The ‘wedding' coincides with Bertie's 80th birthday and Betty being chosen as the new face of Bassett's Red Liquorice Allsorts, the first character to be introduced in those 80 years.

Over 60 factory workers from the Bassett's line were given time off work to celebrate with the happy couple. Thank goodness for a bit of silliness!

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Modesty should preclude me from mentioning this, but if I don't report on it, who will?

The expert number-crunchers that constitute this company's statistics team have just let it be known that the number of visitors to the VI website has increased year-on-year (taking the figures for the January issue) by no less than 3,460 per cent!

This follows a sustained growth pattern over the year that suggests that perhaps, just perhaps, we are doing something right!

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AVEX exhibitors please take note... being by far the longest-established magazine serving the UK vending industry, we at VI are naturally enthusiastic about helping to make this year's AVEX a success - for exhibitors, visitors and the industry as a whole.

While the vending industry has something of a history of taking recessions head-on and fighting back successfully, this time it could be that we really need to be all pulling together.

For our part, as well as taking a stand at the NEC, of course, I want to take every opportunity to ‘talk -up' AVEX to the benefit of all concerned. To that end, we will be running two AVEX Preview editorial features - one in the April issue and the other May - to give all those companies which have invested in the show the best opportunities to promote what they will be featuring on their stands. So let's be hearing from you! The all-important deadline for the April issue is Wednesday 11th March, and for the May issue Thursday 9th April.

More information on our bumper AVEX issue, including a stand-by-stand directory, will be coming soon...

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According to the excellent American vending magazine Vending Times the subject of vending took centre stage at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Coca-Cola and Samsung unveiled a new Coke machine created jointly to offer consumers a ‘multi-sensory experience through touch-screen technology'.

A dynamic 50-inch touch-screen interface on the machine front features graphics of available beverages, replacing traditional selection buttons. Customers can rotate the image of the bottle to view nutrition facts on the back. When not in use, the multimedia machines broadcast advertisements.

Now, doing what I do for as long as I have been doing it, I read a lot about vending, write a lot about vending and even talk a lot about vending, but I don't dream about vending. Yet I am convinced that I have come across something like this ‘new' Coke machine before in the UK.

Am I right?

John Sewell