No culinary war, no sweary saucier: why The Cook and the Chef is still the best food TV

When did we decide making food should be stressful? I believe it was around 2009, when MasterChef Australia took off, with its explosions and tears and plate-throwing; of course we ruthlessly exported it, like the Hemsworths.Along the way, cooking went from being an act of service to an extreme sport. As a result, you can now watch people shout and cry as they decorate a mille-feuille on most of the streamers. Cooking is now a form of combat – there are Cake Wars, Cupcake Wars and Culinary Class Wars – and frequently, pure spectacle. You can make a cake that looks like a lifesize Superman (ahem, Super Mega Cakes) – but, as I said out loud while watching two contestants have a fight about time management, when is someone going to fucking eat something?Most new cooking shows are not really about food at all, but drama

Bath’s Holburne museum to unveil ‘art chamber’ of Renaissance masterpieces

Beneath the Georgian city of Bath, a gleaming treasury of Renaissance masterpieces created for kings, queens, church leaders and scientists is about to be unveiled.Based on the idea of the Renaissance kunstkammer – an art chamber – the basement room at the Holburne Museum is crammed with scores of exquisite pieces of silverware, paintings, bronzes and ceramics.They include an astonishing model of a silver ship, a rare mechanical celestial globe and a silver-gilt vessel likely to have belonged to Henry VIII.“It’s wonderful having pieces here that you’d usually see in places like the Met in New York or the British Museum,” said Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne.The treasures were collected over many decades by the Schroder family, who made their fortune as merchants and bankers, and have been loaned to the Holburne for at least 20 years

Non-profit collective plans festival to help grassroots live music circuit

A group of festival organisers and grassroots venues have launched a “pioneering, gamechanging music collective” to counter what they say is the slow collapse of the UK’s alternative live circuit.Blaming soaring costs and corporate dominance for pushing dozens of smaller events to close, the not-for-profit festival will bring together independent festivals, venues and collectives to share resources, cut costs and pool audiences.Led by Si Chai, the founder of Chai Wallahs, the Where It All Began festival – scheduled for next spring – has been backed by the Music Venue Trust. Freddie Fellowes, the founder of the Secret Garden Party festival, has offered to host the event on his family’s farm in Cambridgeshire.“The current independent festival model has become unsustainable, pressured and too financially stressful for most organisers since Covid, which means a wealth of incredible grassroots artists are being denied a fair opportunity to perform and carve out their own careers,” said Chai

Holding opera and Anna Netrebko to account for Putin’s war crimes | Letters

Martin Kettle accurately highlights the moral dilemma faced by the Royal Opera House in hiring the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko for the upcoming performances of Tosca (As Putin’s bombs fall on Ukraine, the Royal Opera House had a call to make about Anna Netrebko. It made the wrong one, 28 August). He goes on to place the ball in Netrebko’s court by suggesting she should withdraw from the performances or “say something unambiguous for the British audience in opposition to Putin’s continuing war”. He later acknowledges that Netrebko stated her opposition to the war at its outset and that she was attacked for her stance by the Russian regime.Must this happen again? As Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova pointed out, when speaking in a 2022 Guardian interview of how she was “pretty much ready to die” when she went on hunger strike: “If you fight with a dictator, you have to show them that you are ready to fight to the end

The Divine Comedy on Something for the Weekend: ‘We hired a statuesque model for the video. I had to stand on a box’

Having made two albums with a chamber vibe, I was thinking, “Where do I go from here?” I started hearing your Suedes and Saint Etiennes, and Blur were referencing stuff from the 60s and 70s too. I could see the way the wind was blowing. That sounds quite knowing, but I already loved John Barry, the Kinks, Adam Faith and, of course, Scott Walker.I’d come up with a very eurocentric chord sequence, not the type you get in rock’n’roll, almost slightly Pet Shop Boys. Watching the 1995 adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm, I noticed that the grandmother’s repeated line, “There’s something in the woodshed,” scanned with the tune I was writing

Sally Phillips: ‘I saw Hugh Grant and I screamed. I was surprised he was human-size’

What do people approach you about most: Smack the Pony, Bridget Jones, Alan Partridge or shoving cake into Alex Horne’s armpits?I profile them as they come up. If it’s a man about my age, it would normally be Alan Partridge. If it’s a man in his 30s, it might be Taskmaster or Veep. If it’s a woman, it’s harder to tell. Smack the Pony seems to be having a revival among women in their 20s but it could easily be Bridget Jones and Miranda