22 h. ago Love Island fans are just realising Helena's age as she heads to Hideaway with Harry

Air hostess Helena Ford has left fans gobsmacked as she snuck off to the hideaway with Love Island hunk Harry Cooksley leaving their partners in the main bedroom

Politics

3 d. ago Love Island fans are just realising where they've seen Sophie Lee before

Love Island fans were left scratching their heads after a familiar face entered the villa

Politics

4 d. ago Tell us how popular culture has prompted you to make a dramatic life change

We’d like to hear from people who have been inspired by a song, TV show, film or book to make a major change in their lifeWhether it’s leaving a loveless relationship after watching Sex and the City or a punk band inspiring you to quit drinking, we’d like to hear about your moments of cultural awakening for a column in the Guardian’s Saturday magazine.If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago The deadlift difference: is this the exercise you need for an active and pain

Life is easier with a strong, flexible body – and this weightlifting move will help with everything from rearranging the furniture to picking up your groceries. You might even learn to love the barbellOne of the lovely things about getting older is realising there’s always something more you should be doing to look after your body. Did I say lovely? Obviously I meant tedious. But how you feel about it doesn’t change the facts. If you take the slightest interest in your health, and want to stay strong, mobile and pain-free in your 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, you’ll have to pay attention to the exercises that many of us avoid in our 20s, 30s and 40s. Or, in my case, until you’re 61¾.Like deadlifts, which help with one of life’s most basic tasks – bending over and picking stuff up. Training these also involves bending over and picking stuff up – usually a barbell, but sometimes a kettlebell or pair of dumbbells. “Here’s a few things deadlifts help with,” says Laura Kummerle, a Georgia-ba...

Events

2 w. ago My cultural awakening: A Timothée Chalamet drama made me leave my partner – and check him into rehab

It took a viewing of the 2018 film Beautiful Boy, about a father and his addict son, for me to see that my relationship had become damagingly codependentTwo summers ago, I met a man on a dating app who would become my boyfriend. The red flags were there from the start, but I ignored them all. When I stayed at his, he didn’t have a towel to offer me, and he never changed his sheets. It became obvious that he didn’t know how to look after himself. Even though, in reality, he could survive without me (similar to how a teenage boy would survive on his own, eating burgers in bed), I felt like, if I wasn’t there to buy groceries, cook and clean, he might die. He would disappear for days, on a drink- or drugs-fuelled bender, and I’d assume he’d overdosed in a basement somewhere. I lived in fear that something terrible would happen to him. I became his boyfriend and his caregiver.This was a familiar role for me: I’d done it in all my previous relationships. I needed to be needed. If the per...

Events

3 w. ago My cultural awakening: a punk band told me quit drinking. So I did

As a teen, I was surrounded by binge culture. But then a band called Minor Threat taught me it was radical to be sober – and it changed my lifeI started drinking when I was 14. It was how we’d have fun as kids in Aberdeen – I didn’t come across any youth clubs or anything particularly productive. You drank beer or alcopops in some shady lane, and you drank so quickly that you’d get drunk but then be sober enough to get home at 11pm so your parents wouldn’t notice anything. It wasn’t drinking for pleasure: binge drinking was just what everyone – regardless of social groups – seemed to be doing.During my teenage years I worked at a newsagent and I would read Kerrang! every week, which was extremely formative for me in discovering music. It’s incredible how many new bands I was introduced to, and just how my music taste evolved – from nu-metal bands such as Korn to Rage Against the Machine and, most influentially, Fugazi. Continue reading...

Culture

4 w. ago My cultural awakening: a Pulp song made me realise I was in love with my best friend

I was too afraid to confess my feelings and be rejected, until hearing Jarvis Cocker’s words gave me a moment of clarityThe first time Gordon and I kissed I thought we’d made a terrible mistake. It was 1995, we were both 20 years old, and we were drinking at our university bar in Leicester. We had formed a friendship over the previous three years, but I had never considered Gordon in a romantic light. He was a goth at the time, which I thought was very cool, and he had this fruity, posh voice – whereas I was a timid girl from south London with a terrible perm. I remember Gordon leaning in to give me this very innocent, tentative kiss, but it caught me off guard. I felt excited but also confused. For one thing, I’d only ever known Gordon to kiss his fellow goths.I avoided Gordon for weeks after that, which was difficult, considering we were on the same course. We bumped into each other almost every day in lectures but I made things awkward. Conversations between us didn’t flow i...

Culture