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He started in the Harry Potter films and has since become ubiquitous, playing every type of character: romcom leads, evil villains, comical idiots. He even starred in a Taylor Swift video. So how does he stay so under the radar?
Domhnall Gleeson has got so much new stuff coming up, someone recently joked that this was the “summer of Domhnall”. Now the phrase is all over the internet, and Gleeson is mortified: “The worry is that somebody will say this to me now thinking that I believe it.” He doesn’t know where it came from – possibly his co-star Gayle Rankin on his new movie The Incomer. “It’s certainly not something I’m trying to push … but it would be great if it could be the headline.”
He’s in a good mood when we meet at a London hotel on a hot afternoon. You could say he’s good at interviews – charming, funny, garrulous, the perfect chatshow guest. He could just be acting, admittedly, but he seems to be a genuinely good-natured, grounded sort of guy.
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:23 GMT
The comedian’s new Friday night series will be set in a working pub, with his aunties working the bar and celebrities doing shifts as managers. Or it will be if he can only get his licence …
Joe Lycett sits in a pub, an untouched pint in front of him. “Since I had my son, I’m not drinking anywhere near as much,” he laments. “Children do not respect hangovers, or tiredness in general.”
His son is almost two, and Lycett has readjusted his life accordingly. “I’ve started going to bed when he does, which is about seven o’clock,” he explains. “I’ve seen a few nights where I’ve just gone: ‘Right, well, that’s me, then.’”
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:22 GMT
For a decade I lived with a fear so bad that I once tried to climb out of a tube carriage while it was in motion. Then a hypnotherapist told me to ask my parents one very important question
In 2000, I had been living in London for just over a decade and working at EMI Records for five years. I had moved to Brixton from Surrey – where space and peace were generally abundant – in the late 80s, and I’d noticed I was becoming increasingly anxious and claustrophobic, particularly on public transport.
As things got progressively worse, I had a string of distressing panic attacks. Every time, it felt like the world around me was closing in. Then, in July 2003, during my daily commute between Brixton and the South Bank, I had a panic attack so intense I tried to climb out of the tube carriage doors. Thankfully, other passengers held me back until we arrived at the next platform – but I knew the problem was no longer something I could ignore.
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 05:45:24 GMT
Being subservient to the interests of the wealthy now means that his hands are tied, and he will be unable to tackle Britain’s most pressing issues
Damn the electorate. They’re so impatient. No sooner do they get a new leader than they want another one. Those ingrates are already starting to grumble about Andy Burnham. Maybe the country is becoming ungovernable. Perhaps it’s social media. Or a consumerist culture, always picking the next shiny thing. Perhaps we’re addicted to drama. As we’re on our sixth prime minister in 10 years, and as similar levels of discontent surface in many other countries, these claims are recited across the media. What’s wrong with us?
Yet our disgruntlement is entirely rational. We give up so quickly on our prime ministers because they give up so quickly on us. Though it may involve different issues, it is always the same betrayal: the public interest is sacrificed for the sake of a tiny number of immensely wealthy people. And it tends to happen almost immediately.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 05:00:23 GMT
Campaigners say care users face a postcode lottery for support overseas – despite no extra cost to taxpayer
Disabled people are being blocked from travelling abroad by NHS care boards and local councils that refuse to let them use their care funding outside the UK, the Guardian has learned.
Campaigners warn of a “postcode lottery” in England where the right of a disabled person to travel overseas depends on where they live or the whim of local officials – even when there is no extra cost to the taxpayer.
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 05:00:24 GMT
Benedict Andrews’ intense, interval-free mashup of ancient and modernist classics is a show of two halves
The Electra bit of the title refers to the Sophoclean tragedy of a daughter trapped in a cycle of vengeance, the Persona part to Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film about an actor who suddenly stops speaking while performing Electra on stage.
Benedict Andrews’ drama after Bergman and Sophocles first welds the two together, then raises the concept higher by enlisting his star castings in Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss to share the parts of Electra and her murderous mother, Clytemnestra, as well as Bergman’s inexplicably silent actor, Elisabeth, and her nurse, Alma, who fall into a disturbing, mirrored relationship.
At the National Theatre, London until 10 October
Continue reading...Tue, 01 Sep 2026 23:10:36 GMT
The prime minister said Britain needed to be brutally honest about the mistakes of the last 40 years of UK politics
Andy Burnham has blamed Brexit and Margaret Thatcher for a decade of low growth in the UK, arguing that Britain needs to be brutally honest about having taken “a series of wrong turns” in the last 40 years.
In his first Commons appearance since he took over as prime minister about six weeks ago, Burnham told MPs he wanted to build a new sense of optimism so “we can make this next decade better than the last”.
Hinted that he would commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030, saying he had appointed John Healey as his chancellor “precisely because” of his position on military spending.
Signalled he is open to renationalising the water industry – saying he is looking at “all possible solutions”, as the sector is a “leaking monument” to the failures of privatisation.
Opened the door to looking again at electoral reform in Labour’s next manifesto. “I do believe there needs to be a mandate to make that change. There are different views in this house, but I believe we will need to get a consensus at the next election. And if there is that consensus, then a change can be made in the next parliament.”
Announced he would attend the Cop31 climate summit in Turkey and continue pursuing green energy – but that he would be “pragmatic” on supply, amid expectations he will approve the Jackdaw gasfield. “The mistake is saying it’s got to be one or the other for political purposes. The truth is, it’s going to have to be both.”
Continue reading...Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:52:32 GMT
Study reveals that pesticide poisoning kills 11,000 people each year, with India accounting for nearly 60% of fatalities
Almost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every single year, a study has found.
Using publicly available data from 2006-2023, the study, which was commissioned by Pesticide Action Network, found there to be an estimated 402-433m cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers every year.
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 06:00:25 GMT
Exclusive: sanctions against ministers and settler groups are ‘smoke and mirrors cop-out’ says Omar Barghouti
Britain’s legal and ethical obligation to stop a genocide in Gaza requires it to take bigger steps than halting trade with illegal Israeli settlements or imposing further sanctions, Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has said.
He described sanctions against individual settler groups or extremist ministers as a “smoke and mirrors cop-out and distraction” from the UK’s legal obligation under international law to end all support for Israel, including arms exports, trade deals and academic relations that “may directly or indirectly enable Israel’s illegal occupation” of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 06:00:24 GMT
John Sellers, 34, who moved with his family to Sweden aged 10, has been ejected despite his recent marriage to a Swede
A 34-year-old British man who has lived in Sweden since he was 10 has been deported in the latest of a series of Brexit-induced catastrophes for UK citizens in the country.
John Sellers was told to leave despite living in Sweden for 24 years, having been educated in the country and newly married to his Swedish partner, Caroline.
Continue reading...Wed, 02 Sep 2026 05:00:24 GMT