EVERYONE'S talking about Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, but "Sweeney Toad" is a first, as thought up by type-setters in our production department.

It seems that aside from doing a fantastic job of filling the classified pages of this newspaper, they are also thinking up new names for box-office hits this could become quite interesting.

Mistakes happen and I'm acutely aware of that saying about stones and people on glass houses, however this diary still felt it right to point out the unfortunate typo in last week's paper, sorry.

Jonny Depp may be singing and it is gruesome, violent, grimey, full of blood and all of the above, but slimey? Not so sure about that and it's probably a little late to start changing a 19th Century story of a serial killer.

Our production manager went a little green and croaked with embarrassment when the slip of the finger was pointed out.

ACCORDING to a police press release received last week, huge Blockbuster-Video-like cut-outs of plain and uniformed police officers have been placed around The Harlequin shopping centre, to deter criminals and let them know they are being watched.

These cardboard coppers are scouting for wrong-doers and have been scattered round the shopping centre, warning people that plain-clothes police are in the vicinity.

We're not sure how fast these cut-outs can run and whether they are capable of catching foul play, but one thing's for sure, they can definitely sympathise when people rely on their right to remain silent.

Anyway, we hope that they will ward off criminals and keep the shoppers of Watford safe, even if they are a bit of a cop-out.

ON a similar note comes the new Government legislation, that traffic wardens, or Civil Enforcement Officers (CEOs), as they are soon to be known, are being made to wear new uniforms that make them more visible.

These days we seem to insist on having job titles that make us sound more important than we really are.

But CEO really tops it, what's wrong with "traffic warden"? Why can't we just say what it does on the tin?

Anyway, the names have been changed and these luminous CEOs will soon be out in force wearing their uniforms, clearly, for the benefit of Joe public and to brighten up the town. But no matter how brightly dressed they are, how are careless drivers meant to spot them unless they stop hiding behind trees and springing out from behind telegraph poles.

ONE of our trusty reporters, Filip Hzindo, decided to spend his Saturday with the Young Enterprise youth of Watford and while walking round the various stalls happened to pick up a copy of Slik Trix.

The Young Enterprise is the UK's leading business and enterprise education charity, which gives young people the opportunity to learn how business works.

Remarkably, this little handbook "written by teenagers, for teenagers", teaches a multitude of skills, including, how to haggle in Chinese (written in Chinese, and with phonetics), how to make a catapult, how to skim stones, and how to moonwalk, excellent.

Now this little book really does do what it says on the tin.