Britain's biggest bakery chain has reduced the size of several savouries while puffing up prices months after forcing the Government to back down over the “pasty tax”.

A 1962 painting by artist Francis Bacon of his lover Peter Lacy is expected to sell for as much as $40 million when it is auctioned in New York next month, Sotheby's said on Monday.

Molten mozzarella, provolone, fontina, mild cheddar and other cheeses will soon lurk in a crust near you

Serves 4-6

Memoirs of a failing memory

According to the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, anyone on earth is just six connections away from the Hollywood star.

The Gloucestershire council workers are working very hard to keep things going

Comedy actress Miranda Hart seems to be going on a new year health kick - and then undoing it with a cheeky tipple.

Great reputation versus a fat fee? Some celebrities should go compare their options, says Simon Usborne

Serves 6-8

On the morning of Christmas Eve, the bells of St Dunstan's sounded their jolly clangour across London. The shops of the Strand were lavish in their profusion of pies, puddings, currants, raisins, spices, candied peel and sugar mice. Hansom cabs clattered down the cobbles of gas-lit streets, and ladies in poke bonnets, mantled against the cold, purchased sturdy wooden toys for their adorable, curly-headed offspring.

Sketch

If nothing else the questioning of the country’s top taxperson was a study in exasperation today. Understandably, the Commons Public Accounts Committee was eager, desperate even, to find out from Lin Homer, HMRC’s chief executive, how it was that Starbucks managed to pay a trifling £8.6million in corporation tax on UK sales of - wait for it - £398million.

In one sense, there's not a lot in Hebburn that you haven't seen before. The essential dynamic of Jason Cook's warm and funny sitcom is unavoidably reminiscent of Gavin & Stacey – with young love leading to the introduction of an outsider into a close-knit Geordie family – and the fact that there are three generations under the one roof may also remind you of The Royle Family.