1 week 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

2 w. ago City exec was attacked and had her hair ripped out in clumps in a restaurant toilet after mimicking the mobile phone call of a woman in the next cubicle

Marzena Grabiec (pictured), 30, had allegedly been repeating parts of a fellow diner's phone call in a mocking tone, at Lebanese restaurant Comptoir Libanais on November 7.

Society

2 w. ago City exec was attacked and had her hair ripped out in clumps in a restaurant toilets after mimicking in a high voice the mobile phone call of a woman in the next cubicle

Marzena Grabiec (pictured), 30, had allegedly been repeating parts of a fellow diner's phone call in a mocking tone, at Lebanese restaurant Comptoir Libanais on November 7.

Society

2 w. ago Mind your manners, diners, restaurants are turning the tables on grumpy reviewers | Kate Maltby

The post-dinner rant is all of a piece with our fetish for feedback, but isn’t it all a bit morally cheap?My new duvet cover is upset with me. This is not, I stress, due to offensive activities in the bedroom. My sin is that two months after purchasing this admirably functional, mid-market item of bed linen, I have yet to leave a review on the company website.Ever since my initial purchase – online, of course – I have been haunted by an increasingly plaintive sequence of requests, demands and, eventually, cajoling whimpers. Recently, these pleas moved firmly into the territory of emotional blackmail. As an “independent, family business”, my bed linen providers rely on positive reviews to keep a roof over their heads, I was told. I’m aware that the duvet cover itself isn’t sentient but, with this level of pressure leveraged in its name, it’s hard to catch sight of it in the laundry and not attribute to it a smidge of cotton-fibred resentment. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Chinese restaurant compensates 4,000 diners after video showed two drunk teens urinating into hotpot broth

The boys, both aged 17, filmed standing on a dining table and peeing into the broth pot in a private room at a Shanghai branch of Haidilao, China's biggest hotpot chain, in late February.

Culture

3 w. ago Popular pasta maker now gives his verdict on Kate Middleton's mac 'n' cheese after reviewing Meghan Markle's controversial spaghetti

Popular pasta maker Danny Freeman has tried his hand at another Royal kitchen creation, after tackling Meghan Markle's controversial one-pot spaghetti recipe.

Politics

3 w. ago How the boss of the Beckhams' favourite restaurant is turning the tables on infuriating diners

Meet Chris D'Sylva, the owner of Dorian in Notting Hill, west London - reportedly David Beckham's favourite restaurant.

Politics

3 w. ago ‘Everything is so fragile’: Cate Blanchett on marriage, #MeToo and the state of the world

Over turmeric tea one evening, double Oscar winner Cate Blanchett talks about the secret of relationships and how to survive the current news cycle. The answer? Jump into the ice Cate Blanchett saw in the New Year in the Arctic, with her husband and four children, by cutting a hole in the ice and jumping in. It was -30C and she wore a “funny hat” for the cold and, “It was fabulous,” because, she says, “Everything paused.” It’s February now, and the restaurant near the river is just beginning to fill with evening diners when Blanchett slides between the tables in her tartan “chicken feeding coat” [is this her description?] and striped shirt, collar popped. “Who are they murdering out the back?” she shouts – the noise of dough being pounded in the kitchen sounds as if they’re beating somebody to death and means we need to lean in, over her pot of turmeric tea. “I always thought, if the acting thing didn’t work out, which it still might not, I would love to be a Foley artist,” creating...

Politics