Now, whilst I don’t want to wish the glorious summer away, this autumn can’t come quick enough...........Alesha’s back! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssss!

You may remember at the end of last year, in my blog “Out with the old and in with the new: Excalibur’s wishes for 2009”, I wished for Alesha Dixon to turn up on my doorstep and ask to move in...........well, it’s not happened (to date!), but the news that Alesha Dixon will replace Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips when the show returns this autumn is wonderful news. And boy, couldn’t this country just do with a lift like this at the moment, what with all the gloom and doom about the recession, swine flu and MP’s expenses?

Predictably there has been some moaning about the fact that a 66-year-old is being replaced on TV by a 30-year-old, but as one wise sage has pointed out, if we want to watch a wrinkly old judge, we can always pop along to the Old Bailey!