10 THINGS !

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Mr Man author Roger Hargreaves is Britain's third best-selling author, having sold more than 100 million books.

2. Termites are cockroaches, according to the Royal Society's Biology Letters journal.More details

3. Denmark is the happiest country in Europe; Italy the unhappiest. (The UK was 9th out of 15.)More details

4. Kate Middleton's family tree has been traced back 200 years to ancestors who survived coal mining, malnutrition and a cholera epidemic in the North East.

5. Male doctors are twice as likely to drink and drive as anyone outside the health service.

6. Dr Seuss' name is pronounced Dr Zoice.

7. A water-tight denial by a politician – as opposed to one that leaves room for later manoeuvre - is known as a Sherman pledge. The other sort is called a non-denial denial.More details

8. Chocolate is better than a passionate kiss, causing a more intense and longer-lasting buzz, and doubling the heart rate.More details

9. The average Briton has sex 4,239 times.

10. Spiralling obesity rates are forcing councils to upgrade their crematoria, to take wider coffins.More details

Soures: 1 - the Times, 16 April; 4 – the Observer, 15 April; 5 – the Times, 16 April; 6 – Daily Telegraph, 19 April; 9 – News of the World, 15 April.

BBC MAGAZINE.