RIP Humph.

If you’re a brit, you can’t've missed the news. For others, they’ve just announced the death of Humphrey Lyttleton, chairman for over 30 years of the popular radio show “I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue” (ISIHAC), among other things.

ISIHAC was a cult, introducing into our culture (or should that be subculture?) the game of Mornington Crescent, the esteemed Mrs Trellis of North Wales, the ever-lively Samantha, etcetera. It was characterised more than anything by the banter of a team of veteran comedians, coordinated (in the manner of expert cat-herding) by Humph. Banter that was at once witty and lighthearted, outrageously rude, and just like banter within the family. I think that last may have struck the strongest chord with many listeners, including Yours Truly.

I shouldn’t think they’ll try to revive ISIHAC under another chairman (if they do, they’ll surely re-brand it). But the good news for fans is that there is another show where the spirit of ISIHAC lives on, with its own brand of irreverent banter, often only slightly gentler than ISIHAC. Radio 4’s Gardener’s Question Time stands out as rather good entertainment even for those of us with no garden, nor knowledge of or serious interest in gardening. And its chairman Eric Robson has a definite touch of the Humph about him.

Try it!

I just got a phone call from the pollsters.  The reputable ones - Ipsos Mori - running a poll commissioned by the BBC.  I was just starting my (late) lunch, so it was a relatively good time and I didn’t just hang up.

Verdict: what a monumental waste of time!  And of course questions having no meaningful answer, or answers that would tend to support some loony-fringe campaign.  Just about the only stupid thing they didn’t ask about was religion, though they did ask my ethnicity (in a rather offensive way, but I think that’s just copied from the census so it’s not their fault).  Come to think of it, they did ask if I believed in an afterlife and various supernatural things, so that was probably a proxy for religion: if I’d answered “yes” there’d've been more specific questions.  But that followed such daft questions as UFOs and Diana conspiracy theories, and caught me in assume-a-trivia-agenda mode.

There were also potentially-serious questions: “do I believe government advice on [issue]” (mostly yes - where they have no motive for misleading us), and “which of [list] do I consider most important”?  The latter were particularly bad: for example, the most important attributes (strong management, trustworthiness, personal recommendation, gut instinct, ???) in a public organisation such as the government or the NHS (well, I’d give different answers for each of those, but that wasn’t allowed).

Some of them were also rather politically charged.  Do we accept too many asylum seekers?  Yes, but that’s because we have far too many people in total: the fact that some of them are asylum seekers is neither here nor there.  Oops, that’s not an option.

All in all, an insight into the utter worthlessness of public opinion surveys.  Not that I really needed it: I am numerate, and have enough statistics in my background (in both my degree and my early professional career) to notice what they don’t say much more loudly than what they do.

Bah, Humbug.

The Beeb’s early morning farming program[1] today featured a finalist in their “farmer of the year” media event. Today’s finalist is someone who makes a business growing herbs in Scotland, and I found it genuinely interesting.

The Beeb’s farming coverage is mostly in the vanguard of the propaganda effort telling us that farmers are good but hard done by, and supermarkets (especially Tescos, the biggest and most successful) are evil. Today’s herb grower is a clear exception: he’s spent twenty years not whinging, but building a successful business instead. His biggest customer is Tescos, but rather than tow the usual BBC line, he explained that they shared the common goal of selling fresh herbs to consumers, to everyone’s benefit.

That positive attitude to cooperative marketing will look familiar to open sourcers, but doesn’t of itself make an open source style of business. What provoked me into blogging was the additional information that this farmer has spent a lot of time travelling the world in search of best practice and ideas, and shares them freely with whomsoever is interested. That sounds like a genuinely open source style of business model.

[1] no link - the website is wrong: either it’s featuring another day’s (week’s?) program, or they changed their minds. UPDATE - this link now works, but will probably change again.

The BBC’s World Business Review just discussed the ‘net, with reference to social networking sites, online privacy, and identity. Several guests from the industry, and a better than average discussion.

Quote of the day: Microsoft were due to join this discussion, but their own equipment failed.

The BBC seem to have their own problems too: at the time of writing, the link still gives you an earlier edition, on the unrelated subject of Zimbabwe.

What if the BBC when it started out as a state monopoly had broadcast using a proprietary format that could only be received using one manufacturer’s radio or television set, and was encrypted against reverse-engineering? We could have a monopoly manufacturer of radios and TVs. No marketplace, no technology innovation, none of the benefits of competition.

Yet that is exactly what they’re doing now with online contents. They’ve been developing something called the “iplayer”[1] to view TV-like contents delivered over the ‘net. The iplayer is available for recent-windows only, so everyone else (including users of older windows versions) are out in the cold. There can be no competition, no innovation.

People are naturally upset about it, and there’s a petition[3] on the UK govt petitions website:

The BBC plans to launch an on-demand tv service which uses software that will only be available to Windows users. The BBC should not be allowed to show commercial bias in this way, or to exclude certain groups of the population from using its services. The BBC say that they provide ’services for everyone, free of commercial interests and political bias’. Locking the new service’s users into Microsoft Windows whilst ignoring those members of society who use other operating systems should does not fit in with the BBC’s ethos and should not be allowed.

Right up to a point, but the focus is misplaced. It’s open to a valid “where do we stop” reply: If the BBC supports Mac and Linux users, where does that leave BSD and Solaris? Then we can answer that with “Just support X11″. “What about OS2? RiscOS (with all its BBC associations)? New systems for new devices?” A line of argument that’s destined to remain inconclusive, and supports replying with “We have to draw a line somewhere”.

The key argument must be around Open Standards. The BBC’s core business is to provide contents, not technology. With the widespread availability of broadband internet, it makes sense for the BBC to make contents available online. But they should of course use open standards. Leave it to the marketplace to develop viewers for the contents. The BBC is plenty big and popular enough to generate a marketplace. We could naturally expect a choice of players, in exactly the same way as we have a choice of radio or TV sets from competing providers now.

And if not open standards, then at least a published standard. If they really must reinvent a wheel.

How about the iplayer? Given that (in a sane world) the BBC is using a published standard, one could perhaps argue that they should support the majority viewing platform[2]. But to cross-subsidise that using the BBC’s license-payers money is monopolistic and anticompetitive. Developers of media players for Windows should be rightly aggrieved.

[1] Doesn’t “iplayer” sound like something with an Apple trademark written on it?

[2] Is it even a majority platform when windows versions older than XP(?) are excluded?

[3] UPDATE - the petition’s creator has a blog here on wordpress!

The BBC puts out a great deal of deeply unfunny crap in the name of comedy. And the occasional comedy that’s worth listening to (mostly the News Quiz).

I’ve just finished listening to Mark Thomas on Radio 4 (”my life in serious organised crime”). He’s not a name I’m familiar with, and in the 11pm slot I come to it with low expectations. And I was splitting my sides with laughter. This man is brilliant!

I’ve no idea if he’s got enough material in him to make more than a one-off show, or if he’ll tend to repeat the same joke and deteriorate. But on today’s evidence, I hope we’ll get to hear more of him!