The UK security service MI5 is advertising for a chief scientific adviser.

Deference has had it pretty rough for the last 100 years – and even rougher in the last 20. A quality that was already finding it difficult to make a case for itself in an age of universal suffrage and egalitarianism found itself undermined even further by the notion that we should instinctively think of ourselves as customers rather than citizens. This took some getting used to, but in some areas it turned out to be a blessing. Instead of approaching a telephone supplier or an energy provider as a humble supplicant we could start to think of ourselves as the paymasters, people who were owed deference rather than expected to show it.

The shortest ever Bond film is also the speediest. Every scene has been edited down to a breathless flurry, so the action zips along with scorching energy.

James Bond film lovers will recall the character actor James Bree as Gumbold, one of the arch-villain Blofeld's henchmen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the only 007 picture to star George Lazenby as the British Secret Service agent.

Alvaro Quiros has promised to keep his feet firmly on the ground after yesterday's Qatar Masters victory propelled the talented Spaniard firmly on to the world stage.

The lightsabre used by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars sold for more than £130,000 at an auction of Hollywood props and memorabilia.

If you'd asked me last week I would have thought it vanishingly unlikely that Steve McQueen's film Hunger and the latest James Bond film Quantum of Solace would turn out to have anything in common at all, apart from the the medium they share. One is a deeply serious account of the damage that humans can do to themselves made by a Turner Prize winning artist; the other is a rather stylish Ford advert with an apparently unlimited budget.