As a Traitors obsessive, Gamble is in his element hosting its hugely popular companion show, Uncloaked. He discusses keeping the show’s secrets, edgelord comics and how he became known as a ‘mega wife guy’

Ed Gamble does not like seeing himself on screen. “I know a lot of comics who struggle with watching themselves,” he says. “No one should be having to look at their own face so much. It feels simultaneously arrogant and also the most self-flagellating thing you can do.”

Unfortunately for him, he is inescapable. Gamble presents the BBC’s wildly successful companion show to the Traitors, The Traitors: Uncloaked, along with the hugely popular podcast Off Menu, with the comedian and current Celebrity Traitors contestant James Acaster.

Drugs, drink and dancing made Bez famous. Thirty-five years on, has he really swapped it all for filtered water, intermittent fasting and walks with the dogs?

Bez has both shoelaces undone and it’s making me nervous. Out walking his dogs, we’re up and over barbed wire, across streams and over gates. We bash through brambles and skid down slopes. I’m becoming fixated on the perilously trailing laces of his trainers and why he hasn’t tripped over them. Can he be such a thrill-seeker that a dog walk can be turned into an hour of jeopardy?

Of course he can. This is Bez, anarchic maraca-shaker, party person, the man Shaun Ryder, his Happy Mondays bandmate and partner in crime, says is a bad influence. Bez, whose real name is Mark Berry, has been in more scrapes than seems possible for one person. A small sample: knocking his teeth out in a motorbike crash at the age of 16, threatened with a gun when he and Ryder were trying to buy crack in New York, kidnapped and held hostage during another drug deal, smashing his body up in another motorbike crash in 1999 and then getting MRSA in hospital and ending up in a coma for a month.

It’s 50 years since Smith joined TV’s bikini-clad crime fighters alongside Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson. She talks about the love she found on set, the harassment she endured off it and the drug-taking she did her best to ignore

For a TV show that only ran for five years, Charlie’s Angels packs a punch like a bikini-wearing big-hair-flicking private investigator. “We never thought we’d be talking about it 50 years later,” says Jaclyn Smith, the only original Angel to make it to the end of the show’s run. Smith, 80, has now written a memoir, I Once Knew a Guy Called Charlie – she is not, you gather, the type of actor to want to distance herself from her defining project.

As I read her book, and speak to her over Zoom, she comes across as sensible, hardworking and optimistic. Also lucky: loving and supportive parents, agents who seem to appear from nowhere and offer her work, an early hit show, a gift for making friends and getting over heartbreak. Even when she was diagnosed with breast cancer more than 20 years ago, terrifying as it was, it was caught early and successfully treated. Her positive outlook seems to extend to the excesses of US TV in the 1970s and 80s (drug use on set only gets a brief mention); her three ex-husbands get off fairly lightly; and any difficulties – her OCD, the men who stalked her at the height of her fame – are not dwelled on.

Since Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder in 1994, Denise Brown has devoted herself to ending domestic violence. She talks about her beloved sister, the trauma she witnessed in the couple’s marriage and how lives can be saved

The last night Denise Brown spent with her sister Nicole Brown Simpson was at a restaurant for a family celebration. Nicole looked out of the window. “All of a sudden she goes, ‘Oh my God, there he is.’ He was driving by.” Brown looked out, trying to get a glimpse of her sister’s ex-husband, the former American football star OJ Simpson. “I saw these headlights. She said, ‘He’s constantly following me.’” They went back to talking about their plans for the summer.

The following morning, 13 June 1994, Brown was up early at her parents’ house in Orange County in southern California, when the phone rang shortly after 6am. “I heard my mom scream a scream that I had never heard from a human being,” says Brown. “It was so guttural. Just awful.”

The stars are no strangers to public scrutiny of their most intimate relationships – but they’ve never experienced anything like this. They talk about playing a famous divorcing couple, and how money makes things revolting

In a London hotel room, Dominic West is weighing up how much he would accept to strip to his socks. In the new series War, West plays a social media billionaire who is supposed to be fairly decent, though there’s one excruciating scene – goading someone to strip for money – that reveals he’s definitely also a bit of a git. “That, I suppose, is the kick billionaires must get: that people would do anything for money,” he says. He wonders what his price would be. His co-star Sienna Miller laughs and says he’d do it “for the lols”, and West grins and says: “No, I’d want three figures. A hundred quid.”

War is a juicy eight-part legal drama, where Miller and West are a divorcing couple – she a narcissistic film star, he said billionaire – so just about all their scenes together are suppurating with contempt, which is fun, but also a bit of a shame because they have such good chemistry. They first worked together 21 years ago in the West End production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “So we had a history, which was great,” says Miller. There have been many times she’s gone into jobs where “on the first day you’re married to someone and you don’t know them. It’s helpful to have some sort of rapport.”

People in the UK are more interested in oral health than ever - and you can now buy prebiotic toothpastes and brushes that cost up to £600. Yet we remain in the midst of a serious dental crisis

A December 1969 report from the consumer magazine Which? explored a relatively new gadget that, it predicted, many people would be giving as Christmas presents: the electric toothbrush. For those who hadn’t yet seen one, the magazine described it as “not that much different in principle from an ordinary brush – you have a stick with a brush on the end. The difference is that an electric one moves the brush head for you”. Progress indeed.

Nearly six decades on, electric toothbrushes can do a lot more than merely jiggle, offering multiple speeds and movement sensors for real-time tracking of where you’ve brushed – some even promise gum-massage or tongue-cleaning modes. Prices range from about £25 for a basic Oral B model to £599.99 for a Philips Sonicare model that gives “smart coverage feedback”. The latest super-toothbrush – a mere £419.99 – features a camera and a built-in water jet to clean between teeth, using AI to identify gaps. Created by Dyson, it’s still, essentially, a stick with a brush on the end (although there is another toothbrush on the market that’s shaped like a mouthguard, with individual brushes, that claims to clean your teeth in 20 seconds).

The presenters look terrified and some of the celebs are hard to identify, but Strictly remains a rare refuge of joy

At this point, Strictly Come Dancing cannot be allowed to fail. When we’re all living off our Wes Streeting-mandated prepper rations, it’s the only thing that will keep us going, linking us to a time when joy, sparkle and diversity brought the nation together. Enshittification stalks the show – it has long felt too repetitive, its celeb lineups seem to get feebler each year, and the departure of longstanding presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman threatened to be a lethal blow – so there’s a lot riding on this new series.

“Strictly Come Dancing – still fabulous,” said the continuity announcer introducing the launch show, not sounding entirely sure.

With the release of his new biography, the British designer talks about leaving school at 15, the real reason he won’t retire and why no one wears velvet trousers any more

Go for a browse in the Paul Smith shop in Mayfair, London, on any given Saturday and you’ll likely find an older shop assistant, straight-backed in fine tailoring, approaching to help you with a new shirt, or a suit for a special occasion, perhaps a jaunty pair of socks. There aren’t many global fashion brands, Paul Smith points out, perhaps unnecessarily, “where the owner is a Saturday boy”. But working in his shop, one of more than 130 around the world, is probably Smith’s favourite part of the job. “It’s fantastic, you meet so many interesting people,” he says, smiling broadly. Smith’s whole career, he says, has always been about doing things in a different way. He’s the untrained fashion designer who created a global British brand, who put a bright lining or some stripes into classic tailoring, and who has turned down multiple substantial offers to buy his company, in order to remain in control.

Sir Paul Smith has just turned 80 – and he has the enviable energy of someone less than half his age, swimming each day before 6am. He’s about to publish his memoir, Threads: My Life in Style. It’s been a good opportunity to do a stocktake. His has undoubtedly been a lucky life – right place, right time, right people (not least his wife, Pauline, whom he met at the age of 21 and who has been integral to his success) – but it’s also a story of hard work, integrity and modesty. We’ll get to whether those values are still relevant in a harsher, more competitive world, and whether Paul Smith can survive.

One autumn day in 2023 I bathed in the luminous glow of this utterly authentic star – and while she did have one weak spot, her life and music will speak for themselves

• Celebrity tributes pour in for Dolly Parton

• Dolly Parton’s 10 best deep cuts

• Alexis Petridis on Dolly Parton’s peerless career
  

The great privilege of my kind of journalism is to get the chance to meet extraordinary people – some famous, many not – and very occasionally that person is beyond extraordinary. Dolly Parton, you may not be surprised to learn, was one of them. I’ve only come across it a handful of times. It has nothing to do with extreme fame – I’ve met plenty of A-listers who are dead behind the eyes. It’s not charm or extroversion either, nor beauty, and it’s not what we’d call “star quality” because it’s less showy than that. It’s almost indescribable, but “luminous” probably comes closest. I think it’s partly innate – God-given, Parton might have said – but it also comes from living with humility, gratitude and humour. Parton was luminous, and it wasn’t just the rhinestones.

The cliche that you should never meet your heroes because you’ll only be disappointed only stands if you think famous people have somehow transcended the deep character flaws that make the rest of us human. Everyone has off days, or off years. Still, I’d been slightly dreading interviewing Parton. The machinery that surrounds a superstar interview – the holding rooms, the allotted time slots, the officious publicists – is designed to be intimidating, and it was all present on that autumn day in 2023. And then it was just Parton and me in a London hotel room, borderline uncomfortably close on a sofa, but unusually, no publicist sitting in, taking notes.

Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening.

Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered.

From a cake-baking Elton John to possibly the most horrible man in the world, comedians reveal how they get in character – and how far they can push things

In the Covid lockdowns, I was drawing all these silly things, and one day I drew Elton John as a scone. It brought me lots of joy. I love Elton John and everything he’s about – his music and his outfits – and my first job as a musician was in a bar in Soho, where I used to play his back catalogue. I turned the drawing into a very silly character, just for my enjoyment.

Decades after being sexually abused, the author and doctor Frank Spinelli believed he had moved on emotionally. But alcohol destroyed his sense of security. He describes how he confronted his shame

Not so long ago, Frank Spinelli seemed to have sorted out his life. He was happily married, working as a doctor and had a sideline writing medical thrillers. He thought he had dealt with the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child – not only had he helped bring the man who groomed and abused him to justice, but also he had written a memoir about it. “I felt that I had closure,” he says. “I had the good fortune of working with some amazing therapists and I believed I had done the work and moved past it and I was a healed person.”

Little did he know that his recovery was fragile. The Covid pandemic took away his routine and structure: “All the external pillars that were tightly holding me together – the engagements at the office, the work trips.” Two years earlier, he and his husband had moved from Manhattan to a leafy suburb, from where he is speaking to me over a video call today. He was dealing with uncertainty and felt isolated. “We know one thing about shame: shame breeds in isolation.”

Even after half a century in the limelight, the actor can still surprise. Who’d have guessed she went clubbing with Freddie Mercury? Or that she watched Blair and Brown strike their fateful deal at Granita?

A quick run-through of some of the 20th-century icons that Su Pollard has met. Paul McCartney? “Absolutely fabulous,” Pollard says. “He was sat leaning against a wall, next to Linda.” She does a great impression of McCartney’s accent. “‘Hey Su, how are you? Love the show. Can I have your autograph? For my mother.’” The show was, of course, the hugely successful BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, set on an Essex holiday camp and for which Pollard, playing chalet maid Peggy, will for ever be best known.

Queen Elizabeth, after a Royal Variety Performance? “She was absolutely marvellous. What struck me – I’ve always said this – was her skin. I was drawn to her skin. It was all peachified. And beautiful smile, her own teeth. Very regal, very straight-backed, not very tall, and quite a voluptuous bosom.”

The TikTok influencer is now a TV star. But this independent, opinionated woman still lives with her mother, on the Clacton council estate where she grew up. Will she ever leave? And how does she feel about Mum’s curfew?

Since eyes are turned to Clacton-on-Sea and a certain candidate facing questions about a £5m “gift” and a byelection battle with a man dressed as a bin, let’s take a look across the town at a young woman in a pink house and be reminded of some values – generosity, decency – that appear absent from much of public life.

Trewley Precious Temple, who became well known on TikTok, where she has 1m followers, is the star of the Channel 4 show Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives and is fast becoming a phenomenon. The show features her mum, Tina, her sisters Honey, Pearl and Ruby-Anne and her brother Jamie; they’re like the Kardashians, says Temple in every episode’s intro, if the humourless US reality TV family were “fat and broke and on benefits”. What comes across most strongly is the family’s love and big-heartedness, not just for each other, but for their wider community, too.

The N-Dubz and X Factor star’s career went into freefall after an elaborate sting by the Sun on Sunday, and she’s still campaigning for tougher press regulation. But will it work?

Late last year, Tulisa Contostavlos took a good look at her life. Her relationship had come to an end and she found herself in her late 30s (she’s 38 now), wondering what next. “I started thinking about all the things I’d never done,” she says. At 20, life had got weird – Contostavlos was in the successful hip-hop group N-Dubz and became an adult just as the fame and money started coming in. By 24, she was a judge on the Saturday night TV show X Factor. If that hadn’t happened, she thinks she might have become an archaeologist – she’s obsessed with ancient history. And so last year she went travelling, to Egypt to see the pyramids, and to Peru to visit Machu Picchu.

There were other, bigger changes. She gave up smoking and started having therapy for the first time. Contostavlos sat down, she says, and “I wrote a list of what my ‘greatest self’ looked like – where she’d go, how she thought, how she felt, the things she would do. I started implementing every single thing on that list and I found through doing that, you just become her – it is actually that simple. It just takes effort and discipline.” Her greatest self, she says, “is a person of action, and she turns lemons into lemon cake”. It got her thinking about the criminal trial that left her career in freefall. “I was like, right, let’s try to do something.”

It’s easy to lose your cool when you’re crammed into a train, bus or plane with a bunch of strangers and one of them is playing music without headphones or fighting you for the armrest. Here are the rules everyone should be following

Public transport can be a hot, noisy, cramped and stressful environment – and that’s before you add in people with pungent food, questionable hygiene and giant backpacks. Most of us know the general rules – though we don’t all follow them – about letting people off first, not putting bags on seats, where to stand on escalators and offering your seat to others. But what about the vaguer conventions? How can you avoid chatty passengers? Or manspreaders? Is it sometimes OK to put your feet on the seats? (Spoiler: it’s not.) Here, three etiquette experts show us the way to public transport propriety.

Breakin’ the Cycle had celeb performers who hoped it would go to Cannes. Until they realised its creators were still running a drug gang while filming – and it all went very wrong

The story of the making of the 2005 British film Breakin’ the Cycle is surely more compelling than the film itself. Nobody can say for sure, because a rough cut was confiscated by the Met police and the raw footage was considered lost. But the film’s origins and subsequent unravelling is extraordinary. Two of Hackney’s most notorious drug dealers try to go straight and become movie producers. It’s a strange combination of comedic chaos, an accidental stabbing, drug money and shootouts, big dreams of making a different life through art, and, ultimately, tragedy. The film-makers had to navigate real-life gang warfare, and an elitist, perhaps racist, film industry.

The cast included the rapper Lethal Bizzle, and Bradley McIntosh from the pop group S Club 7. If McIntosh was desperately trying to escape his clean tween pop image, he wasn’t the only one trying to escape something, though the stakes were far higher for others. Colin Browne, the leader of the Hackney gang Love of Money, wrote the film while serving a prison sentence for cocaine smuggling, and directed it; he had plans to take it to the Cannes film festival. Browne would be killed shortly after filming had finished.

She was the young girl in that infamous photograph with Prince Andrew, and the best-known survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. As Virginia’s explosive posthumous memoir continues to reverberate, her brother Sky Roberts and his wife, Amanda, talk about her final tragic months

A British prince was arrested at 8am and was stripped of his title; ambassadors, politicians and numerous other high-profile men lost their prestigious jobs; millions of files relating to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released and a US president remains under scrutiny. So much has happened since the death of Virginia Roberts Giuffre in April last year, and the posthumous publication of her memoir Nobody’s Girl six months later, detailing for the first time the full story of her abuse by Epstein and his associates. “This year has been extraordinary,” says Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s younger brother. “I just wish Virginia was here to see it.”

He is determined that there will be many more advances to come. Giuffre had become one of the most recognisable survivors of Epstein; in the midst of grief, Sky and his wife, Amanda, have become accidental advocates. “She paved the way, and we want to keep paving that road forward for other survivors out there,” says Sky.

The much-loved presenter had 10 years on This Morning before suddenly deciding she had to get out of there. She discusses sexual harassment, tabloid intrusion, Phillip Schofield and the power of forgiveness

On the daytime TV behemoth that is This Morning, Fern Britton always had an appealing mix of warmth, no-nonsense capability and a hint of danger, as if she could decide to blow it all up at any moment. And then she did.

On the day she resigned in 2009, Britton didn’t know she was going to do it, but amid rumours of a feud with co-host Phillip Schofield, she took the scorched-earth route and walked away from her high-profile, high-paying job with nothing to take its place. Was she not worried about what she would do next?

When is it OK to go shirtless? What time can you start drinking on holiday? And can you ask a stranger to apply your sunscreen? Experts explain the behaviour that’s hot this summer – and what’s really, really not

Summer means a loosening of rules and norms. Eating with your fingers is suddenly encouraged, near-nakedness is everywhere and a 6am airport pint is unremarkable. It’s a hot, sticky recipe for social chaos and – if you share my view on showing off ungroomed feet – possibly the end times of human civilisation. Here, then, is everything you need to know about summer etiquette.