Last week I was on LBC talking to Jeni Barnett about growing awareness over the unfairness (and possible illegality) of unpaid internships.

Thank you to Jeni for bringing light to the situation, and for dedicating a whole show to the topic; the general consensus was there need to be more regulations in place to stop interns being taken advantage of, a sentiment which has been echoed frequently by intern rights campaigners over the past year.

Anyone wishing to hear the show can download it here:
http://lbc.audioagain.com/
(although you have to pay to sign up, and I'm sure no-one is that eager to hear me wittering on...)

And yes, the podcast is entitled

"Charlotte Church talks about her new single 15th Sept"

Me and Charlotte. On the same show. Best buds.

Looks like I'm moving up in the world. 

Things That Ruin My Day 2: Phone Numbers

I have spent a very large part of my day - and indeed a larger part of last week - inputting business card details into my boss's email contacts.

I know - I live a riveting life.

But it has come to my conclusion that there seems to be some kind of general disagreement here about the correct way to write down a simple phone number.

Let's take the humble London office number as a starting point:

Eleven digits. I.e. 02071234567

n.b. I don't know if this is an actual phone number. If you're feeling particularly frisky, give it a ring and report back.

Come on, it's eleven digits - we're not talking Pi here - so why is it that there is such a vast disagreement on how the digits should be separated?

is it 020 7123 4567?

is it 0207 123 4567?

0207 1234567?

and don't get me started on the +44, 0044 or +44 (0).

No one is consistent and it makes me very, very upset.

Especially as I suspect I have discalculia.

All I desire is a bit of peace and harmony in the world. That we all band together and agree on one united form of telephone notation, so that humble, numerically challenged interns like myself aren't endlessly plagued with this problem, alongside other tough challenges like how to get jammed paper out of the photocopier, and what to do when you've hole-punched something on the wrong side.

Is that asking so much?