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When Ruby Ayers, a piano teacher, took her five-year-old son Roy to a concert by the Lionel Hampton Big Band in California in 1945, the boy showed so much enthusiasm for the performance that Hampton presented him with his pair of vibe mallets. Roy Ayers, who has died aged 84, would go on to blaze … Read more
Anora emerged triumphant from last week’s Academy Awards presentation, winning five Oscars including best actress for Mikey Madison for her performance as Ani, a sex worker who elopes with the feckless son of a Russian oligarch, only to find herself at odds with his powerful family and their henchmen. As in his previous films, writer-director … Read more
When the Wiggles first started touring the US, there was one question they were asked again and again. “People were coming up and saying, ‘Oh, so you’re friends of Dorothy?’” veteran Wiggle Anthony Field says. “I didn’t even know the other meaning – I went, ‘Yeah, we are!’” Field (the OG blue Wiggle) thought Americans … Read more
Every now and then a comedy concept comes along that seems so obvious, you can’t believe no one has done it before. How can Rosalie Minnitt’s Clementine be the first character-comedy show to really mine the absurdities of our love of all things Jane Austen, all things frilly-bonneted and Bridgerton? OK, it’s not a completely … Read more
Many young families quickly find themselves running out of room. Perhaps that’s one more reason why Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s lively 1993 picture book A Squash and a Squeeze – their first collaboration – remains so well loved. The woes of a little old lady whose house feels too small began as a song … Read more
There comes a time in every veteran actor’s career when they ask themselves: have I spent too long playing a large, talking tree? But for Vin Diesel, that moment is clearly yet to arrive. More than a decade after he first portrayed Groot in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, the action star is still giddy … Read more
Over the past two decades, Wretch 32, real name Jermaine Scott, has established himself as a pioneering figure in British rap. From his rise in the underbellies of an early-millennium rap and grime scene, to his mainstream success and songs with the likes of Ed Sheeran and Emeli Sandé, Stormzy and Giggs, he is among … Read more
It may be one of the most devastating scenes in the history of British television. In the final series of Happy Valley, Catherine Cawood begins to understand that her sister Clare has betrayed her, and has been lying about where she is. Catherine watches Clare from outside a cafe, then walks in, sits down at … Read more
There’s a sense in which Roy Ayers was blessed from the start. Aged five, the son of two musicians – and by all accounts already showing talent as a pianist – he was famously presented with his first set of vibraphone mallets backstage at a gig by Lionel Hampton. If you wanted to take a … Read more
Is Lara Croft hot? It’s a question that’s plagued our greatest minds for almost three decades. Yes, she appeared on the cover of the Face magazine next to the tagline “bigger than Pammy” in 1997, and yes, in 2006 lad mag FHM created a whole TV special designed to find the “real” tomb raider. But … Read more