1. 'Who was that?' 'No idea,' she replied unhelpfully.

2. He stood by unhelpfully while the house burned down.

3. A university spokesperson unhelpfully pointed out that at A.S.U. honorary degrees are reserved for "someone who's really outstanding, who has made outstanding contributions in their field."

4. It's in this unhelpfully heated context, I think, that we have to put the Everton controversy, currently raging in a newspaper near you.

5. Companies are still unhelpfully shy of hiring, preferring to squeeze yet more output from fewer people.

6. And although the region's two strongest states still pursue policies that dovetail with America's, they have grown unhelpfully estranged from each other.

7. To look at the total quantity of water on Earth, some 96.5 per cent of it lies in the oceans (and is, most unhelpfully, salty).

8. The ships of the Athenians and their allies sulked unhelpfully.