Post your questions for Harry Potter and Fast Show star Mark Williams
Twenty-five years have now passed since the first Harry Potter film and, with the HBO reboot due out this Christmas, Warner Bros is ramping up the celebrations.Key among them is the unveiling of a new feature at the studio tour showcasing key moments, costumes and props from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.And this is why Mark Williams is now taking your questions – although, as Potter purists will know, his character doesn’t actually appear in the first film.Arthur Weasley does, however, play a pretty big role in the other seven movies, so let’s muggle through regardless.In the movies, Williams plays the ministry of magic employee, husband to Julie Walters’ Molly Weasley and father of Ron, Ginny, Fred, George, Percy, Charlie and Bill – a role for which he had to dye his hair red.
“I turned into a fuzzy-haired ginger person,” he said in 2005, prompting Stephen Fry to ask him if the move was “for professional or sexual reasons?”Williams will be answering your queries about all things Potter, as well as about his career to date, from his early work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre in England to his breakthrough on The Fast Show in the 1990s – his most famous character, which presumably still makes clothes shopping nightmarish.Of the slight lethargy at the start of his career, Williams, now 66, said, “I think it took longer for me to succeed because I’ve got a face like the corner of a crocodile handbag.”Other movie credits include Stardust, 101 Dalmatians, The Borrowers, Shakespeare in Love, A Cock and Bulk Story, Albert Nobbs and Aardman’s Early Man.On the small screen, meanwhile, he’s been on Red Dwarf, Doctor Who, Carrie & Barry, Bottom, Saxondale, as Mr Beebe in the 2007 adaptation of A Room With a View and the lead in 140 episodes of Father Brown (as well as making a cameo as the same holy man in Sister Boniface Mysteries).Two further series of the show have recently started filming.
He also presented quizshow The Link in 2014 and 2015, and has fronted four documentary series about the UK’s industrial history, which taught him, he said, that “the human experience is that we often rely too heavily on the wrong things.The Victorians relied too heavily on coal, and they destroyed their cities and their children in the process.We’re no different today.We’ve been the same organism since Neolithic times.“We think we’re cleverer than our forebears, but we’re not.
We still bring up our children in the same haphazard way, and if there is more than one switch, we still don’t know which one turns the light on.The Americans spent millions of dollars trying to invent a pen that would work in space.Then the Russians went into orbit and found that the humble pencil worked perfectly well.”Post your questions for Williams by noon BST on Monday 4 May and we’ll publish them in June in our regular reader interview series.
Renault says ‘seismic shift’ in electric car interest after oil price shock – business live
Renault’s UK boss has said the Iran war oil price surge has started a “seismic shift upwards” in interest in electric vehicles.Adam Wood, managing director for the French carmaker in the UK, said that buyers were realising that it was much cheaper to charge electric cars than to fill up with petrol.Oil prices remained above $111 per barrel on Friday, with little sign that the US and Iran would reach an agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a key export route for a fifth of the world’s oil.Renault said the effect of the oil price surge was translating to sales. It said enquiries about electric vehicles were up 42% on its website, and that electric vehicles accounted for almost 50% of sales in April
CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 times faster than workers’ pay
CEO pay increased 20 times faster than worker pay around the world in 2025, according to a new analysis from Oxfam and the International Trade Union Confederation, the world’s largest trade union federation.When adjusted for inflation, global worker pay declined 12% between 2019 and 2025, the equivalent of 108 days of free work during that time period. In comparison, CEO compensation increased by 54% between 2019 and 2025.The average CEO received $8.4m in total compensation in 2025 compared to $7
‘Awkward and humiliating’: UK job hunters share frustration with AI interviews
Nearly half (47%) of UK job seekers have had an AI interview, research from the hiring platform Greenhouse has found.In its survey of 2,950 active job seekers, including 1,132 UK-based workers, with additional respondents from the US, Germany, Australia and Ireland, it found that 30% of UK candidates had walked away from a hiring process because it included an AI interview.We asked people about their experiences of AI interviews. The responses included those who found it “awkward” and “humiliating”. Others spoke of wanting a human element in the interviews, and said they were not sure if their interview had even been reviewed
Tim Cook takes victory lap as Apple’s financial results soar past Wall Street expectations
Apple blew past Wall Street expectations in its first earnings report since it announced CEO Tim Cook would be stepping down.Cook shared his thoughts about the leadership transition on Thursday, saying: “There’s no one on this planet I trust more to lead Apple into the future” than incoming CEO John Ternus. Asked by an investor what advice he has given Ternus, Cook said: “Never forget the north star for the company. You know, we’re about making the best products in the world that really enrich other people’s lives.”Ternus spoke briefly, too, praising Cook’s thoughtfulness in financial decision-making and saying: “This is the most exciting time in my 25-year career at Apple to be building products and services
Surrey bolster Oval security, Somerset v Yorkshire, and more: county cricket, day one – live
Andy Bull is out and about at Lord’s and has spotted Ben Stokes batting in the nets on the Nursery ground. “He has drawn a crowd of 30 school kids and 20 men in blazers.” And looks “rugged.”Somerset’s bowlers are currently getting schooled by Bairstow and Root - whose cover drive on one knee against Craig Overton was like a bite of a warm buttery croissant straight from a Parisian paper bag. Yorkshire 110-3
The world’s most expensive losers: the New York Mets are very rich … and very, very bad
The Mets have the second-highest payroll in baseball. They also own the worst record in the major leaguesA franchise once known as baseball’s lovable losers are, for the moment, merely baseball’s most expensive losers.The New York Mets wrapped a shocking April by losing 5-4 to the Washington Nationals on Thursday, dropping to a major league-worst 10-21 and burrowing even deeper into last place in the National League East – making them somehow even worse than their old rivals the Philadelphia Phillies, another wealthy-yet-terrible team. The Mets will (probably) not play at their current 52-win pace all year but their sordid first month has done immense damage to their postseason hopes. Their chances at October baseball were 87% on Opening Day, according to the analytics site FanGraphs
NatWest faces £140m hit from Iran war as UK growth slows and inflation rises
UK house prices jump despite impact of Middle East conflict
Meta threatens to shut down social networks in New Mexico over child safety court case
Judge cuts off Musk’s AI doomsday talk as his testimony ends in OpenAI case
Chess: England fail to win senior team world medals for first time in five years
Robo athletes miss the point of sport – there is no drama without emotion | Emma John