Madeleine Gray has followed her hit debut with a sharp take on complicated parenting. She discusses love, sex and famous fans
Madeleine Gray remembers the first time she had an inkling that her debut novel might become a big deal. When she received news of her advance from her agent, she was “expecting a pittance”; the number was in the six figures. “I thought: holy fuck, there’s been a mistake,” the 31-year-old author laughs. “By the time Green Dot was published last autumn, it had already been hailed as one of the most anticipated novels of the year, and was quickly beloved, drawing comparisons with Bridget Jones, Fleabag and Annie Ernaux. Nigella Lawson and Gillian Anderson posted praise for the book.
Were those celebrity endorsements exciting, I ask her. “I’m gay,” she replies, her enthusiasm leaping through the screen; “are you kidding?! I follow Gillian on Instagram, obviously.” When she saw Anderson post a selfie with the book, “the scream that came out of me was primal”.
Allowing payments to organ donors would undoubtedly save lives. So what are the psychological – and political – impediments?
Right now, about 7,000 people are awaiting a kidney transplant in the UK. According to NHS figures, in 2024/25 only 3,302 adult kidney transplants were performed. The charity Kidney Research UK states that “just 32% of patients receive a transplant within a year of joining the waiting list and six people die every week while waiting.”
People who experience kidney failure need either lifelong dialysis or a transplant to survive. Yet even for those lucky enough to get a transplant, that is by no means the end of the story. Kidneys from deceased donors last an average of 10 to 15 years, those from a living person 20 to 25. If (or rather, when) a transplant fails, the affected patient once again needs dialysis or a donated organ.
The performer was found dead in ‘unexpected’ circumstances in her London flat in 2023. Why are her loved ones still waiting for an explanation?
In commemorations and memorials after her death, the view was unanimous: Heklina had been a bitch. In the world of San Francisco’s drag scene, where she made her name, this wasn’t meant as an insult. Heklina had been a legendary performer whose stage persona was equal parts raunchy and abrasive, slinging insults known as “reads” in fine drag tradition. “Yeah, she was a bitch,” recalls her longtime collaborator Sister Roma, “but she was a bitch in the best possible way.”
Seven weeks after Heklina died, a memorial for her closed down San Francisco’s Castro Street, with crowds gathering to watch the event on giant screens. Among comedy routines and performances, the city’s queer community paid homage to Heklina not just as a drag queen, but also a shrewd promoter whose long-running event series Trannyshack created a platform for countless drag artists to cut their teeth, including those who went on to become stars on the hit show RuPaul’s Drag Race: Alaska, BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon.
Tech could lose its social acceptance unless it makes people’s lives better – and trade unions want an urgent conversation
“Who wouldn’t want a robot to watch over your kids?” Elon Musk asked Davos delegates last week, as he looked forward with enthusiasm to a world with “more robots than people”.
Not me, thanks: children need the human connection – the love – that gives life meaning.
Sri Lanka win was Brook’s first ODI win abroad as captain
Joe Root has lavished praise on Harry Brook and Brendon McCullum after the pair celebrated their first one-day international victory abroad while in charge of England’s white-ball teams.
Root’s 75 was the guiding hand in England’s five-wicket win against Sri Lanka on Saturday, ending a losing streak away from home that began in November 2024. McCullum began his reign as all-format head coach two months later in India before Brook ascended to the limited-overs captaincy in April. Both have been scrutinised in recent weeks: McCullum’s future has been questioned after England’s defeat in the Ashes while Brook has apologised for clashing with a nightclub bouncer on the eve of the third ODI against New Zealand at the start of the winter.
With midterms looming some in Congress have dissented from the president – but it still falls well short of a rebellion
Donald Trump pulled back from the brink on Greenland but not before causing untold damage to the Nato alliance. The US president’s sabre-rattling may also have shaken the faith of his own Republican party.
Trump’s fleeting threat to conquer the Danish territory prompted the most strident Republican opposition to anything he has done since taking office a year ago. It came on the heels of challenges to his authority over military powers, healthcare legislation and the Jeffrey Epstein files.
I’ve worked as a surgeon in disaster zones. Nothing compares to the nightmare I saw in Iran’s hospitals when the state started shooting protesters
By 8 January, Iran’s anti-regime protests that began in late December had spread across the country with reports of at least 45 people killed by security forces. Over the next three days the regime appears to have instigated a brutal crackdown on protesters that is now estimated to have led to the deaths of more than 5,000 people.
By the time I reached the hospital in Tehran on Thursday (8 January) night, the sound of the city had already changed.
Alex Pretti’s death could be a moment of reckoning for Democrats to call time on Trump waging war on his people
Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?”
This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where Renee Good was fatally shot on 7 January, a scene that itself was less than a mile from where police murdered George Floyd in May 2020.
Signed at 13 and dropped by 16, Beer’s path to stardom has not been easy. Now 26, she says she’s finally making music for herself and happy to wear her heart on her sleeve
Madison Beer may only be 26, but she is something of a veteran in the pop industry. She got her start at 13, after Justin Bieber tweeted a link to a YouTube video of her covering Etta James’s At Last, and has spent the intervening decade-plus toiling away in mainstream pop, amassing a huge gen Z fanbase in the process – including more than 60 million followers between Instagram and TikTok. It’s an understatement to say that her career has been a slow burn: the day before we speak, it’s announced that her single Bittersweet, released in October, has become her first song to reach the US Hot 100 chart, entering at No 98. When I suggest congratulations are in order, she shrugs off the achievement. “I’m obviously super excited and thankful whenever a song performs well, but I think I’m at the point where I love what I make, and I’m proud of it regardless,” she says amiably, before laughing. “Only took me like, 15 years! But it’s cool.”
Beer’s attitude is indicative of someone whose career has progressed in fits and starts, a far cry from the kind of meteoric rise that fans and onlookers sometimes expect to see in aspirant pop stars. As she prepares for the release of her third album, Locket, she is in prime position to break through to pop’s upper echelon: Her 2023 album Silence Between Songs featured the sleeper hits Reckless and Home to Another One, the latter a sorely underrated Tame Impala-inspired cut, and in 2024 she released Make You Mine, a Top 50 single in the UK which was nominated for a best dance pop recording Grammy.
The comedian’s dad got him into Bob Marley, and Jamiroquai takes him to another dimension. But which girl band classic does he secretly love?
The first single I bought
Rollout (My Business) by Ludacris from HMV in Lewisham Shopping Centre. I played it over and over.
The first song I fell in love with
I grew up listening to a lot of reggae – my dad was a Rastafarian – so Get Up, Stand Up by Bob Marley was always playing in the house when my mum was dishing out the chores. It’s ironic that it’s a song about redemption when you’re being told to clean the house.
De Minaur is playing in the fourth round for the fifth consecutive year - a feat that not even Hewitt, Mark Philippoussis and Pat Rafter achieved at their home slam – but he’s never been past the quarter-finals. Which largely sums up his career: he’s so consistent in beating the players he’s expected to, but is underpowered against the very best. De Minaur does send a bullet of a backhand winner down the line to get to deuce on Bublik’s serve, though. But two errors then give the Kazakhstani the game.
There is also a big game in the Championship today as Portsmouth take on rivals Southampton at Fratton Park. Pompey really need a win to get out of the relegation zone, but do have a game in hand on most of the teams around them. Should they win both of those, Portsmouth would be just a point behind Saints in 15th, which goes to show jusy how tight things are at the foot of the Championship.
Saints have eased away from the drop zone since Tonda Eckert replaced Will Still in the dugout but their only win in their last six matches was against Sheffield United last time out. These two drew 0-0 back in September, will we get a different result today?
Leicester cope remarkably after illness swept through their squad but Quins cannot bring Champions Cup form to the Prem
English rugby long ago gave up trying to explain the phenomenon that is Harlequins. Quantum physicists would struggle. Two weeks ago here, we watched this same team put 60 past the hitherto unbeaten Stormers from South Africa on the way to qualifying from the Champions Cup, a competition for the best domestic sides in Europe and, as if that were not enough, South Africa, a land of frightening beasts and double World Cup-winners.
This is the same team that won in La Rochelle only last weekend to clinch that home tie in the last 16. Ridiculously, it was Quins’ win against all odds on the west coast of France that afforded Leicester last-gasp entrance by default into that very same elite of the elite. Well, you would never have guessed it, had you been here to witness the latest capitulation at the Stoop, a 34-7 humiliation on Saturday.
As sleep hygiene becomes received wisdom, growing numbers turning to one-to-one consultants for support
Before he sought out an adult sleep coach, Thorsten had spent countless hours trawling online advice about sleep.
“I devoured advice and implemented it all,” he said. “From the moment I got out of bed, virtually everything I did was tailored towards getting a good night’s sleep the following night.”
A generation of overexposed children are being used by their parents for social media clout. What happens when they start to speak out?
A child is born. Before they even landed “Earthside”, in the language of Instagram, a scan of them as a foetus in utero was uploaded to a waiting audience. The room in which they will sleep – the pale pastel paintwork, the carefully curated nursery furniture – is all there, ready, waiting: an advertorial empty of its model. Then comes the photo of the baby being born, held aloft to their audience while still covered in vernix, eyes not yet open, their mother smiling, hair perfect.
From now on, their every moment and milestone is documented for the camera and monetised. That first smile, first word, first step, all mediated by a device and sent to an audience of strangers, many of whom have formed a parasocial relationship with that mother, that father, that child. The child comes to know and understand the black mirror that is regularly put in front of them. There will be days when the child happily performs for the camera; others when they push it away, when they don’t want to be filmed. A natural feeling, but one they may well have learned to suppress. Because performing for the camera makes mummy and daddy happy, although they don’t call it performing. They call it authenticity.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
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January is a prime time for people looking to get fit, so fraudsters create fake websites and apps
A new year means a new start – it’s time to get fit and there are quite a few deals out there. On Facebook you see a local gym advertising a discount on membership if you sign up within the next few hours. There are limited spaces so you act quickly.
It’s only after you pay that you realise the ad was a fraud: you’ve received no membership details and when you contact the gym it has no record of your payment.
Change your life – or just kick back and relax – by connecting with nature, trying a creative workshop, or taking a yoga course somewhere beautiful
Playfulness is at the heart of the Art and Playholiday, based on a farm outside the Bay of Kotor. A family-friendly retreat designed to reignite joy and reconnect with the inner child, it’s one for solo travellers and couples as well as parents with kids. There are creative sessions on everything from dance to painting, as well as time to enjoy the farm – feeding the animals, collecting eggs or helping harvest vegetables for farm-fresh meals. Excursions include hikes to hidden beaches, kayaking and trips to Kotor and Budva, but there’s time to chill by the pool too; evenings are for board games, music and campfires. Accommodation ranges from camping and glamping to cabins, a treehouse and restored farmhouse. Seven daysfrom £695, children 5-12 £350, under-fives free, includes brunch, dinner and snacks,3 May and 23 August,responsibletravel.com
Australian cycling star holds on to lead the hard way
Kangaroo caused Vine and others to crash during final stage
The Australian cycling star Jay Vine has survived a race crash caused by a kangaroo to win the Tour Down Under for the second time.
Despite losing two more UAE Team Emirates colleagues on Sunday’s last stage, Vine’s commanding lead was enough of a buffer. He also won the event in 2023.
World No 1 claims 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 victory over 19th seed
Alcaraz recovers from slow start to navigate first real test at tournament
Carlos Alcaraz continued to build momentum in his pursuit of the career grand slam as he navigated a slow start and pushed through his first test at the Australian Open to reach the quarter-finals with a 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 win over the 19th seed Tommy Paul.
Alcaraz, the world No 1, has now reached the quarter-finals at Melbourne Park for three consecutive years and this is his first time doing so without dropping a set.
Having already won each of the three other grand slam tournaments twice, he will be attempting to break new ground by reaching the semi-finals of the Australian Open for the first time in his career.
Things were far from easy for Alcaraz, who has played many tough matches with Paul over the past four years, losing to the American twice in their seven meetings.
Queensland government says pack linked to 19-year-old’s death pose ‘unacceptable public safety risk’ as Indigenous traditional owners say they were not consulted
The dingo pack linked to the death of Canadian tourist Piper James on Australian island K’gari will be destroyed, the Queensland government has announced.
Environment minister Andrew Powell said on Sunday that an entire pack of 10 animals would be euthanised.
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