Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Thursday 4/04/2002

It's a little dispiriting, you know. Years' worth of decent, solid, worthwhile news copy disappear into the void without a trace, yet slap a few silly songs onto your Web site and the world batters down your door. If it wasn't all so much fun, it'd give a man to think.

But it is fun. Peter Judge, the ZDNetter who got the whole Corporate IT Anthems site online, has vanished for a spot of post-Easter reclusiveness down Cornwall way, and thus doesn't know what's happened. We know, because every time we open a newspaper or turn on the radio there's a report on The Latest Web Craze. The Times gives over most of page 5 to the story, the Today programme hastily composes its own -- extremely painful -- anthem that it broadcasts to the world. CNN come in to film... well, the crew doesn't seem sure, so they settle for an interview with Eugene 'MC Chocolat' Lacey and a few shots of me mugging it up while listening to the choicer cuts. And the Daily Mail uses it -- incredibly -- as an excuse to beat the BBC over the head a bit more for the colour of Peter Sisson's tie: apropos of which I don't think I've ever seen a more prolonged piece of incoherent, pointless, manufactured rage in my life. Lost it there, chaps.

What do we do next? I'm not sure we're ready to become the Napster of Naff, so I guess it's back to news, reviews and comment. Oh, well. What news today? "We Have The Way Out" Web site moved to Windows, apparently. And crashed shortly thereafter. That's more like it!