46 h. ago Couple winning planning battle over 'George Clarke' train carriage

Andrea and Richard have been fighting for two years over the GWR railway carriage that featured on a Channel 4 show

Events

46 h. ago Couple win planning battle over 'George Clarke' train carriage

Andrea and Richard have been fighting for two years over the GWR railway carriage that featured on a Channel 4 show

Events

7 d. ago How to fight a fascist state – what I learned from a second world war briefing for secret agents | Zoe Williams

You can forget the advice on disguises, secret codes and spreading propaganda by dropping leaflets in train carriages. But there is something for us all here about the need for actionThe SOE Syllabus was a series of lectures given to prospective secret agents in Britain during the second world war. These “lessons in ungentlemanly warfare” were released from the top secret bit of the Public Record Office (now known as the National Archive) and published as a historical curio in 2001, when my esteemed colleague John Crace picked out the sillier bits in one of his Digested Read reviews. There was a whole lecture about how to craft a disguise, in which people with sticky-out ears were advised to use glue to pin them back.But now, 24 years later, I have picked up the book with a graver purpose – just on the off-chance that if we end up having to resist a fascist state, the past might have something to offer. They won’t know everything, these ungentlemanly gentlemen, being as they didn’t ...

Politics

8 d. ago At least one passenger dead as 11 carriages derailed in India train accident

Accident occurred near Cuttack, Odisha, where hundreds of passengers were stranded on tracks as authorities scrambled to arrange a substitute train

Events

2 w. ago ‘Prank shows are normally done by thick people or jocks’: Dom Joly on the return of Trigger Happy TV

The 00s star has spent decades trying to escape the legacy of his beloved hidden camera show – only to realise it’s time to bring it back on stage. He talks about fooling a Python, hating Noel Edmonds and why he can’t escape the giant phoneThe first episode of Trigger Happy TV aired 25 years ago. Its very first sequence was of a man screaming into an oversize phone, startling the unwitting diners at a fancy restaurant. “The following Monday I was on a train, and that ringtone went off,” recalls the show’s co-creator and star Dom Joly. “Three people in the carriage stood up and went: ‘Hello! I’m on a train!’ And I sat there thinking: ‘Holy shit, something extraordinary has happened.’”Joly isn’t often drawn into conversation about Trigger Happy TV. In the 20-plus years since the show ended in 2003, he has busied himself with plenty of other projects – books, columns, TV shows, podcasts – but nevertheless has found it hard to shake off his breakout hit. “Every time I do anyth...

Culture

3 w. ago Married couple win approval for new Ayrshire countryside cattery plan

The new cattery will be built on land at the couple's smallholding.

Politics