Good Afternoon to you - and, as this is our first e-mail of 2008, a very Happy New Year to you...
Hope you had a cracker of a Christmas - and yesterday wasn't spent with the first hangover of the year.
And we'll cut the small-talk there because we have an extremely busy afternoon ahead.
First up, if you haven't heard already, a huge fire has broken out at the Royal Marsden hospital - what firefighters have called a 'very serious' fire. Seriously, the pictures tell the story - massive flames tearing through the roof, smoke billowing into the sky. We've just heard the entire hospital has been evacuated - patients carried out of the building to a nearby church. What's more, as you may know, the Marsden is THE specialist cancer centre in the whole country. The knock-on effects could be dreadful. It is a fast moving story this - we'll have the latest from the scene tonight.
We've then got another big story - an exclusive, in fact, from the world of London politics. You may have seen that over the weekend, the man fighting the Lib Dem corner in the election for Mayor - Brian Paddick - dismissed the Tory hopeful - Boris Johnson - as 'a clown'. Well, we and YouGov conducted a poll on who would vote for who in May - and the 'clown' is currently 'neck and neck' with Ken Livingstone. Yes, it looks like Boris is going to make a fight of it. And the man doing the name calling? He's got a bit of custard pie on his face.
Many of you who got the train to work this morning may have had a good grumble about inflation-busting fare increases... or, indeed, the fact that your corner of the rail network is closed. What you may call 'paying more for less'.
Doesn't sound very fare, er, fair to us. And to top it all, we're expecting a bit of snow round these here parts tomorrow. So, that should bring all the other trains to a standstill...
A busy day then - our thoughts obviously with anyone being treated or working at the Royal Marsden.
We'll see you with all the details at SIX.
Ben & Salma.
