The creator of It’s a Sin is back – and he’s furious. His new series, Tip Toe, explores the rise of homophobia through a feud between two Manchester neighbours. He and stars Alan Cumming and David Morrissey talk death, fear and ‘joy as a form of protest’

Late at night on Manchester’s Canal Street, the heart of the city’s famous queer scene, two neighbours are at war. An escalating feud between gay bar manager Leo (Alan Cumming) and reserved, judgmental neighbour Clive (David Morrissey) shows no sign of abating. Yells from Leo are so loud they echo down the canal. The street is not closed to the public as their altercation plays out, so you can’t tell who in the background is an employee at Leo’s bar, Spit & Polish, who is a regular, and who is a member of the public out for their midweek pint. In the background, an ambulance’s lights flash while unflappable drag queens continue to flyer for their neighbouring bars.

Russell T Davies’s Tip Toe, a new Channel 4 drama, looks at how political rhetoric, toxic online bullying and misinformation can add jet fuel to a feud between neighbours. The location of the series won’t be lost on viewers of Queer As Folk. The 1999 classic, which regularly featured scenes shot in Canal Street, followed the lives of three gay men, in a way that not only made being gay seem cool, it also reflected a new era of tolerance. Viewers took from it that the future could only be bright.

The Netherlands has the lowest rate of young people not in education, employment or training in the EU

A shock government-backed report this week warned of the danger of a “lost generation” of young people in Britain, as the number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets) rose to more than 1 million.

According to official UK statistics, roughly 13.5% of young people are not in work or college. Among 18- to 24-year-olds the share rises to 15.8% – nearly one in six.

The loud online hate aimed at two pop stars with polar-opposite styles suggests a shrinking realm of acceptability in which women can exist. That is, you suspect, the point

For an eye-catching spring/summer 2026 look, why not try one of the infinitely fun ways you can dress up misogyny? There’s buttoned-up faux concern. The haughty pince-nez of high dudgeon. The splashy feather boa of outrage. If you’re really bold, why not the full birthday suit of naked disgust? There are far more acceptable options, apparently, than there are for actually dressing as a famous female pop star in 2026. Between the parallel uproar over extremely different outfits worn recently by CMAT and by Olivia Rodrigo, it almost seems as though there are in fact no options at all for how a woman should look in public. Funny, that.

Yesterday, the Irish and American musicians each commented on recent backlash over their appearances that came from the scummy bottom of the internet. On Sunday, CMAT performed at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland. When the BBC posted clips of her performance on Instagram, comments about her body were so vile that the broadcaster had to disable them; tellingly, clips from the same festival featuring smaller-bodied female performers still have comments enabled. “It’s been very hard to try and describe how difficult the last few days since the bbcr1 big weekend have been,” CMAT posted, saying the commentary caused her “deep sadness”.

Spurred on by Elon Musk, the two rightwing parties spent the week taking potshots at each other. We look back at who hurled which insult at whom

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It’s been a week of rudeness, rows and revelations in the Makerfield byelection. Not between Andy Burnham and his challengers for the seat – but between Reform UK and its even more rightwing rival, Restore Britain.

Here are the key moments in a week in which the populist right turned on each other.

The former Mash Report star’s latest show takes aim at his manosphere-courting, Saudi comedy festival-attending peers. Could he be the angry progressive standup we need right now?

Nish Kumar – mop of curly hair, Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, fancy coffee shop cookie in hand – is sitting centimetres away from me in a meeting room in his publicist’s offices in Soho, central London. Nevertheless, another comedian is drawing the eye. On the wall is a massive poster promoting Prime Video’s Last One Laughing UK – and looming over us from the centre of the frame is the show’s host, Jimmy Carr.

This feels, let’s just say, a tad ironic. In Kumar’s last standup show, he recalled the time he furiously confronted Carr about his decision to appear on manosphere influencer Jordan Peterson’s podcast. (“This is a radicalisation event that’s happening on an unprecedented scale,” he told Carr.) Then there’s the blurb for his upcoming tour, Angry Humour from a Really Nice Guy, in which Kumar expresses concern that comedy has been “co-opted by charlatans in service of autocrats” – partly a reference to last autumn’s Riyadh comedy festival, where Carr performed.

Cancoillotte is low in fat, high in protein and – until recently – little known outside of a village in eastern France

At the cheesemakers in the village of Franois, eastern France, a stream of what looks like runny, beige gloop is being potted, packaged and dispatched for delivery as fast as it can be made. The freezer room, normally piled high with pallets of the product, is almost empty.

For what must be the first time in the history of cancoillotte – a cheese product that until recently was little known outside the eastern Franche-Comté – there was talk of a “rupture” in supplies, and an unprecedented shortage.

Exclusive: Calls for urgent change after rehabilitation orders and ‘laughable’ £26 in court fees in three separate cases

Three teenage boys convicted of the rape and serious sexual assault of girls as young as 14 were given rehabilitation orders and paid £26 in court fees, the Guardian has learned.

The three separate cases all took place over the past year in north-east England. They were tried under youth court rules that deal with suspects aged 17 or under and place a greater emphasis on rehabilitation than adult courts.

Kenneth Law, who sold lethal chemicals online with instructions on how to use them, admits counselling or aiding suicide

A Canadian man who mailed “suicide packets” of poison to more than 100 people in dozens of countries – including Canada, the UK, the US, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand – has pleaded guilty to 14 counts of assisting suicide.

Kenneth Law appeared in a packed courtroom in Newmarket, Ontario, on Friday to enter the plea, and sentencing is expected to take place in September. Prosecutors agreed to withdraw 14 murder charges in exchange for Law’s plea.

Refugee charities say the numbers revealed in Freedom of Information data are ‘shocking’

Lone children were held at UK-run detention centres in France on nearly 300 occasions last year, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Data obtained by the Guardian shows they are part of about 900 instances when unaccompanied minors have been detained at British short-term facilities near Calais and Dunkirk over the last four years.

Torsten Bell says Labour manifesto ‘did not set out the timeline’ for changes to living wage after scale of youth unemployment crisis revealed in Milburn report

Ministers are proposing new laws to crack down on damage to undersea cables amid “hostile activity by Russia”, the Press Association reports. PA says:

Tougher penalties for ship owners and operators who recklessly damage underwater infrastructure will be set out in a white paper later this year, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said.

Acts of sabotage linked to a hostile state already carries life imprisonment for the most serious cases but undersea malicious activity sometimes operates in a “grey zone” which is difficult to prosecute, DSIT said.

It’s astonishing that Reform have admitted they knew about Kenyon’s social media accounts. Nigel Farage needs to urgently explain to the public why, if his party was aware of his online history, he was happy to put forward a candidate who has made vile degrading comments about women, multiple homophobic posts and spread dangerous false narratives about the Manchester Arena bombing.

I am rough around the edges. I have made mistakes in my life. I’m not perfect. Nobody is. Not a single person in the world is perfect. I think everybody does say things that eventually they regret.

It was a crude attempt at a joke to probably about 50 followers.

No offence was meant, and it’s not something I’d do now.

I think I’ve addressed the issue. I think that no offence was meant and it wasn’t a direct comment to her. If you go into any building site in the area or any public barracks, I think you’d hear a hundred times worse said.