Here's a poser for all you IT hacks out there: you've been dispatched to CES in Vegas to check out the latest in 110m plasma widescreens and Skype-enabled Bluetooth mice when, suddenly, you find youself strangely drawn toward a bar, outside of which the porn industry's finest are parading along a red carpet on their way to the annual Adult Entertainment Expo next door.

At that moment, your mobile rings. It's your editor demanding to know why you haven't filed that earth-shaking exclusive on the very cutting-edge of domestic media servers. What's your excuse?

Well, if you're the BBC's Gareth Mitchell and producer Julian Siddle, it's pretty simple: "We tried to get out of the bar for two hours, but the bouncers wouldn't let us cross the red carpet, so we had to get legless while loads of top-quality, pneumatic totty and horse-endowed stallions strutted their stuff before our eyes."

Or words to that effect. Check out the whole lamentable tale right here.

As for us, we have spent the whole morning working on a comparable set of outstanding get-outs. And the current favourite for why we didn't come back to the office after a particularly robust lunch is: "We were just crossing the road when two armed men wearing balaclavas ordered us into a nearby lapdancing club where we were obliged to spend two hours and four grand on the company credit card." ®