Good afternoon.
Busy weekend? Bet many of you were at the super-market, or that special little supplier you try to keep to yourself, stocking up with too much food and even more drinks. Last minute presents or, perhaps, collecting that brilliantly imaginative item you've been promising to get your Special One, all year? It is that time of year when the countdown to Christmas crowds out most things, and families gear up to forget the niggles of the year and put everything behind them to focus on friendly festivication. Now think of the family of David Nowak: on Saturday night David was attending a party in Stoke Newington when a gang of gate-crashers apparently bowled in. Mayhem ensued and David was one of four kids to be stabbed. Three survived, including one who is still seriously ill. David didn't. What Christmas for the Nowaks, now, or for the families of the other 25 victims, this year, of the capital's apparently incurable addiction to knife and gun-crime? It beggars imagination but we will try, through the eyes of his friends, family, the crime fighters and victim supporters. Piers is our man looking for answers.
BAA may have come up with the answer to one of the most irritating aspects of flying in or out of Heathrow - and, if they have, there are still a number of other things for them to sort out but let us not be luddites and let us praise progress when we see it. "Buy and fly" is a distant dream because "car" nearly always gets in the way. Getting to and from the longterm car-parks at Heathrow makes doing the silk route or Napoleon's march on Moscow look like strolls in the park while paying for the short-term alternative can make you feel like the Treasury sorting out Northern Rock's short-term borrowing requirement.
Harris has been testing BAA's answer which, in his gloom, he says may prove to be another Sinclair C5 or Advanced Passenger Train - on the other hand, it might be the answer to our prayers.
We all hope that lots of kids at the wonderful Great Ormond Street Hospital get the answer to their prayers: a cure and an early return home. Others will be less lucky but are guaranteed the best possible care available anywhere in the world. Depending on their taste in music , however, their treatment got either a real boost or a serious set-back today when, at their Christmas Party, some Big Names dropped by to wish them well. If it was me on Ward 6, I'd have been a happy bunny and it wasn't a Rolling Stone or two. Put it this way, after a long and winding road across the universe, this man sought to make their illness a thing of yesterday. I'll let it be at that and leave Emma to pen the harmonies.
Where, in London, did Churchill drink (that doesn't really narrow it down) but also has the only "Drive on the Right" road-way? (That should clinch it). Phil explains how you could meander through showbiz history and political intrigue whilst bidding for a bit of it all.
Bidding for a first in our studio, a man who likes to cover himself in grease and clamber through a tennis racket. Our ambitions know no limits but the cleaners have said "go easy" with this one. Will we? Be there at 6 to discover.
Papers, weather and our first schools carol round it off nicely.
It was Nina's birthday at the weekend and she brought in the remains of not one but two cakes. I went for the chocolate so expect no quarter to be given. Others went for carrot cake and are now bouncing around on their haunches and getting surprisingly amorous for a Monday afternoon. I always knew tradition went for something. "Carrot" cake? Mr Kippling would be exceedingly disapproving.
See you at.
If I can stand.
Alastair and "BD girl" Nina.
