The Cambridge Union has revealed a packed programme of visitors for the coming term, including some of Britain’s most influential politicans, television stars and a celebrity magician.

Big name speakers to grace the Union Chamber include former England manager, Fabio Capello, Hugh Bonneville, star of popular television drama Downton Abbey, and BBC News presenter George Alagiah. The BAFTA award-winning actor Rufus Sewell, best known for his performance in ‘A Knight’s Tale’, is confirmed to speak, while England Rugby International player, James Haskell, will take time out from a hectic schedule in advance of the Six Nations to give the first talk of term. Cult television star Pamela Anderson has also been confirmed to speak, as has magician David Blaine, whose latest feat of endurance saw him zapped with one million volts of electricity,

A debate on the relevance of religion in the modern world, meanwhile, will see Professor Richard Dawkins, the celebrated evolutionary biologist, battle it out against Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan, rated by Time magazine among the world’s top 100 most influential thinkers, and new Master of Magdalene College and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Famous nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow will feature in a debate about whether sex has lost its meaning in twenty-first century society, while Katie Price returns to Cambridge for the second year in a row for a debate on the nature of celebrity.

The term’s final debate will see the Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, ‘Burkean conservative’ and regular contributor to Question Time, grapple with Andy Burnham MP, Shadow Health Secretary, over the motion “This House Believes New Labour Ruined Britain’. Other contributors to the debate will include Andrew Mitchell, the subject of the recent ‘plebgate’ row with police, and Hazel Blears.

Response among Cambridge students to the Union’s line-up has been roundly positive. Radley Cunliffe on Twitter applauded a ‘good line-up’, while Emily Chadwick tweeted “Fabio Capello, Pamela Anderson, Richard Dawkins, James Haskell (England flanker/no.8)…could the @cambridgeunion lent line-up be any better?”