OMG as the kids say. They're going to make a Hollywood version of All Creatures Great and Small. And it's going to be "sexier and glossier". I do hope their is a film executive somewhere in LA desperately trying to work out he how to make a man with his arm up the back of a cow look sexy and glossy.

"Give me all the soft focus you've got."

"She cannae take much more captain."

Apparently, the word on the streets of Darrowby is that Ashton Kutcher is going to play James and his wife will be played by Miley Cyrus.

In the Hollywood version, the patronising depiction of the locals as slow-speaking, backward folk who mistreat their animals and marry their cousins (if their animals reject them) will be repeated.

But there will be some differences. James will be a player, zooming around the countryside in a sporty little BMW meeting up with bored farmers' wives for brief coming togethers behind drystone walls, while Miley sits at home getting slowly drunk on Vermouth and cola.

Siegfried will have similar tastes to those of Labour peers, while Tristan will be the unlikely hero, single-handedly saving the world from aliens who have set up a base in one of Bert Sharpe's outlying barns.

I don't know what else to say on the subject. It's silly, but if Welcome to Yorkshire aren't already working on a marketing campaign to get thousands of slack and trainer-wearing Americans to fly into Leeds Bradford for a visit to the Real Herriot Country I will be eat my cloth cap.

Anyway, did you hear about the Dales builder who can predict the weather by the position of his hair?

Apparently it stands up on end when there's low pressure and rain is likely, and is flat when there's high pressure on the way and we're in for a hot spell. Or it could be the other way round - I missed the start of the conversation to be honest.

And can I mention the peacocks that keep walking into shops in Hawes? I'm not really sure. Perhaps when I'm invited to family gatherings it should be made clear from the off that everything discussed within doesn't get regurgitated in the paper the following Friday. I feel like a sparrow sicking up tasty gossip titbits to feed my squawking young.