Dwain was the golden boy of the Olympics, a world-beater. Even better, he was British. But then it all turned sour amid accusations of doping. After he had stormed down the course, beating his nearest rival by 10 seconds, at the recent Goldfish Olympics in Nottinghamshire, Dwain swam proudly on top of the podium. But then the water in his tank turned green. His owner, Richard Allen, said the murk was caused by the boiled peas he fed Dwain to cure his constipation, but Joe Weston-Webb, president of the World Goldfish Racing Association, spluttered: "There is no way a competitor could produce times like that unaided." As a dope test for goldfish has yet to be devised, there the matter rests. For now.

Number of officially designated "protest zones" in Beijing during the Games. Number of... // Independent

Is this the ugliest building in the world? I stand, slack jawed, before the new Hungarian National Theatre. It squats on the banks of the Danube near the Pest end of the Lagymanyosi Bridge, a bloated toad of civic ambition gone horribly wrong.

A tinted glass awning juts over the main entrance. Though quite ugly enough, it has been ruched into scallops for maximum vulgarity. Statues of nine golden haired "muses" are stranded halfway up the mock pillars of the front – they seem to be writhing with embarrassment. Enough, already. For no discernible reason the piazza outside is shaped like the prow of a ship. Please God, make it stop. The ship rides on to a pool in which a mock-up of the old National Theatre's neo-classical façade has been laid on its side and drowned. Nightmare. This is... // Independent

There's been a rash of prequels over the past few years, catering for those strange people who have always wanted to know where James Bond got his Aston Martin or how Batman manufactured his Bat-mask, but there's never been a prequel less necessary than Get Smart. The 1960s TV series was a spy spoof created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. Pitting Maxwell Smart, agent of Control, against the master criminals of Kaos, it was a parade of deadpan catchphrases and wonderfully impractical gadgets, and it didn't have even a hint of seriousness.

So what was the inspiration behind the new, big-screen version of Brooks's irreverent gagfest? Yes, it was Batman Begins. Peter Segal, Get Smart's director, declares in the press notes, "I liked the way that film reinvented the Batman franchise by telling... // Independent

Shortly after the Racing Post, bearing the headline "All Systems Go", appeared under the door of my hotel room last Tuesday morning a "ticker" on Sky Sports revealed that the first day of York's Ebor meeting had been abandoned. The sinking feeling spilt over from the waterlogged course. But the weirdest legacy of the washout was slinking home with an intact betting wedge, un-lost money as it were. So where does the dough go now?

The first opportunity comes with two major races "saved" from York, the Group One Juddmonte International Stakes at Newmarket this afternoon, and the Group Two Great Voltigeur Stakes at Goodwood.

Happily, the Derby hero New Approach and King George VI winner Duke Of Marmalade stand their ground for the International. I fancied New Approach last Tuesday with... // Independent

The FTSE 100 was up 57.3 points at 5427.5 and the FTSE 250 was up 120.7 points at 9059.8 at 11:41 on Friday morning.

The banking sector bounced back from earlier lows, dominating the FTSE 100 leader board. Lloyds TSB, at fourth place on the London benchmark, was up 3.93 per cent or 11p at 291p, and HBOS advanced to 283.5p, up 11.5p. The Royal Bank of Scotland was up 7.75p at 217.25p and Barclays gained 9.5p to 320.5p.

Moving up...

Liberty International was the strongest on the senior index, up 7.37 per cent or 64.5p at 939.5p, after Simon Property Group, the US real estate giant, declared a 3.45 per cent stake in the company.

Among the mid-caps, Benfield soared to 349.5p, up 78.5p or 28.97 per cent, after Aon revealed a recommended 350p per share offer for the reinsurance and risk... // Independent

A very funny man, Steve Carell, but he's spreading himself a bit thin of late.

This revives the 1960s TV spy spoof in which data-crunching desk jockey Maxwell Smart (Carell) finally gets his big break into fieldwork for US spy agency Control. He's teamed with gorgeous Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) on a mission to foil world domination by evil mastermind Terence Stamp, so we sit back and wait for the laughs. Which come pretty slow and infrequent,... // Belfast Telegraph

With apologies to Alex Ferguson: swimming, bloody hell. On yet another barely credible day in the sporting life of America's titanic dolphin man, Michael Phelps came from behind yesterday to win the equivalent of a photo finish by a whisker in the 100m butterfly to earn his seventh gold medal of these Games.

That matched Mark Spitz's 1972 record, although when Phelps went to his outsize bed last night he did so in the knowledge that he still had an eighth shot at gold here to come, in the4 x 100m medley relay this morning, Beijing time.

The record books will show that Phelps, 23, won the 100m fly in 50.58sec by a margin of 0.01sec from Serbia's Milorad Cavic. That barely begins to tell the tale of an extraordinary race. Cavic's coach lodged an official protest because he was convinced... // Independent

"El Ingles" is back. Today Frank Evans dons his suit of lights in southern Spain and returns to the bullring for the first time in three years. As Salford's only matador is 65 and recently underwent a quad-ruple heart bypass and replacement knee surgery, the bull's chance's appear better than average, but Evans says optimistically: "Today's 65 is yesterday's 40." He's certainly a survivor, having played rugby for Sale for eight years, worked as George Best's manager for four and suffered numerous close encounters with bulls' horns, including a particularly painful rectal rearrangement in 1983. Let's hope he doesn't get gored in the ring again today.

Or is it 13? Chinese Olympic gold-medal gymnast He Kexin's passport states her birth date is 1 January 1992, so why did the official Xinhua... // Independent

I don't know if you've noticed, but there's some kind of sporting event on telly. Winners. Losers. Bullock-necked women lifting steel lollipops, mouths agape with pain. Pint-sized superheroes playing the life-or-death game of badminton. Joyless beach volleyball sessions. Humans pretending to be fish. That kind of thing. So this week, just to keep in the spirit of things, welcome to the TV Olympics.

In the God Complex Category, there were two strong contenders: Kevin McCloud, who descended like a deus ex machina into the benighted town of Castleford to save it from itself (Kevin McCloud's Big Town Plan) and Andrew Marr, who ascended into the heavens to show us Britain from Above. It was touch and go between them. McCloud has upped his game since Grand Designs, where he used to linger like... // Independent

Yesterday's German edition of Playboy has an Olympic flavour. The kayaker Nicole Reinhardt, a hot prospect to win gold, is on the cover, her legs around a canoe paddle. She reassures readers she has not developed unattractively muscular arms: "I don't need thick arms. In canoeing it's about technique, thank God." There are four choices of cover – one with Reinhardt; another with the sailor Petra Niemann; Katharina Scholz, the latest field hockey athlete to shed her strip; and the judo competitor Romy Tarangul. Tarangul has already been knocked out but says she has proved women can be good at judo without being an "unfeminine muscular Amazon".

Win an Olympic event and pay for your wedding. That's what China's gold-medal synchronised swimmer Wang Feng has done. His province of Shandong... // Independent

The FTSE 100 was up 1.1 points at 5,542.9 while the FTSE 250 was down 54.1 points at 9,330 at 11.35am this morning. The London market edged up following news that Russia had ordered a ceasefire in the conflict over the South Ossetia region in Georgia.

The development bought some cheer to the market, which was in the red after UK inflation came inhigher than expected for July – consumer prices advanced by 4.4 per cent compared with a year ago, well clear of the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target and above the Government’s 3 per cent upper limit for a third month.

Reacting to the news, Global Insight’s Howard Archer said the data “will not go down at all well at the Bank”. “The rise in consumer price inflation to a series high of 4.4 per cent in July was well above... // Independent

Price: From £63 070.

Engine: 3614cc, flat-six, 24 valves, 258kW at 6500rpm, 288lb ft at 4400rpm

Transmission: Six-speed gearbox (seven-speed PDK optional), rear engine, rear-wheel drive

Performance: 288kkm/h, 0-100km/h 4.9sec, 11.4 litres/100km official average, CO2 225g/km

Time was when a fuel consumption of 30mpg was thought pretty good. That was when 70-profile tyres were the height of sportiness and the five-speed gearbox was starting... // Motoring

It's that slow-news time of year, when PR firms try to promote clients by releasing pointless polls to a gullible media. Seems fair, so here's a couple. First up, as it were, is dating site gay-PARSHIP.co.uk ; decathlete Daley Thompson tops their poll of British Olympians gay men would most like to date, with a resounding 33 per cent of the votes (must be the moustache). Sir Steve Redgrave is not far behind, on 28 per cent. Dame Kelly Holmes wins the lesbian poll with a landslide 48 per cent, Denise Lewis trailing in second with 19 per cent. Sir Steve does come top of BA's Top Five Olympic British Competitors poll, though. In other news: BA come 18th in customer satisfaction poll by 'Which?' magazine.

Number of high school cheerleaders who squeezed into a lift at the University of Texas... // Independent

Time was when a fuel consumption of 30mpg was thought pretty good. That was when 70 profile tyres were the height of sportiness and the five-speed gearbox was starting to register on the radar of drivers who might not necessarily own a pair of stringback driving gloves. If your car did 30mpg, you were a prudent sort.

Today, it is different. There's a significant road taxation increase beyond 225g/km of CO2 output, which equates to just under 30mpg for a petrol car. So 30mpg is merely borderline acceptable and a car whose official "combined" fuel thirst is greater is deemed a gas-guzzler. In London it would have been even more significant had the congestion charge hike to £25 a day over 225g gone ahead. With the mayoral change, this idea has been shelved, which means that Porsche has... // Independent

I gave the show a brief mention a few weeks ago, but now its run has finished, it's time to give Cabin Pressure its due. Its first episode was, I said, flawless. Nothing can be flawless for ever but the writing and performances in this tight comedy have been exceptional. Let me put it like this: this is the only programme that has kept me close to a radio at 11.30 every Wednesday morning. Never mind Listen Again (for more on which, see below) – you want to catch this as soon as you can.

The setting might be novel – a charter plane, with its skeleton crew of misfits – but the writing obeys pretty much all the necessary rules of classic British sitcom writing, which are simple. In fact, students of the art form would do well to listen to it and take notes. You need little more than... // Independent

The American swimmer Michael Phelps is attempting to break his compatriot Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals at an Olympics. The 23-year-old from Baltimore begins his quest in the 400m individual medley. The heats begin today at 11.30 and the final is at 03.00 tomorrow morning.

Craig Fallon, right, could become Britain's first gold medal winner of the Games when he competes in the judo extra lightweight competition (the final is at approximately 11am today). The 25-year-old from Wolverhampton, who was knocked out in the second round four years ago, is the first British man for 25 years to hold the world and European titles at the same time.

Several British crews start their campaigns in the rowing competition, including the men's four, who have won gold at the past two Games... // Independent

Just because you're not intending to scale K2, drive a Maserati Quattroporte or conduct the LSO any time soon doesn't mean you're not interested in mountaineering, fast cars or classical music. By the same token, argues Neil Beckett, the editor of 1001 Wines You Must Try Before You Die (Cassell, £20), knowing more about the loftier peaks of wine doesn't mean it's compulsory to drink legendary vintages of Yquem, Lafite or Cristal and bankrupt yourself in the process. In developing his "life's-too-short-to-drink-bad-wine" thesis, Beckett's mouthwatering bucket list brings the sometimes intimidating subject of fine wine to life, making it instantly more digestible.

1001 Wines makes no claim to be a list of all the world's greatest wines. Although two or more wines from the same... // Independent

The FTSE 100 was down 4.1 points 5450.4 and the FTSE 250 was up 15.4 points at 9091.1 at 12:09 pm on Wednesday. Lonmin dominated the London benchmark, up almost 47 per cent or 1089p at 3408p, after Xstrata unveiled a £5bn offer for the platinum miner. Lonmin rebuffed the 3300p per share proposal – the South African group called the move “opportunistic and entirely unwelcome”. Market sources said the response was not unexpected.

“There are probably enough Lonmin shareholders who want to sell out and invest in other mining plays. The rejection does not mean that we won’t see a takeover,” said one trader, who highlighted Xstrata’s acquisitive past.

Michael Rawlinson, the widely followed mining analyst at Liberum Capital, also expects the bid to succeed.

“We see the bid... // Independent