Gwyneth gets a date

At last! Someone has finally had the gumption to ask Gwyneth Paltrow out for a date. But typically it's not a Brit.

The man in the crash helmet obviously saw an opportunity after the Hollywood star complained that nobody in London was asking her out. It turns out, however, that he is the Canadian singer Bryan Adams - once again putting the British male to shame.

Following Paltrow's comments that we just don't do dating, unlike normal all-American guys, Adams must have picked up the phone.

The pair spent a date at the members-only Wellington club in Knightsbridge, leaving on an Italian moped in the early hours today.

It was an informal affair. Jeans and pinstripe jacket for Gwynnie, 29, denim and leather for Bryan, but a date's a date and if her comments are anything to go by she's in no position to be fussy.

Earlier this week she said: "British people don't seem to ask each other out on dates. I did get asked out a couple of times on my last trip to London - and I went out on both. They were very charming. I only go for the toffs. If someone asks you out, they're really going out on a limb, whereas in America it happens all the time.

"Someone will come up to you and ask you for dinner and you'll say 'sure'. It's no big deal and no weight should be attached to it. It's only dinner, for God's sake. Yet in Britain, mostly what happens seems to be that people meet at work. If there's a little something there, then they hang out together and, all of a sudden, they're boyfriend and girlfriend."

Gwyneth, who is promoting her new film Possession adapted from the AS Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel will, after all, be in London for a little bit longer.

In the film she plays Maud Bailey, an academic who teams up with an aspiring scholar, played by Aaron Eckhart, to uncover a love affair between two Victorian poets. Along the way, they too fall in love.

So, if double dating is not a problem for Gwyneth, that surely leaves the way open for British rivals to whisk her off somewhere nice.