It's been a quiet week, News wise.

You know it's been a quiet week for the news people when you get 3 consecutive days of the same ruddy story, advancing it only insignificantly each day.

On the way to school, after I've dropped the girls off at their school with a cheery, "I'm going to kiss and drop today, MUAH!"*, I like to turn on the radio and listen to Chris Moyles. This usually guarantees that by the time I get to work I'm either grinning like a loon, or actively cackling - a mood which can only be ruined by the activities of the children on their worst days.

This morning was no exception. The team have been fund-raising on behalf of Sport Relief, and this week they've been devising ways to torture a fellow DJ, Scott Mills by making him travel a mile each day in a novel way. The fact that I find Scott Mills a spectacularly awful DJ has only enhanced my enjoyment of this particular item. On Monday he was to be sponsored walking a mile through the sewers of East London, a task which must have been as fascinating for the old, Victorian sewers as it was disgusting for the stench - obviously this prompted many poonami and turdalwave jokes. I can't remember what Tuesday's challenge was, but yesterday, Wednesday, was a corker. They had the poor man walking a mile up and down stairs - ouch! The joke, however, was that he'd have an iPod of inspirational music for the task, but there'd be only one track, repeated for the whole day. The chosen track was Crazy Frog does the theme from Beverley Hills Cop.

However, this is a radio show and as such must entertain the listeners for as long as possible, and one trick employed is the, "We'll tell you what your task is... After the news!" Which is what is prompting this morning's rant. Not, you understand, that I think this a scurvy trick, unworthy of such a radio station. No, it's the content of the news this week which is bothering me.

Anyone with any kind of decent World News feed (the BBC, maybe. Al Jazeera English, perchance) will know that a couple of weeks ago, a young lad by the name of Sahil Saeed was kidnapped while in Pakistan. Now this is a story with a happy ending, as young Sahil was returned (on payment of a not insignificant ransom, I gather) and has been reunited with his father. Yay!

The problem is that the BBC radio news has been reporting this for 3 days - oh, they've been reporting the story from the moment it was discovered that he'd been kidnapped, they're not that slow on the uptake. No, the point is that earlier this week he was returned. That was their headline news story.

The next day his dad was flying out to Pakistan to be reunited with him - headline news.

Today - Sahil's dad has arrived in Pakistan, and has been reunited with him. And that's the top story!

Now this is just silly. News would have been if his 'plane had been blown out of the sky by the very kidnappers while he was en route. Today's headline story was not news, it was the inevitable outcome of the previous days barely-news story. News would have been if the dad had arrived in Pakistan to find that the kid who was returned was a ringer, and poor little Sahil was still missing.

Honestly, I'm sure the BBC has more to report than this, and I always had a whole lot more respect for them than I've got right at this moment.

I am awaiting, with anticipation, tomorrow's headline news on Radio 1.

* Kiss and Drop: This is where you don't walk them to their classrooms, you eject them from the (hopefully stationary) car with a kiss and a promise to see them later.