Sheridan Smith was praised by fans on Monday night for her ’emotional’ performance in ITV’s new drama Isolation Stories. The pregnant star, 38, played Mel in the fifteen minute episode, which tells four stand-alone stories born out of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, which has so far claimed 28,734 lives in the UK alone. During the show, Sheridan, who is expecting her first child … Read more
These are testing times for 70-year-old Elaine Yates. She suffers from lung disease, asthma and arthritis – yet by comparison with her husband, Michael, she might be considered a beacon of health. Until 2004, when Michael fell and incurred brain damage following a stroke, he was a fit former Royal Pioneer Corps soldier. Today, aged … Read more
Rob Brydon is getting ready to take a big risk. ‘I will be nervous on the first night,’ says the comedian and actor as he prepares to change style and go out on the road as a singer like his hero Sammy Davis Jr, performing straight songs alongside jokes with a highly accomplished eight-piece band. … Read more
House Of Glass Hadley Freeman Fourth Estate £16.99 Rating: The dedication at the front of this remarkable book is short and sweet. ‘For my father, Ron Freeman,’ it reads, ‘and my Grandma Sala.’ But like so much else in House Of Glass, those simple words contain a universe. Twelve years after her grandmother’s death in … Read more
In the titular tale, retired serial killer Kim Byeongsu is forgetting everything – words, days, events, the last person he murdered.
What we all need in unsettling times like this is a good laugh. And in this cracking collection of comic novels you’ll find the dry, ironic wit of Jane Austen and her meddling heroine Emma; the knife-sharp comedy of Kingsley Amis and his hapless hero Jim Dixon; the eccentric absurdity of the Starkadders in Cold … Read more