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Many years ago, in a parallel universe not far from here, I was involved in a CRM proof of concept. This involved producing a demonstration of a callcenter application accessing customer and product data from disparate legacy systems in a polished, unified, modern user interface.

The scenario was pretty standard fare. A motor insurance company where a customer calls in to renew his motor policy and the callcenter agent walks through a standard 'question-answer-retort' guided dialogue.

The demo climaxes in a superb cross-sell to add the customers son who has just turned 17 as a named driver to the existing policy (the pre-sales guy was positively orgasmic about this addition) with a substantial discount as part of some campaign.

Now, choosing names is very important so of course the demo initially used dead pop stars, politicians, historic figures, alternative comedians and footballers. This was mainly because the marketing guy thought TEST USER wouldn't impress the CEO's of blue chip companies.

The initial novelty of using celebrity names soon wore off as we struggled to make the software components actually do what we wanted. In fact, we were desperately tired of the endless repetitions of the dialogue ('Take 369'), that we were completely oblivious to the names appearing.

We were just hoping and praying just that the demo behaved and ran through to completion without an hourglass, a blue screen or an unexpected 'cross-sell' opportunity emerging from the 'Home, Buildings & Contents' division.

Finally, the proof of concept was finished, we were exhausted and the demanding marketing man was (finally) happy.

Imagine our surprise, a few weeks later when he returned with two complimentary CD's. 'Great job guys. The Sales MD was absolutely delighted and thinks this collateral will really help us make that breakthrough into SME in Q3. I thought you might be curious to see the fruits of your labour.'

So we thanked him, waved goodbye, then sat down to watch the CD. We were both genuinely dumbfounded when the following words, spoken in best BBC English, came out of the tinny PC speaker:

'Norman Whiteside of Manchester is looking for a competitive quote for his car insurance. '

There's nothing worse than slaving away all day over a hot keyboard trying to coerce various pieces of software to synchronise a single customer record from one legacy system to another.

Of course, the mouth-watering and long awaited climax to a hard days graft (and knowledge transfer) finally arrives at 18.47 when you are tired, irritable and just want to go home.

This is it. This is your moment. Seize the day. You are poised of the edge of greatness, about to scale your own personal Everest.

There is only one thing stopping you. We have to choose a name for the 'customer'.

Your heart sinks as the integrator pauses for an eternity, pauses again, looks enquiringly and then suddenly types in:

Username: TESTUSER
FirstName: TEST
LastName: USER

You politely plead: 'That's really not a good name to use.' 'Why ? Oh wait. I get it. We will need more than one account for testing.' Your mood darkens still further as he modifies the data:

Username: TESTUSER1
FirstName: TEST
LastName: USER1

You snap and the wafer thin veneer of professionalism and consulting is shattered. 'Excuse me. Can I drive for just one minute ?'

Username: MSTIPE
FirstName: Michael
LastName: Stipe

A small point admittedly but one that significantly increases the satisfaction levels for everyone concerned when that confounded customer finally appears on the other side.

All of which reminds me of another story.

Do not disturb
I am disturbed enough already

• Buzzocks - What Do I Get ?
• The Clash - What's My Name/Garageland
• Sex Pistols - EMI
• Siouxsie And The Banshees - Love In A Void
• Joy Division - She's Lost Control
• The Chameleons - In Shreds
• The Fall - Smile (John Peel on intro)
• Nirvana - About A Girl

My long suffering wife and I celebrate our wedding anniversary every year in July.

To mark this momentous milestone, I buy her flowers, chocolate, champagne and book a corner table at our favourite restaurant, the wife takes the kids camping in the New Forest with her girlfriends while I make the annual pilgrimage to the Hook Norton Festival of Fine Ales with my mates.

So, if you'd like to read something from me in a different style, full match reports for the 2002 and 2003 festivals are already available online together with photos of a human pyramid. We even have our own stalker.

So, it transpires that my first blog article was actually written four years ago - not just a personal web journal but collaborative blogging (Blogger) and social networking (Flickr) and I didn't even know it.

A video of Jean (unplugged) with Sandie Shaw on vocals and Johnny Marr on acoustic guitar in Kew gardens surrounded by Morrissey, Rourke, Joyce and assorted children.

I think I might wake up tomorrow morning to discover I dreamt all this. If so, I apologise profusely in advance.

When you are in a crisis meeting, and a consultant or project manager says We desperately need an intervention from ABC - now !, do you ever find yourself idly scribbling the lyrics from Interpol's 'Say Hello To the Angels' on your pristine pad of white paper ?

This is a concept
This is a bracelet
This isn't no intervention

Two hours later, in the same crisis meeting, when the same consultant or project manager forcefully asks 'Is Freddie Geekmeister from Advanced Technical Support engaged ?', are you ever tempted to reply 'No. As far as I know, Freddie Geekmeister is currently a bachelor of this parish'.

When the ratio of the combined letters of the To: and Cc: distributions lists divided by the number of letters in the email is high, do you ever find that the relevance and worth of the actual content is correspondingly low ?

When you say to someone, 'I got your mobile phone number off your .signature so thanks for that and they reply 'You're welcome', are you ever tempted to reply 'Well actually no I didn't because you don't have a .signature so I had to ask 8 different colleagues from 3 different companies which wasted 37 minutes before I finally tracked you down'.

And when the crisis meeting finally draws to a close, and the project manager spontaneously asks you to read out aloud, to all 17 attendees, those three, crucial, important, decisive actions that he has seen you jotting down on your A4 pad, which will immediately rectify the situation, do you ever find yourself in a mild state of panic ?

Or is it just me ?

I just booked a flight to Oslo and noticed that under Meal Options alongside Vegetarian, Non-dairy and various religious preferences was the intriguing option of Bland so of course I immediately selected it.

I simply can not imagine how plastic airline fare could be made any more bland.

Will a cabin stewardess really waltz down the aisles demanding 'Did anyone ask for a bland meal ?'

Stay tuned.

I was enjoying a scan through the archives of Andrew Sherman's incisive, witty (and occasionally downright scary) blog when I suddenly thought Hey Andrew - where are the links ?'

Then I realised. The hyperlinks are actually embedded in the title which is exactly where they should be.

At last. After 7 months, I have finally discovered something useful you can do in Blogger which is not (currently) supported in WordPress.

Doug's post about early memories of attending football matches got me thinking.

Years ago, I was a LMTB (League Match Ticket Book) holder at Manchester United and went to every home game at Old Trafford. An LMTB was similar to a season ticket but only entitled the holder to attend League Matches with no priority for FA Cup tickets.

Consequently, whenever United got to the latter stages of the FA Cup, there was a black market in the Manchester Evening News for the little numbered tokens that were printed in the matchday program. You needed a large number of tokens (including reserve games) to get a ticket.

However, my father was a bank manager and then, as now, the majority of tickets for big football matches went to corporate hospitality rather then the true fans.

So, on Saturday April 3 1976, on a beautiful sunny day, my Dad and I crossed the Pennines to see United play Derby in the FA Cup Semi Final at Hillsborough.

The tickets had 'Exeter FC' imprinted on the back and we were in the wrong end (Spion Kop) and all the United fans were at Leppings Lane but none of that mattered. I was so excited and nervous, I could barely converse properly.

We got into the ground early to watch the ground slowly fill up, soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the fans taunting each other. Inevitably, there were pockets of United fans scattered on the massive, steep terrace at Hillsborough.

United had a young team, managed by Tommy Docherty and were riding high in their first year back in Division 1 after promotion and Derby were the reigning champions.

Gerry Daly gave United the lead in the first half but my main abiding memory of this game was late in the second half when United were awarded a free-kick at our end. Gordon Hill stepped up and produced a swerving, curling free-kick past the despairing hands of the Derby keeper into the corner. 2-0 to United ! The ground exploded, the noise was unbelievable and the whole stadium was a moving sea of red and white.

When the game ended, United fans invaded the pitch to celebrate. Inevitably, a significant minority came to the Kop end to taunt the Derby fans. Some Derby fans responded and joined them on the pitch and the press carried pictures of the resulting 'ugly scenes'. I can vividly remember trying to leave the ground and taking refuge in a concrete backwater as United fans started to get onto the Kop terrace and most peace loving supporters desperately tried to get away from the chaos.

All in all, a fantastic day out.