Theatre director also had career in medicine and was member of Beyond the Fringe
Sir Jonathan Miller, the writer, theatre and opera director, and member of the Beyond the Fringe comedy team, has died at the age of 85.
In a statement his family said Miller died “peacefully at home following a long battle with Alzheimer’s”.
Continue reading...Former gun runner claims republicans plotted to bomb London power supply in 1990s
The IRA planned to attack power stations in south-east England in the final years of its terror bombing campaign, a former member has claimed.
The plan is alleged to have been made in the mid-1990s, shortly before the Belfast Agreement peace accord.
Continue reading...For years, documentary-maker Vanessa Engle has been on the trail of a notorious swindler who escaped from prison and disappeared into thin air. Then one day, the phone rang ...
You probably haven’t heard of Michel Cohen. Do a search and you get Michael Cohen, the Trump fixer who went to jail. Wrong one. Though this one did go to jail, too. He’s French, born in 1953 on an estate in a poor suburb of Paris and his first job was to sell the Encyclopedia Britannica door-to-door, which he was very good at.
Cohen later went to the US and started selling French paté, then prints. He got into the art world, became a dealer, sold Picassos, Monets, Chagalls. For a while he lived the dream, drove fast cars, had a house in Malibu with his German wife and two kids, a chef, horses, everything. He got into the options market. That didn’t go so well, so he got into debt. Cohen started to put loans and artworks that weren’t his into the market; the hole got bigger and bigger. In the end he disappeared, having swindled the New York art world out of $50m.
Continue reading...Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say
When you’re the child of migrants, your forebears may as well have come from the moon. So I set out to rediscover mine
Growing up in Queensland as ABCs (Australian-born Chinese), my siblings and I would get our backs up whenever strangers complimented us on our English – which was often. “Why wouldn’t I be fluent?” I’d think, fuming. “I was born in Nambour.” It didn’t matter: white Australians around us seemed as impressed by our English, as much as our Hong Kong relatives pitied our butchered Cantonese.
Yet I have an admission. Whenever I saw or encountered other Chinese-Australians speaking fluent English myself, my jaw would hang in disbelief. Seeing Chinese-Australians – or any Asian-Australians, really – on TV was rare in the 1980s and 1990s. But when people like Annette Shun Wah presented on SBS, Elizabeth Chong showed Bert Newton how to stuff a chicken with spring onions, or Dr Cindy Pan discussed prophylactics on Sex/Life – and with Australian accents, like mine! – my brain couldn’t process it. Weren’t my family the only ones?
Continue reading...Michael Apted’s groundbreaking seven-yearly series returns, seeming more dreamlike than ever as it follows its subjects into retirement and beyond
Though Michael Apted’s groundbreaking documentary series Up remains resolutely focused on the reality of its (originally 14) subjects’ lives, the experience of watching the programmes is becoming strangely more dreamlike with age.
Related: 56 Up: 'It's like having another family'
Continue reading...Backlash comes after documentary Leaving Neverland details abuse allegations of two men against the singer
Dozens of radio stations around the world have removed Michael Jackson’s music from their playlists after allegations that the late singer abused children aired on Sunday in the documentary Leaving Neverland.
In New Zealand, the public broadcaster and its major commercial rivals – whose listener base covers more than half the population – united in opting not to play Jackson’s hits.
Continue reading...Phoebe Waller-Bridge exploded into our living rooms with Fleabag, her vicious comedy about an angry, awkward woman. As it returns, Guardian writers pick their TV heroines
Who gets to be the bitch?
Continue reading...The singer’s estate is claiming the network is breaching a 1992 non-disparagement contract by airing a two-part documentary alleging sexual abuse against children
Michael Jackson’s estate is suing HBO over the network’s plans to air a documentary alleging the singer sexually abused two young boys.
The estate is claiming that by showing Leaving Neverland, HBO is violating a non-disparagement clause from a 1992 contract. According to the suit, when HBO aired Michael Jackson in Concert in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour, the clause precluded them from disparaging the singer in future works.
Continue reading...Women have accused the singer of sexual abuse for decades. So why are they only being listened to now? Blame misogyny and racism – but also the potency of his music
“Yo, Pac!” You can almost feel the spittle as Gary Oldman launches into his soliloquy. It is 2012, and he is performing in a skit on Jimmy Kimmel’s US talkshow, reciting from R Kelly’s autobiography with the plummy majesty he later brought to the role of Churchill. “What up, baby?” he utters as the audience collapses in giggles. The joke is twofold: English people are so white! But also: R Kelly is so ridiculous!
For years, Robert Kelly, now aged 52, was seen, as Kimmel put it that night, as “great and inexplicable”. He was one of the US’s most brilliant entertainers, beloved for his uproariously carnal R&B tracks and stratospheric ballads. But there was something that set him apart from his musical peers: a knowing ridiculousness, which would prompt him to cast himself in a 33-part television opera centering around a well-endowed dwarf, describe himself as a “sexasaurus”, and make Same Girl, his duet with Usher, so hammy it would inevitably be spoofed by Flight of the Conchords in a song called We’re Both in Love With a Sexy Lady. This sense of self-mockery gained him a new, white hipster audience – Pitchfork booked him to play its festival in 2013 – and also helped insulate him from criticism. Until now.
Continue reading...Prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta appeal for new information after allegations of abuse are made in documentary about R&B star, who has long denied wrongdoing
Fresh investigations have been launched into allegations of sexual and physical abuse against R Kelly by prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta, after the airing of Surviving R Kelly, a documentary that contained claims of abuse by the R&B singer.
Chicago prosecutor Kimberly Foxx urged any potential victims of Kelly to come forward, saying: “There’s nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses. We cannot seek justice without you.” Atlanta lawyer Gerald Griggs, representing a couple who claim Kelly is holding their daughter against her will, has said he was approached by the district attorney’s office regarding potential abuse by Kelly.
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