Anyway, you know all that already – given that your consciousness is (undoubtedly) plugged straight into the scrolling-bar, 24/7, hyperbollix news shite-fest. It's already old. It was old before it happened. If it happened at all. Which it didn't…and did at the same time.

Reason I bring it up is that my immediate reaction, on hearing of it, was: "Viral ad Campaign". Given the apparently genuine panic caused – and the genuine rescue efforts of (hyper)real people – that reaction might seem deeply cynical and paranoid. But that's what living in a world of Total Spectrum Viral Advertising Dominance does to the human mind (or mine at least). The war in Iraq? Viral ad campaign that has yet to reveal its punchline. The mass extinction of the dinosaurs and the mammalian ascent that eventually produced mankind, civilization, and viral advertising itself? Ditto.

Things were rather different back in the damp, gullible, muck-covered, permanent twilight of 1980s Ireland. Back then 98% of all ads were for Triple "A" Golden Maverick. So when the teasing and mysterious words "Big Ed Loves Mona" (and nothing else) popped onto the screens of a pre-viral-ad, pre-internet, pre-most-things nation, the result was hysteria of War of the Worlds proportions. Except not really…though everyone was quite excited and reasonably curious about what it all meant.

I seem to recall it dragging on for some time, with cryptic clues carefully dropped here and there to whet appetites and keep us nattering about it over our nonexistent water-coolers. By the time all was due to be revealed tension had cranked the mystery up to Third Secret of Fatima levels. Whatever it meant, it meant something big. Something huge. Something earth-shattering and apocalyptic.

It was about yogurt. Yogurt. Yogurt called Mona. Disgusting and scarcely edible yogurt called Mona. And Big Ed was someone who liked it. Who liked this yogurt. Yogurt! Something snapped and broke that day. We were dragged from a just-about-modern slumber into the dizzying vortex of postmodernity. By yogurt.

And what of "balloon boy"? Ad for Häagen-Dazs. Or Ben & Jerry's. Truth to be revealed shortly. Keep watching the skies (and CNN).