Nick Clegg. The Transformers. The Ashes 2006/7.

All hyped to the heavens. All rubbish. Lessons should've been learned, but we are repeating the mistakes of history. We've gone all hype mental again.

Clegg, hailed as the new political hero, got a bit of power and took about five seconds to reveal he was just another slippery, flip-flopping, self-serving politician and, even worse, a bit of a Tory. Deputy to the Prime Minister.

The Transformers films were, if anything, even worse. It should have been an open goal: a load of massive CGI alien robots that change into cars. But no. The makers inexplicably focused on entirely the wrong geek's wet dream and instead made the films about a nerd who cops off with the world's most beautiful woman who, as luck would have it, happens to live in his small town.

All that money, all that hype, and the films were not even seven per cent as good as those Citroen adverts where the car went ice-skating.

The Ashes. Oh, the Ashes. England had won the urn so thrillingly in 2005 that we were blinded to the fact the players spent the following 18 months doing absolutely everything wrong as they swaggered around with their MBEs being rubbish, injured or both.

It took precisely one ball to realise we'd been foolish to expect a close series, and one Adelaide snafu to realise the full extent of this folly.

But four years on, and the hypemachine is once again in overdrive. England left for Oz leaving YES, IT'S WAR headlines in their wake.

James Anderson's minor injury - he's already bowling again - was going to keep him out of at least the first two Tests and maybe even the whole series! Oh, the horror!

And he got the injury doing some boxing! With Chris Tremlett, who has a considerable height and reach advantage! What madness! Then it was all Aussie dirty tricks, because there was an Australian involved somewhere along the line.

Then Graeme Swann got hit on the hand in the nets. Injury scare! Our Ashes hopes are up in smoke!

Then Australia's reserves lost a Twenty20. The Ashes are in the bag! These Aussies are bobbins. Not like those Aussies who scored loads of runs against us four years ago like Ponting, Hussey and Clarke.

And now today Australia have lost - in admittedly utterly hilarious and quite wonderful fashion - a one-dayer they should have won by 100 runs.

Quite frankly, there must now be doubts as to whether Punter and his men even bother to turn up at the Gabba for the first of their five inevitable thrashings at the hands of Andrew Strauss and his team of super-fit warriors who are so physically splendid they even box each other! For a laugh! In a wood! In Germany!

Both sides are capable of producing splendid cricket. Both are prone to spells of ghastly awfulness. The series will probably be close. But we Just Don't Know.

So this is a plea - a futile, pointless plea - for calm. There's three weeks to go yet before James Anderson/Mitchell Johnson bowls the first ball to second slip.