Chester makes BBC news - shock! horror!

I was so startled I nearly fell off my chair - the BBC has actually covered a Chester story on its news website today. Admittedly not one of world-shattering importance - Joanna Jepson has been appointed as curate for the London School of Fashion. Jepson, you may recall, tried to force the police in 2002 to prosecute a doctor for unlawful killing when he aborted a foetus that had a cleft palate.

As far as I can remember, the last time Aunty ran any major Chester story was when Stephen Prudhoe suffered a mysterious death in 2004. The case has never been solved.

A quick search on the beeb website shows a total of nine Chester stories, excluding the Jepson item, since 1 January this year , almost all trivial, like new arrivals at the zoo. In 2005, the total count was 23 - that's less than two a month. Again, many of these stories were trivial (zoo news, Duke of Westminster's daughter marrying at the cathedral...). Given that we are more than halfway through the year, it's fair to assume our total news count for 2006 will be less than for last year, unless we are unfortunate enough to have another grisly murder here.

Time to send the stats to Aunty, I think.