AS starts to the week go, you would have to class it as unusual. Early Monday morning I wason BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, with a three-minute slot to convince Michael Palin why he must visit Middlesbrough. Mission Improbable certainly, but impossible? No, I don’t think so.

It was a superb opportunity to promote Middlesbrough and Palin is one of my heroes.

I only have to think of him as Ken Pile in A Fish Called Wanda to start laughing.

He is now, of course, a respected travel writer and broadcaster and it was an off-thecuff remark that he had never visited Middlesbrough that led to our conversation.

I knew I had no time to lose, so gave him a whistle-stop virtual tour of the town.

We started with the river to give him a sense of Middlesbrough’s history and the continued importance of our industry. Then it was the Town Hall and mima, two buildings embodying the same sense of civic pride and quest for excellence and, of course, the largest town square of its kind in the country.

Then I recommended visits to the sculpture Temenos and the Transporter, the Captain Cook Museum – a must for any traveller, particularly one who thought the Captain had been born in Whitby. Then, what train enthusiast could refuse a trip along a route, where it all began, the Stockton to Darlington line?

Apologies for any omissions in the broadcast and in this article, but, I think I did okay.

Certainly, the feedback has been positive and I really hope Michael takes up the invitation.

The strange thing was that as I reeled off all the good things about Middlesbrough, I started to think how rarely I take time to appreciate just how special they are.

I work in one outstanding building, the Town Hall, and look out on to another, mima.

In the distance is the superb backdrop of the Cleveland Hills, where, with the discovery of ironstone, Middlesbrough began its extraordinary journey. Reminders that the everyday doesn’t have to be ordinary.

I think Michael Palin would agree that, however far you travel, the most extraordinary experiences can happen nearer to home.

I will tell you about one.

It was in 2005 in Middleton St George and I stood while – as if from nowhere out of a leaden sky – a Lancaster bomber flew silently overhead. It was one of those sights that makes the hairs on your neck stand on end, a glimpse of another time and another world.

I was there to see the dedication of a statue to Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski VC, the Canadian flyer who lost his life trying to save a trapped crew member in a mission over France.

That Mynarski is honoured is largely because of the efforts of the editor of this newspaper, Peter Barron. Peter made a great speech that day and I remember phoning him up to tell him how proud I was of him and to be associated with this newspaper.

I felt proud again this week when Peter was awarded an MBE for services to journalism and the community, for the Mynarski project is one of many causes that he and the Echo have championed to the great benefit of the North-East.

Back in 1997, as deputy editor, he also commissioned me to write this column, but everyone is allowed the odd lapse!

The new year will bring challenges and change for me and Middlesbrough, and no doubt the Echo and Peter. But while we can still make the ordinary special, I think we can face them with optimism.