I`M SORRY, I`LL READ THAT AGAIN....

"News has just reached us that Natasha Kaplinsky has read her last news bulletin for the BBC before leaving to join Channel Five, where she will do the same job with less hours but for an awful lot more money."

This - or words to that effect - was a recent item of news on the BBC, who could only muster £175,000 of licence-payers` money a year for poor Natasha, whereas Five are reported to be paying her £300,000.

Now, I have no quarrel with Ms. Kaplinsky, who seems a pleasant enough young lady, but I cannot understand why people like her are paid such huge sums just to read out stuff from an autocue that someone else has written for them anyway.

The age of the celebrity newsreader has been with us for some time now and it astonishes me just how much fame - as well as fortune - they achieve, given the limited impact they have on our lives. Why, one of them, Trevor MacDonald, has even become a knight of the realm! And you can be sure that if a big `story` breaks anywhere in the world, one of the celebrity newsreaders will be sent out there despite the BBC boasting that they have resident reporters stationed all over the globe.

And it seems these days we have to have `sportscasters` to bring us the sports news during news bulletins. Is this because sports news isn`t `proper` news and so can`t be read by the newsreaders? Maybe it`s because the prospect of Natasha bringing us news of, say, the Rugby World Cup might mean that neither the presenter nor the subject matter would be taken as seriously as it should be.

Oh, for the days of Sylvia Peters....or Robert Dougall....Richard Baker....Kenneth Kendall....yes, and Bert Ford doing the weather. Rantus finitus.