ROUGH GUIDES have produced a list of the 25 travel wonders of the British Isles, a list that includes soaking up the Edinburgh Festival, hiking in Snowdonia and cycling in the New Forest.

Also on the list is watching football at Old Trafford, the so-called Theatre of Dreams, something that thousands of Watford fans were able to do when Aidy Boothroyd took his team there in January.

But Richard Morrison of the Times was not convinced of Old Trafford's inclusion in the list, writing that the Rough Guide authors have let themselves be "dazzled by hype".

"If you want foreigners to taste English football at its most quintessentially passionate, why direct them to the soulless money-making machine that is modern Old Trafford? Why not Vicarage Road or Upton Park, where you still smell the fried onions and feel the agony of defeat?"

The agony of defeat. He's not wrong there. From my seat in the Rookery this season, I have seen plenty of those.

But win, lose or draw, Vicarage Road is a special place. With ground development due to start with gusto this summer, there will be a lot of changes over the next few years, but I'm sure that the fortnightly pilgrimage to our own Theatre of Dreams will remain as special as ever.

SONNY and Rainbow, a clown duo from Bedmond, are pleading for people to treat them as the consumate professionals that they are.

"We have a real problem in this country because clowning is not taken seriously," Rainbow told my colleague Neil Skinner last week.

Call me naive, but I never thought that clowns would complain that people are not taking them seriously.

In the photo we used to accompany Neil's piece, Sonny and Rainbow are sitting back-to-back on a tandem bicycle.

Both of their faces are painted red, they are wearing comedy jackets and have colourful shoes the size of small boats on their feet.

And they ask to be taken seriously! Whatever next? Teachers pleading for kids to misbehave in their lessons? Watford Borough Council urging residents to mix up all their rubbish in their recycling boxes? The world's gone mad.

AS I'm on Diary-writing duty this week in the absence of Jon Massey, I want to make the most of the opportunity to write further about the launch of the beach at The Grove last week.

Seeing four Amazonian young ladies playing beach volleyball in their bikinis in the grounds of a five star hotel was, as you can imagine, a particularly arduous assignment for me.

Arriving at The Grove on Friday morning, I was unsure whether I was more dazzled by the sight of the four players, each of whom have aspirations of representing Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics, or the fact that there was a beach full of perfect sand - 700 tonnes of the stuff - in Watford.

FIVE HUNDRED teenage girls. Two members of a multi-million selling boyband. One reporter. It was an incendiary combination.

The Watford Observer had been granted an exclusive interview with Tom and Dougie from McFly before the pair met their public at a signing session at HMV in The Harlequin on Bank Holiday Monday.

Soon before 11am, I was ushered down to the staffroom to wait for the boys to arrive. Meanwhile, the throng upstairs was getting restless.

After the interview was over, I opened the staffroom door to return to the store.

Cameras flashed, I think one girl screamed, but soon the mob realised that it wasn't Tom or Dougie but me with my notebook and a pen.

So the 500 teenage girls booed me as I sheepishly made my way along the DVD aisle.

Oh the shame. But I don't want to be in a boyband.

Give me the job of beach volleyball correspondent any day.