Bernie Taupin has an interesting take on the strange brand of fame he enjoys. “I am,” he says, “what I call the credit card guy.” I’m sorry? You’re the what? “The credit card guy. I go somewhere, like a shop or a restaurant, and it’s fine. I can be me, no one notices. Then I pay with my credit card and they see the name and go” – he lets out a mock gasp – “‘You’re that guy!’ And I’m the luckiest man in the world in regards to that. I absolutely, positively, 100% love my anonymity, the fact I can walk down the street. I mean, even my contemporaries, people I know – I find I have to introduce myself to them. I was at the Americanafest in Nashville recently and Robert Plant was playing. I hadn’t seen him in years and he said he wanted to meet up. So I walked towards him and there’s that look: ‘Oh God, who the hell’s this?’ ‘Hey, Robert, it’s Bernie!’ ‘Oh my gosh!’ And the next night, we had dinner together.”

It’s a neat summation of the curious situation Taupin finds himself in. He is half of one of the most successful songwriting partnerships in history: not all the songs on the 300m records Elton John has sold feature Taupin’s lyrics, but the vast majority do. Furthermore, Taupin has never been an invisible presence in the duo. There’s a photo of him on the sleeve of virtually all of John’s most famous albums: on 1975’s Rock of the Westies, he’s resplendent in a quite extraordinary pair of fringed leather chaps and a shirt open to the navel.

Fill the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9.

My father suffers from terminal renal failure and relies on a highly specific dialysis machine every night to survive. British Airways’ check-in staff twice insisted on checking this fragile 20kg lifeline into the aircraft hold where it was first damaged, then lost.

When his outbound flight arrived at Heathrow, it was returned broken resulting in a frantic search for a loan unit and hours spent in A&E so my father’s blood could be monitored. On the return flight to Rome, the machine could not be found. My parents waited until 2am before being told to go home without the equipment that keeps my father alive.

A doctor with a fully qualified moustache races up a carriageway towards an immaculate stately home. “I fear we should have sent for you sooner!” says the lady who greets him on the doorstep as the screams of a woman in drug-free labour rattle the windows in their frames. Oh, ya think? is not Dr Moustache’s reply.

When this many cliches assemble so quickly, it can only mean one thing: Brownstone Abbey – AKA Julian Fellowes’ Revenge, AKA What Did We Do to Deserve This?, AKA The Gilded Age if you insist on its official title – is back for a fourth and, no one has said let alone promised, final season.

• The best beauty Advent calendars

In the 70s and 80s Essex of my youth, no one had a real Christmas tree unless they lived in the country, or perhaps Loughton. Our family’s skinny artificial tree is now 55 years old and comes out every year at my sister’s. It’s shed a few plastic “needles” down the years, but it’s still standing proud – which is more than you can say for a real Christmas tree bought in 1971, or even 2025.

I joined Core Design in the summer of 1994 and met Toby Gard, who showed me his concept sketches for Tomb Raider. He’d already come up with the title and drawn a mock-up box cover with a woman holding two pistols.

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Your debut album Ashanti turns 25 next year and you’re in the process of re-recording it. How do you feel about that album now?

We are rerecording it so I will own my masters. Sonically, it will be a lot clearer. It was 25 years ago so it’ll sound a little more new, obviously, but with the same classic vibe. I’m very excited. What I’ve learned is that I’m just really grateful to have written records that stand the test of time. Foolish is turning 25! That I can still go to an arena and hold the mic in the air and hear everyone sing those lyrics is a beautiful feeling. And a blessing.

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There’s a startling moment in this BBC refugee documentary when Syrian mother Nisreen – in the apparently miserable situation of hiking across the Balkans towards Germany, four kids in tow – suddenly explodes with joy. “This is the best holiday I’ve ever had! It’s an amazing adventure. Now I have the chance to walk in the rain – I love it!” Shunted off early into an arranged marriage, never having left Syria until forced out of Aleppo by the civil war, for Nisreen this running jump into the unknown represents total liberation.

Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’ superb, forthright and highly moving film bypasses the usual refugee dichotomies, that they’re either external threats or history’s victims. Instead of flat abstractions, we get the knotty reality. Focused over a 10-year period from 2015 to 2025 principally on Nisreen’s eldest daughter Israa, it presents an intimate chronicle of how geographical displacement and cultural dislocation reshape families and lives from the inside.

Some cities take on that extra sparkle in winter offering a warm welcome as temperatures drop and nights draw in. We want to know your favourite city in Europe to visit at this time of year and what makes it special. Perhaps it’s somewhere with an atmospheric old town and plentiful cosy cafes. Maybe you discovered somewhere with particularly fabulous shopping that merits a pre-Christmas trip, or perhaps you found a city that impressed with its fun winter activities, from ice skating to snowy walks.

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

Popular in Puglia, assassin’s spaghetti is a rich and punchy dish that I just can’t get enough of. Unlike more familiar pasta recipes, the dried spaghetti is cooked in the sauce itself, and slowly “fed” hot broth, a bit like a risotto. Here, I’ve added sun-dried tomatoes for extra bite and bit of sweetness, and I’ve left the chilli level open, depending on your tolerance – one chilli is just warm, two is my own preference. You could finish with some parmesan, but it really doesn’t need it – there is so much flavour in this dish already.

At the centre of Tate St Ives’ newly opened retrospective of the British modernist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, her monumental altar-piece Glacier (Blue Cave) pulls viewers into its frozen tendons of turquoise and white. Its mouth is agape and the blue slit of its eye casts downwards to the rest of its body. The glacier feels human: a vivisection of rock, ice and snow that brings to mind the fragmented facial features of Picasso’s Weeping Woman.

Standing in front of this glassy colossus, the exhibition’s curator, Katy Norris, talks about these “mangled” and “twisted” forms – so alive on the canvas. “Barns-Graham was so distinct in her approach,” Norris says. “There are always questions of: what am I seeing? What is in front of me really? And how does that relate to what I feel inside?”

• Crossings by Laura Pannack is available now

Taika Waititi has launched a furious broadside at “critics” following the disastrous commercial performance of Klara and the Sun, his new film adapted from a Kazuo Ishiguro novel.

In a post on social media, Waititi wrote: “This Halloween, let’s spare a thought for those sad lost souls who couldn’t achieve their dreams of becoming artists, and thus settled, and became critics.”

Steve Ellis, the singer who found fame as the frontman of 60s pop-rockers Love Affair, has died aged 76. A message on social media announced that Ellis died “peacefully” on 30 October, after “complications from a chronic illness”.

With his stirring, heartfelt croon, Ellis gave voice to one of the most enduring hits of the 1960s: Everlasting Love, which topped the UK chart in 1968.

As it hurtles away from Earth – 16bn miles and counting – the Golden Record on board the Voyager spacecraft continues to fascinate us. Caroline Shaw’s The Listeners – written for San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque in 2019 and here receiving its London premiere from the BBCSO as part of Shaw’s Barbican residency – features one of its tracks: spoken greetings in 55 languages. Heard via record player, these resonate through the hall while Shaw’s music forms haltingly underneath, from a pulsing keyboard note to briefly sweeping choral phrases. At times, the music almost eclipses the speech – which somehow emphasises its wonder. Later, Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” speech is heard, this time unadorned, via cassette player.

Using a wordless choir to express wonderment is a cliche that Shaw skirts deftly, her harmonies avoiding sentimentality even though they often feel simple. Lasting 35 minutes and styled like a miniature classical oratorio, The Listeners starts and ends with movements that grow from a wordless lullaby, sung here hauntingly by the mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean. There’s a prominent role for keyboard; a harpsichord at the premiere, but an electric piano here, lending the whole thing an aptly Tomorrow’s World feel reinforced by the sight of the audio hardware on a table at the front. A baroque-style orchestral interlude conjures interstellar velocity; as for the texts Shaw sets to music, these include poetry by Whitman and Tennyson along with a striking 2017 meditation on the arbitrariness of borders by Yesenia Montilla.

It is September 2009. Barack Obama is settling into the White House. The global economy is hauling itself gingerly out of the financial crisis. And Keisha has just left the Sugababes.

But more importantly, I am on a first date.

Mac Jones may be able to deliver a strike with a 300-pound defensive lineman about to hit him, but the Pro Bowler can’t handle seafood. Or coffee.

Jones, 28, is single and was asked about his biggest dating red flags. Claire Kittle, wife of San Francisco 49ers star tight end George Kittle, answered for him.

"You don’t eat seafood!" Kittle said during an episode of "The Kittle Things." "Oh, and you don’t drink coffee. That one might be worse."

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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Mac Jones warms up before the start of the first quarter against the Washington Commanders at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Oct. 19, 2026. (Stan Szeto/Stan Szeto-Image of Sport/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect)

Jones agreed with Kittle’s assessment.

"Yeah. I’d say that those are probably my two biggest ones," Jones said on "The Kittle Things."

The 49ers backup quarterback joked that he would ask for the kids’ menu at a seafood restaurant. Jones said he has recently gotten back into the dating game and offered some advice for anyone interested.

"Don’t go to a seafood spot with me," Jones said.

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George Kittle and Claire Kittle walk the red carpet at NFL Honors at Symphony Hall at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. (PA Images via Getty Images)

As for Jones’ green flags? The Kittles pointed to his personality.

"I would obviously say his personality. Everyone loves that," Claire said.

"His positivity would be my biggest green flag. Even when you’re hurting, you still got a smile on your face and a love of life," George said.

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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Mac Jones reacts during the second half of an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, in Inglewood, California. (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Claire praised Jones for maintaining a positive attitude during difficult stretches of the season, such as when the team deals with injuries or consecutive losses.

The 49ers have certainly dealt with their fair share of injuries this season, but they have managed to overcome them and are 6-1 and atop the NFC West. With starting quarterback Brock Purdy healthy, Jones has appeared in just one game this season, entering after the 49ers had already put the game out of reach.

The 49ers have a bye this week.

Video above: See the week's top headlines in Tampa Bay

PALM COAST, Fla. (WFLA)— An American Airlines flight attendant is accused of using her travel benefits and defrauding a 75-year-old Florida woman as part of a sweepstakes scheme.

Destiny Blake, 24, of Brooklyn, New York, was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Miami on Friday after an investigation revealed she took around $23,000 from a 75-year-old Palm Coast woman.

In November 2025, a caller, who claimed to be with Publishers Clearing House, told the victim she had won and to collect her "winnings."

The victim was then instructed to mail a $500 gift card to "Destiny Blake" at a Brooklyn address, which she did, deputies said.

During this time, the victim was also locked out of her email address, and the password was changed, and the account had been switched to a look-alike address that she never created.

According to deputies, between Nov. 15 and Nov. 19, 2025, the victim withdrew $14,000 from her bank, and Blake received $14,220 in cash and Zelle payments.

On Nov. 18, Blake flew from New York to Daytona Beach as a standby passenger using her flight attendant benefits and then took an Uber to a hotel in Palm Coast.

The next morning, Blake was dropped off at the victim's home just before 11 a.m. and 15 minutes later, an Uber picked her up and took her back to the Daytona Beach airport.

According to FCSO, before Blake flew home, purchases were made on the victim's credit card at the Daytona Beach airport and Charlotte airport.

Detectives have determined that Blake was issued her own Apple Card and was an authorized user on the victim's account.

Deputies said a family member later found a note in the victim's home with instructions to call the card company and tell them Blake was her granddaughter and was authorized to use the card.

Between Nov. 16 and Dec. 11, 2025, 88 total charges that totaled to $11,590.30 were charged to the victim's credit card, which included a $1,740.91 eBay order shipped to Blake, a $1,523.16 spent on Apple products and more than $1,300 spent at T-Mobile, Ugg, a hair salon, and dozens of Uber rides and Uber Eats orders.

FCSO said one of the Uber rides was paid in Jamaican dollars in Kingston, two days after Blake flew there while working for the airline.

In total, the victim lost around $23,310.

An arrest warrant was obtained for Blake on Oct. 16, 2026, for the thefts and fraudulent charges.

"Most flight attendants use their benefits to see the world. Blake used her's to further a scam against a senior resident, live a lavish lifestyle using stolen bank cards and thinking she could get away with it," said Sheriff Rick Staly. "Her wings were clipped by our detectives and with the help of CPB she was arrested. Her next trip? Flagler County to be held accountable for her crimes."

Blake was arrested for organized scheme to defraud of $20,000 from a victim 65 or older, fraudulent use of personal identification information of a person 60 or older, and grand theft over $20,000, Flagler County deputies said.

Blake was taken to the Miami-Dade County Jail, where she was later released on a $30,000 bond.

The Flagler County Sheriff's Office released the following ways to help elderly victims:

• Suspected financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult can be reported to the Florida Abuse Hotline at 1-800-962-2873 or the U.S. Department of Justice National Elder Fraud Hotline at 1-833-372-8311

FCSO encourages anyone who believes they were targeted in a similar scam or had financial contact with Blake to call the sheriff's office at 386-313-4911.

WFLA News Channel 8 reached out to American Airlines for a statement.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA.

Ahead of production on their first job together, Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney didn’t undergo the standard “chemistry read” to make sure they got on. Which is remarkable, given what their characters would have to do to each other in Onwards and Sideways.

In the Norfolk-set BBC film directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Ifans would have to nearly throttle Linney while in the grip of night terrors, she’d have to collapse in his arms in a weeping mess having bankrupted herself with a gambling addiction; both situations arising from the neurological condition afflicting their characters: Parkinson’s disease.

Laura Kuenssberg always swore she would never write a book. Amid all the vitriol hurled her way, the BBC’s political editor turned presenter has largely kept her counsel. She rarely complained even when she needed security to do her job unobstructed at Labour party conference under Jeremy Corbyn, or had to run the gauntlet of aggressive Brexit protesters outside parliament, or when a creepy unnamed minister tried to inveigle her into his hotel room for what an appalled Kuenssberg concluded was intended to be a threesome. Knowing everything she does is minutely parsed for bias, she keeps her cards close to her chest. Until, apparently, something snapped.

Pay Attention is a muted but heartfelt howl of frustration with politicians “who have looked like an absolute shower for a long time” but also, sotto voce, with voters, who she evidently wishes would occasionally take things more seriously. Having covered Westminster since the late noughties, Kuenssberg brings all that weight of experience to bear in spelling out just how far the abnormal is now becoming normalised in British politics.

Costco Black Friday Sale Schedule

According to Costco's official page, most the deals will be available both in-warehouse or online except for on Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. You can check out the full schedule below and click on each link to check out the ads for each sale.

• Pre-pre-Thanksgiving Day Sale - October 30 - November 15
• Pre-Thanksgiving Day Sale - October 16 - November 30
• Thanksgivng Day Sale - November 26 (Online Only)
• Black Friday Sale - November 27-30
• Cyber Monday Sale - November 30 (Online Only)

What are some of the best deals?

The different sales have a pretty varied selection of deals, so there are savings to be had pretty much all month long. The pre-pre-Thanksgiving sale that's happening now and the pre-thanksgiving sale both have a good amount of deals on snacks, frozen foods, and kitchen essentials. There's also a decent number of discounts on TVs and gaming monitors during this time, all of which will last until Cyber Monday if they stay in stock.

As you might expect, some of the best deals on tech and other big-ticket items don't arrive until the actual Black Friday sale kicks off after Thanksgiving. This is when you'll find an RTX 5060 gaming PC for $300 off, a Dyson vacuum under $300, and a great 4K TV for under $1,000. This is also when some of the best frozen food deals happen, including $5 off Costco's signature frozen lasagnas.

Both the individual Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday sales offer a few interesting items, but the bulk of the sale is not there. If you need a pair of Dickies men's overalls or cargo pants for $30, you won't want to miss the Thanksgiving sale. And if you plan on eating at Applebee's a lot in the future, the Cyber Monday gift card deal is definitely worth taking a look at.

More Black Friday Sales Announced

Hot toddies, red wine, a dram of whisky: alcohol has long been a go-to remedy for keeping warm. But while a drink might make you feel warmer, does it actually help? “There’s a perception of warmth, but in reality, it doesn’t occur,” says Winston Morgan, professor of toxicology, equity and inclusive practice at the University of East London.

Alcohol affects the body’s temperature-regulating system. Our core body temperature is controlled by the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that helps regulate how we respond to changes in temperature. When we get too hot, blood vessels near the surface of the skin widen, a process known as vasodilation. This allows more warm blood to flow close to the skin, where heat can escape into the surrounding air. When we get too cold, the opposite happens. The blood vessels narrow, or constrict, reducing blood flow to the skin and helping to conserve heat.

THE RUNDOWN

• Zendaya chose a specific 2000 Halle Berry look for Halloween 2026.
• Her stylist Law Roach ensured it was the exact same outfit.
• Berry originally wore the Lanvin ensemble to the New York premiere of X-Men in July 2000.

Zendaya isn’t missing out on all the fun this Halloween. The actress dressed up as one of Hollywood’s most enduring screen and style icons, Halle Berry, thanks to a special vintage pull.

On Saturday, Zendaya’s longtime stylist, Law Roach, shared a series of photos of the Dune actress recreating a particularly memorable early-aughts look that Berry wore: a butter yellow, brown, and white printed string bikini top with silver accents and matching low-rise, wide-leg trousers from Lanvin’s fall 2000 collection. Zendaya completed the look with pointed-toe heels.

Roach thanked Lanvin’s artistic director Peter Copping and Alix Long in his post. Copping took the creative reins at the French fashion house in 2024, and Cristina Ortiz was Lanvin’s womenswear designer when the fall 2000 collection debuted.

Berry first wore the two-piece to the New York premiere of X-Men in July 2000. She accessorized with a belly chain and tinted sunglasses.

The fashion homage feels particularly fitting given that Zendaya has been drawing comparisons to Berry since debuting her pixie cut.

In fact, when Zendaya first unveiled the look at the 2026 Emmy Awards in September, Roach confirmed that the haircut was inspired by Berry’s iconic short hairstyle.

Berry later embraced the tribute, sharing Roach’s interview on her Instagram Story and writing that Zendaya “murdered the night.”

This isn’t the first time Zendaya has used fashion to pay tribute to another star. In 2013, she channeled the late Aaliyah for Keep a Child Alive’s Dream Halloween, recreating the singer’s iconic Tommy Hilfiger campaign look. More recently, she honored Cher at the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in a vintage Bob Mackie design.

Zendaya and Roach have more fashion moments ahead: The actress’s Dune: Part Three press tour is just kicking off.

“I never thought I’d be back here with the fluorescent lights and lukewarm coffee,” says recovering addict Tim (Rob Delaney). “But then Lucy Green ruined my life.” So begins this intriguing 10-part drama of bite-size episodes, executive produced by Sharon Horgan. It rewinds to Tim escorting millennial pop star Lucy (Bel Powley) to rehab in Arizona on an eventful road trip. Jameela Jamil and Greg James complete a cracking cast. Hollie Richardson
BBC Sounds, all episodes out on Monday 2 November

Looking over the edge of the snow-smoothed canyon down to dark rushing water, we thought we saw a moose or a reindeer, but it could have been a rock. The light was fading fast so it was hard to tell. It was time to turn back; we didn’t want to get lost in the wood, or fall into the river. By the time we’d retraced our steps to Abisko, the blue world had turned to black and dust-like snowflakes whirled around the little village. Back in our hotel room after our expedition, I looked at my phone – it was only 2pm!

Travelling to the Arctic Circle in winter had always been a dream, but when I realised the sun wouldn’t get above the horizon on my holiday, it made me twitchy. I usually pack my limited annual leave as tightly as I pack my working life. I was already using up three days’ holiday travelling by train from London to Abisko. How would I make the most of my time there with barely any daylight?

9pm, Sky Atlantic

Cauliflower is a culinary gem. Often overlooked, it possesses a remarkable ability to absorb complex seasonings and textures while maintaining a satisfying bite. It’s also perfect for braising, frying or roasting, and provides a canvas for bold, herbaceous and spicy flavour profiles that elevate an ostensibly simple brassica into a true centrepiece.

Fill the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9.

We settle down in front of a fresh Blue Planet, trying to escape a weary sadness that stalks us from several angles. It is a new natural history show narrated by the 100-year-old David Attenborough, so there cannot be many more of those to enjoy. It is a Sunday-night showcase on BBC One, which is nothing like as significant a shared cultural event as it once was. The film-making can’t possibly be as revelatory as the original Blue Planet in 2001, and even the impact Blue Planet II had on conservation in 2017 feels unrepeatable: the attention it brought to plastic pollution in the ocean turned out to be a minor blow struck in a battle against environmental catastrophe that we have, since then, continued to lose.

But if we stop requiring it to be another landmark and appreciate it as just another wildlife series, Blue Planet III is a corker. Its excellence is a bright flash of hopeful defiance, and if it often falls into familiar patterns, that familiarity is a comfort.

A teenage violinist has won the BBC Young Musician competition 2026, in the first all-female final in the competition’s 48-year history.

The judges, Joanna MacGregor, Ben Gernon and Errollyn Wallen, hailed Sofia Demetriades’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as full of insights, poetry and maturity.

Because I don’t eat it very often, I always forget how much I like venison. Or, rather, how much I like it in certain contexts: the natural leanness of a wild animal doesn’t naturally lend itself to soloing in juicy burgers or sausages, but, when slow-cooked, it’s fabulous – rich in flavour, and soft enough to eat with a spoon, should you so desire. It also tends to be good value both in season and frozen for the rest of the year, and, as red meat goes, a pretty climate-friendly option (though not straightforwardly so, as this piece explains) that pairs beautifully with seasonal spuds and kales, and is even better when made ahead of time and reheated. In fact, it’s the perfect autumn and winter entertaining option, even if the only people you’re entertaining are yourselves, the dog and the cast of Celebrity Traitors.

• The best women’s shoes and boots for autumn

The clocks have gone back. The mornings are cold and the evenings are dark. The world seems to be doing its level best to discourage any fashion ambition beyond the need to stay alive and warm enough to function.

But clothes – even in winter – are not just about staying alive. They are about staying alive alive. Alive inside. So this month’s edit is about finding the fun in getting dressed when the weather is trying to discourage you. There is a pink jumper that manages to be both cosy and, well, slutty; a £16 henley that looks considerably more expensive than it is; and a skirt I have been stalking since the summer and can finally report back on. There are also ballet pumps with exactly the right amount of grownup elegance, a sweatshirt that makes a persuasive case for elevating the everyday, and a necklace to bring a bit of sparkle back to the proceedings.

There’s no humble way to say it: I get a lot of fan mail. Almost every day, multi-paragraph emails arrive from passionate and well-informed readers in Barcelona and Frankfurt, Chicago and Warsaw. They have appealing names like Bella Monroe, Thalina Rose and Tricia Claxton. Some of them are straightforward enthusiasts while others are more irreverent, like the one who signs off her messages “warm chaos”. Some love the “deadpan genius” of my novels while others admire my nonfiction’s “moral courage”. What they all have in common, though, is that they are entirely fake and trying to con me out of money. They promise to promote my work at their city-wide book clubs or spread the word among their reading communities, if only I transfer a few hundred dollars to cover costs.

In the age of generative AI, scam emails have achieved a new level of personalisation. Most writers I know are receiving a steady stream of emails like this. The messages are often sophisticated enough to bypass a spam filter and reach our inboxes, leaving us no option but to read them and ask the painful question: would any real, living person feel this strongly about my work? Or, as one writer friend put it, the reason I know they’re fake is because they’ve actually read all my books.

Sam, 29, central London

Occupation Compliance officer
Voting record Sam is American so can’t vote in the UK yet, but when she can she intends to vote Green
Amuse bouche She is an expert knitter. She started when she was five and makes socks, mittens, hat, jumpers – if you know Sam, she’s knitting you something

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

The mechanics of how we have sex don’t matter to me. I still feel the same degree of pleasure

Romeo + Juliet is not the most renowned or beloved of Shakespeare’s plays, but it is perhaps the most foundational. The 16th-century tragedy, a story of love-addled teenagers and white-hot resentment, is often an English student’s first introduction to the bard’s oeuvre – more accessible and relatable to teens, with its plaintive lust and histrionic mood swings, than the more austere machinations in, say, Macbeth, Hamlet or Othello. And if Romeo + Juliet is the young person’s entry to Elizabethan English, perhaps no version of it is more worthy of the term “gateway drug” than Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film version, which reimagined Verona’s family feud as a tropical gang war and launched an army of teenage crushes with the faces of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

The maximalist interpretation of Shakespeare’s most lovelorn work, released 30 years ago this week (!), retains Elizabethan verse but announces its divergence from rigid classicism from the jump. Our scene is set in fair Verona beach by a news anchor via TV set, relaying the woe of two star-cross’d lovers before clips of civil strife. Fresh off his breakout success in 1992’s Strictly Ballroom, the Australian director boldly mapped the medieval story on to 90s tabloid fixations – grainy footage of violence in the streets, magazine headlines of capos and criminals, helicopter views of car chases and riots that recalled the media circus around the OJ Simpson chase two years prior. It is a movie that could have only been made in the 90s; Luhrmann’s vision of two warring families as rival gangs, replete with their own economic operations and marked territory, tapped into the era’s preoccupation with gangland as a source of transportive art, from movies to hip-hop, and as a conservative fixation for ideas on intrinsic criminality.

She has tackled Britain, conquered the world and even grappled with life itself. Now Philomena Cunk is back on our screens – looking as miserable and confused as ever – to take on her biggest subject yet: cinema.

Cinema, the iconically stupid presenter explains, is not just mankind’s greatest achievement but also a world where “men can be heroes, women can get off with heroes, and nobody ever goes to the toilet – unless you’re watching a specialist film from Japan”. So if you’ve ever wanted to know why “Citizen Ken” always has carrots in his pockets, where the word auteur comes from (“They felt they oughta get all the credit”) or how Benedict Cumberbatch reacts to the hardest-hitting questions of his career (such as “Who are you?”), this is quite literally the only place you’ll ever find the answers.

I had the unbelievable privilege of working with Patrick when I was 11 [in Logan]. He was a man of extraordinary warmth, wit and generosity. He possessed that increasingly rare ability to make everyone around him feel as though they were being let in on something wonderful. To work alongside him was to be reminded, every day, of what it means to love what you do, and to share that love with others. He imparted lessons in a way that was so wise, you didn’t even realise you were being taught.

At Ruka, the first skiers of the year slalomed down the slopes on 2 October. Just inside the Arctic Circle, Ruka’s long snow-sure season and cosy village atmosphere make it a popular ski resort with Finnish families. The long polar nights mean there are only a few hours of dim twilight each day, but the slopes here are floodlit, so that never stops play.

8pm, BBC One
Life is every bit as strange and beautiful at the bottom of the ocean as it is on land – and it is even more profuse. In his 101st year, David Attenborough is still finding amazing things to show us. The quality of footage the BBC Natural History Unit now records is truly startling. The return of this beloved series begins in tropical seas where constant sunlight stimulates an extraordinary range of life. Look out for the remarkable team-hunting strategies of the tawny nurse sharks, as well as an incredible tussle between a pair of shrimps and a starfish that culminates in the shrimp stealing and eating the starfish’s arm (don’t worry, it grows back). Consistently amazing. Phil Harrison

My wife and I are in our late 70s, and have been married for more than 40 years. We didn’t have kids and were rather traumatised after failed IVF.

My wife is Asian and has no UK-based family. I do, but they are not close geographically, nor are they people who would be able to give any support if needed. Friends are of a similar age and so have their own issues to deal with. My wife and I have always been a self-reliant unit, and we’re both reasonably healthy, but I’m increasingly aware that there will soon come a time when help is needed.

I’ve done some fairly rash things in my time, but I’ve never popped into anywhere for king scallops with ’nduja and come out with a swallow tattoo on my neck, though what is this life without adventure? Which is where Moods comes in: the space is an all-day restaurant, bar, tattoo parlour and hair salon in Leeds, offering violetta potato with ox cheek, a short back and sides, and the chance to tattoo “Mum” on your lower left arm, all in one Grade II-listed building.

It occupies the former First White Cloth Hall on Kirkgate, built in 1711 for the trade of white undyed cloth. This cavernous ark, with roof timbers dating back to the 1470s, lurked on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register for more than 20 years, during which time it was under almost constant threat from the bulldozers. It took the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Leeds Civic Trust and Rushbond, a Leeds-based developer with a penchant for rescuing buildings, to drag it out of danger. Then Will and Hayley Moody arrived, slotting in their Buzz Club Tattoo Studio and a hair and beauty salon called Self, and now, on the ground floor, there’s Moods, a kitchen reportedly run by Craig Rogan. Laugh at the tattoo/hair/dinner triumvirate, if you want (I know I did), but it’s a grim joke that we treat our old buildings like this, and that hospitality is in a state so wild that this seems to be the solution. Bring on the bright new future of ye olde small plates, buzzcuts and half-sleeve emporiums, all under 400-year-old timbers.

Swiss director Milo Rau’s ripped-from-the-headlines approach to theatre has included shows about wars in Iraq and Congo and the exploitation of migrant workers. His four-hour documentary play (created with Servane Dècle) about the trial of the men who drugged and raped Gisèle Pelicot has been performed around the world and will be staged by the Young Vic at London’s County Hall on 30 November. The production swiftly sold out but will be livestreamed in full. The cast includes Adjoa Andoh, Rosie Jones and Olivia Williams. “It was the act of witnessing that really got me,” said Young Vic boss Nadia Fall of the show. “It isn’t scenes and costumes in a set like a traditional piece of theatre. It is the facts. It just floors you.”

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In September 2023 I’d been divorced for about a year. At 59 I thought to myself, “surely there’s got to be a little bit more love that I could give in my life”. But I was also keenly aware that not many people find romance organically these days.

I gave Bumble a go, had some pretty average dates and thought it wasn’t for me, but I decided to give it one last shot. It was Kev’s smile and his eyes that caught my attention. His profile said travel was really important to him, which gave me a bit of a laugh because I have huge anxiety issues around holidaying of any sort. We exchanged a few texts and decided to arrange a date. It was nothing fancy, just a few drinks at a bar in a bayside suburb of Melbourne.

I’d been warned about Patrick by friends who’d worked with him at the Royal Shakespeare Company. They said: “Marina, you can’t be you around Patrick Stewart. He’s all about the work. He takes it very seriously and he won’t abide you mucking about and trying to make people corpse.”

We had been cast together on Star Trek: The Next Generation and, because of what I’d heard, I was a bit scared, a bit intimidated. And let’s be honest – Patrick was very serious about the work. But there was a concerted effort by the rest of us to beat it out of him. We were from a younger generation and we wanted to shake up this Englishman who was so typical of his generation – stiff upper lip and a Yorkshireman to boot. You know, the kind of person who was not exactly renowned for showing their emotions. Early on Patrick told us all that we weren’t there to have fun, and you should have seen the looks he got. I’m a cockney: I’ve got a Spurs tattoo and we all looked at him in the same way I look at an Arsenal fan. But we did loosen him up. And – he’s said this himself – I think we actually freed him. We gave him a freedom that he said he’d never really felt before.

Aidan Turner has a tactical beard. For the last two decades or so, the actor has found himself in roles that have made him a smouldering pin-up. Audiences really love to look at him. You can buy mugs that say, “Today I don’t feel like doing anything … except Aidan Turner.” There are entire Reddit forums dedicated to sharing photographs of him looking hot. He knows this about himself, just like he knows that people want to ask him about it. “I do get asked these questions,” he says, a little wearily. “I do get the, you know, word ‘smoulder’ or ‘sexy’, and all that kind of shit.” So right now, he has a full beard, in the hope that he will not be accused of, for example, smouldering. “I thought it wouldn’t happen so much with the beard,” he sighs. “I thought I could get away with it. I was going for ‘dad’.”

The job of actors is to sell a story as well as they possibly can, and over the years plenty of the stories that Turner has sold have involved romance and sex. He appeared in Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National Theatre in London this summer, and even the New Yorker noted how much he smoulders. In some ways, Turner is one of those male performers who is, well, a little bit objectified. The fact that he is a good actor, and also known for being sexy, places him in a peculiar bind. If he doesn’t gamely play along, if he points out that he’s getting a bit tired of it actually, then he risks being seen as a killjoy. Sure, there are worse burdens to bear, but at times the star of Poldark and Rivals finds himself in a curious position.