Damiano David on life after Eurovision: ‘An apology would be nice'
'Shall we go and see the Pope?' I ask Italy's biggest pop star, Damiano David, the frontman of the heavily kohled and leather-clad 2021 Eurovision winners Maneskin. He laughs, blowing cigarette smoke out before letting me down: 'I don't think so.'
I'm sort of joking. I know he has listening events with fans and journalists for his debut solo album, Funny Little Fears, after our interview. It would be a special kind of diva behaviour to abandon that for some papal devotion. But Leo XIV is giving his first Sunday address at the same time as our interview, just two miles to the west of the hotel balcony where we're sitting in Rome. Plus, Harry Styles was spotted in St Peter's Square last week
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Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
The best wines to buy from M&S this summer
Between the cyber attacks and fashion editors eulogising about the summer collections, M&S has barely been out of the headlines this year. Food sales are strong, but what is going on with M&S wine? Earlier this spring, I went to the retailer's head office in Paddington to taste some 90 samples from its current drinks range and came out with mixed impressions. Here's what I thought. The first point to make is that the bottles you're inexorably bowled towards by in-store displays, especially in travel hubs, aren't the wines that M&S does best, even if it does sell a lot of them. I'm not a fan of the somewhat sickly Bellante Prosecco and not just because the name reminds me of an unprintable insult rather than a character in Handel's opera Almira. The M&S Garganega Pinot Grigio 2024, Italy (£7), which apparently sells by the bucketload, is made by the very good Cantina di Monteforte and is perfectly fine, though rather sweet (it has more than 6g/litre of residual sugar). My tip? If you like pinot grigio, go to Morrisons and buy Gordon Ramsay Pinot Grigio 2024, Italy (11%, Morrisons, £7.50; also Tesco, £8.75 and still worth that price), which is also made by Cantina di Monteforte but which is dry, peachy and delicious. Back at M&S, other classical styles, such as the Corsican Rosé at £8.50 or the Classics No 14 Spanish Albariño (£13), err on the side of anodyne, which is often my experience of wines at M&S tastings. Strangely, perhaps, for a retailer with a reputation for excelling at basics such as plain cotton knickers and men's crew-neck sweaters, the wines that shine at M&S aren't the ones I might usually look for, they're the ones I didn't know I wanted in my life. A new star to look out for is a beautiful white from the Dão and Lafões regions of Portugal with a slightly textured feel, like pear juice mingled with woody herbs and run through with a salty charge of preserved lemon. That's M&S Found Encruzado 2024, Portugal (12.5%, M&S, £8.50), which is due in stores on June 11. It's fresh enough to drink as an aperitif but it does have good backbone and will sit well with food. Snackwise, I'm matching this with paprika Pringles. Dinnerwise, its combination of texture and tang would be good with the fatty succulence of pulled pork, while its citrus and herbal notes work well with rosemary-and-lemon chicken kebabs. The encruzado is part of an M&S range called Found, dedicated to unusual and little-known grapes, and it's under this label that you will find many of the retailer's best wine buys – and I say this as someone extremely wary of novelty for novelty's sake. Among the Found wines I'd recommend are Feteasca Alba (£7.50) from Romania (also due in stores on June 11), orange Verdil from Spain, and Found Kratosija 2024, Macedonia (13%, M&S, £8.50), a vivid, berry-scented unoaked red that is a cracking buy. My theory is that the apparently cautious approach that leaves me wanting more from some M&S wines is a blessing when it comes to grapes that might otherwise be too challenging. Many Found wines take unfamiliar flavours and wrap them into a wine that is interesting enough but, crucially, approachable and good value – the same approach the food hall has taken for many years. That's not to say Found represents the only wines I'd buy from M&S: other star buys include a cava, an English bacchus and a smoky red from South Africa, all of which you'll find recommended below. Skip to: How we tested Victoria Moore tasted 91 wines at M&S's spring/summer press tasting in April 2025. Why you can trust us Victoria Moore is the author of the best-selling The Wine Dine Dictionary and an award-winning journalist who writes The Telegraph Magazine 's drinks column. With a postgraduate diploma in psychology, she also runs workshops on wine and smell. Her impressive list of awards includes Louis Roederer Wine Columnist of the Year, Louis Roederer Online Communicator of the Year and Fortnum & Mason Drinks Writer of the Year. The Wine Dine Dictionary won the André Simon Special Commendation Award and was also Fortnum & Mason Drink Book of the Year 2018. Follow Victoria on Instagram @how_to_drink.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Britain's biggest-ever lottery jackpot of £208million is still up for grabs after no EuroMillions winners last night means prize rolls over to Tuesday
The biggest lottery prize the UK has ever seen is still up for grabs after Friday's EuroMillions draw had no winners. The jackpot on Tuesday is an estimated £208million and would be the largest prize the UK has seen. The eye-watering sum would see the winner pip the likes of Harry Styles and Rory McIlroy on the wealth scale. Andy Carter, senior winners' adviser at Allwyn, said: 'Tuesday sees the £208 million EuroMillions jackpot still up for grabs. 'A win of this magnitude would create the biggest National Lottery winner this country has ever seen - making a single UK winner instantly richer than the likes of Dua Lipa and Harry Kane while also landing them at the number one spot on the National Lottery's biggest wins list. 'The EuroMillions jackpot is now capped, so any money that would have gone into increasing the jackpot now boosts prizes in the next winning prize tier, meaning that we could see multiple UK players banking huge prizes for matching just the five main numbers and one Lucky Star.' The main EuroMillions winning numbers were 20, 21, 29, 30, 35 and the Lucky Stars were 02, 12. One UK ticket-holder became a millionaire after matching five main numbers and one Lucky Star, winning £2.02 million. No players won the £500,000 Thunderball jackpot by matching the five Thunderball numbers, 03, 14, 31, 32, 34, and the Thunderball number 06. An anonymous UK ticket holder won the existing record jackpot of £195 million on July 19 2022, while just two months earlier, Joe and Jess Thwaite, from Gloucester, won £184,262,899 with a Lucky Dip ticket for the draw on May 10 2022. The UK's third biggest win came after an anonymous ticket-holder scooped the £177 million jackpot in the draw on November 26 last year, while the biggest this year was £83 million in January. MailOnline reported in April that a grieving son found his mother's winning lottery ticket three days after she had died. Liam Carter, 34, found the EuroMillions ticket folded inside an envelope, which his mother Anne and avid lottery player had heartbreakingly scrawled on the front 'Sat draw - don't forget!'. She died on April 16, aged 67, just two days before her winning numbers came up having played every week and 'never winning anything big in her life'. Mr Carter, originally from Hampshire but now living in Aberdeen, discovered the folded envelope inside her kitchen drawer, where his loving mother usually kept her tickets. It meant Anne had won a payout of £18,403. Mr Carter had almost ignored the ticket but said 'something told me to check'. 'I scanned it using the National Lottery app, and it said it was a winning ticket — but I'd have to call the lottery line,' he added He phoned the line last Saturday and 'just froze' when he was told of how much the winning ticket was worth. Mr Carter said: 'I must've gone quiet on the phone. It didn't feel real. She never won anything big in her life — and now this.' He added: 'She always said if she ever won, the money would be for me,' he said. 'And even though she never knew about this win, it really felt like something she left behind for me. Like one final gift.' He plans to use the money towards a deposit on a flat, something he says his mother always wanted him to achieve. 'She always said if she ever won, the money would be for me,' he said. 'And even though she never knew about this win, it really felt like something she left behind for me. Like one final gift.' The ticket had matched five main numbers — 20, 27, 35, 39 and 48 — just missing the two Lucky Stars, 03 and 08.
The Independent
6 hours ago
- The Independent
Bezos vs Venice: Will the billionaire's wedding sink the city of love?
It begins, as all good fairytales do, with a $10m budget, a megayacht the size of a football pitch and a network of A-listers so starry it could alter the tides: in a few weeks, Jeff Bezos ' wedding to Lauren Sánchez is set to be a spectacle of opulence. After a five-year romance, the pair have planned an extravagant celebration in the heart of Venice, a city renowned for its timeless beauty, labyrinthine canals and centuries-old architecture. But the Adriatic city isn't swooning – far from it. In fact, the locals are absolutely seething. One of the richest men on the planet is holding their home 'hostage', they say – to the Venetians, this isn't so much of a destination wedding but an occupation. Residents and activists say that the nuptials – and the pure extravagance planned for the celebration – are set to turn their home into a 'playground for the wealthy'. The 'luxury footprint' – the environmental cost of the weekend in private jets and yachts contributing to Venice's already high carbon emissions – they say, will be huge; the celebrity entourage and logistical chaos they'll bring with them a perfect example of how the spirit of the city has been eroded by unchecked tourism and commercialisation, this time with the added audacity of exclusivity. The response of the locals? Widespread protests reportedly being planned to take the city by storm and attempt to mar the so-called wedding of the year. It's not all that hard to see where they're coming from. The basics are this: reports suggest that on 24 June, billionaire Bezos and his once news anchor, now socialite fiancée, will wed on his $500m (£370m), 3,493 tonne yacht, Koru (also the tallest sailing yacht in the world). However, reports say that views from the boat, which will be anchored in Venice lagoon, will be severely restricted – it can't be moored too far into the famous Grand Canal, because it is (you guessed it) simply too big. The Amazon boss and Washington Post owner, who proposed to Sánchez with a $2.5m diamond ring in 2023, has also secured more or less all of the city's water taxis for guests, and Venice's most luxurious venues and hotels across the city, including the 14th century Venetian landmark, the Scuola Grande della Misericordia. It's one of the largest and grandest buildings in Venice – and it's right in the middle of the historic city centre, much to the horror of the locals. They've also reportedly booked The Gritti Palace, Hotel Danieli, Aman Venice, Belmond Hotel Cipriani and St Regis Venice for the three-day event. Room prices at Gritti Palace and Aman Hotel start at $3,200 per night and soar up to 10 times that amount for the most extravagant suites. Fitting for a 200-strong guest list that reads like a who's who of the global elite. Rumoured to be attending are the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Lady Gaga and Elton John; the latter two are both expected to perform. The couple themselves are rumoured to be staying at the grand canal suite at Aman Venice, at a cost of $11,600 per night. Of course, it was never going to be a humble gathering for Amazon's boss – a nerdy bookseller turned leather-jacket-wearing 'biohacker' famed for his cliché tech-bro lifestyle (ice baths a-plenty), phallic rocket launches and quest for immortality. To some, he's a genius innovator, a trailblazer in technology and space exploration – to others, the face of exploitative capitalism. He's known for his spineless bootlicking when it comes to Trump – the billionaire took a front-row seat at the US president's inauguration in January – and for reportedly paying very little tax. Despite his enormous concentration of wealth, the struggle of his workers at Amazon, who have in the past been found to be working in unsafe and unethical conditions, is regularly exposed and documented. The Venetian mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, insists that the wedding won't be that disruptive, since the city is used to hosting high-profile events, like the film festival, La Biennale di Venezia. And one report in The Times suggests that Morris Ceron, the director general of the Venice council, actively campaigned for the wedding to take place in Venice. 'Seven months ago, Domenico Dolce [co-founder of Dolce & Gabbana] told me Bezos was getting married,' he told the paper. 'I got to work to bring this marriage of the century to Venice – that's how it started.' But as the wedding date approaches, the tension between the couple's plans for a grand celebration and the city's need for preservation is only continuing to escalate. It's an undoubtedly beautiful place, but one that's undergone profound (some would say devastating) changes over the past few decades due to mass tourism. Away from the incredible architecture and romantic canals, littered with gondolas, Venice is in crisis, its residents say, and in danger of becoming 'Veniceland' – a city with all the charm of a museum, and none of the vitality of a real community. Skyrocketing rents and a city packed full of holiday homes have led to a mass exodus of Venetians. For years, locals have protested against giant cruise ships carrying day-trippers (who spend very little but cause a lot of chaos) docking so close to the ancient city to stop the physical damage occurring to its fragile foundations. And, of course, famously, Venice is literally sinking. Which, to be fair, is hard to argue with when it comes to defending a needlessly wasteful wedding for the megarich. Right now, it's slowly dropping about 1-2mm per year due to subsidence. Combined with rising sea levels, it means that Venice is facing extensive flooding threats; it now sees extreme floods every year that used to be rare. At the centre of it all, say the protestors, is a city losing its heart to too many elite events. Of which, Bezos' tone-deaf wedding is a crowning example. In the end, Bezos and Sánchez's wedding is a picture-perfect reflection of the broader issues at play. For the ultra-wealthy, the event is a symbol of success and exclusivity – but, as the Venetians taking to the streets rightly ask: what is the real price of prestige and cash for access? Bezos' floating palace, mooring up in a few weeks' time, will put the tension between old-world beauty and new-world excess firmly on display. And as the world's elite raise glasses of champagne behind velvet ropes, the locals will be raising something else entirely: placards, voices and a warning from the heart of their ancient, beloved home – that cities like Venice don't belong to the richest man in the world, no matter how sparkly the ring.
