Good Week: Angelina Jolie, the Williams sisters, sun-worshippers, Michael Owen

by Greg McDonald

Ch-ching! It was a rich week for Angelina Jolie, who was named Hollywood's highest-earning actress, raking in a cool £16.6m in the last 12 months, the lion's share coming for her role in Wanted. Angelina’s partner Brad Pitt's ex-wife Jennifer Aniston was pipped to the top spot – though the £15.3m Jen banked last year starring in hit movies like Marley and Me may have softened the blow.

It was an ace week for the Williams sisters, as big sis Venus demolished top seed Dinara Safina and little sis Serena battled through against Elena Dementieva in the longest women's semi-final in history to set up another all-Williams "dreams" final. Here are the pair going head to head the year they first took SW19 by storm.

It was a fine week for sun-worshippers as temperatures soared to their highest levels since July 2006, there were predictions of a summer hotter even than 2003, and flash flood warnings were issued by the Environment Agency. And as office workers sweltered in the heatwave, one company in Newcastle came up with an answer: just come to work naked.

It was a great week for former England striker Michael Owen, as Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson moved to unite the Newcastle man with onetime international strike-partner Wayne Rooney. The union will provide an unmissable chance for Owen to justify a return to the England team, for which he once netted such unforgettable World Cup goals as this 1998 sizzler against Argentina and this 2002 vintage shot against Brazil.

Bad Week: George Osborne, Jackson family, Schalk Burger, Mollie Sugden

by Greg McDonald

It was a sad week for the family of Michael Jackson, as it appeared the chaos of Michael’s last years will be there in their lives for some time to come. Jacko’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe declared she will fight for custody of the children and brother Jermaine expressed the wish that he had died rather than his sibling.

It was an expensive week for Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, as the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards confirmed David Cameron's right hand man is to be probed over accusations of falsely claiming mortgage payments. And though George is a sleaze scandal veteran, Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield was in the expenses firing line for the first time after claiming £100,000 for staying in London despite living just 46 miles away.

It was a shameful week for South African rugby star Schalk Burger, who was banned for eight weeks after committing a flaming whopper of an indiscretion, gouging Lions wing Luke Fitzgerald's eyes. Also caught in the eye of the gouging storm was unrepentant Springboks coach Peter de Villiers, blasted for "bringing the game into disrepute" by a furious Brian O'Driscoll.

Finally, it was a sad week for family and friends of Mollie Sugden, the actress known and loved as double entendre-spouting Mrs Slocombe in Are You Being Served?, who passed away aged 86. Paying tribute, co-star Frank Thornton described Sugden as "an excellent comedian". And if proof were needed, here's a tribute to Mollie - and her pussy.

Caption competion: Chippendales

by Simon Glover

What's being said as a group of young girls spot four members of the Chippendales enjoying the heatwave in London's Hyde Park?

Post your entries using the comment form below this entry. (If you can't see it, just click here and scroll down.) We'll publish our winner and runners-up here on the News Blog next Thursday.

You can also enter using your Wap phone. Just go to the News channel on Orange World, click on the "Caption competition" link, then follow the easy on-screen instructions.

See all the previous winners

Biggs: not clever

by Greg McDonald

If Ronnie Biggs’ lawyers are right, and Jack Straw’s decision to refuse the Great Train Robber parole shows British Justice up as “perverse and cruel”, then more perverse cruelty please, Mr Straw.

Fed through a tube after a series of strokes, Biggs’ supporters would have us take pity on the prison-wall jumping globe-trotter, whom they see as a romantic folk hero from a fabulous crime caper.

Perhaps someone should tell the family of the train driver, the late Jack Mills, what a harmless old thing the Great Train Robbery was. As Mills went about an honest day’s work, Biggs’ gang struck him with an iron bar, leaving him suffering lifelong trauma headaches until his death from leukaemia. What a caper, eh?

And of course it didn’t end there. A better man may have used his time behind bars to reflect on his crimes and emerge repentant of them – and grateful for the leniency of a legal system which grants prisoners privileges like open grounds. But no: Biggs vaulted the wall and took off for the Australian sun and, ultimately, Brazil.

It’s easy to pity an old man who can’t feed himself, but the two fingers this thug gave the British legal system for 35 years invite no such mercy.

If that’s “perverse and cruel”, it’s a more perverse cruelty which sees men like Jack Mills suffer while criminals soak up the sun. And it’s time Ronnie Biggs faced the consequences he’s spent his disgusting life avo

Giz a (second) job

by Alan Tyers

Today’s the day that MPs either have to forgo their second, often highly lucrative, second jobs – or face having the nitty-gritty of how much they are trousering revealed to a contemptuous public.

Many Tories have already handed in their notice at various cosy-sounding part-time gigs which include “adviser to the JCB Group” (William Hague, £50,000 a year); Times newspaper columnist (Michael Gove, £60,000 a year; he says he spends about an hour a week on it); and “98 hours’ legal work, £18,750” (Bill Cash, Conservative MP for Stone).

A lot of their Labour opponents seem less willing to call it a day at their other jobs; and David Cameron has insisted that his top people all focus entirely on parliament, and the election, from December.

Is this because the Tories are a nobler bunch, more in tune with what the public wants from its politicians? Or is it because the Labour lot realise they’re going to lose the election and would thus be foolish to give up their other gigs as well?

Anyway, is it so bad for politicians to have a second job? On the one hand, one instinctively thinks that surely the business of running the country should be enough on anyone’s plate – and that 70 grand a year plus a regular trolley dash around Peter Jones at the public expense should be enough to keep body and soul together.

But what this expenses scandal has revealed above all is just how out of touch many MPs seem to be. Maybe actually having some other job – and I’m going to be ultra-generous and assume that they actually do something rather than just the corporate golf day and snoozing through a board meeting – might actually give them a taste of what business, media, professions, finance, industry or whatever is really like.

Perhaps, like a spoiled teenager being forced into a paper round instead of pocket money, they might learn how the world actually works.

A right royal carve-up

by Alan Tyers

MPs, failed but lavishly pensioned Speakers, BBC executives, bailed-out bankers...and now the Queen as well? Has EVERYONE got their hand in your pocket?

As her subjects battle through the biggest recession in a generation, the cost of keeping the Queen in corgis and formidable hats has risen. The total annual cost of the monarchy is up £1.5m to £41.5m.

The Queen’s Civil List, which includes staff, cost £13.9m in 2008. £7.9m of that came from the Government (i.e. the taxpayer) and a further £6m came from a reserve fund that was built up during the 1990s with unspent (i.e. taxpayers’) money.

That pot now stands at "just" £21m, so even the most mathematically challenged royal (no doubt a strong field) should be able to work out that, at the current rate of spending, it’ll all be gone in three years or so.

And so the Royal Family will be wanting more money.

As the Government - this one, the next one, whatever - effects huge public spending cutbacks to fund the bailouts of their chums in the City, the beleaguered taxpayer will have to dig ever deeper to support an anachronistic bunch of losers, freeloaders and no-hopers.

The Queen, Gawd bless her, has done a magnificent job, but once she goes, it’s time for this obscenely-funded monarchy to reform, massively. They have assets and earning potential, so let them pay for their own keep: scrap the civil lists and let them sink or swim.

There is just no justification for having an already vastly wealthy man like Prince Charles and his Hooray Henry sons suckling on the public teat – let alone the also-ran 15th in-line nobodies.

If they want to stay on with people bowing and scraping before them, they can do it without enjoying the largesse of their supposed social inferiors.

Hot Hot Hot!!!

by Greg McDonald

Phew! As sweating bookies slash the odds against the UK experiencing its highest ever temperatures, this week’s heatwave is surely a vision of Britain’s future, in which our tanned grandchildren buzz like noisy mosquitoes around the barbecue while we finish the Monday lunchtime siesta under a Yorkshire olive grove.

Of course we’ll bore them with stories about how there was once green grass in Hyde Park and nobody slept in the day, but they won’t really believe us.

For with global warming changing the face of the country irrevocably, these may be the last British summers as we’ve known them, the warm breeze blowing in a more European lifestyle of long summer evenings at pavement cafes, and changes to a historically reserved national character very much a creation of our climate.

A diverse bunch we may be these days, but while sun-kissed Roman Romeos have long wept to see Juliets depart, the British male has rarely fallen sobbing to his knees at Paddington station.

Indeed, Britain’s climate is changing so much that the Met Office has today delivered the first "heat health" warning, telling the more fragile of us to avoid doing anything too strenuous, take a break from outdoor work around midday and drink lots.

Lots of water, that is – in Britain’s burnt new world, such dehydrating Olde Worlde dangers as a pint of ale or an honest cuppa are off limits. Bring back the rain!

Good Week: John Bercow, Simon Cowell, World’s Shortest Man, England Women’s Cricket Team

by Greg McDonald

It was a proud week for new House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, as the self-styled "clean-break candidate" defeated 10 other MPs to succeed Michael Martin. Though if this was the moment the Commons cleaned up its act, it sure had a Machiavellian way of doing it, as Bercow proved wildly popular with Labour MPs – seemingly because his own lot can’t stand him.

It was a rich week for pop mogul Simon Cowell as Topshop billionaire Sir Philip Green confirmed talks are afoot to see the pair develop an international TV business to challenge Disney, with Simon owning, producing and starring in the company’s shows. TV’s favourite talent judge has seen some uncomfortable moments down the years, but we think his own run-in with American Idol's Chris Sligh is the most toe-curling.

It was a big week for diminutive Khagendra Thapa Magar, as the Nepalese who stands just 2ft tall stood to smash the record for the World's Shortest Man. The teenager will knock 5in off the Guinness World Record currently held by his comparatively gigantic 2ft 5in Chinese rival He Ping Ping when he turns 18 in October.

It was a glorious week for the England Women’s Cricket Team, as they proved themselves the undisputed best in the world with a stunning victory in the World Twenty20 Final. And in the aftermath of the tragic events in Pakistan in March, when the Sri Lankan cricket tour bus fell prey to a fatal terror attack, it proved a great week for Pakistan, who proved popular winners of the men’s event.

Bad Week: Max Mosley, tattoo girl, Peter Andre, Farrah Fawcett

by Greg McDonald

This week was the pits for FIA president Max Mosley, whose resignation proved the price of peace in the battle between Formula One's governing body and the Teams Association for the future of the sport after he called Ferrarri and others "loonies" in this interview and was forced to announce he won’t stand for re-election this year.

Here at GWBW, we've heard some desperate excuses in our time, but none to top that of Belgian “tattoo girl” Kimberley Vlaeminck, who claimed she'd only had 53 stars tattooed on her cheek because she'd fallen asleep under the needle.  But having seen her tattoo artist, we can't help thinking Kim must have known what she was letting herself in for. Indeed, she's since admitted lying to appease her angry father.

It was another painful week for Peter Andre as his estranged wife Katie Price laid bare a couple of striking, ahem, tweets on the social networking site Twitter in which she attacked the 'Mysterious Girl' crooner. Here at GWBW we just feel for the kids – it wasn't so long ago that Katie and Peter were being named Mum and Dad of the Year.

Finally, though inevitably overshadowed by the passing of Michael Jackson, it was a sad week for friends and family of actress Farrah Fawcett, who died in a Los Angeles hospital after losing her battle with cancer. Leading the tributes, Farrah's long-time partner Ryan O'Neal, at her bedside when she died, said: "We take comfort in the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world."

Michael Jackson 1958-2009

by James Amar

Michael Jackson has died, aged 50, after a suspected heart attack. The singer was rushed to hospital in Los Angeles where doctors tried, unsuccessfully, to resuscitate him. He leaves behind him three children – and a world in shock.

His first wife Lisa Marie Presley expressed a “massive loss on so many levels”, while Madonna said "his music will live on forever”.

Jackson's glittering career was launched when he joined his brothers on stage as the youngest member of The Jackson Five, enjoying enormous success with hits such as ABC and I Want You Back.

His work as a solo artist proved even more fruitful, with the trail-blazing Off The Wall setting the tone before, unforgettably, Thriller became the best-selling album of all time.

His death comes just weeks before Jackson was due to start his much-hyped This Is It comeback tour, with no fewer than 50 dates in London. As fans across the world struggle to come to terms with his sudden death, read the tributes for the King of Pop left by Orange.co.uk users.

RIP MJ.