Morwenna Banks, who plays Vicky in Saxondale, is superb. While she gets some of the best lines in the comedy series, co-written by Steve Coogan like ‘Tell him to put some jam on his shoes and invite his trousers down for tea.’ …her delivery and timing is absolutely brilliant.

‘My name is Norman and I am a blogoholic.’ Two years ago, I started this blog purely as an experiment to see what all the fuss was about. Two years ago, I didn’t even know what blogging was. I certainly didn’t expect that I would still be doing it two years later. I didn’t anticipate that I would subsequently play with themes, plug-ins, spend money on a domain, migrate to my own WordPress blog and eventually add Adsense. ...

After recent horrific events, I was forced to flee the country so I took my family (and a couple of young hangers-on) for a relaxing break at CenterParcs near Eindhoven. For those readers with (young) families, CenterParcs in Holland is very similar to the setup in the UK except that the prices are lower and staff are actually friendly and helpful. For those readers without families, CenterParcs is probably not for you. Anyway, I have returned refreshed, invigorated and raring to go. I am currently wading through my backlog of email. Then I will quickly review the week’s football news and my Fantasy League team selections, watch ‘Saxondale’ and then normal blogging service will be resumed as I ease myself gently back into work and scale my ivory tower. ...

Oracle 11g has recently been released so it’s time for everyone to submit their colourful screenshots into the ‘Oracle 11g banner version’ competition. Well, nearly everyone. Apologies for the delay but, finally, I am proud to present my paltry, monochrome effort. I just installed Oracle 11g onto a VMware server running Redhat Enterprise Linux 4.0. It actually took me more time to configure VMware tools and successfully share the folder staging the distribution than to install and configure Oracle. ...

Thanks for bringing us Joy Division, New Order, The Hacienda and your faith and passion for Manchester. From The Times: ‘His name change to Anthony H. Wilson was, he once said, to’ “wind up all the people in Manchester who think I’m a flash t***.” 57 years young. Much too soon. RIP.