G2

I will always love my Bert, but a photograph has unsettled me

I came across something that makes me happy every day. It’s a figurine of a cheery chef chap holding up a menu board in one hand and giving a big thumbs up with the other. I found it in a reclamation yard in Old Hill in the Black Country. It’s run by a...

I felt trapped by Parkinson’s – but dance set me free

Fourteen years ago, a neurologist told me: “You have Parkinson’s.” I remember his face before I remember his words: calm, certain, kind. Parkinson’s: a progressive neurological disease. No cure. In my mind, it was an old person’s disease. Something...

When the UK’s Ice comes calling

I went on 75 first dates – and wrote a book of Kama Sutra-inspired poetry

When Zack Rogow’s relationship ended, he joined an online dating site. At 66, Rogow prepared for his first date with a mixture of grief at the loss of a love he’d thought would last a lifetime, and euphoria. “I was gaga – ‘Oh, I’m single again. I can...

Dianne Wiest’s best films

See the full list of 20 at theguardian.com/film 1 Synecdoche, New York (2008) Wiest shows up only 15 minutes before the end of Charlie Kaufman’s wayward two-hour masterpiece about a theatre director, Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who spends...

Robotaxi!

I slapped on some foul green mascara – and stopped trying to be ‘pretty’

I wore makeup for the first time just after I turned 12: a tube of green mascara from a pound shop in my home town in south Wales. This was not a chic emerald or a flattering forest green. It was a frosted, mucous-tinted green – a colour that looked...

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Oscars dress has changed the game

The 50s are an awkward decade for women on the red carpet. So, the Oscars, being the ultimate red carpet, are like a dramatisation of the awks, a silent movie told in One Dress After Another. It’s complicated by the convention that “over 50” and “in...

‘I saw Courtney Love … and it felt like destiny’

Nancy Sinatra songs

10 So Long, Babe (1966) Sinatra’s first single written by Lee Hazlewood wasn’t a hit, but it was a vast improvement on the limp bubblegum she had spent the previous five years recording. It was hipper – with a hint of folk-rock in its sound – and...

The AI assistant tried to help, but all I wanted was a human being

Something went wrong. The car charger wouldn’t work. Terrible, lifeshortening faff ensued. It was to do with the wifi to which the car was linked having to be changed. I find this stuff so boring that I have been known to simply slump to the floor and...

‘I wish I could buy her 100 more years!’

Liza Minnelli at 80, by Neil Tennant, Ron Howard, Gene Simmons, Audra McDonald …

How to spot a psychopath

Lesley Manville’s best films

1 Another Year (2010) Manville has worked with Leigh for nearly 50 years –but Another Year is her bravest and most complex work for him. Charting the emotional disintegration of clinging, sozzled Mary, Manville can elicit contradictory responses from...

‘If you weren’t tits-out-for-the-lads, they called you middle of the road’

‘If you weren’t tits-outfor-the-lads, they called you middle of the road’

Politicians are in a race to the bottom – but here is a way to help refugees

Nigel Farage is worried about democracy. Specifically, he’s worried about his Reform party losing the Gorton and Denton byelection, feeling that they are the victim of “sectarian voting and cheating”. Sectarian voting is a peculiar little concept: if...

‘People think you’re old if you need a hearing aid’

Lily Allen’s greatest songs

See the full list of 20 at theguardian.com/music 10 Tennis (2025) The song that turned the phrase “who the fuck is Madeline?” into an unlikely meme – and set one tabloid on an apparently successful search to discover her real identity – Tennis is a...

I just wanted an oven with a knob. Instead, I got a world of pain

I bought an oven. I wish I hadn’t. Ovens are like homes, cars, pets and partners, in that you can like the look of them but can’t know what it’s like to live with them until you’re living with them. And by then, it’s too late; you’re stuck with them....

I was hit by a car – and it made me rethink my drinking and screen time

The SUV slammed into me at a crosswalk, where I had right of way. It was 2024 and I was on the first night of a work trip to New Orleans. Time seemed to slow down as I flew 2 metres through the air and crashed on to the road. When I managed to stand...

Red-carpet events can be anodyne, but Prince William broke through

The rule on a red carpet or a parti-coloured podium is that none of the victors say anything about politics. None of the surrounding players – the losers, the judges, the spouses, the hangers-on – should say anything either, as it draws attention to...

I baked a pie every day for a year – and gave them all away

When Vickie Hardin Woods retired, she knew she needed a plan. “I was worried about losing my carefully crafted identity as a professional. I was looking for something to carry me through that time … What else can I be?” She decided to do – rather than...

Best Bafta ceremony moments

1 ‘Angela Bassett did the thing!’ (2023) Ariana DeBose’s spectacular, befuddling 2023 musical number remains my favourite moment of anything ever. She performed a song celebrating women in general, which segued into a rap mentioning every female...

I’ve learned my lesson about auto-renewal – after losing a fortune

Idiot. More fool you. Serves you right. What did you expect? These were some of the things people said to me when I told them about something I had done, or rather not done, or rather – as I saw it – had done to me. I thought I was the victim. Others...

The death of Heather Preen

Feed the birds!

I found £20 in the street – and realised that life is more than a string of disappointments

Growing up, I was envious of one type of person. It was never the kids who were smarter, sportier or more popular. My awe was reserved for a rarer breed of people: optimists. I was hypersensitive to the ease with which they sailed through exams, social...

Songs inspired by literature

10 David Bowie – We Are the Dead (1974) Bowie famously wanted to write a musical based on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but the writer’s estate refused permission. Of the fragments that made their way on to Diamond Dogs, We Are the Dead is the...

I’m trying not to believe that Britain is broken – but, oh, the potholes!

If you’re in the UK, anywhere in the UK, please imagine yourself levitating, rising on a light mist of my despair. Don’t rise too high, for the clouds are low, and I don’t want your aerial view obscured. Look at the roads – the grey ribbons snaking...

The big AI job swap

France’s fertility reminder letters are missing the point

I almost never wonder how I’d feel if I were a 29-year-old French woman. I fear the question would lead to dissatisfactions too profound (would I be eating oysters right now? Would my socks be cashmere? Would I know what existentialism meant – no, I...

‘I had to rebuild my entire self’

Power to the people!

Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura on challenging corruption, defying Bolsonaro and their Oscar-tipped film The Secret Agent

‘The owners boast about the bite pressure ...’

The Epstein files expose just how cheap corruption is in the UK

The release of documents related to the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has proceeded like a bankruptcy – first very slow, and then very fast; 3m items were dropped by the US Justice Department last Friday. It’s interesting how many figures in public...

I quit my job, became a cat-sitter and found new friends

I am a crazy cat lady, except for one small obstacle: I do not own a cat. Though my boyfriend and I discuss names for cats, like other couples do for children, renting in London has put a stop to adding one to our family. So I had pushed dreams of...

‘The muzzle is off!’

The rise of Fafo parenting

A holiday made me realise how much I’d been living in a bubble

When I was 24, I visited Ireland for the first time. It was the autumn after I graduated from university, and a friend who had won an award for her dissertation used her prize money to rent a beach hut on Valentia Island, so that we could spend a week...

Why is Burnham such a threat to Starmer? Everyone likes him

Some people call Andy Burnham Labour’s prince across the water and others call him the King of the North. Those are two different symbolisms – the fi rst referring to James Francis Edward Stuart, the exiled son of James II, the second referring to Robb...

I jumped into the sea for the first time, and began to heal

When David Warr was 11 he thought he was dying. At his school swimming lesson, he jumped in and swam – then realised with horror that his feet couldn’t feel the bottom. He recalls his teacher, standing on the side of the pool, shouting at him to “just...

Time-loop films

1 Groundhog Day (1993) Wander through the history of the time-loop movie and you always end up looping back to Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin’s miraculous fusion of formalist experiment and mainstream high-jinks. Bill Murray is at his unsavoury best as...

I had an eye-opening experience in the queue for the pub toilet

I had an unusual experience just before Christmas. I think it did me good. This was at a gathering of some old friends of mine, a group of dentists as it happens, but’s that’s not relevant. The assembled were all blokes, which is relevant. This was at...

Whole ’lotl love!

Women love Heated Rivalry – but why the sexist kickback?

I’ve never heard anything more sexist than the (mounting) reasons why women supposedly love the hit TV drama Heated Rivalry. Quick recap: if you’re a woman, or even if you’re not and don’t yet love it: Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov...

I stopped saying no to new experiences

For most of my life, I treated taste as fixed. There were things I liked and things I didn’t, and that was that. Hobbies, foods and even social situations were quietly written off with the certainty of personal preference. But sticking to that...

The Damned

‘I was a toilet cleaner – then I was trashing a guitar on stage!’

The Brexit result came through – and my life in Britain fell apart

In the early hours of Friday 24 June 2016, the result glowed on my phone: 52%. Barely a majority, but nonetheless a verdict. I lay in my rented bedroom in Devon, still in pyjamas, watching everything I’d planned dissolve. When I saw the headline “UK...

I adopted a guide dog mum - and found community and confidence

Helen Smith was cleaning her bathroom and listening to the radio, some time after the pandemic, when a story came on about a shortage of guide dogs. The pandemic had made it hard to breed puppies. One vision-impaired owner faced a two-year wait for a...

Matt Damon’s best films

1 The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) This version of Tom Ripley is preppy, even buffoonish: he is no calculating psychopath but a square who stumbles into murder. So much of Anthony Minghella’s film seems to reflect Damon’s struggle to establish a vivid...

As Tehran was bombed, I saw a book I’d translated among the rubble

In the rubble of a collapsed apartment block, a single image stayed with me: a book I had translated from English to Persian, lying halfburied in dust and ash. Its cover was torn and smudged, its pages curled and singed, but it was still legible. Still...

Why is it so perilous to be a person of colour on The Traitors?

It was the first real day of 2026: 2 January. There was already no shortage of mayhem, which is to say “news”, in the world, but the papers were united on one point: The Traitors has changed format and introduced a secret traitor. Looking at the...

TV

Can You Keep a Secret? Dawn French has made a new sitcom, which in itself should be cause for celebration. However, Can You Keep a Secret? is written by Simon Mayhew-Archer (producer of This Country and Funboys) and revolves around a couple trying to...

Songs about new beginnings

See the full list of 20 at theguardian.com/music 1 Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop (1977) There’s a hint of well-that’s-easyfor-you-to-say about Don’t Stop: Christine McVie wrote it for her husband, John, after their marriage had broken down, urging him...

Fireworks, flirting – and heaps of hope

‘We wish you peace,” said Tony Blair as the clock struck 8pm. It was New Year’s Eve 1999, a Friday night, and I was on the banks of the Thames. Britain’s fresh-faced prime minister – only two years into the job – was giving a gimmick called The British...

‘There’s no such thing as normal’

People find it very hard to talk about sex, so if someone takes the time to sit down and write a question, then send it to the Guardian for me to answer, I always regard that as a great privilege. In the 20 years of writing the column, I have been...

The best photographs of 2025

A massive fire broke out around 3pm at Wang Fuk Court, a densely packed housing estate in Tai Po, and I arrived about an hour later. By then, the flames were raging across multiple blocks, with thick black smoke. Unsafe bamboo scaffolding and foam may...

‘It’s dangerous and exciting!’

Prewn From Chicago Recommended if you like Wednesday, Fiona Apple, Giant Drag Up next European/UK tour kicks off in May Prewn, AKA Izzy Hagerup, often uses the word “dissociation” to describe her music – the disconnected emotional state embodied...

Our weirdest Christmases: whoopee cushions, wobbly gazebos and disappearing bikinis!

The top TV of 2025

50 The Last of Us (Sky Atlantic/Now) TV’s best ever video game adaptation screamed back to life with the year’s most traumatic killing off of a beloved character. Losing one half of the show’s central duo was no easy thing to move past, but The Last...

The Coldplay kiss cam couple

On 16 July 2025, Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot went to a Coldplay concert in Boston. You know this, I know this, my pop-culture-averse neighbour Norma knows this. Millions of people around the world are intimately acquainted with what happened that...

Smashed it! The 50 best films of 2025

50 Blue Moon Ethan Hawke plays with campy brilliance and criminal combover the lyricist Lorenz Hart as he spirals into despair after his split from Richard Rodgers in this latest work with Richard Linklater. 49 Happyend Teen romance and paranoid...

Paul Mescal is irresistible except for one thing

I want to believe in reincarnation because I want to come back as Paul Mescal. What it must be like to be irresistible. I’m sure it gets wearing, but I’d still like to give it a try, just for research purposes. Not so much for the carnal stuff, but for...

A pigeon fell out of the sky and led me to an underground rescue network

The plane pushed through wall after wall of sleet on its descent into Manchester. I’d had a sinking feeling during the flight that only deepened as I shuffled through the terminal. I resented having to be back in the city where I had grown up, after...

Making a joyful Christmas ad this year is no mean feat

There can’t be anyone skirting closer to burnout, more deserving of our sympathy and complicated respect, than the people who conceive Christmas ads. The goal is straightforward: make people feel good about Christmas so that they spend more than they...

For my final column, the most important thing I’ve learned so far – you must stay in the room

This is my last column for you. I am shocked and delighted that I’ve been allowed to carry on for almost two years, saying such controversial and true things as: the oedipal complex is real and all of us have one; psychodynamic psychotherapy is an...

Paul Dano films

See the full list of 20 at theguardian.com/film 1 Love & Mercy (2014) This Brian Wilson biopic ping-pongs between the 1960s and the 1980s, with Dano as the younger version of the musician. From Wilson’s perfectionism in the studio to his hounded...

The fine art of receiving a bad gift

To paraphrase George Michael, last Christmas my friend gave her sister-in-law a book. The sister-inlaw opened it, immediately said, “Oh I’ve already got this,” and handed it back. If you just winced, you are correct. Common decency dictates that you...

My train crashed – and then I heard a little girl crying

The moment I thought I was about to die came a couple of years into my 20s, when life was really just starting out. My best friend, Helen, and I were on our way to Blackburn to catch up with an old university friend who had recently moved there for...

Austerity is in the air again – and there’s a lot at stake

The Museum of Austerity, which has just arrived in London having toured Manchester, Newcastle and Bristol, is such a simple idea: you put on a headset, and walk into an empty room. As you walk around, holograms appear; a man about to collapse, clinging...

‘A producer grabbed me, and I thought, “Oh, for God’s sake”’

Roy ‘Wizzard’ Wood’s 10 best songs

1 Wizzard – See My Baby Jive (1973) “Roy Wood was a super-fan,” wrote Bob Stanley, approvingly, in his book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop. “He wanted to be all of pop, all at the same time.” It’s a brilliant summation of an oeuvre so rich...

Letters, texts, emails – the NHS offers everything except someone to talk to

I had this thing on the back of my shoulder, which a dermatologist at an NHS hospital looked at. He was brisk, verging on brusque. He said it was either one complicated-sounding thing or the other, but I distinctly heard the word “carcinoma” in there...