Hey big tipper

The showbiz marriage of the year between Hollywood veteran Michael Douglas and Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones was a cause of celebration among staff at New York's Plaza hotel, who were reportedly tipped £25,000 by the newly weds.

The hotel management refused to comment on the tip, which would have represented 10% of the cost of the wedding feast, nor on how it was divided among the staff.

An unnamed Plaza worker told a UK newspaper that the tip had been divided among the hundreds of staff who had worked on the wedding.

HERE, a union based in Los Angeles, said that the normal practice for dividing tips among banqueting staff was to give 15% to supervisors such as the maitre d', 5% to the bus boys who clean up the tables, and the remaining 80% to the servers or waiters.

But the Douglas's tip dwindles into small change compared with the latest entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Earlier this year, Swiss banker Erich Sager gave a massive $2m (or £1.2m) tip to 29-year-old Gwen Butler, a bar maid at Boston's Federalist Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge. Butler is using her windfall to open her own restaurant in Boston at the end of this month. It is called, oddly enough, Zita.