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Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Aziz Ansari and More on the Lost Comic

Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Aziz Ansari and More on the Lost Comic

‘He was basically ever met’ person the funniest Monday 17.04.17 comic genius ofHarrisWittels Aziz Ansariandmore onthelost , , By Hadley Freeman

12A Quiz

Fingersh Pit your wits against the breakout stars of this year’s University Challenge, and Bobby Seagull , with Eric Monkman 20 questions set by the brainy duo. No conferring

The Fields Medal has in secutive order. This spells out the 1 recent times been awarded 5 name of which borough? to its fi rst woman, Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014, and was What links these former infamously rejected by Russian 7 prime minsters: the British Grigori Perelman in 2006. Which Spencer Perceval, the Lebanese academic discipline is this prize Rafi c Hariri and the Indian awarded for? Indira Gandhi?

Whose art exhibition at Tate Narnia author CS Lewis, 2 Britain this year has become 8 Brave New World author the fastest selling show in the Aldous Huxley and former US gallery’s history? president John F Kennedy all died on 22 November. Which year The fi rst national park desig- was this? 3 nated in the UK was the Peak District in 1951. Announced as a Which north European national park in 2009 and formed 9 country’s fl ag is the oldest in 2010, which is the latest existing fl ag in the world? It is English addition to this list? 15 supposed to have fallen out of the heavens during a battle in the University Challenge inspired 13th century. 4 the novel Starter for Ten. Who is its English author? The fi rst square number is 10 1 (1x1). Placing the 1st, 3rd Roger Federer secured a re- and 7th square number beside 5 cord 18th grand slam tennis each other in that respective title this year at the Australian order gives a calendar year. Open. Which Australian, nick- Which international organisation, named the “Scud”, did he beat headquartered in Brussels, was at Wimbledon in 2003 to win his founded in that year? fi rst grand slam? Lord Sankey served as lord Combine the periodic table 11 chancellor during the second 6 symbols for the chemi- premiership of Ramsay MacDon- cal elements neon, tungsten, ald. In a judgment of the judicial

hydrogen and americium in con- committee of the privy counsel,

ames Clavell 18. Sir Frederick Banting 19. The Songhai Empire 20. Dadaism 20. Empire Songhai The 19. Banting Frederick Sir 18. Clavell ames J 17. Nui) Rapa (or Island Easter 16. Mongolia. Ulanbaatar, 15. cubit/qubit The 14. Nebula Crab The 13. III Richard 12.

2 17.04.17 on buzzers

he likened the Canadian constitu- people living in which locale once tion to what lifeform? 17 partook in an egg hunt as part of a “birdman cult”? According to Shakespeare, 12 a military commander This man wrote, produced received a note informing him 17 and directed To Sir, With to “be not so bold. For ... thy Love, starring Sidney Poitier. He master is bought and sold”. was also famous for writing a Which English monarch was the series of loosely connected novels commander’s master? about “the history of the Anglo- Saxon involvement in Asia”. This heavenly object is Who was he? 13 thought to result from an event seen by Chinese observers A classmate of Dr Norman in 1054 . Containing a pulsar, 18 Bethune, this man received what is located in the area of the the Nobel prize in physiology or constellation Taurus? medicine. The man also received a letter from a boy who benefi This word was frequently from his discovery, stating, “I am 14 used in the description 7 12 a fat boy and I feel fi ne. I can of Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings. climb a tree.” Name him. Spelled diff erently, which word can also be used to describe a This empire, located in the unit of information in computer 19 Sahel, was once ruled by science? Askia the Great. Which empire collapsed following the 1591 Residents of Ottawa Battle of Tondibi? 15 sometimes claim that a phenomen on called the “polar Possibly deriving its name vortex” renders their city the 20 from a colloquial French coldest national in the term for a hobby horse, what is the world. Which Asian city usually name of the early 20th-century BBC; AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ALAMY; ALLSTAR/COLUMBIA; SIPA PRESS/REX SIPA ALLSTAR/COLUMBIA; ALAMY; IMAGES; BBC; AFP/GETTY claims the title of coldest national artistic movement with centres in capital? Zurich, and Paris?

Though more famous for Questions 1-10 were set by Seagull,

PHOTOGRAPHS PHOTOGRAPHS 16 earlier cultural practices, 11-20 by Monkman.

ssassinated 8. 1963 9. Denmark 10. Nato (1 9 49 gives 1949) 11. A (living) tree tree (living) A 11. 1949) gives 49 9 (1 Nato 10. Denmark 9. 1963 8. ssassinated a All 7. Am) H W (Ne Newham 6. Philippoussis Mark 5. Nicholls David 4. Downs South 3. Hockney David 2. Mathematics 1. ANSWERS:

17.04.17 The Guardian 3

Jessica Knappett I am queasy, irritable and dehydrated. My heavy-drinking days have trained me well for having a baby

am pregnant. I think I’m supposed to I go to the opportunity to come to terms with the fact say we’re pregnant but it feels more like that your life is about to change irreversibly and in I I’m the pregnant . He is just reading work, not inconceivable ways – in what is by all accounts a about being pregnant. Aloud. From a hungover miraculous nightmare – before all the unsolicited tediously saccharine baby manual, while advice and opinions start pouring in. I mutter things such as, “What? No brie? That’s but So I decided to button it, which is hell for a bullshit,” under my breath. professional over-sharer like me. Then again, I am I was going to announce it on Instagram by preggers, an actor so I should be able to lie convincingly. It posing in my bra and wearing a veil in front of drinking turns out it wasn’t my acting skills that prepared a wall of roses, but then I remembered I’m not me for what I am now referring to as “the perfor- Beyoncé, so I just texted all my mates: “Guess Lucozade mance of a lifetime”. No. It was being a drunk. what?” and a baby emoji. Many replied saying before 11am As I carried around my guilty secret I became they had guessed. Apparently, the fact that I twitchy with paranoia every time I spoke to wasn’t drinking on any given evening was so out anyone. One morning, feeling like the colour grey, of character that they knew I was pregnant before I bump into a work friend in the street, and yet I could even utter the words “lubricated vaginal again have to resist the urge to tell the truth when ultrasound wand”. asked the innocuous question: “What have you The fi rst trimester of pregnancy has felt almost been up to, Jess?” exactly like a hangover: a 12-week-long hangover Me: “Nothing much, just working,” Brain Me: (or indeed perhaps a detox, though I wouldn’t “I’M PREGGERS, MATE, SO I AM BASICALLY know). I may be sober now, living without any of NOW A PERSON IN A PERSON, LIKE A TERRIFY- the relaxing, entertaining benefi ts of the delicious ING HUMAN RUSSIAN DOLL.” alcohol I held so dear, but what I have observed is This is when it hits me. This cageyness is that almost nothing has changed since my heavy- somehow familiar. I’m covering something up, drinking days. just like in my good old drinking days. Pregnancy First, there are the physical similarities. Most isn’t just physically like being hungover, it also days I am queasy, irritable and have a bang- mirrors it psychologically. Secret Hangover, my ing headache. I wake, parched, at 4am in the old friend, come and meet Secretly Pregnant. You recovery position (my body’s refl ex response to a are virtually the same horror. presumed drinking crisis). I stumble around my So off I go to work, not hungover but preggers: fl at desperately seeking hydration and searching dry heaving on the tube and quietly knocking for some memory of last night’s correlating bad back a Lucozade before 11am, as if it were a behaviour (karaoke? A lock-in? Did dinner get normal morning drink, while fantasising about out of hand again?) until I remember I fell asleep when and where I will take a nap undisturbed. on the sofa watching the News at Ten before my Future pregnant If anyone notices my dark eyes and pallid skin, husband put me to bed. This is me now. I spend person in training I shamefully pretend I am “coming down with each night in a cycle of waking, rehydrating and something”. I wolf down vitamins and gorge on urinating. The reward? Managing an infant doing beige food, and slip out early, falling asleep on the exact same thing, I imagine. the bus home. For the fi rst 12 weeks, the advice is not to tell The agonising shame-over of old has been anyone you are pregnant. Push it down, bottle it replaced with a new, far more disturbing anxi- up, just … be British about it. A big reason for this, I ety: the impending sense of doom that comes learn, is because the chance of losing your baby in with becoming a person in a person. I am going the fi rst 12 weeks is higher than you might think, to have a human child that is going to call me and you might not want to have to explain to Mummy. Pass me the gin. But, alas, I am everyone where your baby has gone while reformed. I don’t actually want booze you are suff ering the trauma of a miscar- in my body, and it makes me feel riage. I can’t help thinking this is advice almost grownup. Sobriety is slowly designed to protect everyone from transforming me into a responsible having an awkward conversation, parent, and I need do nothing but rather than to protect the pregnant ride out the familiar sensation of a woman who might want to talk wretched, never-ending hangover. about her feelings. However, keep- Who knew I had spent my 20s ing it to yourself does also aff ord you training for this? GETTY IMAGES PHOTOGRAPH PHOTOGRAPH

17.04.17 The Guardian 5 , ‘a man people were drawn to’

arris Wittels was always his late 20s, he had achieved the kind of perfectly online – on Vines and lucky. He was the boy success comedians twice his age would podcasts . He coined the term H who would lose his wallet throw themselves into the ocean for. “humblebrag”, which became in Boston, only for it to be “He was a star immediately,” says a feed retweeting egregious returned by post, with Sarah Silverman, who hired him to examples of people aff ecting self- cash and everything, to his parents’ work on her eponymous show when he deprecation but really just bragging place in Texas; the guy who would was 23 . “He was just this kid, but so (for instance: “Oh dear. Don’t know leave his mobile in a New York taxi, confi dent and hilarious, who won all what to do at the airport. Huge crowd, only for the driver to track him down to the arguments in the writers’ room. He but I’ll miss my plane if I stop and do return it. So it felt inevitable to those wrote so much stupid funny stuff for photos … oh dear don’t want to who knew him that when he turned up me it still kills me when I think of it, disappoint” from Stephen Fry ), and then in as a 21-year-old wanting which I do all the time,” she says. a book. “And it got in the dictionary! to make it in comedy, he was, almost From there, he was hired as a staff How many 26-year-olds come up with immediately, hired by some of the writer on the NBC comedy Parks and words that get in the dictionary? That most beloved TV shows of the time. Recreation , eventually becoming the was so Harris,” laughs writer and “He just seemed to be one of those show’s supervising producer. “It was producer , who worked with golden boys that everything went right obvious from the moment I met him Wittels on . “I for,” says comedian , that this guy was just phenomenally know people will say : ‘Oh, you’re just who put Wittels on his infl uential LA- talented. There was no limit to how far saying this because of what happened,’ based podcast, Comedy Bang! Bang! , he could have gone ,” says Michael but I swear this is the truth: Harris was three months after he arrived in the Schur , the comedy’s producer. basically the funniest person I ever met.” city. and colleagues put this “I could always spot Harris’s jokes Wittels also wrote for Eastbound & luck down to two factors. The fi rst was in a script, because they were the Down , opened for Louis CK and wrote Wittels’ lik ability. Amy Poehler says: funniest and craziest ones, and that’s jokes for President Obama when he “He was a person who people were what I always push myself to achieve, appeared on Zack Galifi anakis’s drawn to. He had a natural laid-back to make jokes that are original like Between Two Ferns. But despite his southern charisma, and when some- Harris’s always were,” adds Aziz success as a writer, what Wittels really one’s quick-witted there can be mean- Ansari , who was a close friend. wanted to do was perform his own ness underneath, but Harris was the Wittels became a podcast star in an material as an actor. In early 2015, the opposite. He was smart in his comedy era when the comedy landscape was opportunity arrived. He was working as but so sweet and gentle as a person.” starting to shift from network TV and a writer on Ansari and Yang’s upcoming But in terms of his career, the most movies to the internet. Handsome in Netfl ix show, , when he important factor was talent: Wittels an appealingly nerdy way, he had a got the news: he would play Ansari’s was so gifted at comedy writing that, by sideways sense of humour that worked best friend, a role created for him . ‘I could always spot Harris’s jjokes in Master a scriscript.pt. TTheyhey werewere the ffunniestunniest anandd ccraziest’raziest’ of fun AzizAziz AnAnsarisari In his career on shows such as Parks & Recreation and Master of None, Harris Wittels established himself as one of his generation’s fi nest comic talents – before ANK

dying aged just 30. Those who knew him W S

best tell Hadley Freeman his story VON YN ROB ROBYN VON SWANK ROBYN VON RAPH TOG PHOTOGRAPH PHOTOGRAPH PHO

6 The Guardian 17.04.17 But six days after he got his dream job, Wittels ran out of luck. On 19 February 2015, he overdosed on heroin and died alone at home. He was 30. The relationship between comedy and heroin is long, and littered with early mortality: John Belushi, Lenny Bruce, Chris Farley, Mitch Hedberg. But Wittels doesn’t really fi t into that group. There was nothing dark, angry or punk about him. “Harris was someone it was joy to be around, a 5ft 6in, geeky Jewish guy with the self-confi dence of Matthew McConaughey ,” says Yang when we meet up in a bar in New York. “It wasn’t just that he was a high-functioning addict, which he absolutely was, but he never stopped being himself. Even when he was in rehab that fi nal year he would send me jokes about people he had met there and I’d be like : ‘Dammit, dude, you’re not supposed to do that!’” Wittels grew up in a close family in , the son of Ellison, a doctor, and Maureen, a teacher who gave up her job to spend more time with her children, Stephanie and Harris. “I just loved being with my kids,” says Maureen. “Harris was such a loving little guy. I remember once when he was 12 or 13, I was walking down the hall with him at his school and he took my hand. He didn’t care → ‘He was so good at capturing his ggeneration’s ‘Harrisris oobsessionsbsessions alreadyady hahadd wwith,ith, amonamongg his ownwn ootherther things, ‘He had voice,e, so ppopop cultureculture’’ a specific he mmadeade AmyAmy Poehler comedic a splash’lash’ voice and Scottt tthehe ccountryoun Aukermanerman wwasas ssoo pprimedrimed fforor himhim’’ MichaelMichael SSchurchur

17.04.17 The Guardian 7 was then an almost blandly traditional . He became known as “the king of chuff a” – “chuff a” being the random lines of dialogue characters say at the beginning of a scene before getting into the storyline. Most of the time, these are forgettable pleasantries, but Wittels’ distinctively clever and dopey jokes (“Your favourite kind of cake can’t be birthday cake, that’s like saying your favourite kind of cereal is breakfast cereal.” “I love breakfast cereal!”) helped to give the show its sweet weirdness . “Harris brought an interesting combination of sensitivity and about all his friends seeing him. I do these weird long set-ups and was judgment to the show, and his voice ← can feel his hand in mine now, as so good at telling jokes that were came out a lot in Chris Pratt and Aziz if he were with me.” simultaneously dumb and smart. He Ansari’s characters,” says Poehler. When he was 15, he begged his already had his own voice, so he made “Not just because he was a young man parents to get him tickets to see Louis a splash,” Aukerman tells me when we and they’re young male characters, CK in Houston. The three Wittels went meet in the Comedy Bang! Bang! offi ce, but he was so good at capturing his together and, afterwards, they spotted in Hollywood. generation’s obsessions with, among CK in the bar. “Harris went up to him Silverman says: “The smartest thing other things, pop culture.” and said: ‘Hey man, you were terrifi c, I ever did was hire Harris, and the As he became more successful, he but I need to give you some notes.’ second smartest thing I did was realise bought a house in Los Feliz, Los Louis CK just looked at him – all fi ve how much I had to learn from him, Angeles. It looked, his friends noted, a foot nothing of him – and cracked up. even though he was 14 years younger lot like his childhood home in Houston. But Harris was dead serious. I don’t than me. “He taught me to just write “Which was hilarious,” says Yang, think Harris ever told Louis that story, the stuff you love and appeal to the “because he was in this very grownup even after they became friends as people who love that .” One of the last house, but still living like a teenager, adults,” Maureen smiles. things Wittels and Silverman wrote playing in his band, throwing parties. Maureen has spent a lot of time together was a skit they originally Harris was also kinda gross – he’d only trying to understand what happened. wrote for the rapper Drake called Cops eat fast food, and he was obsessive She was shocked when Stephanie told Cum Dicks and Flying, which is even about going to every single her that she and Harris experimented more bizarre than its title suggests. concert. But everyone, especially with drugs as teenagers – pot, “But Drake never wrote back, which women, loved him. ” mushrooms, acid – but, as Stephanie I thought was weird, as he’s a “Harris could coast because he was said to her, “It was just normal teenage sweetheart. But Harris said: ‘Maybe it’s so talented,” adds Schur. “He basically stuff , Mom. And I’m fi ne, right?” because we spray him with loads of got away with murder for a long time “But of course, you look back and dog sperm in the script, and I don’t because he could produce great work think, what was I not seeing? What was think rappers are cool with being on 50% eff ort.” Colton Dunn as wrong with that picture?” says Maureen. covered in sperm,’” Silverman laughs. Wittels had long been into drugs – Brett and Wittels When Wittels arrived in LA in 2005, Wittels joined Parks and Recreation that was no secret. He joked about as Harris in Parks the trend in comedy clubs was for at the beginning of season two, being stoned at work and he later said and Recreation clever one-liners . “But Harris would bringing his quirky sensibility to what he was high the whole time he wrote

8 The Guardian 17.04.17 Wittels with Sarah Silverman. Bottom: with a doll, his sister and his family

the Humblebrag book (“Which is in much cheaper. So I was like, ‘Where do itself a humblebrag,” he added.) I get heroin?’” “What changed was when he hurt Soon after, he texted Stephanie to his back, when he was 26,” his sister say he was going back into rehab Stephanie says. “He’d collapsed on the because he was addicted to heroin. fl oor with his back in spasms and went “I knew it was game over then, because to hospital. They prescribed OxyContin everything Harris did, he did it to and that’s how everything started.” extremes . There was no way this story The current opioid addiction would end well,” Stephanie tells me. epidemic is the worst drug crisis in Some addicts take drugs because American history. In 2015, the year they want to die, others take them Wittels died, more than 33,000 people because they’re trying to fi nd a way to in the US died from opioid overdoses . live. Wittels was fi rmly in the latter Stephanie says: “I remember going camp. Stephanie says: “When I’d talk to LA to visit Harris when he was about to him about a friend we’d had who 25, and he needed Vicodin just to relax. died from an overdose, he’d say: He just couldn’t turn off his brain ‘That’s not going to be my story.’” ‘I still email CK, named the lead character in his otherwise: he always had a screen in He also never stopped talking about new show, Horace and Pete, after him front of his face so he could put down future, such as planning his move to him. I know (“Horace Wittels”). his ideas, and he had a million of them. New York to work on Master of None. it’s denial, “I just miss him, I was very sad So when he found OxyContin it must Ansari says: “We knew, of course, when he died – sorry,” CK said last year have felt like the perfect way for him to he’d been in rehab, so I guess it was a but I just on the podcast Bullseye , breaking off , a calm himself down.” risk making him our writer, and then lump in his throat. casting him. But as soon as Netfl ix had to “He felt like a son to me, he really ittels relied on commissioned the show we knew we decide he’s did,” says Silverman. “I still email him OxyContin to numb wanted him.” super busy’ from time to time. I know it’s denial, W personal frustrations: Wittels went into rehab for the third but I just had to decide that he’s super the relationships that time in January 2015, and lived in a busy for the rest of my life. ” didn’t work, the movie sober-living facility afterwards. He left “If he were still around he would be scripts that didn’t get optioned, the pe- the facility on a Tuesday and late on a very important person in the world of riods of boredom – all relatively minor Wednesday night, from his home, he comedy,” says Schur. “He had a specifi c hurdles, but ones this golden boy just sent Maureen an email: “I found a cool comedic voice and the country was so didn’t have the emotional toolkit to place to live in Manhattan. I feel good!! primed for him.” deal with. Quickly, to his shock, he was I am feeling very fortunate. Love you.” Wittels would have been 33 on addicted, and not even he could com- Soon after pressing send, Wittels Thursday 20 April – “Same bine working for a network show with shot some heroin, overdosed and birthday as Hitler,” he loved to an addiction to OxyContin. died. When he was found, his point out. To mark it, Stephanie “In late 2014 he handed in a script computer was open on Airbnb. He is putting on Harris Phest in that was just straight up bad, and he had been looking at New York Houston, which will include never gave in bad work,” says Schur. apartments. many of Wittels’ favourite things, “So I said to him: ‘Look, I feel like Wittels had barely started his specifi cally, Phish songs and you’re taking advantage of career, but the comedy. The proceeds will go the me now – it’s crossed over sense of loss in the Harris Wittels Fund, which his to unprofessional.’ To my comedy world was parents set up after his death and surprise, he didn’t push and remains which provides scholarships at his back. He apologised, and immense. Louis old school. then he broke down and “We have a text chain, the actors cried and said he was from Parks, and his name pops up a addicted to drugs. The pills lot, memories and things he’d say, he joked about had become just talking about him,” says Poehler. an actual problem.” “The fucking bummer about death is Earlier that year , shortly that it ends the conversation and Harris after his niece was born, he loved conversation – arguing about had told his parents that he things, coming up with lists, making was going to rehab. “And we dumb jokes. But the conversation is were worried, of course, but he made it just one way now.” sound like he had just been working Since Wittels’ death, the trend has too hard and it was all in hand now. We continued for blacker, bleaker comedy, knew nothing,” says Maureen. not laugh out loud. This was already He relapsed soon after leaving rehab, happening in the last years of his life, and what happened next is a story all and he talked about it with Aukerman too among opiate addicts: the week before he died. “I was like, I just want to get high “Harris thought even comedians one more time, just to say goodbye to could be kind of embarrassed about NBC/GETTY IMAGES; SARAH SILVERMAN; MAUREEN WITTELS MAUREEN SARAH SILVERMAN; NBC/GETTY IMAGES; it,” Wittels explained that year on Pete comedy, and they had to make it serious Holmes’s podcast, You Made It Weird . or dark or whatever. He said to me: ‘I “I decided to make the jump to heroin just think motherfuckers wanna laugh.’ – I’m not going to shoot it, I’ll just snort And he was right. Motherfuckers

PHOTOGRAPHS PHOTOGRAPHS it. It’s basically the same thing, and it’s wanna laugh.”

17.04.17 The Guardian 9 Untitled, Bamako, Mali, 1954, by Seydou Keïta

Driving passion The Autophoto exhibition in Paris reveals how photographers fell in love with the car, and how it gave them a new way of seeing the world. The 500 works include

pictures by giants such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue and Lee Friedlander WWW.FONDATIONCARTIER.COM CONTEMPORAIN OPENS ON 20 APRIL. DETAILS POUR L’ART CARTIER THE FONDATION AT AUTOPHOTO

Woman Waiting to Proceed Califormia, from the South at Sunset and Highland America by Car series, Boulevards, Los Angeles, at 2008, by Lee Friedlander Approximately 11:59am One Day in February 1997, by Andrew Bush

10 The Guardian 17.04.17 From the Los Alamos series, c 1974, by William Eggleston

Car Poolers, Mexico, Anonymous studio portrait, 2011-2012, by China, c 1950 Alejandro Cartagena

17.04.17 The Guardian 11 Health

n morning, run marathons in New York (epic), thousands of people will Tokyo (unbelievably friendly), Berlin O undergo a ritual familiar to (fl at and fast) and then I’ve run anyone who has run the London three times – four, come London Marathon . The Sunday. London simply blows the extremely early wake-up call after a others out of the water. I ran my fi rst in fi tful night’s sleep. The enormous 2014, cynical hack, fully prepared to be breakfast bowl of porridge, or multiple underwhelmed. I’ve never slices of toast, to store energy for what experienced anything like it. The lies ahead. Vaseline smeared on the support is spine-tingling. Marathon nipples, inner arms and thighs. The day is a little fl ashback to the 2012 last-minute trip – or rather trips – to the Olympics, when cynicism evaporated loo. Excitement, fear and adrenaline at overnight and total strangers shared the start. A glorious wall of noise from morning is not. Niggles are par for the eye contact – even (gasp!) conversation the hordes of spectators lining the course and a few days’ rest may sort – on the tube. What’s more, London’s course. And then, 26.2 miles later, an them – proper injuries may disrupt organisation is unbelievably overwhelming buzz of success. your plans. Accept that, and listen to slick. You stagger across Last year, the London marathon your body. that fi nish line on the celebrated its one millionth fi nisher Mall, wobble fawn - since its fi rst event in 1981, yet the How much commitment does legged as a kind demand for places continues to swell. it take? soul puts a medal This year, more than 250,000 people Let’s not beat about the bush. around your entered the ballot: 39,000 will toe the Marathons can be brutal. It’s a long- neck. Seconds starting line. Whether you are one of term commitment. There will be later, someone those about to pin a number to your freezing Sunday mornings when your is holding out chest, or you suspect that you might alarm shrills at your groggy head and your bag to one day catch this mysterious bug, your body is a bundle of mysterious you. , your here are 10 points to guide you to a aches, facing the prospect of a training odds of a ballot good marathon – from someone about run longer than you have ever tackled place are slim, to tackle her eighth ... before. You will have to alter your and fundraising schedule to sneak in extra miles, for the charity How long do I need to train for? perhaps running to work, running at ones is onerous. The fi rst step is to choose a realistic lunchtime or forgoing social occasions. But if you get the training plan and a realistic timeframe. There will be moments when you chance: do it. It’s simply Such plans usually range from 12 to 20 question your sanity. This all takes the best race in the world. weeks, but even those for beginners support, sometimes lots of it. If you tend to assume that you are already have a partner, they must, for all Setting a goal capable of running three times a week. practical purposes, sign up, too, It doesn’t matter how fast you can zip So if your running shoes have been left whether it’s by having a hot bath ready round a 5k parkrun, or how much you in a musty cupboard for years, you for your return, or by happily fancfancyy youryour chancescha of smashing a need to get to that point fi rst. The acquiescing to quiet Saturday nights ccolleague’solleague personal best: the London marathon ballot results come in. A running buddy training for the pprimaryrim goal before your out in October, so if you bag a place for same race is invaluable, but look fi rst marathon should be 2018, you need to spend October to online, too, and fi nd a forum for people tot fi nish it. Anything January gently building up. Then do with similar goals. Or, of course, join elsee is just the icing on your research and fi nd a plan that is the Guardian running blog. thethe well-earnedwe cake. The right for you and which has been ccourseourse ofof 26.2 miles is – forgive devised by a reputable coach, either Why London anyway? Aren’t tthehe glaring lack of logic – more than online, or in a book or magazine . Don’t, there other marathons ? dodoubleuble a ha halflf mmarathon . The cliche however, be a mindless slave to this There are – and most have a distinct, tthathat “the race bbegins at 20 miles” is plan. Marathon training is a fi ne special atmosphere. Whether you ttrue.rue. Push beyondbeyo that barrier, and balance between pushing yourself, and prefer a big city marathon or suddenly thinthingsg fall apart – the body recovering properly. Feeling knackered something a lot smaller and off road, ccannotannot hold. BByy all means use a “race is normal, being unable to get up in the there’s a race for you. However, I have ttimeime predictor”predictor” on the internet to

Want to do the London Marathon? A veteran runner, Kate Carter, off ers a 10-step guide to

12Run The Guardian 17.04.17 for y estimate your time, and aim for that, before your big race is a good time to the hammer down. A negative split – but remember that is probably a best try and eat as healthily as you can, running the second half faster than the case scenario. Adapt, and adjust – both drink minimal alcohol but plenty of fi rst – is one of the holy grails of before, if injuries threaten – and water, and sleep as much as possible marathon running, but it’s one even during, if things don’t go right on the the elites don’t always hit. day. And hey, remember, the fi rst time What about carb loading, and gels you race any distance, it’s a guaranteed during the race? You will overcome personal best. Around two to three days before the What makes a race, you can start carb loading. When marathon such How long should your longest run we run, we burn fats – of which we a chall enge is partly the in training be? have a near-limitless supply, regardless amount of time you People get fi xated on this, but really, of body shape – and carbohydrates. spend in your own the best advice is to not to worry about The latter, in the form of glycogen, head . How do you distance but to work to a maximum starts to run out after about 90 cope with crashing “time on feet”. Whether that takes you minutes. Carb loading ensures that from grinning highs to 18, 20 or 22 miles is irrelevant – the your glycogen levels are at their peak to desperate lows? point is that you need to recover from when you start. Yet wonderful though How do you shut up the that before you run the marathon it is to have a legitimate excuse to voice that whispers, itself. Most people do this three weeks binge on pizza, try not to go overboard. insistently, at 16 miles that before, but four is fi ne, andd mightmight bbee You don’t want to give yourself there’s no way you can do better. Pushing yourself furtherurther intointo stomach problems. And make sure, another 10 ? By remembering the long unknown territory, just soo that yyouou whatever you have for breakfast on training runs when you did it all by know you can, will only risksk still-tiredstill-tired race day, that you have tried and tested yourself. By trusting in that training. legs on race day. And whenn your it before a long run. And by blocking out the negative stomach fi lls with dread att the prospectprospect During the race, your glycogen tank voices. There are many strategies for of 20 miles in grey drizzle,, rememberremember will start depleting. If you don’t top it this – counting in your head is one that everyone feels like this.his. Those up, you could hit the dreaded “wall”. (Paula Radcliff e counted to a hundred slogs, on your own, with nnoo Whether you replace it in the form of when times got tough) or adopting a adrenaline, no rest, and noo crowd gels, jelly beans, or sports drink (or mantra (my favourite is Common- support are the hardest part.art. Get yyourour nothing ) is a personal choice but one wealth Games runner Steve Way’s: training right and race dayy will that it is absolutely essential to practise “Don’t be shit!” ). Break the race down genuinely seem easy in comparison.omparison. in advance. Find out what works for into chunks, and take each mile you and what your stomach can individually . Talk yourself through bad What should I eat? tolerate. Race day is not a day for patches, in your head or – why not? – Before his fi rst London marathon,arathon, the sudden random experimentation. out loud. Now is not the time for self- former 10,000-metre recordrd holder consciousness. You are Dave Bedford had four pina na coladas , Be the tortoise, not the hare a marathoner now. countless beers and a largee curry – The waiting is done. Pre-race nerves having entered the race foror a bet a ffewew have settled. You are across the line, Enjoy it. Or as much of it as hours before. Needless to sasay,y, this is and suddenly feel great. The single you can not the optimum strategy.. But how most important thing you can do now When you cross the fi nish line, you will seriously you take your trainingaining is relax and take it easy. Starting too probably be elated, exhausted and nutrition depends on yourr gogoals.als. If yoyouu fast is the most common race mistake. quite possibly fi nd yourself howling: surveyed regular runners,, one ooff their Yes, for the fi rst few miles, marathon “I’m never, ever doing that again!”. top reasons for running wouldould be “so pace will feel really easy. It always Until a few days, weeks or months that I can eat more cake”. BByy all means, does, right up to the point when it later, when you suddenly fi nd yourself reward yourself within reasonason – and doesn’t. You cannot wing a marathon. online, credit card in hand, inexplic- don’t go overboard on “recoverycovery If everything in your training points ably entering another one. Marathons shakes”. Almost all sportss nutrition towards a reasonable goal, you are can be addictive. I remember waking products are simply a morere convenient simply NOT going to miraculously up the morning after my fi rst and way in which to replace lostost carbohy- hy- shave 45 minutes off that. Guard thinking: “Oh my God. I ran a drates and protein – particularlycularly against the rush of blood to the head marathon yesterday. I RAN A important for recovering mmuscles.uscles. But and do not hare off . If you still feel MARATHON.” It doesn’t get better than really, proper food is better.er. The week good at 20 miles, then by all means put that. Until you do it again, only faster. entering – and completinglti – the th event tth that could change your world

our life 17.04.17 The Guardian 13 Dr Dillner’s dilemma Is yo-yo dieting bad for you? Sexual Healing Pamela Stephenson Connolly

Trying to lose weight is like giving up they tried to lose weight again. The I’m a 25-year-old woman, dating a man smoking: you try, you fail, you try again. women were randomly put into one of who is very loving and understanding. But yo-yo dieting has been thought three groups: dieting only, exercise WRITE TO US Before him, I have been in two relation- to cause problems. Weight cycling – only, and exercise and dieting. Weight ships, one of which ended in sexual defi ned as losing and regaining at least cyclers were as successful as non- Send us your own abuse and the other in emotional abuse. 5lb-10 lb per cycle – has been linked to cyclers in losing weight – on average problem for The problem isn’t my present, it’s my high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes they lost about 10 % of their starting Sexual Healing, past. Sometimes, during intercourse, by emailing and even cancer. Some research weight within a year. There were no memories of previous traumatic private.lives@ suggests that it can actually increase diff erences in the percentage of body theguardian.com experiences come back to my mind the proportion of fat, especially around fat or lean muscle mass between the or writing to and ruin the moment for us. Will the waist. It has also been accused of groups. Meanwhile, a review of Private Lives, The I always feel the same? slowing the metabolism, making it 20 human studies and seven animal Guardian, Kings harder to lose weight in the future. studies found no evidence that weight Place, 90 York Way, There is no reason to be pessimistic . It Surveys estimate that 25% of men cycling causes high blood pressure, London N1 9GU is true that sexual abuse often leads to and 27% of women are always trying diabetes or cancer. relationship problems, intrusive negative to lose weight. So yo-yo dieting seems to be worse memories and diffi culty feeling safe for rodents than humans. Last week, during sex, but healing is certainly The solution Dr David Allison , a bio statistician from possible. You are fortunate in having Much of the evidence for the risks the University of Alabama, told the found a partner who seems willing to be of yo-yo dieting comes from rodent American Association for the Advance- part of your healing journey, so allow research. Studies on “obese-prone” ment of Science that serial slimmers him to fully help you to feel sexually rats found that the reintroduc tion of live longer than people who just stay safe. If you fi nd yourself wavering in more food after a dieting period led to fat. Anna Daniels, registered dietitian your trust, suddenly losing desire, or rats rapidly accumulating fat. But not and spokesperson for the British starting to have fl ashbacks, let him know all rat research shows changes in body Dietetic Association says very restrictive and try to share the problem with him. composition. In humans, the evidence dieting is harder to sustain (and is not Most importantly, explain that you need is also mixed, with some studies healthy) and increases the risk of a great deal of control during lovemaking: showing that weight cycling leads to weight cycling. But there is no need to control to set the pace , licence to take women accumulating fat around their feel bad, or that the odds are stacked a break if necessary, and even the right waist in a male-like pattern of obesity. higher against you, each time to stop altogether. Without feeling in But a study of 439 post-- youyo try to lose weight. charge , you may feel scared or coerced, menopausal women, AAs with giving up or even risk becoming retraumatised. of whom a quarter smoking, the over- But if you are free and able to set the were moderate whelming evidence is time, pace and style – and have your weight cyclers and that if you need to partner’s full agreement and under- 18% severe ones, lose weight, you standing – it is more likely that you will published in the should keep trying. If be able to become steadily more sexually journal Metabolism in you are unhappy with comfortable and eventually capable of 2012 found that yo-yo yyour body but don’t enjoying sex unreservedly. dieters were not at a nneed to lose weight, Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based disadvantage when tthath is another story. psychotherapist specialising in sexual disorders

14 The Guardian 17.04.17 Private lives

Couples counselling is the way to go A problem shared I’m a bright guy, I try hard not to be wrong, then I fi nd it hard to admit when I am wrong My partner refuses to apologise for or have made a mistake. It’s pride ; I think an admission of guilt chips away at my perceived anything and it’s driving me to depair identity of always being right. One day, it dawned on me that this attitude doesn’t work in a relationship. This allowed me to let go a little. My wife has low self-esteem (my past actions can’t have helped) and I now watch her grow half an inch each time she is right. My loss is now her victory. I love her and want My partner of more than 20 years will never Should you choose to end this relationship, her to have many victories. I think the letter apologise. No matter how clearcut an error there will come a time when you will feel an writer could benefi t from couples counselling they might have made, and no matter how almighty sense of relief, almost physical. so that the partner has a similar realisation. damaging the consequences, they will not xtrapnel MinorSwing apologise or attempt to make amends . I don’t believe it is malicious, but this behaviour does Your happiness not down to them The Samaritans can be contacted, free, on 116 123 sometimes come across this way. I have a When you put all your eff ort into trying to history of depression and, while I managed to change the other person’s behaviour, the overcome my last bout with counselling and relationship will fail. When you try to make Next week I’m 57, gay and have never feel I am much better able to cope with life’s the other person responsible for your ‘I’M GAY AND ONLY been in a relationship . slings and arrows, my partner’s inability to happiness, you cannot win. When you put ATTRACTED TO MUCH I think I know why : I’m only YOUNGER, MOSTLY acknowledge mistakes and learn from them is yourself into the victim role, you will soon STRAIGHT MEN. AT 57, attracted to young men, causing a dramatic decline in my health. Each switch roles and become the persecutor, I’VE NEVER HAD roughly 18-35. I always episode of non-apology and its accompanying followed by predictable meltdowns. No one A RELATIONSHIP’ longed for a faithful, vicious meltdown, and each repetition of the can “make” us happy or unhappy: it’s a lifelong partner, but behaviour that caused the problem, is making choice. We can only ever change our own younger men get older, so how could there be me more and more, to be blunt, suicidal. behaviour. If we cannot do this then it is any future in it? Friends tell me: “Be realistic, What I would like to know is, is there a way of better to leave the relationship. fi nd a guy of your own age.” Why do so few dealing with a non-apologiser? Some method JR seem to realise that age is as much an of neutralising the harm that they do? orientation as gender is? I can’t begin to Life is about more than survival imagine falling for a guy of my own age . Plus End the relationship: you’ll feel better My partner of 24 years is the same. We are I fi nd most gay men a turn-off . I have spent my The fact that there is a “vicious meltdown” is now living separately to see if what we feel for life as the third person in a series of triangles. of major concern, heightened by the suicidal each other can overcome the results of the I fall for him, he falls for her. Some of those feelings. The only way I could see you being pattern of behaviour we have got into. I love triangles have stood the test of time. But I’m able to remain in this relationship is if you her and can’t imagine not being together. She still waiting for that one encounter that doesn’t are able to ignore this happening, accept this loves me, too. But a life needs to be lived, not end up with me getting crowded out. is the way they are, and not get upset by it. survived. You both deserve better. To me, you But is it feasible to have a relationship with a shouldn’t be looking for a way of neutralising Any answers? Be an agony aunt or tell us your grownup that works that way? Being adult the harm that they do. You should be looking dilemma. To give advice or send us your problem for means taking responsibility. By refusing to do for a way of saying that you don’t want to live Private Lives, email: private.lives@ theguardian.com this, your partner is not a mature adult. I don’t the rest of your life like this. or write to Private Lives, The Guardian, Kings Place, think you should have to put up with that. resistpopulism 90 York Way, London N1 9GU Doonesbury

Garry Trudeau Daily archive extracts from Doonesbury are on the back page of G2

17.04.17The Guardian 15 Arts

ixteen enormous tree stumps, ernist landscape works fi rst disrupted their roots turned towards pop art in 1967, when he was still a stu- S the sky, stand in a circle in dent at St Martin’s in London. He took a a country park. The mist and His stark train from Waterloo, found an ordinary deer gather around. This country fi eld and walked up and down magical-looking sculpture is placed it, then took a photograph of his traces where the Norfolk hamlet of Houghton and exhibited it under the title A Line once stood, until Sir Robert Walpole, Made by Walking . Britain’s fi rst prime minister, moved materials “When I made my straight line , I the vista-spoiling villagers further from He has trekked the Earth, recording his didn’t know about the other straight his lavish new Palladian mansion. lines – the famous Nazca Lines in Peru, Houghton Hall is a venerable stately journeys and traces, and turning them into or Alfred Watkins, who wrote The Old home these days, but White Deer Circle, mysterious works of land art. As his new Straight Track.” It was Watkins who as this work is called, is new – created coined the term ley lines. “We as by Richard Long for an exhibition that, show opens in Norfolk, Richard Long talks humans come to the same visual unusually for this visionary land artist, to Patrick Barkham about coincidences through diff erent is being held outdoors. His stump circle high-altitude sculpting, cloud- cultures and eras and histories. That’s is an uncanny echo of a Seahenge , an all interesting.” ancient wooden circle discovered on a chasing in France – and the We meet in a grand room at beach 12 miles away. Amazingly , Long, walks that lie ahead Houghton Hall, where Long is putting who this year marks 50 years of showing the fi nishing touches to his show, Earth his walking-inspired work, has never Sky. Despite trekking to the four corners heard of the bronze age relic. Perhaps of the globe, recording his journeys Long is listening to the landscape more and the traces he leaves behind, he’s closely than most, though, for he is found the time to put on 70 exhibitions unsurprised by such serendipity. this century alone. “All these coincidences are part of Does he do more than he should? the natural way of things, aren’t they?” “Probably.” What’s driving him? “I says the artist, whose minimal, mod- would like to do fewer shows but more

16 The Guardian 17.04.17 work. I’d like to do more walks. That’s Above, the new erected a kind of prayer fl ag. He wrote It’s never my intention to make a my real love. So I get a bit frustrated if works in Norfolk; to the Guardian, but never heard back. famous site for people to visit. My too much of my time is taken up with below, Long, who “I was very proud of the fact I had work is much more about the spirit of admin. But I’m not complaining. I’ve had at 71 can still hoof probably made the highest sculpture making marks of passage.” a very lucky life. In some ways, I’ve had a tent 30 miles in the world.” Was that a young man Besides, a good idea endures. “Ideas a very poetic life – in charge of my own and camp wild seeking a challenge? “It was a young can last for ever,” he says. “I’m one of destiny, doing what I want, and being man trying to make a work of art that the artists who realised a journey – paid for it, and people appreciating it.” hadn’t been done before.” from a straight path in the grass to a Long is feted for his heroic treks as Since then, his work – from photo- 1,000-mile walk – could be a work of well as the ideas that spring from them. graphing the outline made by his art.” But he does not seek to infl uence Tall and lean, he’s now 71 and keeps fi t sleeping body in the rain to more others. “I have no desire to leave my by cycling . He can still walk 30 miles in enduring circles or lines in stone – has mark in that way because what I do is a day, tent on back, camping wild. shunned the monumental, though it is only what interests me. I followed my “Often the ideas come after I’ve started not completely ephemeral either. “I’m nature and instincts and desires when a walk,” he says. “I once set out to walk ‘I’m proud not interested in making monuments, I was a young artist – and I think young across France from the mouth of the but the other point of view is to leave artists should do the same.” Loire to the Swiss border. It started out of being absolutely no mark – take only photo- While an outdoor exhibition is not completely cloudless and, day after the fi rst graphs and leave only footprints. There’s quite new for Long, it is a departure day, was cloudless – and then I thought quite interesting territory between from his more familiar terrain and it was a much better idea to fi nish the person those two positions – like moving stones materials: it has not begun with a walk, walk when I saw the fi rst cloud. So around, making works which disappear, and nor is he using his favourite River sometimes circumstances can present to cross or making water marks – many ways of Avon mud. There’s some Cornish slate a better idea. I like being open to that being artists in a landscape.” (which he loves) but it’s mixed with kind of serendipity and chance. That’s Dartmoor I wonder if he considers his legacy Norfolk fl int, while another piece is PETE HUGGINS; SI BARBER FOR THE GUARIDAN at the of my work really.” in a at this stage in his career. “I happen to made from gorgeous local ginger- As a young artist, Long was deter- know that my circle near the Burren coloured carrstone . Then there are mined to make his mark. When he sold straight in Ireland is still more or less as it was his “mud paintings” in a kind of his fi rst show , he spent the £250 raised when I made it in 1975, but that’s not to limewash, refl ecting the chalki- → PHOTOGRAPHS PHOTOGRAPHS on climbing Kilimanjaro, on which he line’ say I want people to know where it is. ness of this landscape.

17.04.17 The Guardian 17 Arts

Despite being so well-travelled, animal. I’m an artist animal. But ← Long has based himself in Bristol obviously my work does celebrate his whole life. Does he fi nd fl atter, nature and the wonderful landscapes drier and bleaker East Anglia rather that cover most of the planet.” alien? “Alien is a bit strong. Bigger Long really comes alive when we skies, colder wind – it’s another type step outside, walking briskly over to of English landscape and I’m moved his new creations. “It’s a bit incredible by it, of course I am, but Dartmoor and really, isn’t it, to get away with it?” he the Somerset Levels, the Quantocks, laughs as we look upon his Cornish the Cotswolds – that’s my heart slate exploding out of Houghton Hall’s landscape.” croquet lawn. He placed all the slates He’s walked every piece of Dart- himself. “I don’t have a factory where moor, but avoids pilgrim routes and people fabricate it for me. That’s not a old ways. “I made a conscious decision value judgment, it’s just my prefer- that there’s so many ways to walk in ence. One reason to be an artist is the new ways or original ways. I was quite pleasure of making.” proud of the fact that no one has Similarly, walking gives him enor- walked across Dartmoor in a straight mous pleasure. Outside, in the open air, line before.” he seems to uncoil his tall frame – and Long’s work appears highly pertinent any tension. Does he ever struggle on a in an era of ecological crisis, but it isn’t walk? He talks about getting stranded overtly political. “Green politics wasn’t in the snow. What about mental ly? really invented when I started. My “No, most of the mental hard times work comes out of wanting to make art in my life have been in domestic [situa- in new ways . The world outside the tions] or cities. I have a sense of well- studio represented a fantastically being by being out in the wilderness. PETE HUGGINS colossal opportunity to engage with It’s a kind of therapy. It’s healing.” the physical world. It was my interest in making new art that took me into Earth Sky: Richard Long is at Houghton Hall, the landscape. I’m not a political A Line in Norfolk, 2016, in front of Houghton Hall Norfolk, 30 April to 26 October. PHOTOGRAPH PHOTOGRAPH

See the Barbican Theatre production, broadcast live to cinemas 11 May

Find your nearest venue at ntlive.com Image © Jan Versweyveld

18 The Guardian 17.04.17 Arts

“Oh dear,” said Tyler. “I’ve prema- Digested read turely ejaculated.” Valerie was a little put out, but hid her disappointment . Ruth, president of the Institute of “Why don’t you dress up as a woman and then I can take you into the High Gender Parity, realised she had Tower to see your grandfather Bobbo before he dies?” Tyler nodded. Being a woman sounded a lot less hassle than now spent two-thirds of the bookk being a man. “Fuck, shit, bollocks,” said Bobbo. fi lling in the backstory in the “Oh, look he’s died,” Valerie sniggered. “No, I fucking haven’t.” But he had. hope of setting up a fl imsy satiree And secretly he was mightily relieved to escape from the book by page 200. As was Mary Fisher. No more hooh- wooing for her. She wondered if anyone had found her funny. They hadn’t. By John Crace Valerie had another idea. Why didn’t Tyler transition to become a girl? Tyler thought that was a great idea. He had Title Death of a She Devil sign on. Ever since he had surgery to always wanted to have labioplasty and fi x a wonky eye, he hass been too beaubeau-- bbe called TaylaTayla.. Fay Weldon Author tiful to get work. Everyoneyone assumed he Up in the HiHighgh ToTower,w as the IGP’s Publisher Head of Zeus was already too entitleded and gave the HQ is known, Ruth wasw quite pleased Price £16.99 job to a woman instead.d. TTyleryler thatthat her ggrandsonra would wasn’t that bothered as he become become herhe granddaughter, I am in my 80s now was a bit thick and likeded to and dugdug outo the old suitcase and who can be have sex with Hermione,ne, fullfull ofof cacashsh that Bobbo had trusted to come after the drug-dealer. embezzledembezzled for her. At times me? My children and Hooh-wooh! I am thee like this,this, she worried for my children’s children ghost of Mary Fisher. I herher ownown memory as the will not speak to me. just sort of hang aboutt plotplot wasw becoming ever But I am Lady Ruth a bit to add colour. moremore absurd, but she Pratchett, the She Valerie Valeria had waswas too old to concern Devil. President of the plans to become head herselfhers with such de- IGP, the Institute of Gender Parity. Ring of the UN. But fi rst tailstails now. Still, it was any bells? Thought not. It’s been near she had to become probablyprob best to wrap enough 35 years since I last made an leader of the IGP. thingsthin up quite appearance and most of you will have It shouldn’t be quickly.quic But only forgotten what all the fuss was about. a problem, she after Tayla a fte had been Looks like I’m going to have to do a lot thought. The old She givengive some more of backstory. Devil was completely hormoneshorm . Here’s Bobbo, my ex-husband. He past it. All she needed SometimeS either ran off with that airhead romantic nov- to do was to shake beforebefo or after a fi re elist, Mary Fisher, so I took my revenge things up a bit. gutted gutt one side of the by making her life a misery, dumping Organising the Wom- HighHigh Tower, Valerie my kids on her, and having surgery to en’s Widdershins left the IGP. She make myself look more attractive. It walk should do it. hopedhop no one would made me a feminist icon at the time, Ruth realised she realisereal the organisa- but now no one gives a toss. Mary had now spent almost tiontion was nearly jumped off the HQ of the IGP, Bobbo two-thirds of the £750,000£750 in the red. went to prison for stashing my loot in book fi lling in the backstorykstory in the ButBut they did. a Swiss bank account, and now he’s 94 hope of setting up a fl imsymsy . Fay escorted and suff ering from Alzheimer’s. “Fuck, shit, bollocks,” said Bobbo. RuthR to the top of “I don’t have Alzheimer’s,” shouts “Quite,” the reader agreed.reed. “I’m the High Tower. Bobbo. “I just say the word ‘cunt’ a lot moving in with your mmum,”um,” Matilda She had tried so to be off ensive.” He does have Alzhei- announced. “Ugh,” crieded Madison hard to off end as mer’s. He will be dead soon. and Mason together. “You’reYou’re manym people as Every week, the little family comes disgusting lezzers.” possible,p but had to see me. I’m Matilda, the family ther- Having achieved theireir goal ooff onlyon left her readers apist, by the way. There’s Nicci, the old being off ensive, the twowo gigirlsrls leleftft feelingfee a bit bored woman’s daughter; her twin daughters, the book. Along with NNicciicci and andand confused that a Mason and Madison; and her son, Matilda. Valerie was veryery attracted to comedycome could have so Tyler, whom she would have aborted Tyler and couldn’t controlntrol her usual littlelittle sparkle. There wwas only one thing

MATT BLEASE MATT if she had known he was going to be lesbian tendencies. forfor it. She pushed RuRuth over the edge a boy. They’re all completely messed Hooh-wooh! I’m goingng to make Tyler and scattered the moneymo to the winds. up. Put it down to Powerful prematurely ejaculate, thought Mary, Fuck you, feminism. Narcissistic Disorder. keen to rob the story of what little

ILLUSTRATION ILLUSTRATION Tyler went to the Jobcentre Plus to narrative tension it had. Digested read: The walking dead.

17.04.17 The Guardian 19 Theatres London

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here’s a suspicious puddle Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, with new on the university campus. sidekick Bill, played by Pearl Mackie T “It hasn’t rained for weeks,” points out Heather, staring told the woman in the town’s garage. into the watery abyss. “Half “Why do so many trucks need new the students are blokes,” returns Bill tyres? Would you mind if I opened them insightfully. She works in the uni can- up?” He slashed at a tyre and silverware teen and so knows about toxic liquids. spilled out, revealing that not just the Moments later, Heather gets sucked into police but most of Arpajon’s citizenry the puddle. We see her face trapped were knee-deep in stolen goods. below the surface, like a 21st-century In Maigret’s Night at the Crossroads Ophelia. All of which puts quite the crimp (ITV, Sunday), he had become suspicious in Heather and Bill’s budding romance. about the local plods’ theory that an Ant- Meet Doctor Who’s latest foe. A The weekend's TV werp jeweller had been whacked in a time-travelling, shape-shifting puddle, diamond heist by a disfi gured Danish possibly made up from boy wee. That’s The Doctor fi nally gets aristo, even though the body had been your licence fee at work right there. found in the latter’s garage and the Dane Fortunately, the star of the new series his mojo back – thanks to had fl ed along with his sister, which of Doctor Who (BBC1, Saturday) isn’t a surely further indicated his culpability. puddle, but Pearl Mackie, who plays I am inferring most of this because the doctor’s new assistant. After all a gobby new assistant Atkinson performs Maigret as a sym- those years I’ll never get back, in which phony of inscrutability: it’s as though fi rst and then Peter Capaldi he has had every last Bean-like twitch mooned over Jenna Coleman’s Clara, the surgically removed so he can play the so-called “impossible girl”, what a treat Gallic copper proper. B ut the great to meet a new assistant who is not elfi n pleasure off ered by his poker face is that but a gobby minx with a nice line in “Do it impels us to work hard to comprehend what now?” expressions. Happily, prob- what he is thinking. We have to solve the ably the least interesting things about By Stuart Jeff ries case in tandem with the pipe-smoke- Mackie’s Bill Potts are that she is his shrouded enigma that is Maigret. fi rst lesbian time-travelling companion you run out of money?” It’s nice to hear In the end, i t wasn’t the Danish posh and his third assistant of colour (Freema Steven Moff at’s droll dialogue here, or Belgian sex worker Emma who dunnit Agyeman and Noel Clarke preceded her). especially after the vexations of his and but Maigret’s law-enforcing colleagues, No, the most cherishable thing about Mark Gatiss’s last outing for Sherlock. in cahoots with the locals. And so, in the the girl called Bill is that she pricks the I liked, too, getting chills when last reel of this most satisfying of the Doctor’s self-regard, which is about Heather slid waterily under a door and three outings for Atkinson’s appealingly goddamned time. The Doctor may think recomposed herself in the Doctor’s study. stolid detective, Maigret went Serpico he’s Michael Caine to her Julie Walters She was as sinisterly unstoppable as the on the corrupt gendarmerie of 1950s in Educating Rita, but she has other liquid metal T-1000 in Terminator 2, a Arpajon and took down the cops. ideas. “Why do you run like that?” she kind of child-friendly mashup of the AND ANOTHER This was a about human cor- asks during a chase sequence. “Like most malevolent moves of Japanese THING ruption – how all of us, all the time, are what?” asks the Doctor. “Like a penguin horror fl icks The Ring and Dark Water. standing at the proverbial crossroads, with its arse on fi re.” “Ergonomics.” After 50 minutes of time-travelling, Britain’s Got Talent tempted by Belgian cleavages and stolen Bill’s eloquent eyebrows comment: puddle-confounding hokum, though, started on Saturday. diamonds to do the wrong thing. In the Yeah right. Ergonomics. That’s why. my abiding sense was that, thanks to the I’m loving the hula- last scene Maigret, incorruptible and When he shows her inside his Tardis, infusion of a new assistant, the ailing hooping magicians expressionless, climbed into the back the Doctor asks if she has any questions. franchise has got its mojo back. and dogs doing of a Citroën to be driven from this pro- yoga. But the cold, “Is this a knock-through?” Bill asks. “It’s Meanwhile, on the other side of the vincial Sodom and Gomorrah back to mirthless eyes of like a really posh kitchen!” Then her space-time continuum, Rowan Atkinson Walliams, Dixon, the straight and narrow of Paris , back to voice modulates into sympathy mode: sucked at his pipe for, ooh, the 27th time. Cowell and Holden? conjugal felicity, back to the woman to “What happened with the doors – did “Just one thing puzzles me, Jo-Jo,” he Not so much. whom he is more wedded than his pipe.

17.04.17 The Guardian 21 Film of the day TV and radio The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (10pm, BBC2) Two boys, a Nazi’s son (Asa Butterfi eld) and a Jewish boy (Jack Scanlon), strike up a friendship in an aff ecting adaptation of John Boyne’s novel

BBC1 BBC2

6.0 Breakfast 9.0 Wanted Down Under 6.15 Flog It! Trade Secrets (T) (R) 6.45 10.0 Homes Under the Hammer Bargain Hunt (T) (R) 7.30 Money (R) 11.0 The Sheriff s Are Coming for Nothing (T) (R) 8.0 Sign Zone. 11.45 Claimed and Shamed 12.15 Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) 9.15 Bargain Hunt 1.0 News; Weather Talking Snooker (T) (R) 10.0 Live 1.15 Regional News; Weather (T) Snooker: The World Championship 1.25 Doctors (T) 1.55 The Code (T) (T) 12.0 The Super League Show 2.40 Escape to the Country (T) (R) (T) 1.0 Live Snooker: The World 3.25 Money for Nothing (T) 4.10 Championship (T) 6.0 Eggheads Garden Rescue (T) (R) 4.55 Flog It! (T) 6.30 Debatable (T) 7.0 Top (T) (R) 5.45 Pointless (T) (R) 6.30 Gear (T) (R) Inside the Freemasons, Sky 1 News; Weather (T) 6.45 Regional News; Weather (T) 7.0 The One Watch this Show (T) 7.30 Would I Lie to You? (T) (R)

8.0 EastEnders (T) Sonia pushes Bex 8.0 Nature’s Weirdest Events (T) The Broadchurch Warship for the truth and eventually learns remains of a gargantuan creature 9pm, ITV 8pm, that Louise has been involved in that baffl ed scientists for decades. the bullying. 9.0 Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Chris Chibnall’s fi nal series Second episode of this absorbing 8.30 Guardians of the Galaxy Lobby (T) and Monica of Broadchurch reaches its series, following the Royal (James Gunn, 2014) (T) Premiere. Galetti work at the Royal Mansour denouement, and the unmasking Navy’s fl eet fl agship HMS Ocean Escapees from a prison space in Marrakesh, Morocco, which was of Trish Winterman’s attacker. as it undertakes a deployment to station battle an alien warlord. Sci- built by royal decree. fi adventure, starring Chris Pratt Thanks to last week’s revelations, the Mediterranean and beyond. and Zoe Saldana. there’s a heck of a lot to wrap up Tonight’s instalment sees the – from the creepy drawer in helicopter carrier undertaking Clive Lucas’s lock-up, to the both sides of modern military 10.20 BBC News (T) 10.0 The Boy in the Striped mysterious football sock, to Ian forays: on high alert off the 10.40 BBC Regional News and Weather Pyjamas (Mark Herman, 2008) (T) (T) Drama, with Asa Butterfi eld. Winterman’s dodgy spyware, Red Sea coast of Yemen, where 10.50 All Round to Mrs Brown’s (T) (R) 11.30 Snooker: The World Championship to Jim At wood’s aggressive both American and Saudi 11.50 The Graham Norton Show (T) (R) (T) philandering. With each of the vessels have recently been With Miranda Hart, Warren Beatty, 12.20 Snooker: World Championship excessive number of suspects targeted by Houthi rebels; Peter Capaldi, Keeley Hawes and Extra (T) 2.20 Sign Zone. looking shiftier than ever before, and projecting soft power in Jennifer Hudson. Panorama: The Spy in the IRA (T) 12.35 Weather for the Week Ahead (T) (R) 3.05 Shop Well for Less? (T) (R) Miller and Hardy have their work Alexandria, hosting a cocktail 12.40 News (T) 4.0 This Is BBC Two (T) cut out. Ben Arnold party for Egyptian offi cers. Andrew Mueller Nature’s Weirdest Events 8pm, BBC2 Inside the Freemasons More pages from ’s 8pm, Sky1 casebook of curious creatures. The extreme secretiveness of the Guinness World Records 2.20 Teleshopping 5.50 Other channels 11.0am  Honey, I ITV2 Nightscreen While those of us lacking pre- Freemasons has led to suspicions Shrunk the Kids (1989) prepared beach bodies might that they are engaged in all kinds 12.50  Epic (2013) 2.55  Rio 2 (2014) 8.55am Food Unwrapped sympathise, the arrival of a of far-reaching conspiracies. In CBBC E4 4.55  Paddington 9.30 A Place in : 7.0am Arthur 7.15 6.0am 6.30 (2014) 6.45  St shapeless grey blob on a Mexican this series, they partially lift the Winter Sun 10.30 Come League of Super Evil Coach Trip: Road to Trinian’s 2: The Legend Dine with Me 1.10 Four in beach baffl es locals and the lid on their activities to assuage 7.25 Dennis the Menace Ibiza 6.55 Baby Daddy of Fritton’s Gold (2009) a Bed 1.40 Four in a Bed and Gnasher 7.40 7.25 Baby Daddy 7.55 9.0  Oblivion (2013) 2.10 Four in a Bed 2.40 internet alike – how did the such fears. You soon suspect that Newsround 7.45 Wild Nine-Nine 8.30 11.25  Terminator Four in a Bed 3.15 Four in & Weird 8.0 Odd Squad Brooklyn Nine-Nine 9.0 Salvation (2009) 1.40 luckless beast arrive there? all of the solemn ritual represents a Bed 3.50  Sunshine 8.15 Newsround 8.20 Melissa & Joey 9.30  Mindscape (2013) Elsewhere, is a gorilla responsible a front for middle managers Blue Peter Bite: Barney Melissa & Joey 10.0 on Leith (2013) 5.50 and Radzi’s High Speed Baby Daddy 10.30 Baby ITV2 Vet on the Hill 6.55 The for an upswing in female visitors and salesmen to give each other Secret Life of the Zoo Challenge 8.30 Horrible Daddy 11.0 How I Met 6.0am You’ve Been 7.55 Grand Designs 9.0 Histories 9.0 Hacker Your Mother 11.35 How Framed! Gold 6.25 at Kyoto municipal zoo? And a commercial leg-up and have Vet on the Hill 10.0 The Time 9.30 So Awkward I Met Your Mother 12.0 You’ve Been Framed! Supervet: Bionic Specials can an octopus really tickle a few drinks away from the 10.0 Sam & Mark’s Big The Goldbergs 12.30 Gold 6.50 Britain’s Got 11.05 24 Hours in A&E Friday Wind Up 11.0 The Goldbergs 1.0 Talent: Stephen’s Top 10 prey into submission? womenfolk. Tonight, a genial 12.05 Ramsay’s Kitchen Kung Fu Panda: Secrets  Bridge to Terabithia Unbelievable Moments Nightmares USA 1.05 Vet Mark Gibbings-Jones young farmer is prepared for of the Furious Five 11.20 (2007) 3.0 The Big Bang 7.40 8.10 on the Hill 2.05 24 Hours Marrying Mum and Dad Theory: Easter Eggs 3.30 Coronation Street 8.40 in A&E 3.10 8 Out of 10 his initiation as a mason. 11.50 Marrying Mum The Big Bang Theory: Coronation Street 9.10 Cats Uncut Hunting the KGB Killers David Stubbs and Dad 12.20 Marrying Easter Eggs 4.0 The Big Grease: Live 12.05 Mum and Dad 12.45 Bang Theory: Easter Emmerdale 12.35 Sky1 9pm, Channel 4 Marrying Mum and Dad Eggs 4.30 The Big Bang Coronation Street 1.05 6.0am Hawaii Five-0 7.0 1.15 Marrying Mum and Theory: Easter Eggs 5.0 Coronation Street 1.35 Russian agent Alexander Animal House 8.0 Monkey Dad 1.45 Marrying Mum The Big Bang Theory:  Happy Feet (2006) Life 8.30 Monkey Life 9.0 Litvinenko might have chosen the and Dad 2.15 Officially Easter Eggs 5.30 The Big 2.35 FYI Daily 2.40 ’s Amazing 2.30 Horrible Bang Theory: Easter Eggs  Happy Feet (2006) Galapagos 10.0 wrong man – one Vladimir Putin – Histories 3.0 So Awkward 6.0 The Big Bang Theory: 3.45 Britain’s Got Talent David Attenborough’s 3.25 Zig and Zag 3.40 Easter Eggs 6.30 The 5.10 Britain’s Got More to talk to about his suspicions Galapagos 11.0 Dennis the Menace Big Bang Theory: Easter Talent 6.15  The David Attenborough’s of corruption in the secret and Gnasher 3.50 HH: Eggs 7.0 Hollyoaks 7.30 Amazing Spider-Man 2 Galapagos 12.0 Gory Games Play Along Baby Daddy 8.0 The Big (2014) 7.15 FYI Daily services. From that moment , his Attenborough at 90: 4.20 Newsround 4.30 Bang Theory 8.30 The Big 7.20  The Amazing Behind the Lens 1.0 Wolfblood 5.0 Wolfblood Bang Theory 9.0 Made Spider-Man 2 (2014) card may have been marked. Like Flying Monsters with 5.30 Show Me What in Chelsea 10.0 Empire 9.0 Family Guy 9.30 David Attenborough 2.30 a real-life Le Carré, this terrifying You’re Made Of: UK 6.0 11.0 The Big Bang Theory The Great Indoors 10.0 David Attenborough’s Scream Street 6.10 11.35 The Big Bang American Dad! 10.30 documentary featuring contribu- Natural History Museum Dragons: Defenders of Theory 12.0 First Dates American Dad! 11.0 Alive 4.0 The Simpsons tions from Litvinenko’s widow Berk 6.35 Dennis the 1.05 Gogglebox 1.55 Family Guy 11.30 The 4.30 Modern Family Menace and Gnasher Made in Chelsea 2.50 Cleveland Show 11.55 5.0 Modern Family Marina tells the story of his 6.45 Danger Mouse 7.0 Empire 3.35 Rude Tube: The Cleveland Show 5.30 Modern Family 6.0 Horrible Histories 7.30 All Things Weird and 12.25 Two and a Half Men poisoning, and of that strangest of Modern Family 6.30 Show Me What You’re Wonderful 4.25 Rules of 12.55 Two and a Half Men The Simpsons 7.0 The

things – a man attempting to solve Made Of: UK 8.0 The Engagement 4.45 Rules 1.25 The Great Indoors Simpsons 7.30 The Broadchurch, ITV Dumping Ground 8.30 of Engagement 5.05 1.55 Totally Bonkers his own murder. Ali Catterall Wolfblood Melissa & Joey Simpsons 8.0 Inside the 22 The Guardian 17.04.17 Much more on TV For TV news, reviews, series, liveblogs and recaps go to: theguardian.com/tv-and-radio

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10.0 The Nightly Show With Dermot 10.35 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown 10.0 All New Traffic Cops: Under Attack 10.0 The Beginning and End of the O’Leary (T) (T) (R) Jessica Hynes, David (T) Universe (T) (R) 10.30 ITV News (T) Weather Walliams, Jon Richardson and 11.05 : The Championship 11.0 B Is for Book (T) (R) 10.44 Local News/Weather (T) Rhod Gilbert. (T) 12.0 Everyday Miracles: The Genius of 10.45 Tales from the Coast With Robson 11.35 Three Wives, One Husband (T) (R) 12.05 Football on 5: Goal Rush (T) 12.35 Sofas, Stockings and Scanners (T) Green (T) (R) 12.30 Tattoo Fixers 1.25 The Last Leg (R) Comedy Bigmouths with Reginald (R) 1.0 Timeshift: The Ladybird 11.50 The Nightly Show With Dermot 2.20 Gap Year 3.15 Building the D Hunter (T) 1.0 SuperCasino 3.10 Books Story (T) (R) 2.0 Bright O’Leary (T) (R) Dream 4.10 Phil Spencer: Secret Body of Proof (T) (R) 4.0 Criminals: Lights, Brilliant Minds: A Tale of 12.15 3.0 The Jeremy Kyle Agent (R) 5.05 Fifteen to One (R) Caught on Camera (T) (R) 4.45 Three Cities (T) (R) 3.0 Empire of Show (T) (R) 3.55 ITV Nightscreen House Doctor (T) (R) 5.10 Great the Tsars (T) (R) 5.05 The Jeremy Kyle Show (T) (R) Artists (T) (R)

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New series. is on the warpath. 7.15 (6/6) 10.0 Bartleby the Our Selves (1/5) 2.30 News 1.02 Radio 3 Arrow 4.0 Animal House Week Tonight with John 6.33 The Radio 1 Poems written in Front Row 7.45 The Scrivener 11.0 Brian The Reef (1/10) 2.45 Lunchtime Concert: 4.30 Animal House 5.0 Oliver 11.10 : Breakfast Show with response to Homer’s epic Amateur Marriage: 1972, Friel Stories (1/5) 11.15 My Autobiography Wigmore Hall Mondays. Road Wars Live from DC 12.30 Big Scott Mills 10.0 Clara The Odyssey. (1/10) 10.0 It Has Not Been Fun. By Poetry for Beginners (1/10) 3.0 Bartleby the Pianist Alessio Bax plays Little Lies 1.30 Girls 2.05 Amfo 1.0 The Matt Woman’s Hour 11.0 The Anne Tyler. (R) (6/10) 12.0 Not in Front of the Scrivener 4.0 Booked pieces by Schubert, Banshee 3.10 Silicon Edmondson Show 4.0 Half: A Countdown to 8.0 From the Couch to Children (13/13) 12.30 (3/6) 4.30 The World Scriabin and Ravel. 2.0 6.0am Matilda & Me Valley 3.45 Silicon Valley Greg James 7.0 MistaJam Performance. The crucial the Courtroom. The Dad’s Army (1/20) 1.0 As We Know It (6/6) 5.0 Afternoon on 3: American 7.0 Auction 7.30 4.20 Richard E Grant’s 9.0 Radio 1’s Specialist 30 minutes before the relationship between law, The Blackburn Files Mr Finchley Takes the Ensembles & Repertoire. Auction 8.0 Tales of the Hotel Secrets 5.10 Chart with Phil Taggart curtain goes up on plays. psychotherapy and mind (1/5) 1.30 An Actor Road (2/6) 5.30 The Music by the São Paulo Unexpected 8.30 Tales Richard E Grant’s Hotel 10.0 Huw Stephens 11.30 Mark Steel’s in doctors. 8.30 Crossing in His Time (6/11) 2.0 Unbelievable Truth (2/6) Symphony Orchestra and of the Unexpected 9.0 Secrets 1.0 Friction 4.0 Adele Town: Barnard Castle (R) Continents: Coming Out Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen L’Orchestre de la Suisse 5 Live Discovering: Katharine Roberts 12.0 News 12.01 (LW) of the Shadows in Kenya (1/5) 2.15 Our Dreams: Hepburn 10.0 Portrait TCM Romande. 4.30 In Tune. 12.04 (R) 9.0 The Curse of Open Our Selves (1/5) 2.30 693, 909 kHz Artist of the Year 2014 6.0am Hollywood’s Best Radio 2 With pianist Sunwook Home Front: 17 April Plan (R) 9.30 Start the The Reef (1/10) 2.45 6.0 5 Live Breakfast 10.0 Kim. 6.30 Composer of 11.0 Disney’s Broadway Film Directors: John 88-91 MHz 1917 – Ralph Winwood. Week (R) 9.59 Weather My Autobiography 5 Live Daily with Adrian the Week: Schumann Hits 1.0 Jesus of Woo 6.30  Man 6.30 9.30 Ken New series. By Shaun 10.0 (1/10) 3.0 Bartleby the Chiles 1.0 Afternoon (R) 7.30 Radio 3 in Nazareth 3.0 Sounds from Sonora (1951) Bruce 12.0 My Life in McKenna. (1/40) 12.15 10.45 Scrivener 4.0 Booked Edition 2.30 5 Live Concert. Kate Molleson of the Dolomites 4.0 7.40  How the Song: Carole King 2.0 12.57 Rabbit, Run. By John (3/6) 4.30 The World Sport 3.0 5 Live Sport: presents from City Halls, Portrait Artist of the West Was Won (1962) Tony Blackburn Bank Weather 1.0 The World Updike. (1/10) 11.0 Word As We Know It (6/6) Championship Football Glasgow, as Christoph Year 2014 5.30 Tales 10.40  Angel and Holiday Specials 5.0 at One 1.45 The Ideas of Mouth: Frenchified – 5.0 Mr Finchley Takes 5.30 5 Live Drive 7.0 5 König conducts the BBC of the Unexpected 6.0 the Badman (1947) Simon Mayo 7.0 Paul That Make Us: Hope. The Influence of French the Road (2/6) 5.30 Live Sport: The Monday Scottish Symphony Tales of the Unexpected 12.45  Rio Lobo Jones 8.0 Peter Skellern New series. Bettany on English (R) 11.30 The Unbelievable Truth Night Club 8.0 5 Live Orchestra and cellist 6.30 Discovering: Paul (1970) 3.0  The Tribute with Sir Tim Rice Hughes considers the Short Cuts: The End of (2/6) 6.0 Thou Shalt Sport: Johannes Moser. Blacher: Newman 7.30 Auction Train Robbers (1973) 9.0 Rick Wakeman’s concept of hope. (1/5) the Story (R) 12.0 News Not Suffer a Witch (1/5) Football 10.0 Flintoff, Concertante Musik. 8.0 Michael Ball: Both 4.50  Cahill, US Key to Keys 10.0 Bill 2.0 The Archers (R) 2.15 and Weather 12.30 The 6.15 Chronicles of Ait: Savage and the Ping Haydn: Cello Concerto No Sides Now 10.45 Fake! Marshal (1973) 6.50 Kenwright’s Golden Years Drama: Tommies – 17th Odyssey Project: My The Lotos Effect (1/5) Pong Guy 10.30 Adrian 1. 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6.0 Today 9.0 Start

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Quick crossword no 14,646 Sudoku no 3,724

Across 12 34567 1 Dry Rhine wine (4) 3 Unauthorised 74 passenger (8) 89 8 Without legal force (4) 5 9 Bitter verbal attack (8) 10 11 Shropshire county town (10) 11 618 14,15 Compromise position (6,6) 12 13 17 One who spies 54 9 pruriently on others 14 15 (7,3) 16 8621 20 Container for melting metal (8) 17 21 Molten volcanic rock 49531

(4) 18 19 . 22 Slow moving (8) 23 On a single occasion (4) 20 21 638 7

Down 317450330 333 6846 1 Good-looking (8) 22 23

2 Beetle whose larvae or call destroy potato plants 45 6 (8) 18 UK body helping to end Solution no 14,645 4 Type of hat (6) industrial disputes (4) TAKEABACKSEAT Easy. Fill the grid so that each row, column and Solution to no 3,723 5 Part of town bordering 19 Code word for Z (4) NVRANC 3x3 box contains the numbers 1-9. Printable a sea, lake or river (10) LINO EPISODIC version at theguardian.com/sudoku 724813956 MKRROD 859672134 6 Sorrowful cry (4) guardianbooks.co.uk Stuck? For help call 0906 200 83 83 or text SALEOFWORK 613459728 7 __ Saint Laurent, GUARDIANQ followed by a space, the day TOEC couturier, d. 2008 (4) and date the crossword appeared followed COCCYX FARROW 478936215 by another space and the CLUE reference RL A N 561724893 10 Uncomfortably hot (10) (e.g GUARDIANQ Wednesday24 Down20) to 88010. Calls cost £1.10 per minute, plus I LL ITERATE 932581647 12 Four-line stanza (8) GC IUOE your phone company’s access charge. Texts Stuck? For help call 0906 200 83 83. Calls cost 296348571 13 Water (5,3) cost £1 per clue plus standard network PEEKABOO DENS charges. Service supplied by ATS. Call 0330 NEEUI T £1.10 per minute, plus your phone company’s access 385197462 16 Short periods of time 333 6946 for customer service (charged at HEARTLESSNESS charge. Service supplied by ATS. Call 0330 333 6946 147265389 (6) standard rate). for customer service (charged at standard rate). . Buy all four Guardian quick crosswords books for only £20 inc UK p&p (save £7.96). Visit . Buy all four Guardian quick crosswords books for only £20 inc UK p&p (save Doonesbury classic Doonesbury Garry Trudeau theguardian.com/crossword

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24 The Guardian 17.04.17

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