Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! The e-mail inbox of my computer currently resembles a fight scene from that old tilt-screened TV classic Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward. All day every day I find myself on the receiving end of unsolicited bulk mails from assorted charlatans, cyber-cowboys and superhighway hucksters promising me the sun, moon and stars if I will only send them my bank account or credit card details immediately, if not sooner.

It’s a problem that’s fast getting ridiculously out of hand, as this daily inundation of unspeakable shite makes it increasingly difficult for me to separate the vast swathes of junk mail I receive from e-mails I might actually be interested in reading: offers of pornography, foolproof get-rich-quick schemes from shady African business men and mysterious ointments that will enlarge my penis. (Question: Assuming you rub it on, do your hands get bigger as well?).

Indeed, the problem of spam has become so endemic that it recently prompted a journalist with The Observer to write a two-page article about the endless junk mails that not only drive us mad, but are “costing companies a fortune and could soon make the internet unworkable.” He claims that 10 billion spams are sent every day, a statistic I find difficult to believe as it would suggest that I’m getting them all and nobody else is getting any. I’ve done several things in my life that I’m ashamed of, but nothing to merit punishment like that.

Interestingly, the same journalist also discovered that one in 12 e-mails in the UK is now spam. Now, when you consider that the other 11 are …

A not-particularly amusing fake Heineken ad featuring Roy Keane.

A list of Reasons Why A Beer Is Better Than A Woman.

An e-mail from an ex-girlfriend telling you to “piss off” in reply to a mail you’d sent asking for a favour for a mutual friend.

Pointless petitions about rainforests, invariably sent by girls you don’t know very well.
Your mate’s speculative Offaly XV to face Wexford in the first round of the All Ireland hurling Championship in June.

An endless list of arcane American by-laws stating that it’s illegal to gut a fish in an Alabama funeral home if you’re dressed as a pirate.

The Dalai Lama’s hopes and wishes for the new millennium.

One of your flatmates wondering if there’s any post for him today.

An automated out-of-office reply from somebody you really need to speak to in a hurry.

The Hot Press editor’s PA wondering why your column is late again.

Somebody asking you to do something you don’t want to (see No3).

… it really makes you wonder why the fuck we bother with e-mail at all.

Yerra, when I was a child growing up in County Offaly, personal computers were to my generation what bananas were to my father’s when he were a lad. That is to say, while my friends and I were aware of their existence, we’d only ever seen on on the telly and therefore couldn’t be certain that they weren’t just the figment of some Hollywood executive’s vivid imagination.

Despite this dearth of technology, however, spamming was as prevalent in the schoolyards of Ireland in the 1970s as it is on the information superhighway today.

Back then, of course, spamming somebody did not involve a ham-fisted and poorly-pitched attempt to sell crap porn, weight loss programmes that don’t work, black-market Viagra, or plots in South African diamond mines. Nor did it have anything to do with pretending you were Williams Duru, the director of operations with Challenge Securities Lagos in Nigeria, before offering some hapless classmate a generous cut of a $45 million dollar “consignment” deposited in your company’s vault by the former president of the Federal Republic of Zaire.

No, when I were a lad, we had no computers so we made our own fun, spamming each other day in day out in a manner that was as irritating as it is in today’s technological age, but a lot more physically pro-active. A peer would approach you in the schoolyard, toilets, on the street… wherever, engage you in conversation and then suddenly, apropos nothing, slam the heel of their hand straight into your forehead with lightning speed and alarming force, shout “SPAM!” at the top of their voice and then run away cackling with unbridled glee. When done properly, it wasn’t particularly painful, but it did leave the spamee feeling dazed, confused, sprawled on the ground and occasionally suffering from mild concussion.

One can only assume that it is from this malevolent juvenile practice that modern day spamming got its name, as being informed that you have “21 new messages” when you log on to t’Internet, only to see a succession of junk mails and nothing else thud into your inbox, really is the cyber equivalent of getting repeatedly slapped in the face. Someday, I’m going to call the bluff of a couple of these charlatans, just to see what happens next. Who knows? Within weeks I could be like Robert Mugabe, walking around with a massive cock and lucrative interests in several shady South African businesses. It’s certainly worth a try, as the worst thing that can happen is that I’ll end up with no money and a small cock, which wouldn’t be a huge departure from my current circumstances.