Brussels sprout crops abandoned, billions rejoice

Adverse weather conditions sweeping across the United Kingdom have forced many brussels sprout farmers to abandon their crops. As a result, the vegetable, which has been reduced to hardened projectiles and snowball fodder due to widespread frost in many parts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, will be in short supply this festive season. Ostensibly, this means the traditional seasonal vegetable will not appear on many plates this Christmas period.

Though the mainstream media is reporting this as bad news, and indeed it will be problematic for British farmers, millions will be cheered by the absence of the country's most hated veggie. Children in the south of England will, for one year, be spared their mother snapping "eat your sprouts or there will be no Christmas pudding" at them.

Thousands across Norfolk have held parties in celebration of the news, revelling as if it were Christmas Day already, regardless of whether they had yet broken up for their Chrimbo hols. As one can imagine, this has caused some disruption to public transport and vital services, though things are expected to be 'back to normal' again –or as normal as can be when all employees are wasted on eggnog– before the 25th December.

A Facebook campaign is now underway to try and make the celebration an annual event, and plans are already in place to sabotage next year's crop of brussels sprouts: Dave from accounts is saving a pot of Dulux paint in his shed until November 2010, when he will not only kill off any budding sprouts with the stuff, but also cover farmers' glasses in a thick coat of magnolia to prevent them tending to their crop.

Image licensed under Creative Commons by Eric

All about... teletext

Starting today, the teletext service known as, erm, Teletext, will close forever. The process will be all but complete by tomorrow afternoon, when the services once found on ITV, Channel 4 and Five will disappear. Go on, just try and press that 'text' button on your remote - it won't work. Mainly because you've worn it down from years of checking the cricket scores.

So will end another era in the dying digital (yes, it is digital, as in it has a lot of numbers on it) medium once revered by so many. Soon, the BBC will take a sledgehammer to all traces of teletext, rendering it completely immobile by 2012, when we'll no doubt be accessing the latest news and views on small computers we carry around everywhere in our pockets. Oh, wait, some people already do. Please forgive me for that, I am very poor, and can only just afford to rent a landline phone connection.

So you can understand why someone like me is cheesed off right now, what with Rupert Murdoch announcing charges for the privilege of reading his ever so accurate 'publications' online. There has never been any such restriction on Teletext - in fact, it came free with the telly and was covered in the annual license.

This is something I discovered to my great cost when I shelled out £154.65 extra for a "brand new second hand colour television with built in telly text" from a bloke called Harry on the boot sale. Could only receive one channel. Needless to say, he wasn't there when I returned the next week, but some other stall holder told me I'd actually bought a microwave.

Sorry if you were offended by the archaic nature of that last quip, but I'm informed the oldies are the goodies. The same is true of teletext - this interactive television service we have to make do with these days is GM Vauxhall Conference standard stuff. If analogue teletext was a Fiat Punto, then BBCi is a Peel P50, crawling along at such a pace you'd think it were travelling backwards. It simply exudes cackness, and I've seen calculators with a better visual interface.

A brief history of teletext

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, as even the original teletext sucked a little bit in its formative years. It was really expensive, could only be updated once a day and usually consisted of messages such as 'look at me I am skill I can braodcast to the naiton hahah!' A bit like today's text messages then.

Not that anyone cared: only about three teletext-capable TV sets were manufactured per year so only The Queen and a couple of oil barons from Abu Dhabi could see what jolly japes the specially sanctioned teletext team were getting up to in their spare time.

This soon changed, though, and by the 1980s a few teachers and solicitors could also afford to get one of these new teletext tellies. By this time, BBC were already screening news, weather and in-house profanities (see p699) to the nation - in fact, it was so successful it had its own dedicated programming slot from 4-5AM on weekday mornings. It was brilliant for security guards on night shift and insomniacs , who ensured Pages from Ceefax would win an Academy Award for Best Programme Nobody's Ever Seen in 1984.

The early 1990s saw renewed interest in the medium with a brand new update that allowed for faster surfing and a cartoon character called Turner the Worm, which was actually yet another in-house joke at Teletext Inc. Yeah, you don't really want to know.

It was also around this time that Bamber Boozler quit his job as a compère at the Monaco Ballroom, Hindley, to take up the position of quizmaster at Teletext. He quickly became an unlikely face of the medium, appearing in numerous magazines and on Countdown three times, where he was an 'absolute demon at the numbers game' according to Richard Whitely.

It is unknown whether Boozler will find further work after the demise of teletext, though there has been speculation he could front Gilette Soccer Special on Sky Sports News, announcing the latest football scores and grinning inanely at Phil Thompson, who'll probably smash his face in. I'll believe it when I see it, though.

As of today, the campaign to bring back teletext goes into full force as a bunch of heavies roll into the offices of Teletext Inc. to guard the big red 'switchoff' button. Sadly, though, they can't stay awake forever and it's inevitable said button will get pressed at some point. Until then, enjoy what's still with us while you can, and don't let it all spoil your Christmas.

Fergie fumes again as officials fail to adhere to his stopwatch

Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson was left absolutely fuming last night, not for his side's 1-0 loss to Aston Villa, but an apparent discrepancy in timekeeping that meant, in his view, insufficient stoppage time was added to the end of the second half.

It's the latest in a long line of excuses spouted by the seething Scot in another attempt to deflect blame away from his Manchester United side and towards the officials, a common tactic used by football managers –and often fans– to make the club seem better than they actually are. On this basis, you'd have thought Manchester United were the champions or something.

Fergie's grievance specifically relates to referee Martin Atkinson's decision to add just three minutes of injury time when ten or twelve would have been more appropriate, at least according to Ferguson's watch. However it seems the stopwatch in question is now old, rusted and prone to dropping a second every minute due to its clockwork mechanics. When this fact was pointed out to Ferguson, he said he 'didn't like all this new fangled digital stuff that's all bleeps and LCD screens and whatnot'.

Prior to this season, Ferguson's watch had not been mentioned for absolutely ages and presumably became hungry for the limelight, stirring up some controversy by making itself deliberately inconsistent, a bit like Fergie's side on the pitch yesterday.

But the Fergster's terrible timepiece hit headlines earlier this year when it mysteriously went missing following September's Manchester derby that saw United grab a last-gasp winner at Old Trafford. It returned over a month later, covered in sea water and horribly rusted but still just about functional. Analysis suggests it spent over three weeks in the Manchester Ship Canal before being submerged in vinegar as a piece of modern art at a local gallery, where it was found by a dog named Pickles.

On the evidence of yesterday, Premier League sides aren't exactly going to be queueing up to buy Ferguson a new watch, mainly because he'd probably throw it back at them or just put it in the back of a cupboard until the battery erodes.

The FA have announced they will take absolutely no action as a result of Ferguson's outburst, and have sent him a packet of Diazepam.

£3,000 brick stolen from London gallery, search for replacement continues

A red brick half-inched from a London art gallery "could be anywhere" according to building experts, or at least some seedy fat bloke in a yellow hard hat that insists on shouting profanities at dog walkers at the end of the high street. A more pressing issue for the Area10 Space Project is the imminent collapse of the building, which has been structurally compromised by the removal of said brick.

It was a pretty important brick. You'd have thought they could take one from the top, but no, that would have been way too easy. We now have to close the gallery for a full three hours while we hunt out a suitable alternative. -- Dimitri Launder of the Area10 Space Project

Police have issued a statement urging any member of the public that finds the brick return it to the gallery immediately or else the whole building will cave in on itself within a week.

It's an ordinary house brick with a chip on the far left edge and three holes in the middle. It is recognisable by a crack running three centimetres from the centre and a reddish hue. It is also signed by artist Gavin Turk. -- Launder

The gallery would have replaced the brick before now but are struggling to find a brick of equal value to the one stolen: the best they have found so far is one worth £113 at Harrod's.

There's a great big 3,000 quid hole in the wall, and it's making us all very cold ... We would get Gavin to sign us another brick but he seems to be otherwise engaged at the moment, probably painting polka dot patterns on traffic cones, or whatever it is artists do for fun. -- Spokesman for Area10

Turk is in fact down at a building site looking for the subject of his next artwork. The gallery, however, face a race against time before the whole building is reduced to rubble, and with Gavin Turk-signed bricks not exactly a dime a dozen, it isn't looking good.

A team of dedicated professionals (local schoolkids) are currently in the process of creating a genetically modified brick from plasticine and a box of Lego. The search continues.

Gran Turismo 5 to include roadkill dodging, airbags and other innovative features

After numerous delays, racing simulator Gran Turismo 5 is finally set to be released for the Playstation 3 in March 2009. This date is, of course, not set in stone: in fact, the likelihood is that there will be further problems that put the launch date back a further three months and we can eventually expect the game to be released in 2031.

Still, Polyphony's Kazunori Yamauchi is confident this date will be the one gamers can not just pencil but write into their diaries in block capitals with permanent marker, pressing down really hard so that the ink seeps through five pages.

We've been ironing out a few bugs and nicking a few ideas from rival video games for the past year or so and are expecting the extra effort to really pay off when things do get up and running. – Kazunori Yamauchi

But Polyphony will have to get their skates on, because not only will the PS3 be long out of production by the time the game is finally released to the market, but main competitor Forza Motorsport will be in its fifteenth incarnation and an old age pensioner before GT is even past the title screen.

You can blame the work experience guy for that - at least that's what I always do. – Kazunori Yamauchi

This latest delay is thought to be down to a problem with 'realism of the extra features', as Yamauchi puts it. We can only speculate as to whether this will involve flattening squirrels and knocking pedestrians flying at level crossings, but Yak Newswire holds out hope that this will be the case.

GT5: What we want to see

• Realtime 'Be-A-Mechanic mode' in the same vein as PES's Be-A-Legend with choice of spanners
• Tramps washing your windscreen at traffic lights
• Cigarette lighter blowing up halfway round a lap
• Airbags going off at random intervals requiring a swift button press to remedy
• Incorporation of the car scrappage scheme for second hand cars

Image courtesy brashgames.co.uk