Stephen Colbert on Trump’s first year back: ‘Today’s maniacal criminality distracts us from yesterday’s maniac crimes’

Late-night hosts acknowledged one full, maniacal year of Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States.Tuesday 20 January, marked one full year of Trump’s second presidency, and “during that time, he has monopolized our attention every second of every minute of every hour of every day,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “Which is sad. Because today we’re not focusing on the real meaning of January 20: it’s Penguin Awareness Day.”On a more serious note, “a lot has happened in a short time”, the host noted

‘We played to 8,000 Mexicans who knew every word’: how the Whitest Boy Alive conquered the world

He lit up Europe with bands ranging from Peachfuzz to Kings of Convenience. But it was the Whitest Boy Alive that sent Erlend Øye stratospheric. As they return, the soft-singing, country-hopping sensation looks backIf you were to imagine the recent evolution of music in Europe as a series of scenes from a Where’s Wally?-style puzzle book, one bespectacled, lanky figure would pop up on almost every page. There he is in mid-90s London, handing out flyers for his first band Peachfuzz. Here he is in NME at the dawn of the new millennium, fronting folk duo Kings of Convenience and spearheading the new acoustic movement

Sally Tallant appointed as new director of London’s Hayward Gallery

Sally Tallant, the former boss of the Liverpool Biennial, has been announced as the new director of the Hayward Gallery and visual arts at London’s Southbank Centre.Tallant, who is currently in charge of the Queens Museum in New York, will return to the UK to take over from Ralph Rugoff, who will step down after two decades in charge of the institution, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.The Leeds-born Tallant has been in the US since 2019 after an eight-year stint in charge of the Liverpool Biennial and more than a decade working at the Serpentine Gallery, where she was head of programmes until 2011.She said she was delighted to be returning to London and excited to build on the “outstanding legacy” of Rugoff, who also took charge of the Venice Biennale in 2019. She said she was looking forward to “shaping the next chapter of this vital cultural destination and civic institution”

Seth Meyers on Trump: ‘It shouldn’t be this hard to make sense of what the president says and does’

With most late-night hosts on holiday, Seth Meyers mocked Donald Trump’s secondhand Nobel peace prize and his incoherent logic for taking over Greenland.Seth Meyers returned to the Late Night desk on Monday evening – Martin Luther King Jr Day in the US, for which other late-night shows remained on break – with a quick rundown of yet another weekend of unfathomably stupid updates from the White House.In the past few days, Trump “threatened to invade Greenland, which is a part of Denmark, because he didn’t win the Nobel peace prize, which he thinks is decided by Norway, which it’s not”, Meyers said. “For more on this, it’s time for ‘Seth Rubs His Temples and Tries to Dissociate for 15 Minutes.’“The news has once again gotten dumber and more exhausting,” he continued

Mama Does Derby review – Virginia Gay’s Town Hall takeover is ambitious, entertaining and irresistibly warm

Sydney’s Town Hall has transformed into a tennis court and a beach for recent iterations of the Sydney festival; this year, it’s a roller derby rink, with a moving set and music stage, and a live band belting covers.Inside the ornate Victorian interior of Centennial Hall, an oval flat track has been installed; on either side are stadium-style seating banks. This is the set for Mama Does Derby, the new family dramedy from Adelaide’s Windmill Production Company, premiering in Sydney ahead of Adelaide festival.There’s something thrilling about seeing art in unusual spaces, and about seeing familiar places rendered strange and wonderful through art. This has become the bread and butter for city festivals over the past decade, offering the thrill of the catch-it-while-you-can live communal experience as a counterpoint to our increasingly isolated lives

The Guide #226: SPOILER ALERT! It’s never been easier to avoid having your favourite show ruined

Don’t be alarmed by the image above. I can assure you that this newsletter features no spoilers for the current season of The Traitors. We won’t be discussing the shocking departure of REDACTED, or the nefarious actions of EXPUNGED, or the fact that CENSORED is the wife/half-brother/hairdresser of NAME REMOVED. Relax, you are in a hermetically sealed Traitors safe space here.Indeed, what has gradually dawned on me while watching this latest series is how relatively straightforward avoiding spoilers has been