SNL is a US comedy institution – can a British version rise to the challenge of finding the funny in our comparatively beige politicians every week? We speak to the team hand-picked to do just that

It is the calm before the storm. The storm being the impending debut of Saturday Night Live UK, our very own version of the US’s headline-grabbing, agenda-setting, impossibly influential TV comedy institution. The calm is a group of performers and writers sitting round a table in a bare-walled boardroom in west London’s Television Centre, seemingly unperturbed by the gargantuan task of staging a live sketch show – most of which will be written in the week of broadcast – or the prospect of a scathing reaction to it. Can SNL UK breathe new life into our ailing comedy industry? Or will the format fail spectacularly on these shores? I come away convinced I’m more nervous about finding out than the cast and crew are about actually making it.

Perhaps they’re just having too much fun. For the past four weeks, 11 performers and 20 writers have been spending every weekday together in this very building, hashing out premises for skits, workshopping each other’s material and “finding the alchemy”, as cast member and standup Ayoade Bamgboye puts it. For another, actor and TikToker Jack Shep, it’s been like “comedy boarding school”.

In 2023, what were thought to be Nazar Daletskyi’s remains were buried in his home village and his mother, Nataliia, visited the grave every week. Three years later, he spoke to her on the phone

Nazar Daletskyi was declared dead in May 2023. The DNA match left no room for doubt, officials told his mother, Nataliia. A Ukrainian soldier who volunteered for the front in the early weeks of the war, Nazar had become one more casualty of Russia’s invasion.

Nazar’s remains were laid to rest in the cemetery of his home village. In the months after the funeral, Nataliia visited the grave at least once a week, at first to cry and later to stand in quiet contemplation, remembering her only son.

It’s hard to be transported by the glitz and glamour when it’s constantly overshadowed by some white-hot new horror

It’s been a full decade now since I attended the Academy Awards ceremony for this very same publication, and chat, I am feeling, like, totally cooked. I’m so unc’d, it’s cringe, fam.

The article was titled “My first Oscars”, which is a terribly presumptuous statement, because it assumes there will be a second or a third. Despite my best efforts, it remains my only Oscars. I reread the piece to prepare to once again write about the Academy Awards for the Guardian, and I was shocked by how mundane the whole experience came across on the page. As befitting the much younger, more crass version of myself, there was a lot of eyerolling and snark about how soulless the event was. Also, I wouldn’t stop talking about seeing Gary Busey.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Talk about your fears, normalise difficult emotions, get up and move: experts share their strategies for managing anxiety at different stages of life

We are living in an age of anxiety. A 2023 survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that one in five people in the UK experience anxiety all or most of the time. In 2024, 500 children a day were being referred for NHS anxiety treatment in England.

It is one of the epidemics of our time, says Owen O’Kane, a psychotherapist and the author of Addicted to Anxiety: How to Break the Habit. “When we look at what is happening in the world at the moment, the one thing we have an abundance of is uncertainty. If you look at a textbook definition of anxiety, it is an intolerance of uncertainty.”

Humiliating failure now looms, as symbolically damaging to US global standing and national self-esteem as Afghanistan or Iraq

Donald Trump menaces the world. He’s global public enemy number one. He’s steadily losing the illegal war with Iran he started but cannot stop. His violence-addicted Israeli sidekick, Benjamin Netanyahu, is terrorising Lebanon. And ordinary people everywhere, their security threatened, face a huge economic bill for his reckless folly.

Add Trump’s war-making to his daily debasing of democracy, appeasing of Russia, punitive tariffs, climate crisis denial and flouting of international law, and it’s clear this White House travesty has gone on long enough. Americans must put their house in order and act decisively to restrain someone who endangers us all.

Daily Mail owner could take long-term hit after being gazumped at the 11th hour by Germany’s Axel Springer

The day after Lord Rothermere was gazumped in his pursuit of the Telegraph by Axel Springer’s £575m knockout offer, the Daily Mail owner was pictured beaming at Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday party in New York.

As guests at the star-studded black tie celebration at The Grill in Manhattan listened to Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman sing numbers such as Fly Me to the Moon, the 58-year-old media mogul may have been wondering how his almost three-decade dream to unite the titles within one right-leaning stable had fallen at the final hurdle.

Iranian foreign minister says that Tehran ‘never asked even for negotiation’, after Trump claimed Iran wanted to make a deal

• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Iraq’s football team will travel to Mexico for a 2026 World Cup playoff match despite calls for it to be postponed due to the Middle East war, the country’s football association has announced.

“The national team will depart at the end of the week to Mexico via a private plane,” said Iraq football association president Adnan Dirjal in a statement, adding they had contacted Fifa to help facilitate the trip during the conflict in the region that has hampered flights.

Energy secretary says government looking at ‘any options’ to get crucial shipping lanes reopened

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Britain is considering sending ships and mine-hunting drones to the Middle East in an attempt to reopen the strait of Hormuz, Ed Miliband has said.

The energy secretary confirmed on Sunday that ministers were talking to their allies about how the UK could help secure the vital waterway after the US president, Donald Trump, urged Britain and other countries to deploy ships to the region.

Defence analyst says torpedo strike is a ‘humiliation’ for Modi’s government that disregarded a US defence partner

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The distress call came in to Sri Lanka’s maritime rescue coordination centre just after 5am. The ship in trouble, they determined, was well within Sri Lanka’s obligation for rescue, being just over 19 nautical miles off the coast of the southern city of Galle.

The navy swiftly mobilised and, by 6am, the first search and rescue boat was on its way, another soon close behind. It was hard to see through the thick morning mist but officers onboard kept their eyes peeled for a ship in the distance.

Experts query ‘mix-up of priorities’ as president plays golf, posts old pictures and repeats details of Bill Maher feud

• Middle East crisis – live updates

More than two weeks into the US-Israel war on Iran, and the conflict appears at risk of spiraling out of control.

Back home, Donald Trump’s behavior also appears chaotic. A foreign conflict typically brings somber reflection from leaders: in Trump’s case, it has brought a stream of behavior that has defied norms and raised eyebrows over his state of mind.