Did you spot those two programmes about clever creatures.

THIS is Eugene Laverty's new bike and team colours as he bids for World Superbike Championship glory in 2012.

The honorary Durham star joins racing legend Max Biaggi at the Aprilia Racing Team this season, and has already been tipped by many as the one to beat this year.

This week the team has finally unveiled its new colours and bike, with just a few weeks to go until the 2012 season kicks-off at Phillip Island, Australia at the end of the month.

It was supposed to be a new start for Midsomer Murders.

WELL, it's been a while since I last blogged. November 21 to be precise.

But that's the thing with motorsport. Once the season ends we have six weeks or so when a few things happen with relation to the coming year, but then it all goes quiet.

Thankfully, February always heralds a new start.

Been a while, folks, but I'm back blogging with some mindless twitterings on television. Let's start with Deal or No Deal.

Twenty two boxes, £250,000, just one question: how does Noel Edmonds do it, day in, day out?

WHISPERED conversations between players, agents stirring the pot and clubs trying to maintain a poker face for a month as they balance the wishes of egomaniac managers with chairman tightening their belts.

Welcome to the world of the modern transfer deal - a far cry from the sanitised version portrayed on Sky Sports News and best-selling computer game Football Manager.
The Sunday Sun today attempts to shed some light on why January is such a tortuous month for football clubs - and why the transfers that might come to pass in the last seconds of the window have probably been six months in the making.

Most of the deals that Newcastle are lining up have been worked on since September 1, the day the window snapped shut.

GRAEME Souness is making rather a better fist of being a perceptive pundit than he ever did as a manager, but his column this week made for difficult reading.

It opened up with the following sentiment: "Steve Bruce paid the price of the high expectations in the North East."

CROFT Circuit has tonight revealed it plans to be back on the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship calendar in 2013.

The news comes just hours after it was revealed the North Yorkshire circuit would not host a round of the leading two-wheel domestic championship in 2012.

Although BSB is now to run a round at Assen in The Netherlands next September, series officials confirmed today that Croft hadn't been lost at Assen's expense, and that it was actually the circuit itself which chose not to host an event.

THE North East will not host a round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship next season after Croft has been sensationally cut from the calendar.

Instead, the series will cross the channel to The Netherlands as it tackles the famous Assen Circuit for the first time in September

It is believed that Croft had turned down the offer of a round of the successful and highly popular championship next year as it struggles to work around its tight noise restrictions.

SO.....the MCE Insurance British Superbike season is over, and what a year it's been.

I don't think I've ever seen such an exciting and dramatic climax to a season as the one we witnessed at Brands Hatch on Sunday afternoon.

The atmosphere was electric, the crowd fantastic and that last lap between Swan Yamaha's Tommy Hill and the Samsung Crescent Suzuki of John Hopkins is doubtlessly one we will see for decades to come as an example of taking it right to the wire.