It may be trite, but it seems to be true - the age of miracles is not dead.

Evidence is coming to light that the late Cardinal Basil Hume possessed miraculous powers and was able to heal the sick. He is now a candidate for canonisation.

Any move to make him a saint must first be endorsed by Archbishop Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the prelate who succeeded him as head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Archbishop Murphy O'Connor was formerly Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.

A blind man is reported to have been cured after attending a funeral mass for Cardinal Hume, who died at the age of 76 last year. Another man said his chronic knee problem disappeared when he watched the funeral on television.

Other evidence reaching Westminster Cathedral includes a report of shadowy images similar to the Virgin Mary appearing on photographs taken by members of the congregation at the funeral mass.

Once I would have dismissed these stories as fanciful nonsense. Now I'm not so sure.

Last February I wrote here about someone very dear to us, the mother of two children under the age of five, who had been stricken with lung cancer. She has never smoked.

My wife, Ellen, took her on a pilgrimage to Lourdes days before she was due to begin a course of intensive treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. Both are practising Catholics.

A miracle, if that is what it is, came to light when she underwent a scan at the hospital before commencing chemotherapy. Doctors could find nothing wrong with her. The cancer diagnosed from X-rays of her lungs had disappeared. Mercifully, subsequent checks are still negative. Could our prayers, and that visit to Lourdes, be responsible?

Whatever the answer, we have never ceased to wonder at her sudden cure.

The Vatican is cautious about miracles and appoints a board of 60 doctors to scrutinise any evidence of healing the sick.

Two-thirds must agree a miracle has occurred before the candidate can be considered for sainthood.

It is a laborious process that can take years, though Pope John Paul II has speeded the process for a current investigation of the life Mother Teresa, a candidate for sainthood.

The Pope has already created 1,235 saints, more than all his predecessors put together, and is known to have thought highly of Cardinal Hume.

There's no lack of supporters in favour of conferring a sainthood on the former Benedictine monk.

They include Ann Widdecombe, Catholic convert and shadow home secretary, who says he was one of only three really holy people she met. The other two were the Pope and Mother Teresa.

Chris is set for a TV hit Good luck to Chris Ellison, one of our local celebrities, who looks like becoming the top 'tec on television with his own series, Burnside, starting on ITV this Thursday. Chris certainly deserves no less.

He gets top billing because of his popularity as the tough, iron-fisted detective in The Bill, but in real life Chris is a real softie, a family man devoted to his wife, Anita, and their children, Louis and Francesca.

We come across the Ellisons at charity gigs and other functions hereabouts and you couldn't meet a more caring bloke than Chris, who lives quietly in Hove and loves to go sailing in his boat.

People come up all the time to shake his hand, but he doesn't get any bother from show-offs. He may be a sweetie, but one hard look from Frank Burnside would frighten King Kong. I fancy viewers will find him more like a real cop than Inspectors Frost and Morse.

Football's 'English disease'

Now the final whistle has blown on Euro 2000, England must once and for all sort the pathetic performance of our heroes, making a farce of the beautiful game we gave to the world.

First of all, we must address the sad fact that our young millionaires cannot pass the ball from one side of the pitch to the other with any certainty that it will land somewhere near its chosen destination.

That's bad enough, but our opponents are also faster and fitter and dominate the possession with their superior technical skills.

Where we score is in the individual talent of certain players, though they are so few in number that our top teams have to recruit better men from every corner of the globe, while the rest of us moan about foreign imports.

I don't blame Kevin Keegan for this sorry story. We are suffering a chronic disease. It's likely to become more severe in next year's World Cup in the sticky heat of North Korea and Japan. That's assuming we qualify.

As Keegan himself says, we must pull down the shutters and start all over again. Proper tuition in schools, youth programmes inside clubs and training centres across the country run by the FA. Order and discipline. That way we might be able to beat the likes of Romania in 2012.

Police must target the real criminals My stomach turned when I read in the Argus that hundreds more speeding tickets will be dished out from this week as Sussex Police "crack down on drivers".

Let me again declare an interest. I have been nicked three times for exceeding 30mph along Kingsway in Hove. I don't expect sympathy, but you should know they're my only motoring offences in 40-odd years behind the wheel.

Supt Jim Hammond, chief traffic officer, says some of the drivers have committed other offences and speeding drivers "often" find themselves being treated in hospital by the NHS.

Sorry, Super, that won't wash. Like millions of other ordinary, law-abiding drivers, I have not committed other offences and in 70 years have never been treated in hospital for any injury.

By all means sort out hooligans, drunks and speed-merchants threatening life and limb on the roads, but as far as the vast majority of motorists are concerned, you and your officers are over-zealous and applying the rules far too strictly.