Richard Whiteley, the star of long-running Channel 4 quiz programme Countdown, died last night just days after undergoing heart surgery. He had fallen ill with pneumonia in May.

Best known nationwide for his loud ties and suits, bad jokes, warmth and good fun on the “words and numbers quiz”, he was also an incisive reporter, working with Yorkshire TV for many years. He was the first reporter to interview Margaret Thatcher in 1984 after the Brighton hotel bombing.

Tributes have flooded in from his many showbiz friends and colleagues.

Carol Vorderman, his co-host for 23 years, was said to be “absolutely devestated” by his death. They were close friends.

Esther Rantzen, friend and frequent guest on the quiz show, said: “It is easy to underestimate his strength on screen - he never outstayed his welcome. They won’t be able to replace him. He will be hugely missed.”

Terry Wogan, a friend of Whiteley, said he was too upset to speak fully. “I’m shocked. It’s terrible news,”

BBC Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce, who also appeared as a guest on Countdown, described Whitely as “one of the nicest of men” and “a completely guileless man”.

He said Whiteley’s friends had been expecting him to recover and return to the show.

“There was no side to Richard,” Bruce said. “Such a nice man - that was the defining quality of him, a genuinely nice man. And he had no real ego.

Last November Whiteley was honoured with an OBE from the Queen, who is said to be a Countdown fan, as was the late Queen Mother.

Channel 4 have not yet decided whether to broadcast the last week of pre-recorded shows Richard made before becoming ill.

Read obituaries and articles:

• BBC: Obituary: Richard Whiteley
• BBC: Tributes paid to TV host Whiteley
• Channel 4: Friends stunned by death of Richard Whiteley

Robert Scoble is having a go at his own people now: Microsoft.

Microsoft opens another cool but lame site … Lame cause it doesn’t have an RSS feed. … When will Microsoft’s marketing departments get the memo? EVERY site MUST have RSS from now on. Got it?

They’ll probably “get it” at the same time as Microsoft software application development departments will standardise their software (even in the same suite) so that common functions work across all software.

Or, they’ll “get it” at the same time as Microsoft releases a decent, modern, capable operating system.

Or, they’ll “get it” when they use, rather than trash or propietarise, open standards in their products.

Getting the message? Don’t expect standardisation from Microsoft. It ain’t never gonna happen.

If you are planning on running any decent web site with scripts that benefit from allowing access to the .htaccess file, in order to do such things as rewrites, redirects and such like, forget using Fasthosts dot co dot uk (no, they’re not getting a link).

Although they claim to provide professional Linux hosting, they prohibit the use of .htaccess files except for their password protection. This is not stated anywhere.

So, I install Wordpress, set up the templates, etc. and then change the permalinks. Wordpress thinks it’s set up htaccess, and indeed it has - but the server doesn’t recognise it as the local override switch is not set.

And it probably never will be.

Fasthosts would rather hold your hand with a crappy sitebuilder script (that you have to pay for any more than three pages, despite it supposedly being included with your package) than allow you direct access. Oh sure, you get ssh access, but you can barely to anything but cd, ls and chmod. Big deal.

So, I either have to run Wordpress without mod-rewrite (and have ugly URLs like index.php/2005/10/10/my-article, or p=25) or I leave FH and run to a better provider (which isn’t difficult)

Fortunately, they had a month’s free trial, so I should be able to close pretty easily. However, it’s already wasted me 4 days and about 10 hours of work, so I’m not best pleased. Given how much they charge, they aren’t the cheapest, and their service is substandard.

It’s the first service I’ve come across claiming to be “professional” that doesn’t allow access to (IMO) basic pro-webmaster services. Who doesn’t give access to .htaccess? Well, Fasthosts don’t.

If you are wanting to build your own systems from scratch, don’t use this company. They’ll charge you for basic add-ons that other providers give for free. They tell you that things are included in your account, but only the very basic versions are, and the rest are add-ons that cost.

I now have to go and set up a new host, wait for the DNS change, set up the scripts again, which will take another couple of days.

So, thanks Fasthosts, you’ve cost me nearly a week, and I’d hoped to have my site running with articles by now.

Don’t expect any recommendations from me.

After a long time waiting to get Formula One motor racing into the US, today’s fiasco could prove the final nail in its coffin.

It’s taken time to build the credibility of this sport - Indy 500 is probably the main motorsport in America and that was only slowly changing.

How can a farcical continuation of a race from which the majority of teams withdrew on a safety issue - whether or not the result stands - do F1s worldwide or US reputation any good?

The row has come about because the teams running Michelin tyres were concerned about the safety of the final corner, and agreed to race only if a chicane had been put in place. Bridgestone tyres are, apparently, immune to this safety issue, and so teams running these - including the ever-arrogant Ferrari (remember when they weren’t winning anything?) - called for the race to continue unaltered.

What this implies is: “We’re OK, we can race, we don’t care about the safety of drivers using ‘inferior’ tyres”.

That’s appalling!

F1 is dangerous enough as it is, without this kind of attitude when a genuine safety concern is raised.

I’m not surprised American fans have left in their droves. I wonder how many people are watching ITV coverage?

It’s hardly exciting.

Bizarre, yes.

Stupid, yes.

An advertisers nightmare. Yes.

This could seriously damage an already wounded sport - a sport where money is thrown around in great measure to the detriment of competition and interest.

I hope it does. Maybe it will knock some sense into team management who seem to care more for self-interest, sponsorship and money than sportsmanship and the interest of the fans.

Some hope.

Update 8.30pm: Michelin was unable to reproduce the problems that caused a couple of drivers running their tyres to crash during practice.

They wanted to fly in new tyres but FIA rules state that tyres cannot be changed during the weekend.

In other words, the FIA say that changing tyres to improve safety is not alowed.

Nice one FIA. How many crashes would have been on your conscience had Michelin-based teams chosen to drive?

I’ve just read an article about Everyclcik, a new UK search engine that donates 50% of its profits to designated charities.

I can’t yet tell how it compares with other engines, but I’ve nominated my chosen charity, and am giving it a trial run. We’ll see how it fares.

Here’s a couple of great quotes that should be remembered, from Graham Dudman, the Sun’s managing editor:

Speaking on BBC News:

“At the Sun we don’t deal in opinions, we deal in facts.”

Brilliant! Trouble is, Graham, it’s not true is it?

“something we found very offensive”

Referring to previous allegations by Clarence House. Thing is, Graham, you don’t care when you offend other people, so why should we care if you are offended?

More classic crap from Graham and his nasty rag.

The mass marketing of online gambling is bringing the misery of debt to a huge audience, for whom it’s just a mouse-click away.

Quite apart from the spam that I get advertising online gambling dens, which has already coloured my judgement that most of these places really don’t care about their victims, so long as the money keeps coming in from the maxed-out credit cards, I am fed up of seeing advertising for it everywhere.

It really should be regulated.

The maxim “never bet more than you can afford to lose” is not being stuck to; many people are getting into serious financial trouble, and more, because these gambling sites are so easy to register for and start playing at. There are plenty of ’sweeteners’ to get people to take the bait.

Face it - in ‘real world’ gambling you have to make the effort to go to an establishment, join as a member, go through all the social etiquette, and so on. With online gambling, you just sit at your computer and play. And you could play multiple games at mulitple sites - exponentially increasing the risk of losing vast sums of money.

Take some case studies:

David doesn’t see himself as a gambler - that’s why he can’t understand how he almost lost his job and ended up with £10,000 of debts from playing online roulette.

One night Paddy lost £1,200, and there were multiple credit card debits for £100 a time.

From the betting patterns, it looks as if Paddy was trying to win back what he had lost. It didn’t go his way, and in the end he owed about £20,000.

What angers me is that these sites are much too easy to access and use, and of course they are addictive.

Some serious regulation needs to be introduced here, and fast.

A major study has found fresh ‘evidence’ for a link between the eating of red / processed meats and bowel cancer. Here’s the study:

Bowel cancer risk was a third higher for those who regularly ate over two 80g portions of red or processed meat a day, compared to less than one a week.

So, we take two extrems: people eating less than one portion per week, and those eating over 160g per day, and draw a conclusion.

The fact is, there are going to be more immediate issues if people eat that amount of red or processed meat in a day, than the longer-term risk of developing a cancer.

These studies are important, but shouldn’t be used to scaremonger. Carcinogens are present in a large variety of different foods, from meat to potatoes, in both organic and non-organic states. Only very high levels are going to cause problems.

People eating a balanced diet really need not worry about this. Eating a high, unbalanced quanity of any foodstuff will likely cause problems of some form or another.

Stick to diets which have been eaten throughout the centuries (which by definition will be low in processed foodstuffs) and there shouldn’t be a problem.

Apparently, some people are happy to indirectly associate themselves with the Ebay Live8 ticket fiasco.

Consider the listing by hertsboi79 for a crappy little TV and DVD stand, with the Description:

TV & DVD STAND ** Not Live8 Tickets**

Yes, we can see it’s a TV and DVD stand, not tickets. Why did hertsboi79 feel the need to implicitly cash in on the Live8 hype to sell his silly little stand? Pathetic.

Or, bluedespatcher whoi is giving away “free Live8 tickets”, with a postage cost of £695.00. Yeah right.

Or, justonemoreguitar who wrote:

The only people who were making a fuss were ignorant loudmouths who didn’t use Ebay, or have any sense of how ‘markets’ work. I can’t believe that a regular Ebay user, whether buyer or seller would have any problem.

Well, start believing it buster.

Here’s some “interesting” comments found on eBay:

Here, here, couldn’t have put it better myself, what makes me really angry though are the people who come on to ebay and bid 10 million pounds for the tickets just to block it out, they are no better then the dictators who run half of the countries in Africa they are trying to “save”. Just because their views are different from the sellers they feel they need to dictate and stop others from doing what they feel is incorrect, this is what’s wrong with the UK, its full of people who think their views are the only ones who count, capitalism rocks!

No better than the dictators? OK, slight lack of understanding there.

As a hard working, struggling, ex-student I am now also the owner of two unwanted live8 tickets.

So why did you bid for them?

Well done mate, if Geldof, Bono and all the other do gooders have a point to make about world povity, why don’t they dip into their own money and solve the problem

It’s “poverty” - and they do.

’small dick syndrome’

Mature, real mature.

I agree with you! It angers me that ‘Sir’ Bob didn’t sell these tickets for a hefty price in the first place - 1: So that people in poverty would actually benefit from this gig (I don’t see the point of this thing if it’s not raising money - surely we’re all ‘aware’ already?)

Yeah, err, the texts cost £1.50 each… for charity.

PS: I don’t have tickets either to keep or to sell, and I don’t want to go to this event, but my heart goes out to those who do want to go but can’t!

At the end of the day, it’s only a concert.