Egg-throwing improves TV show

Britain's Got Talent is an annual reality show competition, where acts compete in front of several judges and are voted for by the TV audience. Last year's competition was won by a dancing dog.
This year's final was livened up when a woman ran out of the backing band, between two men singing opera, and threw five eggs at Simon Cowell, the main judge and creator of the show.

The woman, who is a successful musician and composer, has given several reasons for the egging. She has said she did it because all the music was pre-recorded, and because she was protesting about Simon Cowell and his "dreadful influence" on the music business. She apologised later to the opera singers. The show was won by a Hungarian dance group.

How UK families keep in touch

The average UK family communicates by text, email and phone, according to new research.

A study of 2,000 parents found that each year they send 1,768 text messages, 520 emails and spend 68 hours on the phone to partners and children. They also post more than 450 messages on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Shockingly, over half of the people interviewed admitted texting, emailing or phoning family members who were in the same house because they were too lazy to get up and talk to them.

How to steal diamonds

A man stole diamonds from two jewellers by asking for a glass of water and then swallowing the stones.

The four diamonds, worth GBP ,1000, have not been seen since Lee Tyers swallowed them. He was sent to prison for this. He was also sent for prison by trying to avoid paying his food bill in a restaurant. He put one of his body hairs in the food and then claimed he had found it there.

Famous university joke recreated

In 1958, Cambridge University staff and students woke up one day to find a small van mysteriously parked on the roof of the Senate House. It turned out that engineering students had done this at night, and had used friends to distract police or anyone who might have noticed what was happening. It took a week to get the van off the roof.

This week, officer cadets at the university tried to recreate the event. They used a frame of three poles, a rope, and four pulleys to hoist a car into the air at Jesus Green. They had to abandon plans to put the car on something as high as the original roof, because of worries about safety.

The Mayor of Cambridge said it was a "real tribute to an event we now see as part of the mythology of Cambridge... but we can't afford to damage any of our old buildings today."