This is Dave. You probably don’t know him, but believe it or not he’s about to become Intel’s very favourite person in the whole wide world. You see, according to my exhaustive research (well, having my eyes open in StarBucks yesterday), he’s just single handily doubled the sales of MiDs in the UK… by actually buying one.

It was always going to happen. After absolutely slating the concept with a fair degree of gusto on this week’s podcast (which you should listen to because it’s funny, and informative, and I’m northern and sound a bit like Ringo Starr), my best mate immediately goes and buys one, despite the fact that outwardly he appears perfectly sane.

For anybody not au fait with Intel’s current 15 million market terms, MiD stands for mobile internet device, a rather awkward halfway house between a smartphone and netbook which doesn’t so much fall between two stools as dig its own hole between two very useful products and gleefully chuck itself in.

Personally, I believe they’re destined to the sort of inglorious failure that made Diego Forlan such a welcome sight at most Premiership grounds, but hey, the multibillion dollar marketing department at Intel clearly disagrees. Let the best man win, I say.

Nonetheless my cynicsim clearly didn’t sway Dave, and that brick you see in his hand is the Archos 704 WiFi which he absolutely dazzled me with by watching an episode of Pete and Pete on YouTube, using it to remember which booze to buy in Tesco and completely failing to get into Hotmail.

So maybe I’m wrong.