MICHAEL FLATLEY ignored a torn calf muscle last night for the first night performance of his new show, Lord of the Dance, at London's Coliseum Theatre. In the end he received three encores and two standing ovations.
The dancer injured his calf muscle last week and took painkillers before going on stage.
Before curtain up tempers flared when Elton John's manager, John Reid, was involved in a scuffle with a photographer.
Cricketer Allan Lamb's wife Lindsay broke down in a London court yesterday when giving evidence in the libel action Ian Botham and Lamb have taken against former Pakistan captain Imran Khan. Insisting it was not racism which motivated her husband of 17 years to speak out about ball tampering, she said. "Lambic was not motivated by racism or anything like that."
The US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has admitted he smoked marijuana in college. He then promptly urged the White House to fire any staff member found to have smoked crack, cocaine or taken any hallucinogenic drugs in the last three years.
White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said last Wednesday that he had smoked marijuana in the 1970s and that he had told the FBI about it.
Richard Branson is opening the first of what could be a string of radically new cinemas in Britain. The £5 million picture house in Rochester, Kent incorporates a Silver Screen "first class" service where guests will be checked in to a special bar and 90 seat auditorium. The cinemas boast floor to ceiling projection and digital sound.
Two women were in hospital last night after lightning struck in the grounds of Buckingham Palace as they sheltered from a storm just yards from Queen Elizabeth. The women, aged 45 and 55, were among 8,000 people at a Palace Garden party hit by thunderstorms which caused injuries across south east England. They suffered burns to the body and were being kept in hospital overnight.
The Princess of Vales's media adviser, Jane Atkinson, has quit her job just eight days after the princess's divorce came before the courts.