MEDIA-SAVVY Robin Walker has been a busy boy this week, grilling bosses from a US drugs giant embroiled in controversy over a possible takeover.

As part of a parliamentary select committee investigation, Worcester's MP was afforded a ringside seat this week to question the motives behind Pfizer's bid to buy UK-based pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, which employs 7,000 people around this country.

Such was his zeal, on Wednesday American cable channel CNBC lined up our Robin to make his first ever TV appearance on the network, giving a Brit's view of the saga to our cheeseburger-munching friends.

Unbeknown to him at the time, during his three-minute interview the tag 'Labour's Robin Walker' ran across the bottom of the screen.

Doh!

* WORCESTERSHIRE County Council has finally got underway with its massive street lights switch-off plan, ending a year of hot air and belly-aching over the pros and cons.

Within 18 months around 17,000 lights will be taken out, with special timed dimmers being put into them that flick off between midnight and 6am.

For all the scaremongering going on, The Source wonders whether anyone will actually notice.

Most normal people are asleep at that time anyway, and in more and more Worcestershire conurbations, like Pershore, people living in some rural enclaves away from the town already manage just fine without them.

Mind you Pershore Councillor Liz Tucker, who rarely minces her words, has a unique take on it.

"We manage without street lights and nobody gets robbed or murdered in their beds," she said.

I've told you those Liberal Democrats have quite vivid imaginations.

* LAST month prices for coaches to park in the centre of Worcester went up from a fiver to a tenner, a move which has already upset a riverside cafe and more than 20 coach firms, many of whom have said they are taking their tourists, and hence their money, elsewhere.

You'd think with a 100 per cent percentage rise coming into force, the city council would be careful not to make this rather tricky PR job even more difficult to navigate.

Yet until this week the council's own website was mistakenly advertising the price as £12, a 140 per cent hike which has since been corrected.

Incidentally, and perhaps ironically the Labour-led authority is now taking soundings off Tory-run Gloucester City Council on how to make coach drivers happy again.

It's good to see we know what we're doing.

* THE best event of Worcestershire's yearly political calendar is almost here in the local elections.

Good luck to our candidates, and let's hope for the sake of comedy we get plenty of sensible, outspoken and nutty types either returned or elected to the council chamber.

My facial wrinkle cream needs you.