The Ariana Grande red carpet appearance fans have been waiting on finally happened Wednesday night, when the singer and actor arrived at the New York premiere of Focker-in-Law with her boyfriend, dancer and photographer Ricky Álvarez, at her side. It was the first time the pair had posed together on a red carpet since rekindling their romance this year, and photographers captured them embracing, whispering to one another and sharing a kiss at the Beacon Theatre.

A Rekindled Romance, Ten Years On

Grande and Álvarez met around 2015, when he was a backup dancer on her Honeymoon Tour. They dated for roughly a year and split in 2016. Grande later name-checked him in her 2018 hit “thank u, next,” singing that she “wrote some songs about Ricky, now I listen and laugh.”

That line has since been revised. This summer the two were spotted together in Austin, Texas, after one of Grande’s Eternal Sunshine tour shows, and further sightings followed in Florida, New York and London. By August they were Instagram official, and Grande showed off a new tattoo reading “I do love you,” which Vogue noted seemed to echo an inscription on Álvarez’s collarbone.

Grande also used the song to hint at where things stood. At one show she sang, “We always find our way back.” By the tour’s final night in London, the lyric had become “I’m tryna make him my last.”

Why This Ariana Grande Red Carpet Moment Matters

The outing carries extra weight because of the timing. Grande’s representative said in August that she would step back from public life after the tour, citing “endless, ongoing public scrutiny.” She also withdrew from the planned London revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, in which she was to star opposite her Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey.

Against that backdrop, this was her first major public return, and she chose to share it with her partner rather than appear alone. The film opens in theaters on November 25. It is the fourth entry in the Meet the Parents franchise and also stars Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro and Skyler Gisondo. Owen Wilson, Chris Redd, Eduardo Franco and Beanie Feldstein were among the cast at the premiere.

The Look: Vintage With a Backstory

The fashion drew almost as much attention as the couple. Styled by Law Roach, Grande wore a 1990s Badgley Mischka gown in pale silver-grey plaid, with spaghetti straps, a fitted bodice scattered with tiny floral embellishments and a full, ruffled skirt. Harper’s Bazaar reported that it came from Jellybean Vintage. She paired it with silver hoop earrings and wore her hair in a sleek updo tied with an ivory ribbon.

According to British Vogue, Roach said he bought the dress months ago because it evoked the era of the original Meet the Parents. That gave the Ariana Grande red carpet look a neat tie to the film itself. Álvarez kept things relaxed in a black blazer over an open-collared white shirt, rolled dark jeans, a belt and brown loafers.

Public Affection, Offline and On

Álvarez marked the night on Instagram with a selfie of the two, captioned “Fockers.” Vogue reported that they have also been seen cheering on runners at the New York City Marathon, and that Grande recruited him for a lip-product guessing game on Instagram for her R.E.M. Beauty line.

Grande has been careful about how much of her life she shares, so the couple’s first red-carpet appearance offers a rare look at a relationship she has largely let her lyrics and her tattoo describe.

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The Anthony Clark death, confirmed on Wednesday, marks the loss of a comic who rose from the Boston stand-up circuit to anchor one of network television’s most durable family sitcoms. Clark, best known as Greg Warner on CBS’s Yes, Dear, died Tuesday at 62.

News of his passing came from his longtime friend and former co-star Mike O’Malley, who posted a tribute online. Outlets differ on where: Rolling Stone and Variety cite X, while The Hollywood Reporter cites Instagram. Reports also differ on the cause. Rolling Stone, citing Deadline, said it is believed to be complications from pneumonia, while The Hollywood Reporter said a cause was not immediately available.

A tribute from a friend and fellow comic

O’Malley’s post was personal rather than promotional. He recalled watching Clark sell out shows in Boston in the mid-1990s, when O’Malley and his future wife were dating, and said he was “a fan before I was a friend.” He described Clark as “one of those comics who is laughing along with you at the absurdity of his stories and observations.” The two had spoken by phone about three weeks before Clark’s death, O’Malley wrote, and Clark “had us laughing loudly once again.”

Greg Garcia, co-creator of Yes, Dear and the creator of My Name Is Earl and Raising Hope, also paid tribute in a statement to Deadline. He said Clark had “the most insane sense of humor” of all the funny people he has known, adding that “the things that would come out of his mouth were so unexpected and hilarious.”

From Lynchburg to Boston to CBS

Clark was born April 4, 1964, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and kept the accent that went with it. He studied mass communication at Emerson College in Boston, graduating in 1986, and won a top college comedian award from the American Collegiate Talent Showcase while he was there. Boston became his base. By the early 1990s he was part of a wave of emerging stand-ups that included Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K. and Dave Attell, all of whom appeared in a 1995 Young Comedians special.

Television followed quickly. After an early screen credit on American Playhouse in 1991, he landed his first lead role in 1996 on NBC’s Boston Common, playing a Virginian who moves to Boston and ends up working for a college student union. The show ran two seasons. Film and TV credits included Dogfight, The Thing Called Love, The Rock, Ellen and Soul Man.

The role that defined his career

His best-known part arrived in 2000 with Yes, Dear, which followed two young couples with sharply different approaches to parenting. Clark played the more buttoned-down Greg opposite O’Malley’s wilder brother-in-law. The cast also included Jean Louisa Kelly, Liza Snyder and Billy Gardell. Critics never embraced the show, but audiences did. It ran six seasons on CBS through 2006, totaling 122 episodes, and had a long afterlife in syndication. Variety once called it the “little-comedy-that-could” during a 2005 renewal push.

After the series ended, Clark hosted the sixth season of NBC’s Last Comic Standing in 2006, then largely stepped away from show business. Rolling Stone reported that he spent the past two decades in real estate, and O’Malley wrote that Clark “invested his money well and essentially retired” once the sitcom wrapped.

In a 2006 interview with The Comic’s Comic, Clark explained the pull of live comedy: “There’s no director. There’s no writer. No producer. There’s just you.” He added that he didn’t know why people found him funny, “but I’m glad they do.”

As details of the Anthony Clark death continue to emerge, the tributes from those who knew him point to the same quality: a comic whose own laughter made audiences laugh harder.

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Duran Duran drummer Roger Taylor is leaving the band and retiring from playing the drums altogether, following a worsening of his recently diagnosed tinnitus. The announcement came on Thursday, 12 November 2026, via the group’s social media, and ends a second run in the band that began with the 2001 reunion of the original line-up.

Taylor, who is 66 according to NME, framed the decision as a matter of health rather than a falling-out. “This is one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” he said. “Playing drums in this band has been the joy of my life.” He added that his tinnitus “has been getting steadily worse” and that he had “reached the point where I must now listen to my body and my doctors.”

A Retirement Timed Around a Career High

Taylor stressed that he is leaving on his own terms and at a moment of success. “Figuring out the timing of all of this has not been easy, but I’m going out on a real high,” he said. He pointed to a “hugely successful” UK and European tour, which followed the band’s second headline show at BST Hyde Park, their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, and a return to the studio with Nile Rodgers, the Chic bandleader who has worked with them before.

The band’s own statement echoed the medical reasoning. Following “careful consideration and medical advice,” it said, Taylor decided that “protecting his hearing and long-term health must now come first.” The sources do not describe the severity of his condition beyond his own account of it worsening, and they give no detail on treatment.

What the Band Said About Their Duran Duran Drummer

The remaining members, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, called him their “brother.” Their joint statement said his drumming “helped define the sound of Duran Duran from the very beginning” and that having him back since 2001 “has been incredibly important to us all.” They said they “completely support his decision” and added that “he will always be part of this family, while we continue exploring new and exciting projects with the band.”

That last line suggests the group is carrying on, though none of the reports say who will play drums or what form future live shows might take.

Two Chapters, One Defining Sound

Taylor’s story with the band falls into two parts. He was among the earliest members, alongside Rhodes and John Taylor, and was later joined by Le Bon and guitarist Andy Taylor. The sources differ slightly on when he first came aboard: The Hollywood Reporter says 1978, NME says 1979. All agree he left in 1985. The Guardian notes he played on the first three albums, released between 1981 and 1983, which were transatlantic hits and helped popularise a glossy strain of new wave pop. He departed after the band’s Live Aid appearance, later explaining that he “needed to get to know myself” because being in a band that size meant “you can lose yourself.”

According to the Guardian, he briefly rejoined in 1994 before returning permanently in 2001. From then he played on six further albums, starting with 2004’s Astronaut and ending with 2023’s Danse Macabre. Hollywood Reporter dates the group’s Rock Hall induction to 2022.

What Comes Next for the Band

Duran Duran have stayed active. NME notes that this year they released the one-off single “Free To Love” with Rodgers and wrapped a UK and European arena run, during which The Strokes’ Nick Valensi joined them on stage in Paris. Attention had been turning to their summer 2027 plans, including their long-stated desire to play Glastonbury only in a main-stage slot.

For fans, the news is bittersweet. The Duran Duran drummer who helped shape the band’s early records and anchored its reunion is stepping away not because he wants to, but because, in his words, his body and his doctors are telling him to.

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Irma P Hall, the Texas schoolteacher who became one of American film’s most recognisable screen matriarchs, died on Tuesday, 10 November, in Dallas. She was 91. Her family announced her death and said she was surrounded by loved ones. No cause was given.

In a statement, the family called her “a beloved actress, author, poet, educator and public speaker whose contributions touched countless lives throughout her remarkable career,” adding that her “legacy of talent, dedication and compassion will continue to inspire generations to come.” Funeral and memorial details are to be announced later.

From the classroom to the screen

Hall’s path to Hollywood was an unusual one. Born Irma Dolores Player in Beaumont, Texas, on 3 June 1935, she was raised in Chicago. Her father was a saxophonist who played with big bands, and her mother was a housekeeper. She graduated from Texas College in Tyler and went on to teach English and foreign languages. Accounts differ on the details. One places her in classrooms in Houston and Dallas, another in Dallas public schools, and the length of her teaching career is given as roughly two to nearly three decades. All agree that teaching was her main job for most of her adult life.

Her acting career began almost by accident. While she was reciting a poem in Dallas, actor and director Raymond St. Jacques noticed her and cast her in his 1973 film Book of Numbers. She kept her day job for years afterwards. In 1978 she played the Ewing family’s housekeeper on the CBS series Dallas. She moved into acting full time only in the early-to-mid 1980s, when she was approaching 50.

She seemed to carry that late start lightly. “I always believed I could do whatever I wanted,” she said in a 2001 interview. “I never knew there [were things] I wasn’t supposed to be able to do because I was Black or a woman.” She also joked about her fame. “When I was doing something important like teaching school, nobody came to ask for my autograph,” she once said.

The roles that defined her

National attention came in the mid-1990s. She played the feisty Aunt T. in A Family Thing (1996), which starred Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones. Then came 1997, when she appeared as a root doctor in Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and, more importantly, as the family matriarch in George Tillman Jr.’s Soul Food.

Her character in Soul Food was known as Big Mama or Mama Joe, depending on the account. She held her family together through Sunday dinners, and Hall won an NAACP Image Award for outstanding supporting actress in a motion picture. She reprised the role in the Showtime series that ran from 2000 to 2004. The character also inspired “A Song for Mama,” the Boyz II Men hit written and produced by Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. Hall said fans in Chicago still greeted her as Big Mama and asked for hugs.

Her screen credits include Backdraft, Beloved, Patch Adams, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns. In 2004 she played two very different parts. In the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers, she was Marva Munson, the cantankerous, churchgoing widow who rents a room to a criminal played by Tom Hanks. The performance earned her a special jury prize at Cannes. The same year she played the formidable mother of Jamie Foxx’s character in Michael Mann’s Collateral. Later work included the Sundance TV series Hap and Leonard, where she played the pie-making neighbour Meemaw.

Her career was not without hardship. In January 2004, the Hollywood Reporter notes, she was in a serious car accident during a Chicago snowstorm and needed open-heart surgery to repair a punctured aorta. The following year she was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame, introduced by Joel and Ethan Coen.

A legacy beyond the camera

Outside film, Hall invested in the arts community that had launched her. She helped establish the Dallas Minority Repertory Theatre, and since 2015 the Irma P. Hall Black Theatre Awards, known as “The Irmas,” have honoured excellence in theatre across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She was also church mother at Inspiring Body of Christ church in Dallas and stayed involved in its theatre ministry. “Our beloved Church Mother, Irma P Hall, has taken her final bow on the stage of life and stepped into eternity,” pastor Rickie G Rush said.

Her only daughter, Irma Hall Crayton, summed up her mother’s two careers. “She started as a teacher in the classroom but ended up being a teacher to the world,” she said. She recalled a line her mother often repeated: “To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.”

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Stacy Keach, the American actor who moved between Shakespeare, cult comedy and pulp detective television across a six-decade career, has died at the age of 85. He died on Tuesday at his family home in Magdalenka, Poland, after what his wife described as a long battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure.

In a statement given to The Hollywood Reporter, his wife, the Polish actor Malgosia Tomassi Keach, said he “fought for so long, with extraordinary courage, determination, and strength” and called him “a true warrior.” She also described him as “my beloved husband, my companion, and the heart of our family.” Keach had suffered a heart attack onstage in Chicago in 2017, when he collapsed during a one-man show about Ernest Hemingway and the run was cancelled.

Stacy Keach and the role that defined him

For many viewers, Keach was Mike Hammer, the fedora-wearing private eye created by crime novelist Mickey Spillane. The CBS series ran from 1984 to 1987, and Keach brought the character back in a 1989 TV movie and in a later series, Mike Hammer, Private Eye, in 1997 and 1998. He played Hammer as a kind of modern-day knight, a rumpled champion of the underdog, rather than as a straightforward tough guy.

The role brought him mass popularity, but he never seemed to want a career built on one part. Keach himself acknowledged that his appetite for variety may have cost him. “My choices have had a cost attached to it,” he told New York magazine in 2012. “But I’ve gotten to play Hamlet, and Richard III, and King Lear, and I would not give that up for anything.”

A career with few straight lines

Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1941, Keach was the son of an acting family. His father was the character actor Stacy Keach Sr. He studied English and dramatic art at the University of California, Berkeley, then went to the Yale School of Drama and, as a Fulbright scholar, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Back in New York he built a stage reputation, earning a Tony nomination for playing Buffalo Bill in the 1969 Broadway production of Indians. He also appeared on Broadway opposite Lee J. Cobb in King Lear.

On screen, he worked twice with director John Huston, in Fat City and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. He played a stoner cop in the Cheech and Chong comedies Up in Smoke and Nice Dreams, and a deranged colonel in The Ninth Configuration. He won a Golden Globe for playing Hemingway in the 1988 miniseries, for which he put on 35 pounds. Later credits included American History X, The Bourne Legacy, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and the series Prison Break. His final role was as George Clooney’s bitter father in Jay Kelly.

Theatre honours followed. He won Helen Hayes Awards in 1991 and 1996 for Richard III and Macbeth at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2015 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019. He also worked with his brother, the actor James Keach, who survives him. The two played the James brothers and co-produced the 1980 Western The Long Riders.

The Heathrow arrest and its aftermath

The darkest chapter of the story came in 1984, while Keach was starring in Mike Hammer. He was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport after trying to bring about 1.3 ounces of cocaine into Britain, hidden in an aerosol shaving cream can and elsewhere in his luggage. He was sentenced to nine months and served six at Reading Prison. Reports say he was held in a medium-security facility because authorities worried a more relaxed jail would give reporters too much access.

In his 2013 memoir, All in All: An Actor’s Life On and Off the Stage, he wrote that hearing the sentence felt like being kicked “with lead cleats,” calling it “the lowest moment of my life.” He recalled the experience as lonely and depressing, though he also received supportive letters from stars including Gregory Peck, Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore and Al Pacino. After his release he spoke out against drug dependency, including testifying before the US Congress, and resumed his career, with Hammer returning to screens.

Keach never reached the kind of superstardom his talent might have suggested, and he seemed at peace with that. “If a script interests me, or a character intrigues me, or the cast features someone I’ve always wanted to work with, or the location is somewhere exotic, then sign me up,” he wrote in his memoir. “I’m not going to wait for a call that may or may not come.”

Keach, who was married four times, is survived by his wife, his son Shannon, his daughter Karolina, and his brother James.

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File photo: Stacy Keach “Murder Me, Murder You” (1983 Columbia Pictures Television press photo).jpg by Columbia Pictures Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Coachella 2027 lineup is out, and its top line carries a milestone: Dua Lipa will be the first solo British woman to headline the California festival. She is joined at the top of the bill by Tame Impala and SZA, with passes going on sale on 13 November at 12pm Pacific time.

Who headlines which night

According to Deadline, the festival’s two weekends, 9-11 April and 16-18 April at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, will follow the same pattern. Dua Lipa takes Fridays, Tame Impala has Saturdays and SZA closes out Sundays. Deadline also reports that Daddy Yankee gets a bonus headlining slot in the “In The Desert” area, as does Justice, who will debut “Blinded by the Lights” in the Bunker.

The three main headliners all know the site. Tame Impala, the project of Kevin Parker, topped the bill in 2019 as the festival’s first Australian headliner. SZA appeared as a surprise guest during Justin Bieber’s headline set this year. Dua Lipa made a guest cameo during Martin Garrix’s 2017 set. Lipa and SZA also share a recent history, having both headlined Glastonbury in 2024, where Lipa brought Parker on stage during her Pyramid stage show, according to the BBC.

Madonna, Daddy Yankee and a wide-ranging bill

Below the headliners, the Coachella 2027 lineup leans on nostalgia, global pop and dance music. Madonna returns roughly two decades after her first Coachella appearance. The Guardian describes her as headlining the dance tent, and she also surprised the crowd alongside Sabrina Carpenter this year. Her album Confessions II, a sequel to her 2005 dance record, reached number one in the US and UK, the Guardian reports. The BBC adds that she had been rumoured to be heading to Glastonbury 2027 before organisers ruled it out.

Daddy Yankee makes his Coachella debut. The Independent notes he is due to become the first Latin urbano artist named artist of the year at the Latin Grammys, and that he released the concept album La Postal last month. Also on the bill are Phoebe Bridgers, Weezer, Zara Larsson, Robyn, Kehlani, Don Toliver, Steve Lacy, Måneskin, Four Tet, Underworld and Giorgio Moroder. Diljit Dosanjh returns after his 2023 appearance, when the BBC says he became the first Punjabi-language singer to play the festival.

The international mix is broad, taking in K-pop and K-pop-adjacent names such as Jisoo, NCT and Babymonster, and Becky G and Adéla. British acts include Jorja Smith, EsDeeKid, Shygirl, Lambrini Girls and Chase & Status. The Guardian also points to newer names such as Underscores, Nettspend, After and Tiffany Day.

What the milestone means

The BBC links Lipa’s headline slot to last year’s debate around Charli XCX, who played the main stage before Green Day’s set in 2025 and was photographed in a “Miss Should Be Headliner” sash. Lipa’s booking answers that conversation, though the sources do not suggest the two are directly connected.

The BBC says more than 100,000 fans are expected each day. For those who can’t make it, YouTube returns as livestream partner for both weekends, the 15th year of the arrangement, according to the Guardian. With Lipa, SZA and Parker all reported to have connections to one another, the Coachella 2027 lineup looks like a deliberately familiar lineup, but one that still manages to include a first.

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File photo: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2006 Coachella festival 2006 Coachella 2006 100 2682 (140038081) by Tammy Lo from New York, NY, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Jonathan Ross statement issued on Tuesday night has put one of Britain’s best-known presenters at the centre of a fast-moving row over power and abuse in television. Ross says he is “as horrified by the revelations about David Walliams and the crimes of Russell Brand as the rest of the nation”, and insists that when he was on friendly terms with both men he was “genuinely unaware of their conduct”.

What the Jonathan Ross statement says about the 2004 joke

The statement was prompted by the resurfacing of footage from the 2004 British Comedy Awards. Ross told the audience the awards were 15 years old, “drunk, unpredictable” and “probably going home with David Walliams”. He now describes it as a “deeply shocking” joke to revisit, and a “tasteless” one he “would not dream of making today”.

Ross says the line was supplied by the awards’ scriptwriting team, and that he took the punchline as a reference to Walliams having publicly dated younger women, exaggerated for comic effect. “Had I had any reason to suspect that it might be referring to actual events,” he said, he would have refused to use it and would not have stayed close to Walliams. He added that he would like to think he would have acted on such knowledge. He closed by saying his thoughts were with “the many, many women who have bravely come forward”.

The allegations behind the reaction

Ross’s words came after the Guardian and ITV News published a three-year joint investigation. It reports that several women accuse Walliams, 55, of using his fame and position to pursue young women and teenagers, with some alleging he groomed them when they were as young as 15. The reporting also covers claims of inappropriate behaviour at a publisher and on the set of Britain’s Got Talent. The investigation could be published only after a court rejected Walliams’ attempt to block it through an injunction.

Walliams denies all wrongdoing. In a letter to the journalists, he said he is “not a sexual predator” and has not broken the law. The Metropolitan Police has said it contacted the Guardian and ITV News to make sure any potential victims know how to report criminal allegations, but it has not said it is conducting a criminal investigation.

The timing intensified the story. A day earlier, Russell Brand was jailed for 10-and-a-half years for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. Ross has long been linked to Brand through the 2008 “Sachsgate” scandal, in which the pair left lewd voicemails for the actor Andrew Sachs on a BBC Radio 2 show. An ITV documentary on Walliams also shows Ross in a photograph at an event attended by one of the women who later made allegations. Nothing in the sources suggests Ross is accused of any wrongdoing himself.

Fallout for Walliams and pressure on the industry

The consequences for Walliams’ career have been swift. His literary agency, Independent Talent Group, has dropped him. Sky is exiting its licence for the film Fing!, and the BBC is removing programmes including Little Britain while it reviews all material featuring or written by him. Fremantle UK, the company behind Britain’s Got Talent, said it was “disturbed and concerned”. His Labour membership has been suspended.

Government reaction has gone beyond one individual. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called the claims the “latest in a long line of reported abuses of power” and has summoned senior media figures to “draw a line in the sand”. Media minister Ian Murray told MPs the sector has a “cultural problem” that must change. The prime minister’s spokesperson said every organisation should ask whether it is doing enough to keep people safe and whether staff can raise concerns knowing they will be taken seriously.

The Jonathan Ross statement is unlikely to be the last such response. Allegations against Walliams remain unproven, and he disputes them. But the questions about who knew what, and what they did about it, are now being put to the wider entertainment industry, not just to the men at the centre of the stories.

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File photo: Jonathan Ross by Gage Skidmore 2.jpg by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Duchess of Sussex made her first public appearance on Tuesday since her father was charged with possessing child sexual abuse material. She chose to appear in silence. Meghan accompanied Prince Harry to the European Parliament in Brussels for the opening of the Lost Screen Memorial, but she withdrew from the joint address the couple had been scheduled to give.

A speech planned for two, delivered by one

The couple were originally due to share a rare dual keynote of 15 to 20 minutes on children’s digital safety. Late changes left Harry to deliver the roughly 20-minute address alone. A spokesperson for the duchess said she was travelling with the duke and would accompany him “but will not speak”. A source quoted by the Telegraph said she was “just not strong enough, emotionally, to be doing any public speaking right now.”

Meghan arrived holding her husband’s hand tightly and did not respond to reporters’ questions. Inside, she was seen comforting a bereaved mother who addressed the audience. Harry reportedly asked the woman whether she was all right.

What Harry told the parliament

Harry did not refer directly to his father-in-law’s case. He focused on prevention, saying children should feel safe “at any time, no matter where they are”. He appeared emotional as he urged social media companies to refuse children content they would not show their own.

His sharpest criticism was aimed at tech firms’ privacy policies, which can lock grieving parents out of a dead child’s phone or accounts. “For many parents, even though their child killed themselves, they’ve had to wait years – in some instances, eight years – to get access to their child’s phone,” he said. “That cannot be right.” He added that he was not asking for a world without technology, only that companies answer plainly when asked whether they can keep a child safe.

The memorial and the backdrop

The Lost Screen Memorial is an installation of oversized smartphone-shaped light-boxes. Each shows a lock-screen photograph of a young person whose death is believed to be linked to harm experienced online. It is backed by the couple’s Archewell charity. Harry was also due to join a panel on building a digital future that works for children. Questions were open to the audience but not to the media.

The event came days after Thomas Markle Sr, 82, appeared in a Florida court. He is charged with one count of possession of child pornography and, according to reports, is on home detention with electronic monitoring after being released on bail. Federal agents say they seized material from two Los Angeles storage units he had rented for almost two decades. The inquiry began after his son, Thomas Markle Jr, reported alleged images to police in the Philippines and to the FBI. Markle Sr has previously denied the allegations, calling them “sick lies”. As with any defendant, he is presumed innocent unless a court rules otherwise.

Meghan, who has been estranged from her father since the run-up to her 2018 wedding, has said she is “deeply distressed” by the allegations. She has said she would “absolutely cooperate” with authorities investigating him and would “very much like to”.

Why this appearance matters

Choosing a child-protection event for this first public appearance is striking given the circumstances. The couple’s presence kept the focus on bereaved families and on Harry’s argument about tech accountability, and nothing in the reports suggests the case was addressed from the podium. Meghan’s decision to attend but stay silent shows how she is handling the moment. She is showing up for a cause she has publicly backed while stepping back from the scrutiny of speaking.

File photo: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.jpg by Office of the Governor-General, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize, and in doing so has broken two records at once. At 81, he is the oldest author to take the award, and The End of Everything is the first novel to win it from what the prize’s own chief executive calls “the bona fide SF world”.

Harrison collected the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Monday. The judges’ decision was unanimous, following a full day of debate that chair Mary Beard summed up with a dry understatement: there was “a lot of discussion, disagreement and debate. But nobody stomped off.”

A record-breaking Booker Prize result

The age record is the easier one to measure. Harrison edges past Margaret Atwood, who was 79 when she shared the prize in 2019. The genre milestone is more nuanced. Booker Prize Foundation chief executive Gaby Wood acknowledged that plenty of earlier winners had dabbled in science fiction, but said Harrison is the first to come out of the genre’s own world. She called the result “a historic win”.

For Harrison it is the capstone of a career that began in the mid-1960s. He has published 13 novels, five short story collections and an “anti-memoir”, and spent much of the 1970s running the books pages of the influential magazine New Worlds. That magazine was central to Britain’s “New Wave” of experimental science fiction. This was his first Booker nomination, though he sat on the judging panel in 2022.

What The End of Everything is about

The slim, 198-page novel was the shortest book on the shortlist. It is set on the south-east English coast a few decades from now, years after a catastrophe nobody can properly explain. Its central figures are Tennent, a beachcomber who scrapes a living from strange objects washed up on the shore, and his gun-toting aunt Marnie. Around them loom the iGhetti, vast shape-shifting beings whose origins and intentions are never made clear. Some people flee, violence flares, and others carry on filling the seafront cafés as if little has changed.

That refusal to explain is the point. Harrison has described the book as “a disaster story in which the disaster is the failure to comprehend”, and said he wanted to satirise the modern barrage of information that people lack the tools to analyse. He has also linked it to the collapse of rationality that comes with Trumpism and the internet, and said the aliens parallel the gentrification of places like the south-east coast. Wood noted that the “i” in iGhetti hints at something digital, and described the novel’s landscape as “Large Language Model-dotted”.

Praised, puzzling, and not for everyone

Critics have been far from uniform. The Literary Review called it “a work of uncanny beauty, tender and terrifying in equal parts”, and the Telegraph said reading it felt like dreaming. The New York Times offered a more sceptical note, saying the more we learn about the book’s broken world, “the harder it is to grasp”. Even the Guardian’s admiring reviewer warned that “it won’t be for everyone”.

The judges embraced that difficulty rather than apologising for it. “It’s a challenging read, but some of the best fiction is challenging,” Beard said, adding that it leaves readers with “a twinge of optimism” despite its subject. Wood offered a useful corrective for would-be readers: for all its unsettling mood, it is “a realist book about a strange world, populated by desperate, unmoored characters.”

A shortlist full of heavyweights

Harrison beat five other finalists. They included two former winners, Marlon James, reportedly the bookmakers’ favourite, for The Disappearers, and Douglas Stuart for John of John. The list was completed by Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, Luke Kennard’s Black Bag, and Rebecca Perry’s debut, May We Feed the King. Each shortlisted writer receives £2,500. The judging panel also included Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, Patricia Lockwood, Raymond Antrobus and Rebecca Liu, and agreeing on the shortlist had earlier been described as “to put it mildly, hard work”.

For Harrison, the symbolism may matter as much as the cheque. He has said he spent “40 to 50 years” trying to shift the balance, as both novelist and critic, asking why a well-written work of SF shouldn’t be considered literary fiction. Beard framed the verdict as recognition of “the blindingly obvious, that you find great books in every genre”. Whether the Booker Prize now opens its doors wider to genre writers remains to be seen. But a baffling, beautiful book about the failure to understand has been named the year’s best novel.

File photo: Mohammed Achaari and Rajaa Alem, joint winners of the 2011 Arabic Booker Prize by Peripatetic, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The David Walliams allegations, published on 10 November after a three-year joint investigation by the Guardian and ITV News, have prompted a swift response from broadcasters, his agent and the government. The comedian and author denies any wrongdoing and says he is “not a sexual predator”. He has not been charged with or convicted of any offence.

What the David Walliams allegations say

The investigation reports claims from several women who say Walliams used his fame to pursue them when they were teenagers or young adults. Two say they first met him at 15. One of them describes what she alleges happened at his home as a sexual assault, which he denies. The other says contact began with phone calls and emails about her ambitions as a comedy writer. She says it became sexual when she was 17, and she describes it as grooming.

Other accounts involve women who were 18 or 19 at the time. They describe unwanted advances, including attempts to kiss them and repeated invitations to share his bed. The reports also allege inappropriate behaviour at Britain’s Got Talent, where he was a judge from 2012 to 2022, and at his former publisher HarperCollins. A former HarperCollins staff member said working practices were changed around him and that young women were not sent to his home alone. The reports allege he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee and pursued another.

Walliams’s lawyers have rejected the grooming claims. In some cases he disputes specific events. In one he accepts what he called “a clumsy pass” but says he did not intend to make the woman uncomfortable. He also denies buying the silence of a junior Britain’s Got Talent employee who claimed to have received £300 from him.

His response and the failed injunction

In a letter sent to the journalists months ago, Walliams said he had “behaved thoughtlessly” towards people he had casual sexual relationships with and regretted not taking their feelings into account. He added that abusing a power imbalance was “something that I never did”, and that he was “devastated” that some women had expressed hurt or anger.

He had tried to stop publication through the High Court. Reports say the bid cited the risk to his own life, after two previous suicide attempts. Mr Justice Nicklin refused it, saying an injunction would be an “exceptionally serious interference” with freedom of expression. The Guardian published the day after the deadline to appeal passed, and ITV put its documentary Power and Silence on YouTube ahead of its broadcast on ITV1.

Fallout across TV, publishing and politics

The professional consequences came within hours. Independent Talent Group, his long-time literary agent, confirmed it had dropped him. The BBC called the allegations “serious” and removed Little Britain, the sketch show that made him famous, from iPlayer. Sky said it was dropping an adaptation of his fantasy book Fing! and had already removed content featuring him from its platforms.

HarperCollins had already ended its relationship with him. Reports date that decision to December 2025, and the publisher said it takes “the safety of our people incredibly seriously”. Fremantle, which makes Britain’s Got Talent, said it was “disturbed and concerned” but that no complaint about his behaviour had ever been made to it. Walliams has had his Labour Party membership suspended, and Downing Street called the claims “deeply troubling”.

The Metropolitan Police said it had contacted the Guardian and ITV News to make sure any potential victims know how to report criminal allegations. That is a step towards possible reporting, not an announcement of an investigation.

The significance of the David Walliams allegations goes beyond one entertainer. Walliams has sold more than 60 million books worldwide, and his work spans children’s publishing, television and film. The reaction so far has been commercial and institutional rather than legal. Whether any claim reaches the police or a court remains to be seen, and Walliams’s denials stand until then.

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File photo: David Walliams (6745348487).jpg by Sean Reynolds from Liverpool, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.