Dr Max Pemberton isn’t uncompassionate or especially radical, but he assembles a team of medics whose stance on the condition is clear from the off. This is a documentary that will incense and offend many

Presenter Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist in the NHS, Daily Mail columnist and author, and the experts he has assembled, waste no time in setting out their stall in The Great ADHD Myth?. This is a documentary that will incense and offend some of its viewers, and its scepticism regarding ADHD is clear from the outset. “It’s certainly not a medical condition as far as I’m concerned,” says the former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Dr Iona Heath. “We’re going to look back and think: did we actually put a chemical cosh on an entire developing generation of brains?” says a neurophysiological psychologist. “The industry around ADHD is about making money at the cost of the misery of others,” says a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

These represent the three main questions raised by Pemberton. The first is whether ADHD is a neuro-developmental disorder – ie do those diagnosed with the condition have different brains from those without – or whether it is a way of suppressing natural tendencies (especially those of children) and inducing behaviours that society deems acceptable. The second is how doctors should approach treatment, which most often involves amphetamines. “These are controlled drugs,” says consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi. “There’s good reason why we warn the rest of the population [about them].” The third question is – who benefits from the increase in diagnoses we have seen in the past decade or so? How has ADHD moved from a relatively unknown condition 10 years ago to affecting about 2.5 million people in the UK today (including a 200% increase in people being referred for diagnosis in the past five years)?

Whether it’s paying for dinner, going on holiday or sharing a taxi, friendships can be fraught with financial frustrations, which are very rarely aired. Here’s how to break the taboo

Summer is the season of socialising, from alfresco drinks to weddings to group holidays. It can get expensive – and suddenly you start noticing those friends who don’t pay their way. Or the ones who splash the cash and make you feel cheap. In fact, there are a host of annoying money-related habits that can cause tension among friends. Here are 20 common sources of financial frustration – and how to resolve them.

How do you keep audiences gripped while cycling 27km per show? From the Australian recreating a Tour de France win to a ‘toxically positive’ spin queen, we meet the acts bringing Olympian fitness to Edinburgh

Blood and sweat drip to the floor. Tears are on their way. In a small room in Edinburgh, Megan Tomei is cleat-clipped into a stationary bike, yelling above the music as she leads a high-intensity spin class gone wrong. “We take the thing you’re running from,” Tomei shouts, pink lights bouncing off her gleaming shoulders, “and turn it into fuel!” This is SpinQueen™, one of a handful of shows at this year’s fringe demanding epic endurance from their performers through the use of jazzed-up gym equipment. Employing various bikes and a treadmill to authentically illustrate the struggle for success, the pain of failure, and the escape from reality, a profoundly fit group of actors are pushing themselves to their physical limits.

Across the city, Connor Delves’s calves are worth watching. The workout from his cycling-obsessed play, Cadel: Lungs on Legs, is so powerful that people have come up to him after, wanting to touch them. “To make sure they’re real,” says Delves, who cycles a whopping 27km per show. Does he mind this attention? He shrugs. “If they’re OK with getting their hands sweaty, go for it.”

An over-investment in people-pleasing can be emotionally costly. Here’s how I’m training myself to be OK with letting people down

A few months ago, my 10-year-old daughter and I went to our neighborhood cafe. At the counter, the owner greeted us with her typical effusion of warmth and welcome. Instead of greeting her in kind, my daughter looked on with a stony expression and ungiving eyes.

My face flushed. I was embarrassed and incensed by what I perceived as blatant rudeness. You could at least smile, I thought.

Telling the country to enjoy the heat while it burns, you have to wonder if Tice has lost all sense of reality

These are the doggiest of dog days. Times when hours turn into days and almost nothing happens in between. Days of precious R&R, when only a few politicians venture out, and then only to fend off accusations they are doing next to nothing and prove they are still alive. Much like the rest of us. The silliest days of the silly season. Days that are made for men like Richard Tice.

There are some politicians who have the gift of sounding as if they know what they are talking about. There are those who you suspect are bullshitting but still give the benefit of the doubt. Then there are the ones you only have to look at to know they are completely clueless in every way. Never within the same postcode as plausibility. A walking miracle because somehow they have managed to persuade their party association and constituency voters that what they really need is someone who is visibly dim and incompetent. August gives us space to celebrate these men and women. None more so than Dicky. The apex male of stupidity. The idiot’s idiot.

Trip-prepping shouldn’t be a grim exercise in minimising your milligrams. Take day outfits, night outfits, gymwear, swimwear – and prepare for an adventure

If you’re on the hunt for a streamlined way to travel internationally while only packing a toothbrush, an iPad, a single white T-shirt made of technical fabric and a lukewarm sachet of Huel, then keep scrolling. I simply couldn’t care less.

Packing for travel shouldn’t be a grim logistical exercise in minimising the milligrams of mass one must transport. It should be a prelude to an adventure – and an adventure in itself!

Max Olesker is a writer and comedian. His show Max Olesker: Making the Cut is playing at the Edinburgh fringe, until 30 August 2026

Prime minister urges local leaders to act as homelessness campaigners welcome move but say more needs to be done

• I won’t abandon anyone to sleep rough on our streets. That’s my £442m promise

Andy Burnham has urged local leaders to offer all rough sleepers in England a route off the streets by Christmas, as he pledges another £100m to end street homelessness.

Arguing in the Guardian that rough sleeping has become so common it now “feels like part of the scenery”, Burnham promised he would mount a Covid-style campaign to get everyone off the streets this winter.

Migration minister asked how he intends to stop deportations of people ‘who had lived in Sweden for decades’

The deportation and removal of British citizens from Sweden over Brexit residency rights is damaging relations with the UK amid efforts to improve links with London, a Swedish MP has said.

Häkan Svenneling, representative for Vârmland, where a 78-year-old British widow, Joyce Thomas, has been given four weeks to leave Sweden after 21 years of residency, has written to the migration minister, Johan Forssell, asking what he “intends to do to stop the deportations”.

Allowing jurors to stay in same hotel as police and prosecution denied Patterson a fair trial, lawyers tell Victorian court of appeal

Lawyers for Erin Patterson have argued that allowing jurors to stay in the same hotel as police and the prosecution while they deliberated over their verdicts in the triple-murder trial represented a “catastrophic” failure of the justice system.

On Wednesday, three judges of Victoria’s highest court started hearing two appeals – by Patterson herself and the state’s director of public prosecutions (DPP) – into the conviction and sentence in the case.

Advice and guidance services for doctors in England found to be creating risk of missed or late detection of illness

Cancer diagnoses have been missed or delayed because of a system designed for GPs to seek specialist advice before referring patients to hospital, according to an investigation.

The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) identified patient risks linked to how advice and guidance (A+G) services have been implemented across England.