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For a number of years now we've taken part in a weekly quiz in a local pub. We do pretty well and occasionally win. The chap that runs this quiz runs a number of other quizzes and a few times he's held a Champions' League night where top teams from all of his pubs come together to compete. We do well enough to be invited to these nights.

So we weren't too surprised to be invited to one a couple of months ago. The difference with this one was that it was being filmed by Channel 4. According to  the quizmaster, they had been in touch with him as they wanted to make a documentary about the rise in pub quizzes in London. They had asked him to put on a night that they could film. He got together about thirty of his best teams and Channel 4 added in another couple of teams - one of which was one man one his own.

We turned up and were given a release to sign. My wife pointed out that it was a bit more comprehensive than we had expected. It basically said that we agreed not to tell anyone anything about anything that happened that night. She said something about how she could understand why people like Derren Brown might need a form like that, but that it seemed a bit over the top for a documentary about pub quizzes.

But anyway we signed it and for that reason I'm not going to tell you anything about what the Channel 4 people did that night. I'll just say that it was a standard Champions' League pub quiz and we really didn't do very well.

Our friend the quizmaster got in touch on Friday and said he'd heard that the programme was going to be transmitted this coming Friday (May 2nd). I had a quick look at the Channel 4 listings for that night and couldn't see anything that looked like a documentary about pub quizzes, so I asked if he knew what the title of the programme was.

He replied that it was the new series of Derren Brown's "Trick or Treat".

So I shall be watching on Friday with great excitement.

Update: The Telegraph has an article explaining what is going on.

Updated update: No idea why the Telegraph have taken that story down. They've replaced it with this similar one.

This was never going to go down well with the Daily Mail crowd

South Park, the cartoon series that has pushed the bounds of taste for a decade, has perhaps produced its most spectacularly offensive episode yet.

Certainly Her Majesty is unlikely to be amused by a programme that shows her blowing her brains out.

The scene begins with a clearly alarmed Queen receiving a call on her mobile telling her that an evil British plot to conquer America has gone awry.

She then reaches for a handgun, places it in her mouth and shoots herself. She can be seen tumbling from her throne and in the final image her bloody corpse is depicted lying prostrate on the palace floor.

It's only just been published on their site as I write this and currently there's only one comment (which, surprisingly, is in favour of the programme), but I suspect that the comments on this story will be apoplectic before too long.

It's worth pointing out that South Park is currently shown on an obscure cable channel in the Uk. If it wasn't for the Mail running this story, the vast majority of its readers (indeed the vast majority of the UK population) would have been unaware of this programme.

Unless there's some kind of breakthrough in negotiations in the next few hours I'll be losing four BSkyB channels from my cable TV feed at midnight tonight.

The four channels in question are Sky One, Sky Two, Sky News and Sky Sports News. I only ever watch Sky One (and the occasional repeat on Sky Two) and the only programme I'm regularly watching on Sky One currently is Lost. Sky One is only any good for US imports and most of the good ones are now on E4 or More 4.

Currently Sky One broadcasts Lost the day after it is shown in the US. Which means there will be lots of well-seeded Bittorrent trackers. So I can't really see it effecting me at all.

The lowest point of the argument has been the adverts aimed at Virgin that Sky have run during popular programmes. These have put across Sky's view of the dispute ("Sky want to continue to give you top quality programming but those nasty people at Virgin Media are going to cut you off") and strongly suggested that Virgin customers phone Virgin asking them to cave in and pay Sky's increased fees.

Maybe I'm biased, but it seems to me that Sky have been acting like bullies here and I'm glad to see Virgin stand up to them.

Update: Well they're gone this morning. Sky One has been replaced with Virgin Central 2 (which is identical to Virgin Central - and a bit of a waste of a channel if you ask me). Sky Two has been replaced with a message from Virgin saying "blame Sky, not us". And BBC News 24 has been moved to the old Sky News spot.

A few days ago, CNN ran a segment on Paula Zahn Now where they discussed atheism. Unfortunately they forgot to include any atheists (or anyone who knew anything about atheism) on the panel. You can read the transcript online or watch the whole thing courtesy of YouTube.

This strange omission was noted on a couple of atheist web sites (here's the discussion on Richard Dawkins' site), a number of letters were written and CNN have now announced that Richard Dawkins will be on the programme tonight.

So that's nice. But that's not why I'm mentioning it. One of the panelists in the original discussion was some I'd never heard of called Debbie Schlussel. She was one of the people who said that atheists "should just shut up". She has her own blog so people were able to send her comments on her performance. I assume these comments weren't very complimentary as she wrote an astonishing rant about the experience. Even the title ("When Atheists a/k/a Future Muslims Attack") is unbelievable. The main thrust of her... er... well let's call it an "argument" (even though that's a very generous use of the word) is

I don't mind receiving the atheist hate mail, since I know that in a few years, many of these same people will either be Muslim extremists (redundant) or helping the country fall further in its fight against the creep of Islamic imposition on America . . . or both.

Look at famous atheists and what happened to them. Adam Gadahn a/k/a Azzam Al-Amriki--now a top Al-Qaeda video "personality"--was raised by his hippie Jewish father and equally bizarre gentile mother as an atheist. And look how he turned out. Ditto for hippie-spawn John Walker Lindh.

Those two people are enemies of America, and many of those who think like them are of equally weak mind. If you don't believe in anything, you'll easily fall for virtual nothings. That's why Europe is so quickly turning Islamist--because atheism dominates and Christianity is rapidly dying there. Over there, the number one cause for which atheists are suddenly finding "god" is Islam.

Over here, as I pointed out on CNN, atheists are on the attack against religion and G-d only when Christians and Jews are involved, not when Muslims and Islam are. A Christian prayer at a public school graduation or football game? Send in the ACLU lawyers. A Muslim prayer at a high school football game in Dearbornistan? Suddenly, when the "Religion of Peace" is involved, atheists boast extreme tolerance and display ultimate deference. No lawsuits. Ever. And the Muslim prayers continue.

It's a frightening piece of misinformation. If you're an atheist then either you're just about to convert to islam or you're only interested in attacking christianity - you're happy to let islam get away with anything.

There are already dozens (maybe hundreds) of comments to this piece. A healthly proportion of them are pointing out the obvious errors in her argument. But she seems to be ignoring the debate.

It's a worrying reminder of just how closed some theist minds can be.

Update: Apparently the Dawkins segment on last night's show was bumped to make way for in-depth coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death. Because that's obviously far more important.

Update: The Dawkins interview was finally shown yesterday (Darwin Day, in a nice touch of irony). You can see it (together with discussion of it) on Richard Dawkins' web site.

I haven't been watching Celebrity Big Brother so all the information that I have on the current racism row has come from a number of media outlets (and via BlogLines).

I have come to a few conclusions though.

• I don't understand why people are surprised by this. Do people really think that people in the UK aren't racist? If you're surprised by the opinions shown by the contestants then you really need to get out more.
• If the media are going to create an environment where people like Jade Goody are made into "celebrities" for no good reason (25th most influential person in the world!) then you can't possibly be surprised when the under-educated little morons start to believe that their ill-thought-out opinions are valid and important.
• The one thing that surprises me is the way that our xenophobic tabloid press are covering it. Littlejohn is constant sniping at foreigners and many Sun editorials contain thinly-veiled racism. But today they are all pretending that doesn't happen (relying on the goldfish-like memories of their readers) and promoting a vision of the UK where all races live togther happily.

I have never voted for a contestant in Big Brother. But right now I'm very tempted to do all I can to ensure that Shilpa Shetty wins. Well, anything short of actually phoning up and voting. Obviously.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine acted in a couple of episodes of the American television show 7th Heaven. At the time she told me that there was no danger of it ever being shown in the UK as it was a very American show and British audiences would hate it.

But she reckoned without the large number of dodgy British cable channels that will import any old crap from the US. And recently I noticed that the Hallmark Channel had started showing old episodes of 7th Heaven. A few minutes research with Google showed me which season they were showing and it just happened to be the one that she was in.

So last night I watched the first of her two episodes. The second is on this evening.

Now I've seen some pretty bad TV shows in my time, but this is horrible. I'm not sure what was worse - the ridiculously simple plots that were only there to hang obvious moral points on, or the stereotypical portrayal of a British person (my friend's part). It's a bit like the Waltons - but contemporary and more christian.

Obviously I've only seen one episode. But I'm really not sure that I can stand watching the second one tonight. Maybe I'll just record it an fast-forward looking for Jules' bits.

I can't believe that something this bad was ever made. Oh, no, that's not fair. Lots of bad television shows get made. But most of them don't last very long. This one had been running for eleven years. There must be people out there in the US who are lapping it up. And that's very worrying.

I'm probably coming to this very late. I'm sure you've all seen it already.

A few weeks ago, I recorded the Amnesty International Secret Policeman's Ball, but I hadn't got round to watching much of it until last night - when I discovered this.

"Torn" is, of course a great song and David Armand's interpretation is very clever.

I've been humming it ever since.

The company formed from the amalgamation of ntl, Telewest and Virgin have announced that from early next year they will be rebranding as Virgin Media. I really hope that the promotional video on that page isn't indicative of the quality of their services.

I've had cable TV services for seven or eight years now. I originally signed up with Cable and Wireless. I haven't switched suppliers, but this will be the second time that my supplier has changed name.

I've got a beta membership of Tape It Off The Internet - a new site that aims to make it easier to find episodes of your favourite programmes on the internet.

I have a few invitations, so if you're interested in trrying it out then let me know and I'll send you one.

Channel 4 have... er... lost the rights to broadcast the next series of Lost. They have been outbid by Sky One.

It's been a while since I've watched a US import drama on Sky One. The last one was probably when I got bored of Nip/Tuck halfway though the third series. Oh, no. Actually we watched Threshold on Sky One earlier this year. But the vast majority of US imports that we've been watching in recent years (The West Wing, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, ER, Lost itself) have all been shown on Channel 4 (or one of its digital channels).

And, to be honest, I won't be watching series three of Lost on Sky One either. We were getting so caught up in the mysteries at the end of series two, that I've been getting the series three episodes from Bittorrent. I know I'm behind the curve here, but I'm slowly becoming what 2lmc call a Martini content consumer.