G2

Lizzo’s best tracks

1 Good As Hell (2016) If you had to pinpoint a moment when Lizzo’s career shifted gear, it would be the release of this track from her EP Coconut Oil. Good As Hell amped up the pop aspects of her second album, Big Grrrl Small World, until they became...

The best filing system? Just sweep everything into the nearest bin

How I hate paperwork. Forms to fill, bills to pay, statements to file, receipts to keep, documents documenting things, proving things, explaining things. Keep them all. Up the pile rises until this tower of fear and confusion can no longer support...

Totally grounded?

What is Reform trying to achieve with this latest nastiness?

All parties struggle to invest local elections with meaning, because no party can alter the consequences of what is coming up to two decades of austerity. They can promise they’ll work hard for local people, and many of them will, but they can’t change...

I turned my eye for colour into a new career

Isabel Walker was taking her daughter out for her 36th birthday. She had wanted to do “something unusual and special”, so first Walker accompanied her to get her colours analysed. While the specialist draped swatches over her daughter’s shoulders and...

I couldn’t help but wonder...

What’s my favourite food? Whatever you’re trying to eat

I have identified my worst character trait. In such a crowded field, this has been no easy task. This one wins out because it’s two equally unappealing traits rolled into one. They both concern food, or rather eating. Number one: I cannot stop coveting...

I cried about my cleft lip for the first time in my 60s

At a fundraising event, I looked across the crowded room and saw a woman with a cleft – a gap in the lip (and sometimes the palate) where a baby’s face doesn’t fuse properly during pregnancy. She was standing on her own, and I beckoned her over to join...

Are prime ministers the problem? Or is it the voters?

At what point, as you consider the prime minister’s shortcomings more in sorrow than in anger, as you size up likely successors and try to wonder, idly, whose wallpaper we’re on in Downing Street, do you start to think that you, the electorate, are the...

‘It takes a lot of work to love yourself’

Everything But the Girl songs

See the full list of 20 at theguardian.com/music 10 Come on Home (1986) When their record label suggested making a “big”-sounding album, Everything But the Girl took them at their word. Baby, the Stars Shine Bright was big not in the sense of its 80s...

I tried to do a press-up – and had an existential crisis

I decided to do some pressups. They’re good for you, apparently. A calisthenic classic. This much I picked up in a doomscrolling session. Some algorithm somewhere must have decided I’d be open to the idea and, not for the first time, the algorithm was...

I was always intimidated by landlords - until I met one of mine at a party

After 12 years of renting, I’ve known my fair share of landlords – although “known” is probably the wrong term. I don’t usually meet them in person and rarely speak to them directly, only communicating through a managing estate agent or, if I’m lucky,...

Worried about the May elections? Here’s my tactical voting advice

If there’s one thing I love more than being canvassed at local election time, it’s being canvassed when I’m at someone else’s house. I promise those people the earth. Sure, my friend whose house it is will definitely vote Lib Dem, I tell them; I once...

Abandoned Britain

My gut was telling me to get off the mountain. I’m so glad I listened

I didn’t have a reason for my terrible feeling of dread – and that was part of the problem. From the moment I arrived in Tajikistan with my boyfriend, Tim, to climb two 7,000-metre (23,000ft) peaks, something felt off. It wasn’t a fear I could name: it...

‘My life has become a rollercoaster’

‘It has been a horrendous journey’

Cocteau Twins songs

See the full list of 20 at theguardian.com/music 10 Bluebeard (1993) Bluebeard was a deeply improbable delight in a number of ways. First, who in the 80s could have imagined a Cocteau Twins track audibly influenced by country music? Second, who would...

‘I’ve never been relatable’

‘It’s industrial in scale’

‘Some questions will never be answered’

I gave up my job in tech to become a professional poker player

Gary Fisher has always enjoyed a game of poker, but after he turned 60, his partner suggested he take it seriously. “She said: ‘You’re really good at it, but you don’t study. You just turn up and play.’” It wasn’t what Fisher expected to hear, but he...

‘I’m having the time of my life!’

Surfing the zeitgeist with pop’s hottest property

Talkin’ about evolution: a new model for cancer research

In laboratories across the world, scientists are trying to stay one step ahead of cancer – anticipating the disease’s next moves before it outmanoeuvres treatment. For more than a century, many of these experimental studies have been funded by Cancer...

A stranger pronounced my name correctly

I had five names on the day of my Hindu naming ceremony, but my given name was Priti, a name that came to shape me. Like most children with “unconventional” names, I dreaded the first day of each school year. I would squirm in my chair as my new...

Did Labour lose voters by dithering about kids’ screen time?

I’m past the stage in my parenting journey where I have any influence over my kids’ screen time. They would be much more likely to invade my privacy, grab my phone, perform some search in settings that I don’t understand, wonder out loud how it’s...

I took off my headphones – and noticed a stranger in peril

For years I walked the streets of London wearing noise-cancelling headphones, absorbed in playlists, politics podcasts or long voice notes from friends, and a million miles away from wherever I physically was. One damp January evening last year, I was...

‘I want to give that R&B rock star energy!’

The explosive rise of a pop soul powerhouse

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...