Jamie and Rebekah Vardy’s new reality show will disappoint every single person who tunes in, from football lovers to followers of The Scousetrap. The only possible fun you can have is rolling your eyes at them

If you are tuning in to the new three-part reality show The Vardys you will be disappointed. There’s nothing missing from that sentence. Whatever the reasons or expectations you have for tuning in, you will be disappointed. This is because it is very bad and very boring. That will make every viewer down in the mouth. Those who tune in for more specific reasons – being a fan of Leicester City’s beloved former striker-god Jamie V or wanting to hear Rebekah V’s take on the “Wagatha Christie” libel case she brought against and lost to Coleen Rooney – will be even more let down.

Leicester fans won’t get much of Jamie or any footage they haven’t seen before. And much of what is shown in the first two episodes (the third was not available for review) is to do with the troughs of his early days at the Italian club Cremonese – injury, stress, failing to dazzle in his debut, failing to score many goals thereafter – rather than his glory days at home.

Mark Nowak had asked for his son’s murder not to be used to spread division. But Nige is just not the kind of guy to miss out

The email invitation arrived shortly after 7am. Nigel Farage would be making an “address to the nation” an hour later. The grandiosity. The self-importance. An address to the nation is something usually delivered by the monarch or the prime minister during an emergency. Not from a leader of a political party with just eight MPs.

There again, pomposity is now Nige’s last resort. A few months ago, we would all have been invited to a press conference in central London. Now he is a virtual prisoner in his own home. Afraid to subject himself to awkward questions about the £5m he says he was “gifted” from a Thai crypto billionaire. So Reform is effectively leaderless. All we get to see of Nige is the occasional video from an indeterminate location. He is a man determined not to be found by anyone.

In the first of a new series of dispatches, fans in US, Mexico and Canada tell us that they want visitors to have a good time but are angry about ticket prices, Fifa’s priorities and a lack of long-term thinking from politicians

The 2026 World Cup features 104 matches in 16 cities across Canada, Mexico and the USA, from Vancouver to Mexico City and San Francisco to Boston. Before, throughout and after the tournament we’ll be hearing from fans in those cities about their experiences – some shared and some different – in our “My World Cup” series. Here some of our correspondents share their first thoughts.

With procedures like filler and Botox becoming commonplace, audiences are lamenting the smoothed-out, uncanny faces now rampant in major pictures

A few years ago, New York dermatologist Dr David A Colbert received an unexpected call from a Hollywood director. The director was shooting a film starring a high-profile actor who had plumped his face with so much filler it wouldn’t move.

The director proceeded to berate Colbert, whose practice has treated famous faces such as Sienna Miller, Naomi Watts and Robin Wright, for stilting his star’s ability to emote. “He was kind of rude,” Colbert said. “He was like, ‘Hey, can you stop doing what you’re doing [to his face]?’”

I’m not sure any other first world nation would have this problem. Keir Starmer’s promise of growth, growth, growth appears to have shrivelled

We are in the TL;DR days of Keir Starmer’s government. The latest Mandelson files stimulate nothing so much as an old and now immortally memed response to an online screed: “I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.” In any case, to save you the bother, I can report that there are only two hideously iconic moments in the latest files. The first, obviously, is Pat McFadden’s already viral verdict on Labour’s endlessly self-preserving and vision-free backbenchers – and perhaps those much closer to the heart of government: “Every meeting I have is: ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’” Yowch. New Liam Byrne note just dropped.

But the second is a much, much bigger problem than even that. The second might be the deadliest, most emblematic thing in the entire files dump. It is no more than 10 words but when I read it yesterday afternoon, I slumped back in my chair struck by the absolute state-of-the-nation of it. I thought: that’s it. That is literally the whole of where we are as a country, and the whole scale of the task of how on earth we get out of it. It is both staggeringly shocking and wholly predictable. I’m not doing a trigger warning or anything, but I will say it comes in the section of emails about Trump wanting to be gifted one replica ministerial red box during the state visit last year. Anyway, here goes: “the manufacturer gave a lead time of 8-10 weeks”.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

In the 1990s, there were hundreds of authentic balti restaurants in the English city. Now, there are about 20. Will a big campaign bring back the boom times?

‘Curry might have come from India, but balti was born in Birmingham,” says Zaf Hussain. The 40-year-old’s family business, Shababs, has been on this site on the bustling Ladypool Road in south-east Birmingham since his father opened it in 1987. Settled in between the Indian sweet shops and south Asian bridal boutiques, Shababs is one of the last remaining restaurants in the city that still makes an authentic balti curry – a dish that, if Hussain and other campaigners have their way, could be officially certified as an element of Britain’s living heritage inventory, a preservation scheme established in 2025 by Unesco and the British government.

The problem, says Hussain, is that “people don’t know what the real thing is any more”. True balti, he says, is all about “the bowl in which it’s cooked and served”. The dish is cooked in a steel bowl on a high heat and served straight away, sizzling on the table for the customer. “Lots of people say they do balti, but they actually cook it in a frying pan before dumping it into a bowl,” says Hussain. “The proper thing is fast and it’s very flavoursome.” Balti has become a catch-all term for anything vaguely resembling curry flavour, from curry-flavoured snacks to mass-produced bottled sauces.

Prime minister echoes family’s plea that case should not be used to target communities

Politicians and community leaders have called for calm amid fears that the populist right is using the murder of Henry Nowak by a Sikh man to whip up racist resentment against minority ethnic Britons.

After Nigel Farage called for the public to respond with “pure, cold rage”, Keir Starmer condemned the Reform UK leader, saying Nowak’s family had explicitly asked that the case not be used to target particular communities.

Spokesperson says function is in line with official guidance as scrutiny of papers relating to Peter Mandelson continues

Keir Starmer’s WhatsApp messages automatically delete from his smartphone, Downing Street has confirmed, calling into question how full a picture emerged of his role in the appointment of Peter Mandelson from a recently released tranche of government documents.

Asked at a briefing whether Starmer uses the function on his WhatsApp messages, the prime minister’s spokesperson said he “does use disappearing messages”, adding that this was in line with official guidance on the use of so-called non-corporate communications.

NHS bosses giving evidence to public accounts committee admit current position is unacceptable

GPs in England are so “overloaded” that they cannot help older people who are at risk of falling in what NHS bosses accept is an unacceptable failure of care, the House of Commons’ public accounts committee has said.

Pressure on GPs’ time has intensified as a result of the government’s decision to give patients online access to their services, according to a report by the influential cross-party group of MPs.

Angry phone call took place after Iran said it would suspend talks with US over Israel’s Lebanon campaign, Axios reports

Donald Trump angrily confronted Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s threats to resume airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to a report.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the US president shouted at the Israeli prime minister during the phone call on Monday, according to Axios, a US website that has frequently published reports on high-level conversations between the two leaders.