Sunday

 - and little to report, media wise. It's all Pope. Frankly, it's breathtakingly dull - Radio 4 are trying really hard to take it seriously - and labouring the Cardinal Newman angle to the point where even his most ardent devotee must be sick to death of the whole thing and beginning to have doubts.

In a nutshell - smart but rather prissy church bloke lives long life and works hard but enjoys the trappings of high church life ( which has just been described on radio as 'a bit Italian' ) and may, or may not have got jiggy with devoted friend who did everything for him for most of his life. Realising that he might be turned into a symbolic figure and exploited by church after death ( essentially - chopped up and made into souveniers that people could sing to ) he decides that after death  he wants to be buried, quietly and discretely with his best friend, even insisting that the soil around them be treated to enhance decomposition and prevent grave robbers digging up his corpsey and parading it around in some bizzare ju-ju fashion.

Flash forward - countless self important talking heads are reassessing his life and re-imagining his innermost thought along their own lines, and turning him into a dead papal pop star - and digging up his bones to parade around in some bizzare ju-ju fashion. Nice.

In other news, Julian Fellows has been commissioned by ITV to write a major drama set on the Titanic during it's final hours. I'm a bit wary of this - it has, after all - been done to death. The only version that stands repeated viewing is the first, with 'Night To Remember' - but at least you can be sure it will be very nice to look at ( along with the cast ). I have to admit - the best thing I've seen on telly this year was the 'Road to Corronation Street' - it was superb - everyone pulled a star turn out of the bag and was totally believable - interestingly - all the familiar faces worked really well - nobody stole the show ( until the  very end ) and it was beautifully written and dressed - the sets were great. For me, though - it was Lynda Barron as Ena Sharples in the final scenes reflecting on her character in the mirror

" This is a woman who has buried her own children, seen her husband beg for work, yet still gets down on her knees every night to pray "

Pure class. We watched Corrie when we were kids, it was the focal point of our TV viewing, Ena Sharples scared the shit out of me - this really gave her context and humanity - of a kind. I think the BBC earned my license money this year.

I went to bed in a huff last night because I managed to lose 2 hours of carefully typed document - this was not, alas - a computer fault.... just my fault - so I have nobody but myself to blame, and now I have to do it all again. Bugger.