And another thing…

HEADLINE in today’s Independent:

Daily sex keeps sperm healthy and improves chance of pregnancy

So, regular sex increases the chance of becoming pregnant? Gosh! I wonder how much the grant for that research was?

Coming soon to a newspaper near you: "Drinking lots of lager increases the chances of getting drunk".

SO, THERE I am, browsing through The Independent in the Members’ tearoom, when I come across an eye-catching ad.

“The Bond Brief”, it read, and offered a top-of-the-range Sony Ericsson phone (the kind Bond uses in Quantum of Solace, I assume) in return for answering three 007-related questions correctly. All you had to do was text the word “Bond” to the number in the ad and the first question would be sent to you.

I’m not a great competition enterer, and I don’t need a new phone, but I was curious to find out how hard the questions would be to someone who’s read all the Fleming novels, seen all the movies and read Andrew Lycett’s biography of Fleming.

So I perused the small print – very small in this case (I was incapable of reading it without my new specs). Didn’t want to get fleeced on the “cost per text”, after all. And this is what it said:

“Text entry is open from 00.01 to 11.59 on 9 November 2008.”

This appeared in today’s Independent, I should emphasise. It’s just a cock-up, I’m sure, not a deliberate attempt to con anyone out of their money (though you might be interested to know that the last “E” in SPECTRE stood for “Extortion”). Still, glad I took the time to read the (very) small print.

You have been warned.