Could your face have fitted here? On its establishment in early 2004, keithhann.com used this page to advertise vacancies for a girlfriend/wife, housekeeper/carer and a trainee Border terrier. We specified that applicants should be moderately attractive, exceptionally thick-skinned and, ideally, fully housetrained (though training could be provided for otherwise suitable applicants). We further guarded against the risk that anyone might actually reply by requiring applicants to ask their counsellor, therapist, social worker, probation officer or breeder to prepare a short resumé of their career to date, including a full list of their convictions, and send it along with a recent photograph to yesIamthatdesperate@keithhann.com.

In the first four years this duly attracted just one expression of interest, from a sweet old lady living in sheltered accommodation in Rothbury, who mistakenly believed herself to be a Border terrier.

Then in 2008 came a flood of applications. Well, two at any rate.  With our usual rigour we pursued the first, which came from a young lady in Cheshire writing on behalf of a less fussy friend who was interested in the position of girlfriend/wife. Then things somehow all went horribly wrong, and the would-be intermediary is scheduled to become Mrs Keith Hann at the end of February 2009.  If you really have nothing better to do, you may read the unfolding saga day by day at www.blokeinthenorth.com.

However, we are still in need of an additional Border terrier.

Plus a web designer who knows how to slap a 'vacancy filled' sticker over that picture.