A collision which could have knocked Britain’s Alex Thomson out of the Vendée Globe round the world race has also affected his ability to communicate with his team base as he continues to make fast progress deep south in the Indian Ocean.

Police made almost 300 arrests and seized 61 vehicles and substantial amounts of tobacco and alcohol during a 48-hour crackdown on licensed premises across the capital.

Irish charm

Women who get a new lease of life through merry widowhood aren't a rare breed in either life or art.

Rooney Anand, the boss of Greene King, has come out strongly in favour of minimum pricing for alcohol, claiming cheap supermarket booze is killing the pubs trade.

The number of students using their bodies to make money has doubled in the past year, reports Charlotte Philby

Alpine cuisine is not a concept to make you high-five strangers in the street. Combining the gastronomic traditions of Austria, Germany, France and Italy, it has few home-grown dishes to brag about. One is raclette, which translates literally as 'Holding a lump of mature cheese in the fire until it melts, then scraping the result on to a plate with potatoes, cucumbers and vinegar-pickled onions'. How yummy.

The Odeon cinema in Glasgow's Renfield Street used to be the spool around which spun the highlight reel of Glasgow's weekend. It was Saturday night glamorous: heavy carpets, torches in the darkness; buckets of Spielberg and booming magic, slamming you back into your seat. In my hindsight, its opulence makes whichever omni-screened multiplexes we now patronise seem as drab as the business parks they inhabit. Back in the day, if you were Glaswegian and going to the pictures, you probably went to the Odeon.

I think I've seen this bloke down my local...

Whether you're in the market for fine wines and dining or an outstanding ale, these inns are on the money

Vested interests – including the drinks industry – have raised objections to the Government's plan for a minimum price at which a unit of alcohol can be sold. Millions of moderate drinkers will be unfairly punished, they say, if ministers impose a 50p unit price to mirror the one to be introduced in Scotland soon.

Reckitt Benckiser yesterday added US vitamins company Schiff to its existing bathroom cupboard of products including Gaviscon and Strepsils, with a $1.4bn (£877.7m) deal which marks the first major acquisition for its new chief executive, Rakesh Kapoor.

A student rugby club has been banned from playing following bad behaviour on a night out when members dressed up as disgraced TV star Jimmy Savile, his victims and police.

There's too much reality TV at the moment to stay abreast of it all