WASHED AND READY TO EAT

When I log on to the wireless network at my gym, they kindly offer me some suggested websites to 'get me started'. Coincidentally, the first happens to be the corporate website for the health and fitness chain. I like the idea that I've come to the gym with my laptop, connected to their wireless network, but I'm a complete novice at this thing called the internet. Err... what is it that I'm supposed to do now? If only someone could suggest one of those - what do you call them - web pages? Just to set me off in the right direction. After a few weeks, I'll be able to move on to other sites. With supervision, of course.

"Don't make excuses," reads the banner ad from pharmaceutical giant Lilly on my webmail program. "Talk to your doctor about erectile dysfunction." I'm unclear whether I actually need to be suffering from the condition, or whether I should just have a chat with my GP anyway. They still have such a long way to go with their targeted marketing, eh?

"It's alright, Santa. Nick Clegg says you can promise whatever you want, but you don't actually have to deliver it."

I've been pondering the Windows Live Hotmail ad that shows emails being sorted automatically into different folders. There's some girl called Kate and she's already sent us 15 separate messages with photos of her antics in Australia. When a 16th arrives - handily labelled with a kangaroo-related subject header - Hotmail makes the error of adding it to the 'Kate's's Aussie Photos' folder. My argument would be that there's a perfectly good, pre-existing folder called 'Recycle Bin'. And they'd be doing everyone a favour by diverting this young lady's emails directly there. There will be 43 more messages to follow, believe me, so we have to put a stop to her Antipodean deluge before it gets out of hand.

I was watching a few minutes of Colditz on Yesterday yesterday and discovered that the programme is sponsored - along with other 'classic' series - by Tena Pants Discreet. Idents showed middle-aged ladies wandering round a museum and sharing lame jokes with one another. The juxtaposition of brave British POWs with incontinence products seems a little odd. It got me thinking of another potential tie-up: Tena and Tenko - the ever-popular women's prison camp drama. In fact, what about Tena-ko week? The episodes could be broadcast back-to-back. "Captured by the Japanese, the women held out for years. Now, at last, relief has arrived."