Overview Blog

In an age when even some bishops are near atheists, "man doesn't believe in God" is hardly headline news.

Unless, it seems, that man is Professor Stephen Hawking. It seems that every subject has its authorities, and in the case of religion, physicists are the new prophets, deposing the religious leaders whose vested interests debar them from being objective observers. As for philosophy, that's dead, or so Hawking says.

Believers know that when physicists talk about God, people listen. That's why the minority of physicists who hold broadly conventional Christian views have become such important players in religion's fightback against the idea that science has pulled the rug from under their feet.

If top scientists such as John Polkinghorne and Bernard d'Espagnat believe in God, that challenges the simplistic claim that science and religion are completely incompatible. It doesn't hurt that this message is being pushed with the help of the enormous wealth of the Templeton Foundation, which funds innumerable research programmes, conferences, seminars and prizes as a kind of marriage guidance service to religion and science.

But why on earth should physicists hold this exalted place in the theological firmament? For some, such as the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, it's all down to a basic confusion. Indeed, it can almost be reduced to a linguistic mistake: thinking that because both physicists and theologians study fundamental forces of some kind, they must study fundamental forces of the same kind.

Sacks is right that such a conflation is fatal to faith, since if science and religion really are battling for the same terrain, religion is going to get wiped out. In a fight to understand how the universe works, Bible study is bows and arrows against the hi-tech artillery of Hubble, the Large Hadron Collider and the human genome project.

If, as Sacks argues, science is about the how and religion the why, then scientists are not authorities on religion at all. Hawking's opinions about God would carry no more weight than his taxi driver's. Believers and atheists should remove physicists from the front line and send in the philosophers and theologians as cannon fodder once again. But is Sacks right? Science certainly trails a destructive path through a lot of what has traditionally passed for religion. People accuse Richard Dawkins of attacking a baby version of religion, but the fact is that there are still millions of people who do believe in the literal truth of Genesis, Noah's Ark and all. Clearly science does destroy this kind of religious faith, totally and mercilessly. Scientists are authorities on religion when they declare the earth is considerably more than 6,000 years old.

Most sensible religious commentators agree. But they insist that religion is no longer, if it ever was, in the business of trying to come up with proto-scientific explanations of how the universe works. If that is accepted, science and religion can make their peace and both rule over their different magisteria, as the biologist Stephen Jay Gould put it.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

The scene is a piece of wasteland on the edge of Saint Etienne in central France. A scrap of land, wedged between a cemetery and a rubbish dump, is home to 100 people, 40 of them children.

A band of Roma, immigrants of ambiguous legality from Romania, has lived here since May in a jumble of cars, vans and makeshift shelters. The town council has provided a row of chemical toilets, two water taps and one rubbish skip – five star luxury compared to some of the Roma camps now scattered across France (but also across Belgium, Germany and Italy).

At dawn, the police arrive. They have documents signed by the local prefect. The camp is illegal. It must be cleared. No one protests very much. None of the Roma speaks more than a few words of French in any case. Some – not all – of the Roma are arrested. They are European Union citizens guaranteed the right of "freedom of movement" within the EU (with certain ill-defined limits). They abruptly face a choice between forced expulsion from France for "threatening public order" and "voluntary" repatriation to Romania with a €300 (£248) grant.
How were the Roma "threatening public order"? According to the French state, to occupy a scrap of wasteland that no one wants is a threat to public order. (Some French courts disagree).

Marie-Pierre Manevy, a local activist for the support group Reséau Solidarité Roms, points out that several requests had been made for a legal Roma campsite in Saint Etienne, but that all were ignored. "They weren't bothering anyone," she said. "The only reason to clear the camp was to obey President Sarkozy's orders... In truth, no one cares much what happens to the Roma. People don't care about them either way."

The scene has been repeated scores of times across France in the last month as President Nicolas Sarkozy (himself the son of an eastern European immigrant) wages his unlikely war against one of Europe's most destitute, mysterious and problematic peoples.

In truth, the anti-Roma campaign has been going on for much, much longer (and not just in France). What is new is that, in the last month, Roma-bashing has been turned into a public spectacle on President Sarkozy's explicit orders. Just short of 1,000 Roma have been expelled from France in the month of August. According to the official figures, 11,000 Roma were also expelled from France last year – in other words almost as many, month by month – without anyone much noticing (or, as Ms Manevy says, caring).

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Concerns over the link between rising skin cancer rates and exposure to sunshine may have led to overly precautionary advice being given to the public about staying out of the sun at midday, according to a confidential "position statement" by leading health organisations.

The current advice to the public from the leading research charity on skin cancer, Cancer Research UK, states to spend between 11am and 3pm in the shade and to cover the skin with clothing, hats and sunscreen if out. But a confidential position statement being prepared by the charity in collaboration with other health organisations – and seen by The Independent – acknowledges the changing evidence and emphasises the importance of exposing the skin to the midday sun without any protection in order to maximise production of vitamin D.

Many experts are concerned that past advice designed to protect against skin cancer may have resulted in an increased risk of other illnesses linked to a lack of vitamin D, which the body can only produce when skin in exposed to bright sunlight. New concerns about Britain's policy on sun exposure led to this review of the evidence about the risks and benefits of staying in the shade and covering up during the sunniest part of the day.
The confidential document, seen by The Independent, says: "The time required to make sufficient vitamin D is typically short and less than the amount of time needed for skin to redden and burn. Regularly going outside for a matter of minutes around the middle of the day without sunscreen should be enough. When it comes to sun exposure, little and often is best. However, people should get to know their own skin to understand how long they can spend outside before risking sunburn under different conditions."

The wording of the draft document is being seen by come commentators as a tacit admission by Cancer Research UK that it had got it wrong in the past about telling people to avoid the midday sun, to apply sunscreen and to stay in the shade in order to avoid exposure to the cancer-causing rays of the sun.

"Cancer Research UK is working on a new position statement on vitamin D and sunshine which it expects to agree with other health organisations," said Oliver Gillie, a health writer who has championed the case for vitamin D. "Their new position is expected to break with 20 years of advice to seek the shade and is expected to suggest that people go out in the sun in the middle of the day for at least a few minutes. Several health bodies have agreed to the wording but others are still discussing the details."

Organisations such as the British Heart Foundation, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, Diabetes UK and the National Osteoporosis Society are discussing what their public position should be on sunshine and vitamin D in the light of several new studies suggesting a link between various illnesses and a chronic lack of the vitamin.

The draft position statement says: "Cancer Research UK's SunSmart campaign encourages people to enjoy the sun safely and avoid exposures that lead to sunburn. However, for most people, sunlight is also the most important source of vitamin D, which is essential for good bone health.

"It is important to ensure that skin cancer prevention messages are balanced with the need to make enough vitamin D, and reflect the latest scientific evidence." Sara Hiom, director of health information at the charity, said that the draft consensus statement has not yet been finalised, agreed or released. "It is not our advice to the public and should not be interpreted in that way," Ms Hiom said.

"Even once we reach a consensus we will not be advising the public to go in the sun in the middle of the day without sunscreen. This is because, for some people – those most likely to be at risk of skin cancer – a few minutes in the middle of the day is enough for them to burn and cause serious and lasting skin damage.

"The very fact that messages around safe sun exposure times cannot be generalised to the population means that our advice needs to be general and is, and will remain, to enjoy the sun safely, spend time in the shade around midday and know your own skin type."

drive from www.independent.co.uk

However clearly the new season is being held by the throat, it is probably something better to think than to say, but Nicolas Anelka says it anyway. He sounds like a man who has come to believe anything is possible.

"There are a lot of big teams in the Premier League," he declares, "but we will try to win every game. It's going to be difficult, yes, but [our] goals can come from anywhere. Yes, even if the scorer is on one side of the field and the second player is on the other, we try to switch it very quickly.

"If I don't score, Didier [Drogba] can score, if Didier doesn't score, Florent [Malouda] can score, and if nobody scores, Salomon [Kalou] can come and score."

Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, "First of all, we have the ability not to concede a goal and almost every time we know we will score one. The most important thing is we come on the pitch and don't concede a goal – and after that we try to score. Also, for the team who come to play against Chelsea, they will be scared because if they don't do it, they know we will score."

So far this infant season Chelsea's extraordinary run of fertile attack and utterly sterilised defence has yet to crush a significant rival, but it is to the huge credit of Stoke, eviscerated 8-0 here last spring, that they came and fought with some nerve and courage, a performance best expressed by the drive from substitute Glenn Whelan that brought a shudder to Petr Cech as it crashed against his crossbar. However, nothing Stoke could do challenged the weight of Anelka's confidence. And nor should it have done.

Chelsea may not have been on song but they were, once again, making the most vital noises when it came to settling the business. Stoke may have imported some of the grit of the Potteries to the King's Road but in all the essentials it failed to obscure the vision of Chelsea coach Carlo Ancelotti.

Some of us wondered about the point of Ancelotti, not his brilliant football pedigree but the value of bringing it to Stamford Bridge, where such contrasting but high-achieving luminaries as Jose Mourinho and Luiz Felipe Scolari had, one way or another, been hounded out of office. However, some of us undervalued, quite profoundly, as it is turning out, the ability of the man who operated so successfully for so long under the ownership of Silvio Berlusconi to create his own agenda – and values.

The result is a game of superb efficiency and economy which is also, at times, as aesthetically pleasing as any Roman Abramovich might have craved in the first, relentless march of Mourinho's team.

Stoke were right to leave here with their heads up, but then so was Tony Pulis when he generously conceded that Chelsea might have scored more than the two goals that eventually submerged a team which, while providing the usual barrage of long throws from Rory Delap, still managed to produce bouts of more than decently penetrating football.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Investigators from Pakistan's highest crime-fighting agency will arrive in London today to begin their own inquiry into allegations of a cricket betting scam amid growing calls for the country to be suspended to prevent further damage to the reputation of the international game.

The Pakistan cricket team yesterday left London for Somerset ahead of the series of one-day matches against England due to start this weekend as the political and sporting fallout continued from the sting by the News of the World (NOTW) against a sports agent who claimed to be able to provide information worth large sums to gambling syndicates.

A three-strong team from Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency will work alongside Scotland Yard detectives investigating claims by Mazhar Majeed, 35, a property developer and cricket agent, that he controlled seven Pakistani players and could rig the results of matches. In return for £150,000, undercover reporters were given precise details of three no-balls which were duly delivered by bowlers Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif in last week's Lord's Test against England.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) last night warned of "prompt and decisive" action against any players found guilty of wrongdoing, but stopped short of ordering the suspension of the Pakistan cricketers named in the NOTW inquiry – the captain, Salman Butt, vice-captain, Kamran Akmal, and the two bowlers – for the remainder of the country's matches in England.

The ICC's chief executive Haroon Lorgat said he was "very, very determined" to punish any players found to be corrupt. "We will do our utmost to ensure that before any players who are found to be guilty actually take to the field of play they are brought to book," he said.

A small crowd of cricket fans shouted "thieves" as the coach carrying the Pakistan team left its hotel yesterday and eggs were confiscated from a number of bystanders.

Calls for sterner action were led by Malcolm Speed, the Australian head of the ICC between 2001 and 2008, who said there was a "fairly compelling case" for the entire Pakistan team to be suspended immediately from the sport and there were concerns that corruption was "endemic" within the side.

Mr Speed said: "It looks as though it is endemic, that several of the team members are involved and have been for some time. So perhaps they need a rest."

Pressure for draconian measures against Pakistan was countered by Imran Khan, perhaps the country's most renowned player, who said it would be wrong to punish Pakistanis for the alleged wrongdoing of a handful of their compatriots. Despite the devastation caused by the floods, the alleged gambling scam has dominated the front pages of newspapers and television news bulletins since Sunday.

Mr Khan told ITV News: "Why should Pakistani cricket suffer if some players have indulged in a crime? Why should Pakistani supporters suffer because of that? The people who are found guilty should be removed from the team and replaced and should be punished as an example for future generations."

Detectives visited the hotel of the Pakistan team on Saturday night and took statements from Mr Butt, Mr Akmal, Mr Asif and Mr Aamer, along with the mobile phones of three of the men. None has been arrested. Mr Butt, who is not captain of the side for one-day matches, said: "I will say everyone in my team has given his 100 per cent."

It emerged yesterday that Mr Butt and Mr Akmal were already part of an investigation by the anti-corruption unit of the ICC, Acsu, which is led by Sir Ronnie Flanagan. The unit is looking into the conduct of the Pakistan side during a tour of Australia earlier this year, where it lost every match, including a Test match where the visiting team threw away a seemingly unassailable lead.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

The smoking ban was introduced in the Health Act 2006 and operates by creating 'smoke-free premises'. Photograph: Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty Images

Jon56 asks:

How did the English smoking ban become law? In particular, it forbids a group of adults from buying or renting an isolated building, currently a cafe, and setting up a smoking cafe, staffed by members of the group on a voluntary basis. Surely such a ban, interfering with an activity which would be legal in the home of one of the participants, contravenes the European Human Rights Act?

The smoking ban in England and Wales was introduced by the Health Act 2006. It operates by creating "smoke-free premises" in which it is an offence to smoke and the person in charge of the premises commits an offence if he or she fails to take reasonable steps to stop someone from smoking there:

• Premises that are open to the public (ie the public has access to them, whether by invitation or not, and whether for payment or not) are smoke-free when they are open to the public.

• Premises used as a place of work (including voluntary work) by more than one person, or where members of the public might attend for the purpose of seeking or receiving goods or services from someone working there (even if members of the public are not always present), are smoke-free all the time.

• Premises are smoke-free only in areas which are enclosed or "substantially enclosed".

The smoke-free (exemption and vehicles) regulations 2007 create certain exemptions including for private dwellings, designated bedrooms in hotels and clubs, designated rooms in care homes, hospices and prisons, and performers "where the artistic integrity of a performance makes it appropriate for a person who is taking part in that performance to smoke". Regulation 10 created a temporary exemption for designated rooms in residential mental health institutions.

Jon56 is right, then, that the law does not allow for smoking cafes, even if they are staffed on a voluntary basis, because they would be both open to the public and used as a place of work by more than one person. The rationale for the ban was to protect the public and workers from the negative health effects of second-hand smoke, but presumably it was thought that this aim could only be effectively achieved if there was no distinction between voluntary and paid workers, just as there is none between members of the public who mind being in a smoking environment and those who don't.

Article 8 of the European convention on human rights contains a right to respect for private life, any interferences with which must be justified as necessary and proportionate to achieve one of the permitted aims (including protecting health and the rights of others). The boundaries of the concept of private life are not very easily defined, but it is doubtful that article 8 would be engaged in the situation jon56 describes. The courts have said that the purpose of the right is to protect the individual against intrusion by agents of the state, unless for good reason, into the private sphere within which individuals expect to be left alone to conduct their personal affairs and live their personal lives as they choose. Running a cafe which is open to the public would almost certainly not be considered to be part of personal life protected by article 8. Indeed, in a recent case the court of appeal suggested that even a ban on smoking in the home might not engage article 8.

The case concerned the ban on smoking in Rampton, one of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales. Notwithstanding the temporary exemption in the 2007 regulations referred to above, Nottinghamshire healthcare NHS trust had a smoke-free policy under which smoking was prohibited, subject to very limited exceptions, for both and staff and patients throughout all trust premises – whether indoors or outdoors. The basis for the ban on smoking outdoors was that security reasons prevented the trust from permitting patients to smoke outside. Some patients argued that the ban was incompatible with their rights under article 8 because Rampton was effectively their home. They also argued that because prisoners had a permanent exemption under the 2007 regulations, which allowed them to smoke in a designated room, as opposed to the temporary exemption given to mental-health patients, the law discriminated against them contrary to article 14 of the convention.

In Keene's view the total ban on smoking was more than was necessary to accomplish the public heath objective of protecting people from second-hand smoke, and therefore breached article 8. He also considered that there was no justification for treating mental-health patients differently to prisoners and therefore the law was discriminatory in breach of article 14.

It is possible that the majority would have found that article 8 was engaged if the case had concerned a ban on smoking in private dwellings, but even then any interference is capable of being justified on grounds of the protection of health so the result might well have been the same.

In light of all of that, I'm afraid jon56 will have to pursue political rather than legal avenues if he wants to open a smoking cafe in this country.

drive from www.guardian.co.uk

Asil Nadir built Polly Peck International from a small fruit trading business into one of the biggest conglomerates in Europe.

Until its collapse in 1990, Polly Peck was the stock market's fastest growing company. An investment of £1,000 made in Polly Peck in the late 1970s would have been worth £1 million at the height of its success.

But the dream turned sour and the company collapsed owing £1.3 billion.

Amid plummeting share prices and insider dealing allegations, Nadir fled the UK to avoid fraud charges in 1993.

He took a late-night flight by private plane to Northern Cyprus in breach of his bail conditions and remained there, beyond the reach of the UK authorities, until today.

* Asil Nadir was born in Northern Cyprus in 1942, the son of a prominent Turkish Cypriot businessman who moved his family to Britain in the 1950s.

* In the late 1970s, Nadir took control of listed shell company Polly Peck via a reverse takeover, and used his stock market status to raise the cash to set up a Northern Cyprus fruit-packing subsidiary, Sunzest, and Unipac, a cardboard box factory, via a share issue.

* During the next four years, Polly Peck expanded into consumer electronics and hotel franchises as well as fruit and vegetable packing.

* In 1983, the share price crashed, after hitting a high of £35, after rumours circulated that the Turkish authorities were about to withdraw vital tax concessions.

* But by 1990, the share price had recovered to 450p, valuing the company at £2 billion.

* 70% of the profits recorded at Polly Peck's head office in London supposedly came from the Turkish and Cyprus operations, but few Polly Peck executives understood exactly how they continued to rise steadily.

* Bank mandates allowed Nadir and his directors to make payments on the strength of a single signature, a highly unusual facility for the heads of a public company to have.

* In 1989, Nadir did the deal that should have secured his status as a major international player, when he raised £577 million to buy Del Monte.

The acquisition made Polly Peck the world's third-largest fruits distributor, but caused trouble for the group's already complicated cash flow.

* In summer 1990, persistent rumours about manipulation of Polly Peck's share price reached an intensity where they could not be ignored by City authorities, including the Serious Fraud Office.

* As the City's investigation was getting under way, Nadir called a board meeting to propose that he bought back the 75% of Polly Peck shares he did not already own.

But five days later, he withdrew the proposal just as abruptly, and in doing so called down the wrath of the Stock Exchange upon his head.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

There is nothing more French than a warm baguette. Other symbols of national identity – berets, yellow headlights, yellow cigarettes – may have disappeared, but the baguette survives as a universal emblem of France. The 2010 prize for the best "traditional baguette" in Paris has been won by a young man who was born in Senegal, Djibril Bodian, 33, who moved to France when he was six years old. President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a "great debate on national identity" last year which generated so much anti-immigrant rhetoric that it embarrassed the Elysée Palace and had to be quietly shelved. Immigration, it was claimed by many participants in the debate, threatens to destroy French identity and the French way of life. Not according to Djibril Bodian. And not according to the jury of gastronomes, minor celebrities and ordinary people who voted that his baguettes were the best in the French capital. "This prize is the best response there could be to some of the remarks that were made [in the national identity debate]," Mr Bodian told The Independent. "All of that was just politics and blah blah. Personally, I consider myself to be completely French, as French as my own bread." As part of his prize, Mr Bodian will supply all the bread for 12 months to President Sarkozy's official residence. The bakery where he officiates – sometimes starting his shift at 1 am – could not be in a more traditional part of Paris. Mr Bodian bakes for a branch of the Grenier à Pain chain in the Rue des Abbesses, one of the higgledy-piggledy streets in Montmartre celebrated by the 2001 comic French movie, Amélie. At his third attempt, he beat 162 other bakeries to the €4,000 (£3,600) prize offered annually by Paris town hall for the tastiest and best-smelling "traditional" baguette in the French capital. A baguette de tradition is a slightly shorter, chewier version of the classic, long, white baguette. By law, it must be made from double-fermented dough, with no artificial yeast and no chemical additives. "The only secret is not to take short cuts," Mr Bodian said. "You have to follow the recipe scrupulously. You have to allow enough cooking time. Most of all you have let the dough rest for a while before you bake it." Mr Bodian's father was also a baker, and he trained at a patisserie and baking school at Pantin, in the Paris suburbs 12 years ago. "You couldn't imagine anyone more French than Djibril," said Michel Galloyer, the founder of the Grenier chain, and a celebrated French pastry chef and baker. "He deserves his success. He is modest, he works hard, he is respectful of the people he works with. He teaches us something every day."

drive from www.independent.co.uk

It's a rare pleasure and a small one at that – but there's something about a provocative museum label that can really lift the spirits. I encountered one just the other day, while visiting the Getty Villa in Malibu – a reproduction Pompeiian mansion that houses his collection of ancient artefacts. One of the highlights here is the Getty Kouros – one of those highly formulaic sculptures of male youths that advance towards you out of Archaic-era Greece, one foot slightly before the other and the torso crisply etched. The Getty acquired the statue in 1985 from a Basle dealer in antiquities but its subsequent history hasn't been entirely unclouded, as its description candidly reveals. It reads like this: "Greek, about 530 B.C., or modern forgery". Come across this without foreknowledge, as I did, and you'll probably do a double take at the insouciance of that phrase. Quite a lot rests on that "or", you think. After all we're not talking about a decade here and there in date of origin, or a few hundred miles between the possible site of its creation. This isn't a conjunction linking two equally acceptable alternatives. It's very much an Either Or. It's the real deal or it's bogus.

The Getty takes an educational approach to an object that in most galleries would constitute something of an embarrassment, something to be bustled away behind the scenes until the matter had been resolved one way or another. And though it's possible that this is just a way of clinging on to the attribution they'd prefer to have – it isn't entirely cynical. Follow the matter up beyond that brief label and you discover that it isn't entirely easy to resolve the matter. Certainly some dodgy documentation was supplied with the statue, and certainly it strikes some scholars as an odd collage of different styles. But then perhaps it's very oddity is proof that it's the real thing. If you knew enough about kouroi to forge one this well (though frankly, being doggedly formulaic in style they can't be that hard to forge) why not just stick to copying one model – rather than picking and choosing from several? If you want to push deeper still you can buy a book in the gift shop titled The Getty Kouros Colloquium, which goes into isotope analysis and tool marks and de-dolomitization, with experts bouncing from one side of the authenticity fence to the other.

See, says the Getty – attribution is a complicated matter and it's fascinating to think about these things, so we've left the statue here so that you think about them too. Which is fine as far as it goes – but I found myself thinking about something quite different as well, which is how this object helpfully exemplifies two very different forms of American cultural appropriation – purchase and reconstruction. I'd just arrived from Las Vegas when I saw it, so it's possible I was mildly obsessed with such issues – because Vegas is a kind of delirium of appropriation. They've got real art – which like everything else in that breathtakingly avaricious city – is offered on a pay-per-view basis – and they've got fabulously fake art, much of which you get for free because it's far too tacky to charge for. But – in a much more high-minded and admirable way – there's something of Vegas in the Getty Villa too. It's unabashed approach to architectural facsimile, for one thing – which in Sin City allows you to look across from the New York skyline to a detailed reconstruction of the Paris Opera and the Arc de Triomphe, and in Malibu produces a cut-and-paste reconstruction of a Roman villa, taking the peristyle from one archaeological site and the wall paintings from another. But there's also the cheerful way in which statues the museum couldn't acquire have been simply reproduced and placed around the interior and gardens. This is, it strikes you, is both quintessentially American and representatively Roman too – since so many of the genuinely ancient works in the collection are Roman emulations of Greek originals. And in the Kouros all of that seems to come together – the imperial admiration of an ancient civilisation and (possibly) the criminal exploitation of that admiration, the ability to purchase treasure wholesale and the willingness to re-create it when you can't. The Kouros must be one thing or the other, in truth and one day the matter might be finally resolved. But when the ambiguity goes the Getty will be a little poorer whatever the finding.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Annie Lennox has quit her record label after 30 years to launch an assault on the charts for the Christmas number one.
The 55-year-old Scottish singer will release her next album, a collection of "dark" covers of Christmas carols, through Amy Winehouse's label Island Records in the UK.
Lennox. who has sold more than 80 million albums worldwide with the Eurythmics and as a solo artist, has left music giant Sony.
Dicing with death
Popstar To Opera Star winner Darius Campbell has revealed he was just three millimetres from death after a horror crash in which he broke his neck.
The singer - who first found fame on TV's Popstars then Pop Idol - declared: "I feel like the luckiest man alive."
Speaking about the accident for the first time, he tells Hello! magazine he turned down an operation because he feared it might damage his voice.
Hoax movie
Keith Allen and Phil Daniels are to head the cast in a movie based on an infamous chart hoax which saw Alarm frontman Mike Peters score a hit with a spoof band.
Peters put together a fictitious act in 2004 as a front for his own single to highlight what he saw as ageism in the music business.
Now the story is being adapted for the screen by director Sara Sugarman, who began filming the story - to be called Vinyl - this month.
Is it Stig?
A racing driver who was a stunt double for James Bond has been linked to the role of Top Gear's motoring mystery man The Stig in financial documents.
Ben Collins is one of several drivers whose names have been put forward as being the man who regularly takes to the track on the BBC2 show but famously never removes his helmet on screen.
Accounts for Collins Autosport Ltd from 2003 - the year the present Stig first got behind the wheel - describe it as "a cornerstone year".
Gag king
Comic Tim Vine has been crowned king of the one-liners after one of his gags was named the best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe.
Wisecracking Vine - who set a world record for his quickfire delivery in 2004 - beat acts including John Bishop to the award created by TV channel Dave.
Vine won for the gag: "I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again."

drive from www.independent.co.uk