16 September 2001, 15:47 GMT

Fifteen-year-old ASP "hacker" Cousin Joey had been dabbling with computers for almost a year by the time he produced his first website.

Like most web-savvy kids his age, he started out with a relatively pointless GeoCities homepage. He filled it with disjointed HTML, unclosed tags - the usual sort of mess generated by his pirated copy of Microsoft Word. To improve the presentation, he further augmented his site with faint burgundy text on dark red backdrops.

To further the effect, he filled the site with aimless streams of consciousness (often popping up in overgrown OK/Cancel dialog boxes containing twenty lines of dense, unpunctuated text). The text (what little of it that was decipherable) consisted mostly of things like "yO dUdEs sCHoOl SUX???? 8IG-TiME YEAh mY GRaDs_ SuCKS!!!!"

From these insignificant (and rather inauspicious) beginnings, Cousin Joey was given a rare opportunity to produce a business site for Grandpa Jessie's gas station - one of the few "independents" left in the country. Grandpa Jessie had been assured by Joey's mother that he was "a real whiz with the old inter-computer-web things" and would produce an awesome site.

Four months later, Grandpa Jessie's single-page GeoCities scroll-a-thon was set up. Joey wisely opted to use the same colour scheme that he had used on his own home page, as he already had experience with "mixing them same colors". The site's content also followed a similar stream-of-consciousness style - a bold move for a business site.

Strangely, Grandpa Jessie has never seen the site, as he reportedly won't go near "them dang face-huggin' electro things", or PCs.

Cousin Joey's success did not go unnoticed. Very soon, with his mother's industry contacts, he landed three lucrative website contracts in a row: Auntie Maggie's struggling Bonsai plant shop; Cousin Billy (no actual business but his webbed fingers made it difficult for him to produce his own homepage); and Cousin Billy's father, Unca Billy and his chainsaw shop ("Create a Buzz in YOUR Home Town!")

By the time all three websites were up and running, Cousin Joey had turned eighteen. His mother had high hopes for him one day leaving home and maybe becoming a web designer. In fact, her dream came true much quicker than she could have imagined.

It started with a dispute between Grandpa Jessie and one of the major oil multinationals which was pushing hard to buy out his two-bit gas station. Grandpa Jessie resisted to the hilt, and the "David and Goliath" story soon made headline news - first around America, then around the entire World.

Even the website was featured - appearing alternately on the "Worst of the Web" and the front page of Business Week, where it was showcased as the avant-garde future of business web design - big, bold and different; designed to appeal to the younger generation, and all that. The usual crap from some business journalist who feels that he is in touch with Generation Y (or whatever they've got to now).

Joey's ginger-freckled, toothy grin even appeared on the front cover of The Face (although it was quickly replaced by a stand-by picture of Kylie Minogue before that particular issue went to press).

Luckily for Cousin Joey, this unexpected surge of positive publicity gave him the boost he needed to start producing corporate websites using his own distinctive style - a style that somehow, no other design consultancy seemed either able or willing to emulate.

Joey's design vogue lasted for about a year, after which he abruptly found that he was completely unable to win any new business. At first slightly puzzled, then (after six months of no work) becoming slightly worried, he telephoned his mother (to whom he had not spoken for the last year, since he had moved out and bought himself an Ultra Deluxe 36' motor home and had it delivered to the local trailer park).

As soon as his mother picked up the telephone, Cousin Joey unexpectedly burst into floods of unconsolable tears, and did not stop for almost an hour. When he had recovered, he asked his mother (through wracking sobs) if she could think of any other family members that might want a website.

Miraculously, he was contacted the following week by the same multinational oil company that had bought Grandpa Jessie's gas station (after Jessie had been blown up in a mysterious fishing accident). They told an astonished Cousin Joey that they were very pleased with the previous work he had done on Grandpa Jessie's website, and could he expand it to include elements of e-commerce, credit card authentication, shopping basket, user navigation tracking reports and order fulfillment.

Desperate for some work, Joey agreed immediately. He promised his new bosses that the upgraded site would be ready in "about a week", and - as soon as he had received his advance check ("for expenses n' fings") he rushed out for a celebratory three-week drinking binge with Cousins Billy, Eddie and Billy.

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