Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington's agent said the BBC did not take tough enough action against a comedian who joked on TV about her appearance.

Although Soupy Sales, who has died aged 83, will inevitably be remembered with a pie in his face, as befits a comedian who took an estimated 20,000 of them during his career, his slapstick brilliance should not overshadow his influence on a whole generation of Americans, including many notable comics who, as adolescents, teenagers, or even young adults in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were enthralled by the anarchic pleasures of Soupy's so-called "children's" shows.

David Goldhill, the CEO of the Game Show television network, never intended to be at the center of the United States' healthcare debate. After his father died from an infection he caught in a poorly run hospital, Goldhill became obsessed with the health reform, constantly researching it, asking questions, and talking about it at dinner parties.

First The Office, then Little Britain – now another British comedy is to make the perilous leap across the Atlantic.

That festering colleague slouched in the corner ... leave the fellow alone, he's merely crambazzled.

Mike Bongiorno, who has died aged 85, was a veteran TV host who made quiz shows popular in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s.

Erik Gandini’s documentary about Berlusconi’s Italy arrives in Venice already trailing controversy in its wake. The film, whose trailer has been banned by the Italian state broadcaster RAI, portrays a country that has undergone its own bizarre cultural revolution – through TV.