The erratic behaviour of Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce today

Listeners were left baffled by the erratic behaviour of Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce today - until it emerged the show was being hosted by comedian Rob Brydon.

Brydon managed to get through almost the entire programme before eventually dropping hints that it was an April 1 wind-up.

Listeners took to message boards wondering whether Bruce was drunk.

Brydon had still not owned up by the end of the show when he handed over to the next presenter Jeremy Vine, who he called Tim - the name of Vine's comedian brother.

Some listeners were fooled by the switch. One tweeted: "Ken Bruce has been really annoying this morning totally unlike him but I for one am not impressed. There, I've said it now, rant over."

Others saw through the gag and praised Brydon's appearance.

And the funnyman himself dropped a hint during the show, when he posted a message on Twitter which said: "Loving Ken Bruce on Radio 2 this morning..."

Brydon repeatedly burst into incomprehensible rambles and cracked ribald jokes, far removed from Bruce's usual patter.

And at one stage he chatted to afternoon presenter Vine and grumbled he was "boring".

The programme also included a spoof interview in which Brydon interviewed Sir Terry Wogan - another impostor who turned out to be Peter Serafinowicz.

The real Bruce said after the show: "It's been wonderful to be able to listen to the radio - tuning into someone entertaining in the morning for a change. I'm offering him a contract to share the honours on a regular basis."

And Brydon said: "They were big shoes to fill but I loved the challenge of being Ken for the whole show. I'd seen Being John Malkovich and wanted to take it to the next level. Happy April 1, everyone."

Joel is by no means the first popular musician to cancel an eagerly awaited book

He sang about the delights of being able to "forget about life for a while", and that's exactly what Billy Joel has decided to do after suddenly pulling the plug on a revelatory autobiography which was already written, was in the final stages of being edited, and had been scheduled to hit the world's bookstores in the middle of June.

In a statement released by HarperCollins, his cuckolded publisher, the 61-year-old singer said he'd suddenly had second thoughts about raking over the gory details of his career. All manuscripts of The Book of Joel, a handful of which are already rumoured to be in the hands of reviewers, will now have to be retrieved and pulped.

"It took working on writing a book to make me realise that I'm not all that interested in talking about the past, and that the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music," Joel said. The seven-figure advance he was given after signing his original $3m book deal three years ago is now expected to be repaid.

Joel's decision represents a huge blow for HarperCollins, which had already revealed the cover art for the book and had been busy promising journalists that it would provide an "emotional ride" which would "contain details he has never revealed before". The firm had been counting on it making a splash on a par with that of Keith Richards, whose autobiography has spent recent months at the top of the hardback best-seller lists.

The singer's romantic life has included three failed marriages. His first was to Elizabeth Weber Small, who was married to Joel's (then) bandmate Jon when their relationship began. A second, in the 1980s, was to supermodel Christie Brinkley, the subject of "Uptown Girl". His third ex-wife, Katie Lee, is a television presenter 30 years his junior. Other notches on his bedpost include Elle Macpherson, whom he dated in the 1980s and who inspired "And So It Goes". Joel has also experienced lifelong struggles with depression, substance abuse and alcoholism, which led him to attempt suicide in the early 1970s.

Joel's publicist, Claire Mercuri, would not elaborate on the reasons for his withdrawal from the project, saying only that, "he feels that his music really speaks about his life better than anything else".

Joel is by no means the first popular musician to cancel an eagerly awaited book. Mick Jagger backed out of a deal in the early 1980s, saying he couldn't remember anything interesting. More recently, Sean "Diddy" Combs didn't bother to complete a memoir that he was supposed to write for Random House and ended up being sued.

From Diana's royal puffball to Meg Matthews' Walkers

In 1981, as Britain was in the midst of a biting recession, Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, while the world watched.

Elizabeth Emanuel, designer

"Until Diana's dress, wedding gowns had been uniformly the same: white, ankle-length, A-line, long-sleeved. We brought the wedding dress into high fashion. Diana was introduced to us by Vogue; she didn't yet have her own sense of style, but she loved the very theatrical, fairy-tale dresses we made. When she asked us to make her wedding dress, it was life-changing. She told us to be secretive, but there were no instructions from Buckingham Palace, no protocol.

There was so much speculation in the press after she wore a gown of ours to an official dinner, the Palace was forced to make an announcement through Reuters. The whole world went mad. There were photographers at the studio constantly and we had to take on security. We left false trails for the tabloids in the rubbish bins and we locked the dress in a trunk every night. We even made a spare dress in case our real design was leaked.

On the day itself we realised this wasn't just a wedding dress, it was a moment in history. We dressed her at Clarence House, with the bridesmaids and the Queen Mother. Diana was excited but very calm. There was a moment, waiting for the coach, when we all stood in total silence for what seemed like an age. Then she stepped into the carriage and the crowds went mad."

Nicky Haslam, interior designer and writer

"Princess Diana's wedding was extraordinary because it was a royal wedding. One thinks of watching the coronation on newsreels, there's this incredible formality to it, which doesn't exist now. It was certainly very traditional. There was a ball afterwards, given by the Queen, but Prince Charles and Princess Diana weren't there. In those days, the bride and groom left after their reception and went on honeymoon. To give a dance the night of your wedding was seen as incredibly bad form. The last thing you wanted was the bride getting reeling drunk so she couldn't consummate her marriage."

Bruce Oldfield, designer

"The Eighties was a showy decade. I made a dress for an Australian bride in 1984. We had three appointments and each time she said the sketches weren't quite right, until she finally said, 'You've missed the point. We want our guests to know we've spent an absolute bloody fortune and that this is Australia's royal wedding!'.

Even three or four years after Diana's fairy-princess dress, wedding gowns were changing to suit the times. This Australian bride wanted the full skirt, but also to be able to detach parts of the dress to reveal her very good figure; there were moves afoot to sex up wedding dresses."