Oh well, on with the show, I suppose. Here goes.

You should have seen her face - she had a face that would stop a clock! ("Hello viewers!")

So, video games, eh?

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First up this month, a request. Please, chums, stop telling us lies.

Last week's Hot Topic appeared to reveal that you all buy games magazines for the content, and not for the cover-mounted CDs.

This, as anyone who's ever worked for a games magazine will tell you, is absolute tosh. Any games magazine with a cover CD will sell twice as many as any other mag for the same format which doesn't have a CD. Without exception. Check the figures for yourself.

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That's hardly surprising in itself, of course - with games at £40, £50 and even £60, the chance to try something out before blowing all that cash isn't to be sniffed at.

And the incredibly poor standard of analysis, information and criticism available to readers of the UK's games mags is another good reason not to believe anything you haven't seen with your own face.

So buy away - but don't try to kid yourself the CD is just a bonus.

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Aren't football games getting complicated? Back in my day, when it were all fields round here, you had one button, and it had to do everything - shooting, tackling, heading, elbowing in the face, the lot.

Nowadays, you have to memorise anything up to 28 sets of controls (in the case of the mighty ISS 64) before you can even take the kick-off properly, never mind any fancy stuff.

Surely the Government could take some kind of action on this matter?

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And while we're on the subject of football, I was playing a brand-new Playstation footy game this week, which shall remain nameless, although it's an angram of All Star Osccer.

Trailing 1-0 with seconds to go, I was brutally scythed down in the area and awarded a penalty. Skilfully, I slotted it into the top corner, only for the referee to blow for full time before it crossed the line. How useless is that?

I hope the programmers and the playtesters all starve.

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And while we're on the subject of starving, the Nintendo 64 games situation is getting a bit beyond a joke, isn't it?

Six months in, and what, ten games? (And at least four of those are complete toss). Bet you're glad you waited nine months for your overpriced, slow, shabby official PAL machine, eh?

Blast Corps is great, though. I'd recommend it without reservation, except if you bought it it'd only encourage them.

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Now, just a quick word of postscript to last month's column. As most of you spotted (the words "This survey, which I have just made up" being the main giveaway), the "massive CTW survey about games players" was a big fat lie.

Out of all the groups of machine owners who were roundly abused in the column (PC, Playstation, Saturn, N64 and Amiga), only one group sent in letters of complaint (although they made up for it by sending dozens and dozens).

Can you guess who it was, viewers?

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And while we're on the subject of people writing in, just a quick word about that guy who wrote in a few days ago claiming that I'd been hooked on Dungeon Keeper for several weeks.

I have never played Dungeon Keeper in my entire life. In fact, since giving Magic Carpet 2 a middling review score about two years ago in PC Gamer, I haven't played ANY Bullfrog games, because they've refused to send any to me in case I'm horrid to them again.

Bless their cotton socks.

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Still, mustn't grumble, eh? It's the ECTS in London this week, so you've got lots of identically tedious ECTS "preview" features to look forward to in the coming weeks.

With, if you're lucky, some slightly different pictures of all the same games everyone had in their identically tedious E3 features two months ago.

(Here's an idea, though - get a friend to sneak in and collect all the press releases, then slightly rewrite them yourself and save 20 quid.)

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And finally, here are some people who should be thrown in the sea:

1. Anyone who's STILL writing a Quake clone, "...but with a difference!"

2. Any FIFA 98 previewer STILL saying "They've listened to all the criticism, so it should be much better this time."

3. Anyone who's STILL trying to pretend that Internet gaming is the way forward for the future. It just ISN'T, okay?