Channel 5's Truck won

An ecological campaigner has won Channel 5's endurance gameshow Touch The Truck, and plans to sell the £34,000 first prize.

Jerry Middleton, 39, from Winchester, Hampshire said he wanted to use the money from the sale of the Toyota Landcruiser Amazon to fund a political party.

He was the last person left touching the truck at the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Thurrock, Essex, after 81 hours, 43 minutes and 31 seconds.

Fellow contestant Davina McFarlane, 22, a psychology student from east London, was the only other person still standing.

Other entrants had suffered hallucinations because of sleep deprivation, with one man, a refugee from Kosovo, starting to speak in his native tongue.

Another imagined the vehicle had turned into an ocean liner.

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Weisz takes to the stage

Actress Rachel Weisz is to return to the stage to play an art graduate in Neil LaBute's play The Shape Of Things which opens at the Almeida Kings Cross in May.

LaBute was an accomplished playwright before he made In The Company of Men and Nurse Betty.

Weisz made her first West End appearance in Noel Coward's Design For Living at the Donmar Warehouse in 1994 and in 1999 starred in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer at the Comedy.

Her films include Enemy at the Gates, The Mummy and Land Girls.

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Sontag wins the Jerusalem Prize

Writer Susan Sontag has won the Jerusalem Prize, awarded to a writer whose work expresses the freedom of the individual in society.

Sontag, who was born in New York in 1933, is the author of essays, plays, short stories and novels including The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (1999).

Among previous winners of the Jerusalem Prize are Bertrand Russell, Jorge Luis Borges, Simone de Beauvoir, Milan Kundera and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign minister and the head of the panel of three judges, said he had read all of Ms Sontag's work.

"I identify myself with her as an author, and I respect her as a person," he said.

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Coronation Street star's baby joy

Actress Julie Hesmondhalgh is celebrating after discovering that she is the latest Coronation Street actress to become pregnant.

Hesmondhalgh, 30, who plays transsexual Hayley Cropper in the TV soap, discovered she was expecting while on holiday in Santa Barbara, California, with her live-in-lover actor Ian Kirkshaw last month.

The couple have known each other for three years but became involved romantically last December.

"We are absolutely delighted," she said. "I am over the moon, thrilled at the news."

A spokeswoman for the soap said: "There are now jokes about a fertility chair at stage one because first there was Denise Welch and then news of Jacqueline Pirie expecting."

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Victoria Wood recovers after surgery

Comedienne Victoria Wood is recovering at home following an emergency operation to remove a growth in her womb at the weekend.

A publicist for the star said she underwent surgery after being admitted to a north London hospital on Friday with severe stomach pains.

Woods, 47, was allowed to return to her home in Highgate, North London on Monday after being told to take total rest for the next few weeks.

This means she has cancelled a number of warm-up shows planned ahead of her UK live stage tour, due to begin in May.

Her publicist said: "Victoria was in no danger at any point, the operation was successful.

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Harrison Ford justifies fee

Harrison Ford's spokeswoman has rejected reports that the star is being paid $25m (£17m) for 20 days' work in the film K19: The Widowmaker.

While acknowledging that reports of the fee are correct, Patricia McQueeney points out that Ford has spent months working on the script and casting.

"The shoot is four-and-a-half months long and he's working every day," she said.

The film, based on the true events of a 1961 Russian submarine disaster, has angered the remaining survivors of K-19 who have claimed they are represented as "technically ignorant drunken morons."