● THE nation has been gripped by the John Sergeant saga and the vexed issue of whether ‘Strictly’ is a dance competition or popularity contest.

Let’s turn this one around for a moment. Imagine a TV show titled Strictly Broadcasting Journalism, in which any sub-literate idiots off the street were given the opportunity to deliver a live commentary from the steps of No 10 Downing Street.

How would that one sit with you, Mr Twinkletoes?

● HOPE I grow old before I die.

Next year, I’ll notch up 60 years on this planet and give thanks to the fates for deciding when I would be born.

Baby-boomers’ parents and grandparents knew little but hardship and war. Their equivalent today is as selfish as that generation was selfless, but those people who came into the world during the 1940s were the luckiest of them all.

No bullets and bombs, no sacrifice and suffering… just an endless procession of fulfilment, opportunity and occasional hedonism. Yes, we were certainly the chosen ones.

● IT seemed to come from nowhere, this snow-white spectre eerily and silently crossing my line of vision as we approached the Ketch roundabout one wintry evening.

The apparition was there and then gone in an instant, vanishing into the murk somewhere in the direction of the car boot field on Worcester’s southern outskirts.

Yes, a close encounter with a barn owl. And isn’t it wonderful to think that these magnificent creatures can still – just about – make a living in the world of man?

● CHANNEL 4 has been showing some near-theknuckle series in recent times. No doubt this is all justified as ‘cutting edge’ television.

It seems to have been forgotten that this publicly-funded station’s original remit was to produce quality programmes.

Back in the 1980s, this was the case, but no longer. These days it’s little more than a dumbed-down soft porn channel.

● COME on down, the price is right. News reaches me that a gentleman by the name of Darren Price has announced that there is no greater fan of this column than his good self. Darren lives in Malvern and has been reportedly making these astounding claims to anyone who will listen, running across rooftops and leaping from hill to hill. Those mineral waters must surely be affecting his brain.