The former Atomic Kitten singer Kerry Katona and her baby daughter were today held captive at their home by burglars armed with a knife, sledgehammer and crowbar, police said.

The singer, her child and husband, Mark Croft, managed to escape unharmed after the break-in at their house in Wilmslow, Cheshire, at around midnight.

One intruder held Ms Katona and her daughter in a downstairs room while her husband was taken through the house by two others.

The family was unharmed but the robbers escaped with their blue BMW and several valuable items.

The publicist Max Clifford, who represents Katona, said he had spoken to Mr Croft, who told him his wife was “in a dreadful state” after the “horrible experience” of having a knife held to her throat by one of the intruders.

He told Sky News that the couple had CCTV cameras covering the house, but the three men would be hard to identify because they were wearing balaclavas.

“I think one of them was holding a knife to Kerry’s throat while the other two were running around the house picking up everything they could, all the valuables that they could,” Clifford said.

Katona is one of Britain’s best-known celebrities despite the fact that she left the band that made her name before it reached the peak of its success.

She decided to quit the all-girl group in 2001 after falling pregnant; only weeks later the group registered its first No 1, Whole Again.

In 2002 Katona married the father of her child, the former Westlife singer Bryan McFadden, then moved into television work. She entered and won the ITV reality show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here in 2004, with her down to earth persona endearing herself to the public.

Shortly after her success in the jungle she announced her separation from McFadden and revelations of drug abuse followed.

She went into rehabilitation before bouncing back to public prominence again, becoming the face of the supermarket chain Iceland and writing for the OK! celebrity magazine. She married Mr Croft, a taxi driver, and had a second child this year.

Airbus Overhauls Leadership Team EADS Taps France’s Louis Gallois As New President By EMMA VANDORE The Associated Press

TOULOUSE, France

EADS, the parent of troubled planemaker Airbus, is abandoning its twin-chief executive structure, co-CEO Tom Enders said Monday, with France’s Louis Gallois taking the company’s reins.

“We need to be a normal company,” Enders said, speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Enders said he become CEO of Airbus, which is struggling with losses amid production delays for its superjumbo A380.

Sarkozy who just two months into the job has unveiled ambitious plans to fix Europe, the French economy, its ailing university system and more besides has Airbus in his sights. He invited Merkel to Airbus headquarters in Toulouse on Monday to seek a solution to EADS’ cumbersome dual management structure.

The unusual structure of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., run jointly by French and German management, was cited in a report by the French Senate last month as a major reason for Airbus’ troubles.

In an interview with the German daily Handelsblatt, released on Sunday, Merkel insisted that politics must not play a role in the decision-making process at EADS.

“It’s important that the company be run according to corporate, and not political, principles,” Handelsblatt quoted Merkel as saying.

EADS has been tarnished by a series of mishaps over the past two years at Airbus, with delays to the A380 superjumbo and a revamp of the A350 coming amid revelations of management errors, technical woes and huge severance payments for departing executives.

Top executives have been ousted and a massive restructuring plan will result in 10,000 job cuts over four years. The setbacks have cost the company billions of euros in profits and saddled Airbus with its first-ever operating loss last year.

Still, Merkel insisted “Airbus remains a success story.”

The German chancellor said, however, that important decisions on how the company would be run had to be made now, in order to ensure its success in the future. Both Sarkozy and Merkel have said maintaining a Franco-German balance at EADS is imperative.

The French government owns 15 percent of EADS, and French conglomerate Lagardere Groupe SCA holds 7.5 percent. The German government holds no direct stake, but Stuttgart, Germany-based DaimlerChrysler and German banks hold 22.5 percent.

Besides the management structure, EADS has other pressing issues to sort out, including the delayed A380 and the financing of the midsize, long-range A350 XWB, subject of a costly redesign. The implementation of the restructuring program also needs attention, and unions have questioned the need for job cuts after a raft of orders were announced at the Paris air show last month.

Associated Press Writer Tobias Schmidt in Toulouse, France, contributed to this report.

A woman told a court today how as a 14-year-old she had been stunned when the actor Chris Langham gave her a “soft kiss” during an acting lesson, saying it would help her “relate to the character”.

The award-winning comedy actor denies 10 counts of indecent assault and two counts of buggery between January 1996 and April 2000.

His alleged victim, now 25, told Maidstone crown court today that she had not expected him to kiss her as he helped her to practice breathing techniques and to play a character from Shakespeare.

The prosecution has alleged that the 58-year-old star of television’s The Thick Of It systematically groomed and repeatedly abused her as a teenager.

He befriended the then girl, who wanted to be an actor, as she waited for autographs at the stage door of the Palace Theatre in London where he was appearing in Les Miserables, a show she had been to see as a birthday treat, the jury has heard.

Mr Langham took her for expensive meals and gave her acting lessons before repeatedly assaulting her over a four-year period, the prosecution allege.

Today she told the court that he had kissed her when she had gone to his dressing room at the theatre after he had bought her a copy of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. She said the kiss came as they were practising breathing techniques, and lasted 20 or 30 seconds.

Richard Barraclough QC, prosecuting, asked the alleged victim if Mr Langham had explained why he had kissed her.

She said: “He said it was so I could relate to the character and it would help me with Shakespeare, because I wasn’t from a close family so I didn’t understand the meaning of affection and love to the extent I could have done … he thought if I did that it would at least teach me what affection or love was. That’s what he said.”

Mr Langham had picked out the role of Portia for her and made notes in the margins of the play he had bought for her, the court heard. She said: “He was talking about the diaphragm and how you breathe … he lifted up his top so I could see how his stomach would expand and slowly go down.

“I tried to do the breathing techniques as well but I felt a bit silly and then I sat down in the chair which was near the door, I can’t tell you the time it happened, and then he came up and he gave me a small kiss on the lips.”

Mr Barraclough asked her how she reacted.

“I sat there stunned. I wasn’t expecting that,” she replied.

The defence says that Mr Langham did take the girl to expensive hotels and restaurants, but they did not have a sexual encounter until she was 18. Last week David Whitehouse QC, defending, told the court that the actor had merely been trying to help the girl with her problems.

Mr Langham, of Golford, near Cranbrook in Kent, also denies 15 counts of making an indecent photograph of a child between September and November 2005.

The defence says the material had been downloaded on four specific dates when Mr Langham was writing a television drama involving a paedophile. The crown says this is a “spurious explanation” and that the accused has an “interest in young girls”.

The trial continues.