S just became the most expensive letter of the alphabet this week – well, in the bizarre world of domain name auctions – as cruise community web site cruise.co.uk announced it is to shell out over £500,000 on cruises.co.uk. Sad to say, this figure is actually the highest sum ever paid for a .uk name – the equally mundane recycle.co.uk, ink.co.uk and mobile.co.uk make up the top four.

As in all things, the US leads the way with the biggest, the brashest, and the most sleazy names. Sex.com fetched a whopping $12 million when it was bought in 2005, and porn.com went for a similarly impressive $9.5m last year. Maybe we just prefer more sedate pursuits here in good old Blighty. Wait a minute … cruising??