Victoria Wood (44) was made an OBE at yesterday's investiture in London, and playwright Tom Stoppard received a knighthood. He is the first dramatist to be knighted since Terence Rattigan.
The son of the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gadafy, has refused to leave his two pet tigers in Libya while he studies at university in Vienna. Saif Gadafy (25) has his two tigers temporarily housed in a zoo in the Austrian capital.
"I didn't want to be without them, so I found them a little place in Vienna. I go to the Schonbrunn zoo every two days, I feed them and stroke them," explained Saif, adding "they are my little cats."
The guitar solo in Hotel California by The Eagles has been voted the greatest of all time. Performed by lead guitarists Joe Walsh and Don Felder, the 1976 classic headed an new all-time top 100 of guitar solos in a survey by Guitarist magazine. Other tracks which made it into the top five were Eruption by Eddie Van Halen at number two, Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb at three, Crossroads played by Eric Clapton during his Cream days at four and Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile at number five.
Foreign Office planners are juggling Robin Cook's schedule for his visit to China early next year so he can fit in a visit to Happy Valley racecourse in Hong Kong.
Cook, who will be making his first trip to the Chinese mainland as foreign secretary, is reputed as something of a horse racing expert and tipster. He will be in one of the VIP boxes at the racecourse in January, according to the Independent newspaper.