Queen Elizabeth yesterday picked up some useful hints, at a Brunei mosque, on how to keep a marriage together. Impressed with compulsory Islamic pre-marital classes, the Queen turned to the recently remarried Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, smiled and said: "We should try something like this at home."
"She was jumping up and down - she was so excited," said British-trained architect, Zaini Ali, who showed her around the Jame'Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque.
Also in the royal party visiting Brunei's biggest mosque was Mr Cook's new wife and former secretary, Gaynor.
Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail group, yesterday appointed Peter Wright, currently deputy editor of the Daily Mail, as editor of The Mail on Sunday.
The company said he would replace Jonathan Holborow, who wished to take early retirement.
The Spice Girls and Cleopatra will be putting on a Girl Power show again for 150,000 fans this weekend.
Teenage trio, Cleopatra, cannot believe their luck in being invited to support the Spice Girls for the two sell-out Wembley Stadium concerts today and tomorrow.
"We are thrilled because we are real Spice Girl fans. Our dream was to play Wembley Stadium and we have succeeded in just eight months as a band," singer Cleo (16) said.
Scary Spice Mel B didn't seem to mind at all that Cleopatra's hit single, I Want You Back, had exactly the same title as her own first solo venture - even though it was a completely different song.
Cleopatra's version of the Jackson Five classic went straight into the charts at number four.
Simply Red star Mick Hucknall says he is desperate to become a father soon - even if his music suffers. The 38-year-old singer has even spent 18 months preparing for fatherhood, he disclosed to Talk Radio's Nicky Horne, in an interview to be aired tomorrow at 6 p.m.
"I'd love to have kids before I am 40, so I am running out of time," he said. If he had children his music and writing would probably change, he said: "But if it does suffer and I become not as good as I was, well, sorry, but that's tough.
"Because if I bring somebody into the world then my music will not be my priority any more, and it is as simple as that."
The money-spinning sound of Sweden's seventies 70s super-group Abba is to boom-boom around international arenas again. A new show featuring Abba favourites premieres in the western Swedish city of Gothenburg yesterday - but none of the original four group members will be there.
The two male members of the quartet, song-writers Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, have been involved in helping set up the show, which involves 200 musicians including a symphony orchestra.
Ewan McGregor, the star who plays fraudulent trader Nick Leeson in a forthcoming film, has given his backing to as yet unsuccessful appeals to transfer Leeson to Britain from prison in Singapore.
Leeson (31) is being treated for cancer and has at least a year left to serve of his sentence for fraud and forgery after his £850 million trading debt brought down Barings Bank.
"To leave him there when he is sick is a scandal," McGregor said.