Damon Albarn, the multi-faceted musician and lead singer of Blur, has criticised the Olympics for being "too corporate," despite agreeing to play a concert to celebrate the closing of the Games.

Thousands of people donated money yesterday in memory of an "inspirational" 30-year-old woman who collapsed and died during the London Marathon.

Sunderland 0 Wolverhampton Wanderers 0: Wolves manager accentuates the positive but eight-point gap to safety shows need for miracle

People who missed out on Olympics tickets in the first and second ballots are to be given the first opportunity to buy tickets when the remaining 1 million go on sale in April. Games organisers are considering allowing a 24-hour headstart for the estimated one million people who bid for tickets but didn't receive any.

High-profile gigs by stars including Madonna will go ahead as planned in London's Hyde Park this summer after a decision by councillors.

The St James' Park sign has been removed at Newcastle United's ground to make way for the venue's new name.

There are plenty of press-ups to be done, but a new military-style fitness break in Fuerteventura is no boot camp

For all the Michelin meals, first-class air travel and fat salaries, they are not to be envied

Last week, it was Fenton the dog harassing deer in Richmond Park, London. Now the authorities are having to protect the deer from humans scavenging their food supply for conkers or to revive the Christmas tradition of chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

A one-day festival in east London's Victoria Park, Field Day is awash with names faintly familiar from ones-to-watch and best-new-album lists. Now in its fifth year, Field Day has a swelled capacity of 20,000. You can feel it; just getting under canvas to see certain bands can be a challenge.

Arcade Fire’s live shows always seem to present a sort of organised chaos that you either love or hate, but judging by this sold-out Hyde Park gig – their largest UK show to date – they don’t have to worry too much about the latter.

With its bosky setting, there is no better venue in London for presenting a pastoral play than Regent's Park's Open Air Theatre. As such, it's also the ideal place for staging an anti-pastoral. The pointed and piquant counter-intuitiveness of such a project is proven by director Lucy Bailey and designer William Dudley's cunningly conceived and splendidly spirited production of John Gay's groundbreaking 1728 satire. Gay replaced the far-removed trappings of fashionable Italian opera with the criminals and prostitutes of contemporary London, swapping elaborately artificial arias for vernacular ballads set, ironically, to pre-existing airs.

Beneath a grey sky, a sea of umbrellas bopped up and down on Clapham Common as a crowd wearing anoraks and Wellington boots braved the rain to listen to some great British talent.