Ron Parker, from Speed Stacks, the company who promotes the sport and sells cup-stacking paraphernalia, has come to the school to help demonstrate the sport in morning assembly, and to present the club with a digital display which will help measure stacking speeds to within 1/100 of a second.The club members bound into the hall, each of them clutching a string bag containing 12 plastic cups. It’s the woozy, internet video-clip which launched a craze and, in turn, a sport. “You have to see it to believe it,” says the intro, before fading into blurred footage of Emily Fox, 14, setting the world record at arranging upturned plastic cups into pyramids, or, as it’s now called, Sport Stacking. After watching the jaw-dropping spectacle of cups almost flowing from her hands, you might cynically dismiss Emily’s feat as the pointless achievement of a girl with a little too much spare time. But with encouragement from teachers in thousands of American schools, children are becoming obsessed with stacking these brightly coloured beakers, and, while their PlayStations gather dust, the word is starting to spread over here.

The Tory plans unsettled Tony Blair, who took an unusually high-profile role in presenting the plans by giving a series of media interviews.Mr Clarke came under strong pressure from Mr Blair to produce a tough package. But some ministers had reservations, with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, echoing concerns in the business world that the curbs on migrants might harm Britain’s economy.Unveiling a five-year plan on immigration and asylum, Mr Clarke announced that skilled immigrants, such as doctors, engineers and IT specialists, would be the only group able to come to Britain without a job offer.Skilled workers, including nurses and teachers, will be able to come only to fill a vacancy. Mr Mellon’s brother, Chris, works for the Bush administration in the Pentagon.After several visits to addiction therapy clinics, Matthew Mellon has declared his drug-taking days behind him. When asked about his ability to stay off drugs and drink last month, he said: “It’s about discipline, about making choices. You either want to go down a glowing path full of opportunity, or you want to go down a path towards hell. I start every day with meditation and prayer to a god of my own understanding.”.

“I like Rodney’s style as a pundit, but he has overstepped the mark by a long way,” said an unnamed football fan outside the BBC, joining the chorus of head-shaking that followed Rodney Marsh’s play on the words “tsunami” and “Toon Army” and cost him his six-figure job at Sky Sports. American Vogue devoted eight pages to the nuptials.Their formal separation followed an affair in 2003 between Mrs Mellon, one of the “It” girls of the London party circuit in the 1990s, and Oscar Humphries, the son of Barry Humphries, creator of Dame Edna Everage. The liaison ended spectacularly when Humphries Junior, some 15 years younger than Mrs Mellon, wrote a long account of the relationship in The Daily Telegraph, protecting his lover by changing her age. Her identity was revealed within a week.Mr Mellon, who insists he is friends with his estranged wife, comes from an American family which ranks alongside the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Astors in its wealth and influence.Alongside its role in the oil industry, the dynasty established two banks and the family has properties in Manhattan, Maine and Florida. But the incident will set tongues wagging in the upper echelons of society on both sides of the Atlantic.From a dalliance as a would-be film producer after inheriting a $25m (£14m) trust fund at the age of 21, to a string of celebrity girlfriends, the well-spoken millionaire has long attracted public interest.Mr Mellon, whose friends include the actress Elizabeth Hurley, was reported last monthto be finalising a divorce agreement with his wife, who is estimated to have made £30m from the partial sale of her stake in Jimmy Choo last year.Their marriage in May 2000 at Blenheim Palace was billed as an A-list love story after Mr Mellon proposed in a rose-filled limousine with a poem he had written.