Remarkably, it is seven years ago today that Hooting Yard readers learned of the exciting radio serial Pie Shop Deep Space Six. My informants tell me that it is still at the development stage, beset by teething problems. Here is that original announcement:

Hurtling at inhuman speed through the universe, the thoroughly exciting spaceship Double Pneumonia was headed for a galaxy so distant that it would take billions upon billions of generations of leafcutter ants to reach it. In command on the bridge was Star Captain Barbara Bel Geddes, accompanied by First Officer Mister Unstrebnodtalb, who was only half human. No one had ever worked out what weird extraterrestrial life-form had spawned his other half, and it was best not to ask, for therein lay madness.

And a certain madcap frenzy is what you can expect in the new science fiction drama Pie Shop Deep Space Six, currently being developed by a crack team headed by Mrs Gubbins, who has returned to Haemoglobin Towers. The elderly crone has put down her knitting and, fuelled by lots of piping hot cups of tea, is conjuring up some thrilling ideas for this new radio serial.

In episode one, for example, hostile plasmatronic aliens launch an attack on space station Epsilon Nova X-977, cutting off pastry supplies to the pie shop. Mister Unstrebnodtalb outwits them using a supersonic brain-zapping process involving lots of sparks and whooshing noises.

Mrs Gubbins has asked Sir Harrison Birtwistle to compose the theme music.