Black Sabbath farewell show hit with controversy
In his message, Manson congratulated Ozzy Osbourne and expressed his honour to be part of the tribute.
The appearance followed the cancellation of Manson's Brighton concert two weeks prior, due to pressure from campaign groups and an MP.
Manson has faced allegations of rape, sexual assault, and bodily harm from multiple women, though a case against him was dropped in January.
Many fans expressed outrage on social media regarding Manson's inclusion in the Black Sabbath event.
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The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Anne Reid on fame, desire and ambition at 90: ‘The most wonderful things have happened since I was 68!'
Anne Reid wants to get one thing straight from the off. She adores working with the director Dominic Dromgoole. 'He treats actors like grownups. Some directors feel as if they've got to play games and teach you how to act. But a conductor doesn't teach a viola player how to play the blooming instrument, does he?' She talks about directors who get actors to throw bean bags at each other and go round the room making them recite each other's names. 'Blimey! I want to be an adult. I think I've earned it now.' She pauses. Reid has always been a master of the timely pause. 'You can't get more adult than me and be alive really, can you, darling?' The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Reid turned 90 in May. She celebrated by going on a national tour with Daisy Goodwin's new play, By Royal Appointment. I catch up with the show at Cheltenham's Everyman theatre. She's already done Bath. Then there's Malvern, Southampton, Richmond, Guildford and Salford. I feel knackered just thinking about it, I say. She gives me a look. 'Oh, they send me in cars. I don't have to toil much!' Yesterday she did a double shift – matinee and evening show. Reid is magnificent as the queen in this witty, moving drama, directed by Dromgoole. The play documents Elizabeth II's years on the throne via relationships with her dress designer, milliner and, most poignantly, her dresser. We witness the major events of her reign backstage as her team prepares appropriate outfits for them. Reid's queen is fabulously multifaceted – funny and mischievous, loyal and dutiful, devastated and disappointed, nostalgic and lustful. There are myriad lines to learn and she's on stage virtually the whole two hours. When Reid emerged for the evening performance's encore, she looked as if she could have happily popped out a third show of the day. She tells me she's delighted with the part, not least because it's so different from the roles she played earlier in her career. Back then she tended to be cast as working-class mothers tethered to the kitchen or women working in aprons (Victoria Wood's canteen comedy Dinnerladies, the cook in the revival of Upstairs Downstairs). 'I've always been below-stairs, and you can't get more upstairs than the queen!' The weird thing is, she says, she grew up in a middle-class family and was privately educated. Her grandfather, father and all three brothers were journalists. Reid's dad was a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, and she discovered in 2015 (when participating in the genealogy TV show Who Do You Think You Are?) that he also had a sideline spying for the British in the second world war. Her brother Colin was a columnist for the Daily Mail, and her husband Peter Eckersley worked for the Guardian before becoming head of drama at Granada, which is where they met. Did she ever fancy a career in journalism? 'No, I wanted to be a ballet dancer. My dad wanted me to be a performer because my grandma was some sort of small-time performer. I had a letter from him in the war saying, 'I want you to drink milk when Mummy gives it to you because that will make you strong, but most of all I want you to learn elocution and to sing and dance.'' She was sent to boarding school in Wales, dutifully took the elocution lessons and lost her geordie accent, and her teacher told her parents that Anne was a born actor. She went to Rada and was the only girl in her year to win a prize. For the past couple of decades, her parts have been more varied and challenging. Now she's best known as the genteel Celia in the BBC's comedy-drama Last Tango in Halifax; the family matriarch Muriel in Russell T Davies's dystopian series Years and Years; the grande dame Lady Denham in the Jane Austen adaptation Sanditon; and the mousy May, who has a sizzling affair with her daughter's boyfriend in the 2003 movie The Mother. All of them dream roles, beautifully played. Reid is a household face rather than name. When I tell friends I'm interviewing her, most look blank. Then I show them pictures of her best-known roles, and they say they love her. We meet in the boardroom at the Everyman. Reid is elegantly casual – shirt, slacks, a dash of lipstick. She can look a little sour and disapproving, then she smiles and her face lights up. It's one of Reid's great dramatic gifts, transforming her from dour curmudgeon to empathetic beauty (and vice versa) in a flicker. Your career has been amazing, I say. She gently rebukes me. 'Well, it hasn't, actually, darling!' Give me a chance, I say – I mean in recent years. 'Yes, right! Well, in the beginning I don't think casting directors rated me. A casting director said to me once, 'Dear Anne, you always help us out when we're absolutely desperate.' Meaning they'd tried everyone else in the business and no one was available. On Desert Island Discs, Kirsty Young said to me, 'Your career's the wrong way round.' I said to her, 'I think it's the right way round actually.' Most people have success in their 20s and then it starts to fade away. Mine's just got better and better and better.' In 2010, she was awarded an MBE, presented by the queen, upgraded to a CBE in King Charles's 2025 new year honours list. Reid was actually famous in her 20s – again a household face rather than name, as Ken Barlow's first wife, Valerie, in Coronation Street. She made her debut in 1961, and was electrocuted by hairdryer a decade later – still one of the iconic soap deaths. Reid says she was desperate to leave. 'I said, 'I have to go – I'm going mad.'' Was she bored? 'Oh yeah! I was so frustrated. I didn't get a laugh in nine years.' She thinks that being in Coronation Street pigeonholed her as northern and working class. Didn't she tell casting directors that she was privately educated and more than capable of playing posh? 'Honey, have you ever met a casting director? Once you've done Coronation Street, you're working class. I do think that hangs about.' Even if she was married to the upwardly mobile teacher Ken Barlow? 'Well, he's pseudo-middle class!' she says dismissively. 'God, I don't know how he's stayed in there so long. I would have gone totally bonkers.' I tell her William Roache is in his 65th year on the Street. She looks aghast. 'It suits some people, but it doesn't suit me. No! I would have been in the funny farm by now, darling.' It was on Coronation Street that she met Eckersley, who wrote many of the scripts. She adored him, and tells me how wise and witty he was. 'My husband was the funniest man in the world. You know that thing Clive James said: 'A sense of humour is just common sense dancing'? Wonderful saying! Pete had that pinned up on his office wall. Michael Parkinson said he was the funniest man he'd ever met, and so did Victoria Wood.' She married Eckersley in 1971, the year she left Coronation Street, and got pregnant soon after with their son Mark. But life didn't work out as she had planned. First her mother became ill and then Eckersley was diagnosed with cancer. She became a full-time carer and mother. In 1981, Eckersley died. 'He was ill for a very long time. It was a miracle that he survived that long. We were both 45. Terribly young when I think about it now. I can't really talk about that much.' She looks upset. 'Mark was nine.' How did she cope? 'People deal with these things. You just get on. I wish I'd been the person I am now. I'm much wiser now. I was a fool when I was young.' In what way? Well, she says, Mark had a top education at boarding school, became head boy and went on to the University of Oxford, where he met his wife, but she's still not sure she did the right thing in sending him away. 'He's lovely. He's a film editor. And I've got two lovely grandsons. Family's the most important thing in my life.' When Reid finally returned to work, she'd been away for 12 years, and it felt as if she had to start again with bit parts on TV and in repertory theatre. Wood gave her a break in Dinnerladies in the late 1990s. By now Reid was in her 60s, and this is when she thinks her career really began. She'd never done comedy before except at Rada. 'The relief of working with people like Vic was so lovely. Yeah! Yeah, sad!' And I can see her travelling back to the days working with Wood, the comic genius who died aged 62 in 2016. 'Sad that she's gone. She could never have imagined that she would die before me. Vic was a huge talent. Absolutely huge!' It was The Mother that transformed Reid's career as a serious actor. In an early interview, she said she'd love to be cast in a role where she had to come out of the sea in a bikini and be made love to by James Bond. Here she got her chance, with Daniel Craig, 33 years her junior (and not yet cast as Bond). Reid played the part with such tender yearning and uninhibited passion. The film, directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi, was groundbreaking. Beforehand, we only seemed to see older women with noticeably younger men if it was played for laughs or weirdness (Harold and Maude) or they were famous beauties (Anne Bancroft in The Graduate, and even then she was only six years older than Dustin Hoffman). 'The Mother changed my life,' she says. Did she realise how radical the part was? 'Not really, no. Roger used to say, 'It's a film about this old granny.' I was only 68!' You were a baby, I say. 'Of course I was, but it's because he was only 40 or something. He said 'We can't cast Julie Christie because everyone wants to fuck Julie Christie!', the implication being that no one in their right mind would want to fuck me.' That's outrageous! 'I know! I know. He said, 'I wanted to cast somebody you wouldn't notice if you passed them in Tesco.' Thanks a lot! You can see why I don't feel I've been valued, can't you!' She smiles. I tell her I think it was a brave film. 'Yeah, but I think they wanted to shock people. I mean all that business about leaning down and giving a …' She stops herself for once. Blowjob, I suggest. 'Yes! And the actual sex was very unromantic. I thought all that was rather ugly, personally. I don't think it was necessary. Nooooo! But young men want to shock the public. And Hanif, who I love dearly, certainly does. I do think it could have been more about the emotion than the shocking thing. I found some of it disappointing. I haven't watched it for years.' It's really good, I say. 'Well I did win the Film Critics' best actress award. That was really important.' Then she changes her mind. 'Oh, it doesn't matter! Who remembers, darling?' At the time, she said it was important to show that sexual desire doesn't simply disappear in older people. 'I don't think it does, really,' she says. What about now, 22 years on? 'Oh, now would be ridiculous, darling, but there you go! No, I don't really think about it.' But what she does think about is desire in general – to push herself, to have fun, to make the most of her life. Reid says it drives her nuts when people in their 60s tell her their best days are behind them. 'A dear friend said it to me yesterday: 'Oh, I'm 62 now – I might never do another play.' Then a taxi driver – I live in black cabs – said, 'It's all over now.' He was in his early 60s, and you think My God! Well, if you don't need those years, give them to me because I could do with them. So many of the most wonderful things in my life have happened since I was 68! I hadn't done cabaret then. I'd not done Last Tango in Halifax. Travelling – I've been all over the place. I can't bear negativity! I can't bear it, and I get so angry with people who give up.' Now she's on a roll. 'I'm a real optimist. I always see the best side of things. My father-in-law was the most divine man, an English teacher, and he said happiness is not something you find – it's something you take with you. Some people will always be miserable, and some people will always find the upside and be happy.' Reid never remarried after Eckersley died. Have there been partners? 'Ah well, that's for me to tell you.' Go on, then. 'No, no, I don't talk about my private life.' Is there anybody in her life at the moment? 'Nononononono! Not for a good long time. I don't like living with anybody. I'm very happy on my own. I just prefer to be on my own. I can get up at two in the morning and play the piano if I feel like it. Yeah. I've got wonderful friends, and I like to get up and do what I want to do. If I want to go to New York today and I've got the money I'll go, I don't have to ask anybody or say, 'D'you want to come with me?'' She pauses. 'I used to think it might be quite nice to be American, but I don't now!' She cackles, and doesn't even mention his name. 'God! What a nutcase!' She says she's having a riot touring the play. Every night she and her co-stars Caroline Quentin and James Dreyfus stay up late at night shooting the breeze. Sometimes they are joined by Dromgoole's daughter Grainne, who is also in the play. 'Dominic worries about us. He thinks I'm too wild. He's always saying, 'Go to bed! Go to bed!' because he worries that I live the life too much! But blow that! That's half the fun.' As for the future, she's hoping to take the play to New York, is writing a cabaret that she plans to perform later in the year, and wants to finally get on with her memoir. There's obviously no point in talking about retirement, I say on the way out. She laughs at the idea. Then, with the sweetest voice, she gives me a warning: 'If you write anything horrible about me, darling, I'll come round and put a bomb through your letterbox and blow your house up.' Perhaps we should reconvene in 10 years' time if we're still about, I suggest. 'You don't know! I might be.' And she heads off, singing: 'I'm gonna live for ever, I'm gonna learn how to fly!' By Royal Appointment is at the Mayflower theatre, Southampton, 9-12 July; Richmond theatre, London, 22-26 July; the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, Guildford, 29 July-2 August; and the Lowry, Salford, 5-9 August
The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Macron's UK state visit underlines effort to move on from Brexit nightmare
When Emmanuel Macron rides in a horse-drawn carriage to Windsor Castle this week, it will be to celebrate the return of close political relations between London and Paris, drawing a line under the damaging spats of the Brexit years. The French president's office said the 'shared interests' of the two countries were what mattered now, hailing France and the UK's 'essential' close relationship on the international stage. This reinvigorated cross-Channel bond was 'vital', a UK official said. For Paris, it is symbolic that Macron is the first European leader to be invited for a pomp-filled state visit to the UK since Brexit. It is seen as a sign of the special France-UK relationship that Macron beat the US president, Donald Trump, to be hosted by King Charles. Trump is expected to take his turn in a gilded carriage later this year. The strong Franco-British unity on display is seen as crucial at a time of war in Ukraine and the Middle East and faced with the unpredictability of the US president. London and Paris's close bilateral ties on security and defence continued unhindered by Brexit, but are expected to be deepened and updated at Downing Street's Franco-British summit this week, as the two countries lead the 'coalition of the willing' on Ukraine. For France, Macron's state visit underlines how far Labour's Keir Starmer has gone to move on from the nightmare chapter in cross-Channel relations of the Brexit years. Boris Johnson, who used his best franglais to say Paris should 'donnez-moi un break', was seen by French officials as a populist engaged in constant France-bashing to numb the electorate to the impact of Brexit. Trust and dialogue had ebbed away during bitter rows over submarine contracts with Australia and fishing rights. The short-lived PM Liz Truss had deliberately refused to say whether Macron was a friend or a foe while running for the Conservative leadership. Relations began to thaw under Rishi Sunak, assisted by King Charles's state visit to France in 2023. The king dined at the Palace of Versailles, saying he loved Édith Piaf songs because the French cabaret star had sung to his mother on a state visit when she was pregnant with him. Macron and Starmer see each other unusually often. The UK prime minister has travelled to France five times since his election, with Macron travelling several times in the other direction, as they work together on Ukraine. 'The geopolitical landscape has changed and made it more compelling for both sides to make up,' said Sébastien Maillard, a special adviser to the Jacques Delors Institute. 'At a time of tremendous, almost earth-shattering movements in the international order, it's a way for of both countries – who are permanent members of the UN security council, have nuclear deterrents and the same level of diplomatic and military outreach – to cling to an order based on international law.' Maillard said France and the UK's renewed relationship, and putting Brexit aside, sent a signal to the Kremlin and the White House that they were like-minded and 'there is no ideological warfare between them … that core values and principles are deeply shared, and they are closely tied when it comes to defending Ukraine and the continent, and upgrading their military capabilities while increasing defence spending'. But a difficult issue remains on the table: the catastrophic deaths of would-be asylum seekers trying to reach the UK coast on small boats across the Channel from France. Despite joint British funding and cooperation, and French police presence on the coast, nearly 20,000 people have arrived in Britain via small boats so far this year, a 50% increase on the same period in 2024. At least 17 people died this year trying to cross the Channel by boat, after a record 78 died last year. France is considering allowing police to stop British-bound boats in its shallow coastal waters up to 300 metres from the coast, but this requires a legal decision from sea authorities. Announcements are expected at this week's summit. 'Both governments have to approach this as a domestic political issue, which makes the situation even more complex,' said Christian Lequesne, a professor of international relations at Paris's Sciences Po university. He said Starmer and Macron were in their own ways both under pressure at home from an increase in far-right and anti-immigration political discourse from Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage. Lequesne said that ultimately the newly warmed relationship better equipped the countries to find solutions: 'It took a long time, but France has finally digested Brexit, which it had a hard time swallowing and was disappointed about.'
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Gracie Abrams SLAMMED for smoking cigarette after reaching new milestone in Paul Mescal relationship
Gracie Abrams recently went Instagram official with her long-rumored boyfriend Paul Mescal after they attended England's Glastonbury Festival, but fans seemed far more concerned about her posing with a cigarette in her mouth. Several X users including @Nataliasliife quoted lyrics from the 25-year-old singer's 2021 single Camden while reacting: 'At least I'll never turn to cigarettes / my brother shielded me from all of that / He said that smoking was a killer.' X user @eth3rchouchou shared a grisly, anti-smoking PSA captioned: 'Let's think about our choices, Gracie.' X user @j41r3z3n was concerned over Abrams' two-and-a-half-octave mezzo-soprano pipes, tweeting: 'Can't afford to smoke with that voice.' 'Smoking? This explains her out of breath performances,' X user @alohavera1 scoffed. 'She takes her career as seriously as we would imagine nepo babies to.' X user @xpremiumgroup tweeted his 'hot take' writing: 'Stop promoting smoking cigarettes as something cool and trendy.' Meawnhile, X user @Marsspace17_ defended the two-time Grammy nominee: 'The people dragging Gracie Abrams for simply smoking a cigarette at a festival should know most of their pretentious male actor or artist faves are legit hardcore drug addicts behind the scenes, who will end up broke while Gracie stays pretty and her career continues to thrive.' Gracie - who boasts 10.8M social media followers - appeared to finally confirm her romance with the 29-year-old Irishman in an Instagram slideshow she shared last Wednesday. Abrams and Mescal reportedly celebrated their first anniversary of dating in June. Since last month, the Pacific Palisades native has been photographed numerous times wearing a curious band on her left-ring finger. 'The speculation has been kind of mad for the last x amount of years,' Paul lamented to GQ last October. 'I'm not comfortable inviting any access into that part of my life. How I am in my private life is so precious to me because I get very little of it, and it might be public interest, but it's not public-obligated information.' Gracie wasn't just a Glastonbury patron as she made her official debut June 27 on the Other Stage during the annual music festival, which takes place at Worthy Farm in Pilton. As Abrams performed her new single Out of Nowhere, her famous filmmaking father J.J. Abrams proudly watched from the wings, and she was also supported there by her brothers Auggie and Henry as well as Mescal's younger sister Nell. Last Friday, the Secret of Us songstress performed her new single Crazy Girl at BST Hyde Park in London while sporting the same exact Boston Red Sox cap that the Oscar-nominated actor had worn at Glastonbury. 'Smoking? This explains her out of breath performances,' X user @alohavera1 scoffed. 'She takes her career as seriously as we would imagine nepo babies to' X user @xpremiumgroup tweeted his 'hot take' writing: 'Stop promoting smoking cigarettes as something cool and trendy' Meawnhile, X user @Marsspace17_ defended the two-time Grammy nominee: 'The people dragging Gracie Abrams for simply smoking a cigarette at a festival should know most of their pretentious male actor or artist faves are legit hardcore drug addicts behind the scenes' Gracie previously dated Grammy-winning hitmaker Blake Slatkin from 2017-2022, while Paul ended his two-year relationship with three-time Grammy winner Phoebe Bridgers in 2022. Abrams - who gets 40.4M monthly listeners on Spotify - is next scheduled to bring her 81-date The Secret of Us Tour to Spain's Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona this Wednesday. The Kamala Harris campaigner - who signed with Interscope Records in 2019 at age 20 - got a big career boost in 2022 opening for Olivia Rodrigo's Sour Tour followed by Taylor Swift's Eras Tour between 2023–2024. Mescal will next executive produce and portray Lionel in Oliver Hermanus' post-WWI gay romance The History of Sound - hitting US theaters September 12 - alongside Josh O'Connor and Chris Cooper. The History of Sound currently has a 65% critic approval rating (out of 37 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes after earning a six-minute standing ovation during the world premiere at at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21. The Streetcar Named Desire thespian will then portray William Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao's 1596-set grieving drama Hamnet hitting limited US theaters November 27 before a wider release on December 12. The big-screen adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel also features Jessie Buckley, Joe Alwyn, and Emily Watson. Paul's other upcoming films include Sam Mendes' biopics The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event due out in 2028 and Richard Linklater's big-screen adaptation of the 1981 Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along.
