Weather: Cold, miserable when it rains, but there's rarely more than drizzle. 4.

Travel: Fine out, even though the train needs an engineer on arrival at New Street. Back suffers from poor pathing around Nottingham, and 17 late into Wolverhampton.

As the number of confirmed foot and mouth cases in the UK rose to 12, it's emerged that as many as 25,000 animals passed through markets at the centre of the outbreak in the week before the livestock transport ban. The Netherlands and Germany have begun slaughtering thousands of animals amid fears that the virus may have spread from the UK. The Countryside Alliance has postponed a march through London next month.

The government launched its 10-year crime plan to break the cycle of reoffending and boost convictions. Home secretary Jack Straw proposed tough penalties for a hard-core of 100,000 criminals blamed for half of all crimes, and the televising of appeal court hearings. The Police Federation attacked plans to have more private security guards patrolling the streets.

Things They Didn't Know On The Weakest Link
They're always tough if you don't know the answers.

• Newsround is fact. Jackanory is fiction.
• The difference between a triangle and a square.
• The prequel to "Last of the Summer Whine." (First of...)
• The late-night music show presented by Jools Holland. (Later with Jools Holland, anyone?)

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE

The two high-scoring first round losers meet in the quarter final, which must be the first time this has happened in the revival. The youngsters of St John's Oxford meet the 70s kids of Bristol.

The most devilish question: excluding Nick, name the ten evictees from Big Brother, in order. Linham missed out Anna.

Bristol racing to an early lead, only for St John's to pull back and briefly take a 5 point lead. Trading the advantage, St John's opens a margin, sees it briefly eliminated, then storms on to the win.

Box scores
Person (starter) total

St John's Oxford (21 bonuses)
Bell     (15) 37 Linham (20) 47
Finglass (20) 46 Laird  (50) 80

Bristol (15 bonuses)
Dhanendran (20) 38 Kenyon    (30) 49
Edwards    (25) 44 Armstrong (25) 44

SJO 25 70 35 80 = 210
BRI 60 30 35 50 = 175

The BB answer: Sada Andrew Caroline Nichola Thomas Claire Mel Darren Anna Craig (Nick left the day before Nichola.)

Angela Bigos:
3) Sauce On The Bottom:
We're talking restaurant food here. Sometimes, a side sauce can overpower the main dish, and needs to be applied carefully, to taste. I'm thinking especially of the vinegar-and-spice sauce traditionally served with pommes frites et poisson in this country. However, what is good for fish 'n' chips may not be good for more delicate dishes...

4) Skins In Mashed Potatoes:
Skins are good. Mashed potatoes, quite frankly, are not.

6) Commercials:
Commercials are bad. There are reasons why I'm working out a way to dump every show I watch to this huge hard disc I have, then cut out all the ads before viewing. Might help show up flying paintballs, too.

8) Men and Silicone Breast Implants:
Oh, this is just Grade A Silliness. As if anyone with implants would *dream* about jumping into the sack with someone twice her age, still less with such a leery smirk. Ew. Ew, ew, ew. Besides...

What is so attractive about a woman who has two plastic bags crammed into her chest cavities?
The thought process of the straight male is not too different to that of a cave dweller... Ug. Big 'uns. Ug. Mucho kiddies. Ug. Snoo-snoo. Ug. Ug.

I have cable and Friday and Saturday nights are Silicone Festivals
Really... Friday night is Buffy and Angel night here, and the only silicone around there is in Cordelia's head. (Argue away.) And Saturday night is for tinkering with that Tivo-lite mentioned above. I've got it working for audio...

9) Cosmetics:
Over-priced, over-sold, and tending to the useless. People, you'll look better without 'em.

Weather: Cold, with a fair few heavy sleety showers. +4.

Travel: Fine both ways, with the 1703 (+14) and the 1742 (ON TIME!!!).

Emergency powers to shut thousands of miles of footpaths across the country are being rushed through by the Government today in the latest move to counter the foot-and-mouth crisis as the number of confirmed cases rose by six to 18. The legislation will give local councils immediate power to close any path or right of way near livestock land.
Today's new powers, which do not require a Commons vote, will give councils the right to bar any footpath or right of way to the public, whether in an affected area or not, on disease-control grounds. Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said part of the reason for the action was that members of the public had ignored appeals to stay away from farmland. Snowdonia and Dartmoor are already closed.
Other developments:

• A ban on movement of livestock will continue until March 15.
• The Wales - Ireland rugby match this weekend will be postponed to avoid spreading the disease to Ireland.
• All horse racing is suspended for a week.
• A scheme will start Friday to move animals to secure slaughter.

Heavy snowfall, high winds and freezing temperatures plunged Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England into chaos today, with people struggling to cope without power or transport. Thousands of homes are without electricity and most train services to and from Scotland have been cancelled. Rescuers are searching for a missing climber who disappeared near Loch Lomond on Sunday. The storm is expected to sweep southwards today.

Jaeda:
2) Toni Braxton's dress. Where?
anyone remember her first awards show on the MTV awards...LONG ass time ago? She came out and sang I don't remember what but she wore a white tank top and bluejeans and she was barefoot...
As technically good as she may be, I can't think of Toni without thinking of sometime friend Lauren. It's fresher's week at Uni, and ob-karaoke night. Cue slightly inebriated freshers lining up to murder anything they can get their hands on. Cue the organising mob (myself included) with a rehearsed Take That number. Cue fresher to perform "Breathe Again" with more soul that Braxton ever managed. Sometimes, someone can take a song and make it their own. That was such a time.

4) Baha Men. Sorry, everyone, it's all our fault. We can take them back if
you *really* want.
Although I have to admit I'm still not quite sure what in the hell this song is about or why it makes me giggle like a 4 year old, I am astounded that they awarded a Grammy to that...
So am I. So, to be frank, is Johnathan King, and he (claims to have) blinkin' well discovered them.

6) Elton John's career... you have to leave us.
Am I the ONLY one who wasn't disappointed? Sir Elton wasn't there to give an astounding performance, he was there to prove a point.
In which case, he failed on both counts. One, there is no way anyone can better Dido's rendition of "Thank You." Certainly not Sir John. Second... what was his point? The only possibility I got was that he thinks he is still a hip and happening act? Not so. Hasn't been since about 1979.

1) Macy Gray - am I the only one who thinks this woman has ingested a large amount of crack? I love her music but she resembles Animal from the Muppets entirely too much for me to take her seriously....
Two words. Marge Simpson.

2) Shelby Lynn and Sheryl Crow - boring boring boring...the only redeeming quality to this performance was Shelby in that outfit...I was all kinds of stupid over that....
You have a point. It kinda shows...

3) Steely Dan....exactly WHO in the hell is this?
I think we should be told.

4) Blue Man Group - WTF is all I could think...literally, I just kept thinking the letters "WTF" the entire time
You've got me there, they were missing from the CHOICE highlights.

I had mixed feelings on his decision not to sit in the audience.
Avoid challenge of hypocricy by taking cowardice as a given?

The one award they allowed him to accept on the air (he won 3 out of 4 you know)
In the open categories, 0/1.

Does anyone know of any other time a rap artist has even been nominated for Album of the Year? I can't remember one but I could easily be wrong.
Lauryn Hill, winner two years ago, IIRC.

even when I look at it objectively, I feel he should have won this and didn't, simply because of the media attention and the repercussions the academy faced if he had.
Nope, he didn't win because (drum roll) he didn't make the best album. I don't quite get Beck, but it's great. Radiohead has depths that are revealing themselves like the layers of an onion. I defy anyone to listen to Paul Simon and not agree it's a classic. All three are better than Eminem's work.

I abhor GLAD for the mess they assisted in causing, I think they were a detriment to their cause for trying to undermine what comes down to a battle of freedoms that GLAD has always fought for.
Personally, I couldn't give a monkey's what the "official" gay line is. I don't want to know, I'd rather make my own mind up. If they want to rant against someone they find objectionable, that is their cause. Whether it is moral to profit from (apparent) hatred is for the consciences of Interscope and all directly involved.

Who the FUCK is Steely Dan?!
A bunch of rockers who were popular in the 70s, for no adequately explored reason.

As for the performance, yes Sir Elton sucked. Big deal, he proved his point wonderfully.
What *was* his point? That he can remove Eminem's cool and street-cred in one embrace? He's managed that. No-one is going to be able to think of either act without seeing the other for ages to come. And how can a raging queen from Watford be as cool as a street kid from Detroit? Leave aside that both those roles are just roles, not the truth. Leave aside the self-styled rebel changing the words to suit the audience's sensitivities. Don't recall Alanis doing that a few years ago.

No, Elton's actions have robbed Eminem of his one claim to fame, that people (read: gay activists) hate him. Public protest is the oxygen of this career. Without it, he's going to be flattered into complacency, persuaded to use such talent as he may have in less controversial directions.

Look at Mick Jagger - tearaway rebel in the 60s, bloated behemoth now. Or Ozzy Osbourne, biting the heads off bats in the 70s, gardening by floodlight last year. Or the man who spent £30 million in a year... hi, Elton.

He proved with his performance to be exactly what he is.
Shall we just file this under trite, completely obvious cliches and be done with it?

An amazing lyricist (because unlike MANY other Grammy winners he writes his own music)
Let me have a quick sheaf through the lists...
U2, songwriters. Macy Gray, Sting, songwriters. Kravitz, RATM, Crow, songwriters. Deftones, Metallica, Creed, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, Petra, Jars of Clay, Faith Hill, Tim Rice, Thomas Newman, John Williams, Johnny Cash, Pat Methany, Gloria Estefan, Emmylou Harris, BB King. Grammy winners all. *Songwriters all*.

He is one of the best of his genre right now and I applaud the Academy for seeing that and recognizing it.
That's the point, though. He may be good in the rap genre, but he's woefully short of the mark when compared with acts in other genres. Where were the nominations for Song or Record of the Year?

As for the president of the academy giving his 5 minute speech before Em's performance, was anyone else made nauseous by this show of ass kissing?
There's a good part to seeing CHOICE highlights, the speech is cut *in its entirety.*

---

Of course not...Dido is amazing I agree...she did Eminem a favor with a song that while it gets to me lyrically, it's rather staid and boring.
It's an after-shag song. Treat it as such.

as for Sir Elton's point, I think it was to back an artist he believes has talent, regardless of the words he's saying...
Well, if you say so, I will not dispute. Disagree with Elton's thesis, and hence his methods, but that's another matter.

In the open categories, 0/1.
Jaeda admits ignorance here...what's that mean?
In the categories open to all acts, regardless of genre - Song, Record and Album of the year, plus Newcomer (for which he wasn't eligible.)

Lauryn Hill, winner two years ago, IIRC.
Is she considered Rap or R&B? IMHO she's not rap....
Nominated for solo rapper, but lost. Won (IIRC) 3 in R&B, 2 General. Make of that what you will, but transcending genres is a sure sign of popularity in my book.

Leave aside the self-styled rebel changing the words to suit the audience's sensitivities. Don't recall Alanis doing that a few years ago.
ohh ohh I gotta watch again...I was so enamoured I missed that...which parts were changed? Now I agree, that *is* just plain shitty
They were changed. Review your tapes closely.

Out of how many? A LARGE number of grammy winners never wrote a piece of music or a lyric in their life...
100 categories in total. Seventeen are technical (production, video, mixing, the infamous sleeve notes category.) Another 18 are Spoken Word or Classical, where the concept of writing is subservient to performance. *Another* 10 are Songwriters categories.

Of the remaining 75 categories, the acts I listed accounted for 34 wins. And that doesn't touch Gospel or Latin, where I don't know much.

Sure, if you will go on the picture painted by the prime-time telecast, you won't get the impression that most of the Grammies have gone to people who can write their own music. But then, go on the telecast and Eminem won one award. Can't have it both ways.

Where were the nominations for Song or Record of the Year?
Nonexistant. Because people in general don't *like* his message or his music. Rap is not generally crossover popular stuff with the mainstream.
Yet surely if he *were* supremely talented, the genre wouldn't matter. Look at the career of Shaggy, who has almost single-handedly kept the spirit of reggae alive for the past ten years. Look at Moby, who overcame three critically ignored albums before the monster "Play". Look at Eva Cassidy... but that's another post.

Genuine talent really does win through. It's fun to find where it lies (:

Weather: Snowy for most of the day, on and off. It doesn't stick. +2.

Travel: Fine out. Buses are late and slow, and I miss the 1722, which could have been no more than 4 late. 1729 (+2) to 1804 (+3) held to let a Vermin out of the sidings. Duh.

Bit of a depressing day, all round. The weather is a downer, the news (below) is real bad, and I just feel like going blah a lot.

At least 13 people are killed and 76 injured when a London-bound train was derailed by a Land Rover and trailer which tumbled on the track. (Pic to right)
Around 100 people were on board the Newcastle to King's Cross express. Nine of the injured are in a critical or serious condition, with injuries including crushed spines and chests and multiple fractures. The driver of the passenger train is among the seriously hurt.

The disaster happened at Great Heck near Selby, North Yorkshire, at 6.12am when the Land Rover, towing a Renault, suffered a blow-out on the M62. The vehicles careered off a motorway bridge and blocked the East Coast main line track.
According to a Railtrack spokesman the driver, travelling at 125mph, saw the vehicle on the track but was unable to stop. The spokesman said the impact knocked the train off the rails but it continued to travel upright for half a mile until it was met head-on by a freight train carrying 1,000 tonnes of coal, travelling at 75mph. The freight train driver realised the danger but could not prevent the collision.

The driver of the Land Rover (right) is too shocked to speak, police said. The 36-year-old Lincolnshire man, who has not been named, has not yet given a statement because he is in a distressed state. He had been delivering a Renault car from Lincolnshire to Wigan when the accident happened.
The driver had called the emergency services moments before the crash to tell them that his car had careered off the road and on to the train tracks. As he spoke to the operator he shouted that a train was coming and watched as the train ploughed through his car and trailer before coming off the tracks.
"At 6.12am this morning we had a call from a man who said he had been in a road accident," said a spokesmodel for North Yorkshire Police. "He was on the M62 going west, not far from the A1. The vehicle had left the M62, gone down an embankment and the vehicle was on the railway line. While the operator was speaking to him we heard him shout: 'The train's coming', and then there was a bang."

So, the accident was caused by improper construction of a bridge over a railway line. Can we now look forward to an extended hard shoulder on similar bridges, and mandatory 20mph speed limits to make sure that this does not happen? Of course not. The Party can't risk muffing up things with 30 million voters, all the car drivers.

Ten more cases of foot & mouth today, taking the total to 28. They include the first case in Northern Ireland.

Comment: The Government deserves to be embarrassed by the coincidence that, as Britain's countryside faces its worst crisis for a generation from foot-and-mouth disease, the House of Commons was caught debating Labour's proposed ban on fox-hunting.
One of many objections to fox-hunting legislation is that Labour politicians are indulging their own urban and suburban prejudices at the expense of attacking traditional rural life. There is something seriously wrong with a party that can turn out far more MPs to vote against hunting than to debate the great issues of modern Britain, such as education, child welfare or the future of the health service. All this was true, even before foot-and-mouth struck.
The farming industry faces disaster. Farmers whose livestock have to be slaughtered are eligible for compensation. Since the blanket ban on livestock movements will have to be maintained for weeks, if not months, almost every farmer will face heavy costs for feeding animals he cannot sell, yet cannot expect compensation for. Farmers who make income from holiday lets and other non-agricultural sources are threatened by the ban on the movement of people into the countryside. A host of workers were leaving the land before this crisis; now, many more will be forced to do so.

It will take years for the livestock industry to recover. Country people are outraged by the behaviour of a body politic which is unwilling to do anything of substance to succour rural life, and whose sole contribution to country life is to seek to ban fox-hunting.
This is an old-fashioned class war gesture. It was a wretched business to hear impenitent Labour MPs baying for a fox-hunting ban. The Government had persuaded itself that it could afford to ride roughshod over the countryside, to please its own back benches. Yet if Labour now writes the promise of a ban into its election manifesto, its action will be perceived as a vindictive gesture towards rural Britain in its bleakest hour.

Tom Panarese:
(I really do need to stop lurking).
Yes, you do.

Personally, I'm sick of GUYS ... but I'm not going to get into this because it's too late in the day for me to rant about frat boys walking around with their baseball caps and sweater vests and COMPLETELY OVERCOMPENSATING FOR CERTAIN SHORTCOMINGS by owning a huge car/wardrobe/ego, etc.
Are you suggesting that they have really small penises, by any chance? Whatever gives you that idea I really don't know.

Personally, I've never seen a fake breast in real life (although I am going to a bachelor party later in the year, so I probably will).
Not if I'm throwing it, where the most raunchy it gets is pictures of Anne Widdecombe on the wall of the chic restaurant. (She visited once, when the Blue party held their conference in town.)

10. Misuse of apostrophes. This is going to sound like I'm a nit picking grammar geek (and I am).
There is nothing to apologise for. The Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe (founded: Keith Waterhouse, 1982) is always looking for new members. New member's are *not* welcome.

The constant misues of apostrophes is getting to me. If I see one more sentence like "My friend's are so cool, they have a dog and it's tail is huge!"
This abuse of the English language must stop. It demeans and diminishes the role of the apostrophe as a marker of omitted letters. It also betrays the writer as an imbecile.

I mean, I know the Internet has led to abbreviated spellings and what not,
It has not. It *has* led to a number of common abbreviations, but the essentials - paragraphing, succinct sentences, accurate phrasing, correct morphology and punctuation - still hold. YSWIM.

but does it really mean that we have to completely abandon the English language? I was on a message board earlier in the day and was forced to read several all-caps completely misspelled angry messages. Don't these people who feel so high and mighty writing this stuff realize how stupid they sound?
NO THEY DONT THEIR A BUNCH OF LOOSER'S

Ah, it's a lost cause. I'll shut up now.
Correct grammar is *never* a lost cause. I may not get it right all the time (and most of the errors in this post are *deliberate*) but some of us are trying. Ask Mark. Ask Angela. Ask Sarah about Hallowe'en's lost apostrophe.

Then I can wheel out Dr Wordsmith, the leading researcher in English as a living language; and Professor Grammar, the former BBC World Service tutor.

The Campaign For Correct English Continues!

---

Dr Wordsmith writes:
Hello, readers. Down The Bold Typeface last night, and watching subtitles on the news. They put them up so that we can watch the events *and* have a conversation at the same time. Very clever. Anyway, spotted a few errors. Can you tell what's wrong with these three pictures?

therefor
Comes with an "e" on the end. For free. The way we hand out drugs to the youngsters these days, they don't know they're born sometimes.

your going off on me
#4 on the Top Ten Solecisms list. Your (something that you have) -vs- you're (contraction of you are.)

apprechiate
Seen here with a hextra haitch. Not sure where this sprung from, there isn't even an aspirant or a "ch" when the word is pronounced.

Enough hard work, who's for the bar?

[Dr Wordsmith will continue to study English in the wild over the weekend. Who knows when he'll be back, or if he'll be sober enough to write something coherent when he returns.]

Weather: Sunny, mainly, with the odd light snow shower. They're quite pretty, when they're the other side of the glass.

Travel: Fine out. Fine back, though delayed at Wolverhampton to let the previous train through (Huh?)

L-o-n-g job as The Boss's PC refuses to run her word processor. Reinstall? If only it were so easy. Takes three hours, but eventually delete lots of files individually, by hand, and hack the config. That finally lets the reinstall happen.

Police investigating the Selby rail tragedy are examining the possibility that the driver whose motorway accident triggered the disaster fell asleep at the wheel. Investigators are preparing for a rigorous forensic examination of Gary Hart's Land Rover and the trailer it was towing.
Police said: "All the options are being looked at as to how the vehicle came off the road. Included in that are: Was there a problem with the driver? Did he fall asleep at the wheel? Was he taken ill? Was there a fault with the vehicle - if so, what was that?" The weather and the state of the road would also be taken into account.

Farmers are bracing themselves for at least another 60 cases of foot-and-mouth disease before the situation starts to improve. There are now 32 cases of foot-and-mouth, five confirmed today, including ones in Ulster and Scotland. Police in Wales are stepping up patrols after farmers complain of livestock being moved at night.

A meteor lands near York. A woman walking her dog at Hopgrove heard an explosion followed by a rush of air and then saw smoke coming from a crater in the ground. As happens in all B-movies, the police moved the obligatory cordon back further after the object started making "weird" noises.
PC Peter McCreedy said there was a hole 10 inches in diameter and at least one metre deep. "It started making noises, popping and cracking noises, which are not usual. Experts from York University have been here with radioactive detection equipment. The noises are believed to be caused by background radiation."
As always, the army got called in after the object started making strange noises. "We thought it was just a meteorite just hitting the earth," said PC McCreedy.

Zimbabwe's chief justice arrives for work in direct defiance of an order by president robert mugabe's government to take early retirement. The confrontation with chief justice Anthony Gubbay intensifies when the government appoints a successor. Mr Gubbay, who has challenged mr mugabe's use of presidential decrees to bypass the constitution, has vowed to fight efforts to force him into early retirement.

obPlonkers: The Broadcasting Standards Council hath spoken, and they say that "The Harsh Light Of Day" (S4:03) is too sexually explicit to air mid-evening. Bunkum and balderdash. Hearing implicit suggestions that Oz is, like... or Buffy was... or even that dropping the coat wasn't all that happened... no, that's fine for mid-evening. It's the clear depiction of realistic, senseless violence (as seen on, say, East Enders tonight) that is far more concerning.

obWhatCanSheBeImplying: Last night's Buffy (S4:17-ish) was a classic. Pathos *and* horror in the one mini-hour. Or, if you're watching the Friday repeats on BBC TWO, tonight's Buffy will be a classic. Sigworthy, almost.

obMSCL: Anya in her flowery dress, hair in a bun, going for the break up. It's Sharon Cherski already!

obE4: Fancy watching ER without adverts? Check the late night Thursday repeat. E4 can't sell enough ads yet, and is running ER commercial free. If it's your kind of thing, result!

obMSCLlist: Reading Robert Thompson's bulletin board - www.ttgnet.com/rbt/ - and one of the names is familiar. jchamier rings a bell from somewhere. Then it hits. James Chamier, erstwhile listie and zoo visitor from Round Here.
More... www.chamier.co.uk

Weather: The forecast is sun. We get snow, on and off, all day. It doesn't quite stick, but it's icky. +2.

Travel: Fine out, and notice that the 16 lights between New St station and the first signal are back on for the first time since about October. Back is the London train (1703, +13), which gets caught behind the stopper. 1742 is AWOL, so shoot for the bus. Catch it at stop 2.

Journalist and author John Diamond dies in hospital after a long battle with cancer. Diamond, 47, was married to fellow journalist and bestselling cookery writer Nigella Lawson. Her agent, Jacqui Drewe, said: "John was taken to hospital on Wednesday and Nigella was with him all the time he was there. He was a lovely, lovely man - everybody will miss him."
A sparkling columnist, Diamond worked to the end, refusing to succumb to the disease which robbed him of the power of speech. In his column for The Times, Diamond wrote of his illness with fearless honesty. In one typically self-deprecating article he described how his seemingly perfect life took a horrific twist when the disease was diagnosed.
"It would be an exaggeration to say that I had it all, but certainly I had about as much of the good life as I'd ever expected to get. I was married to a woman I loved with two young children I adored. I was doing the work I'd always wanted to. What else could I possibly need? Cancer as it turned out."
"The lump was on my neck. My GP said it was a left-over from a bout of glandular fever. But the lump was starting to get in the way. Eventually repeated trips to the GP became to ear, nose and throat specialists." In March, 1997 he was told that despite having had surgery to remove the lump, he had cancer of the throat, and that it was incurable. He also wrote movingly, and even humourously, about his disease in his book, C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too.

The Mole

It's Week Eight. It's the end of the road. All good journeys must come to an end. Who's at the Terminal Three?
Zi Khan, 32, expected (by your correspondent) to be the winner, Doncaster
Jennifer Waller, 37, surely the mole, Darlington
David Buxton, 35, regrettably, the loser, London

Why Jennifer? Process of elimination. We can logically eliminate David, after Paul in week 3. I genuinely can't make any sort of case against Zi. Which only leaves one.

Just two challenges this week, and thanks to Count Von Count of Sesame Str for pointing out that last week's challenges were #19-#21. Not #16-#18. D'oh.

Challenge 22: The Running Man (Or Woman): We join the unholy trinity on the beach. Where they each get an orange boilersuit and shades. That's all they wear or carry. For £15,000, the three must reach the same final location from different start points in 2.5 hours. They each have a GPS unit, but can only come back on foot.

Jersey geography is crucial to this game. It's a small island, roughly rectangular, 7 miles east-west, 5 miles north-south. There are bays on the south and west sides, more rocky outcrops on the north and east sides.

David goes by sea, to a point on the NW coast of Jersey. Jen flies, and is left at the aerodrome, top middle. Zi goes in a car, and is dropped near the SE corner.

Each contestant must remember four numbers.
Zi: 8-1-3-7 Jen: 4-10-7-58 David: 42-3-8-68
Then the tape they're listening to - quite literally - self-destructs.

Waiting at the end - on the coast at the SW corner of the island - is a safe with four credit cards. Only one has all the numbers on it. If they're late, the safe is washed away on the tide.

Jen gets terribly confused, Zi has the long run ahead of him, and cracks on with it. Jen doesn't have the faintest how to use the GPS. These are meant to be foolproof systems.

As our readers will know, GPS gives directions as the crow flies. Over hedges and stuff. Not necessarily along the road, as Jennifer seems to think. Further info

Zi is suffering from painful feet with two hours still to run. He asks people around if they've seen a tv crew, which is smart. Jennifer is lost. Zi is pissed off. David can see the lighthouse. 3.8 miles away. 3.6 miles over the sea. He goes down the side of the bay. Jen has gone round in something of a circle - she's at the other end of the airfield.

Zi borrows a bike, which has me flicking back the tape to find if that's legal.
[fx: rewind]
"You must travel on foot. You must not use any form of motorised transport."
[fx: wind]
Probably not, but we may be able to argue that. Zi leaves the bike a couple of miles short, for no obvious reason. He's got the stitch. And cramps. Real agony. A runner comes with bottles of water.

David passes Glen, and meets a security guard. Glen calls him on a mobile phone, and urges him to remember his numbers. Jen is running. Zi is beat.

"Your time is up."

It's all too late.

Zi - "It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'll never run again. Not even to the shops." Jen claims her GPS failed after 30 minutes. Mole Hunt Clue. GPS doesn't fail like that. If one was down, all three would go down.

Glen points out that all three contestants wore tops under their boiler suits. Another call for disqualification.

Challenge 23: St Helier market. Play for £10,000. Glen gives a clue, which will lead to an object, more clues, and more rules. It's a 45 minute game. How long was Treasure Hunt? How long was the endgame phase of Wanted?

Treasure Hunt!

"In the old Townsend, you will find the diary of an elusive creature we're all chasing. Read it well. It is the first chapter of a long journey."

Start the clock.

"Is there a [well-known bookstore] around," asks David?

Look for the book about a mole. Gods, where's Anneka Rice, runner on Treasure Hunt, when you need her?

A Mole. Adrian Mole. Sue Townsend. Got it. Ten minutes gone already.

It's a map. Blue dot is telephone box.

Treasure Hunt suddenly turns into Wanted.

Phone will ring for four minutes, someone needs to run to pick it up and get more instructions. Zi runs. So much for his pledge yesterday! Picks the phone up. There's another clue elsewhere in the phonebox.

Treasure Hunt!

"A colourful garland can hide a multitude of fragrant sins. Route me out and go potty."

Garlands... flower stall... something behind one of the pots. David finds it.Just five more minutes down.

Wanted! (You get the gist.)

They have to guide Anneka Zi to phone box 2. They both have a map, but neither has street names. David gives clear directions to the clue.

"You may reel around a fountain, but you'll need to cast further afield. You'll find me in water, but equally between bars. Scuttle for an answer - written in ink."

Written in ink... octopus... fishmongers... squid. Jen leads them to another market. Annie - sorry, Zi - waits. David has a brainwave. Scuttle - cuttlefish? Got it!

Zi Rice now needs to come back, and find another phonebox elsewhere. Jen's directions were less than brilliant, Zi finds a clue.

"If I knew you were coming... I'd have left my mark. Get stuck in."

Jen thinks it's a cafe, David isn't so sure. Split up, look for the Mole mark. Then David sees a big cake in a baker's window. With the Mole thumbprint on it.

Get stuck in. It's *inside* the cake! "Nice cake, actually," reports David.

Direct Zi to a final destination. There's someone with a ringing mobile phone sitting in a square behind a copy of the FT. No prizes for guessing who.

"Looking for someone?" asks Glen, checking his watch. "You're three minutes late."

They lost a lot of time on the opening clue, but good team work throughout.

Mole Hunt Clue: Whose idea was it to leave the bookstore at the start? The episode didn't make it clear.

£100,000 on offer, exactly half the £200,000 budget. Glen's brought a picnic, champagne, strawberries and cream.

This was a *brilliant* game. There could be a whole series out of this.

Zi will change his nomination again, from David to someone else. David is non-committal. Jen will stick with her nomination of Zi - it's served her since about week two.

The remainder reflect, and it's clear that the five (including Ollie and Sara) *really* bonded. Six, Glen is clearly firm friends with the survivors. The obligatory toast: absent friends.

obsoundtrack: Van Morrison and Tom Jones, duetting on "Sometimes We Cry."

obmontage: A million memories, seven exits.

The Finale: Nightfall. Gourey Castle. Each contestant is shown into their own cell. The person who gets the most of the 20 questions about the mole's activities over the previous three weeks wins the lot.

Wow! Glen can control the doors just by looking at them!

Questions... so many questions...

2 In the market game, was the mole the runner? 5 In the hostage challenge, where was the mole? 9 At the maze, which team was the mole in? 11 At the card game, how many passes did the mole win? 16 At the disguised person challenge, where was the mole? 20 Who is the mole?

Never mind that. Who is the winner?

It's the clip we've seen on all the trailers.

Glen asks, "Will you please open the winner's door."

"Now."

Cut to a pre-recorded film of a door opening.

And a *very* cheesy shot of Glen with an arm outstretched.

The winner is shown in photographic negative. They have curly hair.

Shock! It's Zi!

Cue mass celebrations, and Zi hugging Glen so tight their microphones don't pick up a sensible sound.

Which leaves one question, rich boy, who is the mole?

In a similarly over-cooked sequence, the door opens.

Glen and Zi smile.

Blow me down if it isn't David!!

Zi's clincher was the paintballing, when David had five passes and went out so soon. He really was a way cool mole.

Which means apologies are due to Jennifer, and - for the third time - my nomination leaves the loser.

obsoundtrack "Nobody Does It Better" - theme from "The Spy Who Loved Me."

Join us next week as we reveal How David Did It. Ponder the thought: if he *was* the mole, wasn't he rather ineffective. And did he go rogue on the producer after the interrogation challenge?

Debate these points after the season finale, in seven days.

Weather: Frosty, sunny.

To check out the house I'm buying. Measure it up, figure what can go where, and generally begin to mentally prepare.

Football: Sylvian Wiltord fires a first-half hat trick as Arsenal beats West Ham 3-0, putting last week's slump at Manchester behind them. MUN, meanwhile, scrape a 1-1 draw at Leeds thanks only to a very poor linesman's decision denying the hosts a 89th minute winner.
Leicester's renewed European chase continues, with a 2-0 victory over Birmingham. Liverpool is already guaranteed at least UEFA Cup football next season, thanks to its victory in the League Cup last weekend.
Southampton continues its claim to be Overachievers Of The Season with a 1-0 win at Man City; the Light Blues now look favourites to drop. Derby eases its relegation fears with a 2-1 beating of Tottenham. Everton and Newcastle both continue to slide, though, after the sides insipid 1-1 draw.
Coventry and Chelsea combine for a 0-0 draw, with goalies on both sides featuring well. Middlesborough and Charlton also ends 0-0, that's a lot more dull.

League tables:
1 (1) Man Utd pl 29 - 67
2 (2) Arsenal    29 - 53
3 (3) Liverpool  27 - 45
4 (7) Leicester  28 - 45
5 (6) Leeds      29 - 44
6 (4) Sunderland 29 - 44

15 (13) Aston Villa    26 - 33
16 (15) Everton        29 - 32
17 (17) Middlesborough 29 - 28
18 (18) Man City       29 - 26
19 (19) Coventry       29 - 24
20 (20) Bradford       27 - 16

Tracker points:
1 (1) MUN 1228
2 (2) ARS 1104
3 (5) SOT 1071
4 (6) LEE 1066
5 (3) LIV 1057

16 (16) NWC 946
17 (17) EVE 942
18 (18) MCY 889
19 (19) COV 883
20 (20) BRA 831

Thank goodness for multiple airings of Friends. I thought that one of the characters on there was also a regular character on Buffy. But it's not, I'm mistaken, and let normal service resume. Nevada.

Wait wait wait wait wait wait. And whoa! How come he's allowed to use a cellphone in a hospital? Don't the doctors tend to get rather alarmed at anything that might interfere with their medical equipment? ITWSBT.

How was pancake day for you? Better than for an anonymous Russian gentleman. He tried to spice up the day by having his wife do a Monica while cooking the egg-milk-batter dish. As always happens in these kind of situations, the couple toss the -- toss the *pancake*, darlings -- but the hot stuff lands on the lady's head. Well, the pancake does. In shock, our heroine clamps her teeth together, and our Bill Clinton wannabe has suddenly become the new Wayne Bobbit.

Yum.

Weather: Sunny and 5. Chilly, though.

To a well-known Swedish queue factory, and attempt to buy furniture. The sofa needs to be ordered, delivery is slap in the scheduled moving week, which is good. The wardrobe and Chester Draws are in stock, and (just) fit into the car. I'd like to have ordered a bed for collection on the same date, but We Don't Do That, apparently. Does make me reconsider if I want to do business with them.
That's the result, and it's good, but the process is hellish. Turn up when the store opens its doors, and there are (literally) queues out of the car park. It's all caused because about 40 metres after the entrance is a steep set of steps, which slows people down. Hence lines in the car park, and a crowded store (which we can deal with.) Parents allow their anklebiters to run free and almost get trampled underfoot (which, quite frankly, isn't our responsibility to deal with.)
As I'm buying two big ticket items, they need to be paid for, then collected. Is there a single till devoted to those buying only big ticket items? Is there hell! Line up with all the people buying individual bamboo canes and that kind of stuff. Then wait again for the big ticket to be called. There's no digital display of those tickets that have been delivered, which would be a) cheap and b) means we don't have to strain to listen to the lady whispering the numbers. She's doing her best, but the ambient noise means she doesn't get heard.
So, take the purchases back to the car. They've politely put them on a trolley, but cleverly (their idea) / patronisingly (my call) set barriers that prevent the trolley from leaving the designated pick up zone. Bring the car to the trolley, not the other way round. I can see the sense, customers won't crash into other people's cars, but it strikes me as a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Bag a slot in the waiting bay, then some old biddy drives into it. I gesture and call for her to move out, she refuses, claiming "that's not the way it works." I politely but firmly point out that she doesn't have any goods actually here to collect, and that she is blocking a space for a customer who is actually with their goods and will be in and out of the space before hers arrive. It's a pointless exercise, she's not shifting. Hope it collapses on her foot, whatever it was.

A bomb goes off outside the BBC in London as experts failed to conduct a controlled explosion on the device. No-one is injured, and the main effect is that BBC WORLD is forced to play recorded bulletins for two hours.

Three more cases of foot and mouth bring the total to 59.

Chart News

Personal Airplay Stats: 53 contemporary hit records passed my radar this week (47 last), for a total of 94 plays (81 last.)

Debuts:
"Found That Soul" - Manic Street Preachers (coll, feb 26)
"Push It All Aside" - Alisha's Attic (ac, mar 12)
"Suffocate" - King Adora (main rock, feb 19)

Adds:
"Never Had A Dream Come True" - S Club 7 (pop, nov 00 - on US top 50 status)

Most Heard: 7 plays for Nelly Furtardo's "I'm Like A Bird"
6 for Dido's "Here With Me"