Hodgson's assistant says chance was too good to miss and is sure he can combine it with TV work

Sarah Ferguson went to Turkey to film cruelty to orphans. Now she's been asked back – to jail

Sharp, funny and often cruel, over 50 years Private Eye has perfected the art of the satirical picture caption, says John Walsh

Charlie Sheen has signed up to appear on 'Celebrity Big Brother'.

The tone of the 8,674th and final edition of the News of the World (NOTW) was one of defiance.

On 15 June 1992, a scandalous book about life inside the Royal Family was released - firing the starter pistol on a series of unprecedented criticism of the institution of the monarchy.

The Duchess of York said not being invited to Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding was "so difficult" for her to cope with.

The laying of a wreath by President Obama at Ground Zero, New York, last week, after American marines had despatched the diabolical visionary behind the 11 September bombings, was described by commentators as "seeking closure". After an apocalyptic act of violence, and a decade-long pursuit of the perpetrator, here was a moment of silent reflection. Let the victims of unquiet deaths, finally rest in peace.

The Queen doesn't like him, so he wasn't invited. But the snub to Tony Blair makes a nonsense of claims that Friday's wedding has modernised a fundamentally Conservative institution

They say that no man is a hero to his valet, but in recent years the rise of the super-injunction has attempted to build a phoney shield of decency around selected celebrity sleazes rich enough to afford one. Though injunctions are modern inventions, their intention is as old as Adam; they seek to return relations between the sexes to the level of those idealised in Downton Abbey and shown in surprisingly harsh reality in the earlier and far superior Upstairs, Downstairs, when rich men could do exactly as they pleased to parlour maids, prostitutes and showgirls and get away with it.

I've been thinking about Reformed Characters this week, as Russell Brand and the Duchess of York – and their little Venn baby, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson – all variously parade their guilt and redemption as though they were the latest designer lust-haves. Frankly I wouldn't know guilt and redemption even if I had a threesome with them and they showed me a playback of it the next day, but it's certainly a very popular pose right now – even more so with the falling away of faith in this country. Which goes to prove that clever old GK Chesterton got it right when he said: "When a man ceases to believe in God he does not believe in nothing, he believes in anything."

Perhaps we have got to the point where deference and admiration are offered to people who have actually earned them

The Duchess of York has admitted to a "terrible, terrible error of judgment" after accepting £15,000 from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.