Nigel is encouraged to tidy in a frock. It doesn't solve much, but we get to have a gawp

Their rivalry is the stuff of Olympic folklore but while Coe has been running London 2012, Ovett is keeping his distance

Beach volleyball, a sport with minimal following in Britain, was one of the most sought after events when tickets went on sale for this summer's Olympics.

When Kauto Star was preserved from further risk you could sense the sport’s sigh of relief

In a world where flamboyant headpieces and carefully-cut waistcoats are as ubiquitous as the high-society chatter that fills the air, attending races at Ascot is, in the words of one curt official, a formal occasion and "not one where you might dress as you would a nightclub".

Two weeks of celebrations are set to start tomorrow as communities mark the arrival of Chinese New Year.

According to Arena: Dickens on Film, one source of the author's appeal to film-makers was his "constellation of unforgettable grotesques". They are, the narrator continued, "characters every actor wants to play, characters impossible to overact". To which one might reply that while the first clause might be true, the second certainly isn't, and that grotesquery can be one of Dickens' besetting problems on screen. Adaptations of his work often run into trouble with the Dickensian, that caricature view of the writing that you can see in the original illustrations (which, like film or television, necessarily favour the concrete facts of the prose over its flavour). The Mystery of Edwin Drood has one big advantage in this respect, which is that it isn't terribly well known. When he plays John Jasper, Matthew Rhys isn't taking on a distinguished line of predecessors (as anybody playing Micawber would be) and very few of us at home will be waiting to see whether a beloved scene is correctly done.

If dross like Celebrity Big Brother is any indication of social mores and cultural trends – and believe me, it is – then the edict from the tastemakers is this: boobs are over. You heard me.

Pompoms and marching batons took centre stage in London as more than 8,000 performers took part in the annual New Year's Day Parade.

Northampton, the club who lured Chris Ashton across the rugby divide and turned the one-time league player into a wing good enough to command an automatic place in the England team, are resigned to losing their highest-profile back at the end of the season.

Wales lock Luke Charteris is to leave the Newport Gwent Dragons at the end of the season, the Welsh region have announced.

Anyone wanting to test the mettle of British classical music’s up-and-coming young stars might begin by checking out the annual parade of talent put on at Christmas by the Park Lane Group.

A Spanish court has thrown out a woman’s attempt to prosecute one of the Bible’s three wise men for minor assault, arguing that given the time lapse since the birth of Jesus, it was impossible to establish conclusively the nationality of King Balthasar.

Great Britain's beach volleyball duo Denise Johns and Lucy Boulton missed out on a podium place at the London Prepares test event at Horse Guards Parade yesterday as they lost the bronze medal match.