CLIFF Richard may as well take a holiday. Kylie, the Abergavenny Male Voice Choir, Lord Brocket and anyone else planning a novelty festive single should wait until next year. Because we all know what the Christmas number one is going to be now.

Twenty years on, today's pop stars were commendably quick to rush to the studio this week to re-record the Band Aid record, Do They Know It's Christmas? It is just a shame that it took greying rockers like Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, once again, to mobilise them all into doing something.

Where are the passionate, caring, inspired young musical activists of today? Isn't there anyone out there who feels strongly enough to bang their fists on the table and demand our bleeping money now?

The even greater shame, of course, is that, despite Bob's tremendous efforts, so little has changed since 1984. Thousands are still needlessly dying, still in desperate need of our charity. Just as well it's going to be a hit.

I AM not surprised Tory leader Michael Howard said he wasn't sacking Boris Johnson for moral impropriety but because he lied about having an affair.

That would be the same Michael Howard who wooed his wife when she was still married to husband number three and was then cited in divorce proceedings. And Boris's wife Marina can hardly play the moral card either, since she was Boris's mistress when he was married to wife number one.

Still, as a top barrister specialising in matrimonial finance, I expect it is Marina, rather than Michael Howard, who has Boris quaking in his boots right now.

IT'S depressing enough that hundreds of school children in the North-East play truant every week. But, even worse, most of them choose to spend their time in shopping centres.

Local authorities clamping down on offenders in the region revealed this week that these bland, soulless, indoor commercial centres are truancy hot spots. Perhaps these youngsters can be persuaded back to school before it is too late. Hopefully they will catch up on the education they have missed. But if they lack the imagination or spirit of adventure to do little more than hang around shopping centres in their free time, I fear their future is bleak.

I DID feel for the elderly couple who clearly didn't hear the announcement asking shoppers to pause for a two minutes' silence in Marks & Spencer last Thursday.

While everyone else stood, heads down, still as statues, clutching their baskets, this couple continued filling up their trolley and talking loudly. No-one had the heart to stop them, even when they looked quizzically at other shoppers and members of staff, frozen to the spot around them.

Just as they got to the till, the two minutes was over and everyone started talking and moving as normal again. The puzzled pair looked at each other as if to say: "Did we just imagine that?"

DID Durham Police really have to describe an attack victim, as well as being slightly built with dark, shoulder length hair, as "attractive", last week? Does this mean that if the force, in its wisdom, considers a victim or suspect to be unattractive they will tell us so?