Outlook better still be down on Monday fume office workers

'I was going to blame this outage for the fact I haven't done any work for most of the last 6 months.' said office worker Gary Grimthwaite, who loathes his job, both privately and publicly.

'I bet those dweebs will be in at the weekend fixing it too, so on Monday morning I'll be able to work as normal. I wonder how long I could claim it still isn't working for me. I reckon I could buy at least a day. There's a Bergerac double bill later.'

IT Manager Amy Armstrong said, 'It's a worldwide problem, so I can't do anything about it. Apart from claiming the overtime for supposedly working on a solution. And the credit for turning our servers off and on again.'

CEO Clementine Carruthers fumed, 'This just proves that working from home is morally wrong. The plebs should be in an office where I can secretly monitor them on CCTV from my yacht in international waters. What is Outlook anyway? I do all my communication on the Dark Web. Nothing dodgy.'

Carruthers' PA sighed, 'I changed the background colour of her laptop to black and told her it was the Dark Web. And she's definitely going to jail.'

Picture credit: Wix AI

BBC welcomes exciting new bureaucrat to replace boring old bureaucrat

'We are delighted to welcome a new person dressed in a trouser suit to the ridiculously overpaid post of Chief Content Officer,' said a BBC spokes-minion, addressing virtually no one in a press briefing room at New Broadcasting House.

'Her job will be to sit in meeting rooms and nibble biscuits while saying 'Ooh, I quite like that' every time someone suggests a really rather tired and derivative programme idea - adding the words 'let's discuss that at another 120 meetings'.

'This is a vital post to fill,' the spokes-drone continued, 'following the departure of our last, vastly overpaid, Chief Content Suit, Charlotte Any-Moore-Biscuits. You'd probably never heard of her, but she was a key corporate apparatchik who sat in meetings about a whole range of really seminal BBC programmes - which most of you never watched.'

At this point, an empty red trouser suit strode purposefully to the dais and said: 'In this role I am determined to optimise output variables by benchmarking key targets for our content performance with new and flexible benchmarks which you can operate horizontally, vertically or even turn upside down - with all our future programmes being sprinkled with new, cutting-edge AI dross.

'Do I watch TV myself?' said the suit, replying to a mumbled question from a bored reporter. 'Not really. There's so little worth watching nowadays. Don't you agree?' 

Picture credit: Wix AI

Emerging young actor not related to any famous old actors

Journalists writing about the much-hyped new Channel 4 series “Devington Hall” have made the remarkable discovery that its breakout star, Sebastian Cutlery-Drawer, isn’t related to any famous actors.

”I was writing the standard puff piece about him, as his agent requested,” said Glenda Sludge of the Independent. “I was about to write that being the son of whoever only meant he had to work even harder to prove he was there on merit, when I realised I couldn’t remember whose son he was. 

“So I googled him, and I couldn’t believe it - it turns out his dad’s a solicitor and his mum’s an accountant. I mean, WTF?”

The producer of the show denied they were going out on a limb by casting a young actor with no show business family connections.

“You do realise, all the actors whose kids are now entering the profession were themselves cast just because they were good actors? Believe it or not, that used to be the norm. It’s only in recent years we’ve started treating showbiz families like some kind of gold mine, to be exploited to exhaustion before we even consider looking elsewhere.

“Besides, Channel 4 only gave us permission to do it on condition that Jeremy Irons’ son, Anthony Minghella’s son, Jude Law’s son, David Tennant’s son, Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman’s daughter, Peter Hall’s daughter, Tilda Swinton’s daughter, Imelda Staunton’s daughter, Phil Collins’ daughter, Lenny Kravitz’s daughter, Andie McDowell’s daughter and Johnny Depp’s daughter would all make an appearance before the end of the first series. And maybe a Beckham or two, if they fancy giving acting a go?”

Image: Pixabay/ADMC