Millennium Bug Watch

WHAT QUIRK of fate used to decide that it was always old-age pensioners, rather than yuppies, who would receive nasty letters from the gas company demanding immediate payment of pounds 0.00? Whatever it was, a similar one is now operating in relation to the millennium bug.

An entertaining article in the latest edition of the American magazine Vanity Fair collects a wonderful litany of "Y2K" errors that have cropped up in the past couple of years as (American) companies and organisations have realised that testing is part of the process.

In some cases, the realisation has been forced on them - such as the three hospitals and 75 clinics in Pennsylvania whose appointments system shut down when a user tried to schedule a visit for January 2000.

But all those fade before the letter that dropped onto a doormat in Minnesota where Mary Bandar lived. It was from the schools inspectorate, informing Mary that she was due to report to kindergarten: according to the computer, she had just hit the magic age of four years old.

Close, as they say, but no cigar. Mary Bandar was born in 1888, and was 104.