London Tonight Tonight

Good afternoon.
So there I was, enjoying a ciggie this morning when a lovely chap called Ben came up and told me (a) he liked the blog and (b) he worked in the main ITV press office. He wondered if the Oz and I and Katie actually wrote the blog. Holding myself back from asking if he thought it fell like literary manna from cyber-Heaven, I settled for "Yes, we do". So he said he'd put it on the ITV Twitter. So welcome Twitterers...! (I know that's not Twits as the Big Boss is a keen afficionado of this communications sensation and he is no Twit.)
If I seem a touch more cautious, initially, it is in deference to our new readers. But once they get used to us, it'll be bonkers time again, so here goes.
Tonight, roads across London and the home counties are under constant attack from diggers, pneumatic drills and even spades. Gaping wounds are inflicted upon these fine and noble thoroughfares amidst noise, grime, dust and human sweat. Then they lie there, silent, immobile, paralysed. Why, oh why, do so many companies and organisations do that? Dig a hole and do something, fine. Dig a hole and just drift off - criminal abuse. I may disagree with your reasons for digging the hole but, like Voltaire I will defend to the death your right to dig it.... if, and only if, you then do something.
Bozza has the answer. Large yellow plastic boards that look like surf-boards that have been caught, unawares, by a steam-roller. You can just hear Bozza saying: "Right. Splendid. Just the thing". Are they? Harris, who prefers flying to driving or cycling, is our objective judge.
Sticking with the hole theme, in Essex the good burghers of Navestock wish to retain their holes and have told the slightly bigger and more self-important burghers of Essex County Council to butt out of their affairs. It hinges on how a hole in the ground might be one burgher's "sleeping Policeman" but another burgher's dangerous accident inflicting chasm. Marcus, still a-glow at Arsenal's trouncing of Villarreal, will give the system his famous treatment. (Is there a team in the Spanish league called Villafake? Just wondered.)
Is our Everest coverage fake or real? Real, I bellow, with the full, frost-bitten support of those mad-hatters clambering up the world's highest mountain to play cricket. I know it is mad but it is not a diversion: that is what they are doing and that is what Mark is reporting on. But two of the biggest pedants in the newsroom said, in that simpering snidy way "Of course, you know they're not on Everest, don't you?" Bah and humbug I say to them. Where do they think they are, 13,000 feet above sea-level on the Indo-Nepalese border? Up Ben Nevis? Lost in Snowdonia? I hate pedants and I love the mad-hatters: more FROM EVEREST and Mark at 6.
Much scope for pedantry in Piers' report from outside Scotland Yard where a group of protestors are gathering. They muster under the colours of the Stop The War campaign. But which war? That perceived to have broken out between the Met and the mass ranks of anti-globalisation types at the recent G20 summit - or the declining skirmish in Iraq? Or both? Piers will be pedantic in his explanation, no doubt.
More pedantry over The Travellers who have bought a bit of green belt and rather transparently arrived with the deeds and a lot of building materials. "Foul" cried the locals. "Fair play... and possession IS nine tenths of the law" replied the travellers. Pistols at dawn... well, actually at 6, with Phil.
Harvey Thomas is a gent who used to organise big national conferences for the Conservative Party and nearly got killed in the Brighton Hotel bombing. He is a personal friend of mine so I found it odd to see him on our lunchtime news making a moving and very believable apology for something. It involves a crematorium, some ashes and a variation on that childhood ditty of thinking you've seen someone on the stairs only to learn that you didn't. It is a sad and moving story with a good conclusion. The lovely Emma guides you tastefully through it.
Chrissie just goes for broke on the weather. Heat-wave. Rain-storms. Two days from the weekend. Is she running out of fuel or options? Tune in to find out.
Papers, cos we like to. Your e-mail thoughts on holes in the road, cos we love to.
There's still easter egg chocolate doing the rounds so puffed out cheeks and sticky fingers at 6 I guess.
The Oz is nursing a bottle of mineral water and dreaming of Hugh Jackman who makes an appearance on the show. I gather they are compatriots but he has slightly longer and more dangerous fingernails. Now there's a thought to risk ending on.
See you at 6.
Alastair and Alex.