"Before lockdown I took swimming for granted. I didn't understand how much I'd miss it"

The smart gadgets you need to WFG

As this year's sartorial spectacle gets ready to go virtual, we round up the event's best-ever looks

The new Twilight novel, told from Edward's perspective, will be released on August 4

With waist-up fashion high on the agenda, nailing the jewellery game is your one-way ticket to conference call chic

*Spoilers ahead* Don't go any further if you haven't finished Normal People yet...

Receive a test and treatment in the same day

The number of high intensity "heavy breathing" work-out machines such as treadmills and cross trainers will be hugely reduced in gyms to help make them safe when the lockdown ends.

Mark June 22 in your calendars now

Don't pretend you didn't notice it: that whisper-thin necklace glinting against Connell's chest

The app now counts 1.6 million users

And it's just £35 per night

Log on to lockdown lifelines for parents

The Hello hitmaker is celebrating her 32nd birthday

Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House, tells Katie Law how Kim K, Trump and some nuns inspired her latest novel

Ellie Gibson and Helen Thorn from Scummy Mummies podcast give us their sage - and realistic - advice...

CBeebies tapped the mental health campaigner to narrate the new game

Time to get moving again

These snazzy steals are guaranteed smile-inducers

Don't buy new — stitch it. Vicky Frost has a guide to becoming a sewing machine

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

In a story about the challenges of communication, the characters in Normal People often find solace in reading

It's not too late to join

London's wine shops and bars have shifted their booze online to beat the crippling financial effects of coronavirus. Abbie Moulton on the new way to drink responsibly...

Think time-restricted eating is just another diet trend? Think again...

A ban on sweat towels could be introduced under new guidelines from ukactive

From learning Spanish to playing music, Happity is helping to keep toddlers occupied at home

Work up a sweat while protecting your locks

For the latest episode of At Home With...JP Saxe opens up about his song with girlfriend Julia Michaels and challenges Amira Hashish to sing her verse of If The World Was Ending

It's lit

From Ayurvedic cooking to traybake heroes, these are the cookbooks we've turned to over the last seven weeks

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.

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.

Ricky Gervais’s After Life struggles second time round, as 21st-century London’s answer to Peaky Blinders gets off to a violent start. And how long can live shows survive via video-call?

After Life (Netflix)
Gangs of London (Sky Atlantic)
Emergence (Fox)
Twin (BBC Four) | iPlayer
The Graham Norton Show (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Mash Report (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Have I Got News for You (BBC One) | iPlayer

Ricky Gervais is, take your pick, ever reinventive (a la Madonna, Lady Gaga, the royals) or ever mutating (the worst kind of spirally viruses, the royals). A year ago, in Tony Johnson, subject of his latest drama, After Life, he combined aspects of past characters: The Office’s gloriously unself-aware Brent; the more savvy Andy Millman in Extras; the saccharine platitudes that sat so ill in Derek alongside gags about mental health or other disabilities. After Life was a surprising runaway hit on Netflix, for an arguably slight comedy about a very singular, small-town man’s depression after the loss of his wife, and how an angry man learned to be kind again.

As new actors revive the Talking Heads TV monologues, the poignant tales they tell will resonate more than ever with viewers in lockdown

The decision, announced last week by BBC Drama, to revive and recast Alan Bennett’s landmark Talking Heads series was driven as much by necessity as sentiment. Monologue, delivered to camera, is just about the only form of acting possible at the moment. But, still, there will be a special poignancy in hearing how the mini-dramas sound a generation later in their new voices – Imelda Staunton instead of Patricia Routledge, Kristen Scott Thomas in place of Eileen Atkins, Tamsin Greig for Penelope Wilton, Jodie Comer instead of Julie Walters.

Bennett wrote the first of the monologues in 1987, giving voice, in his 50s, to lives that in several cases were facing their last act. He himself turns 86 next week, about the same age as Thora Hird was when he cast her so memorably in Waiting for the Telegram in the last of the second series of monologues in 1998.

Related: Jodie Comer to star in new BBC production of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads

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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