Wha..hang on...the recession is over? When did that happen? My god, it's always the way, you go to Devon on holiday to get a rain tan and when you come back everything's been moved.

The front pages said it all: "Mergers back, factories busy - recession is finally over." You could almost still see the space where the line "now for God's sake let's talk about something else" had been deleted.

This has to be the first recession in history that has ended purely because everyone just got bored with it. We media were blamed with egging it on at the beginning but now, like a mid-strop teenager, we've had enough.

What shall we turn our evil raygun of doom and gloom onto next? We've had our global financial meltdown and Jordan and Peter Andre have divorced. If a senior Royal and/or Kerry Katona don't pop their clogs soon we're in real trouble.

There is actually plenty of evidence to show we might be past the worst of it - the FTSE 100 is looking healthy, government figures show that British manufacturers have increased production for the second month on the trot and the catchily-titled National Research for Economic and Social research thinktank has declared that the recession actually ended in May. Even house prices are going back up.

And, of course, there's nothing like a big merger, and the deal between Orange and T-Mobile and the Kraft £10bn takeover bid for Cadbury show that there are plenty of people out there feeling pretty confident, and I imagine that they know much more about this stuff than me.

Is it all really this simple? Can it all end seemingly as quickly as it began?

If you want to know the serious answer to that question then consider a recent cover of Newsweek in the US that declared: "The recession is over! Good luck surviving the recovery."

The feature that accompanied it is obviously very US-focused, but it's a very interesting look at just why we're not out of the woods yet. While we may be heading back up the other side of the trough, we're still in a trough and there's a lot more heartache to go through and tough decisions to make yet.

But let me know what you think at the email below - is YOUR recession over?

Andrew Davies, editor, kbbreview

Email me direct: andrew@kbbreview.com