I love being a target demographic, especially when I have the feeling of watching the cruise missile heading up the wrong street…

Last night I was watching ‘BBC Three on BBC One’ – where they put one channel out on another one’s frequency – and I’m sure it’s nothing to do with lack of audience (or even potential audience, what with the new channels being digital only). Anyway, BBC Three is aimed at the twenty-something audience, and so is full of comedy, entertainment, documentries about cult figures, that sort of thing. Now I’ve a feeling that Dom Joly has missed his mark somewhat with the rather bland show I watched him host. His loud, over the top style such as the phone thing made him famous in Trigger Happy TV, but it worked there because in general, people don’t act that way. Watching the reactions in museums when he starts screaming on a phone is funny, but when you’re a chatshow host it just falls flat. And I always thought of him as much more clever than he came across last night.

That was followed by ‘liquid news’ – a live program apparently. But when they cut to a live reporter in east London, where it was dawn, yet in west london it was only just after midnight (and London isn’t that big), the bubble was burst. The reporting style left me cold as well – it was as if they’d been told to be cool, be groovy, and appeal to the target demographic. Maybe it would work better if there was no such thing as Newsround – the news show for kids that treats them like adults, and deservedly wins awards for it’s work year after year. Maybe there’s a lot of young adults who like being treated like teenagers, so perhaps that’s who they’re aiming at. But it didn’t impress me much.

Ooh, I just noticed that it’s the first of April now. So Happy Birthday Jenny, don’t worry, I didn’t forget to buy you a present once again. And I’m going to do my usual trick to avoid being made an April Fool – stay in bed till the afternoon. It’s a cunning trick, but it works every year. Ho hum.

I was going to have a list of unanswered, or unanswerable, questions to start off with, as a clever lead up to the point I am about to make, but it’s more tricky than I first thought. I was one of those irritating kids who would always ask questions, and I know a fair amount about an awful lot of things. I know why the sky is blue, I know why the grass is green, I know why Mars is red … but I don’t know why we have two types of bulb fittings in Britain. There, I did manage to do the list thing. Ha.

The dodgy electrics in our house (ask Mr T, he likes them) are causing lightbulbs to blow at a fair old rate, and my spare bulb supply is running out (hey, if she’s not around to switch her bedroom lights on, she’ll won’t know the difference), so I decided to sally forth to IKEA, a good source of cheap stuff. It also gave me an excuse to go and buy all the bits of kitchen equipment that have gone walkabouts over the years (/me waves at everyone who’s nicked stuff in halls and flats – cheers guys) and generally look around. I really like IKEA stuff – it’s cheap, good quality, and my landlord wouldn’t dream of having any of it in his own house. That’s my new yardstick of seeing whether I like something or not. But IKEA is cool, I like the products, I like the business strategy, I like the ethos, I’m not all that keen on the advertising, but hey. And it’s only two bus journeys away from my house – the same number as my daily commute.

Rule number 1784 in life – don’t ever, ever mix the following things – Bus Route 112, Hanger Lane, the North Circular, 5.30pm on a Monday. I wasn’t thinking straight, or to be more exact, I wasn’t thinking at all. I can’t believe that people sit in that traffic every single day – well, I can, since I’ve seen them doing it. So it look a little while longer than I expected to arrive, having barefacedly lied about the amount of change in my pocket on the way in (‘scuse me mate, but my car’s broken down over there, and I need another £1.80 or so for some petrol – hmmm, last time I looked the minimum delivery was only two litres at less than a pound per litre, and he already had about a fiver of change in his hand).

Those of you who are on the ball know how this story is going to end, and so you can fill it in for me – I’m just too lazy. Those of you who don’t know what I was going to say, shame on you. There’s a clue in the first paragraph; the title is a mis-appropriated Microsoft-bashing joke being put to good use. It’s not that hard, but you might want to lay off the beer, vodka, glue, crack cocaine or whatever it is that’s causing your short-term memory problems…