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Suffering from a UTI? You can now diagnose it and receive treatment at home using your smartphone

Receive a test and treatment in the same day




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London after lockdown: Gyms to reduce class sizes and run open air sessions as part of 'new normal'

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.




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Aldi is looking for wine tasters to sample bottles for free

Where can we sign up?




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Forget banana bread: why we're turning to peanut butter in a time of crisis

Sales are soaring and recipes are going viral. We're going nuts for peanut butter, says Laura Hampson




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Fake news in Covid-19: how misinformation is spreading online during the pandemic

During this pandemic, fake news has spread as fast as the virus itself. Amelia Heathman investigates why




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Marianne's style: How to dress like Daisy Edgar-Jones' character from Normal People

Hers is a style so good that it's far from normal




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Under-fire cruise Carnival pledges to follow official rules on cruises

Cruise company Carnival on Tuesday promised to follow social distancing measures on restarted cruises amid mounting questions over its handling of the coronavirus crisis.




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Facials in a box: the step-by-step salon skincare you can order to your door

An ideal way to glow from home




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What to use to remove your make-up properly, from the experts

Put the face wipes down




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Apple confirms WWDC 2020 date as annual conference goes digital

Mark June 22 in your calendars now




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Connell's chain: Normal People's protagonist has kicked off a major men's jewellery trend

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




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You can rent Normal People's Italian villa on Airbnb

And it's just £35 per night




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How to ace a virtual job interview, according to a career coach

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




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Has Heinz created the most frustrating jigsaw puzzle ever?

Heinz release jigsaw with all pieces coloured in its signature red hue




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Apps for parents: track feeding times and connect with other parents with these smart apps

Log on to lockdown lifelines for parents




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The Queen of the LBD: where to get Adele's birthday black dress look

The Hello hitmaker is celebrating her 32nd birthday




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Why you need Vitamin C in your quarantine skincare regime

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




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An expert guide to at-home hair removal

Making fuzz-free fuss-free




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Your ultimate guide to parenting in lockdown by the Scummy Mummies

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




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Stephen Fry teams up with CBeebies as he voices new mental health game for children

CBeebies tapped the mental health campaigner to narrate the new game




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Reach for the stars to support midwives in this star jump challenge

Time to get moving again




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Warburtons reveals recipe for its iconic crumpets

Long weekend breakfast, sorted




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Book review: Humankind by Rutger Bregman​

If only everyone was kinder we would all reap rewards




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Book review: Looking for Eliza by Leaf Arbuthnot

A widow, a millennial and a cup of Lapsang tea




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No breakfast buffet and smartphones as keys: what London hotels will be like after lockdown

Breakfast buffet's out as hotels prepare to make you open doors using phone




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Book review: The Consequences of Love by Gavanndra Hodge

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




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A ray of sunshine: where to get the Duchess of Cambridge's summer-ready look

It's time to embrace yellow




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A definitive guide to the books and literary references in Normal People

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




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The best stretches and exercises for back pain, according to a physio

How to look after your body physically while WFH




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Happity at home: the platform keeping toddlers entertained with live-streamed classes

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




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VE Day recipes: 8 classic British party foods to make at home

Why not try these easy, tasty recipes at home?




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The best high fashion scented candles: From Gucci to Fornasetti and Bella Freud

It's lit




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10 cookbooks the ES team has been using religiously during lockdown

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




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Photographers team up to capture lockdown London on doorsteps to raise for NHS heroes

"All of my work has been cancelled [because of the crisis] and I was just missing shooting people and thought it would be a nice way for the community to come together and have a memory of this time.




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Tune-free pop and the new Katie Hopkins: our 2020 celebrity predictions

What does our crystal ball say the new year will bring for celebs? Sex tapes, terrible singing and off-the-cuff sofa jokes that ignite the far right. Sounds great!

There are two ways to spend New Year’s Eve, as best as I can tell: you either dirty the floor of a house party and spend the smallest of the small hours running desperately out of drinkable alcohol until you realise it’s 7am and the sun is up and you just watched yourself pour Pepsi Max into half a cup of Bailey’s until they both curdled into a sort of vomitty pâté; or you watched Jools at home with a blanket over your legs, in bed with your teeth brushed by 10 past 12. You get absolutely zero points for guessing which one of the two I saw the new year in with. My body is still shaking.

Fair to say, too, that celebrities have yet to emerge blinkingly into the new decade. In the Christmas lull, the famous go into one of two modes of hibernation: either posting a succession of matching-pyjama family selfies in million-pound mansions that are identically decorated with plush beige carpets and tasteful but anonymous tonal greys; or going on holiday somewhere unthinkably lush and posting: “How’s the weather back home!” while sizzling in a hammock over aquamarine Maldivian waters. What I am saying is that there is no news, all right, and we can’t spend 1,200 words having a go at Cats again, so we simply have to preview the year 2020 and have a stab at guessing what the world of fame has for us. Is it a cop-out? Or is it actually quite a decent effort for someone who still has “brandy” in his system and who many doctors would advise shouldn’t be sitting upright at this still-early stage in his hangover? Well exactly. Let’s get on with it.

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Lee Phillip Bell, co-creator of The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, dies aged 91

The ‘queen of daytime television’ created the two soap operas with her husband William Bell

The co-creator of The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, Lee Phillip Bell, has died aged 91.

Bell, an accomplished broadcast journalist and talk show host, and her husband William created two of the world’s most prominent soap operas, which have run continuously for over 47 years, and aired more than nearly 20,000 combined episodes.

We are all devastated by the passing of Lee Phillip Bell. A television pioneer and powerhouse in her own right, she elevated daytime television in co-creating “The Young and the Restless” with her equally iconic husband, Bill Bell. We sadly mourn our true matriarch. pic.twitter.com/V5nUaz4N5E

Lee Phillip Bell, Rest In Peace....Queen of Daytime Television https://t.co/4wIueloEF0

We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of a member of our CBS family and Daytime community, Emmy Award winning broadcast journalist, and co-creator of Y&R and B&B, Lee Phillip Bell. She was a pioneer in television and will be missed dearly. pic.twitter.com/6BYpUYQwaU

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Kojo Anim review – BGT star on fame, faith and fatherhood

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.”

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Food porn, be gone! Ready Steady Cook is back and better than ever

Who needs pretentious chefs? After a decade away, TV’s simplest cookery show is on the air again, and with Rylan at the helm it’s the perfect recipe for success

This week, the first new episodes of Ready Steady Cook for a decade are broadcast on BBC One. The miraculous thing is that, watching it, you’d never know that it ever went away.

Sure, some things are little different. The budget for the ingredients has risen from £5 to a colossal £7.50, and they are presented in reusable totes rather than single-use plastic bags. The theme tune now comes with a weird techno burble that makes you feel as if you are playing an imported PlayStation 2 game about different methods of cooking mince. Sumac exists. And there is a new host in Rylan Clark-Neal, continuing his monomaniacal quest to seize and hijack every defunct daytime gameshow made during the 1990s.

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Netflix is reducing streaming quality amid coronavirus. How will it affect viewing in Australia?

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

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

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Covid-19 leaves news and entertainment industries reeling

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

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.

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The Big Night In review – telethon triumphs over the lockdown

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

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.

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The week in TV: After Life; Gangs of London; Emergence; Have I Got News for You – and more

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.

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BBC could quarantine actors and crews on dramas to aid filming

Broadcaster considers plans to restart production on many TV series halted by pandemic

The BBC could put actors and directors in quarantine and remove the studio audience from Strictly Come Dancing under plans to help restart television production after the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the industry.

The proposals, which could affect everything from EastEnders to light entertainment and high-end dramas, are being considered as broadcasters face up to the prospect of enormous gaps in their schedules after much of British television production was stopped dead in mid-March.

Related: No Señor Agüero, but BBC Bitesize kicks it out of the park

Related: How TV news hosts get camera-ready in lockdown

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Comedy, tragedy, elegy: why Alan Bennett’s home truths are perfect for our times

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

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Coronavirus poses huge threat to entertainment industry

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.

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‘PUBG Mobile’ 0.18.0 Is Rolling Out Now on iOS and Android with Mad Miramar, a New Results UI, and a Whole Lot More

Earlier this week, Tencent announced a big new update for PUBG Mobile (Free) on iOS and Android. The version 0.18.0 …






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SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath’ Coming May 26th, ‘Slayin 2’ and Today’s Other New Releases, the Latest Sales, and More

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for May 7th, 2020. Like most Thursdays, today is mostly about …