bad Science.