Mr Bean builds his dream house

Rowan Atkinson has applied for planning permission for a new Richard Meier-designed house in the Oxfordshire countryside.

The usual suspects are lined up on both sides - locals, as reported in the Mail and the Telegraph, are up in arms; but Lord Rogers and Professor Burdett both think it's great.

Couldn't we, just for once, have a controversial modernist project that Lord Rogers, after careful scrutiny of the drawings, decides isn't quite up to scratch; or one that Colonel Sir Tufton Bufton of the Old Rectory is pleasantly surprised to find doesn't conform to his preconceptions, and actually makes a rather wonderful addition to the landscape - in much the same way, now he comes to think about it, that the late Lord Burlington might have chosen to do, were he still with us.

It appears not.