The Spice Girls have won a £500,000 vote of confidence from Pepsi, despite sacking their manager, Simon Fuller. In return they will contribute exclusive music to a CD with three other artists, yet to be announced. The girls have also become the first British artists with two albums in the US top 20 since Elton John in 1975.
They are to play their favourite party music on BBC Radio 1 on Christmas Day.
Spurs captain Sol Campbell, former Wimbledon striker John Fashanu and singer Des'ree yesterday helped launch the Daniel De Gale Bone Marrow Appeal. They called on members of the Afro-Caribbean community in Britain to join the Bone Marrow Register and help black leukaemia sufferers.
Paintings by L.S. Lowry and Sir John Lavery sold for world record prices yesterday. Lavery's Playing Golf at North Berwick made £727,500, and The Regatta by Lowry fetched £386,500.
A British charity has accepted a donation of £300,000 from Andrew Morton's controversial book Diana, Her True Story, In Her Own Words, to help landmine victims, it was announced yesterday. The charity HMD International will use the cash to fund the first year of a £1 million project to help victims of civil war in Angola.
Harry Evans, former editor of the Times and Sunday Times, is to resign as president and publisher of Random House, and return to the newspaper business. He is joining property developer and media magnate Mort Zuckerman as editorial director. Evans will be in editorial charge of all Zuckerman's media, most importantly the New York Daily News, which will bring him head to head with Rupert Murdoch, who owns the rival New York Post. The papers are involved in a bitter circulation battle.
The Plain English Campaign has awarded a "Foot in Mouth Prize" to Nick Underwood, head of marketing at Rag Doll Productions, which makes the Teletubbies TV show, for spouting nonsense about the famous foursome. Underwood said: "In life, there are all colours and the Teletubbies are a reflection of that . . . There are no nationalities in the Teletubbies - they are techno-babies, but they are supposed to reflect life in that sense."
Riccardo Schicci (44), the Italian porn king who launched the career of "la Cicciolina" Illona Staller (who later became a deputy in the Italian parliament for the Radical Party), has been arrested on charges of running a prostitution racket, justice officials said yesterday. It is not the first run-in Schicci has had with the justice system. In 1989 he spent time in prison for shooting a hard-core film on a public beach.