It has been an exhausting but absolutely exhilarating week for me, with a diary so full of fantastic events that I keep having to glance at my diary to reassure myself we are still in 2007.
I was at Anfield on Sunday to see Liverpool FC breeze past Bolton 4-0 in a premiership romp.
As I mentioned in a previous entry, Monday night was remarkable on any level. I was lucky enough to be at the Royal Variety Performance at the Empire, which was a truly wonderful event.

Only the clash of fixtures prevented me from being at the Tate Gallery, for what I gather was another splendid evening, as Hollywood star Dennis Hopper presented contemporary art's most famous award, the Turner Prize, for the first time outside London.
Early on Tuesday evening I attended a reception in the City Exchange, the glass atrium area at the front of our Old Hall Street headquarters, to see the return of Anthony Brown's 100 Heads Exhibition, now completed with all 100 subjects.
I've always loved and admired this exhibition, for the original way it brings to life its subjects through the assemblage of multi-media snippets of their lives. On Tuesday I took my own place among them, when my own portrait was added to the exhibition.
It was a very humbling experience to be selected for this, and to say I was chuffed to bits would be an understatement. Seeing your own life told so expertly on a canvas is an extraordinary experience. I think Tony has done a wonderful job, and I'm completely in awe of his talent.
From there, my partner Penny and I hotfooted it across town to the Playhouse Theatre to enjoy the press night of the Flint Street Nativity. I hadn't seen this play before, but I'm told by those who have that it has now been given a new ending, which I won't spoil for anyone by revealing.
The concept of adult actors playing children who are themselves performing in a school nativity play is a clever one, and it is beautifully realised by the cast. It is a warm, affectionate, funny and occasionally poignant look at childhood, and an evening out I would recommend.
Wednesday saw me take a badly needed quiet night at home, but even then I ended up sitting on the edge of the sofa as I watched Everton overcome Russian champions St Petersburg to seal their place as winners of their UEFA Cup group. It was a nail-biting match, with a sending off, a missed penalty, bags of Everton pressure but always the fear that their opponents might nick a goal on the break.
Last night, Thursday, I was back out on my cultural travels, this time accepting an invitation to the Philharmonic Hall to see Vasily Petrenko conducting the orchestra and choir in a stirring rendition of Beethoven's 9th - after the world premiere of a new work by young Liverpool composer Emily Howard, specially commissioned by the Culture Company.
The Beethoven was obviously more familiar, but even that was performed using an orchestration by Gustav Mahler never before performed in the UK. It was fantastic, stirring stuff, and just the first part of a musical celebration by the Phil of Viennese culture to compliment Tate Liverpool's Gustav Klimt exhibition next May.
After all that high culture, I'm off for a bit of light entertainment tonight, back where this fabulous week began, at the Empire Theatre. Having read our arts editor Phil Key's review of Bill Kenwright's production of Doctor Dolittle, starring Tommy Steele, I have to say I am really looking forward to the show.
After all of which, I will be needing a bit of a lie in tomorrow morning before making my way to another Bill Kenwright production at Goodison Park in the afternoon.
If this is what 2008 is going to be like, I can hardly wait for it to start.

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