The exciting news of the day is that my mother's back from Dallas (not from the dead, as was suggested to me recently). The most interesting thing she's learnt from her trip is that according to the American Airlines flight attendant, they no longer do children's meals because of 9/11.

So my little niece went hungry, but on the bright side, no one was able to overpower the pilot with a Turkey Twizzler.

The slightly less exciting news of the day is that I've almost finished my ten minute sitcom script. I didn't manage to add to it yesterday (I was too busy winning twenty five quid on the horses - you see it's not all failed Pope bets around here), but today resulted in another two scenes of knockabout humour and laboured drug references, so the end is in sight.

I've also been checking out the competition. Having chosen 'Annie's People' from the list of eight possible scripts, using an advanced selection procedure based on a combination of laziness and blind luck, I was interested to see who else had plumped for this sitcom.

Entering "'Annie's People', BBC Last Laugh" into Google gets you a grand total of five results:

1. The BBC site.
2. This blog.
3. A blog whose author has posted that he's NOT doing Annie's People.
4 & 5. Two online forums. One of which says "Annie's People, although a great idea, may be too challenging for first time script writers", and the other describes it as "either too dour or just not funny".

Which should make it easy to complete - I can be dour and unfunny at the drop of a hat.

In addtion, Writers' Dock, an offshoot of the old BBC Get Writing site, has polled its members and found only one who's elected to do Annie's People.

And that one is me.

So that's handy. I always find it's easier to win competitions if no one else enters. Though I can't say I'm looking forward to the after show party.