2 h. ago Hey DJ, got any Kanye? Yes. It’s on my ‘do not play’ list | Oliver Keen

I get why wedding DJs are increasingly discerning. Our job is to spread joy on the dancefloor – not upset and divisionI have DJed at some impressively esoteric weddings in my time. I started playing clubs in 1999, but in the mid-2000s I started advertising myself as a wedding DJ on the era-defining digital noticeboard Gumtree. One heroic couple only wanted the music of abrasive Manchester geniuses the Fall for the entirety of their nuptials. Another sweet couple wanted to evoke the night they met at 5am at the London gay club Fire – so hired me to bang out punishing hard house from 5pm in a hotel function room.From experience, people who hire wedding DJs are usually fairly clear about what they like. They may provide a short list of songs they love, usually across a few genres, and trust a DJ to fill in the gaps. It’s rarer that people are clear what they explicitly don’t like. Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago SNL has savage dig at Morgan Wallen one week after country star walked off set early

Musician was accused of snubbing a long-running ‘Saturday Night Live’ tradition

Politics

3 h. ago Era of globalisation ‘at an end’, says UK minister, as countries mull tariff responses – live updates

Darren Jones says age of ‘fast-fashion or cheap TVs’ is over and people should be prepared for tougher times to come amid market turmoilStarmer orders economic reset amid Trump’s tariff mayhemDarren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, was also interviewed by Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning. He said the UK had been “treated differently to the European Union” as a result of Brexit. As a reminder, Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on UK goods but a 20% tariff on EU goods.Asked if the lower 10% tariff imposed by the US was a “Brexit dividend”, the chief secretary to the Treasury said:It is, there’s one. I’ve struggled to find one in the past but there is one we’ve ended up with.It’s good, but what we’re not going to do is pick or trade off the United States or the European Union.People should be prepared for things to be tougher in the global economy.Globalisation has “come to an end” in the wake of the new tariffs. Asked if the era of “cheap fast-fashion or cheap TVs” was over,...

Politics

5 h. ago What Lando Norris said to Max Verstappen about Japanese GP clash in cool down room

Max Verstappen joked about Lando Norris and his 'expensive lawnmower' after their close call at the Japanese Grand Prix which saw the McLaren man go off track at the pit exit

Politics

6 h. ago ‘We’d been through so much’: Jean Hannah Edelstein on breasts – and life without them

All her life Jean Hannah Edelstein had tried to feel comfortable with her breasts, battling unwelcome attention and breastfeeding woes. But then came cancer and a double mastectomy – and she realised she was losing something she lovedLet me tell you about my breasts, of blessed memory. That’s not something I would have said while I still had them. I was quite prim, you see, and maybe I still am, but a double mastectomy gives you license to say “‘breast” over and over again, without the usual consequences. My breasts were real, and they were spectacular.That’s a Seinfeld reference, if you’re not familiar. Seinfeld was one of the shows that I watched often in my adolescent years when my breasts first asserted themselves. It was among our key texts. We were in late-20th-century America, my breasts and I. It was a time and place that taught me that women’s bodies – breasts, specifically – were objects of desire, and jokes, and danger. Friends, Baywatch, Melrose Place. Clueless, Scream. ...

Politics

17 h. ago Get Real: serial Champions League winners Madrid face fresh threat | Jonathan Wilson

Paris Saint-Germain, who beat Liverpool with verve and energy, are the upstart newcomers among big-name quarter-finalistsNarratives are never as straightforward as they may appear. One era does not yield easily to another. What constitutes an era changes over time. While history is happening it’s often hard to make sense of it; patterns seem to emerge that, from the perspective of 20 years later are meaningless, or culs-de-sac. That seems particularly true this season. As the Champions League reaches its quarter-final stage this coming week, it feels that one age has ended and another has yet to materialise.The past was a simpler place. First there was the age of dominance by Real Madrid and Benfica, teams from the capitals of Iberian nations under right-wing dictatorships, packed with great individuals. Then came systematisation, catenaccio and the Italian ascendancy, followed, with a brief period of crossover, by the era of domination by the northern European industrial powers, sk...

Sport

20 h. ago Entire UK reservoir to disappear forever in a matter of weeks – here's why

The reservoir, in eastern foothills of the Clwydians, dates back to the Victorian era and will disappear forever in the weeks ahead after a decision was made to decommission it

Events

20 h. ago Lil Nas X 'able to exist again' as he goes unnoticed as he jokes about 'flop era'

Lil Nas X gave the world the biggest hit of 2020, but five years on he's failed to match the dizzying success of Old Town Road - not that he seems to mind as he enjoyed a relaxing stroll around New York

Politics

22 h. ago A Minecraft Movie review – Jack Black and Jason Momoa star in seriously cobbled

Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess’s adventure based on the world’s favourite video game feels like one big cash-inIt’s a curious choice of title. A Minecraft Movie implies that this cynical intellectual property-rinsing exercise is one of numerous film adaptations of the enduringly popular sandbox video game. Perhaps there’s an alternative out there, a sharper, smarter, funnier version of a Minecraft movie. One with actual jokes. Or, God forbid, there may even be a worse iteration, although that’s hard to imagine. What becomes clear is that one of the key elements in the game’s popularity – the latitude it affords gamers to create their own experience – is a big stumbling block for any film adaptation of Minecraft.In the absence of a single fixed storyline the screenplay can follow, A Minecraft Movie has a cobbled-together feel, borrowing a device from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle – and, in Jack Black, a star – and superimposing an all-purpose quest-for-an-artefact structure o...

Politics

22 h. ago White House jokesters announce 'Week 11 Wins' as Trump 'unleashes economic prosperity'

The Orange Manbaby's tariff announcement sent the world's stock markets into a spiral with an estimated $11trillion dollars knocked off the value of globe's markets

Politics

23 h. ago Kae Tempest review – a brave, intimate set where the personal is political

Village Underground, LondonThe laser-focused spoken-word performer returns to the musical stage with new tracks focusing on their identity, but wider concerns are never far away“This has been a performance piece about how technology is going to be the death of us all,” jokes rapper, poet, author and playwright Kae Tempest as a keyboard player and a technician wrestle with malfunctioning equipment. We’re just two tracks in; Tempest assures us that if the electronics are not back up soon, they’ll do the whole show a cappella.They could, too. The teenage Tempest cut their teeth battle-rapping in south London, turning to slam poetry when more direct avenues into hip-hop refused to open easily to a young, blond slip of a thing. You suspect they have never wasted the opportunity when handed a mic. Given Tempest’s extended output over more than a decade of albums, works of fiction, poems, plays and nonfiction, with prizes and accolades for many of them – you can’t imagine them ever being a...

Politics

23 h. ago Tom Ravenscroft: ‘I always wanted a shell suit, but my mum wouldn’t let me have one’

The radio DJ talks about missing grungy old music festivals, doing all the cleaning at home, and being brought up without ambition by his dad, John PeelMusic was playing before I was even born. I was born into the sound. My dad [radio presenter John Peel] used to make these mixtapes. We had three TDK 90s and we would drive around France in our battered, crappy Peugeot 505 estate, travelling the world musically through these cassettes.As teenagers we used to get called crusties – we had long hair. It was that grunge era, early 90s. And then rave culture started and me and my friends got really into hardcore and jungle, and we got called ravers, but as an insult. I look back at that with great pride. Continue reading...

Politics

24 h. ago Rangers 0 Hibs 2 LIVE reaction as Ibrox empties and Barry stews after mega flop

It's another toothless home stand from Rangers as Hibs hit them with the one-two punch to secure a first Ibrox win since 2018.

Politics

25 h. ago Sara Pascoe: ‘I still identify as an infertile, childless woman’

The standup used to joke about not having kids, but then she had IVF and found herself an ‘eroded’ mother of two. Now she’s back with a show about motherhood in her 40s – but don’t expect any cute parenting storiesMy favourite Sara Pascoe joke is her imaginary riposte to people asking if she’s going to have kids. They mean well, these prying parents – they just don’t want her to miss out on a life-enhancing experience. The thing is, the comedian has had some life-enhancing experiences of her own. “But I have never, ever said to anybody: ‘Oh, have you been on QI? Ahhh, you should go on QI!’” she insists, settling into her archly patronising pep talk. “No I didn’t think I wanted to be on QI until I was on QI, and then it was like I looked back and my entire life had been leading up to me being on QI. Yes it’s very tiring being on QI, but it’s so worth it. I just wouldn’t want you to leave it too late and they’ll have stopped making it!”As a skewering of smug, insensitive acquaint...

Politics

28 h. ago Marketing’s ‘woke’ rebrand has ultimately helped the far right | Eugene Healey

Our industry must reckon with how we’ve trivialised activism by turning it into comms strategy – only to abandon itNobody likes to admit we need marketing, but the discipline has always been necessary to match people with the products and services that fulfil their needs and desires.It started simply enough, with us focusing primarily on brands’ features and tangible benefits. But as consumer society evolved, we moved on to symbolic benefits: identities, lifestyles. Finally, we began selling values: an ideology that hit its zenith between 2015 and 2022 in the era of “brand purpose”.Eugene Healey is brand strategy consultant, educator and creator Continue reading...

Economics

29 h. ago We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown review – you’ll read nothing else like it this year

This exhilarating debut about working-class girls growing up in the hope-starved atmosphere of a small northern English city feels essentialSometimes you need to leave a place before you can write about it, and Colwill Brown’s Doncaster from the late 90s to 2015 is that place. This lacerating, exhilarating debut novel, written almost entirely in South Yorkshire dialect, spans nearly 20 years in the lives of its protagonists Kel, Shaz and Rach, from the Spice Girls to the drug spice. It manages to be both boisterous and bleak, life-enhancing and life-denying, familiar and yet wholly original. It feels essential. You will probably read nothing else like it this year.“Remember when we thought Donny wut whole world? Before we knew we wa Northern, when we seemed to be central, when we carved countries out ut farmers’ fields, biking through neck-high rapeseed, cutting tracks ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke, or place they changed trains once ont way ...

Politics

30 h. ago America’s Brexit? Trump’s historic gamble on tariffs has been decades in the making

Trump’s economic assault on the world stunned economists and sent stock markets into a spiral. Who will pay the price?Donald Trump’s vast overhaul of US trade policy this week has called time on an era of globalization, alarming people, governments and investors around the world. No one should have been surprised, the US president said.The announcement of 10% to 50% tariffs on US trading partners tanked stock markets after Trump unveiled a “declaration of economic independence” so drastic it drew comparison with Britain’s exit from the European Union – Brexit. Continue reading...

Politics

40 h. ago Roy Keane leaves Gary Neville in stitches with brutal Man Utd jibe to Luke Littler

Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane has not been shy about criticising his old club and he took the visit of Luke Littler as a chance to crack a few jokes

Politics

42 h. ago De Bruyne’s perfectly timed departure marks tipping point in Guardiola era | Jonathan Liew

The City midfielder made his teammates look like geniuses and once more he is making just the right move at just the right momentNot for the first time, Kevin De Bruyne read the situation to perfection. Not for the first time, he spotted the right play just a little earlier than everyone else. And of course this was always his gift: not simply to pick the right option but to do it faster than anyone else, buying him those crucial fractions of a second when everything else was in flux and only he in stillness.And of course this was not the only respect in which De Bruyne understood the game of football better than most. As a struggling teenager in the Genk academy, he noticed the way the club abruptly stopped paying for a foster family to house him, and then quietly resumed when he started banging in goals for the second team. Cast adrift at Chelsea, he noticed how he was ignored while first-team players were lavished with attention and bespoke coaching. Continue reading...

Politics

44 h. ago 'Next Torvill and Dean' are first to win GB ice skating medal in over 40 years

For the first time since Torvill and Dean's golden era, British ice dancing is back on the world stage thanks to rising stars Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who won Britain it's first figure-skating medal since 1984

Politics