Can I just say I really don't mind the new layout of Facebook.

Anyway, obviously my blog gets loads updated when i'm stuck in a hotel with nothing other than vodka and cable TV for company.

Just been reading through the sparse comments on my posts - it's good to know that some people other than my five subscribers (who I adooore daahling) actually read this - and one was an old colleague from my tabloid journalism days. I say colleague, his name is Robin (hello mate) and we worked for rival agencies in Manchester/. It was always a race as to who was first to a story.

I say 'first to the story' what that translates to is usually first to a Broughton council house where someone has been murdered/kidnapped/attacked etc.

God it was a horrible job. I'm glad I gave up on the tabloids. I was no good at it anyway.

I worked for Cavendish Press, an outfit who operated from an office near the Hacienda run by a red-faced man called Brian Whittle who a few years ago dropped dead in the bar of the Crown and Kettle in Ancoats. His 2IC was called Jon. He wore permastubble and was quite funny when he wasn't being a cock.

Robin worked for News Team, an operation who had office in the Manchester Evening News building and were run by a fat polish scouser called Jo. who is still alive I think.

I had one great moment of victory over them in about 1998. It was very shortlived though.

It was on a story about a family whose fat daughter was being taken away by social services because they over fed her, and - Robin had left by this time for a life of smuggling people inside hollowed out Donkeys in South America - I was up against their chief reporter, Dave... something. Anyway the long and short of it is that I locked him out of the house and got them signed up on an exclusive contract while he tapped on the window saying 'let me in'.

I was so chuffed. Really a little bit proud of myself. So proud that as I drove through Ancoats on the way home that night I didn't notice the car in front had stopped.

I went right into the back of it.

It happened right outside a pub The Burton Arms, in fact it happened just about
HERE

Who should be the first people out of the pub to witness the accident... the whole of News Team who then helped push my car to the side of the road, somehow proving they were the real winners.