In lockdown, the grown-ups are taking over the social media playground

Lizzie Edmonds speaks to travel expert Simon Calder about whether we should book summer holidays and how travel will be different

And it's just £35 per night

Networking and expanding job opportunities during lockdown is easier than you think. Laura Hampson speaks to career coach and consultant, Hannah Salton to see how it's done

*Rushes to find purse*

It's a wonder ingredient – and not just for fending off illness

'Practising mindfulness is like going to a gym, you have to exercise the muscle and it works with anxiety'

A quarter of all UK pharmacies have joined Hestia's 'UK SAYS NO MORE' campaign

If only everyone was kinder we would all reap rewards

A widow, a millennial and a cup of Lapsang tea

On losing a little sister and having a junkie as a dad

The former First Lady has always been a believer that being highly educated and having an interest in high fashion don't have to be mutually exclusive

The massive popularity of horror films like Joker and It have been a real downer for happy, family clowns. Mark Wilding hears how the entertainers are fighting back

In the corner of Matthew Indge’s kitchen is a photograph of the entertainer Kerby Drill. For many years, Drill was both a clown and a comic voice of authority. He toured the nation’s schools and appeared on television shows, often promoting road safety, until he passed away last year, aged 97. Indge describes him as his “clown hero”, but he recognises that Drill represents a very different era of clowning. “The truth is,” Indge says, “these days, I don’t know if kids are going to listen to a clown saying be careful on the road.”

Indge has been clowning for 32 years, since he was eight years old. In a way that wasn’t necessary for Drill, Indge must now take steps to prove to his audiences that he doesn’t represent a dark and sinister threat. When we meet, he’s preparing for a performance as Zaz the Clown at a five-year-old’s birthday party, and “just to save me any problems,” he says, “I’ll make up in front of the kids” – an attempt to provide reassurance that there’s a benign performer behind the mask.

Fairfield Halls, London
In his show Taxi Tour, the comic from last year’s Britain’s Got Talent offers only standard-issue middle-aged standup

Kojo Anim was a star of the black standup circuit for years, but “Britain’s Got Talent changed my life,” he tells his Croydon crowd. The Londoner has booked his Taxi Tour off the back of an appearance in last year’s final, and recounts how that brush with fame – and his Christian faith, and new fatherhood – picked him back up after a grim period in his life. The emotional honesty is refreshing, but plays only a cameo role in an otherwise unadventurous show. Anim certainly does have talent, but – on this evidence – it’s for performing, not for writing distinctive material.

The show opens with a justification for appearing on BGT, and an account of his experience of overnight celebrity. But it soon devolves into standard issue middle-aged standup comparing his unglamorous childhood with that of today’s pampered youth. His parents play their expected role, giving their son broad accents to mimic when not walloping him for the slightest impertinence. “Only an African parent,” reports our host ruefully, “will beat their own child when they see another child doing something.”

Netflix is cutting down traffic to ease internet capacity as more people work from home. Here’s what it means for Australians’ streaming experience

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Netflix has agreed to reduce the data it uses to stream movies and TV shows across Australia as more and more people are working from home due to the coronavirus shutdown. But what will it mean for your viewing habits while you’re staying at home?

Related: Australian government asks Netflix and Stan to reduce data to avoid broadband overload

Related: As cinemas go dark, the film industry may go straight to Netflix

TV and news website audiences are sky-high but, with few ads or new shows, future looks fraught

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From TV channels running out of shows, to newspapers facing the threat of closure, the British media industry is facing a financial shock that will permanently reshape how we consume news and entertainment.

Media analysts and insiders warn the pandemic will have a long-lasting impact on the country’s cultural life, predicting that changes in consumer behaviour expected to take more than five years may have happened in five weeks, with many people unlikely to entirely return to their pre-lockdown habits.

BBC One’s star-filled charity appeal needed imagination and technical skill to get round distancing rules

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Socially distanced presenters, a skeleton crew, no live audience and automated phonelines only – this is national telethonning, lockdown-style. Comic Relief and Children in Need have joined forces to create The Big Night In on BBC One and raise money for the charities and projects who need more support than ever as Covid-19 strains resources everywhere.

First shift is taken, as is traditional, by Lenny Henry and Davina McCall – joined, not too closely of course, by Matt Baker this time – whose recreation of normality for the viewer in what must, in the studio, be an absolutely bizarre set-up is unimpeachable proof of their professional talents.

The sector is wrestling with issues such as staging plays with social distancing, or running rollercoasters half full

The row between cinema chains and Universal Studios over the digital-only release of Trolls World Tour is one of may crises racking the entertainment industry during the coronavirus lockdown. The challenges range from working out how to stage live performances to managing social distancing in queues for rollercoasters. Here are some of the issues they face.

Sticking to social isolation just became easier. Keeping the kids occupied and their creativity flowing during coronavirus lockdown has just …

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