Camera goes absolutely crazy on shots of Evan – 1 finger each time the camera moves (I accept no responsibility if you run out of alcohol in the first two minutes of the show…. which you will)

The bad music (you know the one, the one that goes der der der der der der der) plays during a pitch – 1 finger

Pitch involves any form of costume – 1 finger

Pitch involves someone singing – 1 finger

Close up shot of piles of money on a table – 1 finger

Pitcher stutters or otherwise displays nerves or becomes flustered at any point during the pitch or questioning – 1 finger

Pitcher has sold their home, re mortgaged, given up work or otherwise placed their entire future security at risk to pursue their idea – 1 finger

Pitcher has sold their home, re mortgaged, given up work or otherwise placed their entire future security at risk to pursue their absolutely ridiculous idea and is sent packing by the dragons – 1 finger

A dragon offers to buy someones product – 1 finger

Peter Jones says “hi I’m Peter” despite the fact that if people didn’t know who he was they wouldn’t be on the show – 1 finger

Theo refers to Mrs P or his kids inheritance – 1 finger

Shot of Duncan looking miserable or bored – 1 finger

Shot of any dragon looking confused or puzzled – 1 finger

Deborah says she likes something – 1 finger

Duncan is the first dragon out – 1 finger

Peter is the last dragon out – 1 finger

Two or more of the dragons combine to make an offer – 1 finger

Two or more of the dragons get into an argument over a pitchers figures – 1 finger

Two or more of the dragons get into an argument over a pitchers figures neither of whom are Duncan – 2 fingers

Hilary says “hello I’m Hilary” – 2 fingers

Bad music plays in a pitch even though nothing bad has happened – 2 fingers

An invention fails to work – 2 fingers

Theo breaks an invention – 2 fingers

Duncan gets out of his chair to try out an invention – 2 fingers

Two or more rival dragons or groups of dragons make an offer – 2 fingers

An inventor gets their figures wrong – 2 fingers

An inventor is forced to call their business partner/friend/mum from downstairs to save them – 2 fingers

A pitcher rejects all offers on the table – 2 fingers

Any dragon makes an offer for more than double the equity originally offered – 2 fingers

Any dragon undercuts another dragon – 2 fingers

Duncan throws his toys out of his pram demonstrating less maturity than most preschoolers – 2 Fingers

A previously rejected inventor turns up with a new invention which is also rejected – 2 fingers

A previously rejected inventor turns up with a new invention and walks out with an investment – 3 fingers

Hilary says “hello I’m Hilary” and the pitcher looks as though they don’t have a clue who she is – 3 Fingers

Duncan makes an offer – 3 fingers

Duncan says “I cannae see this making me any money, I’m OOOOOOt” word for word – 3 fingers

All 5 dragons make an offer (in teams or solo) – 4 fingers

Hilary says “Ee By Gum” – 4 fingers

Any dragon makes an offer involving giving up half of the business and/or the blood of the pitchers firstborn child – 4 fingers

James Caan, Doug Richard, Richard Farleigh, Rachel Elnaugh or Simon Woodroffe make an offer – down any remaining drinks and stop watching repeats on Dave

A pitcher leaves with the exact amount of money they asked for giving up the exact amount of equity they originally wanted to – down any drinks you can lay your eyes on

A dragon is talking to a boy called Merlin and sounds like John Hurt – You are watching Merlin, sober up quick whilst gazing adoringly at Morgana

One of the dragons actually breathes fire – drink some coffee and sober up quick

Enjoy and remember please drink responsibly

Camera goes crazy on shots of Evan – 1 finger

The bad music (you know the one, the one that goes der der der der der der der) plays during a pitch – 1 finger

Pitch involves any form of costume – 1 finger

Close up shot of piles of money on a table – 1 finger

Pitcher stutters or otherwise displays nerves or becomes flustered at any point during the pitch or questioning – 1 finger

Pitcher has sold their home, re mortgaged, given up work or otherwise placed their entire future security at risk to pursue their idea – 1 finger

A dragon offers to buy someones product – 1 finger

Peter Jones says “hi I’m Peter” despite the fact that if people didn’t know who he was they wouldn’t be on the show – 1 finger

Theo refers to Mrs P or his kids inheritance – 1 finger

Shot of Duncan looking miserable or bored – 1 finger

Shot of any dragon looking confused or puzzled – 1 finger

Deborah says she likes something – 1 finger

Duncan is the first dragon out – 1 finger

James is the last dragon out – 1 finger

James makes an offer – 1 finger

Two or more of the dragons combine to make an offer – 1 finger

Bad music plays in a pitch even though nothing bad has happened – 2 fingers

An invention fails to work – 2 fingers

Theo breaks an invention – 2 fingers

Duncan gets out of his chair to try out an invention – 2 fingers

Two or more rival dragons or groups of dragons make an offer – 2 fingers

An inventor gets their figures wrong – 2 fingers

An inventor is forced to call their business partner/friend/mum from downstairs to save them – 2 fingers

A pitcher rejects all offers on the table – 2 fingers

Any dragon makes an offer for more than double the equity originally offered – 2 fingers

Any dragon undercuts another dragon – 2 fingers

A previously rejected inventor turns up with a new invention which is also rejected – 2 fingers

A previously rejected inventor turns up with a new invention and walks out with an investment – 3 fingers

Duncan makes an offer – 3 fingers

All 5 dragons make an offer (in teams or solo) – 4 fingers

Duncan makes an offer in partnership with James – down any remaining drinks

A pitcher leaves with the exact amount of money they asked for giving up the exact amount of equity they originally wanted to – down any drinks you can lay your eyes on

One of the dragons actually breathes fire – drink some coffee and sober up quick

Enjoy and remember please drink responsibly

Anyone interested contact me through this blog with your e-mail address. As each code is unique, I only have 6 codes and the offer is limited to the first 6000 respondents please only contact me if you are going to take the offer up

EDIT- Just reading the terms it seems while the offer is open to existing customers, I only get the M&S vouchers for new customers. If an existing customer wants to take up the offer and compensate me in some other manner they would still be welcome

Just searched on amazon for the DVD and blu-ray release and it seems the BBC aren’t wasting any time. It’s out on 13th July which is a week today.

Pre order links for Blu-ray and DVD

The final was dominated by gangsters that should be dealing crack on the streets, people who only got there due to sympathy from the judges and/or the viewers, a Bridget Jones wannabe who is way too ugly to stand any chance in the world of showbiz, fat blokes that aren’t British anyway, a girl with so few friends that she has to perform with her Grandad (who in fairness seems better than Stuart and Alex’s Grandad in many respects but hey) and a bloke blowing his own trumpet.

The first series actually discovered the talent that is Paul Potts who was languishing as a mobile phone salesman and making semi regular posts on a discussion forum I used to frequent. Pity that whoever wins this series I can’t see them doing much more than lining Simon Cowell’s pockets in his very tall pants!

In golden balls players win money, then at the end have to decide whether to split the money in which case everyone wins or try and steal the money in which case only one person wins as long as the other splits. If they both steal the only winner is ITV as the money goes straight back to them. Consequently intelligence suggests that you should split as that way someone is bound to win some money and the day filming has actually been worthwhile as opposed to when you both steal and you may as well have stayed in bed all day!

Divided has a very similar ending where you win the money and then three people have to decide how to split it. In today’s show £30,000 was split into three pots. Pot A had £21,000, pot B had £6000 and pot C had £3000. So all the players had to do was decide who deserved which pot. Of course two greedy people decided they were entitled to the larger share (one of them greedier than the other because she was sadly misguided as she actually cost the team money through her dithering) and they then promptly went through an agonising 100 seconds watching all three pots drop to zero. Once again victory for ITV who saved themselves £30k that they would have had to payout if the contestants had simply not been greedy.

ITV seems to be doing a lot of shows like these two that depend on human greed in order to save them having to payout any cash at all. At times it does make painful viewing though to watch people throw away such huge amounts of cash and today in particular a poor 19 year old girl was in tears begging one of the other two to drop down to a lower pot.

It is such a shame that the human condition has got to the stage where they cant see that if they simply learn to share, they will be better off than if they follow their greed.

Full details HERE

Well done Alice!! And if you need any help spending that money (or with anything else) I’m more than willing!

Anyway as the daily mail believes she is scaring kids, I’m going to take a minute to examine some other kids shows and how they could scare kids.

Teletubbies

A bunch of alien like creatures with TVs implanted into their stomachs try to hug each other to death or drown in tubby custard all under the watchful gaze of the most frightening child ever being burned alive in the sun

Handy Manny

A repair man and his drug induced halluciagenic tools that can talk and fix things all by themselves do repair jobs that anyone can do. Oh and everyone knows he fancies Kelly but she wont go near him till he is off the drugs

Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs

A kid has a bucket that sends him to a magical world full of monsters and dinosaurs. No wonder children don’t like mopping!

Bear in the big blue house

A giant frickin bear…. in a giant frickin blue house…. singing songs with the moon. If that isn’t frightening I don’t know what is!

Thomas the Tank Engine

Trains with faces that can talk… drive themselves (though they still have a driver) and heaven forbid they cause “confusion and delay” and incurr the wrath of the “nutritionally challenged controller”

My Friends Tigger and Pooh

Tigger and Pooh solve mysteries that aren’t that mysterious. Not that frightening for kids so far. However factor in that Christopher Robin appears to have had a sex change and now wants to be called Darby and all of a sudden it could scar kids for life

So how are we finding the changes. I’ll avoid talking about BT as a phone line is a phone line in respects of making calls so I’ll just talk about the TV and broadband.

TV

The main difference is probably the reduction in tuners in the sky plus box compared to the v+. There is the lack of HD as well but since we don’t have a HDTV and virgin media only have one HD channel that really isn’t a great loss.

The sky plus seems to function fine with the additional benefit being I can now set programmes to record whilst I am out from my iPhone. We also now have full teletext services which is nice (Yvonne wants to look at holidays).

Probably the only bad thing is the installers left some wires trailing that we need to tuck under the carpet at some point. Oh that and the sky plus doesn’t confirm when you press to delete a recording, it just deletes it. There was also an annoying rotating light on the front of the sky plus box when watching a sky plus recording but I managed to turn that off!

Broadband

Now this is probably where I would notice the difference as we have moved from a 20Mbit service to an up to 8Mbit service. Our broadband synced at 5.5Mbit last night but since then has increased to 6.1Mbit.

Oddly we have not notice too much of a speed difference. Probably the main reason for this is virgin media traffic manage their 20Mbit service and reduce it to 5Mbit if you dare actually try and use the 20Mbit service. So in actual fact taking this traffic management into account our service is now faster!

I was also concerned from the number of O2 broadband users experiencing slowdowns at peak rate. I am pleased to say however that so far we haven’t experienced this.

Conclusion

We’ve actually made a huge change by switching from having phone, broadband and TV with one supplier through cable to having them provided by 3 different suppliers through satellite and a BT phone line. So far so good though and this is saving us £15 a month on our previous prices. We also now get three small manageable bills rather than one chunky one.

Of course this saving could be negated as Sky gave us free sports and movies for one month to try and Yvonne is quite liking having the movies so we could end up keeping them. Oh well easy come easy go