For two of the show’s stars, Rachel Shenton and Nicholas Ralph, who plays vet James Herriot, read out letters from the fans.

Producers of the Channel 5 series have previously said they frequently receive letters from viewers about how the ‘ show has brought joy, comfort and relief in challenging times.’

Earlier this year, fans were invited to write a letter to the favourite cast member to be read out, with the first ‘reading’ taking place today.

Today, the two stars, who play onscreen husband and wife, took time out from filming to read out some of the letters to the delight of fans.

The letter stated: “You are all my friends on the other side of the screen”, prompting Rachel to say, ‘Aww, that is very sweet’.

The letter continues: “Watching All Creatures Great & Small is like wrapping yourself in a blanket, with a big cup of tea. A little every day escape and something that gives me breathing space in a world that is upside down.”

Nicholas responded: “We do have a lovely time making the show.

“I hadn’t come across All Creatures Great and Small before, and I think in the earlier auditions it actually worked in my favour, because I think if I knew how big it was, I would maybe be slightly more nervous.

“The overriding feeling was just one of excitement. It’s just been an incredibly rollercoaster since then, and its still incredibly joyful to do.”

The writer of the letter commented on the show’s Instagram page: “Yay!! That’s my letter. And Rachel holding it in her hands. Thank you for your answer. Made my day, or week, or year.”

More letters will be read out in the near future.

READ MORE: Exploring beautiful Grassington where All Creatures is filmed

The drama is filmed just over an hour away from Bolton in the beautiful village of Grassington, just over the border in Yorkshire and for fans who cannot wait, a trip to the village, which is transformed into Darrowby, maybe the next best thing, or to re-watch the series on Channel 5 catch-up.

As well as the new six episode series, there will be Christmas specials.

The series is inspired by Herriot’s timeless books, which have sold over 60 million copies globally and remain a cherished part of literary and television heritage. 

Ethel Caterham has marked her 117th birthday surrounded by friends and family after a remarkable year which included meeting the king and becoming the world’s oldest living person

The world’s oldest person is celebrating her 117th birthday after a year of “many firsts”, including meeting the King and holding his hand.

Ethel Caterham, who lives at Hallmark Lakeview Care Home in Lightwater, Surrey, is spending the day with her family and friends to mark the occasion on Friday.

In a statement, she said: “Thank-you for all of the kind birthday wishes. Even at 117, I’ve had many firsts this year, from stroking a llama to holding hands with the King. I’ve had a lovely day celebrating with my family and friends, and I look forward to seeing what next year brings.”

Mrs Caterham was visited by Charles, who held her hand as he introduced himself, in September last year just after her 116th birthday. She became the oldest living person in April 2025 after the death of Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas at 116.

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During the meeting with Charles, she recollected his 1969 investiture as the Prince of Wales when he was 21, adding: “All the girls were in love with you and wanted to marry you.”

Mrs Caterham was born on August 21, 1909 in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire, five years before the start of the First World War, as the second youngest of eight siblings. She is the last surviving subject of Edward VII, who died in May 1910. In 1927, aged 18 she travelled to India and worked as an au pair to a military family until she was 21. She met her husband Norman, who was a lieutenant colonel in the British Army and died in 1976, at a dinner party in the UK in 1931.

They lived in Salisbury before being stationed in Gibraltar and Hong Kong. Mrs Caterham set up a nursery school while in Hong Kong and raised two daughters, both of whom died before her. One of her sisters, Gladys, lived to be 104.

Mrs Caterham drove until she was 97 and enjoyed playing contract bridge in her centenarian years. She survived Covid in 2020 aged 110.

The title of the oldest person ever is held by French woman Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122 years 164 days, according to Guinness World Records.

HONG KONG (AP) — Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung are two prominent Hong Kong activists who helped lead the group behind the city’s massive annual vigils commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. They were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under Hong Kong’s national security law.

The former leaders of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China are awaiting a verdict in a case that has drawn international attention, with critics saying it highlights the erosion of freedoms in the territory under the law imposed by Beijing.

Here’s a brief look at the two activists:

Lee Cheuk-yan

Lee, 69, was the former chair of the Hong Kong Alliance. During the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, he brought donations from Hong Kongers to Beijing in late May. When troops and tanks entered the heart of Beijing and opened fire to end the protests in June, he was at a hotel that night hearing the gunshots, he said in his testimony at court. The crackdown killed hundreds, possibly thousands.

Lee later boarded a plane to return to Hong Kong but was asked to leave the plane by police before it took off. He was detained. He was allowed to go back to Hong Kong on June 8 after being questioned and signing a letter of repentance, he said.

His experience made him devote himself to letting the world know about what happened. Beyond his Tiananmen activism, Lee is also a veteran labor activist in the city and a former lawmaker.

The national security trial has focused on the alliance’s core demand of “ending one-party rule.” The prosecution alleged that the group’s advocacy was about inciting others to use unlawful means to overthrow the leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party. Lee denied he held enmity toward the party leading the country, saying his desire to see it reform stemmed from his love for the people.

“I have no enmity in my heart, only love,” he said.

Chow Hang-tung

Chow, 41, began going to the vigils when she was just a primary school student. A natural sciences graduate of the University of Cambridge, she later studied law and became a vice-chair of the alliance.

Before the alliance voted to dissolve in September 2021, police had sought details about its operations and finances in connection with alleged links to pro-democracy groups overseas, accusing the group of being a foreign agent. But the group refused to cooperate, insisting it was not.

Chow, alongside two other core members of the group, was convicted in 2023 over their refusal and received a sentence of 4 1/2 months each. But last year, the trio overturned their convictions at the city’s top court.

While Chow was behind bars, she became one of the first people to be arrested under a newer, homegrown national security law in 2024. Authorities alleged she and several others had used a Facebook page to publish seditious posts, saying they were targeting a “sensitive date.”

“Speaking the truth has become inciting hatred, seeking justice has become exploiting suffering, accountability and limiting power have become violating the constitution, and returning power to the people has become subverting the state,” she argued in her closing statement.

Channel 4’s Taskmaster is back with Greg Davies and Alex Horne in the hotseats

Channel 4 ‘s Taskmaster is returning for a new series in a matter of weeks and the confirmation comes after Greg Davies admitted how his co-host “genuinely annoys” him.

Welshman Greg, who is from St Asaph, will return to Channel 4 alongside Alex Horne on Thursday, September 3 for series 22.

But recently, the 58-year-old stand-up comedian admitted there are things his co-host does that “genuinely annoys” him.

Greg told Metro: “I think he deliberately sits down and thinks: ‘I know how to get Greg into character, and it’s to properly wind him up.’ He says things that have no structure, punchline [or] comic premise, and it genuinely annoys me.

“[The scoring] is my revenge. It’s the little things he doesn’t like. When I give two contestants the same score, if you look into his eyes, his little brain is on fire with rage because he wants things put into boxes.”

But hopefully there won’t be too much squabbling between them when the series returns with a number of famous names among the cast including Peep Show’s Isy Suttie, Doctor Who’s Matt Lucas, ventriloquist comedian Nina Conti, stand-up comedian Chloe Petts and The Bad Guys’ Richard Ayoade.

The tasks this time around will see the celebs “crawl through secret tunnels, look for faces on toast, go on holiday with shoes and make interesting use of their armpits”, reports Digital Spy.

In an interview with Polygon in June, Greg said their “roles have become organically defined, rather than in those first few seasons — sorry, series — when we sat down and decided what the dynamics should be and how we should respond”.

He added: “They were almost ‘eggy’ in comparison to where we are now, which is that we both know the limits of our roles and what the dynamic is. It feels a lot more fun now, to be honest, because we know the [Taskmaster] world and the limitations to the world.”

Taskmaster has been expanding across the globe in recent years, with the YouTube channel almost doubling its views across 2025.

Earlier this year, it was announced that a Polish version is on the way, which is the 14th international version.

The upcoming season of Taskmaster UK will return to the UK on Thursday, September 3 at 9pm – its usual time slot – and will then drop an hour later on the Taskmaster YouTube channel around the world.

Taskmaster returns to Channel 4 on September 3

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been taken to a hospital in the capital, Islamabad, following complaints about his poor health.

Khan was taken from Adiala jail and sent to Shifa International Hospital under heavy security, according to his party. There is yet to be official confirmation he has been transferred.

The move complied with a ruling by a three-judge panel of the Supreme Court which had ordered that the cricketer-turned-politician be taken to the hospital within 48 hours to be examined by physicians.

This is the most significant relief Khan has received from the courts since he was imprisoned in 2023 on corruption charges, which he says were politically motivated.

As well as being transferred to hospital, this court order also specified Khan should be allowed to see his family, which he has not been able to do in months. On Tuesday night, his sister visited him in prison.

Khan’s political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), is normally quick to claim court decisions that go against him are politically motivated. It has not publicly been drawn on speculation that the Supreme Court’s decision indicates political manoeuvring behind the scenes.

The area around Shifa International Hospital has been sealed off by police with barriers, officers and police vans in place. Outside the hospital the BBC saw cars being moved with a truck to clear the street while police cars and armoured vehicles patrolled.

The Supreme Court told Khan’s party not to conduct press conferences outside the hospital. This is a warning not to politicise his hospital stay.

The 73-year-old’s lawyers have said he’s suffering from various health conditions, including poor eyesight, and has been unable to access specialist medical care.

In February, Khan’s lawyer said his client had 15% vision left in his right eye after prison authorities failed to take action – an allegation the government disputed.

In Tuesday’s court order, the panel wrote: “We are mindful of the constitutional and legal obligation… to safeguard the life, health, dignity and security of the prisoner.”

Judges said an eye specialist would be involved in Khan’s hospital treatment.

The judges and members of PTI issued warnings to supporters not to gather outside the hospital – that would be a breach of the court order.

Khan, who previously captained the Pakistan national cricket team, served as the country’s prime minister from 2018 to 2022.

He was imprisoned in August 2023 and has faced charges in more than 100 cases, ranging from leaking state secrets to selling state gifts – all of which he decried as politically motivated.

Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were both sentenced to 17 years late last year.

His jailing triggered large-scale protests by supporters, which were met with a crackdown by authorities.

Despite his jailing, Khan remains a significant presence in Pakistani politics with a large number of supporters.

Fewer than a quarter of Britons believe Prince Harry and Meghan Markle should move back to the United Kingdom, a new YouGov poll has found. 

It was last night revealed that the Sussexes are relocating back to the duke’s home country before the end of the month. 

Harry and Meghan are understood to be moving for an ‘extended period’ and seven-year-old Archie and Lilibet, five, have already enrolled in a British school. It is, however, currently unclear where the family will be living. 

The move comes six years after the duke, 41, and duchess, 45, quit their duties as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family in a crisis dubbed ‘Megxit’. 

Harry has since become estranged from his brother, Prince William, after levelling a barrage of accusations against the 44-year-old, King Charles and Queen Camilla.

The couple’s U-turn, then, has unsurprisingly sparked an intense public debate, though sources insist that it is not in the Sussexes’ ‘plan’ to return to the royal fold.

A YouGov poll sampling more than 5,000 people of varying ages today found that just 21 per cent of the public believe the pair ‘should’ return to Britain, while 33 per cent said they ‘should not’.

Those figures are only exacerbated when focus is put on the answers of those aged 65 or older, with just 20 per cent of the belief that Harry and Meghan should relocate to the UK.

Harry is pictured last night in Washington just hours after news of his return to Britain was made public

A staggering 47 per cent of Britons aged over 65 meanwhile said that Harry and Meghan should not return. That figure compared with the 24 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds of the same opinion.

The largest proportion (45 per cent) of Britons, however, said they were unsure whether the Sussexes should move back to Harry’s home country. 

The couple are understood to be living in a non-royal residence, and the King has made clear that there will be ‘no alteration’ to their status as private individuals. 

Just hours after news of his British return was made public, Harry was pictured beaming at a roundtable event in Washington on Wednesday night. 

The duke had already been scheduled to visit England to attend a WellChild Awards event next month and was set to stay in a room at Buckingham Palace. 

Harry last visited in July, when he and Meghan were invited to see the King at his Highgrove home in Gloucestershire. It marked the first time in four years that Charles had spent time with Archie and Lilibet. 

The duke is indeed thought to have missed living in the UK, and it has even been speculated that he is ‘desperate’ for the two children to experience life in his home country. 

But he and Meghan have faced falling approval ratings ever since their exit, which came in acrimonious circumstances amid a series of barbs directed towards the Royal Family.  

A YouGov poll found last month that just 22 per cent of Britons see Meghan in a positive light, compared with 65 per cent who hold an unfavourable opinion of the former actress, with 33 per cent seeing Harry positively and 58 per cent negatively.

The King, who is still living with cancer, was first made aware of their move on Sunday, only three days before it was made public, but is understood to welcome the opportunity to see more of the family both in a private and personal capacity.

But their status will remain the same, with the couple not being offered a ‘half in, half out’ option when it comes to their roles.

King Charles is said to ‘welcome’ Harry’s decision to relocate home (The pair are pictured together in 2022)

The Sussexes’ decision raises the question of how the news will be met by the Prince and Princess of Wales.

William – the future king – is estranged from his brother after Harry levelled  accusations against the prince and Kate in his 2023 memoir, Spare. 

The Sussexes will retain their homes in Montecito and Portugal, while the duchess will continue to run As Ever from their new base. 

Harry and former Suits star Meghan, who married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in May 2018, were once dubbed part of the ‘Fab Four’ with the then-Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

But in March 2019, Buckingham Palace announced Harry and Meghan would set up their own household, breaking from the joint operation they had with William and Kate, amid media reports of rifts between the two couples.

In January 2020, the duke and duchess announced they intended to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family, become financially independent, still support Elizabeth II, but split their time between the UK and North America. 

By March 2020, they had set up a permanent home in California, officially stepped down as senior royals and stopped using their HRH styles.

It was claimed earlier this year that Palace staff had given Meghan the nickname ‘Duchess Difficult’ during her time living in Britain. The American was accused of bullying and, on certain occasions, even making staff cry.

It was said that workers were left ‘in a psychologically delicate state’ and ‘viewed her capacity for revenge as infinite’, an expert has alleged. 

Meghan vehemently denied the allegations and described their release as an orchestrated smear campaign against her.

The bullying story was first reported in March 2021, just before Harry and Meghan were to appear on screen with Oprah Winfrey to discuss Megxit.

A spokesman for the duke and duchess has been contacted for comment today.

In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Gillian Anderson plays Billy, a reclusive actress famous for playing a classic “final girl”. That’s the last woman left alive to confront the killer in a slasher movie. “It’s all about flesh … and fluids,” she explains when discussing the appeal of the fictional Camp Miasma franchise, the series of slasher films at the heart of this affectionate meta-slasher.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed queer horror film I Saw the TV Glow (2025). That film focused on the lifesaving, bittersweet pleasures of cult TV series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer for queer, trans and non-binary fans.

For Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow represents that “egg crack” moment where trans people recognise their difference. The film’s neon-infused, dreamlike quality reminds its characters that “there is still time” for them to accept their authentic selves via graffiti scrawled throughout the world.

I Saw the TV Glow’s deliberately downbeat ending is largely left aside for most of Teenage Sex and Death. But its introspective and heady yearning remains solidly in place. Here, Schoenbrun turns to the slasher genre as inspiration. The protagonist, young queer filmmaker Kris (Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder), clearly represents Schoenbrun themself and their own experiences as an emerging trans filmmaker.

After Kris’s first indie film, an overly intellectual slasher entitled Jouissance (psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s word for overwhelming ecstasy or transgressive pain or pleasure), she is hired to reboot the fictional 1980s slasher series Camp Miasma. Kris’ tracks down the original film’s star Billy Presley (Anderson) who, lives cloistered away Norma Desmond-style in isolation. She’s living at Camp Tivoli in the Pacific Northwest, where the original Camp Miasma was shot.

Kris hopes to convince Billy to return (à la Jamie Lee Curtis in 2018’s Halloween) to the franchise for her own queer-infused reboot. Yet her fascination with the original film and its star has a shattering impact on her work. She learns that Billy’s experience on the film as a young ingenue led to her withdrawal from acting (and society) soon after its release. Evocative 1980s flashbacks reveal that Billy perhaps lost her virginity for real during a pivotal sex scene.

Billy and Kris explore their desire for each other and confront their past feelings of shame around sex. However, they are not alone at the abandoned set of Camp Miasma. The ghost of Little Death (Jack Haven) stalks them in their waking and sleeping hours.

Little Death is a spear-wielding supernatural terror in an HVAC suit. It wears a large square air vent as a head mask. Little Death is the horrific incarnation of trans-vengeance – a former trans camper bullied and drowned in the lake. Having lived concealed for years in a hole at the bottom of the frozen lake, Little Death emerges seasonally to murder oversexed teens.

The haunting of the slasher

The film is haunted by slasher history. Little Death amalgamates Angela (Felissa Rose), the trans-teen anti-hero of Sleepaway Camp (1983), and Friday the 13th’s Jason Vorhees (1980).

Jouissance is laughingly a “retelling of Psycho from the perspective of the shower curtain”. But it’s also haunted by the academic legacy of gender analysis from scholars like Carol J Clover and Barbara Creed.

Schoenbrun (via Kris) moves past the need to psychoanalyse horror film, shifting instead towards recent queer and trans scholarship – including my own – that highlights the pleasures of spectatorship for LGBTQ+ audiences.

Trans culture itself is also haunted by a problematic past with camps. The real-life exclusion of trans women from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (1976-2015), led to the emergence of Camp Trans as a counter-protest-festival, as writers like Susan Stryker and Michelle Tea have documented.

In an interview at Cannes this year, where the film won the Queer Palm, Schoenbrun stated that the film is “all about sex”. The film and its central protagonists clearly become immersed in a psychosexual frenzy of self-discovery.

Just as the film endeavours to celebrate the pleasures of slasher film tropes unabashedly, Camp Miasma/Tivoli provides a space for Kris to come to terms with her own aversion to sex. She declares at one point: “I’m bad at sex, I never have been able to lose myself.” Billy retorts: “there is no bad at sex.”

By experiencing Billy’s prior trauma on film, Kris realises that the practice of switching point of view shots between killer and victim provides a cathartic way to disassociate from the suggested real-life sexual assault. Billy states she went “far away” in her head to the point where she begins to “receive a signal” – a way of viewing the experience from the “killer eye” POV of Little Death, allowing for a reconfiguration of the trauma itself.

With its melding of stylised painted sets and a blurring of fake and real set locations, Schoenbrun’s fondness for nostalgic hyper-reality is finely honed here.

Sonically, the film’s wistful soundtrack and its visual immersion into 90s pop consumerist tropes is reminiscent of both Cronenberg’s body horrors and Araki’s work from New Queer Cinema).

As with I Saw the TV Glow, the film’s conclusion shifts into the symbolic and adopts a tone of estrangement, perhaps revealing that, despite its affiliation with the genre, Teenage Sex and Death is not a slasher film per se. Rather, this is that “something else” that I and other researchers believe has come to define queer horror, as it continues to emerge as a powerful force for speaking about the horrors and pleasures of difference.

An American woman is accused of plotting to bomb New York’s State Capitol to try and kill senators in support of ISIS.

Jessica Bowie, 35, of Albany, New York was arrested by the FBI as undercover agents pretended to help her build a nail bomb she would use to ‘destroy as much of the building as possible’ as senators met.

FBI agents gave Bowie $200 (£147) to buy bomb making material from a local hardware store.

They even drove her to the Home Depot store, and when she emerged from the store she allegedly said she hoped those were the right kind of nails.

‘I hope the nails are big enough… because the nails work as shrapnel, right?’ she allegedly asked the two undercover agents.

She was also caught on camera making several visits to the New York State Capitol grounds and taking photographs of the building.

She was arrested on Wednesday, prosecutors say, adding Bowie planned to conduct the attack and then flee to Syria to live in ISIS-controlled territories.

Describing the New York State Capitol building as her target, Bowie stated: ‘I want to destroy as much of the building as possible and kill the senators while they are meeting.

‘I want them to lose a lot of important documents as well’ and ‘I want it to have a affect on the American system. And destroy some of the taghut [those against Allah].’

On one social media account Bowie expressed anti-American sentiment said, ‘Praise be to Allah for September 11 and ‘When I can migrate, I will poison these infidels.’

Bowie also recorded and disseminated to others online her ‘Bayah,’ or formal oath of allegiance to ISIS. 

Bowie allegedly told undercover agents she had converted to Islam five years ago, going ‘from a little girl waving an American flag after 9/11’ to now having stickers of the falling towers.

‘As alleged, Bowie plotted to deploy an explosive device at the New York State Capitol, intending to kill public officials and to destroy ‘as much of the building as possible’ before fleeing to ISIS‑controlled territory in Syria,’ said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg.

‘The FBI detected and stopped an alleged plot to attack the New York State Capitol and kill elected officials,’ said FBI Operations Director Matt Fodor.

‘According to the criminal complaint, the defendant in this case swore allegiance to ISIS and wanted to follow up with additional horrific acts of terrorism.

‘This case is yet another example of how this FBI is built to not only identify threats of terrorism quickly, but to stop their alleged plots before they are able to harm the American people.’

MORE: Trump berates female reporter in front of boy he was honouring at the White House

MORE: Napping on the job is a dystopian workplace trend — ignore the tech bros

MORE: Ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad sentenced to death almost two years after fleeing Syria

GARY, Ind. (AP) — Tens of thousands of residents in northwest Indiana were in survival mode Thursday as they endured a ninth day without power, throwing out spoiled food, lining up for hot meals and searching for places to charge their phones.

In Gary, Indiana, schools remained closed after the deadly Aug. 11 storm downed trees and power lines. Residents turned to social media to find open laundromats and working Wi-Fi, while others sought food, diapers and cleaning wipes for low-income neighbors.

Meanwhile, heavy rains in central Ohio brought flash flooding that covered roadways Thursday morning in Columbus, the state capital, where emergency crews rescued motorists from stranded cars and saved a 12-year-old boy who was swept off a bridge.

Northern Indiana Public Service Co. said 68,000 customers were still without power as of Thursday morning, the majority of them in Lake County beside the Illinois border. The utility said it has restored power to 306,500 others since Aug. 11. But power is not expected to be fully restored until Tuesday in some places, including Gary.

Courtney Page-Tan, an Indiana University Indianapolis professor who studies community resilience, said health concerns grow each day of a prolonged outage. With many people using generators, poor ventilation can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. In addition, those reliant on medical devices risk having them lose their charge, while refrigerated food once safe to eat could pose health risks as it spoils.

“Nine days is a long time for a community to be without power,” Page-Tan said.

Residents are exhausted from days without power

Shatiya Hardin, a hair stylist in Gary for 25 years, has been unable to open her salon since the storm. She said residents in her lower-income neighborhood initially took the outages in stride. But now patience is wearing thin.

“We’re always in survival mode in Gary. And I think that’s probably why it wasn’t so much of an uproar because the first few days, it was like, ‘OK, we’re used to this …. but this is the second week now,” Hardin said. “It’s not OK for us to continually be in survival mode, doing the best that we can.”

More than a week after the initial storm, many residents in East Chicago, Indiana, who lost power regained it, but then lost it again. Kevin Mejia, who has a community Facebook page, was in that category Thursday.

“If I make one post, I get 500 comments,” Mejia, 30, said. “A lot of people have been reaching out to me for food: ‘Hey, I threw out hundreds of dollars in groceries.’ Elderly people don’t know who to turn to.”

He’s been sleeping on the floor because his mattress is too warm. With no power, his window air conditioners are silent.

Raydia Martin, assistant director of the Flourish Community Hub at Flourish Church in Gary, said the “silver lining” has been the response from volunteers and community groups.