Most read/least read

It's Christmas Eve, and if the traffic in Croydon this morning is anything to go by we're pretty much the only people in work.

I'm no fan of the festive season, thanks to the combination of early deadlines and the lack of anything happening.

It does, though, give me the opportunity to study some of newspaper sales and web traffic statistics over the past 12 months.

I went through the most popular online stories of the year a couple of months ago, and not a great deal has changed.

The tale about a UFO allegedly spotted above Purley Tesco got tens of thousands of hits and still continues to draw people in many weeks on. The rest of the top ten is a faintly depressing list of stabbings and fatal accidents.

I've also had a look at the least popular stories of the year, and can reveal that Big Brother reject Ziggy takes the wooden spoon - just one person was interested in reading how he's moving on with his life after the reality show.

My own personal favourite story of the year was probably Maria Gatland's IRA background, thanks simply to its unexpected nature - it was also astonishing how quickly it went from being a rumour to a resignation issue.

Funnily enough, it wasn't the type of story that would be a particularly high seller - it was of great interest to us and to her colleagues, but possibly not to the man or woman on the street.