5+ day, 12+ hour ago (468+ words) A vintage kids' TV classic is being rebooted by the BBC, 17 years after it last featured on our screens. Grange Hill was known and loved by Brits from 1978-2008, and will ring bells for the millions who were raised watching it. It starred beloved characters like Peter "Tucker" Jenkins " who was played by EastEnders actor Todd Carty, whose catchphrase "flippin" "eck" and cheeky smile were so well recognized that it got him his own spin-off show, Tucker"s Luck. Other recognizable pupils included Alan Humphries (played by George Armstrong from Bill), Benny Green (Terry Sue-Patt), Suzanne Ross (EastEnders actor Susan Tully) Steven Banks (Tim Polley) and Sammy "Zammo" Mcguire (Lee MacDonald). At the peak of the show"s popularity in the 1980s, Grange Hill bravely covered a diverse range of topics, from Aids to drug abuse, and the reboot will be tailored…...

4+ week, 1+ day ago (583+ words) Where was your first flat in London? I grew up in Wembley, but my first flat was in Old Kent Road. What was your first job in London? I work at the Foot Locker, but before that, I worked in a dodgy telemarketing centre that got teenagers in for below minimum wage to try and get old people to accept this "holiday" they just "won." We were stoned for most of it. Which London shops/outlets do you rely on? Daunt Books is good. My wife's a novelist, so she can't walk past the bookshop without going in. Then two caf's: Shreeji Newsagents, which is a caf' opposite Chiltern Firehouse, and Foreign News Exchange in Bayswater, because Bayswater is where all the money used to be changed. It's a short walk just off the Lancaster Gate side of Hyde Park....

4+ day, 1+ hour ago (478+ words) The actor son of Prunella Scales and Timothy West has said he has been touched by the "great outpouring of love from people" after his parents died within a year of each other. All Creatures Great And Small star Samuel West said he is still coming to terms with his father's death in November 2024, followed by Scales' death last month. He told Good Morning Britain (GMB): "The really simple stuff, like when they die you won't see them again. You think you understand what that means, but then they die and you realise you don't. So it's all a work in progress really." He added: "We're meant to bury our parents, aren't we? We might as well do two in a year, the practice is kind of useful." Scales, best known for her role as Sybil in Fawlty Towers, died…...

6+ day, 13+ min ago (525+ words) Peter Kay has his garlic bread gag, Micky Flanagan has his Out Out riff. Both routines are the comedy equivalent of hit songs that fans hope to hear when they buy a ticket. Ex-medic Adam Kay has his must-tell tale too. The degloving story, about an unfortunate patient who turned up in A&E having ripped of the skin off his genitalia sliding down a lamp post. Kay bowed to the demands of his public halfway through his Soho Theatre set this weekend. Though he also has another routine that tops it. It certainly had a similar effect on the men in the audience. His intimate account of having a kidney stone and the extreme lengths he went to to expel it had every male member wincing in unison. Now that's what I call painfully funny. What makes the second…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago (469+ words) Can you talk about being sexually abused by your father in a comedy show? It's a conundrum that Alan Davies tackles on his first tour in a decade. When he mentions his late father coming into his bedroom for a "special cuddle" an awkward silence descends. Davies jokes that this is precisely why he has never spoken about it before onstage. We all relax, he moves on and the laughs resume. Think Ahead is not all about the abuse that has haunted the adenoidal stand-up. In fact his account of being a molested, also detailed in his 2020 book Just Ignore Him, barely takes up a quarter of his performance. But it casts a long shadow. One can clearly see Davies' demeanour change during the account. His breathing alters as if he is experiencing PTSD and reliving it. During another memorable…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago (551+ words) At the start of An Evening With The Fast Show, Charlie Higson suggests that catchphrases are not intrinsically funny. But through a mix of talent, luck and alchemy a random phrase can become hilarious. Even, offered Higson hopefully, something as banal as "Soho is not what it was." This comedic attempt to launch a new catchphrase set up a neat running gag in this extended reunion tour 31 years since the BBC show first aired. The surviving cast relived their Fast past while a touching tribute was paid to the much-missed Caroline Aherne, with a montage of her best bits from Scorchio and beyond prompting the loudest cheer of the night. Is this gathering a shameless waist-deep nostalgia wallow? Of course. But it was also an opportunity to see how The Fast Show slots into comedy history. Various shows of a…...

11+ hour, 13+ min ago (668+ words) Award-winning playwright Sir Tom Stoppard has died aged 88. The writer, known for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,Arcadia and the film Shakespeare In Love, died "peacefully" at his home in Dorset "surrounded by his family", United Agents said in a statement. The statement added: "He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language. "It was an honour to work with Tom and to know him." Over his six-decade career, Sir Tom earned Tony and Olivier awards, as well as a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for his and Marc Norman's 1998 screenplay Shakespeare In Love, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Dame Judi Dench, and Joseph Fiennes. Born in Czechoslovakia, Sir Tom was forced to flee his home during the Nazi…...

3+ day, 8+ hour ago (563+ words) The Prince of Wales has told comic actor John Cleese his children have just discovered his hit 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers and "love it. William revealed they were having "a lot of family laughs watching the shows together when he joined Cleese at the Tusk'Conservation Awards honouring workers safeguarding Africa's habitat and animals. The future King is royal patron of the Tusk Trust wildlife charity, which stages the annual awards to honour leading conservationists and rangers working in Africa, and before the ceremony he chatted to trust ambassadors Rolling Stone guitarist Ronnie Wood and Cleese. Among the guests at the event at the Savoy Hotel in central London were Zara Tindall and husband Mike, and William's cousins Lady Amelia and Lady Eliza Spencer. In a speech to guests the prince warned this generation must not stand by while "wildlife and biodiversity…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago (786+ words) It was an unlikely collaboration. When Caroline Polachek DM-ed These New Puritans in 2022, the American super popstar and Charli XCX collaborator just "had a feeling they were writing new music. She was right. "She's got such a beautiful voice that I could make my voice even uglier, as Jack put it to Crack Magazine this month. It's rare that a band strives for ugliness but it's true that These New Puritans (TNP) sometimes swerve from the divine towards the atonal as well as highly unusual in pop music. The effect is both gripping and unnerving. Now, on a cold November night, those mechanical hymns find their echo inside Village Underground " an odd but staple East London venue made of revamped tube carriages, shipping containers and a warehouse. Accessed through no more than a near hole in the wall on a…...

3+ day, 13+ hour ago (550+ words) Comedian Peter Kay has announced all of the profits from his 2026 stand-up tour will be donated to 12 cancer charities. The comic from Bolton, 52, is finishing his years-long Better Late Than Never tour with arena shows in Newcastle, Nottingham, Glasgow, Dublin, Birmingham, Belfast, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and London. Speaking to The One Show on Wednesday, he said: "It's finishing next year, and I am announcing the last lot of shows, but all the profits are going to cancer charities." The charities are Children With Cancer UK, Teenage Cancer Trust, Kidney Cancer UK, Blood Cancer UK, Bowel Cancer UK, Prostate Cancer UK, DKMS UK, Ovarian Cancer Action, Pancreatic Cancer UK, Anthony Nolan, The Brain Tumour Charity and Breast Cancer UK. Kay said: "Unfortunately, everybody knows someone who's been affected on that list, and I just hope people support it. Come to…...