Or perhaps affected and twee and trendy. Which is why I today start my new campaign. “Puppies for Flipcharts”. Please feel free to join me in this exciting form of beautification.

Quite simply, print out the picture below and keep a handy supply in your desk and pockets. Whenever post-its and brown papers appear, wait until your facillitator’s attention is wandering and register your silent process to management consultancy fads by sticking a nice picture of a puppy onto the flipchart or brown paper! Or at lunchtime go forward a couple of blank pages on the flipchart and write “Puppies not Flipcharts!”. Imagine how exciting the afternoon will be as you await your message’s unexpected arrival!  

Remember – there is no such thing as a bad idea. It’s just that good ones cost you more.

So Kool and the Gang it squeeks on contact.

The man. The myth. The woolly pully. 

“Do you like football?”

“No, not really, I’m a Southampton fan”.

Boom, and, indeed, boom. The Championship has begun. 2-2 on Sunday against Derby. Oh the joy of looking forward to another season of draws and pointless end-to-end fannying about.

But pish and tipsy to this one-armed and boater-doffing nostalgia; the memory that pertains vibriancemost is the fact that every single clumping advertisement break featured a deep and well-modulated voice praising the cure-all agricultural panacea-like effects of IVOMEC worm and parasite control; a product designed to be medically shot up everything from pigs to chickens and back again.

However, surely the horny-handed sons of the sod to whom this missive was aimed would have been out in the fields inseminating cows and drinking sheep-dip during the hours of daylight and not indoors, whiling away the hours until their next subsidy cheque by watching Patrick Macgoohan being chased by a huge albino scrotum?

Advertising people really should be shot for the good of the future of the human race. Even the ones that were advertising things in the 70s and even if they are now white-haired lovelies handing out boiled sweets and wisdom in equal measures everywhere they go.

At last beards have a space on the informationsuperbikelane that does them justice. It is very big (about the aggregate floorspace area of the Minerva pub and boozeshop in Plymouth’s historical Barbican area) and is lovingly tended and occassionally polished by Fouldsie and his helpful sprites and elves. It can be found at  http://theworldofbeards.wordpress.com/ . Have fun now y’hear?