Pulp have the last word in Adelaide festival saga with triumphant opening gig
Britpop rockers wow crowd and say all voices are ‘important’ in wake of Randa Abdel-Fattah controversyGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast“All voices are important,” the Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker told an adoring crowd in Adelaide on Friday.“All voices should be heard.”Message received.At one point Pulp had pulled out of the opening gig at the Adelaide festival over the Adelaide writers’ week (AWW) furore.But they turned up, they wowed the 10,000-strong crowd, and while Cocker didn’t explicitly say his comment was a reference to the brouhaha around AWW, it was pretty clear.
“Things are better when everyone is involved in them,” he said,And he proved his point by launching into Common People, bringing that crowd to its feet,The concert was theatrical but intimate, spectacular and uplifting, cheeky and moving and fun,Getting Pulp, one of the biggest bands of the 90s, for opening night was a major coup for the Adelaide festival,The traditionally free gig kicks off Adelaide’s Mad March.
Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morningPulp are an indie band who generally get lumped in with the Britpop movement.At their peak they garnered fierce devotion with songs about class consciousness, and raw and real storytelling about love and sex and the suburbs.A beautiful and joyous Welcome to Country from Kaurna and Narrunga elder Mickey O’Brien set the scene, and then the show started.Cocker strode out and it was straight into the anthemic Sorted for E’s & Wizz, to a crowd that roiled and popped to his distinctive voice, which gives Pulp songs a peculiar mix of joy and melancholy.And Cocker steered clear, mostly, of local politics, despite the band’s former refusal to play in protest at the cancellation of an appearance by the Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Her reinstatement paved the way for Pulp to U-turn and the writer will also appear at an alternative writers’ week event with Louise Adler – who resigned as director of AWW – on Sunday.At the time, the band had said it wanted “to make it absolutely clear that Pulp refuse to condone the silencing of voices.We celebrate difference, and oppose censorship, violence and oppression in all its forms.”When it decided to play it said it hoped the concert “will be an opportunity for different communities to come together in peace and harmony”.There were plenty of nostalgic gen Xers in 90s band T-shirts in the crowd on Friday night, but it was also the opening whistle for the multiple festivals that take over the city, so it was an eclectic mix that gathered for a breezy, balmy evening by the River Torrens.
Fruit bats and migrating birds soared overhead, and threatened thunderstorms and a feared bacterial stink from the river didn’t eventuate.A constant stream of fans packed out Elder Park until it was a steamy pit and were treated to a mix tape of Pulp’s decades.The band split in 2002, reformed a couple of times after that, then released their 2025 album More.It’s their first album in 24 years.This tour is a perfect blend of how they were then, and how they’ve grown up.
Classic hits including Common People had the dense crowd on its feet.But most of them stayed that way throughout.Tory Shepherd was one of those who pulled out of AWW
Bitter-sweet symphony: vermouth is more than just another cocktail ingredient
I like to think of vermouth as the Nile Rodgers of drinks, a backbone of good times known more for big hit collaborations than for its solo work. It is a foundation of any self-respecting cocktail cabinet (though it should be kept in the fridge), and also a family of drinks with many individual talents, which are now at long last being more widely recognised – Waitrose’s most recent Food & Drink report even touted vermouth as a 2026 trend, with searches for the stuff up by 26%.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
The bubbling beauty of baked pasta
The other day, I climbed the communal stairs and opened the front door to the smell of cheese on toast. A welcome aroma made even more welcome when I realised that it was actually the tips of pasta tubes turning golden among grated cheese and creamy bechamel sauce. To add to the pleasant scene, my partner, Vincenzo, was washing up. Because that is the thing about pasta al forno – baked pasta – the time between finishing the construction and the eating is around about 25 minutes. That is, exactly the right amount of time to wash up and wipe up, or delegate those tasks to someone else while you make a salad and open a bottle of wine
Rachel Roddy’s recipe for beans with greens and sausages | A kitchen in Rome
The benefit of soaking and cooking (or, better still, pressure cooking) your own beans are many: less packaging; money saved (a 500g bag of dried beans costing £2.50 will yield 1.5kg cooked beans, while some 400g tins can cost more or less the same); the suspiciously coloured but flavourful and starchy bean cooking water; and some personal satisfaction that you actually remembered to soak the beans in the first place. The benefits – and joy – of tinned beans, however, are almost instantaneous. That is, just a ring-pull away – unless, of course, said ring-pull comes off prematurely, turning the tin into a door without a knob and leaving you two options: searching for the tin opener that is somewhere in the miscellaneous drawer (or among the picnic equipment, which is on top of the wardrobe), or puncturing the tin at exactly the right spot on the seam with a pointy parmesan knife, which is somewhere in the same drawer
Doom Bar maker Sharp’s Brewery in Cornwall to be closed by US owner
The Cornish brewery that makes Doom Bar ale is to be closed by its US owner, throwing the popular beer brand’s future into doubt and putting about 200 jobs at risk.The drinks company Molson Coors said it plans to shut Sharp’s Brewery in Rock, along with its national call centre in Wales, saying it was “no longer financially sustainable”.The Chicago-based company, which bought Sharp’s 15 years ago, said it was planning to close the site by the end of this year but it “remains committed” to Sharp’s beer brands.Sharp was founded in 1994, and most its sales come from Doom Bar, which is among the bestselling cask ales in the UK, and was named after a notoriously dangerous sandbank in Cornwall’s Camel estuary. Sharp’s also makes Atlantic and Twin Coast pale ales
Table for one: is eating lunch at work on your own a bad thing?
Name: The lonely lunch.Age: Recent, but growing.Appearance: Très misérable.Why are you talking French to me? Have you gone all pretentious? I am talking French to you because this is a French problem.It is? Oui
How to use on-the-turn milk to make an Italian classic – recipe
According to the Sustainable Food Trust, “the milk from 40,000 cows (300,000 tonnes) is tipped down the kitchen sink each year – a real slap in the face for the farmer”. Even though some supermarkets have now swapped use-by for best-before dates on their milk, those dates can still be confusing, so always do the sniff test before binning it: even if it’s a little sour, you can still cook with it.The Food Standards Agency advises that food with a best-before date can usually be tested using sensory cues such as the sniff test. And what better way to use up spent or sour milk than maiale al latte, or milk-braised pork, for which pork is slowly braised in milk and flavoured with a few aromatics until tender. The milk splits and forms large curds that thicken and caramelise the sauce, so creating a creamy rich dressing for the meat
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