Broadcaster Libby Purves has spoken out about the sexism she experienced during the early years of her career at the BBC.

Make sure all eyes are on you

Had his father not been a tree surgeon, then it would be Billy Fentiman – rather than Billy Twelvetrees – making his England debut in rugby’s Calcutta Cup on Saturday. How so? Because the Gloucester centre’s father took his wife’s name when he married, to make his nascent arboriculture business more eye-catching.

Coronation Street star Michelle Collins has described how she was threatened during a "scary" confrontation with a group of teenagers on a train.

Love making stuff, or hate spending money on costumes? Check out our guide to making Halloween costumes...the lazy way!

United Carpets has become the latest retail casualty after it collapsed into administration, putting hundreds of jobs at risk.

A critical view

Meow meow

The PR machine in Downing Street was beside itself with joy at David and Samantha Cameron's visit to the US last week, with the "love-in" between Barack Obama and the Prime Minister surpassing Mr Cameron's other bromance, with Nick Clegg, and some even drawing excitable comparisons between Roosevelt and Churchill.

"I get the feeling sometimes that the staff want us to fail," said Stefan, one of three men who featured in Daddy Daycare, a Channel 4 reality series designed to address a social crisis that almost certainly doesn't exist. I don't mean for a moment, by the way, that there are no incompetent or deadbeat fathers out there. Or that it isn't useful for even the most well-intentioned man to learn some lessons about childcare. But the implication that today's men are unusually bad at fatherhood ("Modern British life has spawned a generation of dysfunctional dads") is surely not true. Even the horror statistic used to underwrite this exercise in mental re-education could be seen from another angle as a silver lining: "Almost half of all mothers feel fathers don't do their share," said the voiceover at the beginning of the show. Really? You mean that as many as 50 per cent of mothers now feel fathers do? The truth of it was that it wasn't the staff at the south London nursery Stefan had been sent to who wanted him to fail. It was the production company. And even they only wanted him to fail a bit comically in the first half so that he could recover in the second, make a public act of contrition, and score a modest triumph before the final credits.

This is a critical year for BBC comedy, when it will finally seek to address previous failings in giving a television platform to the funniest women in Britain.

Nasal New York indie kids Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were in London last night to remind us why back in 2005 they were tipped to be bigger than The Strokes. Part of the first wave of internet sensations, their self-titled debut garnered more buzz than Lana Del Rey.

Paul Lambert's eagerness to learn has helped him shoot from Wycombe to the big time and tonight he takes his high-flying Canaries to meet his old mentor. Simon Hart reports