It would be a real shame if his on-stage claim to be retiring from stand-up is true, because his point of view is fresh and his set was honest and enjoyable

I had just left school when I signed a record deal and toured with Blur and Radiohead. Now, 25 years later, I’m taking those memories to Edinburgh

The singer is said to be surrounded by close friends and family

'Over the last few weeks I have done everything in my ability to confront and address the repercussions of my actions head-on, and apologise personally to those that I affected'

A new survey of western black radical thought is lucid, fluent and compellingBlack radicalism, Kehinde Andrews argues, is the most misunderstood ideology of the 20th century. And he’s right. It has become a vague term, lazily employed to encompass everything from the black nationalism of WEB Du Bois or Martin Delany, the Pan-Africanism of Kwame Ture (AKA Stokely Carmichael) and the black Marxism of

In new documentary A Whale of a Tale, film-maker Megumi Sasaki revisits the Japanese town of Taiji and examines the damage left behind The 2009 documentary The Cove, which depicted the practice of corralling and slaughtering dolphins in a small bay tinged crimson from the blood, has visited a bewildering past decade upon the small Japanese town of Taiji.

Impressive debuts by Alexia Arthurs and Nafissa Thompson-Spires bring grit and wit to issues around racial identity The stories in the debut collection from Alexia Arthurs shuttle between Jamaica, her birthplace, and the US, where she lives. Among the varied scenarios you find depictions of island life, in which a betrayed wife turns up at the home of her husband’s lover brandishing a (blunt) machete; a student party in Brooklyn brought to a halt by a quarrel about Lena Dunham’s

A bravura performance kicks off the first in a three-part drama anthology about criminal justice, while a new series provides valuable perspectives on immigration

The film is set to premiere in March 2020

Usually, Audrey II is brought to life by a feat of stagecraft. So why cast a living, breathing drag queen in the role? It's all in the service of director Maria Aberg's determinedly anti-realist, subversive approach, and because drag is having a crossover moment, says Alice Saville

Sex sells, which explains why performers have been getting their kit off at the fringe for years. But my fleshy odyssey was also mindbending – and profoundly moving Fifteen naked people in a single day is a record for me. For a Monday, at least. I am in Edinburgh to attend the fringe, where I have been given a brief to … well, avoid briefs. Ban bras, skirt skirts – free willy. Go to Edinburgh, and see the naked shows, was the plan. Bring a towel to sit on, a venue said. Nudity is not new at the fringe, established in 1947, when eight theatre companies decided to turn up uninvited and stage their own shows alongside the Edinburgh international festival. This sounds a bit like turning up outside someone’s house with a boombox, but it obviously proved successful. Last year, the Fringe consisted of more than 3,000 shows in 300 venues.

Alan Mencken and Howard Ashman's tongue-in-cheek 1982 musical tells the Faustian story of a hapless Skid Row florist who wins love, fame and fortune when he cultivates a rampantly bloodthirsty plant

Let’s hope Rockstar Games’ follow-up has the same emotional heft as its predecessor while also reflecting our troubled times After years of promotional material largely consisting of moody western landscape shots and artwork of men on horses, the new gameplay trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2 has finally given us a better idea of what you can actually do in Rockstar Games’ death-of-the-old-west America when the game comes out in October. But while there’s plenty to get excited about – I mean, that’s definitely Steven Ogg two minutes and 55 seconds in, right? – it would be great if Red Dead Redemption 2 reflected the times. The world is a vastly different place to the one that greeted the first Red Dead Redemption in 2010. Twitter was a fun little diversion in 2010, rather than an open sewer full of Nazis. Donald Trump was just a sideshow clown. The word Brexit didn’t even exist. We might be more in need of a truly great video game to distract us from the trash fire that is real-world current events than we ever have been before.

In typical Disney fashion, the media giant made waves by creating its first ever openly gay character - but then whipped them into a furious storm by casting a straight actor to play the role.

The Netflix show and films The Greatest Showman and Black Panther were among the big winners.

For me – a middle-aged British man writing in the voice of a teenage Egyptian girl signing up with Isis – this is a tough question. Here is how I answer it My new novel may need justifying. Half of it is narrated by Sofia, a 17-year-old girl born in Cairo; I’m a 47-year-old man who has never lived outside the UK. More to the point, the story opens with Sofia arriving in Syria to join Islamic State – a long way from any experience of my own. Privately, I have been asked what gives me the right to tell this story. With the book newly out, I expect to have to answer this publicly. It’s a good question. And a vexed one, debated with understandable heat over the last few years. One side sees an act of presumption or, worse, exploitation: those who are used to having an audience for their stories usurp the experience, culture and identity of those who are never heard. To object to this is right. Control the past and you control the future, as Orwell tells us; the fictional stories we tell shape us as powerfully as history does. This responsibility ought to sit with the owners of the stories – not only because it is morally right, but also because their chances of being heard diminish every time someone tells their story for them. Like a child who never gets a word in because their older siblings speak for them, they are robbed of the chance to find their own voice.

With such a large and richly realised universe, the creators could have gone a multitude of ways with this season finale

Two more celebrities are set to be announced later today

Sweat it out with some classic sunstruck movies, from a steamy tale of the American south to an English seaside romcomIn most years at this point in August, a streaming playlist of summer-set films would have a wistful quality to it: “This, in case you’ve forgotten after three months of tepid drizzle, is what summer theoretically feels like.” Three months into the balmiest British summer since Labour was in power, however, the heat oozing off the screen in a

Though Donald Trump's approval ratings have dwindled, there is absolutely no budging his popularity with his base of which Sacha Baron Cohen's Who is America? character Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PhD is clearly supposed to typify.