The Government has helped to ensure there are no empty seats at the Olympics by buying 8,800 tickets, at a cost of just under £750,000, for ministers, civil servants, councillors, council officials and their guests.

A billionaire pal of the Clintons has bought the elite chain of private members clubs

The comedian Michael McIntyre has told how a career-capping night of triumph descended into "nastiness" that left him feeling wretched at an awards event in January.

Speed Deaver

Hollywood star Martin Sheen has described his troubled son Charlie's struggle with addiction as a disease "as dangerous as cancer".

Towards the end of his second term, while reeling from public anger over the Iraq war, Tony Blair did a curious thing. He used the announcement of a new crackdown against crime to start a debate about the role of the 1960s in our culture.

First of all, what is work?" wrote Bertrand Russell in In Praise of Idleness. "Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid."

If you want David Cameron singing Benny Hill's "Ernie" on your iPod, or a download of Johnny Vegas talking about how his dad skinned his pet rabbit, or even Kathy Burke requesting a life-size laminated photograph of business guru James Caan to use for bodysurfing, then your time has come.

PG Wodehouse's quip about it being easy to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine probably counts as dinner- party bigotry these days. But being married to a Scot I reckon I'm permitted a bit of licence and besides it's true. At least according to a revelatory documentary called The Glasgow Effect, in which doctors and sociologists analysed just what it is about the city that makes people die younger. Presenter Iain Macwhirter had the idea when he was diagnosed with heart disease. Despite exercising, not smoking and possessing good genes he was told "Scottish men just get heart disease". Was there, perhaps, "something dark in the character of the city", he wondered. Can you, effectively, die of geography?