Anyone who visited the Rainforest Cafe, a now defunct Piccadilly Circus tourist trap serving overpriced burgers among plastic foliage and animatronic wildlife, may have met a future auteur without realising it. In the early 00s, Alonso Ruizpalacios was not the gifted, ingenious director he is today – the man behind A Cop Movie, a slippery … Read more
Stephen Sackur makes no bones about it: he is not going willingly. “I don’t want to leave the BBC, because I still think I’ve got a lot to offer,” the HARDtalk presenter tells me. “And I don’t want the programme to be closed, but that argument has been definitively lost. I’m thinking hard about other … Read more
It’s Saturday night and I’m standing alone at the back of a north London pub when a befuddled-looking couple in matching anoraks come up and ask if this is the queue for the show. My heart sinks. I’d come to This Doesn’t Leave the Room, a night of improvised comedy hosted by the Free Association, with … Read more
When Futureheads singer Barry Hyde was commissioned by Sunderland city council to create an album inspired by the north-east’s mining heritage, he was astonished to discover an unexpected personal connection to the project. “A historian friend of mine – Keith Gregson – told me that at least two and perhaps more of my ancestors had … Read more
Pick of the weekJourney Through Time The first big historical event retold by David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell in their new series is a terror attack on New York – but no, it’s not 9/11. They want to tell us about the world-shaping moments we’re not taught about, which in this case was the Black … Read more
Some sounds are immediately comforting. Gulls, trains, a kettle. The opening chords of I Happen to Like New York, which, despite Bobby Short’s vocals escalating in volume and emphasis ALARMINGLY FAST, signals the start of one of Woody Allen’s loveliest little pictures. This 1993 comedy is like an unaffected Annie Hall – an impromptu reunion … Read more
The first song I fell in love withI’m an only child. My older cousin would come round to play at my house, and she was a big fan of Britney Spears. She put on … Baby One More Time and I was like: “What is this song? I love it.” I watched the music video … Read more
In July 2023, prime minister Rishi Sunak and energy secretary Grant Shapps issued a defence of their decision to expand UK oil and gas production in the North Sea. The move was necessary to prevent household energy prices from rising sharply across the nation, they claimed. It was a manifest distortion of the truth, to … Read more
Animation as a medium and fairytales as a subject have always been natural bedfellows. You only need to look at Disney’s princess industrial complex to understand that sparkle-dusted happily-ever-after is big business; that the appetite for this particular breed of magical thinking (plus associated merchandising and sequined tat) is enduringly healthy. But the beguiling, Oscar-winning, … Read more
For the past five weeks, Joshua McGuire has been in a whitewashed room in north London pretending to be a rhinoceros. The 37-year-old actor isn’t in a performance art piece or strange social experiment, but rather starring in director Omar Elerian’s new production of Eugene Ionèsco’s 1959 absurdist play, Rhinoceros; it is his first stage … Read more