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Winona Ryder taken ill on plane

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:49:41 GMT

American actress Winona Ryder was taken to hospital today after becoming ill on a flight to London.

Sergeant leaves Strictly

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:11:35 GMT

Former political journalist John Sergeant is pulling out of Strictly Come Dancing.

Sergeant waltzes away from Strictly

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:11:35 GMT

Former political journalist John Sergeant is pulling out of Strictly Come Dancing.

Pandora: Westwood lashes out at ministers

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

No longer quite the anarchistic firebrand she was in the 1970s, Dame Vivienne Westwood seemed, for a while, to be mellowing with age.

Hit & Run: High life, or Lo life?

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Stop the presses! Hollywood A-lister ventures away from the red carpet and into... um, Essex. Yes, you read correctly: last Sunday, Lindsay Lohan – the actress, socialite and all-round princess of Hollywood – made the somewhat surprising decision to visit the county best known for its fondness for fake tan, miniskirts and white stilettos.

Man of letters: Alistair Cooke's century

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Alistair Cooke, perhaps not the finest but surely the most famous of all foreign correspondents, was born 100 years ago tomorrow. His weekly radio broadcast, Letter From America, began on 24 March 1946. The last one was transmitted on 20 February 2004, although 10 more days passed before the old boy would concede that his time was up. On the advice of his doctors, he formally announced his retirement on 2 March 2004, and before the month was out he died, aged 95.

Chrissie Rucker: colour and the White Company

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Chrissie Rucker set up The White Company in 1994 as a 12-page mail-order brochure. She now has 450,000 customers a year, produces eight brochures and has opened 28 shops. In addition to running the business, Rucker has four children with her husband Nick Wheeler (who runs Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts), and the couple have just moved to a house near Oxford, which they are renovating.

Sheikh 'felt personally betrayed' by Jackson

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:48:34 GMT

An Arab sheikh who spent a fortune on a project he thought would revive Michael Jackson's career felt "a strong sense of personal betrayal" when the pop superstar walked out on the deal, a court heard today.

Great interviews of our time

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:50 GMT

For more than two decades, the interviews published in 'The Independent' and 'The Independent on Sunday' have been the envy of the rest of the media. From this weekend, readers have a chance to be reminded why, and to savour some of the most celebrated encounters again, in two 128-page anthologies – one devoted to men and the other to women.

Auction reveals the secret life of Spike Milligan

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

It sounds like one of the jokey stories he would tell in a poem or novel. When a wrecking ball sliced a nearby Victorian block of flats in two, Spike Milligan spotted a grand piano left in a disused apartment. Approaching the foreman of the building site, he bribed him with a fiver to hand over the instrument.

Jackson sued for 'reneging' on deal to perform Sheikh's songs

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

The pop superstar Michael Jackson reneged on an agreement that he would perform songs written by an Arab sheikh who paid him $7m (£4.7m), the High Court has heard.

Taboo-buster: the dark side of Jimmy Carr

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

'If a giant ape and a table-tennis champion got into a fight over a karaoke machine, would the newspaper headline be 'King Kong Ping Pong Sing Song Ding Dong?'" Jimmy Carr's smooth features crumple with faux anxiety for a moment then relax as he leans back on the sofa, satisfied at another well-crafted joke, well told. The comedian's head fairly bulges with such perplexing trifles. His current live show features a segment in which he raps out 80 so-called pieces of "brain candy", along the lines of "That cartoon character, Asterix. I wonder how rude his real name is?" and "Suicide bombers. What makes them tick?" in just 10 minutes. "They're unbelievably silly jokes," admits Carr. "But if you have 80 of them in the row, bang, bang, bang, there's a collective 'Let's give into it' in the crowd."

Pandora: Opik's anti-terror crusade continues

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

He may be down but the man's not out: having lost out on the Liberal Democrat presidency, Lembit Opik has no intention of going quietly.

Hit & Run: Lost in music

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

It's tempting to hope that The Beatles' fabled 14-minute track "Carnival of Light", which Paul McCartney wants to release 41 years after its recording, will be a magnificent avant-garde assemblage of noise. But the truth is that just because it was John, Paul, George and Ringo wandering around the studio banging things and shouting "Barcelona!" doesn't mean the result will be a masterpiece, no matter how often McCartney mentions Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was never released because the other Beatles thought it "too adventurous". This is the same band that would release such fare as "Revolution 9" on The White Album, so chances are that "too adventurous" was their way of gently letting Paul know that "Carnival of Light" was a bit rubbish.

Race and identity in 21st century Britain

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

By comparison with the rich heritage of Saskia Nava, who weighed in at 6lbs 13oz at London's Royal Free Hospital last month, Barack Obama's mixed ancestry appears so mundane that it might struggle to arouse the interest of producers on Who Do You Think You Are?

Taboo-buster: the dark side of Jimmy Carr

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

£1m bid for 'baby Beckham' house

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:30:05 GMT

The house David Beckham lived in as a baby has attracted offers of £1 million, it was claimed today.

Mandelson 'would love to be asked' on Strictly Come Dancing

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:40:01 GMT

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said today that he "would love to be asked" to fill John Sergeant's shoes on Strictly Come Dancing.

Pandora: BBC's Prix is not right for Murray

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone may claim that moving the sport from ITV to the BBC won't harm its coverage, but others in the racing world aren't so sanguine.

Man of the world: Leonardo DiCaprio

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

If yesteryear's Hollywood leading man was merely content with saving the world on-screen, then today's film idol must be seen to be saving the world off-screen, too. But this won't be news to anyone who has followed Leonardo DiCaprio's environmental campaigns over the past eight years, putting him at the forefront of a new breed of politically aware actors whose numbers include Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

Garry Kasparov: The master who won't be Putin's pawn

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Garry Kasparov was involved in some epic clashes during his time as the world's leading chess player, but of late, he's picked an opponent that he seems most unlikely to defeat: Vladimir Putin. Revered in Russia as a chess legend, he has become persona non grata by dint of his withering attacks on the country's leader, who he says has perpetrated "the greatest robbery in the history of the human race" by dividing the proceeds of Russia's wealth among his cronies.

How We Met: Diana Hawkins and Richard Attenborough

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Diana Hawkins, 70 , has been Sir Richard Attenborough's business partner for 50 years. After starting as his publicist in 1959, she became his script editor and ultimately co-producer. She lives in south London.

My Week: Stephen K Amos

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Monday

I'm appearing in a well-known cookery show so I was up late last night practising. The idea is to make a dish with ingredients you've never seen before. I'm no master chef but I try my best. It's so stressful, though! I then go and record a TV show called What the Dickens?. It's supposed to be a literary artsy quiz but the only area of the arts I know anything about is comedy.

Malcolm Gladwell: Wise guy

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Malcolm Gladwell looks like a genius. A youthful 45, with an eclectic, vaguely hipster dress sense, a desk at the offices of The New Yorker (though he prefers to work from his apartment in Manhattan's West Village), and that signature mad scientist afro, he is a cliché of furious intellect. Yet as his latest book – Outliers: The Story of Success – demonstrates, genius is a little more complicated than that.

First person: 'I jumped off a cliff – and survived'

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

I was the third son of two academics; my mother was a musician and my father was a scientist. I didn't do well at college and left aged 17, and eventually became a builder. In 1990 I had a severe bike crash, which left me unable to work for years. As I started to recover, there were a couple of job offers, but my parents were getting frail. My brothers are busy and successful, so I felt I should look after mum and dad.