DINNER PARTY INTEL: The queen watches Helen Mirren

1. All the queen’s horses

It’s been long known that Queen Elizabeth is a fan of horses. Now, it turns out, she may prefer them to people.

The 96-year-old monarch, who has health issues, skipped last week’s opening of parliament but on Sunday she stepped out into the cold air for a horse show at Windsor Castle. For two hours, she animatedly watched the spectacle that included star turns from Tom Cruise and Helen Mirren — who played her in the 2006 film The Queen. Last Friday she was spotted at a horse show where one of her horses was named supreme champion.

2. Beer market

Heineken, after a long battle with Guinness, has become the best-selling beer in Nigeria. The Dutch brewer has snapped up a host of local breweries in response to the arrival in the country of AB InBev and taken top spot.

Ayni Adekunle, who runs Heineken’s Nigerian marketing, says beer is popular in the West African country, which about a decade ago supplanted Ireland as the second-biggest Guinness market after the UK.

3. Robo-op

Robot-assisted surgery should be made standard for complex cancer operations, according to researchers quoted in the latest edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The advice follows the first trial of its kind in the UK, which found that the technique led to shorter recovery times and fewer complications in rebuilding a bladder after the removal of a tumour. When surgeons used a robot to help perform a keyhole procedure there was a “striking” 77% reduction in dangerous blood clots, compared with patients who had traditional open surgery.