As Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos attempt to reshape our reality, my advice is to avoid their toxic platforms and wait it out

Wow! That escalated quickly. Last time I filed my supposedly funny column, only two weeks ago, Los Angeles wasn’t on fire ; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t abandoned the guardrails that restrict neo-fascist lies , or “free speech” as they are now known; the US hadn’t threatened to invade Canada and Greenland ; Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson hadn’t declared the sniff-conked sunbed fraudster Tommy Robinson the new Nelson Mandela ; and the next US president, though already an adjudicated sexual abuser, wasn’t actually a convicted felon who would have been in prison were he not in the White House . Jesus! I only popped out for some (oat) milk.

Twenty or so years ago, I had a friend whose flat was clearly infested by hundreds of rats that she never saw. We’d come in, put the Happy Shopper bags on the kitchen table, go to the loo, and return to see the sacks shredded and everything attractive to rodents disappeared into the cavity walls. Either that or there was a really hungry flatmate who was usually out whenever my friend was in. And wasn’t paying any rent. And left tiny oblong droppings under the units.

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

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It just led to him recreating its annoying content offline

My son is holding forth at the kitchen table. He says lasagne is A-tier, but spaghetti and meatballs are B. My wife and I had entered this conversation ambivalently, but things get heated when he declares bangers and mash to be C-tier at best.

He’s taken to ranking everything in lists, a practice he’s borrowed from his favourite YouTubers and is now applying offline to every object, animal and phenomenon he can think of. Right now it’s ‘dinners’, but he’s done dozens this week – ‘animals’, ‘dinosaurs’, ‘modes of transport’, ‘local dogs’ – and attempted to do ‘family members’ before we stopped him.

Four-way love is in the air in the long-awaited return of Severance; the case against US shock rock star Marilyn Manson; Australia’s latest gem reaches full term; and Lucy Worsley looks King Harold in the eye

Severance ( Apple TV+ )
Marilyn Manson: Unmasked (Channel 4) | 4oD
Bump (BBC One) | iPlayer
Lucy Worsley Investigates… 1066 (BBC Two) | iPlayer

The return of the Apple TV+ thriller Severance after three years – it was delayed by factors including the Hollywood writers’ strikes – is a reminder that, for me, the first series took a while to “take”. In it, creator Dan Erickson devised a near-future scenario in which people choose to keep their work and home lives separate by having their brain surgically severed, the “innie” self existing only at the sinister Lumon corporation and kept in the dark about their “outie” self in the real world, and vice versa.

The Norwegian theatre director on bringing Annie Ernaux’s memoir The Years to the West End, standing on Ivo van Hove’s shoulders, and why live experiences still matter

Eline Arbo is a Norwegian theatre director. She grew up in Tromsø in the Arctic Circle, went to university in Oslo, and studied directing at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam. In 2023, she succeeded Ivo van Hove as the artistic director of the celebrated Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, where her productions have included adaptations of The End of Eddy , a novel by Édouard Louis, and of The Years , a memoir by Annie Ernaux. An English-language version of The Years with five actors playing Ernaux was a sellout hit at the Almeida theatre in north London last year, and transfers to the West End later this month.

Did you have any idea just how successful The Years , your first production to be staged in London, would be?
No! It had already been a big hit in the Netherlands, but you never know what’s going to work in a different context. I felt it was an important story: you go through a woman’s whole life, with all its ups and downs, all the different roles you have to play and to juggle; all the bodily things, too. Audiences had told us what a profound experience this was for them. But it is a strange [experimental] form as well, and I did wonder how it would be received. I’ve never had anything like this happen before: the transfer [to the West End], and I’m so happy about it.

There’s at least one outstanding chocolatier and some great bakeries

Ocelot chocolate is made in Scotland. I’m not sure why I haven’t featured it more than I have. It has it all going on: it’s organic, it works with great cocoa beans and it supports women cocoa farmers. The packaging is also really fabulous, like retro modern (yes, this is a thing) paperback books. I have mentioned a few of its bars in the past ( Chocaletta : a creamy milk not currently available, but I remember going mad for it).

Anyway. Ocelot also works with bakeries in Scotland. Wild Hearth , a wood-fired, artisan bakery in an old Nissen hut on the edge of the Highlands, makes the cinnamon swirls for Ocelot’s Cinnamon Swirl bar, £6.99/75g (sadly, not tested).

Concerns had been mounting over future of £200m a year scheme providing food and activities for vulnerable children

Ministers are to safeguard the Marcus Rashford-inspired scheme providing food and activities to vulnerable children during school holidays for another year, following concerns it could fall victim to a desperate search for savings across Whitehall.

More than a million people signed a petition from the Manchester United star calling for the scheme after a huge grassroots campaign in 2020.

Journalists from countries that have seen challenges to democracy give their view on the second Trump presidency

What is the view of US democracy from abroad, and what can Americans learn from other nations with a history of political tumult?

During his first term Donald Trump tested democratic norms by undermining trust in fair elections, encouraging political violence and demonizing the media and public servants. He has promised to be a dictator “on day one” of his second term.

To realise his dream for economic growth, Keir Starmer must seize the reins of technological power

Sir Keir Starmer doesn’t do visions. But last Monday he broke the habit of a lifetime in a speech delivered at University College London . It was about AI , which he sees as “the defining opportunity of our generation”. The UK, he declared “is the nation of Babbage, Lovelace and Turing”, not to mention the country “that gave birth to the modern computer and the world wide web. So mark my words – Britain will be one of the great AI superpowers.”

Stirring stuff, eh. Within days of taking office, the PM had invited Matt Clifford, a smart tech bro from central casting, to think about “how we seize the opportunities of AI”. Clifford came up with a 50-point AI Opportunities Action Plan that Starmer accepted in its entirety, saying that he would “put the full weight of the British state” behind it. He also appointed Clifford as his AI Opportunities Adviser to oversee implementation of the plan and report directly to him. It’s only a matter of time before the Sun dubs him “the UK’s AI tsar”.

The price of gold continues to rise, but who buys it, and where do they keep it? We head to Geneva’s secret vault and meets the dealers

There’s a secrecy to the specifics of our planned rendezvous, when I meet a sharp-suited Egon von Greyerz in Zurich airport’s arrivals hall. Hands shaken, he guides us out of a side entrance towards a car park in a quiet corner of the sprawling complex. Roughly 30,000 people work in and around the site; annually, tens of millions of passengers pass through here. Scarce few are aware of the existence, let alone the precise location, of our intended destination: a high-security, 350sqm vault somewhere deep beneath us. Inside it, vast quantities of gold, much of it belonging to von Greyerz, and a roster of his company’s exceedingly wealthy international clientele.

For more than 25 years, von Greyerz has been in this business: buying, selling and storing precious metals for the super-rich, all the while preaching his golden gospel. “We set certain minimum levels,” he says, “to invest through us: $400,000 to store gold in this Zurich vault, or our similar one in Singapore. We use another deep in the Swiss Alps: you’ll need to invest $5m to have anything there.”