David Cameron attempted to portray the Conservatives as the party of the dispossessed yesterday. He marked 100 days as party leader with a visit to the headquarters of the Big Issue magazine, while Oliver Letwin, the man charged with overhauling Tory policies, said he wanted the party to help the unemployed, homeless, refugees and drug addicts. “It is a question of changing the world according to our lights so that it cannot changed according to theirs [the Tories']. To seek to only protect what we have is to risk losing it,” he said. “The test is this: what does the change mean, when all the argument is said and done, for ordinary people? This is the very core of New Labour – always pursue the values of solidarity and equity but never be Conservative about your means Unchanging on the why, but flexible on the how.”.

It’s about us and about our country.”Mr Blair hopes the policy review will lay the foundations for Labour’s programme for a fourth term. But because one way or the other, any government will have to meet these challenges in today’s world. That is the pattern of the future that we can’t alter.”What we can do is ensure that it is progressive values of fairness and social justice that govern this future, not those of the Conservative Party that would take our nation backwards It’s not about me. He wants to include critics of his education policies such as the think-tank Compass and “outsiders” such as frontline public sector workers who are not party members.Allies said the Prime Minister wanted to learn lessons from the education row, but he was confident of winning the argument for his vision of modern public services which promoted diversity in provision and ensured the least well-off were given advice on taking advantage of the new choices.Mr Blair is anxious to redraw the dividing lines between Labour and the Tories, which have been obscured by the Opposition’s support for his school reforms.He said: “The reason I advocate change is not because I want to provoke party division, still less because I see myself as Ramsay MacBlair betraying the Labour Party’s values or seeking my so-called legacy. I believe we now need to return to the debate but in a more practical and concrete form.”A campaign called Building a Progressive Future will be launched by Mr Blair after the May local elections to shape Labour policies for the next 10 years.

Tony Blair is to launch a new “Clause IV” debate to modernise Labour’s policies on public services in an attempt to heal the party’s wounds over his controversial school reforms. The Prime Minister acknowledged the need for a more inclusive debate inside the Labour Party a day after a rebellion by 52 of his MPs forced him to rely on Opposition support to win a crucial Commons vote on his Education Bill.
Speaking in his Sedgefield constituency last night, Mr Blair said: “Ten years ago, the Labour Party debated the new Clause IV modernising our aims and values. Of course they are not transparent.”But she said it was “absurd” to suggest parties should be barred from appointing their financial supporters to political seats in the House of Lords.People who fund political parties should be seen as “doing a public service for our democracy”, not treated with suspicion and disdain, said the Health Secretary.And she added: “There is no evidence at all for this outrageous suggestion that people have been buying peerages or have been offered peerages for sale.”Labour’s reforms have made Britain’s political culture “one of the most transparent and honest systems of political party finance in the developed world”, Ms Hewitt said.”There is now more for us to do, not only in the Labour Party… but right across the political system, so that everybody agrees on the best way forward, which I believe has to do with electing the House of Lords on the one hand and having the combination of state funding and stricter controls on individual donations and on party campaign spending,” she said.Labour’s former deputy leader Lord Hattersley last night said he was “horrified” by the sums taken by the party in loans without the knowledge of Mr Dromey.”It all demonstrates that the Labour Party leadership is too obsessed with the world of money. The Labour Party should not behave in this way,” he told BBC2’s Newsnight.”Labour Party supporters will be horrified, and quite rightly so.”And Lord Haskins, a former Labour peer and close adviser of the Prime Minister who was expelled from the party for donating cash to a Liberal Democrat candidate, said the affair appeared “a bit dodgy”.”When political leaders start talking to citizens about behaving better and respect and all that, you can’t be surprised that there is cynicism in the public when they see behaviour going on like this,” he told Today.Labour last night sought to defuse the “loangate” controversy, promising to declare all future borrowings – a move swiftly followed by the Tories.Mr Blair also signalled a string of changes to party funding, ministers’ private interests and the honours system, amid claims that wealthy donors were being rewarded with peerages.Mr Blair’s official spokesman said last night that an independent figure would be appointed to start inter-party talks about state funding for political parties.The Prime Minister also suggested he was in favour of another independent figure being appointed to advise ministers on their financial interests, something that No 10 rejected in the wake of the Tessa Jowell affair.And he said he wanted to renounce the right personally to nominate people for honours, other than Labour working peers and some individuals being rewarded for distinguished public service.. Controversy over the loans was ignited on Wednesday, when party treasurer Jack Dromey launched an internal inquiry after revealing he had not been informed about the money.Elected party officials had been “kept in the dark” by 10 Downing Street, he said.Mr Dromey is due to report to the party’s ruling National Executive Committee next Tuesday.Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday confirmed that he had been aware that the party was borrowing large sums from individual supporters.But he said he did not inform the House of Lords Appointments Commission about the money when he nominated three of those involved for peerages last year.Unlike gifts, loans at commercial rates of interest do not have to be declared to the Electoral Commission for publication in its quarterly register of donations to parties.The Commission moved yesterday to close this loophole, urging parties to declare their loans.Cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt today insisted there was nothing illegal or wrong about what Labour had done.But she accepted that it was “unwise” for the party to receive money in a way which gave rise to suspicions that it was offering honours in return for cash.And she said something would have to be done to make the system more transparent, suggesting she would like to see state funding for political parties and an elected Second Chamber of Parliament.The Health Secretary insisted there was no truth in “outrageous” allegations that Labour was selling seats in the House of Lords.”Nothing illegal has been done,” Ms Hewitt told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.”I think it has been unwise to have loans that – although they were perfectly legal and although nothing wrong has been done in terms of these allegations about peerages for loans and all the rest of it – nonetheless gives rise to suspicion.”I think the Prime Minister dealt with this very clearly yesterday when he said not only are we going to bring forward further proposals for reforms of the House of Lords, but we will also, with the other political parties and an independent body, look at how we make even further steps to ensure proper transparency in party political funding.”Ms Hewitt added: “Quite clearly, we have got to do something about the business of loans. Salaries start around £10,000, moving up to £20,000 for a top stud hand in a racing yard.Harriet appears in ‘A Stable Life’ on the Animal Planet channel, part of ‘The Mane Event’ premiering on Sunday at 6pm.

Concorde’s retirement was announced and the last British Airways Concorde flight took place on 24 October 2003. In 1962, Britain and France signed a draft treaty on developing such a plane and a prototype was unveiled five years later. The first supersonic flight took place on 1 October 1969, and commercial flights began in 1976. Alan Whicker, the television presenter, said: “Concorde was the best passenger plane ever built. If you flew in it or even if you saw her flying overhead she just swept you up. I fell in love with this glorious aircraft that looked as though it was going a thousand miles an hour when it was standing still.” Plans for the Concorde began in 1956 when a committee of experts was convened to consider the possibility of a commercial civilian supersonic aircraft. And although the programme’s makers admitted they had not predicted the result when the voting began, it delighted Concorde fans such as Tony Benn, the minister responsible for giving it the go-ahead, Barbara Harmer, the first female pilot, and Christopher Orlebar, who flew the plane 1,000 times.

Cecil Geddis always looks forward to St Patrick’s Day. While millions will be raising a pint in celebration of all things Irish, the nurseryman from Armagh will today be enjoying a well-earned rest after his busiest fortnight of the year. Since the beginning of March, Mr Geddis and his team at Hoophill Nurseries have been packing into boxes 80,000 small plastic cartons of sprouting foliage, each adorned with a cartoon leprechaun proclaiming “St Patrick’s Day, March 17″. Just in case there was any doubt, each carton, destined for wholesalers from London to Liverpool and Donegal to Dublin, is emblazoned with the words: “Authentic shamrock – grown in Ireland.” This is the green gold that is Trifolium dubium, the three-leafed plant used by St Patrick to convert Ireland.. It was always elitist and is now defunct. Yet the Concorde was last night named the winner of the Great British Design Quest – by a nose, of course.

The performances have richness and depth, but I can’t help feeling that these distinguished actors could have captured the essence of the trio in a reading, without having to dress up in false beards and wimples. Stage treatment – with the characters reciting chunks of epistolary prose at one another on a cosily cluttered, William Morris-papered set – involves pretending that an intelligent, witty, quietly powerful anthology of mutual preoccupations (religious belief, the mystery of friendship, the meaning of freedom) can constitute a play. “Plot has always been the curse of serious drama, and indeed of serious literature of any kind,” declares Shaw. The Best of Friends belies this verdict.The piece is revived by James Roose-Evans in a warm, elegant production that casts Roy Dotrice as Shaw, Michael Pennington as Cockerell, and Patricia Routledge as Laurentia.

Theatre critics often use the word “civilised” as code for “literate, humane, but undramatic”. It must be said that, by that token, Hugh Whitemore’s 1988 play is quintessentially civilised. The piece explores the friendship between George Bernard Shaw, Dame Laurentia McLachlan (a Benedictine nun who became the Abbess of Stanbrook) and Sir Sydney Cockerell, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, who arranged their first meeting when Shaw was in his late sixties and Dame Laurentia a decade younger.
GBS admiringly characterised Dame Laurentia as “an enclosed nun with an unenclosed mind”. Her way of life, though, made meeting hard, and their friendship, which lasted 25 years, was conducted mostly by letter. The piece recasts exchanges in the correspondence as dialogue, interspersed by diary extracts, with the last survivor, Sir Sydney, acting as our guide.The natural home for the piece is radio.

Permieres of Glinka’s Ivan Susanin and Ruslan and Ludmila in the 1840s mark the birth of a truly Russian school of composition 1877: First performance of Swan Lake, originally a failure but now a much-loved favourite 1917: Left-wing critics demand the removal of “bourgeois” composers such as Tchaikovsky from the repertory but moderate voices prevail 1920s: Bolshoi Theatre gives free concerts for soldiers and workers 2005: Reconstruction of the main Bolshoi Theatre stage begin, with performances only on its New Stage 2007-2008: Performances on both stages will restart Mariinsky Theatre (formerly the Kirov) 1740s: First Russian ballet company is set up in St Petersburg, laying the foundation for what becomes the Mariinsky 1783: Catherine the Great establishes an official home for the Imperial Italian Opera 1860: New theatre for the Russian troupe opens, named Mariinsky after the Empress Marie who ordered it 1862: Verdi’s La Forza del Destino receives its premiere 1935: The Mariinsky is renamed the Kirov by order of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in honour of Sergey Kirov, a Communist leader whose assassination the previous year marked the beginning of the Great Purge 2003: Dominique Perrault wins an architecture competition to design a new building for the theatre, which will sit alongside the old 2006: The Mariinsky Theatre closes for refurbishment. UK audiences are going to be in for a real feast.” The Bolshoi 1776: Founded in Moscow by Michael Maddox, an English entrepreneur, and Prince Urusov, a patron of the arts 1806: taken over by the Imperial government 1825: The present 2,000-seat Bolshoi Theatre opens. I think there will be ballet at one [venue] and opera at the other. It’s just a wonderful chance to see so much Shostakovich which we very rarely have the opportunity to see. To go ahead with the season, the Mariinsky has needed backing from the Russian Federation government, the foundation of the pools philanthropist Peter Moores and the Mariinsky Theatre Trust, whose 1,000 members have been supporting the company’s work since 1993. Caroline Gonzalez-Pintado, the Theatre Trust’s chief executive, said: ” The idea was really Gergiev’s baby, we’re just very pleased to be able to make it a reality.” She added: “I don’t think there will be an evening when the Mariinsky ballet is on stage at the same time as the Bolshoi ballet is on stage.

As well as the farm’s family, there would be someone to look after the cows, someone to look after the pigs and, in many cases, an Italian prisoner-of-war who actually lived on the premises, unlike the German POWs, who went back to their camp at night. It was not until the end of six decades of peace that sudden death came out of thin air. “I helped with the harvest.”She learnt that sheep are bright enough to recognise faces: “When I came back from university, they would all run towards me. If she told the Italian POWs what to do in a couple of words and then burst into tears, they leapt to it.
“I was tremendously happy. It was absolutely lovely to ‘calve’ a cow; I loved ploughing and harrowing.” This was ploughing practically out of Gray’s Elegy, using a “pram plough” pulled by a horse. She was paid a shilling(5p) per hour, which was more than the official Land Girls; this was because of her highly exaggerated claim to be fluent in Italian and therefore an interpreter for the foreign prisoners-of-war.

In school and university holidays during the early Forties, Nina worked as a farm labourer, first for free on the Welsh farm where she was staying and then for wages at a larger farm. In 2002 her husband was killed instantly and she was seriously injured in the Potters Bar crash. She survived, to be movingly portrayed as one of the characters in the David Hare play The Permanent Way, and to write Dear Austen, a powerful polemic addressed to her late husband, the former BBC World Service supremo Austen Kark. Potter, previously the assistant coach at St George-Illawarra, flew in from Australia and will travel with his new side to England today. The match-day duties at Warrington on Saturday will be in the hands of David Waite, Paul Donkin and Matt Adamson, the trio who have coached the club since Steve Deakin was sacked in December.
Potter will take control in time for the Dragons’ next match, at home to in-form Salford, on 25 March.Six Super League clubs are queuing up to make offers to the New Zealand Test forward, Roy Asotasi, who is out of contract at his Australia club, Canterbury, at the end of this season.Widnes have denied that David Peachey could be leaving them for Wigan.

But it is a reciprocal love affair, as Johnson displayed yesterday when staying largely loyal to the side which all but capitulated five days ago (the changes coming in the back row where Colin Charvis has won a “a well-earned rest ” and Alix Popham brought in at No 8 to shift Michael Owen to the flank). Perhaps that is what draws the players to him, although Jones was quick to highlight the technical reasons. “Scott’s educated us since he joined us four years ago,” he explained “We were millions of miles off things then. I would honestly say he’s the best coach I’ve ever worked with.” It has become a common entreaty from the squad, whose devotion to this strange Sydneysider has been almost Moonie-like of late.

But in contrast, these boys in red are dreading what now appears to be an inevitable farewell. “It would be a huge, huge blow as that would mean we’ve lost our whole coaching set-up a year before the World Cup.” And to those who insist that Wales would have more chance in 2007 without Johnson? “All I can say is they’re wrong Very, very wrong This man’s a one-off. As the day approaches when Ruddock’s “emergency ” replacement will announce whether he will stay in Wales or leave for the No 2 job in his homeland, the players are getting as excitable as the rest of Wales. So stop criticising them.” When Jones said “them” he meant Scott Johnson and this latest show of “player power” – in the verbal sense only – was undoubtedly on the Australian’s behalf. But that’s nothing to do with the coaches, that’s down to individuals. No, Stephen Jones marched in yesterday and all but grabbed his nemesis by the scruff of the neck.
“Why is everything you write negative, eh?” he said, pointing at the startled local reporter.

They ran a medical check to clear him for the trial, handed him some papers and a consent form But he felt rushed. Tom Edwards, 21, said: ”I feel pretty lucky but I feel bad for the people who have done it, it is not like me to turn down £1,100 for lying on my back but I was not comfortable with doing it.” Mr Edwards, of Oxford, wanted to do the trial to help pay off his student debt. ‘Something made me suspicious about the trial’ A former student described yesterday how he nearly took part in the Parexel trial but dropped out of it. Companies involved in testing new medicines were bracing for a collapse in volunteers. Around 300 safety trials, known as phase 1 trials, in which drugs are tested for the first time on humans, are run each year in the UK.

They require several thousand human guinea pigs who are paid an average of £150 a day, according to the MHRA. The MHRA said companies wishing to test a drug on humans had to apply for authorisation, under new rules introduced in May 2004. “Parexel would have provided us with information on the drug [known by the code TGN1412, made by TeGenero AG, based in Wurzburg, Germany] showing three to four years research including laboratory tests, tissue tests and trials on animals,” a spokeswoman said. The investigation will examine whether the incident occurred because of human error, contamination of the manufacturing process or a “freak of nature”, said a spokeswoman for the MHRA. A global alert was issued and a trial of the same drug, which had been approved but not started in Germany, was suspended. They removed samples of the drug used by Parexel and are in contact with Scotland Yard. German manufacturers TeGenero AG last night apologised to the men’s families.

Has she been murdered? Elder becomes aware that the missing woman has led an active (and clandestine) sexual life, taking the risk of meeting partners via the internet. It’s familiar stuff (broken marriage, resentful grown-up daughter), but the unforced nuances have real richness.Once again, Frank is coaxed out of retirement, this time by his ex-wife, to investigate the disappearance of a friend of hers. He reads books, but nothing in particular; he isn’t, unlike Resnick, particularly keen on music (anything classical he automatically assumes is Mozart) But his private life is delineated with consummate skill. Harvey is obviously aware that there would be only so many times he could have his ex-copper riding out of the West (via the A30 or the Penzance-Paddington train) to solve a crime, interact awkwardly with ex-colleagues and try to mend fences with his daughter. After all, Harvey created (and terminated) the successful Resnick books, and knows well how to kiss goodbye before staleness sets in.
Frank Elder is a very different kettle of fish from his jazz-loving predecessor, and one of Harvey’s masterstrokes in this series is to render his hero neutral and almost colourless. If you are one of the many crime aficionados who lapped up the first outing for John Harvey’s retired cop Frank Elder, make the most of this second appearance – there will be only one more. Emma loved it and we had a wonderful holiday in New England where we went to Louisa May Alcott’s house.The Modern Library, £5.99 (ISBN: 0375756728) 10.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Technically this is an adult book, but I read it to Emma when she was about 10. She particularly enjoyed the first few chapters when Jane is a little girl and she’s treated badly by her aunts and her cousins and then packed off to a terrible boarding school.Penguin Classics, £5.99 (ISBN: 0140434003). All her books are wonderful, but this one with the irritable sand fairy, the Psammead, is a particular favourite.HarperCollins Children’s Books, £4.99 (ISBN: 0007196873) 9. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott I try to get every girly girl to read this one because those four sisters are so real. Everybody’s favourite is Jo, the tomboy who wants to be a writer.

It’s about a rich, but not spoilt, little girl who’s left at a boarding school when her father loses all his money. Here she has to be a maid and live in the attic, where she has a pet rat as a friend. It ends happily and is a good, girly read.Penguin Popular Classics, £2.99 (ISBN: 0140622373) 8. Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit Nesbit wrote in Edwardian times so her books are a little dated, but she has a lively style and they’re particularly good to read aloud because each chapter finishes the story within it. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett Instead of a rags to riches story, this is a riches to rags story. And there’s the saintly cousin, Helen, who got on my nerves terribly, but my daughter thought she was wonderful.Wordsworth Editions Ltd, £1.50 (ISBN: 1853261319) 7. They really are lovely, engaging tales.Orion Children’s, £9.99 (ISBN: 1842552473 ) 6.

“Random Rules” meanwhile boasts his definitive opening line: “In 1984, I was hospitalised for gross imperfection”. He’s wearing a black suit, and looks haggard, hunching over the music stand from which he reads his lyrics.The Silver Jews, meanwhile, live up to their Nashville heritage, playing Cosmic American Honkytonk music They’re a crack band, hampered only by muggy sound Even so, they’re worth it. He steps out to make his UK debut to a full house heavy with underground Americana aficionados. Last year’s Tanglewood Numbers was preceded by a suicide attempt, sobriety, marriage to Cassie Berman (on bass tonight), and new engagement with the religious side of his Jewishness.
Having made so many traumatic breakthroughs, playing live, which they’ve done several times in recent months, must have finally seemed a minor matter.

Bright Flight (2001) was recorded immediately after two of his friends fatally overdosed, as his own addictions to crack and vodka took hold. Silver Jews songs share with Pavement a sardonically clever concentration of ideas, and a consequent suspicion of emotional distance, as if their wit is their point. But Berman’s perfectionist craft, and the suffering and redemption his songs describe, show their seriousness. Berman meanwhile recorded seven Silver Jews albums in his Nashville home, often with Malkmus’s involvement. He has known musicians who have been less picky, such as his former bandmate Steven Malkmus, who went on to be leader of the Nineties alt.rock kings Pavement. David Berman’s dread at playing live has kept his Silver Jews a studio band for the 16 years of their existence.

Catt, the Exiles’ centre, is carrying on for another season but Bracken is retiring after a distinguished career.According to Brian Smith, Irish’s director of rugby, Catt is in good enough form to resurrect his England interests.”They say ‘Catty is fantastic, but…’, and what they mean is, ‘but he is 34′,” Smith said “Well, that doesn’t matter. The Exiles still have two games, at least, to play – a Premiership semi-final play-off next weekend at Leicester, where Irish last lost an away match in all competitions at the end of November, followed by the European Challenge Cup final against Gloucester at The Twickenham Stoop the following Sunday. This match was as much a tale of two 34-year-olds, Mike Catt and Kyran Bracken, as it was about London Irish claiming their highest finish in the Premiership. Wasps: Tries Worsley 2, Van Gisbergen, Sackey; Conversions Van Gisbergen 4; Penalties Van Gisbergen 3.Gloucester: O Morgan; J Simpson-Daniel, M Tindall (J Bailey, 40), A Allen, M Foster; R Lamb (L Mercier, 72), P Richards (H Thomas, 40); P Collazo (T Sigley, 76), M Davies (O Azam, 72), J Forster, J Pendlebury (A Eustace, 72), A Brown, P Buxton (capt), A Hazell, J Forrester (L Narraway, 65).Wasps: M van Gisbergen; P Sackey, J Lewsey, S Abbott (F Waters, 76), T Voyce; J Staunton, E Reddan (J Honeyben, 80); T Payne, J Ward, P Bracken (J Va’a, 76), S Shaw, R Birkett, D Leo, J Worsley, L Dallaglio (capt).Referee: A Spreadbury (Somerset).Play-offs* SEMI-FINALS Sunday 14 MaySale v Wasps(Edgeley Park, 13.30 )Leicester v London Irish (Welford Road, 16.00)* FINAL Saturday 27 May(Twickenham, 15.00). Gloucester took a couple against the head on Saturday and Forster, their generously-proportioned tight-head prop, lasted the full 80 and grew in stature (metaphorically rather than literally, thank the Lord) in the second half, which is no mean achievement for a mere 19-year-old.The Londoners picked on him from first minute to last – a punch here, a patronising tap on the head there, a nasty word in his ear somewhere else – yet failed to subdue him.

If they cannot deal with a young pup at scrum time, what price their chances of dominating the fighting dogs awaiting them up north?Gloucester: Tries Allen 2, Lamb, Bailey; Conversions Lamb 3; Penalties Lamb 2. If it goes on like this, we’ll need 40,000-seater stadiums to cope with the demand. Who’d watch football when they can see rugby as it’s being played at the moment?”While Wasps are still involved in a tournament, they expect to win it. To put one over Sale at Edgeley Park, however, they will need a 100 per cent improvement at the line-out and a considerable degree of sharpening at the scrum. There again, everyone in the Premiership has been scoring heavily in recent weeks.

Dallaglio, some captain when it comes to summoning the furies away from home, delivered his most productive spell of the season as the contest reached its climax, and with the likes of Worsley, Josh Lewsey and the hard-working hooker Joe Ward taking control, there was an air of inevitability about the conclusion.”We need to sort ourselves before we go to Sale for the semi-final,”admitted Wasps’ head coach, Shaun Edwards, who in conjunction with Ian McGeechan has precisely six days in which to concoct a strategy to derail the most aggressive and consistent side in the country.”We’ve conceded nine tries to London Irish, now four to Gloucester It isn’t good. We needed to play in the right areas, and we weren’t finding them. Sometimes, you have to play smart and play sensible.”A failure of nerve on Ryan’s part, or a necessary clipping of the wings in the face of the kind of response common to champion teams – especially three-time champion teams, like Wasps? Ryan slept easy in his bed on Saturday night, entirely comfortable with his decision. He had already seen his infants overdose on their own enthusiasm in the first half – “Our game management was appalling; we kept trying to score from our own 22 and gave Wasps high field position every time,” he barked – and was fearful of something similar occurring at the last.As it turned out, Mercier and his fellow old-stagers, Adam Eustace and Olivier Azam, could not prevent the Londoners claiming the one available place in the Premiership play-offs with a try by Joe Worsley two minutes from the end of normal time.

“But there was still plenty of time for Wasps to do what they do best, which is build pressure in the late stages of a game. “We were points up, and yes, we’d done some brilliant things in that third quarter,” the coach said. Gloucester had absorbed wave upon wave of brutal assaults from a Wasps pack ogreish by comparison with the home side’s forward unit. When the Londoners coughed up possession, Lamb might have cleared his lines with the boot. Instead, he cleared them with a combination of brain and technique. Simpson-Daniel’s playful circumnavigation of a thoroughly discombobulated Lawrence Dallaglio was the icing on the cake.Yet Ryan withdrew Lamb from the fray when push really came to shove, replacing him with Ludovic Mercier.

All you have to do is read them, evaluate them and see if you can pick the genuine one from the fakes Ready? Here we go!
1. Police in the German town of Mainzdorf were puzzled by an outbreak of vanishing post-boxes. The post-boxes, some small, some man-sized, have all been taken off the wall or prised out of the pavement So the police set a trap. They erected a complete false post box with an observer inside, and placed it at the point where they thought the next post-box would be taken from They were right.

In the end the charity had to pay £69,600 for a pair of Venetian blackamoor figures which stood in her drawing room and an astonishing £15,600 (pre-sale estimate of £300) for the book in which her chef wrote the menu each day

More from Janet Street-Porter. Somehow, I cannot imagine David Beckham doing any of this, can you?* A charity has had to buy back some of Princess Margaret’s personal belongings at the Christies auctions which raised over £13.6m, adding further controversy to the sale. Historic Royal Palaces manage the Princess’s former home in Kensington Palace, on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, from which they receive no funding The charity exists solely on donations and admission fees. It is mystifying why the Princess’s two children did not donate some pieces to commemorate their mother. This week he had to contend with jellyfish, sewage and the busiest shipping lane in the world.