What does loneliness smell like? Inside the strangely soothing world of fragrance TikTok

I was bestowed with a nickname throughout my younger years: Smellanor. When I decided to go by Elle, the nickname evolved with it: Smell. I’m always a sucker for a fun rhyme. But it did make me hypervigilant about maintaining what I actually smelled like, vowing that this moniker would never manifest itself into reality. Thus began my ongoing journey into the wild world of fragrances

Claire Hooper: ‘People have different forms of therapy. Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age is mine’

The premise of your new standup show, Fun Show xx, is that you are not a fun person. What is the least fun thing about you?The minute my husband leaves the house, I turn the music off. I love silence. For my 40th birthday my husband, my two babies and I flew to Adelaide and hired a car to drive to the Barossa. My husband said, “It’s your birthday, you get to choose the playlist!” and I said, “Just complete silence please

The Guide #235: Live from London, it’s Saturday Night! But will SNL translate transatlantically?

This weekend, after the longest hyping up period for a British comedy in ages, Saturday Night Live UK finally launches on Sky. It arrives with a degree of divisiveness that most shows don’t usually attain until at least a few episodes in, with some people willing it on, others are convinced that it will fail. Already there’s been a note of pre-emptive schadenfreude online, with every last piece of promotional material – even a fairly innocuous advert with the letters S N and L spelt out in baked beans – pounced on as evidence that the show will be a complete bin fire.And maybe it will. I’m hopeful that SNL UK will prove better than many expect: there are some good young comics attached; some shrewd people behind the scenes (it’s heartening to see a couple of members of the great sketch group Sheeps on the writing staff); and the steely presence of original SNL creator Lorne Michaels, keeping an eye on things as exec producer

From Project Hail Mary to Saturday Night Live UK: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

Scientist Ryan Gosling is alone in deep space – or is he? – and America’s famed topical satire is given a British angleProject Hail MaryOut now Novelist Andy Weir’s brand of comic, semi-plausible sci-fi led to Ridley Scott’s The Martian – now Phil Lord and Christopher Miller will be hoping to repeat something of the same success. Ryan Gosling is the lead of a caper in which a science teacher wakes up on a spaceship on a desperate mission in deep space.La GraziaOut now Italian star Toni Servillo reunites with director Paolo Sorrentino for another collaboration exploring conflicts between personal freedom and public obligations. This time, an Italian president must navigate various moral dilemmas, including potentially pardoning two murderers.Broken EnglishOut now Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s documentary about Marianne Faithfull eschews convention to explore its topic through devices including the Ministry of Not Forgetting – an imaginary space where actual memories can collide with myth-making

‘A fascinating discovery’: research challenges Battle of Hastings narrative

It is a story that has been taught to generations of British schoolchildren about one of the most famous and pivotal events in the country’s history.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.In September 1066, as a Norman duke called William prepared to sail from France to claim the English throne, King Harold of England discovered the Viking leader Harald Hardrada had landed in Yorkshire with an army of his own

Driven to the right side of the road? | Brief letters

From the answer to question five of The kids’ quiz (14 March), we learn that people in Britain drive on the left-hand side of the road to keep their right hand free for sword fighting. Does that mean that just about everywhere else in the world people drive on the right-hand side of the road to keep their left hand free for shield wielding?Simon ChapmanMarseille, France In the Saturday quiz (14 March), Glengarry Glen Ross is named as one of four “films with no female characters”. In fact the film does credit “Coat check girl”, played by Lori Tan Chinn, who delivers the immortal line: “Slow tonight.”Rendel HarrisLondon On children fibbing (Letters, 19 March), my brother, the late Tom Hibbert (of Smash Hits, Q magazine and Observer fame), showed early promise of invention when asked by our mother how a large tear in his trousers had appeared. He replied rather scornfully: “Haven’t you heard of moths what eat holes in people’s clothes?”Jimmy Hibbert Porthmadog, Gwynedd Somebody should advise Robin, who said he was looking for someone 5ft 6in tall, what my father once said to me (Blind date, 14 March)