Following the rather unexpected front page on the local Advertiser last week (Ebay’s Worst ‘Home Video’), I’ve been asked a few times if I had put the auction up just so I could then call the papers about it. I wish I’d been that smart!

Basically I use something called Google Alerts to keep me up to date with things that are happening locally (as well as buying the local papers, obviously!) When a new page appears on the internet that contains a particular search term I get sent an email. So when "West Lancs" appears on a page that Google knows about I get alerted, which is what happened here.

When I saw the auction, I thought it would be fun to ring the papers and that it would be a bit of an interest story following some of the more important issues around the stock transfer. I didn’t expect it to appear on the front page, but I hope that silly little story has helped bring the issue to a wider audience, and I can only thank the Advertiser for seeing the humour and running it.