LIKE any self-respecting star-spotter I rarely get out of bed now for a star who isn’t of genuine ‘A’ list quality.

It comes to us all in the end. The novelty of seeing Tony Adams and Dom Joly walking around Cirencester like ordinary folk wears off and they start to seem, well, just like ordinary folk.

I need the next high. What I really need are the elusive Kate’s – the Moss or the Winslet. I don’t mind. If pushed I suppose I could even take a Middleton.

And then I hear that Liz Hurley is going to be selling her sausages at Cirencester Farmers’ market Am thrown into a deep depression. When a star of Hurley’s calibre is forced onto the market to sell her bangers it shows that we are in the grip of a hideous recession.

Admire the woman’s get up and go. Like Liz, I too decide that the only way to survive the recession is to take affirmative action.

Wonder, not for the first time, if the allotment could meet the entire fruit and veg needs of my family throughout the year.

Decide that this is only a possibility if I can persuade health officials to cut the guidelines from five-a-day to two a-day, and if bindweed is re-classified as a root vegetable.

Leave the recession behind for a night at a school fundraising gig. Children watch in awe as school caretaker storms the stage with his band Ocean Green followed by the main event, The Abstracts.

Always crowd pleasers, the band adapt well to playing in a school assembly hall.

It’s a great night and children get to witness the phenomenon that is dad dancing.

Daughter goes home happy - the caretaker and the lead singer with the Abstracts have signed her autograph book.

Nice to see my star-spotting has paid off – she can recognise quality when she sees it.