I receive a text message.

It reads, “Can you help me set up my wireless broadband?”

My friends know that I like a gadgets, and so far seem completely unaware of my inability to use them properly. For this reason I am often asked technical questions like, What is the Interweb? and How do I rewind an MP3?

I turned up at my friends flat to assist in getting her onto the Interweb, in a wireless manner. It took me about 30 minutes to realise I was going to have to call someone at Talktalk, as I didn’t seem to have the information I needed to configure her wireless router correctly.

“That’s how far I got, aren’t you supposed to know about computacators?”, she said pointedly.

“Yes! Now go and make me some dinner woman!” I responded quietly in my head.

After a short wait I got through to a nice Indian lady and explained my dilemma.

“Ah yes, I will give you router settings, are you ready?”

“Yes”

“VBI zero”

“Sorry, is that VBI 0?”

“V for Victor, B for Baba, I for India, zero”

“Right, am I looking for a setting that is VBI0 or is the ‘VBI’ setting zero? Where does this setting actually go?”

“No, V BEE I, Bee as in Baba”

“That’s what I said, VBI as in Baba”

“No, Baba”

“Oh, you mean Papa? You mean P as in Peter?”

“Yes, B as in Beater”

“You see, now I’m confused, your Baba and Papa sound the same, as do Peter and Beater. Do you mean P as in Penguin?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. One setting complete, what’s up next?”

We continued this little telephone dance for the next fifteen minutes and she gave me various other settings for the router that made no sense to me whatsoever whilst my friend stifled her giggles behind a sofa cushion.

To cut a long story short, by 11pm she had wireless broadband and my reputation as a ‘go to’ technical guy remains intact.

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