Sir Hardy Amies, dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth, yesterday berated top British designers in Paris fashion houses and said their clothes looked like cast-offs from the Folies Bergeres.
"Consider the much-hyped British designers John Galliano (at Dior) and Alexan- der McQueen (at Givenchy). The results are terrible," the couturier wrote in the Spectator.
Greece's former first lady Dimitra Papandreou is still hitting the front page as a newspaper runs daily pictures of her naked in a hate campaign. Virtually no one has come forward to defend the woman known popularly as Mimi against the attacks mounted by the populist daily Avriani. For a month it has been publishing page one photographs of Ms Papandreou. Dating from her first marriage, they show the widow of Andreas Papandreou naked on a beach, on a bed and with another woman.
Four cable and satellite channels will be launched today in a £1 billion BBC joint venture which plans to feature big BBC names like Sir David Attenborough, Rowan Atkinson and French and Saunders. Bosses believe the BBC's programme archive will convince viewers of the new UKTV that quality has arrived in the multi-channel world.
North Korea, which is suffering from widespread famine, threw a grand 75th birthday party for King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia this week, the evening before his government established full diplomatic ties with rival South Korea.