Published: Thursday, 15th October, 2009 5:56pm

Uni-que night out

A university is an unlikely place for entertainment but if last week was anything to go public lectures can be much more interesting than your average film or play.

The start of the latest series of lectures at the University of Reading was about the internet and social networking.

And it was brilliant.

Moira Clark showed not only the ways people were fighting back against poor service by embarrassing firms on YouTube and Facebook but also how intrusive the wired world could get.

Musician Dave Carroll's famous YouTube song United Breaks Guitars caused mayhem at the airline.

One customer of a broadband supplier who was outraged when an engineer turned up, rang a helpline, was put on hold, then fell asleep in the customer's armchair, made for the camcorder and put the film online. The engineer was sacked and the firm was at pains to appease the customer.

But a film clip that really stuck in the mind was the big brother pizza order that, while fictional and funny, was not entirely implausible. I urge you to take a look.

Moira then asked everyone to draw a pig before explaining that the direction your pig faced indicated whether you were right or left brained (creative or logical). She then asked everyone to draw a mouse. I expected something similar to be revealed.

Instead she asked who drew a computer mouse. An alarming number did. They were mostly young.

For a free evening out, it was much more memorable than many an expensive show.

The next are listed here:

http://www.reading.ac.uk/a-z/az-eventlist.aspx

One of the future lectures clashes with Reading's home match with Plymouth. I hope the Royals' form improves before that or I will have a decision to make.