IF you thought pantomime season was over, you should have been at Oxford Town Hall on budget night.

Yes, that's right, the heroes and villains were all there in their splendour on Monday for a bit of amateur dramatics.

We couldn't possibly say who we thought played the the Dame, Widow Twankey, Buttons and the Ugly Sisters, but there were plenty of one-liners fit for the stage.

Labour leader Bob Price likened the Liberal Democrat group to TV mobsters The Sopranos, given their group had lost four councillors in two years in mysterious circumstances.

But Lib Dem Richard Huzzey hit back and claimed his group was run purely by Goodfellas.

It's a good job the public gallery didn't have access to rotten vegetables...

FIRST Oxford was dubbed the city of dreaming spires, then it was likened to the Windy City, on account of the fact giant wind turbines could pop up to generate power - but now it seems it could be called the Wheelie City.

Recycling fanatics will be able to get their hands on a free blue wheelie bin from April in which to cram more plastic, cardboard, cartons and lentil wrappers.

By our back-of-the-fag packet calculations, that brings the number of bins, boxes and bags people can accumulate to almost 10.

Not in the People's Republic of Osney Island, though.

HE'S not exactly fiddling while Rome burns, but Boris Johnson certainly looks like he is more bothered about London than his day job looking after Henley.

Well, of course he does - he is running for the office of Mayor of London.

But Boris's latest union-bashing tirade while talking about transport irked train drivers' union Aslef, whose general secretary Keith Norman said: "Boris appears to live in a different century from the rest of us - he'll be having a pop at the Luddites next.

"I hate to think of the disruption and conflict that would result if this man was elected mayor."

IT'S a good job someone from the National Lottery turned up at the Oxford Mail Centre in Cowley to personally deliver a giant cheque to the postal workers' syndicate who won £55,000, because it would have probably been lost in the post otherwise.