Hit & Run: The full spec on Britney's home

You were a child star, and then a Lolita pop princess with MTV at your tattooed feet. You got to dress up in a lovely red shiny jumpsuit and stroke pythons in your very own pop videos. Then, piece by piece, your fabulous life fell apart and you split up from your snake of a husband. You shaved your hair off, barricaded yourself into the loo with one of your sons and wound up in hospital. And now, just as the comeback single is released (a feminist anthem called "Womanizer" – grr!) the darn global economy tanks and your hopes of selling the marital mansion in Beverly Hills crumble to dust.

Here, we present the full spec on the home that Britney Spears is trying to sell – in the hope that somebody out there might want to buck the trend and invest $7.9m (£4m) in American real estate, and a piece of pop history. Offered partly furnished and decorated, this is the house in which Spears lost it and was strapped on a trolley and taken to hospital, "for her own welfare", surrounded by paparazzi.

The six-bedroom, six-bathroom "Italian Renaissance inspired" villa nestles in the Summit, a gated community of in the hills near Mulholland Drive. By local standards, it is not massive – a bijou 700 square metres. Apart from the "grand entrance foyer", there's a smoking room, wet bar (for poolside boozing), maid quarters, three garages and a library; the Italian theme is reiterated through out the property, with burnt-Sienna coloured walls and Hollywood rococo murals. There are grand staircases and mezzanines aplenty (handy for Dynasty-esque hysterical showdowns with your other half/treacherous sister/stalker). Upstairs, the master suite has "a romantic loggia" in which one may sip a colossal Starbucks and contemplate nature. Downstairs, the mahogany-coloured kitchen is fitted with Viking appliances, no doubt left in as-new condition by a previous owner not well-known for her homebody lifestyle.

But let's not be snide. In fact, its décor is more restrained than the average MTV-cribs interior. The swimming pool is neither infinity nor star-shaped but rustic and garlanded with greenery; the books in the library look, well, almost real. Am I selling this? Actually, I am not – Sotheby's Realty is, and anyone interested in this Tuscany-tastic pile should drop them a line. Britney, meanwhile, is off to "more privacy and wide open spaces for her to raise the boys". Let's hope her new neighbours like paparazzi.

A doctor's guide to the duvet-day epidemic

Quiet day at the office? No wonder. Three hundred and eighty thousand people are now calling in sick every single morning, a figure which has been climbing steeply over the past 10 days. The Lehman Brothers blues must be contagious.

Why are so many employers letting their workers sit at home, where they are more likely to be dosing themselves with Jeremy Kyle than cough medicine? The answer is that getting a day off work is child's play, due to the subjective nature of a number of illnesses.

Hang on, did I say getting one day off work? I meant seven. That's right: doctors cannot even issue official sick notes until someone has been off work for seven days. Once the week is up, if you think your medical complaint won't cut it down at the surgery, hobbling in to the office for just one day gives you the right to sign yourself off for a further seven. Retailers, expect a rush on boxed sets of The Wire and Mad Men.

Nottinghamshire GP Dr Ciaran Laughlin wagers that the most plausible (and least likely to be detected) excuse for shirking working is neither food poisioning nor "some 24-hour bug", but back pain. "Lots of patients have back pain, but whether it's bad enough to keep them off work or not is another thing," he says. "If you say it is so bad that you cannot cope at work, there is very little we can do to prove or disprove that."

So if the doc can't call your bluff, it's unlikely the boss can. The drawback to faking back pain is the histrionics you'll have to deploy once back at your desk. If facial contortions and intermittent low yowls aren't your thing, fall back on your bowels – after all, no one's going to ask to see the evidence. By Sophie Morris

Now that's what I call muzak

Michael Parkinson, éminence grise of light entertaiment, writes in his new memoirs that he doesn't approve of Simon Cowell – Parky reckons that 'The X Factor' mogul promotes mediocrity in the music industry. What, then, to make of his latest money-spinner, a series of Michael Parkinson-branded compilation albums that make Leona Lewis look like Thom Yorke? It doesn't stop there – in addition to Mike's favourite MOR and lounge jazz, we also get a website, www.michaelparkinson.tv, where you can access his blog on "my thoughts about the stories making the news...". Er, thanks. By Tom Hoskyns

Save one of his nine lives

The news that someone may have poisoned 27 cats in Weston-super-Mare has left residents in fear that their moggy will be next. But as the free spirits of the pet world, cats can be difficult to protect. "It's important to neuter males, making them less likely to roam – and to keep all cats inside during the hours of darkness," says David Grant, director of the RSPCA Harmsworth animal hospital. Ultra-protective owners might wish to consider pawtrack, a satellite tracker that for £99.99 plus £7.99 a month will keep tabs on your tabby. By Jamie Merrill