This week: Game Kid's PlayStation breaks down...

Alas! Game Kid currently languishes in a dark cell deep within one of Her Majesty's most notorious jails. Even now, weak with hunger and confined to a stone box that even a gerbil would agree needs a separate bathroom, he scratches this to you on the back of an old Readers Digest, using his rapidly paling blood for ink.

As he writes, watching the cockroaches scuttle across the cold flags, our Kid prays he doesn't have to wash in the communal showers again (the last time he went in he made the mistake of dropping a bar of soap).

And how, you may ask, does Game Kid find himself in such a dire situation? His column hasn't been that bad, surely? Well, it all began the weekend his PlayStation stopped working; although it's a mystery to him what he's supposed to have done wrong...

The Kid got home from work last Friday looking forward to a night in: just him, a curry, and his PlayStation for company. Imagine his horror then, when he pressed the button on the little grey box and nothing happened. Aaagghhh!!!

Game Kid racked his brains and tried to isolate the problem scientifically (he even tried plugging everything together, switching the TV to the right channel, and turning the power on at the wall), but try as he might, he couldn't get the bloody thing to work. What to do? What was there to do instead?