FORGET football, my birthday or even drawing Chelsea in the FA Cup — the highlight of my week has been having breakfast with Dirk Benedict at our training ground.

Growing up, he was a real hero of mine and I just couldn’t believe it when he was at Boots and Laces.

I grew up watching the A-Team and Battlestar Galactica so to meet Dirk was just so exciting.

I was completely star struck, along with Simon Francis, and was stuttering as I was trying to speak to him.

He was with us because his son Roland is training with our youth team and it was just great.

I haven’t stopped talking about it yet and rang up most of my family as soon as I got back from training to tell them about it.

They couldn’t believe it and the whole situation was just surreal.

Some of the younger lads weren’t too sure who he was and just carried on playing table-tennis but I wasn’t alone in my admiration.

Kevin Betsy was impressed and wanted to have a picture taken with him but was too embarrassed in front of the other lads!

We then went out to train and Dirk was acting as our ball-boy.

It was certainly something I thought I’d never see and the lads have been giving me a bit of stick about how excited I was.

We had a meal out with all the players and their wives and girlfriends that evening in Billericay and it is safe to say it was certainly mentioned a few times!

CONFIDENCE IS HIGH AHEAD OF LEICESTER TRIP

WE will again be making a few changes for the game at Leicester this weekend and we are going to be missing Jean-Francois Christophe too. But while they may be top of the table, our confidence is high and the Chelsea cup draw has given us all a real boost.

We need to forget about that for now though as we have some important league games coming up.

The next two months will have a huge say on what happens to us this season and we need to turn some of these draws we’ve been getting into wins.

WILL JUNIOR BE A SENIOR AT SINGING

Junior Stanislas was in great form at the weekend, scoring two goals on his debut, and he’s settled in very well already.

He’s a good lad and seems to have a great attitude too.

He will be doing his song before the game with Leicester on Saturday and Rob Milsom is doing his again because his version of My Old Man’s A Dustman just wasn’t acceptable.

He needs to improve on that and has a long way to topple the current leader, Lee Sawyer.

For entertainment value he’s been the best so far and I think he thought he was at Wembley Arena the way he was going for it.

>I thought we played well against Luton on Saturday and should’ve won by more.

We could’ve been 3-0 up by half-time but got there in the end.

Of course since then we’ve gone on to draw Chelsea and with it being my birthday on Saturday too it has been an extra special weekend for me.