Sky: They really are the limit

You may know I'm shortly going to move house. As a result, a lot of my recent phone calls and correspondence revolve around telling the various services I use that I'm off, and where my new abode will be. It's a little over 7 years since I last moved home and that involved a lot of letter writing and call centre queues. The advent of that Internet, however, has made it child's play to tell multiple companies of my pending whereabouts in minutes.

If only it were that easy with Sky.

First off, you can't cancel over the Internet. Shades of Setanta here, as you can't move for attractive deals or new customer offers, while the existing customer base can whistle for any such perks. I therefore deigned to call them the other night to find out whether it would be cheaper to move and upgrade my existing package, or to cancel it and get the Mrs to raise a new order in her name.

The answer was spectacularly the latter. Quite simply, they treat existing customers with unbelievable disdain.

Let me state at this point that both the people I spoke to were friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. It's just the company they represent who raised my ire.

The first bloke I spoke to gave me details of the move process. Basically, I want to upgrade from 1 box to 2. As there is no dish at the new house, it'll be £60 to have one installed. It will then be a further £129 for a second Sky box. So before I even watch owt, it's nearly £200. Bargain. I said I'd think about it and get back to them.

I got off the phone and fired up their website. It is no lie to say that within the next 10 minutes we ordered Sky Multiroom with 2 free boxes, free dish, free fitting and a £25 Tesco voucher using the Mrs' details. Literally 10 minutes and everything was free. I was most perplexed and no error.

The next logical step was call Sky back and say "You know what, squire? Shove it up your poochute". And to a certain extent, I did. Of course, as soon as you press the button which says "I would like to cancel please" I was sent to the back of the world's longest queue. '8 minutes' I was told I had to wait, and at almost exactly that time, I was put through. Again, a genial, helpful Scot, but his intention from minute 1 was clear - you ain't leaving no Sky, fool.

He wanted to know why I was cancelling, and knowing that they would take a dim view of me having raised a new order using different details, I spun an elaborate tissue of lies involving the expense of house moving and how I wouldn't be home as much after moving so I couldn't justify the cost any more. Using the skill of a world-weary detective, he then began to blow my story apart piece by piece. It actually got to the stage when I uttered the phrase "Look mate, I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but I'm literally cancelling my Sky tonight". That got through to him.

In the end, he offered to reduce the installation fee to £30 and the Sky box to £99, meaning that had I moved my current package with them, I would have been paying £60 more than I would if I threatened to leave them instead. Having already ordered a new package I could appreciate the brass neck of the greedy bastards, but allowed myself a rye smile at what could have been if I didn't do my research first.

In the end, he kept me on the phone for 25 minutes, discussing all manner of football-related themes (my password was of a soccer ilk). He reckoned it took 5 minutes to cancel my account, but he was obviously just spinning out the phone call to make more money out of me; a fact proved when the account miraculously completed the cancellation process at the exact point he ran out of things to say.

The above experience does beg further interrogation at a later date, as the practice of attracting new customers with kick-ass offers while treating your existing subscribers like shit is endemic in the service industry. I'll save that inevitable rant for another time, but for now I'm enjoying the honeymoon period of being a new customer, which will undoubtedly end the second our first payment hits their bank account.

What a bunch of robbing shitehawks.

Revealed: John Barrowman's favourite pie filling

Frequently, when I read or talk about 'celeb' magazines like Heat and Closer, I get so het up that steam begins to come out of my ears and I revert to the language of working class Essex girl pissed on tart fuel. I make no secret of the fact that I quite enjoy reading these magazines for some unknown reason, despite the fact that they drive me round the twist with murderous aggression.

However, we've had a breakthrough.

I think I've worked out what gets me so arsed, and as a result, I appear to have made my peace with this kind of magazine and can enjoy perving over pictures of Colleen Nolan without getting upset. Basically, the stories are so banal and pointless, that there can't be a single person on God's green earth (or elsewhere for that matter) who could bring themselves to give any kind of shite about what is written within the pages of these glossy tomes.

I'll give you a few examples. I probably read about 3 of this type of mag last week. Selected """"highlights"""" include:

- Chantelle from Big Brother isn't happy with her body and wants a breast reduction
- Kerry Katona went on a bike ride
- Mischa Barton has put weight on
- Peter Andre went to a party and had his photo taken with a couple of trannies

Let the concept of these stories sink in for a minute, then see if you could possibly care about any of them. Didn't think so.

There are 2 sides to these stories. On the one hand, there's the teller's angle. Apart from Katona who was merely snapped on her epic bike ride round a park, the others have come to the press to tell their story. If I had put weight on, or wasn't happy with my figure, I can't think of anything I'd be less likely to do than inform the press. Who gives a shit what I think about myself? As if someone's sat at home thinking "Do you know what, I'm not fully clear on Chantelle from Big Brother's current body hang-ups. I hope she lets us know in the pages of the popular press soon". If you're not happy about it, love, sort it out in your own time. Don't go whining to the press (complete with half a dozen posed bikini shots, mind. She's clearly dead upset with her appearance if she can do that). Instead, get off your arse and either do some exercise or go to a plaggy surgeon to get your hang-ups de-hanged. You might want to ask for a brain transplant while you're at it.

The other side of the coin is the press angle. 1 of 2 scenarios must play out for this kind of drivel to hit the news stands:

- A meeting is called between the journos of Twat Magazine, where they decide that they're going to find out if Peter Andre has been to any transvestite-themed clubs lately and report thereon, or

- Pedro rings them up to say he's about to nip out to The Sausage Club, and the sheer glamour and interest generated leads the press pack to hot-foot it after him before one of the more respected rags gets the exclusive rights to the undoubtedly phenomenal photos.

Either way, it's a right pile of old slurry. As I said earlier, there can't be anyone who deems such tripe even remotely noteworthy. It has come to my attention that some women actually revel in the fact that certain celebrities have put on a stone since January (often it's the particularly good-looking women who think this, bizarrely). Surely there can't be water fountain conversations about the majority of the material covered though:

Bimbo 1: "Hey, have you seen them photos of Kerry Katona on a bike?"

Bimbo 2: "I know. Awesome!!"

Bimbo 1: "Tell me about it. To think she rides bikes and we didn't know about it until now. I don't know how I functioned before I knew this information"

Bimbo 2: "My entire life has been leading up to this moment"

Bimbo 3: "My stapler's blue!"

Bimbo 2: "No way! You should ring Heat and tell them"

Bimbo 3: "Already did. There's an 8-page spread in next week's edition. Plus I've been given a 6-month residency on Loose Women and my own property programme"

Bimbo 1: "Bitch"

Save me from the reality!

There's nothing good on telly any more.

Apart from Top Gear, House and the occasional episode of Family Guy, there's nothing decent worth watching on a day-to-day basis at the moment. Every now and then there'll be a documentary about spontaneous combustion amongst the homeless community or somesuch, but in the main it's twaddle of the very highest order.

To me, given that there is a floating viewer market looking for something to keep them entertained before the inevitable expiration of their mortal soul, it would make sense to not only make decent programmes, but to actually name and advertise them in a manner befitting both the content and ethos of the programme itself.

Sadly for the makers of "Real Rescue", such a thought process must have passed them by.

I accidentally wasted a decent portion of my evening watching this last night (mainly because there was bugger all else on) but it made me realise that the title is at least 50% lies. Put simply, there were no rescues. Let me elaborate on the stories which unfolded:

- Ship sinks in the Antarctic. You might remember this from a year or so ago, when a specially-designed ship took tourists to the Antarctic, only to get a bloody great hole in the front and everybody had to leave. Now, such was the slowness of the sinking that everybody managed to amble off and get away in lifeboats while the ship was barely listing. Indeed, video footage from the event shows tourists taking pictures of each other dolled up in life jackets while waiting to depart.

www.dictionary.com defines 'rescue' as "to free or deliver from confinement, violence, danger, or evil." and "to liberate or take by forcible or illegal means from lawful custody". Which part of calmly evacuating the ship then being picked up by other ships a few hours later actually constitutes the rescue here? Don't get me wrong, had the ship plunged at speed, or the weather was bad or they were out there for days, a rescue would have been necessary, but it didn't, it wasn't and they weren't, so it's not a rescue in the slightest. Fin.

- Caravan jack-knifes. Next, we're treated to a traffic cop zooming down the motorway to assist in the tragic tale of a caravan which jack-knifed, causing its attached car to hit the central reservation a bit. Again, don't get me wrong, it must have been shit-scary at the time and the car was a bit beaten up, but the family were completely OK and all the copper had to do was push the caravan from lane 3 to the hard shoulder. Not exactly Hollywood material is it?

- Lift gets stuck with ironic passenger. The last of the heart-rending tales of woe was a lift which had got stuck, trapping its inhabitants. "Now we're talking" I thought, as people actually needed rescuing. Cue 2 minutes of looking for the power override switch followed by them opening the doors with a master key, freeing the trapees within a couple of minutes of their arrival. Luckily, the camera crew had a bit of dramatic footage, as some apparently claustrophobic man had been squealing and clawing at the doors whilst trapped. Pardon my cynicism, but what kind of claustrophobic is only scared when trapped, rather than being in a confined space? Surely that's a different condition, like 'Wet-blanketitis' or somesuch. If he really was scared of confined spaces, it served him right for not taking the stairs. The lazy get.

So at the end of the day, out of 3 potentially rescue-ridden stories, we got 1 tenuously linked to the breathless title. It wasn't exactly seat-of-your-pants stuff, which leads me to think that maybe they should scale down their ambitious title to something a bit more fitting.

I'm not in marketing, but how about "Series of incredibly run-of-the-mill events set to dramatic music while emergency services waste time with people who've dropped their keys down a drain"?

It's got a certain ring to it, don't you think?

Are they being murdered?

There's a joke amongst TV critics, especially those who deal with soap operas, regarding the life expectancy of occupants of the various locations used for such programmes. With the necessity to keep audiences tuned in as important as ever, all manner of explosions, stabbings and, yes, bestiality are lobbed at the occupants of The Street, The Dale and The Enders. Week in, week out, some poor bugger ends up under a tram or in The Thames or lodged within the lower digestive tract of a farm animal, all in the name of entertainment.

However, it has recently become apparent that there is a TV programme far more dangerous than any farm on any street in any fictional borough. A programme which has seen 3 of its key protagonists pop their clogs in the last two years.

That programme is Are You Being Served?

Think about it; with Molly Sugden dying this week, that's 3 in a little over 2 years. First was John Inman (ironically-named one-act homosexual) in 2007, then Wendy Richard (shrill, leggy fox turned skeletal mardarse) earlier this year, and now Molly's gone. Granted, she was 86, but Inman was only 71 and Richard 65, so they weren't exactly knock knock knocking on heaven's door at the time. Maybe the sets were covered in lead paint. Maybe the sheer shame of squeezing 10 series worth of material out of a poor vaginal innuendo made them die early. Sadly, we may never know.

So who's left? Well, there's Captain Peacock, who at 88 regularly has our sides splitting in mirth-fest Last of the Summer Wine. Jug-eared Mr. Rumbold is 75, so he's well into the danger zone. Mr Lucas, the housewives favourite is 72 as well. Mr Harman is no longer with us, and if Young Mr. Grace was, he'd be 110. But he isn't.

I suppose if a programme's main cast are all of a similar age, it's likely that they'll all start to fall ill and/or die at a similar stage, but the fact that 3 of them died in a little over 24 months makes me think there are darker forces at work.

Either that, or this was just an exercise in browsing Wikipedia, but if Captain Peacock carks it before the end of the year, make sure you've got a cast-iron alibi.

The King (of Pop) is dead

The King (of Pop) is dead. And that's pretty much that.

I liked him. From a young age I'm not ashamed to admit I thought he was ace. Yes, he was a bit odd with the monkey and the oxygen tent and the one white glove, but his tunes were good, his dancing was awesome and for a young boy growing up in the badlands of Hull, he represented the very epitome of the word 'megastar'.

I can't pretend I ever get really upset about celebrities dying, simply because I don't really know them. There's that initial 'Oh' moment, when you first hear the news, but after that, you realise your life won't change that much and you crack on (or off, depending on your workload) as before.

The media has gone into full meltdown at the news, with literally hours of footage being dedicated to his body of work, which is quite frankly incredible. Everyone's got some shonky tracks in their portfolio, but the majority of his stuff was not only quality, but for it's time, ground-breaking.

Sadly, being such a controversial figure, all hell has broken loose with conspiracies and whatnot. Suggestions of foul play and medical malpractice threaten to overshadow the occasion, when it's likely that the simple fact was he had a heart attack and died. One day, a globally-reknowned star will cark it and everyone will go "That's sad" and that'll be that. No conspiracies, no crying uncontrollably and certainly no gathering round a paving stone bearing their name instead of getting their arses to work. I doubt I'll see that day though.

Luckily, despite the tragedy, there is a silver lining. Often shunning the press, and notorious for his supposed bullying parenting style which saw Michael and his brothers thrust into the limelight whether they liked it or not, Jacko's dad Joe has suddenly turned up again, using the oxygen of his son's death to promote his new record label.

Good work - why let the death of your child get in the way of business.

God rest you Jacko. Chamone.