It’s just so… upbeat. I always seem to end each episode with a warm fuzzy feeling in various parts of my body. I don’t know what it is: even when bad things are happening on-screen, there is an overall positive vibe which permeates the show and leaves me feeling happy.

Comparisons with High School Musical are inevitable, but Glee contains just enough sharp comedy to balance out the syrupy sweetness.

I suppose my one criticism is that most of the characters are generic American high-school stereotypes (dumb jock, cheerleaders, a bully, sassy black girl, gay kid, etc) but by episode 10 they’ve started to flesh out the characters a bit and made them seem a bit more 3-dimensional. It is good to see a successful US show set in a high school which focuses on the misfits rather than the super-popular kids.

Right at the centre of the show is someone who could be the greatest villain in the history of television: Sue Sylvester (played with relish by Jane Lynch), who steals every scene she appears in with rants about curly hair and kitty-cat related threats. Marvellous stuff.

There’s always a danger that Glee will be unable to sustain this momentum long term and struggle to keep going past the second season. For now though, it’s an amazing show fully deserving of the praise and awards that have been heaped on it.

If you’ve missed the first few episodes, E4 are repeating them all on weekday afternoons starting next Monday. You won’t be disappointed. And that’s how Sue C’s it.

I guessed 225 and thought no more of it until today, when I discovered that not only had I won the prize, but that my guess was EXACTLY right. What are the odds?

OK, it’s a tiny victory in the grand scheme of things, but I enjoyed my moment in the sun:

The BBC’s digital channels have long been a target for the corporation’s enemies. In the early days the Daily Mail criticised the BBC for wasting money on channels which no-one watched (and, given that BBC Choice launched in September 1998 before any digital TV receivers became available for the public to buy, they did briefly have a point). Last year, Sky boss James Murdoch criticised the BBC’s expansion. And of course there is a long list of BBC Three programme titles ready to be dropped into a Richard Littlejohn piece at the right point.

The BBC’s radio stations generally, meanwhile, have come in for criticism from commercial rivals. This ignores the fact that, almost without exception, commercial radio is total crap (or should that be Absolute crap?) with unimaginative playlists, annoying presenters, far too many adverts and “local” stations which are often broadcast from a playout server 200 miles away from their licence area. And that’s just music radio, not speech — if BBC Radio 4 closed down tomorrow, would GCap Media step in with their own replacement?

The real problem here is that no-one (including, it seems, BBC management) knows what the corporation is supposed to be doing. Is it supposed to broadcast entertainment and information for the masses (in which case, CLOSE IT DOWN because commercial channels can do that) or is it supposed to broadcast niche programmes of interest to a small minority (in which case, CLOSE IT DOWN because satellite or cable channels funded by subscription can do that)?

My own view is that the BBC is funded by everyone, and therefore has the opportunity (and in fact a responsibility) to be all things to all people. That’s why I’m trying to avoid a “How can the BBC axe (x) when they spend millions on (y)“-type post (where (x) is a show I like, and (y) is probably Top Gear), because programme (y) is going to be of interest to someone, even if it’s not me. Stations like 6Music and the Asian Network are an essential part of that “something for everyone” mix.

The Tories, unsurprisingly, welcomed the move. An incoming Conservative government (I know, I’m scared too) is likely to impose far more radical cuts on the BBC (and everything else, for that matter), so this could just be the start of a very painful period for Auntie.

A Twitter user who posted a “joke” bomb threat against a UK airport could be jailed after pleading guilty to sending a menacing message.

Paul Chambers, 26, of Balby, Doncaster, admitted posting an ill-considered message onto Twitter about Robin Hood Airport, South Yorkshire, on 6 January after the airport closed as a result of unusually heavy snow.

He’s also been banned from Robin Hood Airport for life, thus forcing him to go elsewhere to catch Ryanair flights to Alicante. But a jail sentence for this? Really? Surely there are there more pressing crimes than this which need the attention of the justice system? Utter madness.

Details are in the link above, but in a nutshell: the web site ReadWriteWeb posted an article with the title “Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login”. That page quickly rose to the top of Google’s search results for Facebook login. Soon RWW were inundated with confused facebook users who believed that they had landed on Facebook’s login page and thought that they had fallen victim to one of the frequent redesigns that people love to complain about so much. The comment thread to that post is a sight to behold.

The question is: why didn’t they just type facebook.com into their browser’s address bar directly? The answer, I suspect, is that a lot of people simply don’t know how to do this. For many people “Google = Internet”, the same way “Microsoft = Computer” is commonplace (or certainly was until recently).

They never bother to bookmark sites, preferring to use Google to find everything. This fiasco has demonstrated, in the most hilarious way possible, why that it is a bad thing, especially when the same users seemingly believe Google even when it throws up an obviously bad result.

It’s no wonder phishing and other scams are so commonplace with this level of internet literacy. It would be a good idea for Google and other big players on the Internet to embark on a programme of education in this area.

Some people may struggle to understand the emotions here: on the face of it, it’s just a boat that took people from Liverpool to Wallasey. And let’s face facts, its design was never going to win a beauty contest. But for many Merseysiders, the Royal Iris is not just a ferry, it’s an icon of Scouse culture. This is mainly thanks to the regular cruises it operated during the Merseybeat era, where passengers would receive dinner and an afternoon’s entertainment from one of the leading Liverpool bands. Even the Beatles performed on board on a few occasions. It’s a very sad state of affairs to see it ending its days like this.

But look at the comments on the Liverpool Echo’s online report, most of which are a variation on the theme: “this is a DISGRACE! someone somewhere must do something”. Do a Google search for “Royal Iris” and you’ll find numerous internet forums on the subject, with people expressing similar sentiment.

I get immensely frustrated when I see these comments. I’m sure they are genuine and heartfelt, but I wish more people would get away from typing missives on web sites and channel their energy into something a bit more constructive and practical, like actually helping out.

This is a problem I experienced first hand with the Merseyrail class 502 unit. When pictures of it in a forlorn condition appeared online, people queued up to complain, criticise the train’s owners and generally mouth off, but when group to restore it was formed, how many people dug into their pockets or offered their time to help? Sadly, very few.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect people to drop everything, but even a small amount of time and money can make a difference, if enough people contribute. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, from working with the 502 and now seeing the Royal Iris, it’s that you shouldn’t wait for other people to come to the rescue. Get involved and do something yourself!

PS: I should point out that although I am the treasurer of the Friends of the 502 Group, the above post is my opinion alone and does not reflect the group’s views.

Also, if anyone does want to rescue the Royal Iris, let me know where to send the cheque.

So does the iPad bring us one step closer to Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision? Maybe. But I wish we were getting the full blown MacOS rather than the iPhone OS, with its dependence on the locked-down App store which means that Apple, and Apple alone, decide which apps you can and can’t run on it. It also looks a bit underspecced and underpowered for what it is. A netbook or a cheap laptop still might be a better bet for lots of people.

I remain to be convinced that this the quantum leap forward for computing that the pre-launch hype promised us. But it’s Apple, and the brand name and lovely design will surely mean that 100 billion are sold within the first 20 minutes.

Now, speaking of Star Trek technology: when do we get a working Holodeck?

In America, the late night talk show has become something of a staple of many network schedules (Wikipedia helpfully summarises). It seems odd to us in the UK, where most TV channels give up after about 11.30pm and fling on old films or Pages from Ceefax to take insomniac viewers through the night. Across the pond however, some of these shows have become icons of popular culture, and that is especially true of NBC’s long-running Tonight Show. So when questions started being asked about Tonight’s future, it was headline news in the US.

I’m not going to go into detail about the controversy (the links in this post should satisfy any curiosity you have) but I want to highlight Conan O’Brien, the current host of the Tonight Show who is being forced out after just seven months on the job.

I first discovered Conan a few years ago when I stumbled across his previous show, Late Night, which was shown in the UK for many years as a weekend filler on the business news channel CNBC Europe. I quickly became enamoured with his absurdist style of humour, honed while writing some of the very best Simpsons episodes during that show’s glory years. The surrealism was elevated further by CNBC’s practice of showing stock market prices during the commercial breaks.

Unfortunately, Conan lost some of his edginess with a move to the more mainstream Tonight Show in 2009. Fortunately, there are some choice clips from his old show available on YouTube and I’ve posted a selection of them below.

GE Computerised Voice

Late Night was broadcast from NBC’s studios in New York City’s Rockefeller Center which meant that Conan was sharing office space with some big names in Corporate America, including NBC’s parent company, General Electric. It was a setup that was mined for its comedy potential on a number of occasions. In the clips below Conan has fun with the building’s computerised phone system.

Transit Strike

Conan was often at his best during taped segments such as these, where he got out and about on location and met with normal people whose reactions range from bewilderment to a willingness to play good-natured stooge to his antics.

Bread Man

Celebrity guests were the show’s bread and butter, of course, but every so often someone more unusual would come along. Here the host has fun with a “bread expert” who puts a little too much into his hobby.

Good Priest, Bad Priest

One of the many random sketches which interrupted show. Look out for a guest appearance from Jesus Christ:

Pierre Barnard’s Recliner of Rage

Conan, like Letterman before him, frequently made his production staff into characters on the show. Late Night’s graphic designer, Pierre Barnard, was recruited to rant about his nerdish obsessions.

Cloppy the Late Night Horse

A horse with a fondness for shotguns and death. This one-joke sketch was given extra legs after Nicholas Cage of all people endorsed it during an interview.

Conan and Finland

Bizarrely the show was especially popular in Finland, a fact discovered when Conan solicited hate mail from countries across the World and discovered that Finnish people were sending in their letters even before he’d got to their country.

Video games and social networking sites have been blamed for a shocking rise in cases of rickets in children.

Er, no. Bad parenting which allows kids to sit for hours playing video games and using social networking sites is to blame for a shocking rise in cases of rickets in children.

I only mention this because I know someone somewhere will call for something to be banned to solve the problem.