The court is the power of the state at work. As such, it must be open to scrutiny

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

Romantic hero, sex addict, troubled intellectual, IRA hunger striker. He can play the lot, and more. And an astonishing run of performances has taken him from obscurity to the brink of the Oscars

Christmas Island is a naturalist's dream, finds Kathy Marks (but a kabourophobe's nightmare)

English rugby is divided into two camps: those who consider Jonny Wilkinson to be the best player ever to pull on the white jersey – pretty much the only player worth watching, in fact – and those more realistic souls who decided long ago that the outside-half was not quite the genius his many thousands of supporters made him out to be. There is no disputing this much, however: no individual ever gave more of himself to, or prepared more thoroughly for, life in the international arena.

The case against unintelligent design

A pair of lightweight spectacles with in-built stereoscopic cameras similar to those used in computer games consoles could soon be helping the blind to see again, scientists said on the eve of the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition which opens today.

Larry Leight has been designing sunglasses for the famous and fabulous for 25 years. He talks to Harriet Walker about the relaunch of his most enduring styles

When I was little I had perfect vision. Until I went off to university, I was consulted on all things near (the ingredients in a can of soup) and far (street signs). "Yours will go too," my mother would say when I tried on her glasses and quickly flung them from my head before they made me dizzy.

The Seventies are a tough time, and Glasgow is a tough place in an unflinching coming-of-age drama