Knife-wielding skeletons, wild experiments with toilets, an audience with the bassist from The Jam … the team behind the globe-conquering spookfest open up about their astonishing success

‘Oh. Em. Bloody. Gee.” Danny Robins, “high priest of the paranormal”, has removed his trademark red anorak and is pacing around the London Palladium stage telling ghost stories. A phantom baby. A haunted Teams meeting. A … “hairy flasher”. He dissects each tale with parapsychologists Evelyn Hollow (Team Believer) and Ciarán O’Keeffe (Team Sceptic – he exposed Most Haunted’s medium, Derek Acorah, as a fraud in a rift Robins calls “the Biggie and Tupac of the paranormal”). The rapt audience – a harmonious mix of millennials, boomers and gen Z – are eager to share their own stories, too: a woman’s voice quivers into a microphone as she describes a skeleton that wanted to stab her sister. This is the enthralling world of Uncanny.

A lot has happened in the five years since Uncanny started life as a Radio 4 paranormal investigations podcast, with those spine-tingling opening lyrics, “I know what I saw.” In the first episode, The Evil in Room 611, Robins met scientist Ken, who recalled unexplained scares from decades ago in his university halls. Details of an evil dark figure and shaking doors were met with the reaction: “Bloody hell, Ken.” Two experts then shared their theories: parapsychologist Caroline Watt proffered hypnagogic hallucinations, while ordained minster Peter Laws claimed poltergeist activity.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s dark dramedy is a stylish acting showcase, but does it do justice to its weighty themes?

Ever since its first trailer dropped – and, on certain corners of Reddit, even before that – the internet has been abuzz with speculation over just what goes down in The Drama. The auteur production powerhouse A24 somewhat ingeniously pitched writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s pitch-black film as a tart romantic comedy, with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a seemingly happy couple derailed by a disturbing revelation a week before their wedding. The actors, among a cohort of vanishingly few young movie stars, appeared as their characters in a fake wedding announcement in the Boston Globe; Zendaya’s rumored marriage to actor Tom Holland became a meta discussion point on a press tour that saw her method dressing in “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”, her wardrobe slowly darkening in a nod to something gone horribly awry.

The Norwegian film-maker’s second English-language film depicts what we could loosely call premarital jitters as a psychological unraveling with a surrealist touch. The Drama is lustrously filmed, virtuosically acted and crisply edited – but, inevitably, attention will focus on its very combustible, deliberately provocative premise, one somewhat spoiled by a pre-embargo TMZ headline citing a recent American tragedy. There’s no way to talk about this movie without talking about “the twist” – which plays out less as a dramatic turn of events than as an unsettling divulgence that, depending on your view, the film may or may not justify. Obviously, spoilers ahead, so tread carefully and, presuming you’ve seen it … let’s discuss.

Some people using retatrutide, which is not yet approved, are reporting ‘emotional flattening’, but experts point to a more complex picture

• ‘Traceability is vital’: labs test thousands of unregulated substances amid peptide craze

• What are peptides, are they safe and is there evidence to back up the hype?

A recent TikTok video shows a man in a black baseball cap, with text over the video stating: “strange effects of Reta” and “ruining relationships”.

He is referring to retatrutide, an experimental weight-loss drug that targets three appetite-related hormones. It is still in clinical trials but has generated such interest that some users are already sourcing it illegally online before approval. The “weird theory going around”, the TikTok poster says, is that the drug can “make you fall out of love”.

From soundtracking the silent era, via 50s rock’n’roll and the ‘symphonic pop’ of Henry Mancini to iconic works by John Williams and Hans Zimmer, movies are unimaginable without music. Ahead of the London soundtrack festival its artistic director picks 10 scores that moved the dial

The music of cinema’s earliest years played a crucial role in how audiences – with a live pianist or organist soundtracking the silent movie – experienced the stories on screen. But it wasn’t until the advent of synchronised sound that they were guaranteed the same musical experience.

Even that moment, widely regarded to be 1926’s Don Juan – an otherwise silent film – wasn’t a true soundtrack. Warner Bros used the Vitaphone system, essentially a recording on disc that was played with the picture. The same system was used for 1927’s The Jazz Singer, the first film for which voices were synchronised to the picture as well. Playing a disc to picture was unreliable, and it wasn’t long before music could be printed directly on to the celluloid of the film itself and the soundtrack proper was born.

The heavyweight from Dagestan now lives in Canada and describes Saturday’s opponent as the ‘professor’ of boxing

“This guy is the professor,” Arslanbek Makhmudov says of Tyson Fury as he looks forward politely to their fight on Saturday night at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. There is none of the usual bluster and malice of heavyweight boxing as the huge Russian from Dagestan shows considerable respect for the former world champion who is making yet another comeback to the ring.

“Tyson Fury is the professor of mind and boxing,” Makhmudov continues in his functional but effective English. “A lot of boxing is mental and he is a master. But boxing is also spiritual. I am going to be strong, spiritual and smart. You can say this is a war between mental and spiritual and we’ll see who is more successful. Inshallah it is spiritual.”

I don’t want to minimise the scenes in Clapham High Street. But how about dialling things down a notch?

Last week, some teenagers in the Clapham area of south-west London started running up and down the high street. The terms used to describe them ranged from “feral gang” to “chaotic swarm”; evidently, it is in the eye of the beholder as to whether they were closer to animals or insects. Definitely, positively, some of them shoplifted.

Fireworks were let off, which sounds like the kind of mischief the Bash Street Kids would get up to, but is quite scary in real life, and the line between “Beano” and “scary” is finer than I thought. Marks & Spencer needed a police guard and closed early; Oliver Bonas briefly had a security guard, which was like seeing a bouncer outside a library – either a mad overreaction, or the end of days.

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President addresses his latest deadline for Tehran to reach a deal of Tuesday at 8pm ET in press conference

• Trump warns Iran to reopen strait of Hormuz by Tuesday or face ‘hell’

• ‘Unhinged madman’: US politicians react to Trump Iran threat

A Japanese shipping firm said on Monday that an Indian-flagged tanker owned by its subsidiary had passed through the strait of Hormuz and was en route to India.

A spokeswoman for Mitsui O.S.K. Lines told AFP that the Green Asha – a liquefied petroleum gas tanker – had crossed the waterway.

Pakistan stands in solidarity with the brotherly people of the UAE and reiterates the urgent need for restraint and de-escalation in the region.

Increased recognition of crime and perpetrators using technology to track victims are behind rise, say experts

The number of stalking offences recorded by police has soared over the past decade, with experts saying the rise has been driven by increased recognition, and technology making it easier for perpetrators to track their victims.

House of Commons library data analysed by the Liberal Democrats found more than 135,000 offences were recorded last year, up from just under 3,000 10 years ago.

Retailer faces public outcry over treatment of Walker Smith, who tackled shoplifter stealing Easter eggs at London store

Waitrose is under growing pressure to reinstate an employee of 17 years who was sacked after tackling a shoplifter who was trying to steal Lindt Gold Bunny Easter eggs.

The retailer has faced public outcry over its treatment of Walker Smith, who was fired two days after he stopped the shoplifter taking items from the Easter egg display.

Exclusive: Seven of England’s 24 stroke centres still not providing mechanical thrombectomy 24/7 despite ministers’ pledges

The NHS has not made a “life-changing” treatment for stroke available around the clock across England despite ministers repeatedly promising that it would.

The health service was expected to improve stroke care by making a clot removal technique called mechanical thrombectomy available everywhere in the country 24/7 from 1 April.