WHO IS NUMBER ONE?

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. I've resigned."

For 17 episodes of "The Prisoner", Number Six trekked around the Village, trying to work out where he was and how he could escape. Patrick McGoohan's character spent each of those episodes unclear about where he had been trapped. It was a surreal world - an apparently self-contained village with no contact with the outside world. The Village was full of eccentric characters, brass band music permeated the atmosphere and nothing ever seemed quite real. And, crucially, no one ever, ever left the Village.

Since its inception, the show has been tirelessly debated in fan circles. Where is it based? What does it mean? What was the last episode really all about?

Well, people, I think I've figured it out. And, yes, I am willing to share that information with you, my loyal Krusty fans.

The bandstand, the eccentric characters, the feeling of unreality - it all points to one thing. Number Six spent those 17 episodes trapped in Trumpton. You know - just outside Chigley, down the road from Camberwick Green.

Once you work that out, it's pretty clear who Number One was... Brian Cant.

"Number Two, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Number Six, Dibble, Grubb..."

THE FAIR SHARE

Some of the stuff they drum into you as a child has no application in the adult world. There's always a lot of emphasis placed on sharing toys, sharing sweets, letting others join in your games. Always with the sharing, the getting involved.

If you can’t share you won't get any sweets. If you don't share you just won't be allowed to play. This sort of statement is commonplace among parents and teachers.

Yet as soon as you bring that mentality into the adult world you get branded a thief and an adulterer. This is why the world is so full of neurotic loners - nobody likes getting mixed signals. All that sharing when they were young messed them up for later life.

THE HAIR RAISING STRATEGY

"Strong hold" and "extra hold" seem to be the main variations of hairspray. That makes sense - I mean, if you're going to spray gunk in your hair to make it lay a certain way, you've already committed yourself to a degree of "hold".

But, the "strong" part seems kind of redundant. Is anyone looking through the hairsprays trying to find "weak hold"? They want to brush their hair in front of the mirror, get it a certain way, spray it so it stays like that for maybe a minute, minute and a half - this is enough for them? It's not like mixing spirits - seasoned hair sculptors prefer a double, while newbies want plenty of ice with their hairspray. No.

"Extra strong hold" is really the ultimate. Both "extra" and "strong" from the same nozzle.

"I can't seem to do a thing with my hair today."

"Would you like a shot of my hairspray?"

"Wellll..."

"Go on, it's extra strong hold."

"Oh, I can’t. I'm driving."

THE FIFTY THIRD MAN

"Join the world's biggest online poker game," hails the advert currently doing the rounds in newspapers and on billboards and the tube. This sounds pretty impressive, until you think about it. Because the world's biggest online poker game can still only accommodate maybe five or six players - after that, there aren't really enough cards to make it worth playing.

There has to come a point where you close the table in poker. If you had 20 players, you'd end up playing something like "Hole in the head", that game where you hold a card to your forehead for your opponents to see, leaving you effectively betting against your own hand blind.

If they get more than 52 players on that online game you'd really have to start checking your cards closely...

"I got two aces!"

"I got two kings!"

"I got a dinosaur top trump card and an optician's business card!"

"I got a hand of Tarot cards and, if I've read them right, I don't think I'm going to still be alive to collect my winnings!"

"I got a rock!"

You can only really hope that the advertising is a dismal failure, otherwise this influx of new players will ruin it for everyone. Unless the online poker game is maybe some game with a poker. Like, stoke the fire for a while, keep the room nice and toasty for everyone. Yeah, that's a game. Sure, why not?

THE INSURANCE SCAM

I'm starting to think that the insurance people aren't being entirely honest with us. All those adverts they do where the people change their insurance and saved £50, saved £100, saved up to £300, you know? Those people are frighteningly happy to have saved this money. They're not just pleased - they are, like, scary happy.

It's especially true with the single image ads - the ones you see at bus stops and on bill boards or in newspapers. The people there are like "I saved £100, and now I have the biggest rictus grin you ever did see! I just can’t stop smiling. It actually, physically hurts now. I am in pain here because I saved so much money. Please, please kill me. Kill me now."

If I may hazard a guess here, could it be that these people are spending these terrific savings on some, erm, happy pills? Because, what they save in car insurance they may end up losing on the health insurance. Good rehab isn't cheap.

30 DAYS OF SWORDFISH

Workplace security is officially out of control.

Not so long ago you'd come in, show your pass to the guy at the main gate, then you were ready to start your day. Heck, sometimes you didn't even need to show a pass - the security guy just knew everyone. These days you're carrying an electronic fob to access the gate, you need two different four-digit codes to get into the corridor you work in, and then you switch on your computer to be told that your password expires in four days.

That's a nasty little damper on your day, isn't it, that moment where you have to come up with a new password? You're scrabbling around, you're looking at notes on your desk, you're trying to think of obscure pet names. "Computer... No, wait - password. No, no - scratch that. Phone. Post-it. Um... Pen!" It's like a little game of eye-spy going on there for a half a minute or so.

What is with all these computer passwords anyhow? Bad enough you have to remember one password, to then have to change it every thirty days... well, it's a tough call to keep coming up with new material on a regular basis, you don't have to tell me that.

I think a lot of people use the same principal when coming up with these new passwords. They settle on something that they can remember and then they add a number to the end. "Lisa" has expired? I'll just turn to her twin sister, the charming "Lisa1". When the health of "Lisa1" takes a downturn, she can be replaced by the delightful "Lisa2". We all reason that no criminal mastermind would think to change the number at the end like that. They'd maybe put in Lisa and Lisa1 and, once that didn't work, they'd just give up. Thus our computer is locked up, safe and untouchable to the world of crime and we can sleep easily in our beds.

For the most part, criminal geniuses don't actually sneak into your office to access your computer. They're not forging a pass to show to the guy at the gate, they don't carry one of those magic key fob things that tests every four-digit combination ever in a three second high pitched blip so they can get through the doors to your office, and they don't use clever password skills to get into your computer files. Really, it's all remote access these days, back-door stuff. You see it in the papers every week - we're all aware of how it's done.

So, I figure the ever-changing password is really only there for one reason: To make sure that the workers are actually awake by asking them taxing questions every 30 days. If you can't come up with a new password within three minutes, security turns up, they escort you from the premises.

LET'S RAP WITH CAP

As superhero names go, Captain America kind of comes out of left field. Is he actually a captain of something? Like a ship's captain? It's like his surname is America.

I think it's meant to be a military rank, because he started out as a soldier granted super powers. So, it's like he's the captain of America. But I guess "Captain (of) America" made for a lousy logo on the front of his magazine so they shortened it to simply Captain America.

But, while "Captain America" has a nice feel to it - it flows off the tongue, it sits nicely on the page - it's not really a very impressive title for a superhero. In the American military you have quite a lot of people who outrank the captain. Major, Colonel, Brigadier and General all outrank him, and there are plenty of gradations within those ranks, I can assure you. I could be here all day listing all the Lieutenant Colonels, Brigadier Generals and Major Fractions that outrank a captain.

Yet, as a superhero, you don't really want to be outranked. Ideally, you'd choose General America, chief of the army, but it kind of sounds a bit vague, I guess. "Freeze evildoer - or face the wrath of General America!" You'd find yourself fighting a lot of bad guys called stuff like the Vague Menace and Nasty Something.

THE KLOWNICULUM VITAE

When I started working for Ad magazine they couldn't get my articles in there for all the advertising space they'd sold - I'd keep getting bumped. Eurgh! I admit it - I did some awful work when I wrote for Bad magazine - nothing I did for those people came out well. I acted like a scoundrel while I was writing for Cad magazine, just couldn't stop myself. I had to learn about fatherhood for Dad magazine - eurgh, that was a challenge. I really enjoyed working for Fad magazine at first, but I lost interest after a week. Writing for Gad magazine was a heavenly experience, between you and me. After that, I wrote for Had magazine - I did some great articles there, but they didn't pay me. And, working for Lad magazine was just one photoshoot after another.

So, here's the question - would I be crazy to apply for a job on Mad magazine?

REAP THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Who are the news people trying to kid with the reporting of foreign elections? I'm all for nurturing an awareness of the global perspective, but does anyone really care about the build-up to an election in some out of the way South American country that we've never even traded coffee beans with? The results could go either way. It's neck and neck. One party leader has been campaigning in rural areas that I've never heard of. There are even some suggestions of ballot rigging.

This isn't news. This is gossip. And, what's more, it's gossip about things that nobody's interested in. Even the people involved probably don't care very much. Just let it go.

By all means tell us the results - point out what this could mean for neighbouring countries, sure. But the rest - well, that's not even news. It's the opposite of news, my friends. It is non-news.

Maybe they could split the news up in the same way book shops do it - fiction and non-fiction. You'd get the news, then you'd get all that other stuff that we all know isn't really news at all.

Sports can sit comfortably in the non-news section. Teams met at the pre-arranged fixture at a pre-arranged time and one of them won and one of them lost - no real surprises here, I'm afraid. Nothing newsworthy. You could also throw in all those royal engagements - the Queen went here, opened this baby unit, got a commemorative tea towel - it was a nice day for all concerned. But it just wasn't news, buckaroo. And coming up later in the non-news... any item of local news too irrelevant to make a dent on the national headlines.

Once we have that clear delineation, we can all sit down, have a chat about the non-news - it'll be a nonversation

NUGGET-ME-NOT

Whenever the chicken is used as comparison, you know it's going to be less than flattering. Your legs are like a chicken's legs. You have chicken wing shoulders. Sometimes, people will just be called chicken. "What are ya? Chicken?"

What is with the chicken references being so negative? Nobody's getting described as smart as a chicken, strong as a chicken, attractive as a chicken. It's always very antagonistic when the chicken is brought into play.

Are the chickens calling each other human by way of insult? "You've got human legs!" "Hey, cock-a-doodle human brains!" "Scared to go out in case the fox comes after ya? What are ya? Human?"

The next time someone brings up the chicken metaphor, I suggest you just smile. Sure, you'll end up with smile lines, but at least they'll be crow's feet.

THE PIRATE NAME

When it comes to pirate's names there's a lot of emphasis on the facial hair. Blackbeard, Bluebeard, I think there was a Redbeard in there somewhere.

This is odd, when you think about it, when our traditional image of the pirate has him with an eye-patch, a peg leg, maybe a hook in place of one of his hands. With all those things to distinguish him from other people, you'd really expect a more imaginative nickname that does more than identify whether or not he shaved this morning. And, let's not forget, these were mass killers - murdering, ravaging and plundering on a vast scale.

Maybe naming pirates is like writing a eulogy for someone you don't really like - you just try to focus on their good points...

"Well, he has the wooden leg, the cyclopean eye, he's uni-dextrous and he's a crazed killer of babies. I think we'll call him... Blondebeard."

"That really gets to the essence of what the captain's all about. Good work."

ADVANCED CUTLERY

Once you've used the pizza wheel, it's hard to go back to the regular knife to cut stuff up. It's like eating with chopsticks after you've seen a spoon - you can do it, but you can't shake the thought that there's an easier way you're just ignoring.

All the pizza wheel is is a blade on an axle with a handle attached. It's so simple. But, put those three things together and you have a knife that goes on cutting forever. If you wanted to carve the Earth into portions for, say, visiting titans, you'd use a pizza wheel. It never runs out.

The universe is ever-expanding - the pizza wheel could still cut it into slices.

But you still go back to the regular knife, at the end of the day. It's got, like, a three inch blade, no moving parts - it's like we're living in the Dark Ages here. I figure, if we could phase in the pizza wheel as its replacement we'd see a drop in knife crime. It's pretty tough to stab someone with a wheel. That's one of the laws of geometry, I think.

THE LONG THANK YOU

No matter how compulsive a reader you are, working through the extended dedications that music artists put in the CD sleeve notes is an unconquerable challenge.

Book authors will often provide a simple dedication - "For my father" or "To my mother" or "Thanks to Miss Gibson, the best English teacher I ever had". Occasionally you might see an extra few credits there by way of acknowledgement if the book's got some techie stuff, science or engineering detail.

But, the singers - they're thanking Mum, Dad, their manager, their barber, that kid they used to go to school with and lost touch with, their late dog... it's an endless stream of names they've managed to dredge up from every single facet of their life prior to the very second of releasing this album. There are comprehensive dictionaries shorter than those lists.

And who are all these people they're thanking? Don't any of them own telephones? E-mail? A letter box? Is the musician's schedule so packed that they can’t find five minutes in their day to drop round this person's house and say "Hey, I've got a new record out and, well, it's for you." Do they have to name every last person who offered them a piece of gum since the day they were born?

If you mix up all the words in the extended dedication you can create the lyrics to a whole new song. That would be a far better way of saying thank you, I feel. "Thanks for buying my CD - here's another tune."

45s AND OVER

It is Official Singles Week this week, I kid you not. A whole week devoted to the unattached members of society who have yet to form a meaningful relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

Moves are afoot to drop the words spinster and bachelor because they are perceived to hold negative connotations. Instead, the argument goes, they should be replaced by either the word "single" or, please no, the ghastly "singleton". Singleton, for those of you who haven’t read Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding, is a popular British surname. Fielding, for those of you who haven't read Bridget Jones' Diary, is a position in cricket, rounders and baseball. Jones, for those of you who haven’t read Bridget Jones' Diary, is a town in Indiana.

I quite like the word spinster. It's the fact it uses "spin" at the start that really appeals to me. It makes single women out to be whirling dervishes, twirling from room to room. It makes me dizzy just imagining it.

Bachelor, by contrast, sounds like single men are produced in huge batches from a factory in one of the old Soviet Bloc countries. Which is strange because the old Soviet Bloc countries are doing their utmost to entice the bachelors into marrying their single women.

ENTERING THE ASTEROID FIELD

A vast amount of space debris - meteorites and the like - plummets to Earth every day. Although the majority of it may be obliterated or sterilised on the hazardous trip through the Earth's atmosphere, this space debris is our most likely chance of finding clues to alien life. And yet, almost none of it makes the news.

In the 1950s, when the threat of an alien invasion seemed much more possible, the arrival of asteroids, meteorites and the like was considered to be far more newsworthy. These days, unless there's a real possibility of a big impact from an asteroid, the chances are the news people won't bother to mention it to us.

By contrast, if there's a house fire across town, the news people feel obliged to tell us all about it. Not content with providing us with the details, they like to keep us up to date on developments, getting statements from the emergency services, local residents and so on. It's fire - we've seen this plenty of times before.

If a UFO ever does land, chances are the news reports will be focusing on whether the aliens had tested the batteries in their smoke alarm lately. Setting themselves on fire may be the only chance alien life has of us noticing it.

THE LEGAL PRECEDENT

We've all heard the phrase Any man who defends himself in court has a fool for a client.

Having a fool for a client isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course. There are plenty of half wits, slow wits and no wits walking the streets today thanks to the tireless efforts of a good lawyer, I'm sure. I'd guess that half of a lawyer's working life is spent defending the moronic - they're not raising the legal bar by choosing only smart criminals.

In lawyer circles they have a similar phrase, only it goes Any man who defends that guy in court has a fool for a client.

It's always interesting to read those stories in the paper where a defendant has multiple personalities. They have that paragraph about how the apparently normal client committed the crime while under the influence of her "reincarnation of Genghis Khan" personality.

I guess even people with multiple personalities defend themselves in court now and then. The Judge is all "You have heard the phrase that any man who defends himself in court has a fool for a client, haven’t you?" and they'd be "Well, actually, as my client I'm adopting the Stephen Hawking facet of my personality. Unfortunately, I'll be defending myself mostly in the mindset of Daffy Duck, your honour."

WALKMAN ETIQUETTE

There's a lot of pressure on people to get a personal music system these days. Everyone's talking about downloading music to their iPod, getting stuff transferred to their MP3 player, storing their favourite tunes on their mobile phone. The advertising budget for these things is astronomical, you can’t seem to move for trailers full of people dancing in silhouette to bongo drums.

So, can someone please tell me what the rule is about talking to people with headphones on? Because, frankly, it's got me stumped. Do you go in with the shouting? The "Hello? Hell-oh? Can I just...? Would you mind...? Hell-oh?!" Or do you do the little wave, catching their eyeline, mouthing the words "Excuse me" before you start conversing?

It's a serious issue, I feel - there needs to be some kind of ruling on this already. We need to establish a universal sign that means "Turn off your music a second, buddy, we need to talk."

There are two standard reactions from a headphone junkie when you try to talk to them. They take the headphone from one ear and either look bewildered or they look incensed.

I don't understand the incensed reaction. It's like: we're all participating in the universal continuance of mankind, here. You chose to exclude yourself. Don't look all offended when I have to bother you because you're still taking up space in this crazy thing we like to call society. Because you're only listening to music - we can still see you, you're still here.

However, I love to get the bewildered reaction - that really makes my day. People take off those headphones and they're like "What? What did I miss? Is it the end of the world? I was listening to Hilary Duff's greatest hits - did I miss the end of the world because of that?" When I see that look, I just want to say, "Yes - yes, you did."

THE CALL OF OPHIUCHUS

It's a tough call to do jokes about cancer. In fact, it's pretty hard to do jokes about any of the star signs - you always run the risk of alienating a twelfth of your audience.

When you ask, most people can name four or five signs of the zodiac off the top of their head, but after that they have to put some thought in. Because, they're such a random group of items, it's very difficult just to remember them like --snap-- that.

There's a lion and a bull, and I think there's a ram in there somewhere. The arachnid kingdom is especially well represented, with both the scorpion and the crab making the top twelve. But after that, it's like getting photos back from a fancy dress party you were at three months ago. "What? Someone came as a set of scales? There were twins there? I don’t think I even spoke to them. And what's this guy with the arrows? Is he meant to be an archer? Now, that guy's going home a virgin!"

I get confused by Aquarius - I always think it's the sign of the aquarium. Maybe it should be - then we could drop Pisces the fish, shunt all the houses of the zodiac along one place, and make room for a new star sign at the end. Based on current form, that star sign could be a zebra. It could, just as easily, be a houseboat. Maybe an umbrella.

If anyone with influence is taking notes here, can I just put a bid in for Krustio - the sign of the Harlequin? I think that would add to the general ambience of the astrology page in the newspapers.

WHY MY CINEMA NEEDS A BIGGER MARQUEE #1

Showing this week: Charlie and the Chocolate Wedding Crashers.

IT'S MORE OF A LYLE LANLEY IDEA

On paper, the rollercoaster makes no sense.

"What we're going to do is build a set a tracks."

"And where do these tracks go?"

"They don't go anywhere - that's the beauty of it. They just go around a big loop, back to the start."

"So, what's people's incentive to ride on this 'rollercoaster'? Is it a particularly smooth ride?"

"No, no - it's really bumpy and dangerous. We're going to need automatic safety bars on these things to stop people falling out and getting themselves hurt or killed."

How did an idea like that make it past the planning stage? I cannot comprehend of any fairground owner thinking that there was mileage in the concept of people paying money to go around a circuit of tracks so that they could get off pretty much exactly where they started. Unless the fairground owner was catching the train to and from work each day - then it would make a kind of perverted sense.

Of course, I'm just guessing here about how they pitched the first rollercoaster concept. Maybe they had actually planned these things as an alternative transport system, just for very small, local journeys. It was only when the conductor noticed that the same kids kept going around the circuit, screaming and enjoying themselves that he figured maybe there was a better use for the Nemesis and Mantis Line trains.

RIDDLE ME THIS

As supervillains go, you have to hand it to the Riddler. Not only does he wear the gaudy costume with no superpowers whatsoever, he obsessively comes up with a riddle before committing a crime. And not just one riddle, either - he'll usually have three or four in stock for various parts of the caper.

Here's a Riddler classic...

Q. There are three men in a boat with four cigarettes and no matches - how do they manage to smoke?

A. They throw one cigarette overboard and make the boat a cigarette lighter.

Now, that's pretty smart. Can you imagine coming up with three or four of those every time you want to do anything? Can you imagine coming up with even one?

If he hadn’t been a supervillain, the Riddler could have got the job as editor of the Beano in a second.

TAKING IT BACK TO FORMULA

I'm sure we all sleep in our beds easier knowing that, from this week, cigarette manufacturers can no longer sponsor Formula One motor racing in Europe.

I, for one, think it's very important to disassociate an unhealthy vice like smoking from the health conscious pursuit of utilising non-renewable fossil fuels in a combustion engine by driving at high speed around a great big circle.

To be honest, I don't think that the tobacco sponsorship of Formula One was really working anyway. I know two fans of Formula One and neither of them smoke. Both of them drive cars, however. That seems to me the more likely natural crossover market. You never saw the winning F1 drivers standing on the podium spraying the crowd with champagne with a cigarette attached to their bottom lip. Nobody was making pit stops saying "Ah, just light me up and I'll be on my way." Between you and me, I don't think the Formula One cars even have a cigarette lighter on the dashboard, much less a pop out ashtray beside the driver's knee.

I guess the drivers were too busy weaving through the pack of cars at high velocity, taking corners at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour, spinning out of control and ramming into the bales of hay they have at the edges of the course, occasionally having their engines burst into flame.

To make Formula One really healthy, you probably need to think about enforcing the speed limits. Get all those drivers doing the circuit at no more than 70, drop it down to 30 for those inner city races where they're going through a residential area the whole time. They wouldn't need to do these 25 lap races anymore. A couple of times around Le Mans at 30 mph - the afternoon's over.

THE FARMING ANGLE

There's a lot of crossover between farming and mathematics when you look at it.

Farmers are keeping an eye on the roots of their plants; mathematicians are watching the square roots of their numbers. Farmers plot where to sew types of seeds based on where the sun hits a field, often using a compass; mathematicians plot circles using a pair of compasses. Farmers are using the amateur tractors to plough their fields; mathematicians only use protractors.

Obviously, I'm only referring to arable farming here. I don't know so much about poultry farming. I could tell you about dairy farming, of course, but that would be milking the joke.