Gossip

The Hunky Mouse returns from isolation ...

After a week away in Seattle, our gossip columnist returns to the UK and to Internet access, with apologies from Microsoft.

It was a week with no news. You might like an explanation! - and believe it or not, the explanation is that we've been in deep background discussions with Microsoft in Redmond.

At the end of our seminar - details have to stay secret till next month - we tackled the most senior VP we could find at the Court of King Bill. We explained the Mobile Campaign to him, and proclaimed our aim and ambition of making all corporate networks into good hosts, so that courtiers - er, guests - could have Internet access during working hours.

To our amazement, Will Poole, head of the streaming media parts of Microsoft, utterly agreed, and was clearly mortified. "We feel the same way," he blushed. "The problem is that this particular room was the only one that was big enough, and for training reasons, it isn't normally connected to the Internet."

Normal service can now be resumed, just as soon as the Boss gets back from the dentist this morning ...