Ranting for DOND

When satellites were first put into space, most people thought 'gosh thats clever', and got on with their own lives, afterall it was only Dr Strangelove and his cronnies who would use that kind of technology - not the man and woman in the street. So it was that for decades Russia and the West played the most expensive game of chess this planet has ever seen. In the meantime we in the UK, carried on our normal lives of repression, with the pubs closing at 10.00 pm, and the most daring magazine in the newsagents being Playboy. Of course the Dannish and Dutch, who had been smoking cannabis for years to get over their WWII guilt, thought nothing of films containing 100s of naked men and women having sex; they laughed at our silly British ways, until they realised what a massive market they were looking at in blackmarket pornography. Initially this was a trickle (no pun intended), but then they started to make so much money that one of them bought access to a satellite, and suddenly people all over the UK could pick up smut whenever they wanted and the authorities couldn't do a thing. Rupert Murdoch soon got the idea, and within a couple of years everyone started planting big grey metal dishes on the outside of their homes. A technology that could have allowed us to explore outer-space, is used instead to relay 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'.

Where porn leads, the mass market will eventually follow.

Computing went the same way: first it was a small bunch of super-brained professors with buildings full of clicking machines calculating how the universe started, and then it was spotty, nerdy students swapping grainy pictures of Italian starlets in compromising positions, and now computers are everywhere, allowing generations of school kids to avoid homework, by playing Tombraiders, or 'chatting' to paedophiles.

DOND, when it first started had good people, it was fresh, the format was honest and new. The rules were not explained too often and it took a little effort to understand the game. Players understood the risks, carefully considering what the money meant to their lives before making decisions - they did not have the benefit of a long history of the game to feed into their decision making. The audience clapped in appreciation. It was almost like Sunday afternoon cricket on the village green, with afficionados appreciating the finer points of the board, and of a player's decision. But now we are in the pornography cycle of the game, decisions and board positions are over-hyped, the audience scream, stamp their feet, are even encouraged to chant, while players are there for the fame rather than the game. The true DOND fan is kept waiting longer and longer for a game displaying thought and skill. Soon we will have DOND pub games, DOND newspaper competitions, DOND books, DOND magazines, DOND blogs.... oh b****r, I've just disappeared up my own logic.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is wouldn't it be nice if we just kept DOND to ourselves? No stamping and screaming, no artificially induced tension, no advertising in The Sun newspaper - just good people, working for each other, and trying to beat The Banker. And as for the Banker, he should be a man devoid of emotion rather than one who pretends to be capable of spite, anger, retribution, even contrition.

Of course we can't have this, the age of innocence for DOND is over. We return each day like the nail-bitten, twitching gambling addicts who wait at the casino door until it opens; DOND moves inexorably from Morecombe Bay to Blackpool, while Noel evolves from Terry Wogan in to the terrifying figure of Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) from The Moulin Rouge.