So, as always, rumours abounded during CES amongst the deserted employees of Europe not attending that the world's largest consumer electronics fair was nothing but martinis, gambling and bling, not helped by weather back home which didn't even seem capable of dealing out some decent cold weather, preferring instead a kind of miserably warm, windy and wet damp squib of a winter, not even cold enough to offer a cosy evening in front of the fire.

So despite the emails from the Skype guys in CES assuring us of the thousands of miles they were covering each day round the conference floor pressing flesh and spreading the Skype word, backed up by photos of the Skype booth in the grand hall (above), an over-arching suspicion was hanging around that perhaps this didn't tell the whole story

Lo, it wasn't long before disturbing pictures surfaced from the Skype press conference of Skype US general manager Don Albert forced to speak to the assembled crowds in front of, quite frankly, some of the most shocking wallpaper Skypegear has seen in quite a while.

In addition (and potentially even more worryingly), as you can see from this photo it appears that Skype hardware and mobile Business Development Director Eric Lagier has been mysteriously shrunk by some malevolent anti-Skype force at CES to a quarter of his normal size. All of us back in London can only hope that the collective consumer electronics brains of the world have found a way to return him to normal size in time for 3GSM in February.

Thankfully, the newly re-hosted gang over at Skype Journal (Phil Wolff et al) were on hand to capture the event in full 5 megapixel glory, so check out the new look Skype Journal for a genuinely great roundup of Skype and other content from CES, and a suitably 72-point font reaction to the Apple announcement in Los Angeles which, quite frankly, echoed my own...

Roll on CES 2008!