DEREK JAMESON

EMERGENCY services apart, I had rather hoped the millennium bug would close down the nation for an hour or two to serve as a warning that computer nerds are taking over our lives.

In the event, these technocrats spotted the danger months ago. Apart from a few hiccups, it was all systems go for year 2000, but that does not mean that all is well.

Anyone who has wrestled with a computer knows how fiendishly clever they are, which is why we must act now before Hal, of Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey, and his fellow microchips commandeer our brains.

There is evidence aplenty we are going barmy.

The experts have just come up with an electronic tag attached to the ankle of the disgraced Jonathan Aitken.

I'm just back from America, where they are busy installing

hi-tech body scanners at airports that can see through clothing with an X-ray image that shows the naked body.

To save your blushes, the operator must be of the same sex as the passenger.

More American madness, I thought, but then learned the machine has been tested at Gatwick with a view to installing them in Britain.

There may be a public outcry but that won't stop the onward march of the techno-ants. Nobody has a kind word to say for mobile phones and yet more than 24 million of us own one and the number will grow now they are able to access the Internet.

Even the Queen now has her own website.

The Americans are fast surrendering all human activity to the flickering screen. They're excited by the prospect. Shopping, dealing with the bank, arranging holidays and communicating with friends, neighbours and relatives through a series of cryptic bleeps. One lady told me the time is coming when if milk in a bottle drops to a certain level it automatically tells the supermarket to add a quart to the shopping list.

"You've got mail" has become the sexiest phrase on the planet, according to Microsoft, the empire built by Bill Gates. Watch out for Bill. The world's richest man hasn't finished with us yet.

Probably he's responsible for a gorilla named Koko being interviewed on the Net. Chimps are being taught to communicate by computer and students at Washington University have been warned not to talk in front of them because they understand English.

Porn merchants the world over are cashing in and it cannot be long before cybersex in the home is as readily available as the weather forecast.

Computer madness is everywhere. It's the creeping disease of the new millennium. We should declare war before the microchip revolution enslaves us all.

DIAMOND REGAINS HER SPARKLE

MY old TV-AM friend Anne Diamond has joined the health and fitness brigade, but nobody should begrudge the pounds (sterling) she will gain from the exercise and diet plan she is promoting after losing 56lb in a year.

Anne ballooned to 14 stone after the bitter break-up of her marriage to producer and agent Mike Hollingsworth in 1998, leaving her to raise their four sons on her own. At a low ebb, she dropped out of television and found work as a radio presenter.

It is good to see her back in top form.

Friends were horrified when the neat, slender Anne we all loved grew ever bigger while her career as a top television presenter went down the drain.

She came to her own rescue when she failed to recognise herself as the fat lady in some holiday snaps.

By the way, another TV-AM star, actress and singer Rusty Lee, turns up at Chichester Festival Theatre this week in Smokey Joe's Cafe, which I thought the most stunning musical of all time when we saw it in New York a few days ago.

GIVE BECKHAM A BREAK

GIVE the guy a break, you newshounds.

I'm talking about soccer star David Beckham as he struggles to cope with the frenzy he generates in the media.

The agonies he must have suffered over his stupidity on the field as well as the alleged plot to kidnap his wife and baby son surely must be aggravated by the army of reporters and photographers that pursues him everywhere.

The career of our most skillful soccer player could well come to an early end thanks to the frequently spiteful antics of the media, who refuse to give him a minute's peace.

Incinerator raises ugly head again

ONCE again we face the awful prospect of our protests falling on deaf ears while the bureaucrats go ahead with plans to plant their hated rubbish incinerator in our midst.

My prediction months ago that East Sussex would never accommodate an incinerator to burn Brighton and Hove's rubbish proved all too correct.

You may be sure the same goes for Adur and West Sussex and that means Shoreham Harbour again becomes the most likely site, though Black Rock, Sheepcote Valley and Waterhall are also in the firing line.

Environmental services in Brighton and Hove and their political supremo, Councillor John Ballance, have never come out against incineration as a means of producing energy from waste.

On the contrary, I believe he'll share the county view that Brighton and Hove must dispose of its own rubbish.

Stand by for the biggest public protest in local history.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.