53 h. ago Still Game star first made people laugh with his impersonations at school in Lanarkshire

Gavin Mitchell is best known for his role as Boabby the Barman.

Politics

59 h. ago Rebel Wilson: ‘I always wanted to be like Judi Dench. But people like laughing at me’

The actor on plans for a new Pitch Perfect, pretending to lick Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi’s ‘fun grandpa vibe’What’s been the most fun you’ve had on set? FrNthOldPitch Perfect, because it felt like theatre camp. We came together in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was like college: hanging out with my friends, having fun, not really acting. For four weeks we were in boot camp, where we’d dance and do conditioning in the mornings – so sit-ups, stretching and learning the choreography. In the afternoons, we’d learn our 10-part harmonies and go into the recording studio. Sometimes we were really dorky and said: on Friday we’re all going to wear the same colour T-shirts, just to be like a squad.You’ve worked with Sir Derek Jacobi twice – in Juliet & Romeo, and the upcoming Tinsel Town. How was he? Derekj2210It was pretty cool to be in scenes with him. Even though we weren’t doing the iambic pentameter, it was interesting to watch how the language fell off his tongue. We were filming in...

Politics

4 d. ago ‘Our fantasy of love has to do with need and dependency’: Melissa Febos on her year of celibacy

Febos’ life flourished while taking a year off sex and dating. In a new memoir, The Dry Season, the author explores the strong hold romance had on herWhen Melissa Febos decided to be celibate for a year – after what she describes as a “ravaging vortex of a relationship” and “five other brief entanglements” – she felt “pretty self-conscious and kind of weird”. But other people’s reactions surprised her.“I thought people were going to laugh at me or be like, that sounds boring, but so many people would lean in and either get this eager look on their face or this sort of dreadful look on their face, and they would say, ‘Oh, I think I should probably do that too,’” she says.
“I had no idea how many people had been in relationships for their whole adult life.” Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Dame Judi Dench and Carey Mulligan urge Keir Starmer to free British man who's been trapped in Egypt prison for the past 10 years

EXCLUSIVE: Alaa Abd el Fattah, 43, has been imprisoned in Wadi El Natrun prison in Cairo after being arrested for his activist work in support of democracy and human rights in the country.

Events

6 d. ago Salman Rushdie says AI won’t threaten authors until it can make people laugh

Author tells Hay festival AI has no sense of humour but when it writes a funny book ‘we’re screwed’Salman Rushdie has said that authors are safe from the threat of AI – until the moment it can create a book that makes people laugh.Speaking at the Hay festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Rushdie said he had “never tried AI” and liked to pretend it didn’t exist. Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Man stabbed 'generous, caring' comedian and left him for dead in city park

Georgie Tannetta murdered James Brogan whose family described him as a "generous, caring and thoughtful" man. They added he was a "comedian who loved making people smile and laugh.”

Events

1 week ago ‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom

Best known as Hawkeye in the TV series M*A*S*H, the 89-year-old actor, director and writer has another hit on his hands with a revamp of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons. He talks about his Parkinson’s disease, Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald TrumpAlan Alda never expected this. The 89-year-old is back topping the charts with an update of his film The Four Seasons. In 1981, Alda wrote, directed and starred in the movie about three inseparable couples who holiday together every quarter until divorce, envy and angst intervene.Now the film has been turned into a TV series by Tina Fey, with Alda as a producer and, at the time of writing, it is the fourth most watched show on Netflix. “It’s really interesting to have my work appeal to a new generation of very smart writers,” he tells me on a video call from New York. What gave him even more pleasure was watching a screening of the original movie a couple of weeks ago. “The people were laughing at the same things they were...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘I don’t have a relationship with my face’: Judi Dench models for a live sculpture

To raise money for lymphoedema research, the actor sat before an audience for artist Frances Segelman, who admired her youthful, ‘pixie-like’ face while rendering it in clayIt began as a blob: a 12kg lump of clay the size of a watermelon. Three hours later, it had become Judi Dench’s head, 50% larger than usual, twinkle-eyed even in terracotta.At Claridge’s hotel in London on Monday evening, Frances Segelman hosted her latest ticking-clock sculpt: paying guests watch as she kneads a celebrity bust on stage, the subject sitting quietly beside her. In the past, Segelman has done Simon Rattle, Joan Collins, Joanna Lumley, Boris Johnson, Mr Motivator and major-league royals, almost always for charity. Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Sculptor produces bust of Dame Judi Dench in front of audience for charity

Dame Judi sat in front of the 200-strong audience as royal sculptor Frances Segelman completed the majority of the bust in two hours.

Events

3 w. ago Rebel Wilson SLAMS the lead star of her own film in scathing social media post

Rebel Wilson is once again shining light on the conflicts surrounding her stalled film The Deb.

Politics

3 w. ago ‘LSD? Been there, done that’: the Grateful Dead’s 60 years of drugs, epic noodling and obsessive fans

Forget Swifties. The Grateful Dead have the world’s most devoted following. As he heads for Britain, founder Bobby Weir talks Vegas spectaculars, bootleggers and life after Jerry Garcia‘We didn’t want to be the cops,” says Bobby Weir, guitarist and founder member of the Grateful Dead, laughing as he describes his band’s legendarily lax attitude to people taping their concerts. Bootleggers were given their own area at gigs on the proviso their tapes were traded, not sold – an illustration of the band’s generosity of spirit. “It was an easy decision to make,” Weir says.Decisions like those have ensured that, decades before today’s obsessional Swifties and K-pop stans, the Dead have cultivated one of music’s most passionate fandoms. They are surely the world’s best-documented band. This year, they’re marking their 60th anniversary with a 60-CD box set, just one of many gargantuan packages over the years. Their 2024 Friend of the Devils box set only covered a single month of live music ...

Events