David Nicholls to adapt The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ for BBC
A writing team led by the One Day author, David Nicholls, and that includes Caitlin Moran is bringing Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ to the small screen in a 10-part BBC One adaptation of the classic tale of teenage life in British suburbia.Nicholls, who described the book as “a classic piece of comic writing and an incredible piece of ventriloquism on Sue Townsend’s part”, will adapt the book that produced one of the best-known literary creations of the 1980s.Known for Mole’s comically dramatic assessments of his life in a Midlands cul-de-sac – “I feel like a character in a Russian novel half the time” – the book sold 20m copies worldwide and was translated into 30 languages.The BBC said: “With only a multi-coloured ballpoint pen as his guide, Adrian worries about his spots, his parents’ divorce, the torment of first love and the fact he’s never seen a female nipple.”None of the cast has been revealed, and producers say “a nationwide … search is currently underway to find Adrian”.
Gian Sammarco starred in the Thames TV’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole in 1985, with Julie Walters playing Mole’s mother, Pauline,The book was also adapted as a musical and a play, and a second TV series of based on Townsend’s follow-up novel, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, was released in 1987,Big Talk Studios, the production company behind Ludwig and The Outlaws, will produce the show for the BBC, while Nicholls will be joined in the writing room by Moran and her sister Caroline, Big Boy’s Jack Rooke, and Dillon Mapletoft and Oliver Taylor, the team behind Everyone Else Burns,Despite Mole first appearing four decades ago, the character’s influence continues to be felt,Townsend, who died in 2014, said the character “wouldn’t be using Twitter to memorialise his life” in the age of social media because “his thoughts and diary were very much private”.
The BBC’s director of drama, Lindsay Salt, said: “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole is one of those rare, seminal stories that has captivated generation after generation,Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotion“David Nicholls has brilliantly distilled the wit, warmth and quiet poignancy of Sue Townsend’s iconic novel, reminding us why Adrian’s voice remains as sharply relevant today as it was in the 1980s,“Times may have changed, but the anxieties, ambitions and wonderfully awkward truths at the heart of Adrian’s world are utterly timeless,”
Cloudflare outage causes error messages across the internet
A key piece of the internet’s usually hidden infrastructure suffered a global outage on Tuesday, causing error messages to flash up across websites.Cloudflare, a US company whose services include defending millions of websites against malicious attacks, experienced an unidentified problem that meant internet users could not access some of its customers’ websites.Some site owners could not access their performance dashboards. Sites including X and OpenAI suffered increased outages at the same time as Cloudflare’s problems, according to Downdetector.The outage was reported at 11
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Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery.A tech titan and a startup are fighting over who controls the next phase of artificial intelligence.Amazon has sued Perplexity AI, a prominent artificial intelligence startup, over a shopping feature in that company’s browser that allows it to automate placing orders for users. Amazon accused Perplexity AI of covertly accessing customer accounts and disguising AI activity as human browsing
Crypto market sheds more than $1tn in six weeks amid fears of tech bubble
More than $1tn (£760bn) has been wiped off the value of the cryptocurrency market in the past six weeks amid fears of a tech bubble and fading expectations for a US rate cut next month.Tracking more than 18,500 coins, the value of the crypto market has fallen by a quarter since a high in early October, according to the data company CoinGecko.Bitcoin has fallen by 27% over the same period to $91,212, its lowest level since April.Investors around the world are on edge as fears mount over an artificial intelligence bubble in the stock market, with even the boss of Google’s parent company warning that “no company” will be immune if the bubble bursts.The UK’s blue-chip FTSE 100 index fell 1
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His company is potentially creating the ultimate state surveillance tool, and Karp has recently been on a striking political and philosophical journey. His biographer reveals what makes him tickIn a recent interview, Alex Karp said that his company Palantir was “the most important software company in America and therefore in the world”. He may well be right. To some, Palantir is also the scariest company in the world, what with its involvement in the Trump administration’s authoritarian agenda. The potential end point of Palantir’s tech is an all-powerful government system amalgamating citizens’ tax records, biometric data and other personal information – the ultimate state surveillance tool
Don’t blindly trust everything AI tools say, warns Alphabet boss
The head of Google’s parent company has said people should not “blindly trust” everything artificial intelligence tools tell them.In an interview with the BBC, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Alphabet, said AI models were “prone to errors” and urged people to use them alongside other tools.In the same interview, Pichai warned that no company would be immune if the AI bubble burst.Since May, Google has introduced an “AI Mode” into its search using its Gemini chatbot, which aims to give users the experience of talking to an expert.Google’s consumer AI model, Gemini 3
UK consumers warned over AI chatbots giving inaccurate financial advice
Artificial intelligence chatbots are giving inaccurate money tips, offering British consumers misleading tax advice and suggesting they buy unnecessary travel insurance, research has revealed.Tests on the most popular chatbots found Microsoft’s Copilot and ChatGPT advised breaking HMRC investment limits on Isas; ChatGPT wrongly said it was mandatory to have travel insurance to visit most EU countries; and Meta’s AI gave incorrect information about how to claim compensation for delayed flights.Google’s Gemini advised withholding money from a builder if a job went wrong, a move that the consumer organisation Which? said risked exposing the consumer to a claim of breach of contract.Which? said its research, conducted by putting 40 questions to the rival AI tools, “uncovered far too many inaccuracies and misleading statements for comfort, especially when leaning on AI for important issues like financial or legal queries”.Meta’s AI received the worst score, followed by ChatGPT; Copilot and Gemini scored slightly higher
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