IN my younger, more carefree days, I was captain of a pub quiz team.

We had a regular team in the Monday night quiz and called ourselves the Desmond Lynam Fan Club, as the great man was on the TV presenting the football (Euro 88, to be precise).

It was a tradition I carried on when I started work and entered a team into the Thwaites' quiz league.

In fact we went so far as to write to Mr Lynam about our team name and he kindly replied and sent a signed photograph of himself, which we framed and carried to all our matches as a mascot.

Anyway, this lengthy and really rather dull personal anecdote is by way of telling readers that Des has now gone online as a mentor for internet users.

He has been signed up by Microsoft to present "How to MSN", a guide to the services offered by the Seattle Behemoth's web services.

The idea is to have someone we all know and love tell us in his reassuringly familiar tones how to use MSN and what we can expect from it.

www.msn.co.uk