At the appointed hour, Gervais was in New York, Groening and Jean were in Los Angeles, and I was in Pudleston, a tiny village in rural north Herefordshire. It was a scenario almost as improbable as the average dream sequence on The Simpsons. But then Groening went one better: might he be interested in writing one? Last week, Gervais, Groening and Jean agreed to talk exclusively in a unique conference call to The Independent Magazine about The Simpsons, The Office and their enthusiastic mutual appreciation society. At first the idea was that Gervais would merely lend his voice to an episode, joining an already stellar list of guest stars. Groening was a fan of The Office, and hearing that Gervais was devoted to The Simpsons, engineered a get-together. So Homer gets to share his life with the professor, who burns his underwear and tries to stop Bart watching TV, while Charles is thrown together with Marge, with whom he quickly becomes besotted, even serenading her with a love song. Gervais conceived the storyline after meeting Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, and Al Jean, the show's head writer and executive producer, shortly after he won a Golden Globe for The Office in January 2004. In the new episode "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife", Homer volunteers to take part in a reality show on TV in which he swaps wives with an Englishman, Charles (Gervais), a gauche office manager unhappily married to a domineering, prissy university professor.

Also next Sunday, airing on British television for the first time, is an episode of The Simpsons written by Ricky Gervais. For patriotic English people wondering what to take pride in on their patron saint's day, the answer is on Sky One at 6.30pm. Never in the 16-year history of The Simpsons has an outsider been invited to write an episode, let alone an outsider from Reading. And Gervais has taken full advantage of the privilege, inventing a character voiced by himself who bears a striking resemblance to David Brent, his alter ego in the hit show The Office (based in Slough - a long way from The Simpsons' Springfield). Next Sunday is St George's Day. The government tightened up regulations on research and clinical drug trials after reporters in China accused a US-funded project of conducting research on asthma medication without the proper consent of farmers in central China in the 1990s.. Chinese and foreign experts have criticised the government for what they say is lax oversight of research, saying the push for breakthroughs is creating ethical problems.

Another picture showed Mr Li after the operation, lying with a tube in his mouth, his face puffy, and with surgical scars running from his left ear to his right ear and around his chin. Other details, including how doctors had found Mr Li and whether he had consented to the publicity he has received, were not immediately available. Photographs released by the hospital showed the extent of his injuries. His right eye was almost closed and the cheek and lip had been badly ripped. The Chinese hospital said Mr Li had been mauled by a black bear in the southern province of Yunnan two years ago. The partial face transplant comes less than five months after doctors in Amiens, France, performed the world's first such procedure, transplanting lips, a chin and a nose on to a woman who had been attacked by a dog. China, which was the third country to have a successful manned space programme, has won praise from international scientists for its its gene research.

William Hsiao, a health economist at Harvard University who researches Chinese public health, said: "China always has a group of people who like to be on the cutting-edge of scientific development." Over the past decade, the Chinese government has poured money into advanced scientific fields, from aerospace to biotechnology, directing grant money and pooling resources to create research centres to rival those of the West. It would underscore the nation's growing scientific prowess while raising questions about its patchy regulation of medical experiments. The claims, once they are verified by independent experts, would make China the second country to conduct the procedure. It is predicted that the patient's wounds can be healed within one week," the hospital said. Li Guoxing has a new nose, cheek, upper lip and eyebrow, according to Xijing military hospital in the central city of Xi'an. "Up to now, the patient is in good condition The operation was successful.