The actor, who is playing Scrooge on stage, is a fan of Christmas games – and quizzes in particular. But there’s one question he can’t answer: why are Christmas cracker jokes so bad? Stephen Mangan, one of the most disarmingly likable comic actors arou…
Parish council Zoom star Jackie Weaver: ‘I got a number of emails from “Alan’s iPad” but ignored them’
The councillor on sudden fame and dealing with difficult people, from ‘Alan’s iPad’ to her own motherJackie Weaver, 63, is the engagingly improbable internet star who found herself on a fast track to fame when a Zoom meeting of the Handforth parish cou…
Photographer Enda Burke and the theatre of family lockdown
In lockdown in Galway City, Burke focused on the bright side – creating gaudily retro, deadpan tableaux with his parents in all the starring rolesEnda Burke spent lockdown with his parents in Galway City on the west coast of Ireland. As a street photog…
Alan Johnson: ‘John Betjeman was wrong about Slough’
The former health secretary and acclaimed memoirist on his rock’n’roll past, how the Litvinenko poisoning inspired his new thriller, and how he’d have handled CovidAlan Johnson grew up in working-class Notting Hill, London, in the 1950s, raised by his …
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser review – darting between two worlds
The Yemeni American poet’s debut collection is a dazzling exploration of a life caught between different culturesWho is the wild fox of Yemen? I busied myself with a form of foxhunting as I read on through Threa Almontaser’s extraordinary debut collect…