Opinion

Cold Feet (ITV, Mondays, 9pm) is back, and as reassuringly warm and golden as ever. It’s an incredible series really, in that it makes Manchester look as green and bucolic as a forest glade, and the interiors could have come from a John Lewis catalogue.

When I was five I tried to dig a hole and make my way down under.

Herbal columnist Nicola Parker writes about getting more Vitamin D and L-5HTP to boost your mood.

I realise that we are just 11 days into the new year, but I think we can say we have already seen the worst TV show of the year, in the shape of new shiny-floor show The Masked Singer (ITV, Sat/Sun, 8pm).

January and February tend to be the worst months for coughs and sinus congestion.

If recent events in the Middle East are anything to go by, 2020 will be another year of chaos and disorder around the world, so what better way to welcome in the new decade than with lashings of blood and gore, with a side of camp?

Herbal columnist Nicola Parker writes about the best herbal remedies of 2019

Christmas, is all about family, right? But what happens if you can’t stand your family, or they live miles away and you can’t get to see them? What then?

Herbal columnist Nicola Parker writes about preventing over indulgence

I’m making a list. I’m checking it twice.

There was one scene in Doctor Foster, that BBC drama hit of a couple of years ago, which really stood out – around a dinner table, family secrets were revealed and you weren’t entirely sure it wouldn’t all descend into an orgy of violence.

Some programmes over the festive period seem designed to make me fume, and Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas (Channel 4, Tuesday, 8pm) was precision-engineered to have me slapping my forehead in exasperation and exclaiming “are you kidding me?!” at the TV set.

Herbal columnist Nicola Parker writes about avoiding over doing it on the sugar this Christmas.

Lancashire has one of the lowest percentage of employees working from home and it is about time the county’s businesses had a rethink argues CEO Toby Harper

In that pre-Christmas TV lull, between the end of the big Autumn dramas and the beginning of the festive schedules, the programme guides are a wasteland of nonsense, but this week a little gem of documentary really stood out.

Nicola Parker writes about finding a herbal hug, a sunny herb or the bitter truth

Let’s be honest, no-one knows who or what to believe as this General Election looms.

So we tend to think of ourselves as a bit more resilient up north (hard), what with  us all travelling on  terrible Pacer trains, eating gravy with everything and surviving, largely, without Pret a Manger every three metres.