Humphrey Lyttleton - jazz maestro, comedian par excellence and broadcaster - died yesterday; and like many others I suspect, I feel I have lost a good friend - or perhaps a slightly risqué but much-loved uncle.

So join with me in listening to the memorial broadcast of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue tomorrow (Sunday) at 12 noon on Radio 4.

We'll miss you, Humph.

From some recent spam (my comments in italics):

"Please only reply to the email links in the text below.
Why can't you put the proper reply-to address in your email - or is that too difficult to set up?

"Are you looking to improve your website performance? Yes, then please take a moment to read this email.
If I was, you'd be the last person I'd ask.

"We can offer you a free website performance review, all that we ask in return is that you consider using our very competitively priced services to make the relevant improvements.
I can offer you free advice on how not to p*ss people off by offering them services they can do themselves, as would be perfectly obvious if you looked at the web site rather than buying a mailing list
 
"If you are interested please email us at ukbestwebsite-designing@lycos.com to request our free review form.
Hmm: web designers that can't afford their own mail domain and use a free service.
 
"Our work is always our best advert, so please email us at ukbestwebsite-designing@lycos.com if you want to see our design portfolio.
And they don't have their own web site to advertise a portfolio either?
 
"Thank you for taking the time to read this email. We look forward to working with you.
Dream on, Buster.
 
"If don't want to receive email from us, we apologise for any inconvenience caused and ask that you simply email ukbestwebsite-designing@lycos.com putting remove as the subject."
Too late: this is the third copy I have had and you have already really annoyed me. The last thing I shall do is to confirm that you have a genuine email adress, silly persons.

While I drank my afternoon cuppa just now, I watched a TV ad for InjuryLawyers4U - a piece I found rather nauseatingly self-righteous, urging us to go out and sue someone for something we probably brought on ourselves by being clumsy or not looking.

Personally, I abhor all this litigation culture stuff: people ought to take responsibility for their own actions rather than always blaming someone else for accidents. Of course, sometimes there is gross negligence and that ought to be punished in the criminal courts - but not the everyday stuff that can happen to us all.

So, I am proposing a new strapline for their next campaign to go with the green eagle in the ad: instead of "InjuryLawyers4U - fixing the spiritual balance",

InjuryLawyers4U: Pecking the liver of Justice since 2002

http://www.injurylawyers4u.co.uk/

Can you get the link to the new ad to work? All I got was a blank screen, and the browser window was resized to fit. How dare they?

OFCOM has just released a report considering the future of public service broadcasting in the UK, and the possibility of giving some of the licence fee to commercial TV to make more of it.

What PSB, I ask? Apart from the odd Attenborough documentary here and there, the Beeb and its "competitors" are stuffed with lifestyle documentaries (100 best plastic surgery fiascos), reality TV (Celebrity slipping in pig muck), wobblycam dumbed down "science" programs (Violent volcanoes - aren't they exciting) and news so vapid that a 6 year old could better analyse the stories (see below for an example).

Why does my licence fee subsidise a weekly programme that is nothing more than a free plug for Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example? That's PSB? I think not. And Kevin Spacey agrees with me.