At 60, Davies is less of a hell-raiser than he once was – but a great deal happier. He talks about the excesses of the 90s, the sexual abuse that made him such an ‘angry boy’, his recent bladder cancer, and fatherhood

It looks as if Alan Davies is in the wrong place. Not as in the wrong venue: he’s here at the Pleasance theatre in Islington, a north London fringe theatre and comedy venue, where we arranged to meet. But he’s in the wrong part of it. Although there’s a stage with a single microphone at standup height, Davies – who has performed here many times – joins me in the auditorium, sitting down at a table. Someone in the shadows is testing the lighting, and suddenly there’s a spotlight on the stage where the mic is. Is it tempting to jump up there and do his thing, even to an audience of one? “It is a bit, yeah,” he admits.

When I started the interview, I’d found that the notebook I’d brought with me contained some diary entries from my 14-year-old son. “Have you got the wrong notebook, or has he been writing in your notebook?” Davies asks. I think B. “Sounds like he wants it to be found.”

Calaminarian grassland is a rare habitat where plants thrive in soils contaminated by heavy metals. But should these toxic meadows be protected or allowed to fade away?

At first, the small purple flowers are hard to spot in the weak May sunshine. Slowly the drifts of delicate mountain pansies, along with the white rosettes of alpine pennycress, begin to jump out, scattered across an area little bigger than a football pitch, on the banks of the River Allen in Northumberland.

This is a pocket of calaminarian grassland, an increasingly rare habitat where specialist plants called metallophytes have adapted to live in soils deeply contaminated by heavy metals, the legacy of more than 1,000 years of lead mining.

Tourists and locals in Madrid, Paris, London, Dublin and Berlin share their experiences of the unseasonable May temperatures

In recent days across parts of Europe, temperatures have soared, heat records have been broken and spring has felt more like the height of summer. Météo France, the French national weather service, has attributed this to a “heat dome”, with warmth held in place by a high-pressure weather front that has produced temperatures more than 10C above what used to be usual for this time of year.

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather around the world, driving deadly extremes that can strike at abnormal times in unusual places and claim lives.

A new cap on bus fares in the Highlands and islands makes exploring this stunning archipelago in Scotland a breeze

The views are remarkable. From one window, gorse-gold hills roll west towards mountains patched with snow. On the other side, fields of new spring lambs slope down to a silver sea. Elsewhere, the bus crosses wide estuaries and cascading burns. There are thatched crofts, rocky bays and birch woods starred with anemones. One of the most remarkable things about this scenic 111-mile, 3½-hour trip on bus X99 is that it costs just £2.

Until March 2026, a single from Inverness to Scrabster on Scotland’s north coast was £28. Now, thanks to a new bus fare cap in Orkney, Highland and Moray, no journey in the area costs more than £2. The bus is timed to coincide with the Northlink Ferry to Stromness, Orkney’s second biggest town, and I’m heading there to explore by bus.

Hard-won, vital legal protections have been upended by the supreme court and the EHRC. Ultimately our lawmakers must fix this

• Alexandra Parmar-Yee is a campaigner for trans equality and a director of Trans+ Solidarity Alliance

When you try to imagine the lives of trans people in the UK today, you could be forgiven for thinking they have always been dominated entirely by fear and anxiety. Things have been getting worse, but until recently, my life as a transgender woman had not been consumed with worrying about how I’m supposed to live it. That is, until last year’s UK supreme court ruling.

In fact, when I’ve worried about needing a bathroom or felt hesitant about taking up space when invited to join a women’s network, it’s been other women who have made me feel welcome and pushed me to stop worrying. This was the reality for many trans people in the UK until 2025, when the court decided that “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act must refer to “biological sex”, upending decades of shared understanding of the law.

Alexandra Parmar-Yee is a campaigner for trans equality and a director of Trans+ Solidarity Alliance

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When you’re separating from a partner you’ve lived with, dividing up your shared belongings isn’t always a priority. There are ways to navigate this emotional and financial minefield, though

When wandering around Ikea arm-in-arm, most newly cohabiting couples are too excited about their new sofa, or Billy bookcase, or the enormous house plant they are about to wrestle into an Uber, to think too deeply about what might happen to those items were their relationship to sour. But at a time when many young couples can’t afford to buy property or have children, furniture can end up being the only thing to fight over at the end of a relationship. And, as the cost of living rises, having to replace furniture after a breakup can have a huge impact on people’s finances.

“It took me a couple of years to recover financially,” says Becca of her 2022 breakup. The 35-year-old, who is based in Leeds, had been in a relationship for about a year when her then-girlfriend invited her to move in to her house. At the time, Becca was renting her own flat, which was “amazing: big garden, really bright and lovely”, she says. But being what she describes as “young, stupid and in love”, she left that behind to move in with her partner. Becca reluctantly agreed to get rid of all the furniture she had bought for her flat, since her girlfriend didn’t want any of it in her place.

Torsten Bell and Dan Tomlinson criticise some of the arguments in ex-PM’s 5,700-word critique of Labour

• Tony Blair tells Starmer and rivals: abandon net zero and move closer to Trump

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, posted this on social media about Tony Blair’s latest intervention this morning.

Tony Blair.

What the billionaire class have paid for.

Spot the difference between “Tony Blair says” and “Nigel Farage says”

Ground troops clash in close combat north of Litani river following huge bombing raid and Netanyahu’s pledge to take control of new areas

Donald Trump will host the 12th cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday as talks on ending the nearly three-month war with Iran reach a crucial stage amid conflicting signals over whether an agreement is close.

The gathering had originally been scheduled to take place in the bucolic setting of Camp David, the presidential retreat that had previously been the site of sensitive Middle East negotiations, including the historic Israeli-Egyptian peace accords.

Party spent £252,000 in last two weeks of campaign on its main Facebook pages compared with Labour’s £276,000

• UK politics live – latest updates

Reform UK ramped up the funding and sophistication of its political Facebook ads in the final weeks of campaigning for the May elections, in a sign of the growing financial muscle of Nigel Farage’s party.

There were several days in the fortnight before the party’s breakthrough electoral performance when Reform spent more than any other party on the influential platform.

Former first minister speaks out after SNP’s ex-chief executive pleaded guilty to stealing £400,000 from party

• UK politics live – latest updates

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s former first minister, has called for Peter Murrell to get a “hefty” jail sentence after he admitted stealing £400,000 from the Scottish National party.

Yousaf had been serving as first minister for just eight days when Murrell was arrested in April 2023 at the home he then shared with Nicola Sturgeon, Yousaf’s ally and mentor, in a police fraud investigation.