Things can only get better with less noise in Leicester Square
Might not the problem of noisy street performers be solved by banning amplification, especially singing or playing along to backing tracks, which is really just karaoke?Ian WatsonGlasgow
Keith Langton says he needs a signal to others that he is not just a dotty old bloke talking to himself when using his hearing aid to take a phone call (Letters, 13 April). This works both ways. If you like talking to yourself when out and about, stick in your earbuds and everyone will assume you're on the phone.Ron JacobLondon
As Liz Truss is so proud of her Yorkshire roots, may I suggest that T'Witter might be an option for the name of her planned social media platform (Letters, 16 April). Ian Grieve Gordon Bennett, Llangollen canal
I am thinking of getting a red baseball cap inscribed 'MABA', and a matching T-shirt inscribed 'Make America Behave Again'.Robin M WhiteBroughty Ferry, Dundee
A plea to people in the US: please Make America Boring Again.Debbie ColsonLondon
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The Sun
30 minutes ago
- The Sun
Emmerdale kills off major character in bloodied soap first after five years on ITV show
EMMERDALE has killed off a major character after five years in the village - in a bloodied soap first. Viewers have watched John Sugden's reign of terror play out over the last several months. 5 5 5 It now appears that the villainous army medic claimed another victim. Mackenzie Boyd (Lawrence Robb) has been suspicious about John for a long time. Emmerdale fans know John killed Nate Robinson in a shock twist last year. And he's gone on to kill his ex-fiancee Aidan shortly after he woke up from a coma. Viewers also watched recently as he framed patient Owen for Nate's murder - before killing him too. Mackenzie discovered an old photo of John with an army buddy - the same man who took Nate's belongings away. Driving Mack away from the village, John confronted him for searching through his stuff. He chillingly asked the mechanic: "By now I'm guessing you've joined up the dots?" John added: "Really would've been better for everyone if you had not seen that photo of me. Better for you." Mackenzie confirmed he knows John killed Nate - and he's known there was "something wrong" with him for a while. Emmerdale icon set to quit the Dales days after co-star's exit was confirmed and shock cheating plot After a scuffle, Mackenzie fled into the woods while John pursues, armed with a crossbow. Cornering him, John shot Mackenzie in the back with an arrow, after he tries escaping. Later, viewers saw the boot of John's van with blood stains and a body covered by a sheet. The episode ended with a flashback of John throwing a heavy rock down at a helpless Mackenzie. It comes as The Sun previously revealed Lawrence Robb had filmed devastating murder scenes for his character. A source said at the time: 'The scenes are going to be really harrowing for fans to watch. 'Mackenzie has been in so many scrapes and dangerous positions but this time it looks like he's bitten off more than he can chew. 'Viewers will be on the edges of their seats watching what happens.' Darkest soap storylines Over the years the likes of EastEnders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street have all tried to try outdo each other with their outlandish plots in a bid to keep us tuning in each week. But here are some of the darkest that had fans in shock... EastEnders: Tony grooming Whitney (2008-2009) - Tony King first appeared in Albert Square in 2008 as the boyfriend of Bianca, played by Patsy Palmer. But it was quickly revealed he was a paedophile who had been grooming vulnerable Whitney, Bianca's adopted stepdaughter from a previous relationship, since she was 12. The shocking storyline attracted more than 200 complaints within a week of it beginning. Whitney waited until her 16th birthday to reveal the truth to a horrified Bianca, who called the police. Emmerdale: Holly's drug addiction and shock death (2010-2016) - In 2010, Holly Barton (played by Sophie Powles) became Emmerdale's first teenage drug addict. The shocking storyline saw her taking cocaine on a night out before developing a deadly heroin habit. Parents John and Moira desperately tried to help get their daughter clean but when Holly returned in 2016, following a four-year absence, she quickly relapsed. Fans were left stunned and heartbroken when distraught Moira found Holly dead in her bed from a heroin overdose. Hollyoaks: Luke's rape (2000) - Actor Gary Lucy was just 17 when he took on this groundbreaking storyline, which saw his character Luke Morgan become soap's first male rape victim. Luke had endured a long-running bullying campaign by football rival Mark Gibbs - who raped him after Luke stood up to him. Luke was left suicidal following the brutal attack, before opening up to his brother Adam. Gibbs was sentenced to eight years in prison. Gary won the Best Actor gong at the British Soap Awards in 2000 for his performance. Coronation Street: Evil Richard Hillman (2001-2003) - Just a mere mention of 'Richard Hillman' is enough to send a shiver down the spines of soap fans. He is often ranked one of the most evil soap villains and it's not hard to see why. The smooth-talking financial adviser bashed his ex-wife Patricia over the head with a shovel. In a bid to keep his mother-in-law Audrey quiet, he set fire to her house. And when Maxine caught him trying to murder Emily Bishop, he took a crowbar to her head. He made his exit from the cobbles in 2003 when he drove Gail Platt, played by Helen Worth, and her family into the canal. They survived, but he didn't. The scenes are set to air later this year after Mackenzie makes a chilling discovery about John. The insider added: 'There are huge twists and turns coming throughout this storyline and it's going to run for months and months. 'Nothing can be ruled out - bosses are really going for it and doing everything they can to keep the audience on their toes.' Emmerdale airs on ITV1 and ITVX. 5 5
Spectator
16 hours ago
- Spectator
A sensory awakening: the adventures of a cheesemonger
Food memoirs, as distinct from cookery books, and from the relatively new genre of 'biographies' of ingredients, used to fall into three rough groups: foraging, hunting or gathering food; producing or cooking food; and eating. Like the restaurateur Keith McNally's recent I Regret Almost Everything, Michael Finnerty's The Cheese Cure adds a fourth category, memoirs of those who sell or serve food. These foodie books often blur at the margins and merge at the borders but usually share the characteristic of being narrated in the first person – and if recipes are given they are often incidental. (Of course, many of these authors also write cookery books.) There is a canon of such tomes by writers including Elizabeth David, M.F.K. Fisher, Jane Grigson, Wendell Berry, Julia Child, Patience Gray, A.J. Liebling and Joseph Wechsberg; and, more recently, Claudia Roden, Raymond Sokolov, Jeffrey Steingarten, Jonathan Meades, Bill Buford and Nigel Slater. Besides the quality of their writing, these memoirs have in common wit, grace, delicacy and introspection. Though it tells mostly of the pleasures of food, Fisher's work exemplifies these virtues. When she writes about youthful hunger, for example, she reminds us that it is a thing apart: It is very hard for people who have passed the age of, say, 50, to remember with any clarity the hunger of their own puberty and adolescence… But I can recall its intensity still; I am not too far from it to understand its ferocious demands when I see a 15-year-old boy wince and whiten at the prospect of waiting a few more hours for food. Fisher wrote this in 1946, when she was a sympathetic matron of 38. She remains one of the few food memoirists to take hunger and its feeling as a subject. Finnerty, now aged 54, works part-time at Mons Cheesemongers in London's Borough Market and part-time in Montreal, Canada, where he broadcasts a weekly live radio programme in French. His genre-defying book is an account of how he dealt with his mid-life predicament by taking leave from his job as a high-flying journalist to train as a cheesemonger. It's a remarkable tale, with only a tinge of bathos. Born in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, he spent 'the better part of a year' in secondary school as an exchange student with a French family in St-Étienne, where he had his first experience of non-supermarket cheese. There's a lacuna in the narrative and the reader never learns how or why he ended up in London, working as a researcher, then a reporter, then a producer for the BBC World Service and finally 'multimedia news editor' for the Guardian for '15 years on either side of the Millennium' . In 1999 he even bought an ex-council flat in Southwark, and in 2002 met his life partner, 'a beautiful, compassionate, eccentric and understanding Frenchman', about whose movements and whereabouts we somewhat annoyingly learn nothing more. Finnerty left his successful London life to return to Montreal, where for 13 years he presented Daybreak, the CBC early morning live radio show. He was well-paid, well-regarded and had fame of a sort: 'Hell, my face is on billboards and on the side of CBC trucks.' But, he writes, the job was 'robbing me of joy'. It seems obvious that the killer factor was the uncivilised hours – getting up at 3 a.m., having 'lunch' at 8 a.m. when the programme finished, needing sleep as well as food at anti-social times. So he negotiated a six-month sabbatical and went to live in his London flat. It soon occurs to him that both morale and his bank balance indicate that he should find a temporary job; and a meal in an Ottolenghi restaurant so tickles his foodie fancy that he applies to be a waiter there and works a trial shift, but fails. With lowered spirits, he sees an advert in Borough Market for a trainee cheesemonger, cheers up, applies, is taken on as an apprentice, passes his three-month probation and gets the job without ever mentioning his prior career. Finnerty is physically fit – which is just as well, since every day starts with sweeping, hauling out wheels of cheese, moving large tables, climbing ladders, moving boxes, wrapping with focus and precision, manipulating slates, cutting down through the thick pastes of Cheddars and Alpine cheeses with both hands on a knife, scrubbing surfaces to free them of cheese residue, bleaching and squeegeeing floors and rearranging the furniture. He is so tired that he longs only to be horizontal, not even experiencing the hunger or thirst Fisher details so eloquently. One attraction of his brave new career is the fraternity of fellow cheesemongers and market personnel – his descriptions and evaluations of them and his customers display the best writing in this book, and show that he is curious and cares about them as much as he does about the cheese he is handling and selling. There are a few outstanding set pieces, such as the account of the November 2019 knife attack at Fishmongers' Hall, at the north end of London Bridge, which spread into Borough Market and resulted in Finnerty and some of his colleagues and customers taking refuge in the cheese fridge. While much of this memoir is about Finnerty's state of mind and feelings, he does not neglect the subject of his subtitle. Every chapter ends with a page or two on a single cheese, always readable, sometimes funny, in the manner of his great predecessors Pierre Androuet and Patrick Rance. He's in love with cheese, passionately, and it shows. At the end of his sabbatical, as he prepares to return to Montreal and broadcasting, he worries about whether he's deceived his mates and his boss. In the end he finds a compromise. Next time you're shopping for cheese in Borough Market, ask if Michael is there to serve you.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Brian Davis obituary
My friend and former colleague Brian Davis, who has died aged 91, was a journalist of the old school, meticulous in his commitment to fair, accurate reporting throughout an understated but distinguished career. All those he trained remember his mantra: 'If you can't get names right, why should anyone trust the rest of the story?' He spent the bulk of his time in regional journalism, except for a stint subediting on the Guardian in the 1960s. He trained dozens of young journalists, including the future broadcaster Richard Madeley at the Brentwood Argus, where Brian was the launch editor in 1968 and stayed for nearly 20 years. He later appeared as a guest on an episode of This Is Your Life that featured Madeley. Brian was also the author of three books: Ferndown, The Back of Beyond (1996), about growing up in a Dorset village; You 'Orrible Little Man (2010), highlighting his experience of national service; and I'll Take That One (2013), about child wartime evacuees. Brian was born in Ferndown, to Ernest Davis, a hotel waiter, and his wife, Norah. He never entirely lost his Dorset lilt or his love of the county. He attended Queen Elizabeth's grammar school in Wimborne and at 18 worked at the Wimborne News for two years before beginning his national service in 1955. After that he worked on papers including the Hertfordshire Mercury, the Romford Recorder and the Ilford Pictorial, and then moved to launch the Argus – a tough job in an already crowded but very lucrative market, served at one time by five different newspapers. His fierce insistence on fact-checking belied a character that former colleagues described as encouraging, kind, funny, quirky, intelligent and patient. Brian went on to become an editor at the Yellow Advertiser before freelancing until a stroke in 2014 brought his career to an end. He was devoted to his second wife, Joy (nee Noys), a receptionist and typist, whom he married in 1973 and her son, Alan. They survive him, as do his children, Russell and Kate, from his first marriage, to Joan, which ended in divorce.
