London

October 13 is being declared Peel Day to celebrate the life and legacy of trail-blazing BBC disc jockey John Peel, who died suddenly last year at the age of 65, the public broadcaster announced. Gigs will take place across Britain in as many venues as possible, and organisers hope Peel Day will become an annual event.

The Royal and Ancient Golf Club have formally abandoned their ban on women competing in the Open Championship. Their decision came on the day teenage sensation Michelle Wie made her professional debut. Next year’s entry form will no longer restrict the event to ”any male professional golfer” or ”male amateur golfer whose playing handicap does not exceed scratch”.

Ever mindful of its image, British luxury goods firm Burberry has threatened legal action against a company making garments in its trademark check pattern — for ferrets. Burberry’s lawyers have sent letters to Ferret World, the country’s only outlet for clothes made especially for the rodents, a popular pet.

German police and authorities are preparing for an influx of more than 100 000 English soccer fans next summer after England qualified for the 2006 World Cup. Plans include issuing banning orders against potential troublemakers and the deployment of British police officers in Germany.

Irish author John Banville beat higher-profile favourites Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro and Zadie Smith to become the surprise winner of Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for fiction late on Monday. Banville’s The Sea was described by the judges as ”a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected”.

England striker Wayne Rooney said on Monday the ill-tempered behaviour that has landed him in trouble will be long gone by the time he arrives in Germany for next year’s Word Cup finals. Rooney is expected to become a target for opposition defences when England embark on yet another hopeful World Cup campaign.

A fire at a warehouse in England on Monday destroyed all the sets, props and models in the Wallace and Gromit films, just after the latest release hit number one at the United States box office. The building housed all the props and sets from Morph to the Wallace and Gromit films.

Developers announced plans on Friday to open a multimillion-pound sexual ”theme park” near London’s Piccadilly Circus, home to the much-photographed statue of the Greek god of love. Backers say the London Academy of Sex and Relationships, due to open next spring, will not be a sleazy sex museum.

The world’s first self-controlled robotic fish were due to be unveiled at the London Aquarium on Thursday, officials said. The three aquatic robots were developed by a team at the University of Essex, in south-east England, to teach the public more about robotic technology.

An original set of waxwork heads of The Beatles, which was used on the band’s album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, has been found and will be put up for sale this month, an auction house said on Thursday. The heads were unearthed in a store room at Madame Tussaud’s waxwork museum in London.

There is enough rugby potential in England for the national side to mount a successful defence of its World Cup in 2007, former skipper Lawrence Dallaglio said on Wednesday. Dallaglio is yet to officially come out of England retirement, but his desire to pull on an English jersey burns strongly once again.

Most <i>Scrabble</i> players presented with a rack containing a tile marked "LL" would be both puzzled and stuck. But for players of the newly released Welsh edition of the popular word game, it’s an easy score. Released on Wednesday, the new edition is aimed at the estimated 500 000 speakers of Welsh.

The unpredictable and often confusing story of the British weather is to be told more simply in future in order to make forecasts more ”relevant” to the public. The Meteorological Office said efforts to introduce greater clarity to the weather report do not represent an attempt to make the weather appear ”more positive”.

British researchers said on Tuesday they hope to produce the first-ever authoritative map of the country’s last uncharted territory: what lies beneath people’s feet. With the help of utility companies, engineers from the University of Birmingham in central Britain hope to come up with a comprehensive chart of the more than four million kilometres of underground cables and pipes.

A British bank employee who stole huge sums from his employer left a note in a safe admitting he had ”borrowed” seven million pounds (,3-million), a court was told on Tuesday. In fact, the true scale of financial consultant Graham Price’s theft and deception totalled nearer £10-million, Swansea magistrates’ court in South Wales heard.

Former Manchester United football star George Best, who has battled alcoholism since quitting the game, was in a ”serious” condition in intensive care at a London hospital on Monday, his doctor said. Best (59) was admitted to the private Cromwell hospital in central London on Saturday with influenza-like symptoms.

Britain is give all school pupils lessons in cooking healthy meals as part of attempts to tackle an epidemic of obesity in young people. All senior school pupils aged 11 to 14 will receive practical cooking lessons and learn about the importance of a balanced diet, food safety and hygiene, the education department said.

England World Cup hero Jonny Wilkinson returned to action in Newcastle’s impressive 34-9 Anglo-Welsh Cup win over Sale on Sunday. Wilkinson came off the bench after 54 minutes and made an immediate impact, sending Matthew Burke over for a try and controlling the game with his varied kicking.

Robbie Keane came off the bench to score the winner, and Tottenham rallied from a two-goal deficit to beat second-place Charlton 3-2 on Saturday in the English Premier League. In another comeback, Ruud van Nistelrooy scored twice to lead Manchester United to a 3-2 victory at Fulham.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger believes the decision by bookmakers to pay out on Chelsea defending their Premiership title will backfire and spur his side to challenge their London rivals. While Chelsea are 11 points clear of Arsenal and 10 clear of Manchester United, Wenger insists the race is far from over.

When an 11-year-old boy sneaked his first kiss under a British railway bridge in 1965, he most likely never expected it to be front-page news 40 years later. But then he did choose British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s future wife. Stephen Smerdon woke up on Thursday to find his fledgling love life of four decades ago splashed across newspapers.

He might be the self-professed enemy of the West, but a decade ago terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden considered seeking asylum in Britain, the country’s interior minister of the time has said. Michael Howard told The Times on Thursday that the request from the al-Qaeda chief appeared to be serious.