‘No, thank you for talking to me,’ says a beaming Phil Ellis. 

It’s impossible not to match Phil’s bounce in our interview, with his contagious grins and chortles. This energy – not to mention his natural funny bones – is what’s sailed him through 20 years of being the ultimate comedian’s comedian. 

He’s won the awards, critical acclaim, and a stellar reputation as one of the nicest guys in comedy. It was only last year, backstage at a particularly laborious gig, that he got a call which changed his career forever. 

Phil, 44, was gigging at a festival, where the audience was just a 10th of a 2000-person space. Ouch. Backstage, a fellow comedian asked him why he’s never been on Taskmaster. 

‘I said, “Well there’s so many comedians, it’s a big queue isn’t it? They’re not going to get me on, no one knows who I am,”’ he remembers. 

‘I went out to the tent, and there were 12 audience members. I was hosting it, so I was trying to get an atmosphere going. I asked the audience if they wanted to move forward, because they were all at the back. They went, “No, we’re alright,”’ Phil laughs. ‘There was a gap of like a mile.’ 

In his break from hosting, Phil pondered that after 20 years, he thought he might have moved past these experiences by now. Then his agent rang.

‘It was an invitation for Taskmaster,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t believe it, and you couldn’t tell anyone, so I just had to go back out and carry on. I couldn’t even tell the person who asked earlier why I wasn’t on it.’ 

Phil’s work and life changed in a few salient ways after his appearance in series 20 in September last year alongside SNL’s Ania Magliano, Maisie Adam, Reece Shearsmith, and Sanjeev Bhaskar. 

‘Firstly, the gigs I get now, I’m not worried about what I’m turning up to. They are so well run and wonderful. It opened the door to those. But the main thing is I’ve always loved my shows, and been really proud of them, and I’ve just always wanted to show them to more people.’ 

Pre-Taskmaster, Phil would take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe, and successfully so: he’d always have bums on seats unless it was a bad show. (I’m told not to look into 2017). 

But his shows’ lives would begin and end in Edinburgh. ‘I couldn’t tour it because I didn’t have an audience to tour it to,’ Phil says. 

Fast forward 12 years from when Phil’s Fun and Gamez won the Edinburgh Comedy Awards’ Panel Prize in 2014, his current show Bath Mat is the subject of his first full national stand-up tour. Many dates in his run are already sold out. 

‘I can actually go out and perform to like 500 people a night in some venues, which I’d never have dreamed of before, and they’re all for you, which I find insane,’ Phil says, having become used to rocking up in random towns to perform poorly paid gigs.  

He continues: ‘It’s nice to be the comedians’ comedian. But you do also need to live.’ 

Being recognised is a lovely adjustment, too, which Phil keeps on forgetting is his reality. He’s had a few memorable moments with fans over the last few months. 

One time, Phil was going to the toilet on a train when a young girl asked, “Are you Phil Ellis?” He said, “Yes, I am”. 

‘Then the lady came out of the toilet after me and just went, “He won’t flush that one,”’ the comedian says, laughing at the memory. 

But it’s not all just funny. Phil finds the newfound fan interactions touching, too. 

‘Once you pay for your tickets and your travel, maybe babysitters and a meal, I just want to make sure [my audiences] have the best night possible,’ Phil says. ‘Then they want to spend an hour afterwards doing autographs and things. It’s just amazing. I never thought it’d be like this. It’s moving.’  

Another Taskmaster plus was that Phil was gifted a hair transplant in January after talking in a podcast about seeing a bird’s-eye-view of his not-so-luscious locks on the Channel 4 show.  

‘I’d never been that insecure about my hair, to be honest,’ Phil laughs. ‘It’s been thinning for so long, it was so gradual. I was quite lucky really, it suited me, a receding hairline. But it took 20 years, and then I went, “Right, I’m definitely going now mate.”’ 

Phil had to choose where he wanted his hairline to start. Naturally, he brought in a photo of Jude Law, and said he liked his hairline receding, akin to the Hollywood heartthrob. It became apparent that such a hairline might not have the same effect on Phil, so he compromised with the kindly doctor. 

‘This is a very different man,’ Phil laughs. He gestures to his head. ‘It’s so weird because if I showed you a picture of my hair six months ago, this is insane, like so much thicker.’ 

While there’s still ‘a lot of work’ to do on Phil’s mop, the change has given him ‘a bit more confidence’. 

‘I’d made peace with it, but even now I look at it and go, “This is so much nicer,”’ he says. ‘I never want to encourage anyone to feel the need to do it, because I like people to feel comfortable how they are anyway. But equally, you should never be discouraged to do something that might make you feel better.’ 

He’s done Taskmaster. He’s had a hair transplant. What’s next for Phil Ellis? Will he strive for further TV appearances, or take a step back, as Phil puts it, like Homer Simpson into a bush? 

‘I only got into stand-up because I wanted to write a sitcom, so I’d like to do that,’ Phil says. 

Fans will be glad to hear he shall not be backing into the bush any time soon. 

‘It’s nice to say you’re the guy on the edge of a comedy,’ he says. ‘But it’s also quite nice to be in the tent with everyone else, and not looking in going, “Hey, what’s it like in here, guys? You got free drinks?”’ 

Phil Ellis: Bath Mat is showing throughout August at the Edinburgh Fringe at the Monkey Barrel venue at 1.55pm, and in Pleasance Courtyard on selected dates at 9.30pm. Get tickets here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/phil-ellis-bath-mat 

He is touring the show throughout the rest of 2026 into 2027. Get tickets here: https://www.philelliscomedy.com/ 

Narcan was found in the apartment where Hayden Panettiere died, it was reported, after the Heroes actress suffered an apparent overdose at the age of just 36.

The nasal spray, which is used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, was found on a mattress in a loft apartment Panettiere was staying in when she died Sunday, TMZ reported.

It is still unclear if that Narcan had been used to try and revive Panettiere, although 911 audio obtained earlier on Monday revealed that the actress had gone into cardiac arrest following a suspected overdose. 

On Monday, Greenville County Sheriff’s Office said that Panettiere’s autopsy had been completed and that no signs of trauma were found on the star’s body. 

Further investigations will now take place to establish her cause of death, with Chief Deputy Coroner Shelton England telling the Daily Mail that it was too early to discuss the drug overdose theory. 

Meanwhile, a neighbor has spoken of the chaos that unfolded at the scene Sunday after Panettiere was found unresponsive and efforts to revive her proved unsuccessful.  

Micah Lee, who lives in the Judson Mill Lofts complex where Panettiere died, claimed there was a ‘bunch of commotion in the hallway’ after the star allegedly ‘collapsed’ in a unit in the building.

‘The halls are pretty hollow, so noise echoes throughout. And I had just heard about someone collapsing,’ Lee told WYFF. ‘And then afterwards there was talk about cardiac arrest. I can’t confirm any of that. That’s just what I’ve heard.’ 

In an audio of a 911 call made at 1.51pm Sunday, a female dispatcher described the actress as suffering a ‘cardiac arrest.’

A few moments later, a male dispatcher could be heard saying that Panettiere had suffered a suspected overdose at the home.

The actress – who was due to turn 37 this Friday – was pronounced dead at the scene at 2.32pm, just over 40 minutes after the first 911 call was made.

The Greenville County Coroner’s Office has completed the star’s autopsy, with the coroner telling the Daily Mail that ‘no signs of trauma were discovered that would have contributed to the death.’

The cause and exact manner of her death remain under investigation. 

The actress was found dead at the Judson Mill Lofts in Greenville, South Carolina, on Sunday

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Panettiere died at Judson Mill Lofts, an apartment block in Greenville, South Carolina

Police and the medical examiner are investigating her death, but say the preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances.

Panettiere was found ‘unresponsive inside the residence, where she had been temporarily staying,’ the coroner said in a statement.

Investigators will carry out additional studies as they continue to work the case, the coroner’s statement said.

Micah Lee, who reportedly lives in the complex, claimed there was a ‘bunch of commotion in the hallway’ after the star allegedly ‘collapsed’ in a unit in the building

Panettiere and her on-off real estate agent boyfriend Brian Hickerson were said to have flown from Los Angeles to South Carolina one day before she died. 

Hickerson is originally from Greenville, public records show. It is unclear if the couple were in town to visit his family.

Panettiere’s Nashville co-star Charles Esten also performed at The Foundry, a music venue inside the complex, on Friday night as part of his Carolina Tour. 

Judson Mill Lofts is a former textile mill dating back to 1912, which was recently converted into apartments. These include studios and three-bedroom homes that can be rented from $1,295 to $3,485 a month. 

Earlier, a representative for Panettiere confirmed her death, saying her family would remember her as an ‘incredible light’ who brought ‘immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her’.

A statement from her father, Skip, read: ‘It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden.

‘She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her – and to the millions who watched her onscreen.’

Her father also asked that her family be given privacy as they ‘take time to process this unimaginable loss’.

Panettiere with her on-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson in Los Angeles in 2018. The couple had reportedly travelled to Greenville, where Hickerson is from, together

The actress had a history of suffering from drug addiction, beginning when she was just 15 years old. At the time, she claimed she started taking ‘happy pills’ in an effort to make her seem more ‘peppy’ during interviews.

Her addiction worsened while she was battling postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter Kaya in 2014. 

But Panettiere has been sober in recent years, she said in a 2022 interview, noting that ‘it’s an everyday battle.’

‘It’s an everyday choice, and I’m checking in with myself all the time,’ Panettiere told People at the time. ‘But I’m just so grateful to be part of this world again, and I will never take it for granted again.’

Panettiere has also told how she nearly died during childbirth, and later gave full custody of Kaya to her former fiancé, Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko.

Kaya, now 11, lives in Europe with her father. 

Speaking of the decision, Panettiere said she ‘desperately’ needed help at the time and insisted that Kaya does not feel ‘abandoned’ while appearing in a recent episode of the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast.

‘The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be okay with it is heartbreaking. Couldn’t be further from the truth,’ the actress said.

‘I was struggling with mental health and anxiety and postpartum and having to act my way through it, and just feeling like I completely lost myself,’ she added. 

Panettiere leaves behind an 11-year-old daughter with ex, Wladimir Klitschko

Hayden Panettiere has tragically died at the age of 36. Her cause of death was not immediately clear. The Hollywood star is pictured here at the Emmy Awards in 2012

The actress shared how she struggled with the decision to give Klitschko full custody.

‘It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, nor was it a decision I even wanted to make,’ she said.

‘I was going through a really challenging time in my life… I knew I needed to be able to put her first so that I could get the help I needed and be the mum she needed me to be.’

After giving birth to her daughter in 2014, Panettiere recalled hemorrhaging before she underwent seven blood transfusions and surgery to repair vessels that had begun to fail.

She said, ‘I closed my eyes and just prayed for my daughter to be OK. I truly was ready to go if it was my time. Kaya being safe and healthy was all that mattered.’

However, days later, she recalled feeling ‘nothing’ when looking at her daughter and developed postnatal depression. The actress then turned to drinking.

She said. ‘I turned to wine, which ultimately ended up leading to an alcohol dependency. It was how I would get through each day.’

Although she underwent treatment, Panettiere felt the ‘root cause’ of her drinking, the depression, was not addressed.

‘I wish more people had known what it was at the time. Maybe I wouldn’t have waited so long to get help,’ she said. 

Panettiere is remembered for her role as Claire Bennet on the hit NBC series Heroes

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She played Juliette Barnes on the ABC show Nashville, releasing a number of her own songs

Six years on from giving up custody, Panettiere spoke about her current relationship with her daughter. 

She said: ‘I love my daughter, and I’m so proud of the young woman she is becoming. I talk to her all the time, and I feel so connected to her. She’s like a mini-me.’

The actress went on to say she had ‘been able to put her first no matter how I’ve felt or what I’ve experienced’ and that she hoped that one day Kaya would ‘understand my story and why I wasn’t able to be with her all the time’.

She then called herself ‘resilient’ and a ‘work in progress’, but that she was ‘doing the work…and doing my best’.

In May, Panettiere released her memoir titled This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she also detailed being separated from her only child.

‘Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life, and it’s hard to describe the layers of emotion – including sadness, resentment, and anger – I’ve felt because of it,’ she wrote.

‘I grieve that I’m not the mother I thought I’d be and definitely not the mother I want to be (trust me, no one should ever have to raise a child on FaceTime), and although I miss Kaya so much my heart aches, I know how blessed I am to be her mom.

‘She is the greatest gift of my life, with all the best parts of her father and me.’

Cannibalism is one of the biggest taboos throughout history. The idea of eating one of your own species tends to fill people with disgust and horror.

Yet, cannibalism has happened for many reasons, including warfare and religious rituals. Reports of cannibalism are particularly prevalent in times of scarcity, such as Jamestown in Virginia in the 17th century, where remains of at least one person who may have been butchered have been identified.

Looking at stories about cannibalism during famines can tell us about how people retell stories over the centuries and what people thought their fellow man was capable of.

The most famous Scottish cannibal was Sawney Bean, purportedly a 16th-century man who, with his wife and children, killed travellers and ate them on the Ayrshire coast. It was only after one traveller escaped and raised the alarm that the king sent an army to arrest and execute them.

The only problem with this story is that Sawney Bean is first mentioned in English stories from the 18th century. Despite the purported thousands who were eaten over many decades, no source mentions an epidemic of missing persons. The word “Sawney” was a derogatory term for a Scot at that time and the whole tale may have been an invention.

The tale of Christie Cleek

Centuries earlier, Scottish chroniclers speak of another cannibal from Scotland – Christie Cleek from Perth. In 1339, Cleek was said to have set up traps to capture women and children, whom he subsequently killed and ate.

We know very little about Cleek. No reference to him survives from the years he was supposedly active. The name “Cleek” comes from an old Scots word for a metal hook which some stories suggest he used to drag his victims off of their horses.

The first reference we have to Cleek is decades later by the early 15th-century chronicler Andrew of Wyntoun. In this tale, Cleek was a low-born rustic who captured “children and women” and “ate them up”. We know of at least one chronicle that existed around the time of Cleek’s actions which is now lost and may well have recorded the original tale.

As time went on, further details were added to the legend. A few decades later, another chronicler, Walter Bower, spoke about how Cleek was joined in his actions by his “fierce woman”, though there is no hint if they were married. It was also said that Cleek and his partner were eventually arrested, given over to the local justices and “put to an ignominious death”.

Over the centuries, more details were added to the legend. Cleek gained an occupation: he was apparently a butcher rather than a low-level rustic. There is some logic to this since he may have had the relevant knives to carve up his victims. Yet, the earliest sources make no mention of an occupation, so any reference to him as a butcher is an educated guess. His elevation up the social scale is seen in a 19th-century tale which said he was a married and prosperous merchant from Dumfries and that for a century merely mentioning his name “was sufficient to silence noisy children”.

In the 19th century, Cleek’s story was sanitised. Wilson’s Book of Border Tales speaks about how Cleek had become the leader of a group of hunters who, during a famine, had either killed all of the nearby animals or had caused them to flee. They resorted to cannibalism after being driven to eat one woman who starved to death, and then another woman after drawing lots. After that they started to hunt humans. This led to their eventual arrest when a government force was sent to arrest them, which is reminiscent of the arrest of the legendary figure Sawney Bean. The tale is one of people driven to desperation.

Cleek’s tale has been embellished and changed over the centuries. This is pretty normal since stories are always tweaked or reinterpreted by new generations. But did he actually exist? In truth, it is impossible to say – there is very little evidence of the man or his actions that can be verified.

An interesting point about the story is that Cleek apparently started this during a time of famine in the later 1330s. The medieval chroniclers say that many Scots were driven to eating unnatural things like dogs and grass. Such tales, including those of cannibalism, were common across medieval Europe, though with all of them it is difficult to assess whether or not they were true. Times were no doubt hard and the possibility of people being driven to cannibalism is possible.

Tales of cannibalism have always grabbed people’s attention. The famine conditions in Scotland in the later 1330s no doubt trigger survival instincts that drove people to eat things they would normally find repulsive.

We can never know if Cleek was real or not. What we do know is that people believed hunger and famine could drive people to committing one of the ultimate taboos.

QUSRA, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian American whose home in the occupied West Bank has been besieged by Israeli settlers for over a week traveled to his property on Monday to join other family members who have been defending it.

The standoff, in the village of Qusra, has seen groups of settlers surround several Palestinian houses and prevent residents from leaving. The United States has condemned the siege and the Israeli military has deployed troops it says are there to maintain order.

The siege of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers comes as violence in the West Bank has soared in recent months. The settlers, emboldened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, have ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, harassing residents and setting homes, mosques and fields ablaze.

As Loui Ridi, an Ohio-based owner of one of the houses, landed in Israel, settlers were still roaming near Qusra, according to video footage taken by his brother. It showed them driving ATVs and speaking to soldiers.

“I’m terrified for my brother and his son and their safety,” Ridi told reporters at Israel’s main international airport. “And now I’m going to have to fear for my own safety.”

Ridi arrived in Qusra late Monday night.

As he waited for Israel’s military to escort him to his home on the village’s outskirts, Ridi said little had changed since early last week, when the siege began. His brother’s footage still showed the soldiers interacting amicably with settlers in Qusra rather than arresting them.

When Ridi finally reached his home, he was greeted by his brother and teenage nephew, who have stayed inside to protect the property from the settlers. He exited his car carrying an American flag while settlers were still visible from the home’s security cameras.

The village is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Nablus. Israel declared the neighborhood where Ridi’s home is located a closed military zone last week.

According to Palestinian health officials, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 87 Palestinians so far this year. Palestinians have killed three Israelis, including two who were killed in the West Bank village of Tell last month.

__ Metz reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Continuous glucose monitors have transformed life for many people with type 1 diabetes. Instead of relying on finger-prick blood tests throughout the day, users can track their blood sugar levels almost continuously. This allows them to receive alerts via a smartphone when levels become too high or too low and spot patterns that help them better manage their condition.

But the latest research from my colleagues and I has uncovered a little-known blind spot. During the most extreme high and low blood sugar episodes, these devices cannot tell users exactly how severe those events are. While this limitation doesn’t affect the standard measures doctors use to assess diabetes management, it does mean that some important information is lost when blood sugar moves beyond the monitor’s measurement range.

Continuous glucose monitors are small sensors, usually worn on the upper arm, that measure glucose levels every few minutes and send the results to a smartphone app. They have revolutionised diabetes care over the past decade by giving people a much clearer picture of how their blood sugar responds to meals, exercise, sleep and insulin.

Like every scientific instrument, however, they have limits. They can only measure blood sugar within a fixed range. If blood sugar rises or falls beyond that range, the sensor can tell you that levels are extremely high or extremely low, but it can no longer say exactly how high or how low they are.

A useful comparison is a kitchen thermometer that only measures up to 100°C. Once the temperature exceeds that point, the thermometer can tell you it is at least 100°C, but not whether it is 120°C or 180°C. Continuous glucose monitors work in much the same way when glucose moves beyond their measurement range.

What we found

To find out how often this actually happens, we analysed nearly 47 million publicly available continuous glucose monitor readings from 948 people with type 1 diabetes across four large international clinical trials.

Between 93.5% and 100% of participants across the four studies experienced at least one reading that reached the upper or lower measurement limit. In other words, this is something that affects almost everyone with type 1 diabetes who uses these devices over a period of time.

The pattern was particularly striking for high glucose levels. In three of the four studies, more than one-third of these episodes remained at the upper measurement limit for at least an hour. The longest episode for a typical participant lasted between two and three hours. Throughout these periods, the monitor could confirm that blood sugar was extremely high, but it couldn’t distinguish between levels just above its limit and those that were substantially higher.

The pattern wasn’t evenly distributed either. Younger people experienced upper-limit readings more frequently than older adults. This reflects what we already know about the challenges of managing blood sugar during adolescence.

We also found that people with higher HbA1c levels (a blood test that reflects average blood sugar over the previous two to three months) were much more likely to reach the monitor’s measurement limits. In simple terms, those who already struggle most to manage their diabetes are also the people most likely to encounter this hidden limitation.

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Reassuringly, this limitation doesn’t appear to undermine the figures that doctors rely on in everyday diabetes care. We compared continuous glucose monitor readings with simultaneous finger-prick blood glucose measurements.

We found that even when sensors regularly reached their measurement limits, the standard summary measures used in clinical practice remained remarkably robust. Metrics such as average glucose levels, glucose variability and time in range (the proportion of the day spent within the target glucose range) were largely unaffected.

That is probably because, even among participants with relatively frequent glucose readings that meet or exceed measurement limits, most readings still fell comfortably within the sensor’s measurable range. So, the main consequence is not inaccurate summary statistics, but a loss of detail during the most extreme glucose events. We know glucose is very high or very low, but we cannot tell exactly how high or how low.

What should change?

Current smartphone apps and web-based software summarise glucose data in many different ways. But they never explicitly state that a sensor has reached its measurement limits, how often this happened or how long it lasted.

Adding that information would need only a relatively small change to existing software. But that could help doctors and researchers identify the people for whom this blind spot is most relevant and interpret glucose data with greater confidence.

Continuous glucose monitors remain one of the most important advances in diabetes care. Our findings shouldn’t discourage anyone from using them. Every scientific instrument has a measurement range. Understanding those limits helps us make better use of the information it provides. Recognising when a glucose sensor has reached the edge of what it can reliably measure is another step towards making an already transformative technology even more useful.