EVER dreamed of sitting down over a candlelit supper with Kylie? Or perhaps you find yourself wondering whether George Clooney would be the perfect gent and let you choose what film you wouldn't watch on a romantic date.

Well, it seems all your wildest dreams could be about to come true.

Or perhaps not as it has sadly transpired.

You can imagine this diarist's excitement when an e-mail entitled, "Have you always dreamed of dating a celebrity?" winged its way along the information super-highway and found it way into my inbox this week.

"Finally", I thought, "this could be my chance to tell the lovely Cat Deeley my best joke and win her heart for ever more".

Alas, it seems not.

First of all can I just say bravo to the concept of online auction, Rent a Date for Charity, as well as congratulate the charity for raising so much money for Brain Tumour UK.

However, (and I'm afraid to say it is a bit of a whopping however) I am going to have to take issue with the, albeit entirely charitable, company's somewhat loose definition of the word "celebrity".

Apparently the five star "celebs" available for hire include Dev from Coronation Street, Orlaith, apparently of Big Brother fame, someone called Donatella from Loose Woman, and Cheryl Baker.

I know.

Anyway, this diarist is certainly not one to turn his nose up to a charitable cause so I am hereby opening the bidding for a evening soirée with Cheryl Baker with a hefty offer of £5.

Apologies Cheryl, but I'm a little hard up this month.

SOMETIMES the newsroom receives some slightly baffling telephone calls. So you can imagine the scepticism that swept across the office when someone phoned up to tell us that Hollywood superstar and double Oscar winning actor Kevin Spacey was set to pay a visit to Moor Park.

According to the yarn, the triple A-lister was popping into a school to open a new lobby.

Now we all know that Moor Park is the cherry on the cake that is Three Rivers, but Malibu Beach it is not. And this is the man who has played Lex Luther we are talking about after all.

They must be pulling our legs?

Well, how wrong we were.

To our shock it transpired the rumour was as accurate as Mr Spacey's portrayal of Richard II and the star of The Usual Suspects, and American Beauty was indeed due to cut the ribbon at the opening of school theatre last Friday.

Nerves jangling, our intrepid reporter, Neil "friend of the stars" Skinner, trotted along to Northwood Prep armed with a myriad of questions and ready to get to grips with the hottest thing to hit Rickmansworth since the famous heat wave of 2003.

Unfortunately for Mr Skinner his brush with Hollywood was a brief affair and he only got the chance to ask the head honcho at the Old Vic one question.

More importantly his attempts at securing a part in the next Superman film continue to go unfulfilled.

EUROPE has brought us many, many fine things. Pizza, the croissant, Abba, Jurgen Klinsmann, to name just a few.

However, even the most ardent Europhile could not argue with the latest reason for The Daily Mail to demand we rip up the Lisbon Treaty - namely the suspicious "Euro-wiff" that wafted over Watford last week.

It seems the recent pong that has filled our nostrils can, like socks with sandals and Ulrika Jonsson, be blamed entirely on Europe.

Described by some as smelling like old nappies, rotten eggs and by others as an odd mixture of "vomit and poo" (those are actual descriptions I have found I would just like to point out), it turns out "Euro-whiff" originated from German - the land of sausages and dodgy dance music. As a pro-European this diarist thinks the whole episode shows just how far we have come in the past 60 years.

Once upon time it would have been bombs, now it is just putrid smells.

Isn't it great to be European?

11:52am Friday 2nd May 2008

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