Anyway, it's probably a good thing that videogames are a sub-standard experience otherwise we'd get hurt. "What passing bells for those who die as cattle?/Only the monstrous anger of the guns/Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle/Can patter out their hasty orisons," penned Wilfred Owen in the trenches, shortly before he was killed. Game of Civilization anyone?

"Videogames are not any fun," continues my friend. "Oh yes they bloody well are mate," is my considered retort. (Aren't. Are. Aren't. Are - the argument rages on.) What I'm saying is that it's a personal thing; some people think videogames are fun, other people don't. Those who do should be allowed to carry on, because fun - until it encroaches upon the fun of others - is good.

The question of cool
"Videogames are not cool," is the next premise. Well, they are in the sense that "videos are cool" (Beavis and Butthead) or that "cartoons kick ass" (South Park), but that's satire. Videogames are not 'cool', despite the radical change of image that today's consoles have made to videogaming. At the dawn of time (circa 1979), computer games were green text on black screens, giving binary choices about trying to kill dragons, picking up treasure and choosing which door to go through next.

You could even, with a decent grounding in BASIC, program a cutting-edge game yourself, and many people did. That's clever, but Dungeons & Dragons isn't cool, never has been and never will be. Having said that, I spent one highly memorable evening in the early '80s watching a friend pull a veritable gaggle of girls by relating his adventures with a party of imaginary elves in some dark virtual forest. But then this was the same bloke who used to employ the chat-up line, "You're Pisces aren't you?" accepting that anything approaching a 1-in-12 hit rate for this tactic was to be considered a success.

However, stopping doing something you enjoy because it isn't cool isn't going to suddenly make you cool - in fact it's only going to make matters worse. You're either cool or you're not; trying to be cool simply doesn't work, as well you know. Look at Mr Tony Blair's ill-conceived 'Cool Britannia' campaign. Shocking. So the entire subject of cool is moot. It really doesn't matter - at least not if you're cool.

Continued next week, with a look at sex, childishness, education and more...