Eric Chappell, the creator of hit TV sitcoms Rising Damp and Home to Roost, has died aged 88.

Chappell, who was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, in 1933, had several novels rejected by publishers before he decided to become a playwright.

He went on to win a Bafta in 1978 for Rising Damp, starring Leonard Rossiter and Frances de la Tour.

Reece Dinsdale, who starred in Home To Roost, paid tribute to him, saying his scripts were “a complete joy”.

Chappell originally worked as an auditor for the East Midlands Electricity Board for 22 years.

When he turned his hand to writing plays, his Yorkshire-based story The Banana Box was staged at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1970

It moved to the West End three years later.

The show was then adapted to become Rising Damp, which ITV broadcast over four series from 1974 to 1978.

Rising Damp, which also starred Don Warrington and Richard Beckinsale, was later adapted into a film, which was released in 1980.

Residents in a North Lincolnshire village have been left feeling a little disorientated after a road sign was erected welcoming people to Yorkshire.

The mysterious sign, which can be seen by motorists entering Sandtoft, appeared earlier this week.

One resident said it was about 150m (492ft) from the original Welcome to North Lincolnshire sign – on the same side of the road.

Some have suggested it is the work of contractors unfamiliar with the area.

The local authority, North Lincolnshire Council, said it was unaware of the sign, while the neighbouring authority, Doncaster Council, has yet to respond to a request for comment.

Posting in a local Facebook group, one resident said it appeared the sign had been put up on the wrong side of the road and facing the wrong way.

An ITV drama starring Rob Lowe as a rural police chief has been branded “criminally inaccurate” by a UK force.

In Wild Bill, the Brat Pack heart-throb plays a grizzled US lawman transferred from Miami to the fictional East Lincolnshire Police.

Episode one saw the one-time Tinseltown hellraiser throwing a cabbage and being booked for speeding on a bicycle.

In a tongue-in-cheek tweet, the real Lincolnshire Police said: “The inaccuracies are criminal”.

“It’s definitely not what we are really like.”

The force said it would pass “concerns about the officers portrayed” to AC-12 – the anti-corruption unit featured in the BBC’s Line of Duty.

Chris Packham, the television presenter and naturalist, has accused a property developer of setting “wildlife traps” after it covered a hedgerow in netting on a site earmarked for 40 new homes.

The conservationist has joined local campaigners in condemning a move by Partner Construction to prevent birds nesting on rural land in Lincolnshire where the company has applied to build a new housing estate.

Pictures and a video have been posted online of the netting apparently trapping birds in what they called an “unnecessary attack on the natural world”.

The netting was set up on a long stretch of hedgerow in an attempt to prevent birds nesting, and consequently potentially halting until Autumn any construction.

He wrote: “It’s so utterly abhorrent that I feel sick. What has become of the agencies who should protect life from this? Is everything spent?”

He added that “if I were there I would rip those nets down. Do it.”

A mystery activist has now removed some of the netting, with the developers claiming whoever vandalised the mesh is responsible for any birds becoming trapped.

Campaigners are angry that the netting was installed before North Lincolnshire Council has ruled on whether the development should even go ahead.

In a secluded Lincolnshire orchard on a sunny afternoon, half a dozen people are posing for selfies in front of what is arguably the world’s most famous apple tree.

The tree may, in all honesty, look a bit past its best (gnarled, bush-like and propped up by a wooden support), but then, it’s very old – and very special.

Exactly 350 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from it and wondered, as he told a friend: “Why should it not go sideways or upwards but constantly to the Earth’s centre? Assuredly the reason is that the Earth draws it.” And so the concept of gravity was born, here at Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton’s birthplace and family home, between Grantham and Stamford in Lincolnshire.

This is the equivalent of £6 a gallon and the latest sign that driving is becoming increasingly unaffordable.

If this carries on “City Flight” will fizzle out and rural places will no longer suffer from the challenges of “blow ins” driving up house prices.

Instead those in our rural communities dependent on the private motor car, or public transport (which will undoubtedly diminish in the face of these sort of prices) will find themselves spending unsustainable amounts of their resources on simply getting about.

I have been doing some work over the last couple of weeks talking to communities in Lincolnshire about what makes their villages successful or in some cases (no names no pack drill) unsuccessful.

We have begun with a timeline and it is fascinating to chart the massive rise in population, in some settlements, as the introduction of the car, post war, gave families to mobility to choose to live in the country and work in the town.

Those days seem to be rapidly coming to an end- key question is  – can small scale and well meaning initiatives like the transition towns movement really address the challenge of “peak oil” or is something more significant needed?

All of this makes me think of those classic lines from “Heavy Horses” by Jethro Tull – “And one day when the oil barons have all dripped dry and the nights are seen to draw colder, they’ll beg for your strength, your gentle power, your noble grace and your bearing.”

My colleague Jessica is often confused about which “divvie card” to use in which shop as we have our own independent Lincolnshire Co-op as well as the national Co-op.  When I was at Lincolnshire TEC our Chair Keith Darwin became national chair of the Co-op through his role as CEO at the independent Lincolnshire Co-op.

I was confused about the relationship between the two organisations and he admitted that he still had some confusion about how the Co-op empire worked – he described Co-op politics as more “Byzantine” than local government. As I look back on this, having worked in a positively benign local authority world for 20 years, on an off, I feel strangely comfortable with this movement growing and developing.

I am biased, but in these globally cynical times, there is something reassuring about the notion of the Co-op. In Lincolnshire we also benefit from our Co-op CEO Ursula Lidbetter also being Chair of our new LEP – it is after all our County’s largest rural business.