Prince William and Kate Middleton have been transformed into the infamous punk couple Sid and Nancy in the latest piece of artwork inspired by the royal wedding.

Artist Rich Simmons, 24, a Prince’s Trust ambassador, has created a mural on London’s Southbank in honour of the pair who will wed in April. In the artwork Prince William and his fiancée both wear leather jackets against the backdrop of the union flag.

The artist took his inspiration from the photograph of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen by 1970s photographer Jamie Reid.

Mr Simmons said: “Hopefully they will like it. I wanted to do something that would make William and Kate accessible. They are the modern breed of royals and they’re not like the others, they are more down to earth – they’re not the snooty types.” (PA)

Wear your dinner

If you really loved your meal at one New York restaurant, you can now walk out with the skin of the animal you ate.

Marlow & Sons, an eaterie in the city’s trendy Williamsburg neighbourhood, wants clients to be able to remember their meals forever by purchasing items such as bags made from the hide of cows and other animals served up from the kitchen.

“We want something people could enjoy beyond their dinner,” Kate Huling, wife of the owner, said. “They come in, they eat, they leave and usually think of something else. So the bags really preserve and honour that animal.”

Belts, wallet and hats and sweaters using wool and rabbit fur will also be on offer once the animal in question has been eaten. (AFP)

Pen guns

Two guns disguised as pens have been seized in raids at the homes of a pair of teenage gang members.

The weapons were recovered from the homes of two young men in Waltham Forest, east London.

Members of the Metropolitan Police’s Territorial Support Group arrested the suspects – a 16-year-old and 17-year-old – on suspicion of possessing a firearm and ammunition. (PA)

Latest allegation

Daniel Domscheit-Berg accuses WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of many things in his book presented yesterday, but perhaps the oddest allegation is that he abused the former insider’s cat.

“Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt,” Domscheit-Berg says in his book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website.

“Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat’s throat.” (AFP)

Sex strike

That’s the message a female Belgian politician hopes will catch on amongst the spouses of her colleagues in the Brussels Parliament. She thinks a temporary withholding of conjugal rights from the nation’s elected representatives might be the incentive they need to form a government.

Senator Marleen Temmerman – a gynaecologist as well as a politician – told a Belgian newspaper she got the idea from Kenya where the deadlock over forming a government was broken just after a similar ban in 2009.

Certainly nothing else has broken the political impasse in Belgium, which has now been without an effective government for 241 days after a row along linguistic lines between the French-speaking southern part and the Dutch-speaking northern part has defeated a series of intermediaries from amongst Belgium’s seasoned politicians. (AFP)

Women at work

UK women now make up half the total number of those in work, although they outnumber men in a growing number of regions, according to a new study.

Research for the GMB union found there were almost 12 million women in public and private sector jobs, 49.4 per cent of the 24.2 million of all employees in the UK.

Areas where women outnumbered men included Gwynedd in North Wales, Knowsley, Dumfries and Galloway, Anglesey and Pembrokeshire.

The lowest number of women workers were in the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets (40 per cent), Haringey (42 per cent) and Southwark (43 per cent).

GMB official Kamaljeet Jandu said: “There are 85 areas in the UK where women in employment outnumber men. So what happens to women in the workplace is no longer a minority issue.” (PA)