WHARFEDALE and Aireborough may not be overly blessed by celebrity visits but if this month is anything to go by it would seem they are like buses - you wait ages for one and then two come at once.

Last Friday, in a sure sign that the country is about to be gripped by General Election campaigning from all the parties, no less a figure than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, paid a visit to Otley.

Here ostensibly to celebrate success in the local economy and falling unemployment rates, Mr Brown's visit, part of a northern publicity blitz, surely also marked the first stirrings of the Government's election campaign.

Leeds North West may have been a pretty safe Labour seat for Harold Best but the Liberal Democrats, focusing on attracting protest votes from those who still feel betrayed over the Iraq war, are hoping to claim it this time.

So Mr Brown's visit also served to give a very public endorsement of Labour's candidate for the seat, Judith Blake. Whatever the political motivations, however, a visit by the man regarded by many as Prime Minister in waiting can only have done good in terms of raising the national profile of Otley and Wharfedale.

And that profile is set to rise still higher when the town welcomes Princess Anne on Wednesday, January 26. Here to officially open the new Wharfedale Hospital, the Princess Royal's visit has come as a welcome surprise to many.

Who knows what else the year may have in store after such a star-filled start - we could see Michael Howard in Horsforth, the Queen in Guiseley or Bono in Bramhope.

But perhaps that would be greedy, and we should just be grateful for the year getting off to such an eventful start.