Royal family in the news

It has been a strange week for news about the Royal family. First of all there was the news that a burglar was found in Buckingham Palace. A few days later, police stopped Prince Andrew, one of the Queen's sons, from walking in the Palace gardens. They apparently didn't recognise him, and newspaper reports suggest he was very cross about this. And then Prince William (who has just announced he is leaving his job as a helicopter pilot) told reporters how he liked to relax. He said: "I've got hundreds of animals on my iPhone, noises and sounds of the bush. So if I'm having a stressful day, I'll put a buffalo, a cricket or a newt on and it takes you back instantly to the bush."

Watching Big Brother

Big Brother is a popular reality TV show in the UK, where a group of strangers spend weeks in a house together being constantly filmed. They are not allowed books, TV, radio or internet, and are set tasks by the show's producers. The National Trust is also well-known in the UK: it is a charity which looks after special buildings or places. These are often grand old houses with valuable pictures and furniture or beautiful countryside. Late this month, though, the National Trust will be opening up the Big Brother house to the public. It is not a real house, but a film set based at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire. The idea is controversial but the National Trust says there is a good reason for it. "The National Trust needs to get more involved in cities," says Ivo Dawnay. He said young people also wanted to be able to tell friends: "You'll never guess what I did at the weekend."

What do British people do in bed?

A new worldwide survey has found British people are more likely to sleep naked than other nations. A third of Britons do not wear anything in bed, compared with half of Canadians. Half of us have a cup of tea or a hot drink before going to bed, but almost half of Americans and Mexicans pray or meditate at that time. Britons also like more pillows than other nations (20 per cent of us like three or more) and one in seven of us sleep with curtains and blinds open. Our beds are clean -- half of us change the sheets once a week, compared with 2 in ten people in Germany. One in ten of us, though, go to bed with a pet animal.

Less tea drinking in the UK now

We are famous for liking to drink cups of tea in the UK. But new sales figures show our habits are changing. Sales of ordinary tea have remained the same for the past year, but we are spending much more money on fruit tea, herbal tea and green tea. Sales of green tea have risen by almost 20 per cent, and herbal tea sales are up by 15 per cent. But you are still likely to find us drinking ordinary tea. Research shows 83 per cent of us do so every day.