55 m. ago Alan Partridge is back at rock bottom – and it’s the funniest he’s been in years

After stadium tour success, the delusional broadcaster is back where he belongs: self-funding a series about the nation’s mental health. As comedy goes, it couldn’t be more pleasurableLike anyone who has grown up in the shadow of Alan Partridge’s three-decade dominion over British comedy, I want only the very best for Norwich’s most relentless broadcaster. By which I mean the absolute worst. For me, Partridge is at his finest when he’s scrabbling around the media’s outer fringes, rebranding past humiliations as glories and furiously name-dropping 1980s television personalities to the nonplussed acquaintances he genuinely believes to be his closest friends.Sadly, Alan has been riding (relatively) high in recent years. In 2022, Steve Coogan’s creation – now co-written by Rob and Neil Gibbons – embarked on a UK arena tour as a motivational speaker, imparting dubious advice to tens of thousands of adoring fans. Before that, he landed the job of a lifetime: a presenting gig on the BBC’s ...

Politics

70 m. ago Fans react feverishly to The Summer I Turned Pretty star’s move to audio erotica series

Chris Briney’s surprising new project on Quinn is a major coup for the platform and highlights insatiable public appetite for ‘spicy’ fictionIt took less than 24 hours for the actor Chris Briney to reveal his next creative project after the finale of The Summer That I Turned Pretty, and it was soon clear that fans of the heart-throb would not be disappointed.“If he didn’t take good care of your heart, I bet he didn’t take good care of your body either, did he?” the actor purred in an Instagram reel, looking into a camera, after hoisting himself into a pickup truck. With the scene switching to Briney wearing oversized pink headphones and talking into a microphone, he adds: “You deserve to be loved And thoroughly ruined.” Continue reading...

Politics

78 m. ago Couple 'spend daughter's university savings' to fund neighbour row over bin shed

Kevin and Elizabeth Harrison-Ellis were forced to almost £150,000 in legal fees following a battle over their home in Oxfordshire - which was triggered by a small wooden bin store

Economics

86 m. ago UK pensioners snorting cocaine on the rise as even OAPs in their 90s are getting high

Hospitals are seeing a surge in admissions for coked-up OAPs who are in some cases as old as 90, as NHS figures show 723 pensioners needed hospital treatment between March 2023 and March 2024

Politics

1 hour ago Storm damaged children's hospice gets makeover thanks to Postcode Lottery win

Aileen Suter's People's Postcode Lottery win helped, in part, fund the makeover of Robin House's gardens after it was devastated by Storm Eowyn.

Events

2 h. ago The REAL reason why Ernest Shackleton's ship sank: Endurance had key structural weaknesses

Ernest Shackleton was well aware of his ship's deficiencies before he set sail, reports a scientist at Aalto University in Finland.

Politics

2 h. ago DWP full list of Universal Credit changes coming from April 2026

Labour has previously said the the reforms are needed to 'rebalance' the benefits system, but critics argue that many of the changes will reduce support for people most in need

Politics

2 h. ago Synagogue terrorist was ‘university dropout with interest in Islamic State’

Jihad Al-Shamie was born in Syria before moving to the UK as a young child.

Events

2 h. ago NHS chiefs accused of 'prioritising' single women and lesbians as number of straight couples getting free IVF plunges 28% in a decade

The Daily Mail can reveal the number of women with male partners having cycles of taxpayer-funded fertility treatment each year has fallen 28% since peaking in 2016.

Politics

2 h. ago Outlander star Sam Heughan joins campaign to save Cumbernauld Theatre after funding decision

Cumbernauld Theatre is at risk of closure

Politics

3 h. ago ‘Obedient, yielding and happy to follow’: the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

AI dating sites claim they remove potential for exploitation, but critics say they are reinforcing harmful stereotypesEleanor, 24, is a Polish historian and lecturer at a university in Warsaw; Isabelle, 25, is a detective serving with the NYPD; Brooke, 39, is an American housewife who enjoys an opulent Miami lifestyle financed by her frequently absent husband.All three women will flirt and chat and send nude photographs and explicit videos via one of a soaring number of new adult dating websites that offer an increasingly realistic selection of AI girlfriends for subscribers willing to pay a monthly fee. Continue reading...

Events

3 h. ago Fade to grey: as forests are cut down, butterflies are losing their colours

The insects’ brilliant hues evolved in lush ecosystems to help them survive. Now they are becoming more muted to adapt to degraded landscapes – and they are not the only things dulling downPhotographs by Roberto García-RoaThe world is becoming less colourful. For butterflies, bold and bright wings once meant survival, helping them attract mates and hide from prey. But a new research project suggests that as humans replace rich tropical forests with monochrome, the colour of other creatures is leaching away.“The colours on a butterfly’s wings are not trivial – they have been designed over millions of years,” says researcher and photographer Roberto García-Roa, who is part of a project in Brazil documenting how habitat loss is bleaching the natural world of colour.Amiga arnaca found in a eucalyptus plantation, where scientists observed butterflies were less colourful than in native forests Continue reading...

Politics

3 h. ago Gambler who stole £800,000 from friends to fund 'lavish lifestyle' of cars, watches, designer clothes and holidays is jailed

Kenny Sanders, 38, from Canterbury, Kent, posed as a successful businessman but was secretly a hopeless gambling addict who blew his victims' life savings on all-day betting binges.

Economics

4 h. ago The three appliances experts say you should never plug into extension leads

This advice comes as fire services across the UK have reported a rise in electrical fires caused by overloaded and misused extension leads

Events

5 h. ago Grateful family gives back to Great Ormond Street Hospital with fundraising run

The family of 11-year-old Harrison Gale, who had brain surgery in March, will be among those taking part in RBC Race for the Kids on October 11.

Politics

6 h. ago Home Office grants extra visas for UCL international students told to defer

Hundreds of students with promised places had been left in limbo after university exceeded its visa allocationsHundreds of international students will be able to take up their promised places after negotiations between the Home Office and University College London ended with the government granting extra visas.Hundreds of students, many from China, had been left in limbo after UCL underestimated the demand for places this year and exceeded its allocation of confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) electronic documents allowed by the Home Office. Continue reading...

Society

7 h. ago UNESCO is choosing a new director who will face a big funding shortage after US exit

An Egyptian antiquities professor and a Congolese economist are competing to become the new director of UNESCO

Politics

7 h. ago Play Dirty could have been the movie to end the Mark Wahlberg rut – but it isn’t

The actor stars as a slick crook in Shane Black’s new straight-to-streaming thriller. It’s the most promising project Wahlberg has had in years, writes Louis Chilton – which only makes the end result more frustrating

Politics

8 h. ago Seeing double: the wooden carvings that celebrate the Yorùbá’s unique connection to twins

The Ìbejì Project is resurrecting interest in the traditional art of the Yorùbá people, who have one of the highest rates of twin births in the worldWhen the Nigerian art collector, curator and dealer Kayode Adegbola was given a pair of Yorùbá twin statuettes – ère ìbejì – in 2022 as a reward for a successful art deal, it was the start of a new passion. While he had seen a few ìbejì carvings in his uncle’s collection of African traditional art, the gift resonated with Adegbola, a twin himself.“I have always been conscious of ìbejì but I will say my passionate research was definitely a 2022 moment. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago Prosecutors probe death of student who took own life on graduation day after uni grade blunder

The family of tragic Ethan Brown has called for a fatal accident inquiry to be held after blaming a “catastrophic grading failure” at the University of Glasgow for the 23-year-old’s death in December last year.

Events