For a while there, I thought Alisher Usmanov had sent in some Spetsnaz-trained goons to close me down but it was only my webhost suffering from a major hardware meltdown. Things aren’t yet back to norm, my email is still down, so I’ll hold off posting anything new until tomorrow.

In the meantime, can I just say that it’s a pleasure to be back. I think I needed the break. I’d managed to post a picture a day pretty much for a whole year. Blair’s resignation and Prescott’s departure also hit me hard. It was like losing the ability to tell jokes without the letter ‘k’ in the alphabet. I’m now learning a new vocabulary and I’m beginning to see the funny side of Gordon Brown. I’ve also got lots of housekeeping to catch up with but my sidebar is now newly trimmed and in come a few new blogs including Dave Hill’s new Big Britain.

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John McCririck has been showing off the horrendous injuries he claims were caused by Alan Titchmarsh after the afternoon chat show presenter threw him off his new ITV show. ‘At first he seemed quite calm but once the cameras went off, he turned into an animal,’ claimed McCririck. ‘He said he was going to make me grovel and then he started to “bitch slap” me. It was humiliating. I tried to fight back, God help me I tried, but he’s a brute! An animal! And then he planted a crocus in a warm moist spot that doesn’t get too much direct sunlight.’

The horse-racing tipster claims that he was then subjected to nearly three hours of continuous beating by Titchmarsh and the other guests. ‘Anneka Rice worked on my knees but Alan never stopped punching my face,’ he told The News of the World. ‘Doctors say that I might never look the same again, though The Booby says she thinks it’s a definite improvement.’

Industry analysts believe the beating is Titchmarsh’s latest attempt to make the 3pm slot his own. Early audience research suggests that viewers are responding favourably to his causal banter, meaningless asides, and brutal punishment beatings.

The popular choice for Blue Peter’s new kitten may have been ‘Nutsack III’ but when producers saw the result of their phone in poll, they decided that ‘Socks’ was more appropriate for a family show. Now the BBC have been forced to issue an apology and rename the six month kitten.

In a statement, Blue Peter’s producers have expressed their ’sincerest apologies for not listening to our viewers’ and have promised that ‘from now on, little Nutsack will be as important a member of the Blue Peter family as The Testicle Dog and little Crapper the tortoise.’

Insiders are already suggesting that Nutsack might not be around that long. ‘They’re desparate to get rid of it,’ said one of the presenters, who spoke anonymously to The Spine. ‘This is supposed to be a family show. We can’t keep talking about our little nutsack.’ It’s thought an accident has already been arranged involving Bill Oddie, a sparrow hawk, and half a pound of cheap mutton stolen from the BBC canteen.