Breaker, breaker, reading you loud and clear, good buddies. And such.

Behold the glory of the new, working pie-man email. Not that it's any different as far as you're concerned. Apart, I suppose, from the fact that your emails will actually reach us now. Call us crazy old traditionalists but that's a quality we always admire in an email system. The old system was all gravy and no trousers, I'm afraid, so if you've sent us an email over the last few months and not had a reply please accept our apologies and do have another pop at it.

We've moved! Well, not in the real world (that takes far too much effort for our liking, and requires much concentrated pie-eating to build up your strength), but we have in the virtual one. Fed up with our web provider's server falling over at the most inconvenient moments, we've upped sticks and gone elsewhere. Not that you'll notice - our web address is still the same. But the main difference is that whatever time of day or night you choose to visit pie-man.com, we'll be here, rather than some strange error message. Enjoy!

There appears to be something of a spat going on in the world of pork pies at the moment - it's handbags at dawn in Leicestershire. Pie-maker Northern Foods has launched a legal challenge to try and stop the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association, which is attempting to make sure that only pies made in the town can carry its name.

They're after a European 'protected' status, which is designed so that only things traditionally made in a particular geographical area can use the area's name - so you can only make Newcastle Brown Ale in Newcastle, for example (although technically it's actually made in Gateshead, so we won't dwell on that). Which only seems right and proper. If the decision goes through, pie-man won't be able to whip up a pork pie in the staff kitchen and pass it off as a 'Melton Mowbray' pork pie, being as said staff kitchen is inconveniently a couple of hundred miles too far north. But there's a complication - Northern Foods has been making its 'Melton Mowbray' pies in Shropshire and Wiltshire for over a hundred years...so which tradition is the more traditional? A nice one for the lawyers to wrangle over, methinks. And just don't get them started on Cornish pasties...