My fingers were achingly sore and my head was spinning. I still had a sticky label stuck to me that read Lady Audley, and the phrase ‘goal-mate’ was echoing in my ears. There was a stick on moustache stuck to my handbag, and I had spent all night avoiding penalties and red cards. I had been speed dating.

Football boss Harry Redknapp told a jury today: "I have always paid my taxes."

The man who gave the world St Trinian's and St Custard's, who depicted the anarchy that lay beneath the English school system, and whose satirical pen skewered a throng of national stereotypes is no more.

The point of the tale of terror is not, in the end, the specifics of what kills us – the vampires, the elder gods, the serial killers – so much as the inexorable fact that something will. It is a reminder of death, and of an essentially tragic view of the universe in which any consolation, however welcome, is temporary. In this literature of secular apocalypse, the few happy endings are fleeting, and never eternal; like the other literatures of the fantastic, it is at its best when it says these central things so clearly that they tap into the sublime.

Narcissists live in a fantasy world – they think they are better, richer, more attractive and more intelligent than they are

The week in culture

It may not work for Ryan Giggs but as a get-out clause for philandering finches it is just about perfect: I can't help cheating, it's in my genes.

You can blame your Grandad. If you are caught in a moment of sexual infidelity it may be down to your genes. German scientists working with zebra finches have discovered that this normally faithful species has aberrant individuals who like to stray.

Poll shows that seven out of 10 people believe courts have been too willing to grant injunctions to celebrities

The growing culture of cheating to get ahead can only be countered by making virtue a habit

Bankers became public enemy number one during the credit crisis. They can expect even more opprobrium at home after an extraordinary survey carried out for Here is the City. From the poll of almost 2,000 male and female bankers, 72 per cent admitted to having "at least one affair", the overwhelming majority of which involved a work colleague. The survey found that, surprise surprise, a male banker was four times more likely to cheat than a female counterpart. Among the other choice nuggets, 37 per cent of the men decided on an affair as it was "cheaper than a divorce", and 24 per cent said they strayed because their wife now reminded them of their mother.

The former governor may soon find more claims about alleged infidelities resurfacing

Labour calls for Energy Secretary to appear in House / Cameron's support deemed lukewarm

Free school meals are no longer a stigma – and, bizarre as it may seem, can even be a status symbol. But the system is outdated and wrong-headed, says Peter Stanford