If you found singer Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunctions offensive, please skip to the next item. In Britain, where topless women adorn tabloid newspapers and soft-core porn “documentaries” air after dark, one publicly-owned, commercially-funded broadcaster, Channel 4, plans to break new ground.

The channel–imagine a cross between PBS and Spike TV in the U.S.–plans to broadcast the annual Wank-a-thon, a charity event sponsored by the San Francisco-based Center for Sex and Culture devoted to the solitary pursuit which Woody Allen once described as “sex with someone you love.”

TV production company Zig Zag tells the MediaGuardian: “This year it’s time to bring the event across the pond to see if the great British public can embrace mass public masturbation.”

We’ll have to stop there. Shameless individuals who wish to read more can check out coverage at MediaGuardian, but be warned that the story carries a picture of the event’s logo, which may draw disapproving glances from your coworkers.

London’s taxi drivers are a famously knowledgeable bunch, but their expertise only goes so far.

On the BBC’s News 24 channel last week, an “expert” on the Apple Computer vs Beatles court verdict seemed strangely clueless about the case.

What were the implications for Apple?

“I dont know, said the man, who had been introduced as Guy Kewney, a well-known tech journalist. Im not at all sure what Im doing here.

Turns out the man was a minicab driver who had been waiting to pick up a passenger at the BBC. A stage manager for the show had come looking for Kewney, who is a white man with blue eyes and blond hair, and instead found the driver, a black man with a French accent.

“Confused but co-operative, he agreed to follow the manager to a studio, where he was promptly fitted with a microphone and placed in front of a camera,” the Times of London reported.

Meanwhile, the real Kewney was waiting in the BBC’s reception area and saw the whole thing on TV!

Guy tells the story on his blog: “At first, Ill admit, I thought it was hilarious. … And the fact that a few hundred thousand people in the world are now under the impression that Im an ignoramus who knows nothing about technology or Apple or iPods, and has a very poor command of English? well, thats not the Beebs problem, is it?”