Nobody should have been surprised by the news that the 55-year old comedian Frank Skinner is to become a father, after all, he’s never lost the glint in his eye. Grey-haired he may be, and perhaps a little bit more stately at times, the veteran joker can still nurture an audience.

Where the jokes come naturally

Around 200,000 oil paintings, representing the entire catalogue of the national collection, are to be made available online.

The Last Word

Comedy: I liked Roisin Conaty at the Soho Theatre. She won Best Comedy Newcomer at Edinburgh. She was her own support act, so supporting a character she played who was nothing like her real self.

When I wrote, from my own jaundiced viewpoint, that Manchester had a greater claim to beEngland’s second city than Birmingham, I was braced to expect a torrent of missives from angry Brummies.

The pride of Frankenstein

Edinburgh's shabby-chic civic chambers became the spiritual home to the best and brightest comic talents. Carol Sarler can't stay away

Coutts, the Queen's bank, is under investigation from the financial market watchdog over a fund it sold to customers including TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, it emerged yesterday.

The long, boozy lunch may no longer be a part of media culture, but you'd never know it from all the new restaurants opening in Soho. Just when it seemed that chain cafés and bars would choke the life out of London's creative heartland, the place has been revived by an infusion of exciting, independently-owned new openings.

The Rolling Stones were celebrating their first album number one in 16 years last night, as a re-released Exile on Main Street hit the top spot.

Perhaps it's the beard wot done it. Adrian Chiles's controversial face fur arguably doesn't cut it on Friday nights when, it was confirmed this week, Chris Evans (pictured, top), will occupy The One Show sofa alongside the sufficiently glamorous Christine Bleakley. BBC bosses expect Evans, the clean-cut (well, clean-shaven) new star of mainstream BBC programming, to sprinkle the 7pm magazine show with a bit of stardust in a new-look end-of-week edition. Expect sharper suits and more purple – a house band, perhaps.

A background of ethnic ambiguity inspired David Baddiel's new film, <i>The Infidel</i>