Elvis is 72 today. If you happen to spot him at Macca's or KFC today give him my regards. His contribution to world culture is embodied by his presence on the soundtrack of Disney's Lilo and Stich movies.

More pertinent, however, is the fact that January 8 is also the birthday of David Jones - not the Monkee or the department store chain, but the artist who would become known as David Bowie. Today he turns 60. Scary eh?

To mark the birthday of an extraordinary craftsman, here's a playlist of my favourite Bowie numbers. In no particular order, though I've tried to give some form of thematic flow. My favourite of all is the last, even if I was suckered in at the time by the (for 1980) brilliant video clip.

If we didn't know before, we do now. Australia's 5-0 drubbing of England in 2006-07 is the first such triumph since 1920-21. But which was the bigger achievement?

"The performance in the Ashes series has been a great disappointment and a number of lessons must be learned. This review will be comprehensive and broad ranging with the clear objective of regaining the Ashes in 2009 and significantly improving England's results in one-day international cricket in the next four year cycle."

- ECB chief executive David Collier, 5.1.07

Not since the Harlem Globetrotters last beat the Washington Generals has a foregone sporting conclusion been so rapturously and emotionally received by a sell-out crowd.

All over by lunchtime. Australia 5, England 0. Warne 708, McGrath 563, Langer 7698, Buchanan 68-11-10. Lots to reflect upon and digest, but that will have to wait for this evening.

"You got an MBE, right? For scoring seven at the Oval? It's an embarrassment."

- Dr Shane Warne to Paul Collingwood MBE, Sydney Cricket Ground, 4.1.07.

Now we all know that the credibility of the British honours scheme is in tatters, but the decision to hand out gongs to the 2005 Ashes team a year ago was really a bit silly, something that I wrote about at the time.

You have to hand it to the Murdoch comic books. One week they are celebrating - in advance - the Lord Of The RingsText Alert's 700th wicket, the next week they are celebrating his 1000th wicket. With that rarest or rarities, the full page colour liftout commemorative poster.

So what are we celebrating again? Shane Warne's 1000th international wicket. As in all "full internationals". Let me explain, by introducing the rickeyre.com vegetable index (More about the fruit index later)

Was this just another Pommy sledge, or a pagan ritual aimed at raising Sir Neville Cardus from the dead?

12.30am in Sydney, ten hours before the scheduled start of the Warne-McGrath-Langer-Buchanan grand finale. It has been raining fairly steadily for the last three or four hours here, about six kilometres west of the SCG.

Having said that, the forecast from the Bureau of Meteorology indicates that the showers will be restricted to morning and night.

The International Year of the Dolphin begins on a poignant note. Last month, the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin - the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) - was declared to be almost certainly extinct.

A victim of the long-term poisoning of the Yangtze River.

The baiji is the first species of cetacean to have become extinct in modern times, and it's the first large mammal to disappear as the direct result of man's pillage of the Earth's natural resources.