It's been a rather exciting few weeks hasn't it?  First the election debates kicked off on telly then in an even more unlikely turn of events, the UK fell victim to the whims of an Icelandic volcano. Interesting times indeed but I've noticed an equally seismic shift. For the last fortnight the newspapers have actually been covering, well, news.

Cast your minds back a few short weeks and the majority of 'news' stories centred around philandering footballers, golf pros and even boy band hearthrobs (shame on you Mark Owen, shame).

In stark contrast, the last two weeks' papers have told us how UK airspace has been closed, thousands of UK citizens have been stuck overseas and political swing-o-meters have been in full swing over the future of our great nation. It's a bit embarrassing really to think that in the weeks running up to that, the main news story for many papers was whether a scorned wife may or may not have hit her husband's car with a golf club.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about celebrity gossip, but that's why I indulge in the likes of Heat and why I'm currently stalking select celebs on twitter with varying degrees of success. I don't expect national newspapers to cover celeb highs and lows in microscopic detail and I think it's a shame that they do. The rather vague definition of news is 'new or interesting information about recent events'. Should Katie Price's antics fall into this or do we need a new definition of news to focus on issues that affect the average Joe rather than publicising the latest tale of celebrity woe?

Helen A