Sarah Lancashire, James Norton and Siobhan Finneran are reprising their roles for the third and final season.
With production having finally begun on the third and final season of BBC drama Happy Valley, it shouldn’t be too long before the long-awaited instalment lands on our screens. The BBC drama once again features a star-studded cast, with Sarah Lancashire reprising her role as Sergeant Catherine Cawood. Siobhan Finneran and James Norton will also be returning as Catherine's sister Clare Cartwright and Tommy Lee Royce respectively. And that's not all. BBC One has revealed some exciting new additions to the Happy Valley cast, including Amit Shah (The Other One, The Long Call), Mollie Winnard (All Creatures Great and Small, Four Lives) and Mark Stanley (The Girl Before, White House Farm) in roles as yet undisclosed. Read on for everything you need to know about the cast ahead of Happy Valley season 3. Happy Valley season 2 cast Sarah Lancashire plays Catherine Cawood Who is Catherine Cawood? Eighteen months ago Catherine was savagely beaten by vicious Tommy Lee Royce, the rapist she held responsible for the death of her beloved daughter. But Catherine emerged from crushing depression to gather the strands of her life — she’s back at work and once again is at the heart of her home and her town. But though Royce is in prison, he is never far away. What else has Sarah Lancashire been in? Sarah Lancashire made her name on Coronation Street before quitting in 1996 and going on to find success with Where the Heart Is, Clocking Off and Seeing Red. In recent years she's also appeared in Lark Rise to Candleford, The Paradise and Last Tango in Halifax James Norton as Tommy Lee Royce A terrifying sociopath, Tommy has been in prison for eighteen months for the atrocities he committed in series one. On the surface, Catherine has won their battle with Tommy behind bars and left powerless... or so it seems. Another twist in their tale soon drags the pair back together and, like the slippery snake that he is, murderous Tommy focuses his mind on one goal: revenge. What else has James Norton been in? Happy Valley cemented James Norton's status as one of Britain's brightest young stars, earning him a Bafta nomination – a role he's since followed up with the lead in ITV's Grantchester. He's recently been thrilling audiences as Prince Andrei in BBC1's adaptation of War and Peace. Siobhan Finneran as Clare Cawood Who is Clare Cawood? We know Clare is the big, beating heart at the centre of Happy Valley with her sister Catherine. She’s the one who keeps their strange little family on the straight and narrow — but she’s struggling to forge her own life. What else has Siobhan Finneran been in? Siobhan Finneran's first major role was opposite Happy Valley's George Costigan in Rita, Sue and Bob Too, before going on to appear in Coronation Street and Emmerdale. But to international audiences she's best known as Downton Abbey's scheming O'Brien, a part she departed in 2013. Since then she's been seen in The Syndicate alongside her long-running role as Janice in Benidorm. Con O'Neill as Neil Ackroyd Who is Neil Ackroyd? An old friend of Clare's, Neil is a worker at a local corner store in his new home of Hebden Bridge. When the two cross paths for the first time in years, will they reignite their old flame or will it burn out? What else has Con O'Neill been in? Con O'Neill is best known as a stage actor, winning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in Blood Brothers back in 1993. Since then he's starred in a string of productions opposite the likes of Jude Law and David Bradley, as well as appearing on screens in BBC series Criminal Justice, Channel 4's Cucumber and 2013 miniseries The Bible. George Costigan as Nevison Gallagher Who is Nevison Gallagher? Nevison had a tough first series – with his wife terminally ill, his daughter was stolen from him and his friend betrayed him – but with Ann home safe and out of harm's way, he must now must come to grips with the new reality he's forced to live in. What else has George Costigan been in? George Costigan rose to fame in Rita, Sue and Bob Too and has gone on to appear in a string of TV shows including The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Dalziel and Pascoe and Kavanagh QC. Kevin Doyle as John Wadsworth Who is John Wadsworth? A good copper and an essentially decent man in the midst of a crumbling marriage to wife Amanda (Julie Hesmondhalgh), John’s in trouble with a demanding, vengeful mistress (played by Amelia Bullmore) who won’t be dismissed when he calls time on their relationship. What else has Kevin Doyle been in? Known to most as Downton Abbey's Mr Molesley, Kevin Doyle has also appeared in Drop Dead Gorgeous, The Crimson Field and Happy Valley writer Sally Wainwright's series Scott & Bailey. Shirley Henderson as Frances Drummond Who is Frances Drummond? She’s a fragile, damaged soul unhealthily obsessed by Tommy Lee Royce. Staring devotedly at him during prison visits, Frances is the perfect victim/puppet for a manipulative and brutal man whose malevolence stretches far beyond his cell. What else has Shirley Henderson been in? Shirley Henderson found global fame as Gail in Trainspotting, Harry Potter's Moaning Myrtle and Bridget Jones's best friend Jude, but has also been a star of the small screen, appearing opposite Robert Carlyle in BBC series Hamish Macbeth and earning a BAFTA TV nod for Channel 4 miniseries Southcliffe. Charlie Murphy as Ann Gallagher Who is Ann Gallagher? With her harrowing experiences from series one now behind her, Ann is trying to move on with her life. She knows that she'll never be the same person she was before her kidnapping, but – with the help of Catherine – she's trying to make the best of things. What else has Charlie Murphy been in? Irish actress Charlie Murphy is best known for playing the lead role of Siobhan Delaney in RTE drama Love/Hate. She's also appeared in The Last Kingdom, Quirke and '71. Amelia Bullmore as Vicky Fleming Who is Vicky Fleming? When her married lover John Wadsworth calls time on their relationship, Vicky Fleming goes on a mission to show him that she's not a woman to be trifled with. What else has Amelia Bullmore been in? Amelia Bullmore is no stranger to Sally Wainwright's work, starring in Scott & Bailey alongside Suranne Jones. She played Alan Partridge's Ukrainian girlfriend Sonja, and has cropped up in BBC spoof Twenty Twelve as well as State of Play, Sherlock and 2014 film What We Did on Our Holiday. Bullmore is also known for her writing too, penning episodes of Scott & Bailey as well as plays Mammals and Di and Viv and Rose. Katherine Kelly as Jodie Shackleton Who is Jodie Shackleton? Her dad is a senior police officer, so Inspector Shackleton must prove she’s worked her way up on merit. Jodie is a sharp, cold and focused operator who grapples with Catherine Cawood’s common sense, instinctive-cop approach. What else has Katherine Kelly been in? Another Happy Valley star to make her name on Corrie, Katherine Kelly has gone on to enjoy critical acclaim since quitting the soap in 2012. A leading role in Mr Selfridge has gone alongside BBC4 Kenny Everett biopic Best Possible Taste, The Guilty, The Field of Blood and National Theatre play She Stoops to Conquer. Matthew Lewis as Sean Balmforth Who is Sean Balmforth? This is a man stuck in a dark place in his life. Along with his growing drinking problem, Sean has trouble expressing his very angry, repressed emotions. As things begin to get worse for the West Yorkshire lad, he becomes increasingly out of control. What else has Matthew Lewis been in? Known to most as dorky Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter, Matthew Lewis has focused his talents on British TV in recent years, taking roles in Bluestone 42, The Syndicate, Ripper Street and now Happy Valley. He'll also appear in the big-screen adaptation of Jojo Moyes novel Me Before You this June. Julie Hesmondhalgh plays Amanda Wandsworth Who is Amanda Wandsworth? A midwife and a working mother, a woman with a faithless husband who’s slowly drifting away from her as he’s swallowed by his secret world. But Amanda's partner isn't the only one with something to hide as she harbours troubles of her own. What else has Julie Hesmondhalgh been in? Julie Hesmondhalgh bowed out of Coronation Street in 2014 after 16 years playing Hayley Cropper. Since then she's taken roles in Channel 4 series Cucumber, BBC4 film Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster and appeared on stage in Blindsided at the Royal Exchange and God Bless the Child at the Royal Court. Angela Pleasence as Winnie Who is Winnie? Catherine's neighbour Winnie may look like a little old lady, but she's actually one of the police officer's greatest allies. A willing translator, she's on hand to help when a suspected victim of human trafficking with no English comes calling at the station. But will her efforts put her life in danger? What else has Angela Pleasence been in? Angela Pleasance is a veteran of the stage and screen, having popped up in numerous BBC productions in the past. She's probably best known for playing Catherine Howard in The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and younger generations may recognise her as Elizabeth I from Doctor Who's The Shakespeare Code. Horror fans will know Pleasance best for her roles in From beyond the Grave, Symptoms and The Godsend. Oh and her dad, Donald, played James Bond villain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in You Only Live Twice. No release date has been announced for Happy Valley season 3 as yet. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or visit our dedicated Drama hub.
Olivia Cooke: I'm a working class northern actress – before Hollywood, Vanity Fair would never have happened for me
As the Ready Player One actress plays ultimate social climber Becky Sharp in ITV's Vanity Fair, she recalls her own swift rise
Olivia Cooke is beautiful, with eyes so enormous and intense you’re reluctant to look away from them . But it’s her broad, rich, Lancashire accent you notice first, and Cooke is aware that from the moment she opens her mouth, she’s labelled. “It’s such an identifiable factor. I come into a room, ‘Oh. She’s northern. She’s from the North West somewhere. She’s working class.” And when it comes to auditions? She mimics a casting director: “‘If she sounds like that, make her Maid Number Two.’” Happily for Cooke, the Oldham-born daughter of a police officer dad and sales rep mum, those doing the hiring for Vanity Fair saw beyond that lazy stereotype and gave her the role of the industrious, manipulative social-climbing orphan Becky Sharp in ITV’s lavish adaptation of the Thackeray classic. Meet the cast of Vanity Fair Isobel Waller-Bridge on the 'dream' of composing for Vanity Fair – and its 'weird similarities' to sister Phoebe's Fleabag When is Vanity Fair on TV? Everything you need to know Unrefined candour is part of Cooke’s immense appeal. She admits, for instance, that not only had she never read the book before landing the part, she hadn’t even heard of it. And – whisper it – she’s not much of a fan of costume dramas. “I’ve found in the past that they can be quite dreary,” she says. “They tend to marinate in their sophistication a little bit too much. Often it looks pretty but the drama is lacking. The substance isn’t actually there for me.” View oEmbed on the source website With Becky Sharp, substance is not in short supply, and Cooke is sympathetic about the orphan’s selfish, scheming climb to the top of early-19th-century society. “She’s hungry for a better life, she chases status, she weaponises her sexuality, and she wants celebrity and wealth. She’s bound by society and her place as a woman.” All of which, Cooke thinks, will be very familiar to a modern audience. When we meet on location in Surrey on a freezing day in January, the 24-year-old is sinking into a creaking prop chair in a drafty room filled with dusty picture frames and an abandoned four-poster bed. Her corset is so tight it’s restricting her ability to breathe. She describes stumbling into acting at 14, when she started going to the Oldham Theatre Workshop. “It was just something fun to do with my friends after school,” she says. Her best friend had an agent, so she wanted one too. After a bit of modelling and a few commercials, a casting director saw something in her – “Which was quite nice!” – and got her her first job aged 18, as Christopher Eccleston’s daughter on the BBC drama Blackout. She left sixth form early – she planned to have classical training at drama school, but didn’t get in – and “one thing led to another”. A lead role in US horror drama Bates Motel took her to America. There, she won acclaim for her roles in films like The Quiet Ones, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Thoroughbreds. Earlier this year, she starred in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi adventure Ready Player One, and will appear in the upcoming American-Spanish comedy drama Life Itself. “My trajectory has been a quick one. It has been an adrenaline rush for the past six years.” She ponders whether her professional life would have taken off in the same way had she remained in the UK and not upped sticks to America. She concludes probably not, again citing that accent. “I’m only guessing, and with the benefit of hindsight, but I wonder, if I’d stayed here as a working class northern actress, whether I would have had this career path. In America, my accent’s not a thing, I’m just British – ‘Where’s Manchester? In London?’ Here working-class men can rise up the ranks and do all these different accents, and I just don’t think they assume women can. But it’s definitely changing.” Given her stateside success, you might think Cooke would be cool and maybe intimidating, but she’s lively, funny and approachable – with a line in self-deprecating humour. Describing her life in New York she says, “I love it, but when I brought my mum and sister out last year, they said, ‘Ooh, it’s just like Manchester.’ Great, I’m so glad I brought you all this way!” This is the most comedic she’s been in a role, she says, and it’s probably her most sophisticated part, too, although she says “there are parts of Becky that are very immature, very impulsive and spontaneous. Not as measured as an adult is.” Cooke, however, is measured – save for the moment she opens her mouth to answer a question and instead allows a burp to escape. She looks horrified but ploughs on. She says that not having to audition for the role of Becky Sharp – she was approached and then sent the script – was “bizarre”. “On set, I thought to myself, ‘I’m definitely going to get fired’, because they’ve not seen me!” Describing herself as “pretty innocuous in real life”, she says that although it’s lovely when it happens, she rarely gets recognised. That will surely change: her face now beams down from billboards and buses to promote Vanity Fair. She doesn’t use social media. “I don’t put myself out there much – the only time anyone sees me is when I’ve got a film out,” and keeping a normal routine is important to her. “What’s the point of being an actor and playing people from all walks of life if you can’t go down the road and get a pint of milk? Do you know what I mean?” She exaggerates her voice for dramatic effect. “Do you know what I mean?” When asked if she seeks out strong female characters like Becky, she offers an emphatic “no”. “All women are strong if they have convictions. There are very few cases of weak female characters, just bad writing – I think it takes a bad writer to write a woman who is weak." Though Cooke is determined rather than dastardly, Becky’s ambition is something she understands. “I love working so much, I haven’t stopped. I want to do things that challenge myself, and create things that haven’t been seen before. I strive for excellence, really.” It’s only this year she has allowed herself some time off. “I’ve always thought, ‘You might not be working next year, so get it in before someone finds out!’ Now I’ve settled into the fact that the work’s gonna come. The tap’s not gonna run dry.” To unwind, she’ll watch Extras or The Office over and over again in bed, and says Caitlin Moran books “make you feel a lot better about your neuroses, your body, and how you feel as a woman”. She’s also thinking about the future: she’s got a producer role in upcoming projects, and would love to direct one day. From little comments she makes, it seems there’s still perhaps a hint of imposter syndrome in Cooke – a fear that she’ll be “exposed” – that she’s still shaking off. But she never questions whether her successes, however quickly they’ve come, are deserved. “I hate saying the word ‘lucky’. It’s incredibly patronising. I’ve worked really, really hard. I’m called ‘lucky’ because of my background. Someone that’s born into it isn’t called lucky – and I think it’s the other way around. They’ve had a bit of a leg-up and their DNA is inherently really lucky. I’ve got to eat and put food on the table. I’m lucky to do something I really love, but that’s it.” Then she takes a deep breath before closing her eyes. “I sound like a w****r.” Vanity Fair airs on Sundays at 9pm on ITV This article was originally published in the 15-21 September 2018 issue of Radio Times magazine
"Shakespeare is so Bollywood": Anita Rani shares her love for India's cinema classics
The TV presenter discusses her latest BBC2 documentary, Bollywood: the World’s Biggest Film Industry
Countryfile's Anita Rani discusses her latest BBC2 documentary Bollywood: the World’s Biggest Film Industry – and why she still holds a candle for India's cinema classics... Your new show is all about Bollywood. I’m picturing all-singing, all-dancing movie marathons at your house... No! I don’t actually watch all that much Bollywood – they churn out films, and I’ve got family members who’ll watch everything going. But I’m very selective and will wait till something’s highly recommended. They’re all very long – you’ve really got to invest time! Any recommendations? Lunchbox is a beautiful Indian film that came out last year – but there’s no singing or dancing, so it’s not strictly Bollywood. There are some classics you need to watch: Sholay, an early Indian western, is epic. Love, friendship, comedy, a great villain. Everybody knows every lyric to every song – they get played at every wedding! And Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is really cheesy, but it’s a big hit for the diaspora in Britain. Omkara is the Indian version of Othello, set in the Rajasthani desert. Shakespeare is so Bollywood. Doctor Who Bollywood style is brilliantly bizarre Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter View oEmbed on the source website Back to the small screen… Being Indians, we can’t actually just have a small screen at home. Our telly is decent-sized and we’ve got surround-sound. I’ve got my own swivelly Bond villain chair, but my husband and I sometimes sit together on the sofa. I like to get cosy, make popcorn, eat expensive chocolate and have a nice bottle of red wine. I’m often distracted by my phone, though, or have a book or magazine I’m flicking through. What are you watching? Atlanta. I’m obsessed with Donald Glover [who writes and stars in the show] – and I’ve been a huge fan of his music as Childish Gambino [his rapper alias] for ages. He’s a clever dude. Atlanta is very subtle, with such an interesting insight into the lives of his characters, especially how they’re viewed by outsiders. Westworld was entertaining but a bit full-on. The music documentary The Defiant Ones on Netflix is one of the best series I’ve seen in a long time – the people involved, the way it’s shot… It’s just perfection. Whose advice do you take on what to watch? Twitter’s always a good place to find out what people are watching. I think my husband’s taste is dreadful – his standards are much lower than mine. I know I’ve got great taste, so we meet in the middle when we decide… So no rubbish gets past you? Oh it does! I find myself watching weird alien history programmes, and there’s an Australian remake of Monkey that’s so bad it’s good! Do you miss old TV shows? Yes, bring back Quantum Leap! I was bought my own TV at a young age – my mum and dad worked very hard running a factory and I was given a telly in my bedroom when a lot of my friends weren’t allowed one. Me and my brother watched brilliant shows on a Saturday morning like 8.15 from Manchester. I’d also watch a lot of late-night telly that I wasn’t supposed to see, like The Word and Baadasss TV… It was usually on Channel 4. Anita Rani presents Bollywood: the World’s Biggest Film Industry on Monday 13th August at 9.00pm on BBC2
Cuckoo's Helen Baxendale on her TV tastes: ‘Reality television is drivel – but First Dates gives me hope for humanity’
The star of Cold Feet, Friends and BBC3's Cuckoo talks TV, current affairs – and why First Dates gives her hope for humanity
Helen Baxendale, who played Emily in Friends and who now stars in BBC3's Cuckoo, talks reality TV and why she can never watch herself onscreen... How do you watch TV? We’ve still got a cathode ray TV with a big back. An ancient, massive thing. All our teenagers’ friends come round and say the TV’s really cool. The picture is so much better than HD TVs – everything looks like film. It’s not digital, and we still haven’t got Netflix. It’s too confusing. So we can’t pause anything. We can turn it off… Do you watch TV with your teenagers? Yes, I like to make it sociable. When I was growing up, we used to be like the Royle family, sitting around watching lots of TV and commenting on it. It was our focal point. I have vivid memories of my dad watching Not the Nine o’Clock News. I didn’t really get it but I thought it was hilarious because he was laughing. TV seemed really good back then – watching Swap Shop on a Saturday with my sister. It’s easy not to be sociable nowadays and just sit alone and watch it on your iPad. So no iPlayer binges? Oh yes – iPlayer’s great! We love box sets on there. You can look forward to it, like Dickens. It’s nice to be able to say to each other, “Ooh, you know what night it is tonight?!” Recently we’ve loved A Very English Scandal, The Bridge, The Handmaid’s Tale and a French show called Missions on BBC4. It’s surprisingly easy to get teenagers to watch subtitles. I don’t think they balk at it if you just say, “This is what we’re watching.” Where is First Dates Hotel filmed? Is the First Dates restaurant real? How to be on First Dates View oEmbed on the source website Sounds like a lot of drama series… I actually used to be really into current affairs, but I find everything so depressing these days that I just scream at the TV or radio. I always watched Newsnight, but it’s so miserable now. There’s a lot of non-depressing things if you look up, away from the TV, and I can often go weeks without watching! Although I was really enjoying the World Cup and Wimbledon. How about some daft escapism? Well, most reality TV is drivel. I’ll tell you what I do really like: First Dates. It’s positive TV – they treat people nicely, you come out of it actually liking them. There’s hope for humanity in First Dates! How do you feel about watching yourself on TV? I can’t stand it. I pretend it’s not happening. How do you avoid yourself, when Friends is syndicated all the time? I never catch them but I know when they’re being shown again, because young people will come up to me and say, “Oh, are you that woman…?” I think, “Well, at least I haven’t aged so much they don’t recognise me!” It’s a testament to Friends that it’s repeated after all this time and people still love it – it’s nice when young, new viewers get all excited. In your weeks away from the telly, what do you get up to? Radio 4 is my constant companion. Sometimes you listen and think, nowhere else on Earth would this programme be made. But I do find some of it so annoying – what’s happened to the Today programme? I’ve started switching to Radio 3 in the morning. Generally, I think radio is flourishing, whereas with TV you’ve got to make an effort to know what’s on when. With radio, you catch things that are so surprising and wonderful. And you can listen while you’re doing other things. Like what? I’m into cycling and pottery. There’s something deep within us that wants to make things. I do it once a week, and I’m pretty bad, even though I’ve been doing it for a year. My pots are like cannonballs, if you threw them at someone you’d kill them. I give them to everybody for presents, we eat out of them, drink out of them, but they’re heavy and only really good for weightlifting! Helen Baxendale returns in Cuckoo, available on BBC3 online from Thursday 2nd August
European Championships 2018: GB swimming star Adam Peaty reveals the secrets to his incredible success
The world's fastest breaststroke swimmer says he can pick up a European Championship medal with only 80 per cent effort
Adam Peaty is one of the fastest swimmers the world has ever known. An Olympic and world champion, he holds the ten best times on record for the 100m breaststroke, remains the only person ever to dip inside 58 seconds for the same event and also holds the world record for the 50m. You hold your own breath when you watch him in the pool, so rapid and superhuman are his movements. Which makes it all the more surreal to meet the 23-year-old on land, going nowhere fast, all 6ft 2 and 15 stones of him shoved into the back of a taxi outside an airport in Rome, sitting on the motorway in rush-hour traffic. European Championships 2018 live on TV: how to watch the all-new sports tournament Premier League 2018/19 TV fixtures and coverage guide RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox Peaty, from Uttoxeter, has been a star since splashing into the spotlight when he won Team GB’s first gold medal at the Rio Olympics. That triumph – in which he broke his own world record – opened a glorious summer of British sport, in which he’d go on to win a silver medal in the 4x100m medley relay, too. “I’m still on a high now!” he says of the 100m breaststroke gold. “Thinking about it gives me goosebumps. I thought, ‘If I can get this first gold medal for Britain, the whole mood is going to be lifted.’ It was a relief. You can’t think of anything that has more pressure, or is as prestigious as that.” Rio is the crowning glory of his career so far. As well as being the first swimmer to hold Olympic, world, European and Commonwealth gold in the same event at once, he has now been nominated for Sports Personality of the Year and has an MBE, an achievement he values just below the Olympic gold: “It’s something you can’t win.” Now, he’s gearing up to win again at the European Championships in Glasgow. After suffering a rare setback when he missed out on the gold in the 50m at the Commonwealth Games in April, victory in Glasgow is part of a carefully planned route to the Tokyo Olympics in two years’ time. “I know I’ve got a target on my back and everyone’s after me,” he says. Elite sportspeople – particularly the young – have a reputation for ego and bombast. Despite the obvious strain of a delay, lost luggage, and the matter of being flown around the world in the middle of a tight training block, Peaty, with his boyish face and Herculean, tattooed body, is cool as he sits in the back of the small car. “This year I’m not too fussed about my times – they’re irrelevant,” he says. “I’m just going out to enjoy it – and for the wins. I’m a little bit slower than I was last year but that doesn’t affect me because I’m not against the rest of the world this time, I’m just against Europe, which is a bit easier on my mind and body. “Why put your foot down, full gas, when you can take it off a bit to 80, 90 per cent, and still get the job done?” That, he says, is because of his focus on Tokyo, and the fact that a fixation on times threw him earlier this year. “Nobody has touched 57 seconds [in the 100m] except for me, and everyone started talking about Project 56 – trying to go under 57 seconds. The past year I’ve been obsessed by that, and it’s almost had a negative effect on my training.” View oEmbed on the source website Peaty’s defeat at the Commonwealth Games broke a four-year unbeaten streak. “If my preparation had been better, I probably would have been able to defend it,” he says, also mentioning a tiny injury on his shoulder in January, though he doesn’t like to use that as an excuse. “But I’m glad I didn’t win, in a sense, because it’s recharged me, it’s given me that push that I needed. Everyone loses – it’s whether you use it as a benefit or let it hinder you.” Peaty grew up the youngest of four children in Staffordshire, and started swimming at the age of nine. When he was 14, he joined City of Derby Swimming Club, where former Olympic swimmer Melanie Marshall noticed “something special” in his breaststroke. She’s still his coach now. “You don’t see many successful female coaches in sport, at the level Mel is. Plus, she’s ten times the man some men are. Loyalty is everything, and hopefully I’ll be with her until I retire.” It’s clear from the way he speaks that Peaty has grown up a lot. “Back in Rio, I was still a boy, really,” he says. “I’m a big man now.” He’s talking – accurately – about his body, but his attitude, too. “I used to be horrendous – if I didn’t get the results I would throw a tantrum and start swinging stuff about.” View oEmbed on the source website Back in 2016, as one of Radio Times’s stars to watch in Rio, his mum Caroline told us about his childhood fear of water. Was he mortified? “I get asked about that in every interview now!” he laughs. “But I’m not embarrassed. There’s a seriousness to that story. If I can be scared and go on to be a champion swimmer, then anyone can learn.” After years of being ferried around by his mum, he’s now moved out of the family home and is living “pretty much on my training base” at the National Centre for Swimming in Loughborough. “I see my family once every two weeks, but that’s more than enough for me! They’ve finally come to the understanding that I need my own space. Everyone needs to leave the nest at some point, don’t they?” The universe he lives in – 6am starts, strict diets, no drinking – has meant that he doesn’t relate much to his age group. “I didn’t go to uni – I committed fully to training. I can’t go to the pub, I can’t go to footie matches…” (He’s a huge Nottingham Forest fan). “When your mates say ‘Come on a night out,’ I can’t do that.” What he can do is shop. “I believe that retail therapy is a cure! When you’re training, following a black line [at the bottom of a pool] for hours and hours all week, your mind can get a bit numb. I love going to Harrods, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols.” Do you have expensive taste? “Yeah, but I did before – I just couldn’t afford it! I do like a bit of Gucci… But once you’re looking at T-shirts that go up by £100 every season, you start to think about what’s really important in life.” His other thing is cars – his is a Mercedes S63. “It keeps me busy. Waxing my car, polishing my car – I wouldn’t say it’s a prize or trophy, because nothing can replace an Olympic gold. But it’s kind of a reward for hard work.” He’s also learning a language to keep his brain active, but is hesitant to say which one, until he’s good enough. He’s serious about music – says that if he weren’t a swimmer, he’d be a producer – and loves Birmingham grime artists in particular. “If a good beat comes on, that changes my mood. Music is the number one thing to psych myself up. I have to be nervous. At this level, you’ve got to be nervous. “I’ll trick my mind into being number two. The mind is the driver but the body is the vehicle. Once my headphones are in it’s just me, and the lane ahead of me.” It’s interesting to hear his thoughts, at such a young age, on sport in general. When speaking about competing for Team England at the Commonwealth Games, he says he’s struggled with the concept of an “English” identity. “I don’t really see myself as English, I see myself as British, whereas the Scottish see themselves as Scottish first, and the Welsh, Welsh,” he says. I ask about his rivalry with South African swimmer Cameron van der Burgh – his former idol who beat him on the Gold Coast. “We’re close. But I don’t believe in the kind of rivalry where you’re best mates. You look at tennis, some players say ‘We’re really good friends’,” – he means Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer – “but you can see it in their eyes that they want each other dead in the arena. If you’re best friends it doesn’t add spectacle to the event. It should be like gladiators against each other. That’s what people want.” Making sport a spectacle is important to him. “Why not have press conferences where you’re going against each other? Promote it so there’s hype. At the Olympics, swimming has that ‘amateur’ label – but it’s one of the most-watched sports. "Until there’s a professional league, nothing’s going to change. If it happens in my career, great. If not, I’m going to make a move to make sure, when I retire, that it will be put in place.” Swimming is still, obviously, the priority. But Peaty loves the opportunities that come with celebrity – sitting in the royal box at Wimbledon, posing on the cover of Attitude magazine (“I’m always half-naked in the pool so why not?”) – but is careful that fame won’t overtake his career: “Half of it gets lost when they start replacing the sport with the stars and flashing cameras.” Heading back to Glasgow, Peaty is confident. “It’s where I was born in my senior career, at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, so I’m looking forward to racing there again. It’s a chance to defend – everyone is after me. “I can’t take a break. That’s what comes with being the world-record holder; that’s what comes with being an Olympic champion.” Peaty will compete in the breaststroke over three distances: 100m (heats begin Friday morning BBC2, Euro 1), 200m (heats begin Sun morning BBC2) and 50m (heats begin Tue morning BBC2). He was speaking ahead of an Arena event in Rome Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter
Trauma star Lyndsey Marshal: "Playing a mother who's lost her son, I feel so lucky to have my own"
The actress explains why the storyline in ITV's new drama will particularly hit home with parents: "When you have children, your whole life and priorities change"
ITV's new drama Trauma sees actress Lyndsey Marshal play the mother of a boy who is stabbed and subsequently dies in hospital. Here she explains why the plot hit particularly close to home while she was filming... When you first meet my character Susie, her son is in the trauma unit and she has to stay strong for her family while her husband spirals out of control. I have two young sons — one is five years old, the other is one and a half. This was one of my first jobs after having my second child, so it was easy to access the emotions Susie might feel and put myself in her position. I live in Tufnell Park, which is a nice area of north London, but there were five stabbings there over Christmas. You can’t help but think: “Oh God, should I bring my family up outside London? Or is that running away?” Meet the cast of Trauma From Doctor Who to Doctor Foster: Trauma writer Mike Bartlett reveals his TV influences Call the Midwife’s Helen George on pregnancy, childbirth and women being shamed for choosing to have C-sections Having boys rather than girls, too, makes it more of a worry. People’s sons are always getting mugged — and anyone can pick up a knife and leave the house. When I was growing up in Manchester there were gangs, and there was a big gun problem, but now it’s all about knives, which weirdly, I find more frightening. I first worked with Mike Bartlett on a radio play about 15 years ago and one of the things he explores in Trauma is the crisis point we are at with our NHS. Every part of you wants to believe that a doctor is giving everything to your child, but how many trauma cases have they seen that day? The stress they’re under means some doctors haven’t had a break for 14 hours. It also explores the relationship you have with the person looking after you, which is total pot luck. When I had my first child, the experience with my midwife was awful, but the second time I had a much better connection with the man who delivered my child. When you have children, your whole life and priorities change. They become everything. Playing a mother who’s lost her son, I feel so lucky to have my own — I come home and hug them tighter. As told to Sarah Carson View oEmbed on the source website
Springwatch 2018: Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan return for a new series
The BBC's Springwatch team hopes to showcase the best of British wildlife - following a gruelling winter
After a winter that felt like it might never end, spring has finally sprung, and the Springwatch team are getting ready to decamp for the second year to the National Trust’s Sherborne Park Estate in the Cotswolds, to spend another three weeks among the wildlife. The British weather this year hasn’t been forgiving. The “Beast from the East”, Storm Emma and the recent heatwaves have taken a toll on animals and their habitats, but Chris Packham is as optimistic as ever about animals’ ability to adapt, and says the mix of weather this year will keep things interesting. Autumnwatch can't all be white and middle-class Springwatch presenter Chris Packham explores his Aspergers in new BBC documentary RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox View oEmbed on the source website “We’ll see some things we normally miss because usually, they’ve already happened by the time we get there,” he says. Michaela Strachan is excited, too. “I love the surprises. We usually go with a plan and it completely changes – you get such interesting stories out of the most standard stuff. We all sigh at the blue tit box every year, but one year, the blue tit was bringing up great tit chicks. That’s the wildlife writing the story.” Packham agrees. “It’s not prescriptive, it’s always reactive: the opportunity to see stuff you’d never imagine to see in a lifetime of watching by yourself, because you couldn’t physically be there – or be awake for all those hours. The things we’ve seen on Springwatch have transformed the way we think about animal behaviour." Packham and Strachan will be joined at Sherborne by guest presenters including Steve Backshall, Iolo Williams, Lucy Cooke and Patrick Aryee, while Gillian Burke is on the road, travelling from Shetland to Cornwall. They’re looking forward to seeing raptors, gannets, barn owls, and badgers, but one sight they won’t see is former presenter Martin Hughes-Games, who has left, having had a precarious on-off relationship with the show for the past couple of years. Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter He was circumspect when RT asked him about his departure, simply saying, “I had reasons for deciding to leave Springwatch, but these are private and I have no wish to upset anyone by banging on about them. I’m going to miss Chris and Michaela terribly. Springwatch, as a totally non-scripted, live show is exceptionally difficult to present, but Chris and Michaela make it look almost effortless and great fun – it’s an amazing skill.” The pair are sad to see him go. “We’ll miss him, he’s been an important part of the show for a long time,” says Strachan, while Packham adds, “Martin and I had some good times gadding around in the name of popularising science! We’re great mates, and we had a lot of other interests outside of natural history, which was a healthy distraction at times. I’ll miss him because Michaela knows absolutely nothing about Second World War aircraft. I’m just going to be talking to myself in the caravan!” Springwatch is on Monday 28th—Thursday 31st May at 8.00pm on BBC2
Meet the winner of our competition to design the Radio Times Royal Wedding cover
Over 8,000 children applied and children's authors David Walliams and Lauren Child picked a design fit for a prince and his bride
The finest florists, dressmakers and chefs in the land have spent months preparing for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – but no one, surely, has been working harder than our nation’s budding artists. The search has been on to find the Radio Times cover to celebrate the occasion in style, and when a staggering 8,000-plus children across the country entered their wonderful creations to our competition, our judging panel had a tough job. And what a panel it was. Joining RT’s art director Shem Law were children’s authors David Walliams and Lauren Child, who, after much deliberation, settled on a cover that’s fit for a prince and his bride. The best royal TV specials marking Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding How to watch the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox View oEmbed on the source website The winning entry was drawn by six-year-old Archie Lovett. Radio Times travelled to Scargill Infant School in Rainham in Essex to break the good news, and found that the whole school was waiting to congratulate him. The Radio Times Royal Wedding issue is on sale now – in shops and on the newsstand “I feel great,” Archie told us. “I was shocked when I saw my mum at school today! “I used felt-tip pens and looked at pictures of Harry and Meghan for the idea – Harry’s my favourite, because I’d like to be a prince! If I was a prince for the day, I’d tell everyone what to do. “It’s fantastic that people will buy my cover in the shops. I like art – I like copying pictures of Peter Rabbit and drawing football, my favourite team is Tottenham.” It was a lovely surprise, too, for his mum Carley, who had no idea he’d entered the competition. “It’s been hard to keep it a secret, I can’t believe it,” she says. “I’m off-the-scale proud of Archie – when he draws, he takes his time over it and puts his all in. Archie was born the year William and Kate got married, so I remember that really well! It’s a very special event, and we’ll defnitely be watching at home.” View oEmbed on the source website So what swung the judges’ decision? “We could easily have had 1,000 winners because the standard was so high,” says Shem Law. “But what made Archie’s drawing stand out from all the others is the fact that it’s such a strong graphic image combined with a naive charm. It’s simple, brilliant and it will really hit you in the eyes when you see it in your newsagent’s.” Does Archie have a future as an illustrator? “Give me a call in 20 years...” Archie and the three runners-up will each receive signed copies of books by David Walliams and Lauren Child. The three runners up are Elizabeth Lucas, 8, from Meltham Moor Primary School in Holmfirth; Johnny Young, 6, from Hale Prep School in Hale; and Charles Gall, 6, King's House School in Richmond, London. Thank you to the schools that took part: Hawkhurst Primary School, Hawkhurst Cheam School, Berkshire, Pratts Bottom Primary School, Kent Baildon C0f E Primary School, West Yorkshire Hurstpierpoint Pre School, Hassocks Rushmoor School, Bedford, Edge Grove School, Hertfordshire Lansdown Primary School, Essex Chepstow House School, London Tower College, Rain Hill St Joseph's Catholic School, London Beckford Primary School St Hilda's School, Hertfordshire St Pauls C E Academy, West Midlands Beechwood Primary Academy, Plymouth Edge Grove Pre Prep Cedar Class, Herts Saltford School Swinderby All Saints Primary School, Swinderberry Lincoln Tormead School, Surrey Goodwyn School, London Dorothy Barley Infant School, Essex Boxgrove Primary School, Surrey The Froebelian School, Leeds New Pitsligo & St John's School, Fraserburgh Scargill Infant School, Rainham Essex Westfield School, Independent Day School for Girls, Newcastle upon Tyne Northside Primary School, London RGS Springfield, Worcester Hillside Primary School, Huddersfield Yarrells School, Dorset Clase Primary School, Swansea Halterworth Primary School, Hampshire Warwick Preparatory School, Warwick Boughton Primary School, Northampton Fairlop Primary School, Hainault Winton Primary School, Bournemouth Baden Powell and St Peter's Junior School, Dorset St Martin's Northwood Preparatory School, Middlesex College Park Infant School, Portsmouth Easterfield School, Aberdeenshire Hawthorn Tree School, Boston Old Palace Primary School, Bromley by Bow Chater Infant School, Hertfordshire Hale Prep School, Cheshire Corpus Christi Primary School, New Malden Dalrymple Primary School, Dalrymple Scott Primary School, Bedford Burley and Woodhead Church of England Primary School, Ilkley West Yorkshire Henley Green Primary School, Coventry Hacton Primary School Marlbrook Primary School, Herefordshire Akira School Harrowgate Hill Primary School, Darlington Reculver Cof E Primary School, Kent Sydenham High Junior School, London St. Margaret of Scotland Catholic Primary School, Luton Howell's School, Llandaff, Cardiff Rd, Cardiff St Paul's C of E Primary School, Stoke-on-Trent Burnham on Crouch Primary School, Essex Grrenleas School, Beds Horspath Primary School, Oxford Hunter Hall School, Cumbria Parsonage Farm Primary School, Essex Stromness Primary School, Orkney Park Hall Junior Academy, West Midlands MDCPS, Market Deeping Waverley School and Nursery, Berkshire Newcastle Preparatory School, Jesmond St Edward's Catholic Primary School, Birmingham Comberton Primary School, Worcestershire Liphook Infant School, Hampshire Elmwood Primary School, Essex Charleston Primary School, Manchester St Martin's Academy, Chester Lady Barn House School, Manchester St Teresa's School, Surrey Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School, London Horspath Primary, Oxford Ipswich High School, Suffolk Waterside Rd, Jedburgh Garthorpe Primary School, Luddington North Lincolnshire Netherton Infant and Nursery School Malmesbury Primary School, London Overfields Primary School, Middlesborough Croft Primary School, Sutton-in-Ashfield All Saints Junior School, Maidenhead Adelaide Primary School, Hull Twyford School, Winchester Temple Primary School Hilltop Infant School Sinai Primary School Croft Preparatory School Kinross Primary School Abacus Belsize Primary School Meadow View JMI School Whittakermoss Primary RHWS Primary Newhey Community Primary Harpfield Primary Holywell Church of England Primary Roos CE VC Primary Avon House Preparatory School, Essex St Saviour C of E Primary School, Manchester Swaffield School Greenfield Primary School, Leicester King's House School Junior Dept, Richmond St Margaret Mary's Catholic Junior School, Hyton Liverpool St Richard's Catholic Primary School, Kent Delamere C of E Academy Broomley First School Naima Jewish Preparatory School, London Riverside Primary School, Leicester St John the Baptist Primary School, Nottingham Wells Primary School, Woodford Green Blanford Mere Primary School, Kingswimford Somerville JI School, Birmingham Walford Primary School, Herefordshire Park School, Bournemouth Dorset Greenfield Primary School, Cherry Tree Str, Hoyland Barnsley Poppleton Rd Primary School, Poppleton Rd, York St Clare's Primary School, Leicestershire St Joseph's Primary School, Linlithgow The Premier Academy Saffron St, Bletchley MK Broad Bent Fold Primary School and Nursery, Dukingfield Boxgrove Primary School St Joseph's & St Theresa Catholic Primary School,Staffordshire High March School, Beaconsfield Woodford Green Preparatory School, Essex Overfields Primary School, Middlesborough Croft Primary School, Nottinghamshire All Saints Jr School, Maidenhead Byron Primary School,Kent Greenfield Primary School, Leicester Ings Farm Primary School, Redcar Rydall Penrhos Prep School, Colwyn Bay Irby Primary School, Coombe Road Watermore Primary School, Bristol Hollingwood Primary School Little Common School, East Sussex Baslow St. Anne's C of E Primary School Nottingham Girl's High School, Nottingham Howell's School, Cardiff Bisham C of E Academy, Marlow St Margaret Mary's Catholic Jr School, Liverpool St Mary's CE (A) First School St John The Baptist Primary, Fareham Lanlivery Primary Academy, Cornwall 3rd Theydon Bois (St. Mary's) Brownie Pack Fourfields Community Primary School, Peterborough Highbury Primary School, Cosham Exwixk Heights Primary School, Exeter Randal Cremer Primary Alvaston Infant & Nursery School, Derby Oasis Academy Putney Swaffield School, St Ann's Hill, London Ranelagh Primary School, Ipswich Rhŵs Primary School, Vale of Glamorgan Hillsborough Primary School, Sheffield Warden Hill Infant School, Luton Upton Infant School, Dorset Walter Infant School, Berks St Boniface RC Primary School, London Netherlee Primary School, Glasgow Knowl Hill C of E Academy, Knowl Hill St. Mary's School New Pitsligo & St John's Primary, New Pitsligo Woodpecker Club, Streetly Newport C of E Primary, Newport Canford Heath Jr. School Southford C of E Primary School, Saltford Blackshaw Primary School, Bolton St Lawrence Junior Academy, Kent Queen's Gate School, London Clapham Manor Primary School, London The Pointer School, London St Ambrose Catholic Primary School, Kidderminster Mead Vale Primary School, Worle Four Lanes Infants, Basingstoke Scargill CE Primary School, Derbyshire All Souls C of E Primary School, Kent Ardley Hill Academy, Bedfordshire Linton Primary School,Morpeth Milton Ernest C of E Primary, Bedford Swaresey Primary School, Cambridgeshire: Our Lady of the Assumption, Blackpool White Waltham CE Academy, Berkshire St. Leonards Primary School, Exeter Shelton Junior School, Derby St Teresa's Catholica Academy, Wokingham Beck Row Primary Academy, Suffolk Archbishop Sumner C of E Primary School, London Troon Community Primary School, Cornwall Corbridge C of E First School, Northumberland Ruswarp Primary School, Whitby Queen Edith Community Primary School, Cambridge St Cuthbert & The First Martyrs' Catholic Primary School, Bradford Divine Saviour Catholic Primary School,Watford East Lane Primary, North Wembley Gartree High School, Oadby Oldfield Primary School, Chester Beacon Primary School, West Midlands St Peters RC Primary School, Edinburgh Guildford High Jr. School Lavendar Primary School Brampton Primary Academy, Bexleyheath River Primary School, Dover Temple Hill Primary Academy, Dartford St Helen's Catholic Primary School, London Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter Read on at: RadioTimes.com/RoyalWeddingCover
Masterchef's Gregg Wallace and John Torode on why the Bake Off judges have an easier job
The presenting duo also talk why they'd do I'm a Celebrity and what Bear Grylls is forgetting
You’ve been one of TV’s biggest double acts for nearly 15 years. But do you ever watch TV together? GREGG: Never. We hardly spend any time together outside work, but we text and call all the time. JOHN: I live in Muswell Hill in London and he lives in Kent, but we spend more time together than most married couples. I see inside his ear, I know what aftershave he wears! We respect each other, and we have completely different opinions about politics, literature, art, music, food… G: That’s why it works. John wants me to have my own opinion – once he’s given it to me! What do you enjoy watching? G: I don’t have sofa time like everyone else. If I want to watch TV – and I try to watch two hours a week – I diarise it. I’m up at 6am and my bedtime is 8pm – I diarise everything. I like documentaries and rugby repeats. J: You can see how much fun he is! I grew up with rubbish television in Australia, so I’m good on junk. I love things like Border Control, Ice Road Truckers or, “He was obese once and it’s taken him 12 months to lose weight…” TV’s there to entertain, and I like weird stuff when I’m trying to switch off. Or comedy, like Live at the Apollo. Do you like dramas? J: Lisa [Faulkner, his partner] loves them. But I watch the first one and then I’m done – I want something new! Except for Orange Is the New Black and Breaking Bad. I do love Netflix. G: I’m not even sure what Netflix is. If there were no young people in my house, I wouldn’t be able to turn things on! I did download the box set of Wolf Hall recently, though. What makes you turn off? J: People trying to sell their house, or what’s in their attic. Who gives a damn? They’re just boring! G: I hate all the history channels that only show Hitler. Do you watch food channels? G: Is there a food channel? J: We’re on them all the time, Gregg! Do you ever think you could do a show better? G: History programmes. I don’t like academics doing them – it’s like they’re doing adverts for their book. History is only stories; I would tell it like I’m talking about two blokes in the pub! Or Bear Grylls. For all his SAS training, at least I would remember to bring a packed lunch! I wouldn’t want to judge Bake Off. Their job’s easier than ours because they only taste one kind of food. Would you appear on reality TV? J: The one I might consider – when I’m old – is I’m a Celebrity… You eat beans and rice for a couple of weeks, lose a few pounds, and then you get a holiday in Australia. A few bugs and testicles? Have you seen what we’ve eaten on MasterChef ? G: I’d do that if it paid enough of the mortgage off. Who is your favourite person to watch TV with? G: Nobody! I want my wife Anna [Anne-Marie Sterpini] next to me, but it’s not a joint activity. And I’m invariably watching in a hotel room or in a cab. Unless I’m watching rugby with my mother-in-law. J: That must be the only time we agree on anything – I want the remote control to myself! What do you eat while you watch? J: I don’t eat on my sofa. It’s not allowed. Never, ever, ever. The last thing I want to hear is chewing. G: You have a telly in your lounge, John? How common! I like chocolate. I’ll snack on two or three Quality Streets. MasterChef: the Finals is on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday BBC1
Mum star Lesley Manville reveals her West End dressing room secrets
The Olivier Awards nominee on the creature comforts that got her through a 10-week stint starring in theatre production Long Day's Journey into Night
As London dressing rooms go, this one – at Wyndham’s Theatre – is really good. It’s decorated in a classic, old-fashioned style, and it’s got some wonderful pieces of furniture that I moved around a bit – Jeremy Irons, my co-star in Long Day’s Journey into Night [Lesley Manville is nominated for an Olivier Award for best actress], is quite jealous. It’s also got a modern shower that they put in a few years ago. I use it when I’m off stage between acts – I get quite hot because of a little fat suit I wear in the show. Lesley Manville on a life on-screen, awards season and being an older woman in Hollywood Meet the cast of Mum I don’t do anything to prepare before I walk out on stage and I don’t get nervous, but putting on my make-up, wig and costume is part of the process. I’m very good at getting in and out of character quickly: when the lights go down, I’m in it, I’m Mary Tyrone. There’s an excitement when you look out and all the layers of the theatre are full – thank God, we’ve played to really big houses. A performance is never the same as the one you did before – there’s real spontaneity each time. View oEmbed on the source website I think this will go down as the most challenging ten weeks of my career. There’s been press for Phantom Thread, press for this play, press for Mum, awards season with the Baftas and the Oscars (lucky me, I know – but it wasn’t easy!) and I’ve been on stage in the evening, and up at 5am and filming a new series of Harlots at the same time. I don’t have a day off either, because of the Sunday matinée! It’s been intense – there’s a lot of make-up removal in cars. I think a lot of 20-year-olds would balk at my schedule. I don’t feel tired, but I’ve been saved by naps here on my sofa in the corner! It’s really important to me to make a dressing room homey. My cushions always come with me from home. They’re pale and creamy and old, and give the room a shabby chic look, which I like. I bring in a nice throw for the sofa, a blanket so I can have a snooze and all my press night cards that you traditionally put up around the mirror. My fellow Olivier nominee Imelda Staunton gave me this lovely mug when we finished filming Maleficent – we were both playing pixies. It’s become my dressing room mug. I bring my own kettle in, and my Yorkshire Gold tea bags, which I’m passionate about and which I take everywhere – they’re in my trailer on set as well. I like nice healthy snacks, like oatcakes and peanut butter, for an instant bit of energy and to keep me going. I’ve always got champagne in the fridge. If you’ve got friends watching, people can come back and have a quick drink – then I’m in the car home! I’ve been wearing quite a chunky knee brace under my costume – you can’t see it under the big skirts, but it’s been an absolute godsend! When you’re performing on a slightly tilted stage – especially when you’re wearing heels – it throws your whole balance off-kilter. About 12 years ago I had to have a cartilage operation after I spent five months doing His Dark Materials at the National Theatre. It’s a common problem, and I was really worried at first, but the knee brace has saved the day. Lesley Manville was talking to Sarah Carson
Alan Carr: I'd love a role in The Crown – and I know exactly who I'd play
"I want to play Paul Burrell when they finally get to the Diana years," he says of his favourite Netflix drama. "Wouldn’t it just be perfect?"
Your new game show, I Don’t Like Mondays, sees people trying to win a year’s salary. What’s the worst job you ever had? You name it, I’ve done it. Pet shampooing, call centres, flyering… the worst one was at a CD factory. Somebody would hold my ankles and swing me under a machine that made CDs – cash in hand, typical Northampton – and I’d scoop up all the bits of plastic that had fallen on the floor and put them in the bin. I was 12! Only joking. What would be your dream job? An old-school detective in the 1920s. Somebody’s been poisoned in a stately home! Some jewels have gone missing in the south of France. I’m fascinated by this Russian spy stuff – it’s proper Agatha Christie! I don’t want to slag off Russia too much, they’re probably listening in, but the world’s gone bonkers and the news is addictive stuff! Hollyoaks: Alan Carr films cameo – with his dogs! Alan Carr on why the time is right to bring back The Price Is Right View oEmbed on the source website Have you always been a news junkie? God no, when I was a teenager I’d have said, “BORING! Put Neighbours on.” But it’s scary times now. Trump, Russia, Kim Jong Un: I love Daniel Craig but real life is more dramatic than the last James Bond film I watched. What else do you watch apart from the news? My Sky planner is eclectic. I love Civilisations, where you’ve got Mary Beard walking round the pharaohs’ tombs, then Five Star Hotel and Spencer Matthews bathing with young girls on a Greek island, then someone having their microwave and deep-fat fryer confiscated by heavies on Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away. I love real life. It’s the rich tapestry that makes this world such a beautiful place. When Russia’s not involved. I like a lot of stuff on Netflix. The Crown’s fantastic; I’ve put a call in to my agent, I want to play Paul Burrell when they finally get to the Diana years. Wouldn’t it just be perfect? What about comedy? I don’t watch any comedy. Not because I think, “Oh, I can do it better,” but I just don’t find things funny! I find more humour in reality. Though I did love Fleabag. Who are you watching with? If it’s trash, my husband Paul, but anything with Lucy Worsley I have to go upstairs and watch it alone in my bedroom like Tracy Barlow. I’m showing my age, aren’t I? Tracy’s probably allowed downstairs by now. Are you easily distracted when you watch TV? I’m really disappointed in myself because I’ve always got two screens on the go. The neighbours can see into our terraced house through the window and can see what I’m watching on telly, and my bald spot and Candy Crush on the iPad! I’ve finally weaned myself off that a bit. When you’re not watching telly, how do you switch off? We have two Irish setters that need lots of exercise, so I listen to Radio 4 when I’m walking them, and I download lots of books. I like Nick Grimshaw in the morning on Radio 1 and a bit of Radio 2. I’m outside with the dogs for two hours a day. I’ve got the complexion of a tramp. I Don’t Like Mondays begins on Friday 6th March at 8pm on Channel 4
The Pilgrimage: Follow Neil Morrissey and Debbie McGee on the road to Santiago
The rewards of the Camino de Santiago far outweigh the pain - even if you're not a believer
A fierce sun beats down against your back. Your bag is heavy, your feet are sore and you’ve walked for two weeks through northern Spain, with two more to go before you reach Santiago de Compostela. You tread the same route that Christian pilgrims have taken for more than a millennium. Once, it was only the truly pious who set off on the holy route, but now the Camino de Santiago has become a spiritual journey that transcends religion, attracting more than 250,000 pilgrims each year. The Camino de Santiago – or the Way of St James – was first taken in the Middle Ages, when King Alfonso II heard that the holy remains of the apostle St James had been discovered, and travelled west from his court in Oviedo to Galicia to confirm it. He ordered a basilica to be built to house the remains in Santiago de Compostela, and that cathedral became a shrine, with Catholics flocking from across Europe to pay their respects – and to cut down on the time they’d spend in purgatory after death. For believers and non-believers alike, it’s a contemplative journey. Some choose to travel traditionally by walking the whole way (you can cycle or go on horseback, too) and find cheap shelter in refugios and albergues – hostels for pilgrims – run by churches and local councils. At each point on the trail there’s a stamp for your pilgrim passport, and when you reach the end – provided you’ve walked the last 100km – there’s a certificate to prove it. Others take the Camino to discover a Spain of aqueducts, castles, cathedrals and monasteries – many transformed into luxurious hotels. This week a group of celebrities – including Neil Morrissey, Debbie McGee, the Reverend Kate Bottley and Ed Byrne – will set out on the Camino to reflect on their own relationship with spirituality and faith in The Pilgrimage on BBC2. Cheap flights to Santiago de Compostela Compare top hotels in Santiago There are hundreds of routes, but the most popular is the Camino Francés – the French Way. It starts in the idyllic town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the French Pyrenees and passes through the Spanish cities of Pamplona, Logroño, Burgos and León, before continuing into the region of Galicia. Discover old Hemingway haunts in Pamplona, the medieval six-arched bridge in Puente la Reina, and Spain’s finest wine in La Rioja. Burgos’s cathedral is a marvel of intricate Gothic architecture – and while there, be sure to try Ribera del Duero wine and morcilla (blood sausage). León’s cathedral boasts breathtaking stained-glass windows, while Astorga is home to Gaudí’s fairy-tale Palacio Episcopal. When you reach Galicia you enter Celtic Spain – the town of O Cebreiro is one of the first stops and is full of round, pre-Roman mountain dwellings called pallozas. The Camino del Norte – the Northern Way – is the road less travelled, but more picturesque. It favours the coast over cathedrals, and runs parallel to the sea. Starting in the Basque town of Irún, it passes through Spain’s foodie capital of San Sebastián; the historic town of Guernica, bombed by Hitler during the Spanish Civil War and immortalised in Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica; and Bilbao, where the Guggenheim Museum houses cultural treasures and is an architectural marvel in its own right. The walk is tougher-going, but it’s worth it for the rich landscapes – this is lush, green Spain, a world away from the costas of the south. Santiago de Compostela is a vibrant city where Romanesque, Baroque and Renaissance architecture come together. The cathedral is its centre, and a Pilgrim’s Mass is held every day at noon to greet the weary walkers. Visit the Alameda Park, the sprawling Plaza del Obradoiro and the Convent of San Francisco, and buy Galician delicacies at the Mercado de Abastos – Padrón peppers, traditional tetilla cheese and the best seafood in Spain. The Hostal dos Reis Católicos opposite the cathedral was built as a hospital for pilgrims in 1486; now, it is a five-star Parador hotel – considered the oldest hotel in the world and one of the most beautiful. It’s the perfect place to celebrate completing the Camino – and to contemplate your journey, spiritual and physical, with a glass of Albariño wine. Pilgrimage: The Road to Santiago begins on Friday 16 March on BBC2 Cheap flights to Santiago de Compostela Compare top hotels in Santiago
How This Country stars Daisy May and Charlie Cooper created the comedy hit of the year
The siblings behind the BBC3 Cotswolds mockumentary reveal how the series came to life
It wasn’t a promising start for the surprise comedy hit of 2017. Daisy May and Charlie Cooper were sharing a bedroom in their parents’ house in Cirencester, with no money and nothing to do but ponder the ridiculous side of their lives in the Cotswolds. He was an Exeter University dropout; she was struggling to find acting work after graduating from Rada. Instead, with almost no writing experience – but two lifetimes’ worth of inspiration – they created what became This Country. A BBC3 mockumentary about cousins Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe, played by Daisy May (31) and Charlie (28), it was the cult hit of last year. The second series is on iPlayer and airs every Tuesday on BBC1. Not since William Blake’s Jerusalem has such evocative tribute been paid to the English countryside. Welcome back to This Country: Daisy May and Charlie Cooper’s sublime mockumentary is as hilarious and heartbreaking as ever There are so many funny women in this amazing promo for Amy Poehler’s directorial debut View oEmbed on the source website The Coopers’ green and pleasant land is one of pebbledashed council houses and scarecrow competitions, fights over oven space, boredom-induced shoplifting, peeping Toms, and the search for a lost primary school classmate immortalised on a tea towel. The show is so funny that comparisons have been made to The Office, The Inbetweeners and The Royle Family; so realistic some have mistaken it for a real documentary. Halfway through our interview in Daisy’s cottage – “A bit Cotswold Life, this, she’s betrayed us,” Charlie whispers to me – their mother, Gill, bursts in to tell us that she’s just been chased through the woods by two enormous feral pigs on her way back from the corner shop. Kerry and Kurtan are the perfect double act. She is a daft, would-be hard-nut who surrounds herself with a gang of Year Seven schoolkids for protection; he, “very much too obsessive with things”, has halfconcealed ambitions to break free from the village. Series two looks less at the idiosyncrasies of rural life and more deeply at the cousins themselves – Kurtan’s reliance on the local vicar for guidance and Kerry’s heartbreaking relationship with her dad, who is played by the Coopers’ real father, Paul (their uncle Trevor also stars as the local miser, Len). “It’s difficult to sustain a programme where the main theme is boredom,” says Charlie. This second series was written in five months while the first was six years in the making, born out of homesickness when Daisy was studying in London (in the same year as James Norton) and Charlie was sleeping on her floor. “I was so unhappy at Rada. I’d always wanted to do comedy, but we never did any, all we had to do was Macbeth,” Daisy says. “I played Lady Macbeth, being as serious as I could, and everybody started laughing. Charlie and I started talking about this girl we knew that used to hang around Cirencester, and I’d do impressions of her.” That impression grew into a monologue for Daisy’s final performance, and became Kerry. After drama school, auditions came to nothing. “I’m difficult to cast. In comedy, if there’s a female character, usually written by a bloke, she’s either the ditsy good-looking one, or the sexually aggressive one. I never fit into those.” “It drove us to write something that she could be in,” says Charlie, who has worked as a model, and never intended to star in the show himself until they couldn’t find anyone who could do the accent. Broke and otherwise directionless, working on the comedy “gave us something to focus on”. A disastrous ITV pilot followed, before, eventually, the BBC’s head of comedy commissioning, Shane Allen, took notice. View oEmbed on the source website Almost every storyline is based on real life and the characters – antagonistic neighbour Mandy, tedious schoolfriend Slugs – are inspired by people they know, and most of them are flattered. The eccentricities of village life – like a crisis meeting the pair attended after a big cat was seen at a zebra crossing – provide rich, lyrical turns of phrase to use in their dialogue. Daisy says, “It’s truthful for us, so it’s lovely when other people say it could be any village in the country.” Two things make This Country special. One is the way it mines comedy from the mundane: “We’re inspired by everyday things, stuff we’ve seen on Facebook, like people collecting Compare the Meerkat toys,” Charlie says. “When you set out to write a heavy storyline, it’s always a damp squib.” The other is the detail that bejewels every line: specific cultural references such as the Cadbury’s Fuse bar, Tony from Hollyoaks, Warhammer. “Tiny things take us ages. We’ll be looking for the name of a shop – Greggs isn’t right, Tesco’s not right… We’re meticulous,” says Daisy. “You’ve got to be brave enough to accept that 90 per cent of people won’t get the reference, but the ten per cent who do will love it,” adds Charlie. The Coopers’ Gloucestershire is far from bucolic idyll, but there’s genuine affection for their home and real pathos in their characters, whose hopes and horizons are limited. “You have to feel for them,” Charlie says. “The best comedies are always the most tragic. Del Boy, Harold Steptoe, they’re all trying to better themselves. [In the first series] Kerry gets involved in a pyramid scheme thinking she’ll be on Dragons’ Den – but she gets it wrong, time and time again. Anyone who’s got bravado but deep down is completely vulnerable is interesting.” Daisy agrees. “She’s different from other female comedy characters – the focus is not on femininity. This is someone who is asexual, tomboyish, and the biggest unrequited love story is her relationship with her dad. She’s got nobody, and her life is a lot sadder than Kurtan’s.” This series, he gets a job and a girlfriend, while Kerry only gets herself in trouble. “She’s so lost and is such a plodder, he feels a duty to look after her,” says Daisy. Daisy and Charlie are warm and hysterical company. Throughout our conversation, Daisy tells lurid anecdotes about Cirencester celebrities and graphically recounts going into labour two weeks earlier. Charlie cradles his new niece, Pip, and compares her, fondly, to Winston Churchill. It seems deserving that their years of holding on to hope have finally been rewarded, but Daisy insists, “We’re just trying to make each other laugh. That’s all it is.” This Country is available on iPlayer (a new episode is released every Monday) and airs on Tuesdays at 10.45pm on BBC1
Mum series 2 preview: Lesley Manville returns in BBC2's quietly brilliant family comedy
"Mum's emotional moments are as powerful as anything on television," says Sarah Carson as series two of the acclaimed BBC sitcom begins
The first series of Mum, two years ago, was a slow-burning grower of a sitcom: Lesley Manville was the patient, obliging widow Cathy, the centrepoint of her small family, as they moved through the months following the death of their father, husband, best friend, and son. For a series that used grief as its jumping point, there were no dramatic displays of emotion. Instead, this was a simple, subtle comedy about the ways we navigate the quiet tragedies we all know might hit us, but which still shake our worlds upside down. What time is Mum series two on TV? Lesley Manville on a life on screen, awards season and being an older woman in Hollywood BBC commissions third series of Mum before the second has even aired It was, too, about the people we do not choose to be close to us but must tolerate – sisters-in-law, parents-in-law, and – most jolting for Cathy – her son Jason’s loquacious but charming new girlfriend Kelly. Never straying far from the patio in front of Cathy’s three-bedroom semi, it was superb. Each episode marked a few more months of distance from their loss and brought the characters closer to each other; creator Stefan Golaszewski’s scripts brimmed with fantastically sharp observances and subtle family dynamics and he was awarded with a Bafta Craft Award for Best Comedy Writer. In the series two opener it is Cathy’s 60th birthday, and Kelly, guileless as ever, can’t believe it. “If I met you for the first time I’d be like, ‘That woman is no older than 58!’” Cathy, bent over the sink: “Thanks love.” She can’t believe it either. It feels like only yesterday she was 18 – but Kelly’s done the maths. “It wasn’t yesterday though was it Cathy? It was 42 years ago.” She’s designed a banner so the whole street can see how old she is. Cathy, as one would expect, is thrilled. And so the series continues in much the same vein as the first; the passage of time marked by quiet milestones and events that come round each year sooner than you’ve had time to clear up after the last one – Easter, the summer holidays, Bonfire Night... At first glance, it seems that not much has changed. Lesley Manville's Cathy is all deep breaths and stoic smiles, Lisa McGrillis steals every scene as Kelly, and the brilliant Peter Mullan is heartbreakingly good as close family friend Michael. His love for Cathy – possibly requited, possibly not – was the driving force of the last series, but this series is layered in its portrayal of relationships. The more you watch, the more you see how much much has changed, and how much closer these people have become as they muddle through their bereavement. Jason, Cathy’s son, is chattier than before. Dimmer, too, it seems, but more openly concerned about the welfare of his mother. Kelly, whose insecurities are rooted in her disparaging mother – a perfectly-cast Tanya Franks – is living with Cathy and Jason and has found solace in spending time with another mother who loves, unconditionally. They’re looking for a flat together: far enough to feel like they’ve moved out, but close enough to be able to come back for dinner. And breakfast, sometimes. Derek, Cathy’s brother, still pops round to check in on his sister, and is still tethered to his venomous snob of a partner Pauline, who continues her quest to ‘civilise’ him with her dogmatic (and heavy-handed) edicts about the theatre, brown bread, and other such bourgeoisie badges of honour. This time around, he lets the emasculating effect she has on him show. As in his previous series, creator Stefan Golaszewski (who also penned the Bafta-winning Him & Her) is masterful in observing our everyday habits and manners, and leaves long, uneasy pauses to let viewers decipher the unsaid. Apart, of course, with Kelly, for whom little goes unsaid, least of all her love for Cathy. This series of Mum isn’t a hysterical, riotous romp; the laughs don’t come as easily as they once did, now that we know this family and they know each other. But its emotional moments – sparse and judiciously chosen – are as powerful as anything on television. They are tenderly wrought, and devastatingly familiar. View oEmbed on the source website If the central relationship in the first series was the bonding of Cathy and Kelly, this time Golaszewski has perfectly, sensitively captured the tragedies of good men in crises trying to do their best. Jason is afraid of leaving his mother alone, and is not ready to leave his dead father behind. Derek grapples with his masculinity, and a partner who cruelly undermines him at every turn. And while Lesley Manville may be this show’s beating heart, it is Peter Mullan who shines brightest here as the cautious, doting, Michael; the pair out of sync in their unexpected affection. Mum is an intimate comedy about love – dutiful, romantic, parental, lost love – that wrenches the emotions, often agonisingly, but is only ever a moment away from a neatly-landed poo gag. Mum series two begins Tuesday 20th February at 10pm on BBC2 View oEmbed on the source website
Back in Time for Tea: How to take an ordinary living room back to the 1970s
Interiors expert Lizzie Chambers takes us back to when kitsch was king
“Everybody knows the 70s when they see it,” says Lizzie Chambers, art director for Back in Time for Tea, which this week takes the Ellis family back to the decade by transforming their home and dinner table to reflect the country’s changing tastes and trends. “Visually, it was my favourite period to work on. There’s still lots of material you can find in prop stores and on eBay. We had seven days and £8,000 to transform the house for each show. “For this room, I took inspiration from books and the internet, but the best thing you can do is talk to people who remember how it would have been. You don’t want it to look like too much of a pastiche or stereotype. You also can’t make it too luxurious – this is the home of a working-class family in Bradford, so they wouldn’t have been able to afford all mod cons. What it’s like to go 100 years back in time for dinner Mary Berry’s 7 lessons in dining “Trying to find authentic pieces was hard, and you want to make sure you don’t do a disservice to the period. The other tricky thing is that everything has to work. Whether it’s a record player, the kitchen utensils, a sandwich toaster or a pogo stick, it’s got to function properly. This family have to live in the house, and have to believe that they’re in that period. If it feels like a set, the magic’s gone.” New colours “Every time we redecorated, we had to move away from the colours we’d used in the previous decade,” says Lizzie Chambers. “This is original vintage wallpaper that cost £30 a roll from a prop shop in London. The print isn’t iconic, but the colourway is. Lots of people would have kept their old wallpaper or wood chip and painted over it in these colours.” Party time “In the 70s, people started to furnish their houses a bit more and, as they spent more time socialising at home, cocktail cabinets were all the rage. We hired the pineapple ice cube bucket from a prop house — it represented what people could afford, without being too elitist. Exotic fruit and veg had become more easily available, so everything had a slice of pineapple or a glacé cherry on the side.” Box of delights “We had a list of appliances from each decade and the TV had to be right because at a specific point they changed from black and white to colour. We work with a fantastic man who buys old TVs, radios, gramophones and lovingly restores and rewires them in his workshop so you can plug an mp3 or iPod into it. He sourced everything for us. You can run an old black and white TV programme on a DVD plugged into that TV so it feels like you’re actually watching television from that era.” Petal power “In the 70s florals were massive in furnishing fabrics. Music and fashion were more creative than ever before, so people were going crazy with brighter, more colourful things in their houses. Brown and orange might seem garish now, but things go around in circles. Everything’s grey at the moment, but in 20 years we might wonder why. Originally, brown was popular because of its availability — it was one of the only paint colours available in the 60s, so its prevalence was a hangover from then. The sofa was hired: when we got it, it smelt like it had come from the 70s — it was revolting.” Back in Time for Tea is on Tuesdays at 8pm on BBC2
Welcome back to This Country: Daisy May and Charlie Cooper’s sublime mockumentary is as hilarious and heartbreaking as ever
Sarah Carson previews series two of the break-out BBC3 hit and talks to the brother and sister team behind it about the secrets of their success
Was there a funnier programme than This Country on television last year? Daisy May and Charlie Cooper’s sublime mockumentary about life for young people in the Cotswolds combined, with perfect precision, the familiarity and the cartoonish in ordinary life, with rich detail, hilarious dialogue, and heartbreaking pathos in its two heroes, the meandering cousins Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe. For them – played by the Cooper siblings – idle entertainment is all they have to escape the tedium of the village. Pursuits chronicled in the first series included the chaos of a scarecrow festival, the ill-fated homecoming of an incarcerated uncle, and the search for a boy they bullied in their Year Six woodwork class. That first series was six years in the making, and evolved from an impression by Daisy of a local girl from the Coopers’ much-missed hometown Cirencester back when Charlie was a dropout of Sports Science Exeter University and sleeping on his older sister’s floor and Daisy was a student at Rada in London, and “so f***ing miserable.” It finally reached iPlayer in 2017, and became a word-of-mouth hit and a critical triumph. When we left them, the Mucklowe cousins were roaming the fields of Gloucestershire in exaltation. Kurtan had just postponed his GNVQ at Swindon College to stay at home with Kerry – much to her relief, because she had founded a new posse the Dump Gang, and wanted him beside her to smash some ceramic ceiling tiles by the side of the road. Series two of This Country arrives on BBC3 on Monday 26th February and will air on BBC1 the following week. With only five months to write it, the Coopers have been nervous. “It’s that second album thing – are people going to say they’ve lost their way?” Daisy wonders to me. They haven’t. Their storytelling is well-honed; their characters reveal what’s shaped them and their deepest desires become clear. Brilliantly chosen cultural references – TK Maxx, Compare the Meerkat, Sodastreams, S Club 7, Screwfix– still adorn lyrical local patterns of speech that are rarely heard on scripted television. This time around, Kerry gets a stalker, and Kurtan gets a job. We find out about the Vicar’s background, and we meet his mysterious son. Neighbour Mandy remains on terrorising form, and Kerry’s degenerate father and his indifference to – and manipulation of– his daughter take more than just an emotional toll. And crucially, it is very, very funny. “See this house here?” says Kerry in a knock-off tracksuit, walking up a hill and pointing to a run-down looking semi. “The bloke that used to live in there, right, kept hearing strange noises coming out of the attic at night. And he goes to the fridge, and food was missing from the fridge, so he thought ‘I’m just going to go to the attic and check this out.’ And he found an entire family of Peruvian panpipe buskers just living up there. And he thought ‘I’m just gonna leave them to it because they’re not really doing me any harm.’” After elaborating on their terrible fate, she concludes, “He doesn’t live here anymore. He lives in Stroud because it’s closer to his work.” So opens the first episode, before the cousins assure us that ‘so much’ has changed in the year since the film crew’s last visit. Kerry’s grasp on reality is still loose, her anecdotes still outlandish. But she’s been making an effort to improve herself, ‘hanging out with the Vicar’: long walks, gardening, golf. He’s been teaching her about how to be kind to others. “There’s a balance to be had between being nice and being feared,” she warns. “Doctor Barnardo’s, he was too nice and not feared, so he just got overrun by orphans and everyone just took the piss.” For his part, Kurtan’s been avoiding the Vicar (and neglecting the cress he planted on the window ledge of the village hall), because he’s got a girlfriend. He cast the net wide on Tinder, but ended up with a local girl Sophie, who Kerry approves of – she’ll let her call her ‘Soph’. But there’s trouble in paradise. Kurtan’s worried he set the bar too high at the beginning and now she demands too much of him. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but four texts a day is complete madness. No one can keep up with that.” He doesn’t make the requisite effort with his costume at the village Secret Cinema night, and things begin to derail. When it came to writing the show, the pair agree neither could have done it by themselves. “You have to have someone you can bounce things off. If he doesn’t laugh then it’s not going in. And you can’t have nicety or politeness, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘That line you just wrote is f***ing rubbish’,” says Daisy. “We’re better now,” says Charlie, “but when we were first writing, living at home with no money and lots of pressure, it’s easy to turn on each other – which we did a hell of a lot. But you’re siblings so you can’t fall out forever.” They avoided watching other comedies, in case it affected their writing, and had to try to block out what people had liked the first time around. “You get instant feedback on social media, if you’re brave enough to look,” says Charlie. ”It’s great to see what people like, and so much of it was unintentional things, but it makes you overthink and overanalyse when you’re writing.” Viewers seemed to love the way Kerry’s mother (an unseen, bed-bound harpy, voiced by Daisy) pronounced the word ‘tomato’. “I f***ing hate that now,” says Daisy. Their real mum, Gill, bursts into the cottage halfway through our interview to announce that she’s been chased through the woods by two feral pigs. “I almost peed myself but they were gorgeous! Can we get some?” Laughing hysterically, Charlie reveals that for the show, they tried to write an episode where Kerry and Kurtan rescue a pig that’s been sent to abattoir. “But we had to give it up, because where do we find a pig that can act aggressive on cue?” They always wanted people to find This Country on their own. “It’s like when you discover The Office for the first time, it gives you so much pride showing it to a friend – you feel connected to it.” When I ask why they chose to make Kerry and Kurtan cousins, specifically, Daisy says, “They needed to be in the same year at school, best friends, but related – if they were just friends, people will think ‘Will they ever get together?’ That’s a really annoying thing when you have male and female protagonists.” This time around, there’s more of a narrative arc to the series. Kurtan broadens his horizons, and we see how emotionally intelligent, kind, and supportive he truly is when it comes to Kerry – which is as devastating as it is touching. It’s rare, and perhaps only possible when the writers/actors are this close, that you can feel the way two characters on-screen truly know each other. In one scene, Kurtan – who’s always been sharper than Kerry – tells cameras that Kerry’s problem is she is very loyal, but also very stupid. He is not wrong, and the small tragedy of Kerry’s life is what drives this series forward, as she comes a cropper with her father Martin – played by their real-life dad Paul. (He was recently asked for his first selfie in Waitrose, “And he WILL NOT stop talking about it!”) “There are not many good, original characters for women in sitcoms,” Charlie says, but in Kerry, they have created one. In the first episode of this series, called Random Acts of Kindness, Kerry volunteers to do security for the Vicar’s aforementioned secret cinema night. She’s metal-detecting pensioners as they enter the village hall for a screening of Grease, and has got her eye out for possible snipers. Her hair is scraped back, and she’s wearing an oversized men’s shirt (Daisy had to mask her pregnancy for the shoot. During our interview, her two-week old baby daughter Pip gurgles happily from her chair, as if laughing along with her mother and uncle.) “You look like Andy Fordham,” Kurtan tells her. “Who’s that?” “A fat darts player, basically.” “Well, I don’t care, because I’m enjoying myself.” And that, simply, is that. Kerry is uninterested in femininity, romance, or vanity, which feels truly novel for a woman on-screen. Is she the ultimate feminist comedy character, as has been suggested? “That’s really nice,” Charlie nods. Daisy, vehemently, continues. “It sounds awful, but when they’re written by blokes women are always f***ing really bad, really two dimensional, just make women look like complete c***s. I wanted to do something else. Usually women are just vehicles for the love story. This is someone who is asexual, tomboyish, and the biggest unrequited love story is her relationship with her dad. It’s never questioned why she’s wearing a shirt from Burtons, you accept her as she is.” An early – and ill-fated – pilot with ITV saw the pair forced to write a plot where Kerry became super-girly. “And how wrong could that be?” Daisy asks. “We were pushed to write that by a f***ing male producer, and it still makes me cross to this day. She is not worthy as a woman unless she puts on a dress and wears make up and puts heels on – that is so stupid. What’s funny about a tomboy girl trying to change – how many times have I seen that? She’s All That, Shallow Hal – it’s all crap. The BBC have been amazing and trust us. They’ve never pushed anything on us like that.” Writing the show has been cathartic for the Coopers, who are both happily back living in the Cotswolds. There’s talk of more This Country, maybe a special episode, but Charlie says the challenge would be writing something else, and Daisy agrees. “I’m really scared about it. We’ll know when the time is right, when our lives have changed and we’re living something we can write about. It has to be something we know – it has to be organic.” On the strength of this second series, it’s a thrill to consider what they might write in future. But Daisy thinks their priorities, for the moment, should be elsewhere. “He can’t find a girlfriend. Charlie, I just think you should put it out there, you really need to get this sorted.” This Country series two is available on BBC iPlayer now and begins airing on BBC1 on Tuesday 6th March at 10:45pm
Joanna Lumley and the cast of Finding Your Feet talk dancing on the big screen
'It's definitely not Strictly Come Dancing!' Lumley, Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie, John Sessions and David Hayman reveal their triumphs and struggles on their new movie
Joanna Lumley I am hooked on tea dances! When I was younger, I never really went to dances. I’m too old for discos… they didn’t really exist when I was the right age, but at school I learnt the waltz, the quickstep, the foxtrot. Trying to remember those when we went to tea dances put on by Age UK in preparation for Finding Your Feet (in cinemas from Friday 23 February) was really special. You can have tea – or champagne – and cake, a big band plays, and you get up and dance with total strangers in the afternoon. Older people can get quite lonely and these events give everybody a chance to meet new people, dress up a bit, and exercise their body and their minds. Remembering the steps is good for the brain and the feeling of achievement is wonderful. The human touch of old-fashioned dancing is also good for us – we’ve been guided away from ever touching anybody unless it’s a kind of sexual embrace. View oEmbed on the source website My character in the film, Jackie, has been a divorce lawyer for 30 years – and married five times – and she’s joined the dance group to meet new people. It’s so inspiring! I’ve travelled a lot, and I’ll always remember in areas of China, every night on the local games field, everything is cleared away, music blares out and everybody is expected to go and dance – old and young, in groups, pairs or alone – all together. Those two hours make you feel fit, they make you friendly with people, and they make you make an effort, which is wonderful. We should do that here! Imelda Staunton Getting together to learn the dances for this film, taking those first steps, was like a breath of fresh air. I thought, “God, I love doing this.” It’s so nice to make a film about people who aren’t 22 years old and that shows that we still have lives, feelings and emotions when we get older. Often, the message in films today is that it’s only worth having a go – or trying to change – when you’re young, but this one is all about older people coping with and embracing big, unexpected changes in their lives. My character Sandra is uptight and locked into her life. When her husband has an affair and she leaves him, she goes to stay with her sister who is much more free-spirited, and her whole life is shaken up. Dancing helps her move forward. Dancing is about trying, finding friends and the joy in something new. And, crucially, feeling part of something, which is important however old you are. Teenagers can get isolated if they’re not in the gang – it makes them feel wanted. This dance troupe makes everyone feel like they have another family. It lets them express stuff they couldn’t in their everyday lives. That’s what dance does: when you learn steps, it’s not just about you any more, it’s about the whole. It’s also nice to see people dancing imperfectly on screen because this definitely isn’t Strictly Come Dancing! John Sessions I’m the worst dancer in the world. When I was at Rada, we did a production of Lady, Be Good, and I was appalling – I had six left feet. We used to have to do ballet and everyone else could get their legs on the bar; I – a poor arthritic old man at 26 – could only put my leg up on a chair! I don’t even dance at weddings. I sit and chat to the older people, which is far more fascinating. Luckily, unlike the rest of the cast, I didn’t have to dance for this part and I was ecstatic. I play Mike, Sandra’s cheating husband: her leaving him is where the story starts. Celia Imrie <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2018/02/GettyImages-920228924-7e23a93.jpg" width="3338" height="5000" alt="LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 18: Celia Imrie poses in the press room during the EE British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) held at Royal Albert Hall on February 18, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Dave J Hogan/Dave J Hogan/Getty Images) Getty, TL" title="Celia Imrie" /> Imelda and I first met playing Kit Kat girls in Cabaret in Exeter years and years ago. You never know when you’ll meet back up with people – to be dancing with her again is rather thrilling. And it’s lovely playing her older sister. Bif takes Sandra in, despite not really having seen her in ten years, so they’re getting to know each other again. And what better way than going dancing. It’s a shame people don’t do more dancing. I hope it’s coming back into fashion a bit. I’ve just learned to do a foxtrot, which is an absolutely gorgeous dance – really elegant and contained. I love the effect dance has on everybody; I find it terribly moving to see people of a certain age being so lithe on their feet, back doing something they had done years ago. Dancing is the most marvellous thing you can do and I love it… especially Greek dancing with bare feet, which I do on my own in my kitchen! David Hayman <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2018/02/GettyImages-638494192-774666e.jpg" width="8660" height="5773" alt="David Hayman from FX's 'Taboo' poses in the Getty Images Portrait Studio at the 2017 Winter Television Critics Association press tour at the Langham Hotel on January 12, 2017 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Maarten de Boer/Getty Images Portrait) Getty, TL" title="2017 Winter TCA - Portraits" /> Before this film, I hadn’t danced since I was last in pantomime 25 years ago. This is very different to that, but great fun. I’ve got new respect for everyone who does Strictly – how do they learn those routines in such a short space of time? It’s phenomenal! Appropriately, my character, Ted, is the one who always messes up the dances. He has been an engineer all his life, lives on a houseboat and misses his wife, who died a few years ago. So despite not being very good at it, dancing is very important to him. We spent two weeks struggling on a number to the tune of Chantilly Lace. When we finally did it, we were all cheering, ‘We’ve done it! We’ve done it!’ All the professionals on set burst into applause! The sensation you get when you get a dance right is fantastic. Finding Your Feet is in cinemas from Friday 23 February
Shetland star Mark Bonnar: "Strictly often reduces me to tears"
The Catastrophe actor on breaking into spontaneous dance routines on set
You’re in Shetland – so what are you watching on TV up there? I live in Hertfordshire! But I’d love to live in Shetland. It’s the most breath-taking place, and people are so friendly, which makes up for any sense of isolation. But I don’t mind my own company. I’d buy a bike. Mark Bonnar: “I’ve always been attracted to the weird” 12 killer crime dramas coming to TV in 2018 What TV have you liked lately? Time is precious, with two young children [Martha, six, and Samuel, two]. I used to channel-flick, but now it’s Blue Planet II and The League of Gentlemen. Or sport – I love boxing and football, but I’ll easily sit and watch kayaking. What’s your TV room like? We [he and his wife, Cutting It actor Lucy Gaskell] have a green sofa, a purple sofa and a yellow chair – but I’m a floor dweller. Years of wine-drinking have made the rug the safest place to be, so I don’t fall off anything! Any must-see programmes? I’ll watch anything, if I’m grabbed in the first ten minutes. I have quite a low attention span. I keep a wee list on my phone of things that people recommend. Stranger Things [on Netflix] was on it and that was incredible. But I feel guilty that I haven’t finished Breaking Bad. I used to watch it on my iPad when I was doing the dishes – it wouldnae have been Lucy’s kind of thing – so I’d have it up on the windowsill and do the pots and pans. Is there anything you turn off? I hate my children watching adverts. On some kids’ channels, the ad breaks are longer than the cartoons. But CBeebies is absolutely fantastic – it’s the go-to in our house. I find myself getting drawn in because it’s so good. My wee boy and I absolutely love Peter Rabbit. What about grown-up telly? I loved Motherland. Everybody in it is amazing, but Anna Maxwell Martin, wow. As parents, we all have that anxiety and tension. It’s hilarious but quite a hard watch because it’s so close to the bone. Have you told its co-writer, Sharon Horgan? You were in Catastrophe with her. I’ve got two more episodes to watch, and then I’ll give her a wee text. It’s always great to see anybody you know doing other things and surprising you. Your character Chris in Catastrophe can be quite dark… Are you drawn to black comedy? Yes. When I was little in the late 70s I used to sneak downstairs to watch the late Hammer Horror double bill on BBC2. I’ve always been drawn to scary and unsettling things. When you can combine that with humour, it’s a winner. What on TV makes you cry? The end of The League of Gentlemen was pretty emotional, when Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith were on the platform saying goodbye. It was a beautiful end, and a hug goodbye to us viewers. And Strictly is so charged, it often reduces me to tears. When someone pulls something off, it can easily set me off. Lucy will turn to me and go, “Are you crying?” Do you dance yourself? Frequently, but it’s daddy dancing. And on set sometimes, if I’m bored or people need a laugh, I’ve been known to break into spontaneous free-form routines. Mark Bonnar plays Duncan Hunter in Shetland on Tuesdays at 9pm on BBC1
How to choose the perfect specialist subject on Mastermind
Producer Mark Helsby reveals what the most popular choice is – and the kind of subjects you should avoid
Can contestants choose any topic as their specialist subject? You can do any subject you want – within reason. They have to be suitable for broadcast on BBC2 on a Friday night, but pretty much everything is do-able, provided there’s sufficient source material to refer to. As a minimum, we would want there to be at least two good quality books on a biographical or historical subject. TV, film and literary subjects are a bit more subjective, but we would never allow just one book or one film. Can you answer the toughest questions from your favourite quiz shows? Pointless star Richard Osman explains why he and Alexander Armstrong work so well together How many subjects do contestants have to pick? Every contender has to agree three different specialist subjects with me before I confirm their place in the heats and commission the writers to come up with the questions. We don’t repeat subjects from one series to the next so that we can give the writers a break from doing the same material. What’s the most popular subject? Harry Potter! Last year 262 people wanted to take that as one of their three specialist subjects – only one of them could. Have any subjects been over-done? Some of the shorter sitcom series – Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and Father Ted for example – have been exhausted for new questions. Thirty-two people wanted to do Fawlty Towers last year, 19 wanted Blackadder and 22 wanted Father Ted. Some of the very popular literary subjects such as the Chronicles of Narnia or Roald Dahl probably wouldn’t be agreed to for the same reason. What subjects do you reject? Some subjects are very broad and need to be tightened up; or they might be too tight and need to be opened out to make them a fair contest compared to the other people they’re competing against. One applicant wanted to do “meat” and narrowed it down to “pork”. Unfortunately, we still said no. I try very hard not to reject any subject out of hand. I’d rather work with the contender to find some common ground between what they are interested in and what we think we can write enough questions about. The rule of thumb I always suggest that people bear in mind is that if they wanted to do the Works of Shakespeare, we would say no, as the subject is so vast that there is very little chance that what they think is worth remembering would overlap with what the question writers think is worth writing a question about. Equally, we would say that Romeo and Juliet would be too narrow but Shakespeare’s Tragedies would be a good compromise. Shakespeare’s Tragedies was last done in 2012. How do you balance diverse subjects like The Inbetweeners with, say, Leonardo da Vinci? People have been accused of taking the easy option by choosing a comedy like Friends or Frasier but they have over 200 episodes each, so that’s still a lot of research. There’s sometimes a debate on Twitter about whether it is fair to have a “classic” Mastermind specialist subject in the same programme as someone doing a sitcom, but we treat them equally and it’s the skill of the question writers, verifiers and the team putting the questions together in the office to make sure that they are comparable tests of knowledge. We work hard to make sure that each contender should get the same number of questions in their allotted time, provided they answer promptly and accurately, and the same number of easy, medium and hard questions along the way. Mastermind is on Fridays at 8pm on BBC2
The Last Leg's presenting trio reveal what goes on behind the scenes
Political guests like Jeremy Corbyn, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg are treated like “rock stars” and stay to hang out until 3am
Josh Widdicombe, Alex Brooker and Adam Hills created what began as an irreverent comedy about disability - five years later it's a political big hitter... The Last Leg started in 2012 as a spin-off show from Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage. How would you describe it now? Adam Hills My manager once said, “The beauty of your show is that you can grill Nick Clegg about tuition fees one minute, and then you can throw fruit at Alex’s prosthetic the next.” Early on we’d use the phrase “three blokes with four legs talk about the news” as a joke, but that’s probably the best description. It’s like TFI Friday, but in a lot darker times. Josh Widdicombe If you took the show to a channel in its present form, it would never get commissioned. Ed Balls teaching Michael Gove how to dance Gangnam Style is as awkward as it sounds Taskmaster Champion of Champions: Alex Horne rates the contenders It’s a good balance of serious and daft. Adam The Paralympics was good training, dealing with something a bit awkward that can be a little bit sad or tragic and finding the joy in it. I think that’s still what we’re doing today. View oEmbed on the source website Adam, you once described your trio as the “three-part harmony of comedy”… Alex Brooker Blimey, was that when you were still drinking? Adam That was in the early days when it was all new. Our voices come together well – I’m the crotchety, old, but slightly positive responsible one, and Josh is the more cynical one. Alex is puppylike and enthusiastic. Do you think it’s changed the way people discuss disability in Britain? Alex When I was 14 and coming to terms with my disability, I’d have loved to have seen another fella with one leg talking and joking about stuff like that, making it feel like there aren’t two worlds, an able-bodied world and a disabled one. One of the things I’m proudest of is that we’ve blurred it all into one. Adam It was never really the intention, but it’s a lovely side effect of what we’ve done. Alex Do you remember when we first met, Adam? No one said to us, “Do you two fancy talking about your legs?” But the only other people I’d met with prosthetics were the old boys down at the hospital, and I didn’t have a lot in common with them. View oEmbed on the source website Important people send themselves up on your show. Jeremy Corbyn in a limo in a fur coat, Ed Miliband performing Take On Me, Ed Balls doing Gangnam Style… Alex Miliband’s set his sights a lot lower now, hasn’t he? At one point he wanted to be Prime Minister… Josh He didn’t need much coaxing. And Corbyn – that will be the one bit of the show that will be remembered, and it’s the bit we’re not in! You think, “There’s no way he’s going to do it,” and then he turns up at seven, we’re busy in our dressing rooms writing, and we get a message saying, “Corbyn’s done it!” Adam We’d made a couple of pops at Ed Balls before he came on the show but he was so lovely afterwards and told us he was a big fan, and that he’d grown up with a stammer. He said although he didn’t class it as a disability, he got where we were coming from. It was a moment when you look at a politician and go, “Ah, that’s right, you’re a real person!” View oEmbed on the source website Why do you think politicians are so willing to appear on the show? Adam We don’t make cheap, overly personal jokes about anyone. Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn – they all walked away feeling good. Josh A lot of that comes from Hillsy. Adam, you’re always looking for the positive from a situation, which isn’t always easy. It’s rare in satirical comedy not just to be cynical. Maybe it’s a non-British attitude, from growing up in the sunshine in Australia. It would be bizarre if we turned into Jeremy Paxman and attacked people. It’s a warm and inclusive show. When we have people on who have actually said stuff that’s made the headlines, it’s come from asking cheekier, funnier questions – like when Corbyn said he cared “seven out of ten” about the EU or Nick Clegg felt “nine-and-a-half out of ten” guilty about tuition fees. The Nick Clegg interview was the moment it all changed because people saw the human side of him, and from then on, people have trusted that we’re not out to humiliate them. Adam Recently, we had the Tory MP Anna Soubry on. I walked into the make-up room and she looked at me with a joking sour face and said, “What are you going to do to me?” I said, “We’re not here to humiliate you, you’re here because you tore strips off Boris Johnson this week.” View oEmbed on the source website Alex Tory MPs think we’ll have a pop at them, but that’s not the case. I’d love to see more Tories [on the show]. I’d love to see Theresa May come on. We might get her involved in the closing number, singing and dancing. Adam We’ve got a really good green room afterwards. That doesn’t happen on Newsnight. Josh Well, I don’t know, I’ve never been on Newsnight. Adam Me neither, but considering Ed Miliband stayed around until 3am after his first appearance on The Last Leg, I’m assuming we offered more than they do. Jeremy Corbyn’s wife made sure she got a photograph with Russell Crowe. It’s not often politicians come on shows and are treated like rock stars. Josh They get all the free San Miguels they want. Yes, have a slice of lime, Jeremy. Enjoy yourself. You also got in a lift with Tony Blair… Alex He actually filmed on a different day – I don’t think there was enough room in the lift for both of our consciences. Josh It was all camera trickery. Alex And while we’re talking about camera trickery, I might as well reveal it now – I’m not actually disabled! View oEmbed on the source website Blair featured in your Reunited Kingdom special last summer, marking a year since Jo Cox’s murder. Was that a big responsibility? Adam It was huge. It was exactly what we do – take something that’s serious and find the light in it. I felt a responsibility to Jo’s family – her sister had been in touch, and her husband, Brendan, had been on the show the week before. The number of influential people who jumped on board was incredible. Josh It was a strange experience – the show celebrated and remembered Jo Cox, but then you think, “Is that the one where I was in a paddling pool with Alex with our tops off playing an inflatable guitar?” The Last Leg is on Fridays at 10pm on Channel 4
The 10 best celebrity facts to come out of Would I Lie to You
Which star was listed as a missing person by Interpol? And who broke into their ex-boyfriend’s house through the dog flap in order to steal his pants?
1. Danny Dyer once wore a zebra mask around a zoo so that he wouldn’t be recognised View oEmbed on the source website People were driving him mad, his child was “getting the hump”, so he bought a mask at the zoo shop. The zoo itself didn’t actually have any zebras, just “a couple of rabbits and a moody giraffe”. 2. Bob Mortimer burnt his house down with a box of fireworks View oEmbed on the source website Around the age of seven, Mortimer set a box of fireworks alight, which he threw into the kitchen where it scorched the floor. But he didn’t notice that he’d dropped one in the living room, and the whole house burned down. 3. Mel Giedroyc snogged one of the other panellists on the show. It was Dermot O’Leary View oEmbed on the source website In the late 1990s, the pair kissed at the “end of term” party for her daytime series, Light Lunch . 4. Katherine Parkinson used a Womble as an example of a mammal in her GCSE biology exam View oEmbed on the source website Parkinson gave three examples: bear, whale and Womble. She was awarded an A grade. 5. Miranda Hart had a trial for QPR football team View oEmbed on the source website In their early 20s, the comedian and a friend turned up at the trial, having “mucked about” with a football at university and fancied themselves to be pretty good. They were unsuccessful. 6. For three weeks, Henning Wehn was listed as a missing person by Interpol View oEmbed on the source website In the mid-1990s, Wehn met a man on a train in Spain and was invited to join him in Morocco. He sent a postcard to a friend at home, joking that he had joined the Foreign Legion, who showed it to Wehn’s parents for a laugh. They were horrified and rang the German consulate to report him missing. 7. Kirsty Young named her chickens after her favourite newsreaders View oEmbed on the source website At the time, her five hens were called Anna Ford, Jan Leeming, Selina Scott, Viv Lumsden and Mary Marquis. She also had Moira Stuart, but that chicken died. 8. Jo Brand broke into her ex-boyfriend’s house through the dog flap in order to steal his pants View oEmbed on the source website Around the age of 18, Jo saw her millionaire boyfriend snogging a blonde woman at a party, and decided to exact revenge by wriggling through his dog flap and throwing all his pants away. 9. Claudia Winkleman took her pet tortoise Yoshi to the vet because she thought he was depressed View oEmbed on the source website Yoshi seemed a bit “stationary” when he’d once been “scampery”. The vet said he was fine, and suggested she organise tortoise play dates to lift his mood. 10. Terry Wogan set fire to his colleagues’ scripts while they were live on air View oEmbed on the source website On Irish radio, at around the age of 21, Wogan would regularly sneak into the studios behind them and set fire to their news scripts from the bottom. Would I Lie to You? is on 8.30pm Wednesday BBC1
Things I Know to Be True review: A devastating drama about a seemingly perfect family ★★★★
Four siblings and their parents all have something to hide in this brilliant British-Australian co-production
It is a rare thing for a suburban family drama to resonate quite as acutely and uncomfortably as Things I Know to Be True. A co-production between Frantic Assembly and State Theatre Company South Australia, it first played at London's Lyric Hammersmith and toured the UK in 2016. The fact that it's back so soon is testament to writer Andrew Bovell's powerful script and how beautifully it's been staged. All the action takes place in the back garden of the Price family – mum, dad and four grownup children – who appear conventional and convivial, until their long-harboured resentments and shortcomings are laid bare. The play is driven by the youngest daughter, Rosie, who returns home to Australia heartbroken after an ill-fated backpacking trip around Europe. Desperate for the comfort and peace of home, Rosie is resistant to change, but truths begin to out and she is forced to recognise the imperfections in the people she loves, and let go of her childhood along the way. Kirsty Oswald is impressive as the naive Rosie, whose monologues open and close the play and pack an emotional clout. But it's the scenes between hardened eldest daughter Pip (Seline Hizli) and her punitive mother Fran (Cate Hamer) that sting of the hottest, burning suffering. Bovell reveals the fervent hatreds even in the most intimate relationships, and in the most ordinary lives. Ewan Stewart's Bob Price is devastating, too. In the first half of the play his grief and disappointments are the usual fare of a retired working class father-of-four; in the second they become more unexpected. Bovell's dialogue isn't subtle, but it packs a hefty emotional punch. Frantic Assembly's trademark physical drama is woven into the narrative sparingly, but to powerful effect, as the family members lift each other up and lean on one another. Their slow dance illustrates their co-dependency, the tenderness beneath the tense arguments. This production's searing honesty about family relationships stays with you long after the curtain falls. Things I Know to Be True is at London's Lyric Hammersmith until 3 February, then Bristol Old Vic Book tickets for Things I Know to be True from the Radio Times box office
The Gruffalo writer Julia Donaldson on her new creation, The Highway Rat
The children's author shares the pleasures and pains of the writing process
Where do your characters come from? Most of my storylines come from traditional tales, especially trickster tales. The Highway Rat came from a poem I love called The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Of all my villains, I especially enjoyed writing him. Where do you write? In my study, which looks out on a busy street. All life is there and I get easily distracted, but I’m good at shutting it out if I’m on a roll. I like to use a pen and paper; I feel like I’m plugged in and ideas can flow from my head to my hand like an electrical current. I’ll start in the study and then I’ll keep thinking about how to solve a rhyme or plot problem in the bath, or while walking on the South Downs. Each couplet might take two days. What time is David Walliams’ Ratburger on TV this Christmas? What is on TV this Christmas? What time is The Highway Rat on TV this Christmas? Do you think about how a character will look when it’s illustrated? No, I have problems enough dreaming up a storyline; I can’t be thinking about what they look like. They’re Axel Scheffler’s vision, not mine. I trust him. What did you read as a child? I remember my granny reading me Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Then I grew into an avid reader — I collected all the Just William books by Richmal Crompton. Did you always have a vivid imagination? Always — as a child I liked making up plays. I liked writing, but doing it in a sociable way. I’d write a version of Cinderella with a twist or choreograph a ballet to Chopin and try to get my friends to do Les Sylphides. How do you feel when you’re writing? It’s horrible! But I always forget; it’s like having a baby. Every book feels impossible and I’ll say to my husband, Malcolm, “I can’t do this any more. This is rubbish compared to my other books!” And he’ll say, “You always say that,” which is reassuring. The Highway Rat is on Christmas Day, 4.45pm BBC1
Harry Potter star Rupert Grint on fame, fans and new show Sick Note
The actor also reveals that he "can’t enjoy Harry Potter any more"
How much TV do you watch? I’ve always got the TV on. I can’t sleep without it, actually – at night I’ll put on something really obscure, like a documentary about pelicans. That usually does the job. So do you mainly watch in bed? And the kitchen. I don’t cook a lot, I just feel comfortable in there. I’m picturing the cosy Weasley farmhouse from Harry Potter... No! Mine’s quite modern – and my design tastes are quite “interesting”. I’ve got a portrait of Colonel Sanders above my oven. So it’s pelicans in bed – what’s on TV in the kitchen? I like comedies like Brass Eye and Alan Partridge – stuff that pushes the limit and is a bit bold, which I think my current series Sick Note is. But I also love game shows like Tipping Point and Pointless, and the classic game shows, which you find on Challenge. I went through a phase where I was watching really old ones like 3-2-1 and Family Fortunes with Les Dennis. And Supermarket Sweep is a favourite. I’d love to go on that. Well, I’d love to host it. I’d rather go on The Crystal Maze. Are you at home a lot during the day, Rupert? It sounds like it, doesn’t it… What else are you into? I loved The Great Pottery Throw Down – that professional potter, Keith Brymer Jones, the judge who cried all the time, was great. I was late to Bake Off, but I really got into that. And I think I’m the last person in the world to watch Lost, but it’s grabbed me. I also like RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watched every single season, back to back. It’s really, really funny. Do you play on your phone while you’re watching? No, I used to play games, but my phone ran out of space so I had to delete them. I’m a bit of an outcast, I don’t use Twitter or social media. I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of crochet or knitting. What I do like is to carve things into crayons. Come again? It’s like making micro-sculptures. I promise, it’s a thing. I get a wax crayon and I can just about shape anything into the end of it. It’s very tiny and very fiddly. I once made a bust of William Shakespeare. I do it when I’m bored, but it’s quite messy. Do you ever Google yourself? I used to do it occasionally, just out of curiosity. There’s some weird stuff out there. For a while there was a rumour going around that my dad was a stage hypnotist. Was he? No, he used to sell Formula One memorabilia. It’s important not to take that stuff seriously. Is fame easy to deal with? It’s definitely manageable. I end up having to take a selfie [for a fan] most days, but I’ve never really minded if it makes people happy – though I hate it when people take pictures without asking. It was really exciting when I was about 11 or 12, but it got harder in my teenage years. Sometimes you just want to be invisible. How do you feel about watching yourself on screen? It’s pretty strange. I don’t really do it. I’m so self-critical, I can’t really deal with it! What’s your dream role? I don’t have one – I think being in things ruins them for me. I can’t enjoy Harry Potter any more, not as a fan – it’s just not the same! Rupert Grint stars in Sick Note, Tuesday 10pm Sky 1
Blue Planet II has inspired a group of young artists who want to save the oceans
Meet the climate-conscious youngsters of Lionel Primary School in Brentford
Inspired by David Attenborough and Blue Planet II, children at Lionel Primary School in Brentford, west London have been creating some of their own special works of art. Find out more about how young viewers have responded to the BBC1 series below. Hanan, 9 I like the more ferocious animals like the sixgill shark, which fights for food and its family. When I first saw the scabbard fish, I thought it was really eye-catching. It’s silver like metal, and glistening. It swims upright, so if a predator comes from underneath, it’s just gone! I thought, “How fascinating!” I never knew about those before. I’d like to know more about the deep sea near the North Pole. Are the creatures there hot or cold? Something that made me sad was seeing a sea turtle get stuck in a net — I don’t like people throwing litter in the sea. From now on I’ll make sure I walk to school and I’m going to make a sign about not putting litter on the ground. How Blue Planet II filmed the gorgeous light show with rays and luminous plankton How Blue Planet II filmed the incredible fish vs bird sequence in episode one The “giant carnivorous” bobbit worm turns Blue Planet II into an actual horror movie Ginevra, 8 I really like all the different kinds of fish and colours, but my favourite kind of animal in the sea is the dolphin. It was really interesting to see how they jump for fun — I just thought they did that because they needed to. Also, how they rub against coral to protect themselves from diseases, and the way the adults were showing their little kids how to do it. The sixgill shark looked really scary, and when one found food, it was really disgusting the way the blood came out! Sea creatures are amazing, and that’s why I’d never pollute the ocean — it’s my favourite place to be. I’m worried that some animals are going to die before I even see them. Lucy, 8 When you watch Blue Planet II, it feels like it’s not in this world — but another planet or universe. It’s amazing that it’s just the sea, not some mysterious, magical place! When I heard that they know more about Mars than the deep sea, I was amazed. I like seeing the strange fish — they’re usually in the unlikeliest forms. You think you know what fish look like, but you go into the deep parts of the sea and see some really odd creatures. I also found it fascinating that the sixgill shark can survive a year without eating. I’d be starving! I’m worried about the walruses and their babies and the melting ice caps. I think if I was really small and I couldn’t sit down, I’d feel scared. Zahir, 8 I like watching the horrid bits! It’s called the circle of life — when you’re hungry, you have to eat other animals! One of my favourite characters is the cut-throat eel — I like all types of eels. I like how they twist and turn and tie themselves up in knots. The underwater volcanoes are surprising — it looks like the desert at night. You forget it’s under water because it explodes as if it was on land. I do worry about some of the animals. People throw rubbish on the beach, and that’s where turtles lay their eggs. What if the rubbish attracts seagulls and they come down and eat the newborn turtles? I went to the beach with my mum and my sister and we picked lots of litter up off the sand. Sacha, 8 I really want to see a shark and a whale. I want to see how big they are in real life. Maybe those are things I’ll get to experience when I’m older. I find it really funny that when squid run out of food, they try to eat each other. And if one kills another and they don’t want other squid to know, it will squirt ink out to camouflage itself. I’ve learnt that we need things like icebergs to help animals like walruses to survive, and they’re melting because of global warming. We should use less electricity. It’s hard to stop computing because I love it, but I only go on it for ten minutes a day now. My mum and dad are pretty proud! Taylor, 8 I’ve got quite a lot of fish at home — two tanks — so when I see animals die, I get quite upset. And I felt so sorry for the walruses. I knew nothing about them before I watched this, but they’re quite intriguing. Watching the mother escaping the polar bears and trying to protect her baby while also trying to rest on the melting ice caps that kept breaking — she was really going through it. Animals get tired, they can’t just keep swimming, but because of global warming, the walruses have nowhere to go. I know that when you go to the beach, you shouldn’t leave plastic rubbish on the sand — it goes into the water and animals eat it. If they start to die, we’ll have no sea life. Theo 9 Everyone thinks that fish have a five-second memory, but actually they’re extremely clever. The tusk fish was really amazing — it swam to the same part of the ocean each day looking for a clam, then whacked the clam shell against the stone and eventually broke it to get to the nice juicy meat inside. Doing the same thing, taking the same route, every single day — I never knew that would happen. And it makes me think if it can go to the same spot each day, it can probably do a lot more than that, it definitely knows other skills. I love how Blue Planet II is made. Developing oxygen masks that make no bubbles so they don’t scare the wildlife and filming dolphins surfing. It’s so fascinating. Najma, 8 I used to think it was just sharks, fish, octopus and squid in the sea. Now I know about turtles, bottlenosed dolphins, everything! I never knew that any animal could change from female to male, but I saw in Blue Planet II that kobudai fish can change in just four months. I also liked learning about the dolphins who could remember the whales that were their friends a long time ago. It’s so cool! But I learnt that animals are getting killed by nets and plastic, so at home I don’t throw anything in the bin — we recycle everything in the right place. Not a lot of people think about the environment and wildlife, just about themselves. Blue Planet II is on Sunday at 8pm on BBC1
Lenny Henry: "I was the unhippest comedian in the universe"
The comic turned actor explains why radio gives him more creative freedom than TV – and why comedy's ready for a revolution
“Douglas Adams said that on the radio, you build the sets,” Lenny Henry is telling me. “You do all the special effects. You close your eyes and it’s your canvas, and you can do anything you want on that canvas. It’s a workout for your mind.” We’re talking ahead of a new run of Rogue’s Gallery, Henry’s Radio 4 series of short comic monologues with twists in the tale, the subjects of which last time ranged from American GIs in Cornwall during the Second World War to aliens on Earth – the kind of zany freedom for imagination that only radio really allows. Jim Broadbent, Lenny Henry and Ed Byrne cast in new The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series Lenny Henry says Ofcom is creating “fake diversity” by focusing on actors and not those behind the camera Lenny Henry: Scheduled TV could feel quaint in 10 years He recalls an old Goon Show script that said “a sock full of custard explodes”, and believes television budgets can’t make that happen in the same way. “When you write for telly, they say, ‘I don’t know about that, we’ve only got £5 and a toffee apple.’ When I write for radio, I don’t feel like I’m limited. You can stretch out, you can do anything you want.” This series opens with a story about Stan Clayton, a butcher who hopes his sons will follow in his footsteps and take up the family business – but his dreams are dashed when one of the boys comes home with a bright red Stratocaster. Short stories, for Henry, are a natural fit. “Growing up, I was a devourer of Stephen King short stories and Marvel comics, the Fontana sci-fi books, Weird Tales, Tales to Astonish… There was something quite horrific and naughty and forbidden about them. When you’re a kid you like that ‘DUN DUN DUN – oh my God, she was a werewolf!’ stuff. They had a big effect on me, and that’s the reason I want to write them.” Another of the stories in the new series is inspired by radio itself – an episode of John Peel’s Saturday morning show Home Truths. “People would talk about their lives – a beekeeper, or someone with a disability,” explains Henry. “One person was sightless and they made aural postcards of sound effects to describe their life. It was beautiful. Another featured people talking about regaining their sight. ‘A blow to the head, bars of light, before everything snapped into some kind of half-focus.’ I think I might have cried. I wrote about a guy getting his eyesight back during a mugging because of that story.” Henry’s own tastes include Book at Bedtime – “I loved Rachel Joyce’s The Music Shop recently” and Dirk Maggs. In comedy, the world in which he has worked for more than four decades, he reveres those who are mining the current febrile political atmosphere for laughs. “The past ten years, we’ve been waiting for a bit of anarchy,” he says. “We’ve now got a moment of complete and utter political madness and it doesn’t seem like anybody knows what’s going on. There’s a need for sensitivity, and the opposite, too – for somebody to kick down the door of whatever the taboos are. “Comedians have got very excited. There’s a slow, growing thing of comedians getting braver and I love that. It’s like the late 1970s all over again. It reminds me of punk. Creativity abhors a vacuum, and when changes are happening in the world, comedy rises to meet it. I’m not sure I’m doing that with this, though,” he adds, referring to Rogue’s Gallery. “People like Mark Steel, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Trevor Noah – they’re calling people out. On late-night talkshows in America, they’re having to be comedians-slash-talkshow hosts-slash-activists. They’re required to have a response to what’s going on in the world, and that’s healthy.” So who does the Dudley-born Henry, 59, who has lived in south London for the past five years, think is getting this politically fuelled comedy right? “Here, Russell Brand’s strange, messianic approach to comedy is amusing, and also his sense of activism and wanting to change the world through comedy is refreshing. I love Graham Norton’s show, because it’s celeb-tastic, and he gets a chance every week to talk truth to power in a way that not many other comedians do”. Does he think he’s been as political as he could be during his career? “I didn’t do politics when I was young. Talking truth to power – it sounds like it’s hip, and I was the unhippest comedian in the universe. I did impressions of Frank Spencer and got paid for it. If I was starting as a comic now, I’d have a go. But I’m an actor now, I don’t have to do that – hooray!” Lenny Henry: Rogue’s Gallery is on Wednesday 15th November at 11pm on Radio 4
How well do Alfie Boe and Michael Ball really know each other?
They’re inseparable off stage and on screen, but just how strong is their bromance? We put the two to the test – with some surprising results
They've been singing together for years and fronting an ITV special Ball and Boe: Back Together this Sunday. But are they really best friends? There's only one way to find out: subject the pair to an in-depth quiz on each other... Ball on Boe So, Michael, what’s Alfie’s eye colour? [Laughing] A green that you can sink into. Alfie’s answer: Green. ✅ His favourite musical? Les Mis. Alfie’s answer: Les Misérables. It changed my career.✅ First musical he starred in? When he was a kid he played Tony in West Side Story. Alfie’s answer: Tony in West Side Story.✅ His favourite role ever? Jean Valjean in Les Mis — it changed his life completely. Alfie’s answer: I’ve loved playing Jimmy in Quadrophenia recently.❌ View oEmbed on the source website First album he ever bought? Something by the Who. Quadrophenia or Tommy . Alfie’s answer: 12 Gold Bars by Status Quo.❌ Karaoke song? A Led Zeppelin classic. Alfie’s answer: New York, New York — I won a karaoke competition and £1,000 in a pub in Shepherd’s Bush when I was a student singing that. West London Karaoke Champion 1994. Still proud.❌ Favourite TV programme? He loves things about motorbikes and sharks. No cooking. I don’t know. Top Gear? Alfie’s answer: South Park. Or Family Guy. Or Ghost Adventures. I bet he said Dad’s Army? I travel with the box set…❌ Favourite TV show growing up? Knight Rider? Alfie’s answer: I loved Happy Days, I’d tune in every Friday to watch it.❌ Perfect holiday? He’d love a road trip around America. Alfie’s answer: I love just being at home in Utah. If I’ve got to go away it’d be Italy or Hawaii.❌ His last supper? Roast beef. Or a pie. Whatever it is, it’s got to have gravy. Alfie’s answer: Steak and chips. Simple.❌ Superpower? The ability to smile. Or superstrength. Alfie’s answer: Flight.❌ Newspaper he reads? The Beano. Alfie’s answer: Is it bad to say that I’m not a big newspaper reader?❌ Favourite TV double act? Morecambe and Wise. Alfie’s answer: Morecambe and Wise ✅ Final Score: 4/13 Boe on Ball Your turn Alfie. What’s Michael’s eye colour? Blue. Pretty blue — not pretty! Take that out. I didn’t say pretty. Icy blue. Cold as his heart. Michael’s answer: Blue.✅ Favourite musical? He really connected with Sweeney Todd, but I’ll plump for Hairspray. Michael’s answer: Hairspray or Sweeney Todd. Hairspray is the most perfect feel-good well-structured happy joyous experience, Sweeney Todd is a work of genius — dark, challenging, everything you wouldn’t expect a musical to be.✅ First musical he starred in? Marius in Les Mis? Michael’s answer: I think he might say Pirates of Penzance, but it’s Godspell.❌ His favourite role ever? Edna in Hairspray. Michael’s answer: Edna in Hairspray — it was a nonstop laugh, on and off stage, it brought so much joy, and earned me a fortune.✅ First album he bought? Barbra Streisand? Michael’s answer: Jesus Christ Superstar cast album.❌ Karaoke song? No clue. Michael’s answer: Delilah. He won’t know that. We’ve never done karaoke together.❌ Favourite TV programme? Game of Thrones. He never stops talking about it, it’s really annoying. Michael’s answer: Game of Thrones. And he’ll know that. I’m obsessed.✅ View oEmbed on the source website Favourite TV show growing up? Dynasty. Michael’s answer: Doctor Who.❌ Perfect holiday? Bognor? Just kidding. He spends a lot of time in Mallorca. Michael’s answer: A beach, lying down, sun, eating and drinking my own bodyweight. Mallorca, Mauritius, Bermuda. Idyllic beach life.✅ His last supper? Some fancy chicken dish he’d done himself, and a soufflé for dessert. Michael’s answer: An amazing roast dinner.❌ Superpower? He’d want x-ray vision. Michael’s answer: I want everything. Telekinesis, invisibility, and to be able to control minds.❌ Newspaper? The Times. Michael’s answer: The Telegraph.❌ Favourite TV double act? Morecambe and Wise. Michael’s answer: Morecambe and Wise — you can’t beat them. Or French and Saunders.✅ Final Score: 6/13 Ball and Boe: Back Together is on Sunday 9.00pm ITV
Eleanor Tomlinson and the stars of Loving Vincent reveal their own painting talents
The Poldark actor stars alongside Jerome Flynn and Douglas Booth in the painted movie – but how do they like their art?
Loving Vincent brings Van Gogh’s art to life frame by hand-painted frame… RT quizzes the film’s stars about their own creative talents Eleanor Tomlinson (plays Van Gogh’s muse Adeline Ravoux) I like to think that I’m quite artistic – I like pencil drawing more than actually painting and love sculpting and silhouettes. I got bored recently on a job and started making papier-mâché heads, which was great fun. I grew up seeing the Peak District on Pride and Prejudice, so if I could, I’d paint a landscape of somewhere around Matlock in Derbyshire. It’s a beautiful part of the world. But if you’re asking me if I’d ever be the next Van Gogh, the answer is absolutely not! I express my creativity in other ways – like decorating my house. It’s a mismatch of different vintage things from the 1930s. View oEmbed on the source website If I saw a piece of art that I really liked, I’d look into buying it, but art is so expensive and there’s always the debate of “What is art?”. I think it’s something that inspires you, that you get joy from seeing, that makes you feel a certain way. At home, I’ve got a drawing that Josh Whitehouse [Hugh Armitage in Poldark] did of me as Demelza, which is a really lovely memento of working with him. And I bought one of the paintings that was left over at the end of filming Loving Vincent as a reminder of how special it was working on such a unique film. I’d love to own one of Sally Mann’s photos, or one of Simon Annand’s – he does incredible portraits. I saw a Damien Hirst exhibition recently and thought it was absolutely phenomenal. That bizarre artform is so brilliant – the cow sawed in half, it’s barbaric but very interesting. When I travel for work, I try to go to art galleries, but my favourite museum is still the V&A. I’d love to get locked in there for a night. The Hollywood Costume exhibition was the best I’ve ever seen – they had Scarlett O'Hara's dresses from Gone with the Wind – I was beside myself with glee! Douglas Booth (plays local postman’s son Armand Roulin) My family stole all the artistic talent – my mother’s an artist and paints beautifully, and my sister went to Chelsea College of Art – but I’ve never been able to draw very well. My thing was music – I played the trumpet to Grade 7, but acting pushed it aside. If I could paint, I’d do a landscape of Hampstead Heath. Not the view of London from there, but the Heath itself – it’s one of my favourite places… I try to walk there a couple of times a week. I like art that comments on the world around us, or pushes us into an emotional place rather than just being beautiful. I love artists like Grayson Perry and Gilbert and George. I’ve got their prints up in my house, along with a lot of Hayden Kays’s stuff, Jeff Koons, and a Hockney print, but I’d love originals. My mum bought a very small Grayson Perry tapestry for my dad’s 50th birthday. View oEmbed on the source website Although I’ve always been more into modern art, since doing the film I’ve bought some Van Gogh prints to hang alongside my contemporary ones. I never appreciated Van Gogh the way I do now I’ve looked at his work in depth and found out more about him as a man. The fact he never picked up a paintbrush until the age of 28 is remarkable. He painted with his emotion, as well as his paints. I live close to the Tate Modern so I drop in fairly frequently. That’s the brilliant thing about London – it’s so full of culture. A few weeks ago I was at home for four days and managed to go to the theatre to catch Girl from the North Country, Road and Yerma – which hit me the hardest. Billie Piper’s performance was remarkable. Jerome Flynn (plays Van Gogh’s physician Dr Gachet) I never had an education in classical artists like Van Gogh at school, but I’ve always enjoyed modern artists like Rothko – he paints unconventional things with lots of deep colours. I like art that deepens one’s experience, that takes one into a mysterious place. I’m just beginning to covet original art. I think it’s since living in Pembrokeshire, where we’re blessed with wonderful local artists who paint the sea, and landscapes that encourage an appreciation of the natural world. Jackie Morris paints people with animals, and mixes magic with humans’ deep connection to nature, and it grabs me, it speaks to my tribal heritage. We’re distracted from nature and desperately need to reconnect. As for me – I used to draw big monster faces when I was a child, and I loved it, but I never got going with proper art. I once tried to paint a love letter instead of writing it, and really lost myself in it at the time but never carried on painting afterwards. I quite like woodwork, but there’s never any time to take it up for fun. Writing, though – I know there’s something there. I wouldn’t have to work as hard to find my creative flow when writing a song or a short play. I’ve got a couple of stories in me that I’ll be ready to tell when we’ve finished filming the final series of Game of Thrones Loving Vincent opens in cinemas on Friday 13 October
Stanley Tucci: "British news channels are a 1000 times better than US ones"
The Hunger Games star also reveals his favourite TV and why he doesn't watch Bake Off
Your wife is the literary agent Felicity Blunt, who’s the sister of actor Emily, and you have two teenagers and a young child. Do you argue about what to watch? No, with all the computers and having Netflix on your iPad, everyone can watch what they want. But we do still watch things together – we’ll all sit down and watch a movie or a football match. What’s your living room like? Our house is in Barnes in southwest London and it once had two parlours; it’s an older building, but modern inside. There’s a fireplace and an L-shaped couch, and everything’s in a palette of greys. What do you watch? Cooking shows are my favourite thing. Saturday Kitchen, Rick Stein, Heston Blumenthal, Mark Hix, Giorgio Locatelli… There are so many great chefs in Britain. I’m less of a fan of American cookery programmes. They’re kind of brash and showy. Do you watch Bake Off? I’m getting a little tired of those competition shows. I just like to watch somebody cook. Sometimes it’s nicer to have somebody come in and cook a chicken! What else do you like to watch? I watched The Handmaid’s Tale, which was just amazing. I love the way it was shot. It was so incredibly cinematic, and the acting was very good, Elisabeth Moss in particular. When you’re an actor or director, you can’t help but notice those things. I also love historical documentaries – Time Team is fascinating! Are you a binge-watcher? No, I never watch anything hour after hour, unless I have to for work. Felicity and I watched the original series of The Killing when we first met and were living in the States. That was very hard to tear yourself away from. How do you relax? I go to the gym five or six times a week. I go crazy if I miss a day. I always watch BBC News in the morning while I’m there. British news channels are a thousand times better than American ones. There’s so much happening now, so swiftly – it’s fascinating, it’s making it slightly addictive. Have you always been engaged with world events? No, it’s probably over the past decade that I’ve become that way. It started when George W Bush came into office. View oEmbed on the source website You’ve written and directed a film about the artist Alberto Giacometti — are you artistic? I do paint and draw. I suppose I have some talent, but really it just helps me clear my head and see the world more clearly. I do landscapes and portraits, and I’ll sketch while I’m on vacation. When I’m painting I’ll listen to a BBC podcast. I like science podcasts – anything that doesn’t have to do with entertainment or the arts. I try to avoid that in my free time. When it’s your life, you don’t need to read or hear about it. By Sarah Carson Final Portrait, a biopic of artist Alberto Giacometti, is in cinemas from 18 August
The Big Family Cooking Showdown hosts and judges share their favourite home recipes
The BBC’s new cookery contest is for family cooks – but what do the team behind it cook for their nearest and dearest?
Last year, when Channel 4 poached The Great British Bake Off from the BBC, the nation mourned, before fretting where its next family-friendly foodie fix would now come from. But our hunger is about to be satisfied. The Beeb’s answer to Bake Off arrives on BBC2 this week, as The Big Family Cooking Showdown (Tuesday at 8pm, BBC2) takes us into the kitchens of Britain’s best home cooks. View oEmbed on the source website Bake Off’s favourite champion Nadiya Hussain shares presenting duties with Zoë Ball, while veteran chefs Rosemary Shrager and Giorgio Locatelli will judge 16 families from across Britain as they take on three main rounds, which include creating a meal for four for £10, sharing their foodie traditions in their own homes and whipping up their favourite family dinners in the studio – which is now a barn, as quaint as (but cosier than) the Bake Off tent. But what about the hosts and judges' own traditions? What's their favourite family grub? We found out... Nadiya Hussain My favourite family meal: Cod & clementine (serves 2) My kids, my brothers, my sisters — everyone in the family loves this recipe. When we were really young and eating clementines, my mum would say, “Save the peel!” We never really questioned it, until one day we put two and two together and realised she was putting it in the curry. That was the moment I realised that cooking is almost magical. It’s the first time I remember really understanding flavour. My mum normally cooks it with river fish, which is slightly difficult to eat because of the bones, but my dad maintains that you’re not Bangladeshi unless you’ve got some bones stuck in your throat! Mum still doesn’t fully approve of the cod element, but I like to make my life simple. My grandma cooked it one way, my mother another and me another. Some things are sacred, but as generations go by and life changes, recipes evolve, too. On Saturdays, my sons Musa (10) and Dawud (9) cook; they go off and do the shopping and come back and will make dinner for us. On a Sunday my husband Abdal cooks with my little girl Maryam (6). During the week when I’m at home, I’ll do it and they’ll help. We never eat in front of the television, unless it’s a movie night and we’re having a pizza. Even if I’m in a rush or off out somewhere, I’ll sit with the kids and have a cup of tea while they eat. Growing up, there was always freshly cooked food around. I’ve been really lucky that my children are very good eaters, they love tripe, cow’s tongue, kidney and liver! We never batted an eyelid growing up eating such treats and didn’t realise they were unusual for some people to eat — my father always had some kind of innards cooking. It’s a way of saving money as much as anything else. But I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to kill an animal then you don’t throw bits of it away. I’m talking everything, including skin and feet — I’m not messing around! Ingredients 5 tbsp olive oil 2 cloves of garlic, crushed 1/2 onion, diced 1 tbsp tomato purée 1 tsp fine sea salt 200ml water 1/2 tsp turmeric 1 tsp paprika 1 tsp ground cumin 2 clementines, peel only, sliced Juice of 1 clementine 300g cod fillets A large handful of coriander, finely chopped Method 1. Heat the oil in a medium pan over a medium heat. Once hot, add the crushed garlic and diced onion. Turn the heat down and cook gently until the onions are soft. 2. Add the tomato purée, salt and water. Cook for a further 5 minutes over a low heat. 3. Now add the turmeric, paprika and cumin, and cook gently for another 5 minutes. Keep adding small amounts of water if it starts to catch on the bottom. 4. Add the clementine peel and cook for 10 minutes, until the peel is soft and almost falling apart. 5. Use a potato masher to mash all the peel — breaking it up will intensify the flavour. 6. Add the fish, cover and cook for 10 minutes over a low heat. Squeeze in the clementine juice. Once the fish is cooked, take the pan off the heat and sprinkle over the chopped coriander. 7. This dish is best eaten with hot basmati rice. Giorgio Locatelli, Judge Favourite family food: Gnocchi My first memory of food was sitting on a stool at the table and watching my big brother help our grandmother make gnocchi, and feeling so jealous because I wasn’t allowed to join in! That was the first thing I learnt to do in the kitchen, roll gnocchi with a fork — my grandparents owned a restaurant, so I grew up in a very foodie environment and gnocchi is very traditional to northern Italy. When we think of Italian food, we think pizza, pasta, spaghetti, but that’s all from the south. In the north, where I’m from, it’s gnocchi and risotto. I make gnocchi often, and my children will help. My son Jack is 27 and my daughter Dita is 21, and last week we were on holiday and the potatoes were good enough, so my daughter and I made it one morning. When we cook, it’s not just one person alone, it’s everyone together, and when we eat we talk and relax — it’s a special relationship you can have with your children through the pleasure of food. Britain’s food has a bad reputation, but you had the Beatles, the Rolling Stones — what did Italy have? Maybe because there were so many other types of cultural expression, food went on the back burner. When I first moved here in the 1980s food was certainly only seen as fuel. But that’s changing, and young people in particular are really interested and adventurous in what they eat. British cuisine blends together foods and styles from different ethnicities. The Italians cook good Italian food, the French cook good French food, but the British cook good food from all over the world. It’s much more open than any other cuisine in Europe: if people knew that, it would make a difference to how British food is seen around the world. Potato gnocchi dough Makes about 1kg. It is quite difficult to work with small quantities of dough, so make a larger amount, then lay the finished gnocchi on a tray and put it into the freezer. When the gnocchi are hard, put them into a freezer bag. Ingredients 1kg very starchy potatoes (Spunta or Desiree are the best) About 320g plain flour 2 small eggs, lightly beaten A pinch of salt Method 1. Have all your ingredients ready — it’s very important to work with the gnocchi dough while the potato is still hot. 2. Leave the potatoes whole, still in their skins. Cover in cold water and bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer until soft (about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size). Put the potatoes into a warm oven to dry out (preheat to 100—120°C/gas 1 /2 before you start), especially if the potato skins have split during cooking and they have absorbed a little too much water — not too long, though, or they will become crusty and stick to the oven tray. 3. While the potatoes are still hot, peel them, put them through a fine sieve and then mix with the egg, a pinch of salt, and about three-quarters of the flour. Mix well and, as soon as the dough comes together, stop — only add the rest of the flour if you need it. 4. Dust your work surface lightly with flour, then take your dough and flatten it down with the palms of your hands into a rough square about 1.5cm thick. 5. With a knife, cut it into strips about 1.5cm wide — so you have “square” cigars. 6. Dusting your hands with flour all the time, roll each piece lightly until they are cylindrical. Trim off the ends, then cut them into pieces (1—1.5cm in width). 7. Take a fork (or a gnocchi paddle, if you have one) and push each piece of dough onto the prongs, so that it rolls itself up and is marked with lines — they don’t have to be perfect, but they should be the same size so that they will cook evenly. As you make each one, roll it on a tray dusted with flour. 8. When they are all ready, cook them as quickly as possible. Two things are particularly important: don’t let the dough get cold or the finished gnocchi will become chewy, and work it as little as possible. Gnocchi with black pepper and goat’s cheese sauce (Serves 2) Ingredients 1/2 recipe quantity potato gnocchi dough About 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper 3 tbsp milk About 160g soft goat’s cheese, broken into pieces Small bunch of chives, half of them chopped and the rest cut into batons 2 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan Method 1. Follow the recipe for potato gnocchi dough, but mix the 2 tsp of freshly ground black pepper into the flour before you add it to the potatoes. Shape into gnocchi. 2. Warm the milk in a sauté pan, add the goat’s cheese and let it melt gently to form a thick sauce. Grind in enough black pepper to taste. 3. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, put in the gnocchi and keep stirring until they rise to the surface (a minute or so), then lift them out carefully with a slotted spoon or a spider and put them into the sauce. 4. Sprinkle in the chopped chives and toss the gnocchi around very carefully, just to coat them in the sauce. Add the parmesan, and a little of the cooking water if you think the sauce needs loosening, but don’t leave them in the sauce any longer than about a minute, or they will start to break up. 5. Serve garnished with the batons of chives. Rosemary Shrager, Judge Favourite family meal: Chicken and potato pie (serves 6-8) This is one recipe my husband Michael and all our family adore — it’s the cheapest thing in the world, so simple, and utterly delicious. I was in Cornwall and loved pasties, so I created this from crossing a pasty with a traditional French potato dish. I’ve been making it for 30 years — I made it for our children Tom and Kate when they were young, and now our grandchildren are always asking for it whenever they come to visit. We’ve always eaten at the table as a family together, and my children learnt to cook with me when they were young. I was brought up on home-cooked meals my mother made, we used to grow our own vegetables and had our own animals like chicken and rabbits. We’d eat very traditional old-school “British” food like tripe and onions and fish pies, but now, what we consider to be a quintessentially British dish has changed, and people embrace cultural differences in this country and are much more experimental in the kitchen. What’s got worse is that families just don’t cook together as much anymore. People live a different sort of life today, and parents and grandparents haven’t had time to pass on their old techniques to their families. Making this series, though, it was wonderful to show that British food isn’t just Yorkshire pudding and roast beef, it was fascinating to see the diversity of the cuisine, and to pick up some tips. You never stop learning in cooking, especially when it comes to flavours and techniques. Method 500g puff pastry 4 large chicken breasts, boned and cut into thin strips 720g peeled potatoes, thinly sliced (it is easier to slice the potatoes finely if you use a mandolin) 130g butter 3 shallots, finely chopped 2 tbsp tarragon leaves 2 tbsp chives, chopped 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten 240ml double cream Seasoning Method 1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4. Turn the potatoes in half the butter over a gentle heat until they are just tender — don’t let them brown. Remove them from the pan and allow them to cool in a large bowl. 2. Meanwhile, soften the shallots in the remaining butter and add the herbs and chicken, turning it over a steady heat for a few minutes until it is partially cooked. Mix it all carefully with the potatoes, season to taste, and again allow it to cool. 3. Roll half the pastry into a circle about 36cm in diameter and put it straight onto a lightly buttered baking tray. It helps to have a baking mat, in which case don’t bother to butter the tray but put the pastry directly onto the mat. Brush the edges with egg yolk then pile the mixture in the middle. 4. Roll the rest of the pastry into a slightly larger circle and cover the pie with it, sealing and crimping the edges. Cut a little circle in the top (about 10cm diameter) to make a lid, leaving it in place. Brush the whole surface with the rest of the egg yolk. 5. Bake the pie for about 50 minutes, checking that it’s not too brown — in which case turn the oven down slightly. Heat the cream. Take the pie out of the oven, remove the lid and pour in the boiling cream, lifting the mixture gently to allow it to permeate the pie. Return it to the oven for 10 minutes. The Big Family Cooking Showdown airs on Tuesdays at 8pm on BBC2