Putting an 'i' in front of things

John Holmes: 

As Sean Connery in Highlander once said, right now appears to be 'the time of the gathering'. A time of mass gatherings in fact, in London, as we've heard, with people recently laying siege to shops. I saw them on telly, standing in a queue for two days outside the Apple Store in Regent Street, protesting that the cuts have left them with no choice but to spend £450 on an iPad 2. It's Apple's latest thing of course - a rectangle with a screen that does nothing that three of the other Apple products that you already own don't do already.

But you have to admire the amazing discovery they've made over the last few years. Simply putting an 'i' in front of an already existing word makes it sound cool and must-have. First there was a phone of course, then suddenly it was an 'iPhone'. Macintosh computers, which magically became 'iMacs' - basically a computer with a two-storey tall cinema built in... Personally I blame the Americans, who think that simply by taking something and interfering with it makes it better. See also: iRaq. But it's not just the Americans, of course. This also happened in ancient Rome.

Hugh Dennis (advertising voice-over): 

Have you got a Claudius, an old-fashioned Claudius? Afflicted with a limp and deafness due to sickness at a young age? Then upgrade to the all-new 'I, Claudius'. We've made the old Claudius much more powerful, simply by killing his predecessor, Caligula 1.0.

- The Now Show, Radio 4, 1 April 2011