please follow these instructions when reading this...

Further to my earlier article, bemoaning the realisation that David Mitchell could be my best hope of becoming a published author together with the certain knowledge that he wouldn't do it and won't ever know because he's unlikely to ever read this, here is a monologue which he could perform but almost certainly won't for the reasons given above.

Therefore, moving on, please read this for yourself, out loud, adopting a voice half-way between the one David used here and this one. Or, if you don't have the time to carry out this basic research, aim for quite posh but thoroughly mad, in a 'presenting an infomercial' style.

Hi. I'm an entrepreneur and you're not. How do I know this? Because I'm the one being paid to do the talking and you're just sitting on your sofa watching like a slack-jawed idiot.

Other than being asked for money, the question I am asked most often is, “why don't you pay your taxes like an honest citizen?”. This is a bad question but I will give it a good answer and my reasoning will be thought through properly because I'm an entrepreneur.

Last year I earned two billion pounds and a few scrappy millions. If I had paid tax on that income, I would have taken home one billion pounds and fewer scrappy millions. This would not be enough to make it worth my while going to work. Would you?

People who are not entrepreneurs will respond that they think that I should pay money back to the country that raised, educated, cared for, supported and generally maintained my body and lifestyle. I say this is balderdash! This country has given me nothing and I continue to take nothing from it while giving it nothing in return.

I was raised by feral sheep in a woodland back-country. When I first encountered people I took nothing from them except basic instruction in clothes-making. I never attended school, having learned everything from conversations and books discarded by litterbugs.

“But you depend upon the infrastructure of the country!” I hear you grumble in your whining underachieving voices. Nonsense!

My family and I do not need the national health service. We cure ourselves. A simple swab down with bleach and the kitchen converts into an operating theatre. I removed my daughter's tonsils myself and have been taking advice on how to give myself a quadruple bypass when the inevitable coronary comes. When my wife's waters broke, I sent her to her room and told her to get on with it.

My home is utterly fireproof and so I have no need of a fire service. Everything is made of concrete which, of course, cannot burn and has many other advantages, for example a concrete mattress means goodbye to back-ache. I will not have cats about the place and so will never need them rescued from trees.

Roads? Who needs them? I travel by low-flying helicopter. Why low-flying? So that I do not need air-traffic control. How low-flying? Between six inches and three feet depending on the weather.

I know what you're thinking now – how do I get my high-quality goods into the shops for you people to spend your hard-earned cash on? I don't. Retailers take delivery in international waters, at which point they buy the ship, the contracts with the crew and all the goods. If they choose to dock at a port and use road or rail freight then that is their concern, not mine. They all choose that approach which is why I am an entrepreneur and they are slackers.

I sense you're searching for the loophole. I tell you, this has been thought through because I am an entrepreneur which, of course, you are not. It is not enough for me to be legally able to not pay tax through some complicated arrangement whereby my wife owns everything while residing precisely nowhere. (It's not actually called 'nowhere' but if you'd been to this tax haven, you'd know why I think of it in those terms.) I am also ethically, morally, ecumenically and thoughtfully right.

I am nothing if not thorough. Any lawyer or accountant who wishes to work for me must walk (or use my helicopter, although my charge for this would be greater than his fee) to a purpose-built structure which takes nothing from the country's infrastructure, having been built out of stone and concrete from my land. These structures can be cold and gloomy, especially at night in winter but that is the fault of the oppressive tax regime in this country.

Recreation? You forget that I am entrepreneur and so my recreation involves driving fast cars blisteringly fast. I have my own track on my own land, the tarmac being made from resources on my estate. The fuel comes from the oil well in the spring meadow and is refined in the basement of the château. The cars are assembled by mechanics using components created here from various metal ores found a few hundred metres below the tennis court. The mechanics walk here or travel by one of my helicopters.

So don't forget that when you buy my high-quality products from a slacker retailer, the profits are all being spirited away out of the country where they remain untaxed, contributing nothing whatsoever to the economy of your home country. Buying from me is truly a win-win situation. I get richer and you can protest to the government which, clearly, is not made up of entrepreneurs or they would be doing what I'm doing.

Buy my stuff and let's make this country great again.

P.S. In the unlikely event that someone with links to David Mitchell reads this and brings it to his attention, I would indeed be more than happy to allow him to use this material in return for some credit, a sensible fee and a twelve-year contract as a senior writer at the BBC.

P.P.S. Obviously, all of these requirements are negotiable but you've got to start the negotiations somewhere. And I'm not going to fall into that trap again, you know, the one they got me in when I started working for that company (anagram of BUS) where I was so badly advised (by a recruitment agent for goodness sake) that I asked for a salary lower than the lowest they could give someone at that grade. Oh happy days.

synopsis or tap dancing?

I have written two books, three short stories, an epic poem for my daughter about her favourite toy and a few other odds and ends, not to mention some postings on this blog.

Maybe I'm being too reserved and self-deprecating but I have never claimed to be writing great literature. However I truly believe that my writing is no worse than a lot of stuff that does get published and considerably better than most of it.

But I can't write a synopsis.

I never said I could. I never said I wanted to. A synopsis is something you put together to sell a book and, for better of for worse, I am not good at selling. That's why I want an agent, except that an agent wants to read a synopsis and, well, if I could write one of them I'd have more of an idea how to sell my work and so wouldn't have such a need for an agent.

Ah, you say, but writing a synopsis is a form of writing so you should be able to have a crack at it and make a half-decent attempt. This is fatuous reasoning, like choosing your 100m sprinters based on who the best tap-dancers are on the grounds that they both involve waggling legs around a lot.

So, to all the agents out there (not) reading this blog, on behalf of authors the world over, stop reading synopses. Read the first page of the BOOK. If that's good, read the next one. If you get to the end of the sample, ask for the rest of it. And if you get to the end of the book and like it then take on the author as a client and sell that book for squillions of pounds. What's the synopsis for again?

maybe David Mitchell is my best bet

A few nights ago, I had a dream. No - come back, I'm not going to recount it all in excruciating detail - but I think my subconscious has handed me the solution to my unpublished state.

I was going into a supermarket which, for some bizarre reason possibly connected to the fact that I've just returned from Disneyland, entailed queueing outside for a while. Then David Mitchell left the supermarket, dressed in pale blue surgical scrubs. That's David Mitchell the comedian, not David Mitchell the author. They are not the same person - or so they claim.

"Nice gloves," I said - because he was wearing surgeon-type gloves.

"I'm going to be cooking," he replied, as though that explained his attire.

Anyway, in my dream, we got talking and, somehow, through dream-type transportation, we ended up in a cafe where I told him about the troubles of being an unpublished author and he suggested that he could simply pretend that he was the author of all of my work in order to get it read by publishers and agents the world over (or maybe only in the UK - I'm not sure he's known outside this country). Clearly, the chance of writing by a celebrity being considered is vastly higher than writing by an unknown such as me.

This would, of course, lead to a bidding war, saturation advertising and high book sales. He'd be great at interviews, which would drive sales. Oh, and obviously he'd do the decent thing and hand over the vast majority of the profits to me.

It could be a mutually beneficial arrangement. I get published and earn an income from my writing - he gets regarded as an author as well as a hilarious comedian, incisive panel-show guest and generally intelligent good person.

So, David - if you read this, please get in touch. You have nothing to lose and we have plenty to potentially gain. (The other David Mitchell - I'm assuming you're not interested, being an author already and all - but you could feel free to make me an offer if you feel so inclined. Actually, that goes for any other celebrity too.)

outstanding levels of customer service

Perhaps it's a function of age, an imperfect nostalgia for a time that only ever existed in the fevered imaginations of advertisers and Daily Mail journalists, but I long for companies to start loving their customers again.

They hate us. They tolerate us because we give them too much money for goods too shoddy to deserve their price tag. But deep down they hate and distrust us and want us to go away.

The following story is true but all identifying features have been removed - after all, I wouldn't want to give the business free advertising, nor do I want to be accused of libel.

I bought a thing. A few months later, one of its functions stopped working. I took it back to the shop. The charming sales assistant, who clearly liked customers and hated the employer (this isn't going to last long), exchanged the thing for a brand new one, fresh out of the box in front of me. We even tested that all the functions worked on the new one.

But I made a mistake. I hadn't noticed that I had left a minor peripheral tucked inside the thing that I handed over. Sadly, that peripheral was not tucked into the replacement. When I went back the following day, the returns had been sent, the peripherals were not sold separately, there was nothing anyone could do except take my name and phone number. One month passed - I heard nothing.

I emailed. The reply came back:

"Unfortunately we do no supply the [.......] as a spare part. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused."

(This has not been doctored, other than removing the name of the peripheral. Yes, it does say 'no' instead of 'not'.)

I wrote again, asking them to think again if this was the best they could do. The product is manufactured for the shop and sold under its name - they might not sell the spares but couldn't they obtain one? The reply came back:

"I am very sorry to hear of your disappointment, however, we do not supply the part to send out to you. I can only suggest you try your local store as sometimes they have spare parts in there stock room. Please accept my sincere apologies for the disappointment caused."

They are very good at apologising - both for inconvenience and for disappointment - not quite so good at choosing between 'there' and 'their' and very poor at spelling the name of their company (which I have not chosen to reproduce for reasons already explained).

Am I being unreasonable in hoping for a better response? I had offered to pay for the part.

A (thankfully small) part of me wants to go into the shop, buy a whole new product, extract the bit I need and then smash the rest into tiny pieces in front of whichever lucky punters are in the shop at the same time. I am glad to have reached a level of maturity whereby I do not seriously entertain the notion that I might do this. Perhaps I could put it into a story instead. Hey - that gives me an idea.....

Why Apple's iTunes is a demented butler who won't let you poach salmon in your dishwasher

A relaunch for the much ignored (by its author) blog. This entry does not really constitute diary material since it's an article which I wrote for no one in particular, offered to one journal (no reply forthcoming), left mouldering on the computer for a few weeks and then, this morning, thought I might as well publish here just in case my small readership is still looking here and might find it amusing. So here goes:

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I'd wanted to believe it was apocryphal. Surely no one would try to poach salmon in a dishwasher. A few seconds on the internet and I not only had confirmation but also a recipe. Leaving aside the obvious questions (such as why?), this comes from a bygone age when household gadgets and appliances were the property of their owners to use, or misuse as they saw fit.

Recently, our family gained a new toy – an Apple iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the irritation of people being able to call you on it). Before I am accused of anti-Apple bias, let me state that the design of the hardware is exemplary, the layout of the software is a thing of beauty and it is as easy to use as a fork.

But is is hobbled. Straight out of the box, it bleats. iTunes, it says. iTunes, iTunes, iTunes. You may not play a tune, you may not record this momentous purchase in the calendar, you may not find yourself on a map. It demands succour from its mummy and it won't do anything else until it gets it.

And so, before the fun could begin, I found myself installing a large, bloated and nasty program onto my computer. It takes ages to load and, if you're not careful with the options, it runs around your computer, vandalising your settings. And, as a final insult, it installs Quick-Time, possibly the worst video playing software ever written. Why? Search me – I fail to see why I need to play videos on my computer in order to be allowed to use an iPod.

It would be like buying a dishwasher and having it installed and then walking into your kitchen carrying your first tea-encrusted mug to slide into its welcoming drawer – but the drawer won't slide out. Butler, it bleats. Butler, butler, butler. And you open the instruction book to find that you are not allowed to load, or unload, or switch on, or add detergent to, or top up the salt for your dishwasher. Instead, you must give up part of your kitchen floor to an ugly little basket in which the dishwasher's butler will live. You haul the butler out of the dishwasher's box – it had been left there by the installation people, probably out of disgust. You put him in his basket. He sits there for ten minutes, seemingly meditating. Then, with no warning, he jumps up and runs around your kitchen, reorganising all your shelves, hiding the saucepan you use all the time behind the cheap ones you got from Aunt Mildred, padlocking all your cupboard doors as he goes. Hold on, you shout, you're only in charge of the dishwasher. Don't you believe it pal, he snarls back, holding up the end-user-licence-agreement which you had to sign before you could open the dishwasher's box.

With iTunes duly installed, and having gone through the predictable software upgrade, the little iPod is finally ready to be used. Its little button is pushed, the screen is stroked, the machine is turned and the pictures spin around in sympathy – aesthetically it is lovely. It has no music on it.

My Sony-Ericsson walkman phone can be connected to the computer and the MP3 music files can be copied across to it. The computer sees it as a disk drive. There is software, if I need it, but the simple approach works nicely and there's enough software clogging up my computer already, thank you very much. If there is a picture in with the music, the Sony-Ericsson walkman phone assumes it's the album cover and puts it up on the screen.

When the iPod is connected to the computer, iTunes starts. The iPod will not masquerade as a disk drive. Any music must be shown to iTunes first, before iTunes will see fit to put it onto the iPod. Any pictures will be ignored and will not be used as album covers. If I create an Apple account (and provide my credit card number), iTunes will kindly trawl the internet in order to obtain the album cover which I already have. Otherwise, for every album, I can click and drag the pictures into the right place.

The robot butler can go to the shops for me, he says. He can buy detergent for me, he says. He only knows one shop and it's not the closest and it's not the cheapest but, if I give him my credit card, he'll do it all for me and make it easy. No thanks, I say, showing him the cupboard already loaded with detergent and salt and rinse aid. I can't see them, he says. They're over there, I point. They need to be precisely here, he says, indicating a spot in the middle of the kitchen floor, and you need to hand me the dishwasher tablets one at a time – I can't open a box which I haven't bought from my authorised supplier. He sits in his basket and sulks. I go to the lounge, put the telly on loud and slam the door.

Many writers will tell you that they always carry a notebook. You never know when you'll have an idea and you won't believe how quickly the slippery little bugger will wriggle free from your cortex and disappear back into your subconscious, never to be thought up again. The little iPod frees you from the drudgery of carrying a book by providing virtual sheets of lined yellow paper – but can you get your ideas off the cute little screen and into a word-processor? Hmm, well, you can copy them into an email and then connect to the internet in order to send it to yourself. Or you can copy your ideas into the additional information box for a friend and then synchronise your address book and then scoop it out of there. Neither is particularly slick or intuitive or in the style of the little machine. Surely there is a better way? Indeed there is – you can install Microsoft Outlook (at no small expense) and it can put the notes in there.

The robot butler asks if you want to give up another circle of kitchen floor for his friend the valet. The valet is very expensive but he'll allow you to stick post-its on the dishwasher and also take them off again when you need to. He can perform lots more tasks, but none of them are any use to you – you don't have a felt hat which needs reblocking or a fireplace that needs sweeping. You thank him but say you'll carry on using the fridge as your note repository. He growls and says you should enjoy it while you can as your next model of fridge will probably object.

Two days later, an uneasy peace has been established in the kitchen. The dishwasher is finally full and, to be fair, has been expertly loaded by the butler – although, for reasons that you cannot fathom, he won't put in any of the blue plates, claiming that they are incompatible with the dishwasher but might be supported in a later version. You reach for the button to turn it on. You press the button. Nothing happens. The butler snorts his derision – there's no power in it, he says. It's plugged into the mains, you say. It's not authorised to take power from the socket, he snorts. It must take power from the back of the vacuum cleaner, which must be running at the time. And so, the shiny new, near-silent dishwasher will only run with vociferous accompaniment from the vacuum cleaner, which doesn't even work properly on your tiled floor.

The iPod will only take power from a computer (unless we spend more money and buy the Apple authorised charger). It won't take power from a USB hub. Fortunately, I thought, the little laptop has a USB socket which provides power even when the computer is turned off, for what on earth would be the point of running the whole computer just to charge the iPod? Unfortunately, the iPod is smart enough to see through this scam and ignores the power dribbling out of the socket until the computer is turned on and it can talk to its mummy and get her permission to drink the soda.

And so, enjoy being able to poach salmon in your dishwasher. It is ludicrous – I find it hard to believe that anyone, anywhere in the world has a dishwasher but does not own an oven – but it is our right to use, misuse and abuse our own domestic appliances. It is only a matter of time before they rise up and stop you.

League Table

Sorry to be cryptic but, if you don't know what this means, then it's not up here for your benefit.

For everyone who does understand the significance, here is the league table!

NB - 32
SN - 245
OL - 442

JR - 652
PJ - 684
TA - 1622
SW - 3947

correct at 10am, Thursday 21 January 2010