There has been an unfeasibly large amount of coverage in the media today about Encyclopedia Britannica ceasing to exist in printed book form. While the passing of an era is a time for downbeat reflection, there are times when progress isn't the big mean old bastard that he/she is often made out to be. The fact that almost every house in the civilised world has an Internet connection makes such things as encyclopedias a bit redundant. If you need to know anything nowadays, you can search it out in a matter of seconds. Even spellchecker, which more people should use, especially on Facebook, has killed the need for dictionaries. Need a phone number? Google it, do they even still publish the yellow pages these days?

There will in the future, be a generation of people who don't have memories in their heads. All they will do is Google everything they ever need to know, this is why you're not meant to use mobile phones during pub quizzes.

What the reports mainly focused on though, was the death knell for the door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. I was always under the impression that this was a made up profession that only existed in films and comic strips, like Andy Capp's rent collector who had 'Rent' written on his briefcase. Is the dole queue really going to be suddenly burdened by out of work salesmen with a spare room full of unsellable encyclopedias? I very much doubt it.

The whole concept of a door-to-door salesman seems to be a fantasy. I have never encountered one in my whole life, aside from maybe one or two double glazing peddlers. Surely they belong in 1970s sex comedies, and their only purpose was to have sex with bored housewives? Legend has it that the washing powder Omo was taken off the shelves not because of the slightly homophobic connotations of the name, but because it was used as a signal between sex-starved housewife and salesman, the code being 'Old Man's Out'. I don't know how true that is, in fact it is probably one of those urban myths that everyone takes as gospel.

A while ago, I came up with an idea for a television show that I didn't even get round to pitching, in which obsolete jobs are brought back for the modern world. This would teach new skills and hopefully reduce unemployment, as we started to use 'knocker-uppers', match sellers, tally-men, bookie runners, and so on. Maybe there is a market for a concept like this after all? Now that the British seaside is being promoted again, how about those people who take your photograph and you go and pick it up the next day? My grandparents had one done every year, in what appears to be the same spot, so obviously they all had their own patch. So what if you have a camera phone? Let's bring back some traditions!

Got to go, the chimney sweep is at the door.