Hot tip from Sharon Stone on why she still looks good at 48: always use the stairs. The woman behind the most famously uncrossed legs in film history has also revealed some future plans. “I’m thinking I ought to make an exercise video,” said the actress at the premiere for Basic Instinct 2. “I’ve exercised a little bit over a long period of time,” she added. Exercise might be a euphemism.

Bosses should be sweating the small stuff; things that make people miserable. “It’s not so much what I say, but what you hear,” says Stephen Young, one of a new band of consultants teaching cheap ways to hang on to staff by dealing with “microinequities”. If bosses just listened to their staff and looked them in the eye during conversations, rather than checking their e-mails, he says, performance and loyalty from those lower down the fear-and-loathing chain would be improved.

Research is needed into possible long-term hearing loss from prolonged listening to iPods and their ilk, the National Institutes of Health, part of the US Department of Health, concludes. A survey of 301 teenagers across America found that 51 per cent reported that their hearing was impaired, compared with 37 per cent of 1,000 adults also questioned.

Death of a spouse may not affect the surviving partner as severely as you might suppose. A Michigan study tracked 1,500 couples over the age of 65, looking at the quality of marriage and what happened when one in the relationship died. Nearly half reported happy unions, but also that they coped with the loss without much grieving, drawing on happy memories for comfort.

James Blunt says that he sold his sister on eBay. “She was crying because she couldn’t get to a funeral in southern Ireland,” he explains. Snapping into action, the musician sought bidders for a “damsel in distress” needing a “knight in shining armour”. The winner whisked her to the service in a helicopter. “They’re now dating and they’ve been going out for 18 months and she’s living with him,” Blunt says. He now intends to put his second sister “on sale soon”. Still, you’d think he might have made enough now from four million album sales.

Sources: Time, BBC News, Reuters, Ananova, IOL.com