Seven black-and-white photographs of the Beatles sitting on a grassy field, taken by a teenage girl on the last day of filming for their movie Help!, will be sold next week.

Gwyn Blanchard, then a 13-year-old student, trudged in the rain with a group of friends to the set of the Fab Four's second film, hoping for an autograph, but wound up being invited for a chat with her idols.

In Help!, released in 1965, the Beatles try to escape the clutches of a mysterious cult. The soundtrack includes some of the group's biggest hits, including Ticket to Ride. When the Beatles were filming the scene in which they play beside some tanks, Ms Blanchard snapped some photographs as the band-members relaxed between takes.

"It was only a little black plastic Kodak that I had."

Ms Blanchard said she had kept the photos and signatures in a box for several decades, but had decided to sell them.

Cameo Auctioneers, which will hold the sale on November 10, said the photos, accompanied by the autographs on notebook paper, could fetch £2-3,000 (€2800). (Reuters)

Sex broadcast baffles London commuters

London commuters listening out for the latest news about train services got a broadcast with a difference when the noise of a couple apparently having sex was blasted out over a station's loudspeaker system.

Instead of the usual messages about delays, passengers at West Ham station in London heard a couple's love-making antics being relayed over platform loudspeakers during the evening rush hour on Thursday.

"The noises heard by passengers were not from within our station. We believe they were a result of some sort of interference with our public address system," a Transport for London spokesman said yesterday. "It certainly wasn't coming from our staff."

"It was definitely a couple doing it there and then," passenger Laura O'Connor told the London Evening Standard newspaper. "The driver must have heard it, too, as the doors stayed open longer than usual." (Reuters)

Developers destroy artist's work

Internationally-acclaimed sculptor Terry New is to sue developers who destroyed moulds of most of his life's work when they demolished his lock-up garage.

Mr New kept the moulds, from which he could create copies of his original works for exhibitions and sales, in one of 43 garages close to his home in Florence Road, south east London.

His landlords sold the site for housing development in 2007, for £1,062,500 to Mindcross, which demolished the garages and cleared the site without Mr New being told. Deputy High Court judge Christopher Pymont QC ruled that Mindcross was responsible for the loss rather than the landlords. The claim could be for about £400,000. (PA)

Cocky burglary suspect

An on-the-run burglary suspect taunted the authorities with a home-made mugshot showing him standing next to a police van.

Matthew Maynard, 23, is wanted in connection with a burglary in the Mount Pleasant area of Swansea, south Wales, in September.

His mugshot appeared in the South Wales Evening Post newspaper, together with seven others, as part of a police appeal to track down wanted suspects. The photo can be viewed via the newspaper's website at www.thisissouthwales.co.uk. (PA)

Jumbo roadblock

A couple driving home from church in Oklahoma, United States, crashed into an elephant in the middle of the road.

It had escaped from a nearby circus and run across a rural main road in Enid, north of Oklahoma City.

The couple were not injured in the crash, but police said the elephant had a broken tusk and a cut leg. (PA)

Sphere of influence

The ball has finally earned a place at the National Toy Hall of Fame in New York.

Along with the Game Boy video, the museum chose the ball to join its all-star lineup of 41 classics, ranging from the bicycle and the kite to the jump rope, the teddy bear and Mr Potato Head.

Longevity is a key criterion for getting into the hall. Each toy must also foster learning, creativity or discovery through play. (PA)

Art under canvas

Paris's Pompidou Centre plans to fill a circus big top with Picassos, Matisses and Calders in a roving museum to take its masterpieces of modern art to culturally deprived rural regions.

The "Pompidou Mobile" aims to be just as avant-garde in its design as the original Pompidou Centre - the tube-covered structure that houses the city's premier contemporary art museum.

Only part of the funding has been raised and no itinerary has yet been drawn up. The project's priorities are rural regions and the poor, crime-ridden suburbs that ring French cities. (PA)

Berlusconi hails Kazakh men

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi praised the virility of Kazakhstan's men during a visit to Rome by its President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, saying this was the reason for the former Soviet country's population growth.

The comment by the 73-year-old Italian leader, who often boasts of his own virility and has been in trouble for hosting parties with prostitutes, came at a meeting with Mr Nazarbayev that Mr Berlusconi said sealed business deals for "billions of dollars".

The Italian Prime Minister, praising Kazakhstan's "great natural resources and huge demographic growth" at a meeting with Mr Nazarbayev late on Thursday, added with a smile that the latter "demonstrates the great vitality of all Kazakh males". (Reuters)