Latest news with #RogerHargreaves
Daily Mail
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Trouble With Mr Doodle: Sensitively drawn portrait of Mr Doodle's psychotic breakdown
The Trouble with Mr Doodle (Ch4) Rating: Doodling at work made Roger Hargreaves a multi-millionaire. The advertising executive drew cartoon characters in idle moments, which evolved into the Mr Men — Mr Tickle, Mr Greedy and many more. But Hargreaves never thought to create Mr Doodle. That manic persona sprang from the perfervid brain of art student Sam Cox, who had been doodling obsessively throughout his teens, up to 15 hours a day. Mr Doodle, though he looked like a bundle of fun in his white suit and hat covered in squiggles, was not the benign Mr Man character he seemed at first. His demented extrovert personality took over Sam's life, enabling him to make a small fortune in the art world but gradually shredding his sanity, until he was sectioned for his own safety in a psychiatric hospital. This two-hour documentary, directed with sensitivity but also humour by Jaimie D'Cruz and Ed Perkins, depicted the stages of Sam's psychotic breakdown, which seemed to be building up in waves for several years. Mental health, no longer the taboo subject of a decade ago, is now frequently discussed on TV, but it's rare to see the development of such severe illness shown so clearly. The Trouble With Mr Doodle deserves to join the case histories of Oliver Sacks, who wrote up his patients' symptoms in a series of bestselling books, as a model of psychiatric study. Sam has been fortunate to have a close and loving family to sustain him. His compulsion to doodle over every available surface was so extreme that he fantasised about covering the entire planet in his artwork, and then zooming off in a rocket ship to discover new worlds to daub with jaunty graffiti. Though no one was interested when he tried to sell individual pages of doodles at £1 a time, his fortunes changed after a Hong Kong art dealer began marketing his work to the cartoon-crazy Japanese. One sprawling canvas sold for $1m (£730,000), enabling Sam to buy a large, secluded he then proceeded to cover in doodles. The documentary began at the moment Sam, filmed by his Ukrainian fiancee, Alena, explored the house, after it had been stripped of all its cupboards and carpets, with all the walls, floors and ceilings painted bright white. Then, he got his marker pens out... His breakdown occurred halfway through the project. Incredibly, after he left hospital, he returned to the house and finished every inch of doodling. Loyal Alena never stopped supporting him, and the one genuinely happy moment in this portrait of fraught, hyper-intense jollity came at the end when their first child was born. But weighed against that were the interviews with Sam, who seemed deeply anxious to be facing the camera and whose face was sometimes a vacant mask. These silent close-ups were a reminder that there's so much we simply don't understand about mental illness.
Daily Record
27-06-2025
- Climate
- Daily Record
Everyone to get mobile phone alert as sirens sound for 10 seconds
The system was last used in January when it warned of the oncoming storm The UK Government is to send an emergency alert to revert mobile phone in the UK, with a message taking over the screen and a loud siren sounding for 10 seconds. The alarm will come from a system that was launched in 2023 to alert people across the country to immediate threats. According to the Sun, this will be a nationwide test of the system - designed to tell people if they are at risk of everything from extreme weather to disease and war. The message will read: "Severe Alert. This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a new UK government service that will warn you if there's a life-threatening emergency nearby. "In a real emergency, follow the instructions in the alert to keep yourself and others safe. Visit for more information. This is a test. You do not need to take any action.", reports the Express. During the 2023 test, people reported the alarm being loud' and frightening. The test signal will be sent later this year on a date to be set, and will be tested every two years to make sure it is still working. A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "This system is not designed to cause panic, but to ensure people are aware of imminent threats and can act test is part of building national resilience and saving lives in future crises." The system has already been used in real-world situations. Earlier this year four million people got an alert ahead of Storm Eowyn smashing into the UK. Three million were sent a message ahead of Storm Darragh in 2024. Roger Hargreaves, director of the Cobra emergencies committee unit at the Cabinet Office, told MPs in 2023: 'It is international standard practice to do regular test messages. I think there is a case for doing it every two years, but we haven't got a ministerial decision on that. Every two years is what we would probably advise ministers but we're yet to get a view on that.'
Wales Online
27-06-2025
- General
- Wales Online
Emergency alert to be sent to every UK mobile phone
Emergency alert to be sent to every UK mobile phone There will be a 10-second siren and a warning message People got the first messages in 2023 The Government is to send an emergency alert to revert mobile phone in the UK, with a message taking over the screen and a loud siren sounding for 10 seconds. The alarm will come from a system that was launched in 2023 to alert people across the country to immediate threats. According to the Sun, this will be a nationwide test of the system - designed to tell people if they are at risk of everything from extreme weather to disease and war. The message will read: "Severe Alert. This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a new UK government service that will warn you if there's a life-threatening emergency nearby. "In a real emergency, follow the instructions in the alert to keep yourself and others safe. Visit for more information. This is a test. You do not need to take any action.", reports the Express. An Emergency Alert from the UK government During the 2023 test, people reported the alarm being loud' and frightening. The test signal will be sent later this year on a date to be set, and will be tested every two years to make sure it is still working. Article continues below A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "This system is not designed to cause panic, but to ensure people are aware of imminent threats and can act test is part of building national resilience and saving lives in future crises." The system has already been used in real-world situations. Earlier this year four million people got an alert ahead of Storm Eowyn smashing into the UK. Three million were sent a message ahead of Storm Darragh in 2024. Roger Hargreaves, director of the Cobra emergencies committee unit at the Cabinet Office, told MPs in 2023: 'It is international standard practice to do regular test messages. I think there is a case for doing it every two years, but we haven't got a ministerial decision on that. Every two years is what we would probably advise ministers but we're yet to get a view on that.'
