Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Colin Hughes

At this special time of year I think it's nice to pause and remember what - or who - it's really about.
Colin Hughes.


Thanks Cliff

Gastro-Cartography

Mrs Gorman and I were out for dinner this evening. Part way through the meal I looked across at her plate and noticed that she'd managed to cut her steak up to resemble a map of the United Kingdom.

She claims it wasn't done on purpose. I'm not sure that explains the small bit of potato so handily positioned to represent Northern Ireland, though.

I'm suspicious. Very suspicious.

Blimey, The Duke of Cambridge Really Is Looking Patchy On Top These Days

Spamazing

Not so long ago I had to abandon an email address because it was getting upwards of 30,000 spam emails a day. The idea of filtering through that inbox to find the odd legitimate email was obviously a bit ridiculous.

I don't get 30,000 spam emails a day any more... but it's regularly into the hundreds. And as much as I detest it, it is kind of fascinating.

When I first encountered spam it seemed to be that it was related to a limited number of things: "Rolex" watches were quite common. As were inkjet cartridges and home loans etc etc. (The old, "I need to smuggle some money out of Nigeria and you are the man I trust to help me" emails aren't spam as such, they're a different kettle of con entirely).

I understood the mathematics of spam in those days. If your email at least appears relevant to someone there's more chance of them falling for it. So sending designed to appeal to the needy and the greedy made sense.

If you send it to a million people you only need a tenth of a percent of them to fall for it to have 1000 mugs in the game. And it doesn't matter what it is you appear to be selling because you're not actually selling anything. I'm told that spam is - for the most part - just trying to get your details. It's your name, address and phone number they really want. Information is valuable in today's economy.

But recently the spam I've been getting has been incredibly niche. And this confuses me.

I've had spam telling me about "great deals on forklift trucks". Really? What percentage of people would even read beyond the first line? How many people actually buy forklift trucks anyway? It's not exactly an impulse buy. "I only came in for some paint but they'd put the forklift trucks by the counter and, well... yellow is so my colour, so I just had to get one."

Likewise premium grade aviation fuel. Surely the people charged with buying aviation fuel are a) limited in number and b) pretty wise to spam.

Aren't the spammers just cutting the number of potential dupes down before their evil words have even hit our inboxes?

This spam arrived today.

There's no guess work required here. I can speculate as to how many people buy forklift trucks or aviation fuel... but really I'd just be plucking numbers out of thin air. But I can find out how many people are in the AICPA.

According to the AICPA website, there are 370,000 members. So in the whole wide world, there are only 370,000 people who can genuinely fall for this spam. And how many of them are actually receiving it in the first place? If I'm getting it, it's not as though this email has been sent to a highly targeted list of addresses. It's the same scattergun tactic as all other spam.

But surely accountants are the kind of people who regularly deal in formal documents that contain legalese. Surely they're the kind of people who will read a sentence like, "we have received a denouncement about your recent involvement in income tax hustle" and spot that it's a bit, y'know, shit.  

"The rejection to provide the clarifications within this term will finish in end off of your..." what's that? Really? Will it. If I reject to provide clarification you'll do what now?

I'm really struggling to believe that anyone on earth has fallen for this. If you're not an American Certified Public Accountant the "threat" from the AICPA to end (off) (of) your career is a bit of an empty one so there's no reason for anyone else to respond to it.

And if you are an American Certified Public Accountant you're surely equipped to spot that this isn't legit. If you are and you do, I'd suggest you need a change of career.

But put yourself in the crook's shoes. Imagine creating this email. You've bothered to steal the logo and the colour scheme from the AICPA website. You've formatted the graphics and made it look nice. Would it really not occur to you to, just maybe, find someone who has English as a first language to proof read it first? Are the spammers so stupid they think Google Translate is good enough?

How many levels of stupidity does this reveal? Someone's stupid enough to send this spam. And someone, somewhere, might - just might - be stupid enough to have fallen for it.

Or is there something I don't understand about how this works?

PS: Just as I published this, another, almost identical email arrived.

This time, I think I might be in trouble. They're on to me and my tax return crook business. I hope I don't waiver to submit exposition within this term.

PPS: And then another...

... is it just me, or isn't it even less convincing when they send three in such quick succession? Isn't it just three times as unconvincing? Wouldn't one, well written, email have been more effective?

December 10 version: income tax refund shady transactions:

S.P.O.T.Why?

Every year it happens... and every year it leaves me feeling confused.

People - rational people, many of them people whose opinions I value - start talking about the Sports Personality Of The Year.

They ask who you think will win it, they tell you who they think will win it... and all the while, the assumption seems to be that this-is-important. That the competition matters. That it is the prize that people crave.

And I don't get it. I don't think it's important and more than that, I don't understand how any sportsman or sportswoman could think it was important either. It seems to me to be the antithesis of what sport is really about.

Sportsmen and women compete. In events that have tangible outcomes. They strive to be the best at what they do. And when all is said and done, the outcome speaks for itself.

If you set out to be a great cyclist, then world records, gold medals and yellow jerseys are surely your ultimate goal. What could possibly be more meaningful to Bradley Wiggins than winning the Tour de France? That's the proof that he was the best of the best in his chosen sport.

Sport isn't about being popular. It's about some combination of being the fastest, the strongest, the most accurate, having the best technique and/or the most tactically astute. It's about strength of will, determination and above all else, ability. It has nothing whatsoever to do with who we like.

Usain Bolt is a likeable character. But that would count for nothing on the global stage if he wasn't the world's fastest man. And if the world's fastest man just happened to be an out and out jerk that wouldn't matter either. We would admire his athleticism all the same.

I don't understand how anyone is supposed to compare the achievements of the twelve nominees - or indeed the achievements of those who could just have easily been nominated but weren't. It just seems ridiculous. And actually, just a tiny bit insulting. As if our opinion matters more than the sport itself.

Tennis players measure themselves against tennis players. Heptathletes measure themselves against heptathletes and swimmers competing in S6 events, measure themselves against other swimmers in S6 events. Anything else must surely be meaningless to them. Mustn't it?

Saying to those people, "I know you set out to achieve something huge and you succeeded, which is lovely... but now we're going to have a vote and let you know whether you were the best at being the best" makes us seem a bit full of ourselves doesn't it? Why on earth would they care? "Yep, being the best in the world at your chosen event is all well and good... but is it really good enough... we'll have a vote and get back to you." It's a bit cocky isn't it?

Maybe it's all just a bit of fun. In which case, can people stop talking and writing about it as if it was important. And when I say that I don't care who wins, can people stop saying, "but it's the Sports Personality of the Year!" as if I hadn't understood the question in the first place. I know it is. That's why I don't care.

Absolutely Final

Well that was an exhausting weekend.

I had the second of the current run of Screen Guild shows at Hoxton Hall on Saturday followed by the final show of my time at Absolute Radio on Sunday morning.

I love the Hoxton shows but there's nothing I do that's quite as nerve-wracking and/or time-consuming. It's always all new material - which means that I have no idea how it's going to go - and I start building the powerpoint for it at about 7am and finish, some 600-800 slides later at around 6pm... at which point it's time to head out to the venue.

The acts - Jay Foreman, James Acaster, Lucy Beaumont and Pete Firman - were all great - the line-ups are always strong - but the show didn't quite take off for me in the way the last one did. But overall it was a good night. And incredibly useful. Every bit of new material had legs. So nothing will get thrown away as useless, but all of it will need honing if it's to survive in the big bad world of stand up.

Which, I guess, is the point of these shows. 

It was followed by an early start and our final show from Absolute Radio. Which was difficult for completely different reasons. I blogged about the reasons a wee while ago so I won't retread the same ground now suffice to say I've loved working there and know I will miss it hugely. We wanted to avoid getting mawkish and overly-sentimental about it all so I hope the final show wasn't wallowing in it's final-show-ness.

Michael wasn't there this week - he had a show in Moscow - so I took on the angry mantle and did a Dave Gorman Isn't Michael Legge But Is Angry feature in his stead, while all the other regular features were in place with a final Ward's Weekly Word and a not-really-final Found Poem.

I say not-really-final because Found Poetry found its way into the last tour show, exist in cheap-and-cheerful pamphlet form, I regularly put one in the Hoxton shows and I did one on stage when I guested at the Horne Section recently.

I won't continue to put one together every week - I'm looking forward to not spending quite so much time wading through the insanity that is the bottom-half-of-the-internet - but I will still compile new ones from time to time because they provide a really useful change of tone and pace to a live show - so I'll keep them in the mix for future projects.

 There were two very different songs from home this week. The first is folky, the other all electronic. But both of them are fantastic and if the final show's music hadn't involved a ukulele and a stylophone something would have been amiss. This is Stand Up Show by Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell from the album, Kite.  

And this is The Robot Heart by Alto45 who describe what they do as "homemade pop music from three men in labcoats". You can find this track on the album, The Spectrum Sings.

I've added these two tunes to my Spotify playlist of (nearly) all the songs I've brought in from home this year. It's here... and the podcasts for the show - which contain all the talky content from the Sunday morning as well as loads of extras - should be here.

If you've listened to the shows - whether live or in podcast form - then we're proud that you chose to join us and appreciative of your company. We wanted to make the show not be about us - and we were always really proud of how smart and funny the audience would be. Thanks.