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Jul 21

'This show is just the start': inside the BBC's all-person-of-colour A Suitable Boy

‘This is an Indian story,” says Tanya Maniktala, “so it’s about time it was told by us.” The 22-year-old actor is speaking by video call ...

Jul 16

'I’ve seen how uprisings have come from pain': Idris Elba on Black Lives Matter

“History maketh the man,” says Idris Elba. The actor is quoting his late father, a man who he has spent the past two years playing a vers...

Jul 16

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Womad 1985: the qawwali star invokes rapture

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice is quite unlike any other. At turns heavy and hulkingly powerful, yet also nimble and pointedly precise, hi...

Jul 16

My streaming gem: why you should watch Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham

Clocking in at three and a half hours long, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is a remarkably swift Bollywood experience. In fact, the 2001 film c...

Jun 30

‘It’s like we just fell on to this planet’: the rise of psych-rockers Khruangbin

Onstage, the Texan trio Khruangbin are a strange sight to behold. At their sold-out show at London’s near-5,000 capacity O2 Academy Brixt...

Jun 30

My pandemic epiphany: I loved becoming a fitness junkie

Ever since my gym teacher stood, arms folded, laughing at my inability as a four-year-old to tuck myself into a ball and perform a somers...

Jun 16

Bootsy Collins: 'We're all funky, just not all of us know it'

At the age of 17, William “Bootsy” Collins packed up his homemade bass guitar and left home to tour the world with James Brown. He was he...

May 30

Lil Dicky on Dave: 'Everything the show says about my penis is true'

‘I couldn’t ignore this thing that was the driving force of my childhood and my neuroticism,” Dave Burd tells me over the phone from Los ...

May 26

The 100 greatest UK No 1s: No 10, Marvin Gaye – I Heard It Through the Grapevine

It can be hard to grasp the depth and breadth of Marvin Gaye’s career. He seems to have lived one of those kaleidoscopic lives that could...

May 21

The Zoom boom: how video-calling became a blessing – and a curse

Just before lockdown, 29-year-old Ala Uddin became ill with coronavirus-related symptoms and had to self-isolate in his London flat. “For...

May 11

How we made The Story of Tracy Beaker

Jacqueline Wilson, author I’d been writing children’s books for a while, but they had mostly disappeared without a trace. One day, I saw ...

May 11

'I'd join you always': how Gogglebox's Leon and June captured our hearts

Everything from the nightly news to emails from an online store we ordered an appliance from five years ago is desperate to tell us about...

May 8

'Can Tony Soprano make me a better parent?': the lessons we've learned from lockdown TV

Relationships I am a Pisces, which – if you believe in the eminently sketchy world of astrology – means that my personality should be cat...

May 8

I wish more people would read ... Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

There is a particular danger in enthusing over a big book. Namely, of becoming one of those people found on university campuses everywher...

May 8

Hollywood's Jeremy Pope: 'Is there room for another black man like me?'

"Can all of us be in the same room at the same time?,” Jeremy Pope asks over the phone from his home in Los Angeles. It is over a month i...

May 4

Remembering Tony Allen, the pioneering Afrobeat drummer who inspired generations

Drumming is often the pursuit of power. Look to the controlled whirlwinds of classic rock or big band swing, the notion of a steady groov...

May 2

Tony Allen: the Afrobeat pioneer's 10 finest recordings

Fela Kuti: Roforofo Fight (Roforofo Fight, 1972) Roforofo Fight is the earliest cohesive expression of Tony Allen and saxophonist Fela Ku...

May 2

The extreme loneliness of lockdown: 'Even though my partner is here, I’m struggling to cope'

Two days before Ireland went into lockdown, David’s wife, Maureen, went into a hospice. He stayed there with her for 10 days until she di...

May 2

Gilles Peterson: ‘This period is going to be one of nostalgia'

This is every record collector’s wet dream,” says Gilles Peterson. The DJ and broadcaster is speaking over the phone from his east London...

Apr 23

My favourite book as a kid: The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

I wasn’t much of a reader as a kid. Books and words required far too much attention; I was much happier laid out dribbling mindlessly on ...

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