Last night I sat up late watching Dylan Moran doing stand-up on TV. The stream of amusing words was interrupted by a break for some adverts, during which there was a recommendation for the DVD of a film called March Of The Penguins.

March Of The Penguins is, it would seem, a film which follows the progress of some penguins marching purposefully across Antarctica. It's not something I'd like to attempt, personally – I mean, men have died trying to do that kind of thing, including one particular chap, Oates, who surely was an ancestor of that similarly intrepid Philly Soul Legend John Oates. He went outside, saying “I may be some time”, and of course never came back. When I go outside, I try and give a more specific idea of how long I'll be, and do my best to come back – and if I'm going to be late, I'll make a quick call on my mobile to reassure any worried parties. Oates, by contrast, chose to be consumed by a blizzard. A dangerous place, Antarctica.

But penguins, they choose to live there. They love it. For them, a walk across Antarctica is like a gentle drive through leafy country lanes of Buckinghamshire. But you can't sell a film on the premise of some birds going for a pleasant stroll. So the advertisement had across the bottom of the screen a caveat for any people who might attempt to watch this film from the comfort of a suburban sofa. It read: “Warning: Contains Mild Peril”.

Peril, according to the built in dictionary on my Powerbook, means “Serious Danger”. Mild is defined as “Not Serious.” So the marching penguins, it would seem, were in some kind of serious-not-serious danger. What IS that, I wondered. Then, when I opened the curtains this morning to reveal a mildly snowy Bedfordshire back garden, knowing that I had to get back to London by mid-afternoon. I thought, yep, that's serious-not-serious.