Liz Hurley is being considered for a role in an adaptation of Enid Blyton's classic Malory Towers stories. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are also being considered for the rival French teachers, the "Mamzelles" Dupont and Rougier. Blyton's stories, set in a fictional Cornish boarding school in the 1950s, will be transformed to include modern trends like smoking, "snogging" boys, GCSEs and the Spice Girls.
England football coach Glenn Hoddle has separated from his wife Anne after 18 years of marriage, the Football Association announced last night.
The split has nothing to do with his football responsibilities, and nobody else is involved, the FA's public affairs director, David Davies, stressed.
Stephen Fry (40), who plays Oscar Wilde in the £6.5 million film, Wilde Life, has said that, like himself, Wilde wrestled with his public and private life.
The film, directed by Brian Gilbert, has its premiere this week.
A villa in California, purchased by Dodi Fayed three months before he died in a car crash with Princess Diana, is for sale, the Los Angeles Times reported. The asking price for the six-bedroom, 1,000 square-meter villa at Malibu is $10 million. The former home of Julie Andrews and Blake Ed- wards, it was purchased in June for $7.5 million.
Disney has hired former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger to counter a Chinese campaign against Kindun, Martin Scorsese's film about China's occupation of Tibet. Beijing has banned the $28 million movie and all other Disney products, threatening to halt the company's operations throughout China.
Bill Gates and wife Melinda have decided not to take Washington state's King County to court over property tax levied against their new $53.4 million (£36 million) residence. The couple were arguing that the $600,000 appraisal included all the technological extras they had built into the house, instead of being based on the real estate value of the home alone.