Category Archives: Culture

‘A lovely bit of squirrel’: Paul Ritter’s most memorable roles

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Ritter carved out a wonderful career, culminating in the acclaimed Chernobyl – but he’ll be remembered most as oddball patriarch Martin Goodman in Friday Night Dinner

Paul Ritter, who died on Monday at the age of 54, is destined to be remembered as the dad from Friday Night Dinner. And rightly so. If you think of Ritter, or Friday Night Dinner for that matter, one image will almost certainly be seared into your mind: Ritter, walking around with his top off like it was the most normal thing in the world, complaining about the heat, or enquiring after a “lovely bit of squirrel”.

That role, and that image, brought Ritter a level of fame he had previously never achieved. Before the sitcom, which began in 2011, he had worked solidly in a number of small screen parts, usually playing characters who were professions first and people second – Detective Sergeant in 1998’s Big Cat, Geography Teacher in 2007’s Son of Rambow and Prisoner Louis in Hannibal Rising from the same year – while tending to a growing reputation on the stage. In 2006, he was nominated for an Olivier award for Coram Boy, and a Tony three years later for The Norman Conquests.

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Friday Night Dinner star Paul Ritter dies of brain tumour at 54

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Ritter, who also appeared in films including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, died at home alongside his wife and two sons

The actor Paul Ritter has died of a brain tumour at the age of 54, his agent has told the Guardian. Ritter who starred as the family patriarch Martin in Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner alongside Tamsin Greig, Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal died on Monday.

In a statement, his agent said that the actor, who also appeared in numerous films including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Quantum of Solace, died at home with his family by his side.

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‘They are living maps’: how Richard Mosse captured environmental damage in the Amazon

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In a new set of photos, environmental degradation in the Amazon is explored to shine light on ‘a hideously complex story’

In his 20s, Irish photographer Richard Mosse made his first foray into photojournalism by capturing postwar Balkan nations. This experience led to a realisation that the medium was inadequately suited to capture complex, layered narratives. “You have to put the thing in front of the camera, and when that thing is an abstraction, far bigger than a human figure, it’s very difficult to do,” he explained in a recent podcast with Monocle.

The subjects he found himself covering over the next two decades were equally abstract and complex as the first, ranging from conflict in DR Congo to the refugee crisis in Europe. However, in his search for ways to subvert the medium and bend it to his will, he eventually managed to create his own unique brand of photography, characterised by the use of infra-red film and other technology rooted in military reconnaissance.

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Pino Palladino, pop’s greatest bassist: ‘I felt like a performing monkey!’

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One of the world’s most celebrated bass players has worked with everyone from Adele to Elton John, the Who and D’Angelo. But the Welsh musician has hidden from the spotlight – until now

By his own admission, Pino Palladino is not a man much accustomed to giving interviews. “Very reticent,” he nods during a Zoom call, his accent speaking noticeably louder of his childhood in Cardiff than his current home in LA. “You know, there was a time when I was featured in all sorts of musicians’ magazines, and then I just thought to myself, ‘Move over, there’s people out there that actually need the publicity.’ Not to blow smoke up my own arse,” he adds hurriedly, “but really I just didn’t want to see or hear from myself.”

It’s a remark in keeping with the astonishing career of one of the most celebrated bass players in the world. It’s hard not to blanche when you consider the sheer number of records that have been sold featuring his work. He played on not one but two of the biggest selling albums of the 21st century: Adele’s 21 and Ed Sheeran’s Divide, as well as with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, Simon and Garfunkel and Keith Richards. They’re the biggest names in a startlingly diverse back catalogue of collaborations: Palladino’s playing is the thread that links Perfume Genius with Phil Collins, Harry Styles with Chris de Burgh, and Nine Inch Nails with De La Soul. Indeed, his versatility and omnipresence is a running joke within the music industry. When another fabled bass player, Pink Floyd’s Guy Pratt, got married, he opened his groom’s speech with the words: “I’m only here today because Pino couldn’t make it.”

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Ryley Walker: ‘Going two days sober was impossible since I was a kid’

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He was hailed as the new Nick Drake, but addiction nearly destroyed him. Now he writes songs ‘in a state of joy’ and, after stacking shelves for minimum wage, has released his best work yet

Speaking on a video call from Massachusetts, Ryley Walker is obscured by a blaze of sunlight coming through a large open window as he filters out the air in his apartment. “I must give up smoking,” the singer-songwriter frowns, lighting up his third cigarette.

Given how much Walker has had to give up over the last few years – emerging from the drug and alcohol dependency that shaped his adult life – it’s hard to begrudge him one last remaining vice. Walker, who attempted suicide as a consequence of his addictions, says that being here today is “a miracle”. His career-best new album – the proggy, unexpectedly pretty Course in Fable – is the sound of an artist treating his life as such.

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Let me stop you there: why do Oscar speeches get cut short?

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Even finally winning the most prestigious award in your field can’t stop you from being drowned out by pesky time-keepers

In the Guide’s weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you’ve been burning to know the answer to – and settle it, once and for all

Winning an Oscar is the highlight of a career. It’s peer validation on the largest possible stage. As your name is called and you approach the podium, your heart bursts and your head spins. You look out and see every famous person on Earth, all staring straight at you. Beyond them, cameras are beaming your face into hundreds of millions of homes. Time to gather your thoughts and articulate exactly what this means to you.

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‘An escape from dark times’: how ancient history podcasts bring comfort and clarity

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I started listening to tales of yore in 2019, when long drives with my infant son became essential. They soothed him to sleep – and transported me to a different world

Fans of Paul Cooper’s podcast Fall of Civilizations will know that it usually begins in a particular way. A traveller, often far from home, encounters a ruin that hints at a vast and forgotten story of the past.

Hiding from bandits in the desert, the Italian nobleman Pietro della Valle takes shelter in the shadow of the crumbling Ziggurat of Ur. Clambering through the rubble of a once magnificent site of Roman Britain, an unknown poet of the eighth or ninth century writes an elegy to the broken “work of giants”.

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Actor Thandiwe Newton reclaims original spelling of her name

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Westworld actor tells Vogue she is reverting to Zulu spelling, saying ‘I’m taking back what’s mine’

The actor formerly known as Thandie Newton has said she will reclaim the original Zulu-derived spelling of her name for use in her professional career, declaring: “I’m taking back what’s mine.”

For more than 30 years, the actor, born Melanie Thandiwe Newton Parker, has been known by an anglicised version of her name since the “w” was dropped “carelessly” from her first acting credit.

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If you like salmon, don’t read this: the art duo exposing a booming £1bn market

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Farmed salmon can end up deformed, blind, riddled with sea lice and driven to eat each other. Eco art activists Cooking Sections are highlighting their plight – and getting Tate to change its menus

A few months back, a book arrived in the post – tiny, not much larger than a bank card. Though the cover was grey, its pages were a riot of pinks, from deepest persimmon to pale rose. Printed on them were dense, technical essays referencing everything from fish farming to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. The title was Salmon: A Red Herring.

Fish is an unexpected topic for an art book – but then the duo who created this little volume, Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, aren’t really going for the coffee-table market. Operating under the name Cooking Sections, the pair have a thing for food. Their art is about what we eat and its impact on the Earth.

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Back in black: Spanish region summons Goya home to stem decline

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Area around Fuendetodos will recreate artists’ Black Paintings venue as it marks his 275th birthday

Two hundred years after he covered the walls of his house near Madrid with febrile visions of Saturn devouring his son, a witches’ sabbath and a slowly drowning dog, Francisco de Goya has been summoned home to help reverse the fortunes of the poor, remote and underpopulated Spanish region where he was born in 1746.

The painter, printmaker and fascinated, appalled chronicler of war, cruelty and reason’s frequent slumbers, studied in Italy and painted for the court in Madrid before dying in Bordeaux in 1828. But he was born on the other side of the Pyrenees in Fuendetodos, a small town 27 miles (44km) south of Zaragoza in the north-eastern Spanish region of Aragon.

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My rock’n’roll friendship with Lindy Morrison

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She was in the Go-Betweens, Tracey Thorn was in the Marine Girls, their 30-year friendship enhanced both their lives

On 31 March 1983, she burst into my dressing room, asking at the top of her voice, “Has anyone here got a lipstick I can borrow?” I looked up to see a tall woman in a Lurex dress, with a mass of blonde hair. Our two bands, Marine Girls and the Go-Betweens, were on the same bill at the Lyceum in London. I was 20, and she was 31. I was a tentative singer, she was a loud, outspoken drummer. I was from suburbia, she was from Brisbane, Australia. And I was still a student, while she had already been a social worker, then joined a feminist punk band called Xero. She’d hitchhiked across Europe with a girlfriend, she’d seen every art film, read every avant-garde book. She’d slept at Shakespeare and Co in Paris, she’d swum with Roger Moore, she could recite Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. But I didn’t know any of this. I just knew that she looked like self-belief in a minidress, and that she had arrived in my life. “Who was that?” I asked when she had gone. “That,” came the reply, “was Lindy Morrison.”

It took a couple of years for us to become friends. We were opposites in many ways, and at different stages of life, but there were similarities: we both lived with the boyfriend we were in a band with; we had strong opinions about everything – feminism, love and art; we liked Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Patti Smith, Simone de Beauvoir, and we had no time for a lot of the men who surrounded us in the music business. I’d watch her on stage, fierce and sweating behind the drum kit, long hair flying in her face, all energy, all concentration, and I was proud to be her friend.

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Damson Idris: ‘Mum would dress me in a three-piece golden suit’

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Peckham-born Damson Idris is a huge name in the US. But back here his star is still rising. He talks to Tim Lewis about breaking out in Snowfall, his American accent, joking with Jay-Z and the joy of dressing up

In 2015, when he was a young actor from Peckham with a couple of theatre credits and, naturally, an episode of Casualty to his Equity card, Damson Idris somehow wangled a big TV audition in Los Angeles. The part was Franklin Saint, a bright kid in South Central LA during the 1980s who becomes a drug kingpin just as the city is on the cusp of a crack cocaine epidemic. Snowfall was the vision of John Singleton, the director of the seminal 1991 coming-of-age film Boyz n the Hood. Word was that every tyro black actor in America, and beyond, wanted to be cast as Franklin.

“The audition was about two, three weeks out,” recalls Idris, “so I went to my family and said, ‘Guys, I’m going to be in an American accent for three weeks and onwards if this process keeps going on. Don’t, don’t, don’t make no jokes. Don’t ask me, “Ahhhh, why are you talking like that?” No. My name’s Franklin and from now on you’re going to address me as Franklin. You hear that Mum?’ I was still living with my mum at the time. And she’s like, ‘Yeah, whatever. Go wash the dishes.’”

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Beautiful Things review: Hunter Biden as prodigal son and the Trumpists’ target

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The president’s son recounts his struggles and his father’s love with honesty – yet still seems blind to glaring political realities

Robert Hunter Biden is not a rock star. Instead, the sole surviving son of Joe Biden – senator, vice-president, president – is a lawyer by training and a princeling by happenstance. Regardless, life on the edge comes with consequences.

Related: Lucky review: how Biden beat Trump – and doubters like Obama and Hillary

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Maker of Lil Nas X ‘Satan shoes’ blocked by Nike insists they are works of art

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  • MSCHF cannot sell 666 pairs of controversial sneakers
  • ‘Conceptual art collective’ bemoans legal reverse

The maker of the rapper Lil Nas X’s controversial “Satan shoes” responded to a lawsuit from Nike by claiming the sneakers were works of art.

Related: Satan shoes? Sure. But Lil Nas X is not leading American kids to devil-worship | Akin Olla

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Sir Tom Jones: ‘The knicker throwing started in the Copacabana in New York in 1968’

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The singer, 80, on enthusiastic audiences, singing Sex Bomb at 90, meeting a young Michael Jackson and losing the love of his life

I’ve been singing since I was a kid growing up in Pontypridd in South Wales. I would sing in school. I would sing in chapel. Any chance I got to get up and sing, I took it.

I was quarantined for two years with tuberculosis. I was in hospital or confined to my house from 1952 to 1954, from the age of 12 to 14. There was an old gas lamp-post at the end of the street I could see out of the window from our house where the local kids used to gather. I used to think, “When I can walk to the lamp-post again, I’ll never complain about anything as long as I live.” I still see that lamp-post in my mind and think, “What am I complaining about?”

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Salman Rushdie on Midnight’s Children at 40: ‘India is no longer the country of this novel’

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Four decades after his Booker-winner was published, Rushdie reflects on the Bombay of his childhood – and his despair at the sectarianism he sees in India today

Longevity is the real prize for which writers strive, and it isn’t awarded by any jury. For a book to stand the test of time, to pass successfully down the generations, is uncommon enough to be worth a small celebration. For a writer in his mid-70s, the continued health of a book published in his mid-30s is, quite simply, a delight. This is why we do what we do: to make works of art that, if we are very lucky, will endure.

As a reader, I have always been attracted to capacious, largehearted fictions, books that try to gather up large armfuls of the world. When I started to think about the work that would grow into Midnight’s Children, I looked again at the great Russian novels of the 19th century, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, Dead Souls, books of the type that Henry James had called “loose, baggy monsters”, large-scale realist novels – though, in the case of Dead Souls, on the very edge of surrealism. And at the great English novels of the 18th and 19th centuries, Tristram Shandy (wildly innovative and by no means realist), Vanity Fair (bristling with sharp knives of satire), Little Dorrit (in which the Circumlocution Office, a government department whose purpose is to do nothing, comes close to magic realism), and Bleak House (in which the interminable court case Jarndyce v Jarndyce comes even closer). And at their great French precursor, Gargantua and Pantagruel, which is completely fabulist.

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From colonialism to Covid: Viet Thanh Nguyen on the rise of anti-Asian violence

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Anti-Asian racism is on the rise around the world. The Pulitzer-winning author reflects on his own experiences as a Vietnamese American – and the dark history that continues to fuel the current hate

On 16 March eight people were killed in Atlanta, Georgia, by a 21-year-old white man: all but one were women, and six were Asian. The shootings take their place in a much longer story of anti-Asian violence. The Covid pandemic has given us a particular insight into this phenomenon: verbal and physical assaults against Asians have accelerated in the US over the last year, with 3,800 documented incidents involving spitting, knifings, beatings, acid attacks – and murder. The majority of the victims have been women.

Though the Atlanta killings took place in Asian massage parlours, the shooter has said he did not target the women because of their race. Instead, he claimed to be a sex addict bent on “removing temptation”. Regardless of his denial – whether it is a lie or self-deception – it is obvious that he targeted these women because they were Asian. “Racism and sexism intersect,” says Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociology professor. This intersection has been a driving force in western attitudes towards Asia and Asian women, who are routinely hypersexualised and objectified in popular culture.

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How Leslie Jordan made it big: ‘If you want to get sober, try 27 days in county jail’

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After starring in Will & Grace and American Horror Story, his life took a twist in lockdown and he became an Instagram superstar at 65. He discusses fame, fun and sharing a cell with Robert Downey Jr

For a man of such diminutive stature – 4ft 11in in shoes – Leslie Jordan loves a tall tale. A cursory question at the start of our interview about where he is calling from, for example, results in this glorious flight of fancy: “I got on a bus in 1982, from the hills of Tennessee. I had $1,200 sewn into my underpants by my mother and I arrived in LA and found West Hollywood, which is where I currently live.”

Such vivid storytelling – delivered in a honey-thick southern drawl, accentuated perfectly by a knowing campness – is part of the reason for Jordan’s unexpected career boost at 65. A jobbing actor best known for his role in American Horror Story and his Emmy-winning turn as Beverly Leslie, the acid-tongued rival of Megan Mullally’s Karen in Will & Grace, Jordan spent most of 2020 becoming an accidental internet sensation, racking up 5.6 million Instagram followers – including the likes of Rihanna and Lily Allen – thanks to his charmingly chaotic videos.

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The eggs factor: Belgian pop star finds fame again from rural Irish exile

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Philippe Robrecht was living the quiet life with his wife and hens when stardom came calling back

Something odd happened to Philippe Robrecht while hunkered down in lockdown on Inishbofin, a tiny island with just 170 inhabitants off Ireland’s Atlantic coast: he became, again, a pop star.

The 55-year-old musician and singer had not made an album in almost a decade and was all but forgotten in his native Belgium when the Covid-19 pandemic reached Ireland last year.

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