1. Towns granted city status to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

Once, it was just for children's tea parties. Now the trembling treat is being reclaimed as a delectable grown-up summer dessert. Gerard Gilbert reports

Unimaginable but true, Nigella Lawson, the prima donna assoluta of foodie porn, the doe-eyed, brown-haired, pink-sweatered doyenne of spatula and mixing bowl, the flirty sexpot of pot-roast and pavlova, hit 50 in January. The fall of years has not diminished her infinite gorgeousness by a jot or tittle, sprig or teaspoon, but some pretenders have been waiting in the wings, groomed by publishers and TV producers to take over the goddess's mantle.

That's showbiz

"It was the most unpleasant thing that has ever happened to me while filming – having my undercarriage dealt with by gaffer tape."

Andrew Marr dons a vintage bathing suit for the filming of A History of Modern Britain

The BBC executive Alan Yentob hit out at the corporation's critics and attacked ministers for trying to interfere in its affairs.

You may have noticed a story in other papers today about high saturated fat in recipes by the likes of Rick Stein, Nigella Lawson and other chefs.

You're right: this chill January morning isn't the most sensitively chosen of dates to start banging on about booze. But at least it's a topic those of you who enjoyed seven tipples too many last night will feel a certain kinship with, albeit one of complete revulsion if you haven't had a cup of coffee yet (if you're thinking of giving up caffeine as part of a New Year's health kick, may I recommend waiting until tomorrow? Ditto carbs).

The beauteous Nigella Lawson is one of the few celebrity chefs who doesn’t rate a mention in one of this year’s coolest cookbooks, In At The Deep End, from Hampshire’s Botley School.

Jamie Oliver is beating Nigella Lawson in the battle for the best-selling cookbook this Christmas, a retailer said today.

Essential skills for the modern world

What does the goggle box of delights have in store for us over Christmas?

Fergie offering lifestyle advice is pure class snobbery, while a minister giving advice on suicide is just plain creepy

When Pauline Hyde's husband fell so ill he couldn't even remember her name, she took her mind off the pain by writing a fruity account of life in the City of the 1980s

No wonder John Prescott could not get cured of bulimia. When the doctor asked him what was wrong he probably said, "In as much as over-consumeringness, that which is vomitatious to indigested, as you well know. Now, don't be interruption doctor, I've paid listening to how you've said – sickability, as such, of triflement and manyfold of chips, is forthcoming with each regurgitationingness of that which has undergone swallowment, both liquified and solidacious, and you can look at the reports to be backing this of certain, pukement levels have ascendified to alarmed figure, reaching frankly unprecedentious rates of outpourings that is highly inacceptable AS I HAVE SAID ALL ALONG."