Sean shorn of knighthood

Two incidents that would have a 007 nemesis clasping hand to forehead and reaching for the lever marked "piranha pit". . . First, Sean Connery is denied a knighthood because of a dodgy confession by the actor five years ago in Vanity Fair magazine. Ageing Scottish macho men are known to like a battered haggis supper of a Saturday night - but Connery can do you a battered wife, allege his female critics. His former spouse, Diane Cilento, claimed Connery used to hit her - something he's always denied. But in the Vanity Fair he claimed it's OK to slap a woman if alternatives fail: "If a woman is a bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually, then I'd do it," he said. Perhaps he'd be better off slapping the bloody-minded and bitchy litigants at MGM and Sony Pictures. Expanding on its countersuit against MGM, Sony Pictures is claiming a percentage of profits from all MGM's Bond films. Sony's case rests upon a deal done with writer and producer Kevin McClory, who collaborated with Ian Fleming on the Thunderball script. MGM, however, say the proposal is "bizarre" and "preposterous as a matter of fact and law".