Last week an American man was charged with doing what many of us have surely been tempted to do at one time or another. He became so angry with his malfunctioning computer that he took it outside the house and shot it eight times.

His local newspaper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, said that “He was able to wreak the kind of revenge most of us only dream about”. That is undoubtedly true, as anybody who has spent several hours working on their computer, only to lose all that work because the computer wouldn’t save it, will surely testify.

As with Basil Fawlty giving his errant motor car “a damn good thrashing” with a fallen tree branch all those years ago, we find it funny because we can identify with it. Breaking-down cars, computers failing to function correctly and mobile phones losing their signal in the middle of an important conversation are three of the banes of modern life so all credit to the guy from Colorado.

Incidentally, and perhaps unsurprisingly,  his computer is not expected to recover from its injuries.