People
Dawkins to take on the US bible belt
Richard Dawkins, crusader for evolutionary theory, is to deliver a series of high-profile lectures in America's bible belt next year. Dawkins is visiting the US, where 50 per cent of people believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, to coincide with the paperback publication of his atheist manifesto... [continued]
Did Hirst really sell his bling skull?
Damien Hirst became the world's most expensive living artist when his diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God, sold for £50m. But a new book has art experts asking if the sculpture - named after Hirst's mother's response when he told her he planned to coat an 18th-century human skull... [continued]
After the coronation, Miss France’s blasphemy and yoghurt
Newly crowned as Miss France, Valerie Begue, returned to her native Reunion island in the Indian Ocean, a French terrritory, last week, to a heroine's welcome. She was the first Reunion islander to wear the Miss France sash since 1978. But over the weekend, a row erupted involving accusations of... [continued]
Attenborough speaks about Boxing Day grief
Sir Richard Attenborough has spoken of how he no longer feels able to celebrate Christmas, since the deaths of his daughter and granddaughter. The vetern actor's daughter Jane died at the age of 49 with her daughter Lucy, who was 15, in the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.... [continued]
In Brief: JK’s tears on memory lane
David Gest has been forced to postpone his one-man show David Gest is Nuts... My Life as a Musical after experiencing chest pains... JK Rowling has re-visited the Edinburgh flat where she wrote the first of her globally successfully Harry Potter novels - she was reduced to tears, saying she... [continued]
St Trinian’s Gemma Arterton - the new head girl of British film?
Gemma Arterton, who plays head girl Kelly in the updated St Trinian's film, which opened at cinemas at the weekend, is getting so many offers of work she's being called
the new Keira Knightley. Still only 21, Arterton has already appeared on TV opposite David Walliams in Capturing Mary, the recent... [continued]
Read the First Post review of St Trinian's 
See St Trinian's trailer
Berlusconi in drama over soap actresses
Italy's richest man Silvio Berlusconi, no stranger to the law courts, is under investigation again – and this time there are soap starlets involved. The newspaper La Repubblica has posted online a seven-minute excerpt of a phone call, secretly taped by police, in which the former prime minister apparently tries... [continued]
