‘Clear conflict’ between Eurovision ideals of ‘inclusion and dignity for all’ and decision to let Israel compete, says 2024 winner

Nemo, the Swiss singer who won the 2024 Eurovision song contest, has said they are handing back their trophy in protest over Israel’s participation in next year’s event.

The 26-year-old, the first non-binary winner of the contest, said on Thursday there was “a clear conflict” between the Eurovision ideals of “unity, inclusion and dignity for all” and the decision to allow Israel to compete.

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© Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

The historian is set to lead a ‘stellar’ 2026 panel featuring the Pulp frontman and other acclaimed writers, as the search begins for next year’s standout work of fiction

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker will feature on the 2026 Booker prize judging panel that will be chaired by the classicist and broadcaster Mary Beard.

Novelist Patricia Lockwood has also been named as a judge, along with the poet Raymond Antrobus and Rebecca Liu, an editor at the Guardian Saturday magazine.

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© Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

Star turns from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Colette can’t stop cartoony sentimentality smothering this film directed by Winslet and written by her son Joe Anders

Kate Winslet’s feature directing debut is a family movie, scripted by her son Joe Anders; it’s a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo at the end. There are one or two nice lines and sharp moments but they are submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality; in the end, I couldn’t get past the cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation and the weird not-quite-earthlingness of the people involved. Having said this, I am aware of having been first in the queue to denigrate Winslet’s Christmas film The Holiday, that is regarded by many as one of the most successful films of all time.

Helen Mirren is the June of the title, an affectionate but sharp-tongued matriarch who is diagnosed with terminal cancer in the run-up to Christmas, and her entire quarrelling clan will have to assemble in her hospital room. June, with a kind of benign cunning, realises that she can use her last days as a cathartic crisis that will cure her adult children’s unspoken hurt. They are a stressed careerist (Winslet), a stay-at-home mum (Andrea Riseborough), a hippy-dippy natural birth counsellor (Toni Collette) and a troubled soul (Johnny Flynn), plus all their various kids. There is also June’s daft old husband Bernie, played by Timothy Spall, who likes a drink and can’t talk about his feelings, and whose scatterbrained goofiness has a sad origin. Stephen Merchant plays Riseborough’s lovably useless husband and a gentle hospital nurse, played by Fisayo Akinade, is the ensemble’s self-effacing guide to a wiser future.

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© Photograph: Kimberley French/Netflix

© Photograph: Kimberley French/Netflix

© Photograph: Kimberley French/Netflix

‘I no longer feel this trophy belongs on my shelf,’ they announced

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Musician was killed in an electric scooter accident

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Opera may be conspicuous by its absence, but the brilliance of Berlin Philharmonic’s Schoenberg and the exceptional South Korean Yunchan Lim gave us plenty to sink our teeth into this year

The survey of the new releases that my colleagues and I have enjoyed most in 2025 differs in one significant respect from the lists of previous years. This year’s top ten contains no operas. There has been a profound change in record companies’ policies of how and what they record. The glitzy, studio-based opera recordings of the last century now seem impossible to contemplate, and even releasing audio-only recordings taken directly from live opera-house performances often seems less viable than issuing DVDs of the same productions.

Some specialist labels devoted to specific areas of the operatic repertoire continue sterling work: operas feature prominently in Bru Zane’s mission on behalf of neglected French composers, while Opera Rara continues to crusade for forgotten, mostly 19th century, mostly Italian, scores which this year included the original 1857 version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. Other companies continue to find treasures in Europe’s apparently inexhaustible baroque archives, while, on its own label, the London Symphony Orchestra has continued to release Simon Rattle’s Janáček series taken from his concert performances with the orchestra at the Barbican, the latest release being Jenůfa. If full-length operas are notably scarce in the schedules of the major companies, two exceptions this year were Decca’s release of the Oslo-sourced Flying Dutchman, with Lise Davidsen and Gerald Finley, and Deutsche Grammophon’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, part of Andris Nelson’s Boston-based Shostakovich series, both of which proved less than overwhelming.

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© Composite: Guardian Design/Raphael Neal/Stephan Rabold

© Composite: Guardian Design/Raphael Neal/Stephan Rabold

© Composite: Guardian Design/Raphael Neal/Stephan Rabold

‘Big Boys’ artist is the latest star to condemn U.S. government for using music without consent in videos promoting Trump’s agenda

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The Pretenders bandleader answers your questions on her friendship with Morrissey, her love of Van Gogh and why her cameo on Friends ruined her school run

Wondering if you saw the [music-filled 1996 comedy drama] film Grace of My Heart and whether it influenced your decision to record an album of duets? GiniMarie
I didn’t see the film – Duets Special came about after a conversation with Rufus Wainwright’s husband when I impulsively suggested doing an album with Rufus. Rufus wanted to do Always on My Mind, and I looked at the list of nine other songs I’d sent him and thought: why don’t I ask some other people? Like, Low are one of my all-time favourite bands and when I first met Mimi Parker she immediately seemed like someone I’ve known all my life. I told her I’d done one of their songs with Debbie Harry and she looked at me and said: “Why didn’t you ask me?” I thought: touché, Mimi. I suggested [Cass McCombs’s] County Line but she wasn’t well. I told Mimi I’d wait as long as it takes. Then she died. Alan [Sparhawk, Parker’s husband] sang it instead and it’s absolutely amazing.

The Pretenders covered Morrissey’s Every Day Is Like Sunday and now Duets Special features The First of the Gang to Die. As one of Morrissey’s oldest friends, how often do your conversations reach a philosophical, political or moral impasse? McScootikins
My relationship with him started because we were both vegetarian and he sent me a postcard asking to meet for tea. Thirty-five years ago most of my mates – Linda McCartney and so on – were friends because of vegetarianism. Morrissey does stuff for Peta and he’s an amazing songwriter. A few nights ago I had dinner with a couple of girls he’d worked with. I sent him a picture of the three of us and he immediately sent back a picture of three women from Coronation Street. He’s always true to himself and no, we’ve never reached an impasse.

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© Photograph: Ki Price

© Photograph: Ki Price

© Photograph: Ki Price

The mashup Satisfaction Skank was unofficial for years but band allow Norman Cook to remake it using original stems of their 1965 hit

A classic bootleg recording by Fatboy Slim which samples the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction has finally been released, as the band give it their blessing after 25 years.

Satisfaction Skank was a familiar track on turn-of-the-century dancefloors, as Fatboy Slim mashed up his own 1999 hit The Rockafeller Skank with the Stones’ 1965 classic, hurling Keith Richards’ iconic guitar riff into the “big beat” sound of the late 90s.

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© Photograph: Mark Holloway/Redferns

© Photograph: Mark Holloway/Redferns

© Photograph: Mark Holloway/Redferns

British guitarist has faced number of health issues in recent years

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Taylor Swift responds to critics telling her to "give someone else a turn," saying "'I don't want to'" during candid "Late Show" interview with Stephen Colbert.

Accusations that tied ‘Opalite’ singer to MAGA movement, Nazi ideology and tradwife gender norms came from bot-like accounts, report finds

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Jelly Roll seeks a Tennessee pardon to regain hunting rights after a violent offense conviction. The country star discussed gun restrictions on parole.

‘Mamma Mia!’ star went viral in March for her pitch-perfect rendition of the folk-rock classic ‘California’ during a late-night appearance

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The wife and manager of the late Black Sabbath frontman discussed the monarch’s touching gesture in an emotional interview with Piers Morgan about her husband’s final days

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Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, and the Netherlands have also withdrawn from the competition

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The wife and manager of the late Black Sabbath frontman gave an emotional interview to Piers Morgan about her husband’s final days

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Accusations that tied ‘Opalite’ singer to MAGA movement, Nazi ideology and tradwife gender norms came from bot-like accounts, report finds

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Wife and manager of the late Black Sabbath frontman grew emotional as she spoke about his final moments at their home in Buckinghamshire

© X/Piers Morgan Uncensored