YOUR super soaraway Echo has recently got even better. For not only do we bring you an award-winning newspaper for less than the price of a chocolate bar, you can also get highlights via the internet.

Which means that twice a day a member of staff is coerced - sorry, encouraged - to perform a newscast, that, thanks to the wonders of the worldwide web, will very soon afterwards appear at the click of a mouse button on a computer screen near you.

Some of us have shown previously hidden talents. Some have taken to the prospect of appearing before a potential audience of millions like ducks to water.

Some, but not all - which makes me a bit worried when the news editor compliments me on my speaking voice, ("You've got a good voice for TV..."), but leaves unsaid the inevitable follow-up, ("...and the perfect face for radio.") I think what he, and you, the viewing public, probably don't appreciate is the fact that I have a long and illustrious record of TV appearances.

As far back as the mid-70s, for example, I was on University Challenge. I remember it well. Lancaster (my lot) in a TV quiz version of the War of the Roses, taking on York, with Bamber Gascoigne in the chair.

I met Bamber backstage in the "green room" (as we telly types call the hospitality area), and we won, so it was a happy day indeed.

And when the show was transmitted, I was delighted to see that I got a good, oh, two seconds of air-time, as the camera panned over the audience at the end - although the girl waving the gonk (remember them?) sitting in the front row did rather steal some of my thunder.

For most of the '80s and '90s, I was between TV jobs, but then, when Cherries were in really serious financial trouble (and that truly does merit the description "crisis"), I was invited to comment on the local news.

But, putting false modesty aside for a moment, probably my greatest performance came, once again, back in the 1970s, when I starred in the ITV Sunday Match, between Sheffield United and Manchester United.

Ah, Bramall Lane was my stage that day, and I played the part of Fan by Corner Flag Eating Meat and Potato Pie with gusto. It was method acting at its finest. Not even de Niro could have bettered it.

Sadly, my mate, standing next to me, failed to shine as Bored Nose-Picker - and has, as yet, still to make another appearance on telly. I guess you've either got it, or you haven't.