106-year-old Bletchley WW2 veteran celebrates birthday with Glastonbury themed party
A woman who worked at the Bletchley Park codebreaking centre during World War Two is celebrating her 106th birthday with a Glastonbury themed party.
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Times
44 minutes ago
- Times
The 1975 at Glastonbury 2025 review: hard to take seriously
The 1975Pyramid Stage The first headliner of the weekend was a strange choice. The 1975 certainly made a big splash about ten years ago, combining rock, pop and everything in between as a reflection of the new genre-free era of music, but more recently they have been working on an album yet to be released and singer Matty Healy has become known for being immortalised by his ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift in her song The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. Still, they were determined to make an impact, from the blinding lights of the multi screen setup to Healy arriving on stage with a pint of Guinness (a real glass one — where did he get that from? Did he bring it with him?) and a cigarette before leaping about in imagined rock star fashion. It was all very flash, but with their uptight white funk sound, and Healy coming across like a drunken George Michael, it was frankly hard to take seriously. • Glastonbury 2025 live: the 1975, Lewis Capaldi and Lorde kick off festival 'Love me if that's what you wanna do,' sang Healy on Love Me, strutting from one side of the stage to the other, and you did feel that he really would like you to love him. Sometimes that desire reaped dividends. She's American was a nice bit of 80s pop funk, Paris was a sweet love song featuring the line 'I think my boyfriend's a narcissist', and there was a certain charm to Healy and his mix of arrogance and insecurity. But then he had to ruin it all. Looking like he was about to cry, he announced, 'This moment has made me realise … that I probably am the best songwriter of my generation.' There followed a nonsense novelty pop song after which he announced, 'Only joking. I'm an idiot.' It was also hard to equate Healy's dissolute rocker image, complete with ever-present cigarette and tendency to wobble about like he was really out of it, with the word-perfect delivery, the way he knew exactly where the cameras were at all times, and the precise, clean, rather soppy pop coming out of the band. There were some good songs here, especially the state of the world address Love It If We Made It, although showing horrific current affairs scenes to accompany it was gratuitous. But this Glastonbury headline set was unconvincing, like Healy would love nothing more than to be cast in a film about a troubled rock star and this was his audition. It was all an act, in other words: not a bad act, and certainly a high budget one, but ultimately rather empty. ★★☆☆☆
Times
44 minutes ago
- Times
Justin Welby fails to surprise with no hope for Pope
Justin Welby may have said that his ousting as Archbishop of Canterbury was based on a flawed report, but he is courting less controversy by asserting that he is unlikely to become Pope. Asked what his papal name would be, he opted for either Hadrian or Francis, but was keen to stress that a Welby papacy would be unlikely. 'I have had six children, therefore there is some evidence that I've not been entirely celibate,' he said, adding that he was also a 'lousy theologian'. Still, this needn't rule him out as a Pope, if the Borgias were anything to go by. Welby remarked: 'It was a Borgia who said, 'Since God has given us the papacy, we may as well enjoy it'. ' Glastonbury brings together the revolutionaries and the posh, and this year is throwing together particularly strange bedfellows. The other night, the same backstage VIP bar was frequented by the controversial band Kneecap and the uncontroversial Samantha Cameron. It's not like they have nothing in common, though. For instance, as she was a PM's wife, both have benefited from government money. Jeffrey Archer's success is not as impressive as it sounds. The former Tory MP's first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, is still topping bestsellers' lists after racking up 25,000 sales last month, but he points out that this is worldwide and it's not all that impressive when you divide it by 151 countries. 'I got a call from Iceland saying your latest book is number one in the bestsellers' list,' he tells the Rosebud podcast. Archer, right, was filled with pride, until he asked how many copies had taken him to this giddy height. The answer was 83. Much excitement on the left this week about the potential for a new Jeremy Corbyn-led party. Many are saying that polls have shown it would get 10 per cent of the vote, but the pollster Joe Twyman offers a note of caution. 'May I gently suggest that 'would' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here,' he said. 'I say that as the official pollster for Change UK.' It is official — politicians don't talk like humans. A study to be published in Comparative Political Studies has found that politicians' speeches become more interminable as soon as they are elected. The study looked at 1.5 million extracts from speeches by Danish parliamentarians across a quarter of a century from 1997. It found that the speeches became less readable after the speaker was elected but this reverted as soon as their career ended. It's cited by the political scientist Philip Cowley in his latest for The House. 'You campaign in poetry, govern in prose,' he says, 'but even the prose suffers when in office.' With books like his new history of St Petersburg, the author Sinclair McKay has become an adept copy editor, but he learnt the craft the hard way. He used to be a diarist and tells me he got into terrible trouble when he wrote a piece about the political salon host Lady Carla Powell. She was furious about one word. He admits it was probably an error to call her 'fawnlike' in the first place, but what was worse was that he also got the third letter wrong and had to explain to Powell that he hadn't meant to suggest she was half-man, half-goat.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Matty Healy smokes a cigarette and drinks a pint of Guinness before calling himself his generation's 'best songwriter' as he takes to the stage for The 1975's Glastonbury headliner set
Matty Healy smoked a cigarette and drank a pint of Guinness as he took to the stage for The 1975's Glastonbury headliner set. The band topped the bill on the Pyramid Stage for the first day of the festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. Frontman Matty, 36, is famous for his provocative stage presence - and his Glastonbury set was no different. The English singer-songwriter was seen belting out hits while puffing away on a cigarette and sipping from a pint of Guinness. During his set, Matty claimed to be his generation's 'best songwriter' in a tongue and cheek moment. The Cheshire-formed band, backed with a saxophone, opened with Happiness from 2022's Being Funny In A Foreign Language, with Matty wearing a black leather jacket, white t-shirt and blue jeans, with a pint of stout in his hand on the Pyramid Stage. After performing Part Of The Band, sat on a stool and smoked while sipping his drink, Healy said: 'What this moment is making me realise is that I probably am the best songwriter of my generation. 'The best what they say, a poet, ladies and gentlemen, is what I am. 'Generational words, and I just wanted to remind you, over the next couple of minutes, these lyrics are poetry, I believe.' The band then launched into Chocolate from their 2013 self-titled debut, before Healy remarked, 'I was only joking about being a poet' at its conclusion. Made up of four school friends, the group, comprised of singer Matty, bassist Ross MacDonald, guitarist Adam Hann and drummer George Daniel, were headlining the festival for the first time. Midway through the set, Matty told festival goers: 'Use your platform, that's what they say, right?' He continued: 'People who are watching this may, I don't know, they might be disappointed at the lack of politics in this show and our forthcoming shows, and probably a few shows, because I always know it's a conscious decision, and we honestly don't want our legacy to be one of politics. 'We want it to be that of love and friendship, because we and I'm not trying to be too earnest, but you can go out into the world, and there's loads of politics everywhere. And I think we don't need more politics, we need more love and friendship. The English singer-songwriter was seen belting out hits while puffing away on a cigarette and sipping from a pint of Guinness During his set, Matty claimed to be his generation's 'best songwriter' in a tongue and cheek moment After performing Part Of The Band, sat on a stool and smoked while sipping his drink, Healy said: 'What this moment is making me realise is that I probably am the best songwriter of my generation' 'And I know that's really basic, but if you are a young kid and you are inspired by like about this band or something like that, don't aspire to like play a stage or be a certain size, aspire for like this level of friendship and love in what you do and you'll never fail and I love you, thank you so much.' Love Me, the lead single from 2016's I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It, prompts the first sing-a-long from the crowd, with Healy pushing guitarist Hann to the front, announcing: 'Ladies and gentleman, in 2025 with zero irony, a guitar solo.' Their stage set-up included a car, which Matty got into to sing Somebody Else while smoking a cigarette, before getting out during the song and walking on a travelator. While performing She's American, Matty dipped into The Backstreet Boys I Want It That Way, before returning to his own 2016 song. Before Paris, the singer declared 'this is my favourite 1975 song', and prior to playing Robbers from the band's debut album, he said: 'For the first time in my life I don't know what to say.' The band ended their set with About You from Being Funny In A Foreign Language. Before the song, Matty said: 'Ladies and gentlemen it's very cool to be mysterious but I think it's cooler to be honest and we're not going anywhere, we're not going anywhere, everything's going to be fine.' Earlier in the day, festivalgoers were treated to surprise performances from alternative pop star Lorde, who played her new album Virgin in full, and Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, who played two years after a performance at the festival during which he struggled to manage his Tourette syndrome symptoms. Among the celebrities spotted at the event so far included Barbie star Margot Robbie, 34, with her producer husband Tom Ackerley, eight months after giving birth to their first child. Yesterday, moustachioed Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch, 48, read out letters from around the world in the Greenpeace area in a feature called 'Letters Live'. Meanwhile, thousands of unsuspecting fans were treated to surprise performances from Lewis Capaldi and Lorde yesterday. Lewis choked back tears as he declared 'I'm back baby' during an emotional return to Glastonbury's iconic Pyramid Stage. The Scottish singer, 28, was greeted with cheers from the huge Worthy Farm crowd, two years after his battle with Tourettes left him unable to finish his performance at the festival and led to a career hiatus. Delighted to back in front of an audience he tearfully said: 'Two years ago I wasn't sure if I'd ever do this again, but I'm back baby!''. Lewis sung a number of his famous hits, before once chocking back tears as he performed brand new single Survive, which highlights the difficult period in his career following his last Glastonbury gig. Fans in the crowd could be seen crying and calling out his name before joining him in a rendition of megahit Someone You Loved. In his emotional speech, Lewis said: ' Glastonbury it's good to be back. Won't say too much up here today as if I do I might start crying, but I can't thank you enough for coming here and being with here'. 'Second times a charm hey! It's a short set today but just wanted to come and finish what I couldn't last time, also this was like the worst kept f*****g secret ever'. Following his set Lewis took to Instagram with footage of his performance alongside a post which read: 'Glastonbury it's so incredible to be back, thank you so much for having me x' Fans and famous friends rushed to the comments to welcome the talented musician back into the public eye. Sam Fender said: 'Return of The King', while Alan Shearer said: 'Love It': Paddy McGuinness gushed: 'Governor' and Jade Thirlwall shared a slew of loving emojis. Following his emotional set at Worthy Farm in June 2023, the singer took time off to focus on his mental health and to 'adjust to the impact' of his Tourette's diagnosis. Also performing on Glastonbury's first day was CMAT, Lola Young, Alanis Morissette, as well Lorde with her own secret set. Meanwhile Rizzle Kicks also made a return to the stage after their own 11 year hiatus and were joined by a surprise guest. Harley 'Sylvester' Alexander-Sule and Jordan Stephens performed the biggest hits, with the later introducing his mum on stage during their track Mama Do the Hump.
