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The big football transfer news this week has to be the extraordinary £100m bid by Manchester City for AC Milan’s Kaka. Silvio Berlusconi club Manager (and of course Italy’s Prime Minister) has always asserted that the Brazilian player would not be sold and would be a player at San Siro for life. This situation now seems very likely to change as Berlusconi has reputedly stated that there is a recession on and so it is a sensible move to liquidate a very valuable asset and so a football transfer is now a possibility. Clearly Kaka is a very talented and valuable player to the Italian club and would be of interest to most of the big clubs around the world, but it does beg the question; is any player actually worth £100m football transfer fee and certainly in today’s very precarious financial markets? The football transfer if it goes ahead would attract a world record football transfer fee, which is possible due to the wealthy Abu Dhabi Manchester City owner, Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Dancing On Ice is back on our screens and speculation is already rife about who will be the ultimate winner of the wintery ITV ice skating spectacular. Presented as usual by the absolutely gorgeous and now ‘blooming’ lovely Holly and the silvery fox himself Philip, the first week has got off to a flying ice skating start with the boys taking to the ice first and competing with one another and with the first elimination taking place. We can now announce that Graeme Le Saux will not be in a position to win the most exciting ice show on television as he was unfortunately voted off last weekend by the judges. The Ex-England football star had a skate-off against reporter Donal MacIntyre, with Donal obtaining all the votes from the judges for his more polished ice skating performance which resulted in Le Saux having to hang up his skates at the first stage of the Dancing On Ice 2009 competition.

The 19th January 2009 sees the start of the 2009 Australian Open and this year unlike any other sees a whole new exciting aspect to this tennis tournament. It appears that our own Andy Murray is being dubbed the man to bring this particular trophy home, and the bookies favourite not only in good old Blighty but also with the Australian bookies too. Who ever said hell would freeze over first at the merest hint of a British major tennis tournament victory, might just be buying a pair of ice skates for the devil as Andy Murray is something of the bookies grand slam darling.

Ronnie O’Sullivan has managed to get through to the Quarter finals of the Snooker Masters after a nail biting opening game against Joe Perry. Ronnie O’Sullivan wasn’t playing his best ever snooker, struggling to get to grips with a replacement cue after snapping his favoured cue on Friday in a fit of pique. The cue that was broken had previously served Ronnie O’Sullivan well and assisted in his UK and World title wins, and was the subject of some regret after the event with Ronnie O’Sullivan being reported as saying “I really went to town, it felt really good. It wasn’t easy to snap it”, further adding “then I thought, was that wise?” The new cue that was used in the snooker match against Perry, was one of seven that were sent hurriedly from John Parris, one of the leading snooker cue makers, to O’Sullivan as replacements, and had been sent at such short notice that Ronnie O’Sullivan had barely had an opportunity to do more than basic practice with it, and indeed now requires some minor adjustments to make the grade.

There is something of a rumpus being kicked up after around 15 eleventh-hour online bets were made with Paddy Power on the identity of who the new Time Lord might be, these bets were all made from the home town of the actor finally named, the online bets correctly predicted in the last few hours that Matt Smith would be named as the new Doctor Who. Matt who comes from Northampton became a late odds on favourite with the online betting site after the flurry of late bets. Paddy Power’s online betting site is able to assert that all bets were made by residents of Northampton as address information is given by all new account holders when first opening their account. The BBC has investigated the allegations regarding the online bets on the new Doctor Who but can find no evidence of any insider knowledge being passed on by any of the team connected with the show, including the actor and his agent all of whom were aware of the identity of the new Doctor Who prior to the official announcement.

Online bookmaker Paddy Power have an astounding array of sensational betting markets available from the traditional sporting variety to the extreme and sometimes quite frankly ridiculous showbiz novelty bets. With some fabulous categories such as ‘Hatches, Matches & Dispatches’, Celebrities Behaving Badly and Princely Punts in the Paddy Power novelty bets section there is certainly an emphasis on the fun side of betting. Never a sportsbook to take themselves too seriously online bookmaker Paddy Power provide the less than ‘serious’ bettor with some very unusual novelty bets as well as the more regular sporting fixtures to place bets on.

With January upon us the talk is now directed at football transfers; Who wants to go? Who will go? Is there anything to be gained from a football transfer? Is there any money to spare in the current economic crisis to pay football transfer fees? One club with such a dilemma is Middlesborough, speculation has been rife that two key players are being courted to leave namely, Tuncay Sanli who has received interest allegedly from Chelsea and Stewart Downing who has received some interest from Tottenham Hotspur. Manager, Gareth Southgate has poured scorn on speculation that either player is leaving, stating repeatedly that allowing key players to leave in football transfers would further weaken their already precarious position in the murky depths at the bottom of the Barclays Premier League. However it would appear that Downing is now forcing the situation by making a formal football transfer request, Southgate is likely to remain unimpressed as he has been reported as being less than happy about the whole football transfer process.

Anti-betting campaigners in Australia are up in arms at Betfair promoting their online gambling sites on Australian prime time television, fearing the corrupting force of online betting on innocent Australian minors. This comes in the wake of a controversial partnership between Betfair and the CA (Cricket Australia) formerly the Australian Cricket Board which allows Betfair to promote the online betting site through cricket ground sign advertising at domestic and International matches staged through 2008 and 2009. In a reciprocal agreement Befair will receive the ground advertising and in return will promote cricket coverage provided by Nine Network on their online gambling site.

We can now report that Matt Smith is to be the eleventh BBC Time Lord, he takes his place with the elite set of actors who have played the role since the television debut of Doctor Who in 1963. Matt at 26 will be the youngest ever to play one of the most sought after roles on television, and is named after much speculation and comes no doubt as a bit of a shock to the bookies who had favoured Paterson Joseph to replace David Tennant who will step down from the Tardis at the end of the year. William Hill had closed the book on all Doctor Who betting believing Joseph as the only likely candidate for the role.