Peter Kay joked filming of the event which took place at the Lowry Theatre in Salford, Greater Manchester. It turned out to be ’20 minutes of entertainment dragged out over two-and-a-half hours’ and featured the audience slow-clapping at the end of it.

During the second half of the spectacle, a public announcement was made to the £300-a-seat audience: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated, we have a technical problem but everything possible is being done. While we are addressing the problem, please welcome back to the stage, Peter Kay.’

Weddings can be expensive occasions not just for the bride and groom – but for their guests too. But it was perhaps surprising to learn that even [...]

Britain’s consumers became far less gloomy over the past month with the royal wedding, good weather and the realisation that their mortgages would not be going up coinciding with the second-biggest improvement in consumer confidence in recent times.

The latest snapshot of household sentiment from Gfk NOP Social Research showed that overall sentiment picked up from -31 to -21 during May, returning consumer confidence to levels seen last autumn when the economy weakened.