Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issu 208

One of the great flying mysteries is the one where a dead man in a diving suit is found in the aftermath-ashes of an Australian forest fire. Who did he get there? Who was he?

As any aficionado of rural myth knows, the man was diving in a lake when a helicopter scooped up water to put out the fire and promptly dumped him in the middle of it... and no, his name wasn't Lucky.

While this poor chap must have been surprised by the fatal interruption to his swim, it wasn't as surprising as this week's news that Ryanair is installing a system to allow passengers to use their mobile phones. Er, do they know something we don't? Apparently, it's quite difficult nowadays to take anything onto a flight, least of all an electronic device.

The weirdness of this was compounded recently when so-called security checks failed to pick up a mobile phone that a passenger had smuggled onboard a UK-US flight. When the ringtone went off halfway across Ireland, there were probably several sphincters that tightened faster than a Chelsea footballer's hamstring.

Thankfully there was no big bang and naturally nobody owned up that it was their phone, but it did cost the airliner £100,000 to turn the plane around. Now that's what I call a roaming charge... and the caller didn't even get through!

Ryanair presumably have other plans and knowing the slimness of their profit margins, passengers will probably be charged if their phone DOESN'T go off during the flight. And what's more, I'm absolutely delighted that I wrote those three paragraphs without mentioning any 'I'm on the plane' gags.

While we're on the subject of flying and mobile phones, it is my great pleasure to announce that this year's winner of the mobile phone throwing World Championships is Lassi Etelätalo. This Finnish hero lobbed his handset 89 metres - a distance that many Ryanair customers would like to throw their fellow passengers when they have to hear yet another phone conversation.