And finally…Au-f wiedersehen

A giant oversized gold coin worth millions of pounds and bearing the queen’s face has been stolen from a German museum.

The Big Maple Leaf weighs 100 kg (221lbs) and measures 53cm (21ins) across, and is thought to be the world’s biggest coin.

It has a face value of $1m (£790,000), but the gold in it makes it worth almost $4.5m (£3.9m) at today’s market prices.

Berlin police said the theft is believed to have happened at around 03:30 Monday morning (01:30 GMT).

Spokesman Stefen Petersen said they entered through a window and broke into a cabinet where the coin was kept.

“Based on the information we have so far we believe that the thief, maybe thieves, broke open a window in the back of the museum next to the railway tracks,” Wenzel told Reuters news agency.

“They then managed to enter the building and went to the coin exhibition.”

“The coin was secured with bullet-proof glass inside the building. That much I can say,” he added - but refused to discuss details about security staff or the alarm system.

The museum says the Big Maple Leaf is in the Guinness Book of Records for its purity of 999.99/1000 gold.

It has a portrait of the Queen on one side and maple leaves on the other.

The three centimetre thick coin is a commemorative piece issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007.

The Bode Museum houses one of the world’s biggest collections of coins.

Exhibits include 102,000 coins from ancient Greece and about 50,000 Roman coins.