MORE than £2,000 was raised during a fun day, which will kick-start a patient fund to offer a unique alternative therapy to children with movement disorders.

The festival of joyous chaos that descends on Edinburgh every summer redrafts its own crazy history each year, as performers and their willing lackeys head north for the bacchanalian revelry that chaotically meanders through the backwaters of the silly season. Nearly all the performers fantasise about triumphant, sell-out runs that will kick-start a glittering career. Most of these desperate ...

What is the most important item in your pocket or handbag? Your wallet, a purse, maybe a set of keys? A condom? Or is it a packet of mints? Who, after all, hasn't reached for a Polo or Smint before a job interview, romantic tryst or board meeting, in the hope that a blast of extra-strong peppermint or waft of spearmint will banish bad breath and pep up your self-confidence?

Pink List judges ? including former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw, broadcaster Clare Balding, Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill, and John Amaechi, the psychologist and author ? fought long and hard to decide on the 101 most influential gay and lesbian people in Britain today.

It is a typical midsummer's day, duck-egg blue skies, a wisp of cloud, not a hint of breeze. A convoy of vehicles is burrowing deep into the impossibly green mountains of rural Congo. The first, a flat-top, is bristling with men and machine guns and the last, a jeep, is driven by a brilliant young anthropologist who also happens to be heir to the now defunct Belgian throne. I am in the truck in ...