IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is, I think, a wonderful medium for meeting people and making friends. I discovered IRC whilst reading somebody's Web pages in March 1996.

The two most popular programs or clients for IRC are for the PC (Windoze), and Ircle for the Mac. This software is readily available on the Net - a good place to start is at . From there you can connect to a mirror site nearer to you - look in their 'Chat - IRC' section.

There are many IRC servers - you will normally connect to the server provided by your ISP, if they have one, or use one of the many available like irc.demon.co.uk or irc.stealth.net

There are many thousands of IRC channels - encompassing almost any topic you could imagine. I mainly use #queer, #out, #gaylondon and #uk-poofs on IRCNET.