It seems everyone wants a slice of Channel 4’s action, whether homemade or imported. But what exactly is the attraction?Last week a visitor to the Great British Bake Off set was on the phone to her mother in South Africa. “She was having her hair done …
Father to 15 children … but were any of blues star BB King’s offspring his?
A new biography says paternity would have been impossible for the musician because he was sterile due to illness and an accidentBB King was born into poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi and raised on a cotton plantation before becoming a street busker then…
Miriam Margolyes: ‘Writing my memoir was terrifying. It’s quite revealing’
Gleefully outspoken and bursting with hilarious anecdotes, Miriam Margolyes is gloriously larger than life. As her memoir is published, she tells Eva Wiseman about settling scores, her one regret and why for her nothing is tabooMoney and sex and religi…
Rose Plays Julie review – identity quest goes to truly dark places
A student’s search for her birth mother has haunting results in this tale from the innovative Irish directing team of Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor“Who are you?” That’s a question that rings throughout the work of Dublin-born film-making duo Christin…
Cedella Marley: ‘The mission is to spread Daddy’s music to every corner of the Earth’
As a new musical about the life of Bob Marley prepares to celebrate his spirit and classic songs, Marley’s daughter, plus the director and star of Get Up, Stand Up!, discuss his extraordinary legacyCedella Marley was 13 years old when the man she still…
The big picture: standing out from the crowd in New Delhi, 1984
A lifelong passion for India and its people is evident in Mitch Epstein’s colourful new collectionThe photographer Mitch Epstein fell in love with the idea of India long before he went there. As a young man from small-town New England, he watched Ravi …
Strictly Come Dancing 2021 launch show – live
The sparkliest contest on TV returns to brighten up our weekend evenings, with the likes of Robert Webb, AJ Odudu and Tom Fletcher taking to the floor in search of Glitterball glory 8.09pm BST RHYS STEPHENSON is paired with NANCY XU, who is off the ben…
Art of neon: light flickers on old British craft, but new show aims to keep it alive
Major exhibition will reveal how neon went from the staple of brash advertising to an art formAcross two galleries in Wakefield sit more than half a dozen tubes of light at least two metres tall, revolving on the spot and creating ethereal shapes in th…
Anthony Doerr: ‘Rather than write what I know, I write what I want to know’
The Pulitzer winner on why his new novel is partly set in medieval Constantinople, the Netflix adaptation of All the Light We Cannot See and his childhood love of the Narnia booksAnthony Doerr, 47, is the author of six books, including All the Light We…
Nadine Dorries should write what she likes. And I’ll read what I like | Alex Clark
High brow, low brow – for heaven’s sake, just pick up a bookIn the latest tedious round of the culture war, I did not expect to be taking a position on the books of the new culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, whose defenders point to her being a prolifi…