In brief: The Doctor conquers Stratford

Beforehand, many, including the director Jonathan Miller, dismissed him as a mere celebrity. But David Tennant (pictured), better known as the Doctor in Doctor Who, has just proved them all wrong with the critics giving him a big (though slightly qualified) thumbs-up on the first night of his debut in the title role of Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company. "I rate Tennant very highly," judges Paul Taylor, theatre critic of the Independent. "I've seen bolder Hamlets and more moving Hamlets, but few who kept me so riveted throughout," said Benedict Nightingale in the Times. Every performance is sold out but perhaps the ultimate accolade is that Stratford-upon-Avon, which can be sniffy about its local theatre, has taken to him. The local fish and chip shop has put up a notice promising to "exterminate" customers' hunger... Normally a reliable monarchist publication, the glossy monthly, Tatler, has published an article by its editor Geordie Grieg with the headline: "How naff are the royals?" Grieg writes: "The Royal Family may call themselves the 'Firm' but never have they appeared so infirm and so divided as a group when it comes to style, substance and purpose." The article carries a "naff-o-meter". The Queen  scores zero for "naffness", but the Earl of Wessex is rated eight and the Duke of York nine. Brave stuff from a magazine for which the Duchess of Cornwall's son, Tom Parker Bowles, and her niece, Emma Parker Bowles, are columnists, reports the Daily Telegraph... ·