The band’s melodic new indie-punk album seems a change of pace. But it can’t mask the frontman’s brutal honesty. He talks about childhood trauma – and partying with Post Malone

When Ian Shelton was growing up in Enumclaw, a small town near Seattle, coming home from school was a constant step into the unknown. “I was living in fear of the next fucked-up experience,” he says. Sitting in a store room above the London venue his band Militarie Gun will later fill with shoutalong aggro-pop energy, the singer is jetlagged but animated as he puts himself back there, his sandy hair peeking from beneath the hood of his sweatshirt. “Twice, my bus pulled up as an ambulance pulled away from our house,” he continues. “There was never a point when you were safe from things getting worse.”

Shelton says his childhood was defined by addiction. His mother was a relapsed alcoholic, meaning rehab, AA meetings and spells in jail. Often, it fell to him to look out for his younger siblings. “There was a huge question mark over what every day would bring,” he says. This feeling created an anxiety that Shelton thrashed out at hardcore shows, having been sucked in by Bay Area greats Ceremony as a 15-year-old. He began to write his own kitchen-sink compositions, too. “That fear needs a release,” he says. “I found music. I wrote a song that was just my mom’s name. At the time, there was a domestic violence incident and a restraining order – and I channelled my anger into a diss track.”

He went to court over having his phone tapped, and now he’s starring in ITV’s look at the Guardian’s investigation into the scandal. Tennant and writer Jack Thorne open up about this ‘immensely troubling’ story that is far from over

‘I got a phonecall from the police saying your name is in a notebook and I joined one of the bundles of people who took that to court,” says the actor, David Tennant, carefully. “I mean, at the time I was in Doctor Who so I was useful for a story, I suppose …

“It didn’t come as a massive surprise, but the whole thing had always felt like a gross invasion. It felt like the world had gone a bit mad, that we lost a moral compass, that a layer of humanity was being stripped away by what was happening here.”

Oscar winner’s comments come days after suspension of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC and Disney, a decision heavily criticised by major stars including Pedro Pascal and Olivia Rodrigo

Angelina Jolie has said “I don’t recognise my country” amid the threats to free speech in the US, saying “anything anywhere that divides or limits personal expressions and freedoms from anyone, I think, is very dangerous”.

At Spain’s San Sebastián film festival on Sunday, the Oscar winning actor was asked by a journalist: “What do you fear as an artist and an American?”

This rigorous look at the Tories’ ‘VIP lane’ for PPE suppliers during Covid raises questions about the motivations of those involved – ones that are almost too disgusting to contemplate

‘It is,” says one contributor to The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money, “probably the biggest misspending scandal in the UK of all time.” When a documentary tries to bring an underreported outrage to a wider audience, it helps to have attention-grabbing quotes like that. But as the evidence about the Covid “VIP lane” affair is collated by this cool, clear investigation, “biggest misspending scandal of all time” starts to look like an understatement.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK in the early months of 2020, doctors and nurses urgently required large amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE): the disposable masks, goggles and gowns that would allow them to treat an infectious disease without contracting it themselves. Our impoverished NHS did not own adequate stockpiles of PPE, so the Conservative government of the day set about buying it in. It appealed for companies that were not part of the regular NHS supply chain to pitch their services.

The O2, London
The boybands go toe-to-toe with their catchy teenage anthems – and after a hefty 90-minute bout of greatest hits McFly just about edge it on points

The last time Busted and McFly shared a stage a decade ago they were conjoined as McBusted, an unholy union that resulted in two arena tours and an album. Now they’ve reconnected as pop-rock foes, with the “rivalry” – both bands were formed by the same management company, with McFly arriving three years after Busted in 2003 – cemented by an opening video segment based on Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet that pits them as “star crossed bands” living in “fair Britannia”. Millennial couples in rival Team Busted and Team McFly T-shirts, meanwhile, eye each other up nervously.

A surprisingly buff McFly open proceedings, anchoring their rock credentials with 2023’s Where Did All the Guitars Go?, an embarrassing “real music” diatribe about the “shit” on the radio. But while there are some other duds in their 12 song set – Red is a Kidz Bop version of U2; the faux-breezy pop of Happiness falls into that “shit” category – they also have a handful of top-tier bops (Obviously, All About You, a raucous One For the Radio), and enough musical variety, to keep even the patient Busted fans happy.

Royal Opera House, London
Stefan Herheim’s production of this fascinating work battles with hollowness and ambiguities despite an impressive debut from Speranza Scappucci as principal guest conductor

The Giuseppe Verdi of 1855 was not unlike the Bob Dylan of 1965. Both had just produced, in rapid succession, three defining masterpieces which would ensure their immortality – in Verdi’s case Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata, in Dylan’s the trilogy of albums starting with Bringing It All Back Home . The question that now loomed was – where to go from here?

For Verdi, as for Rossini and Donizetti before him, the answer was Paris, and the conquest (and financial rewards) of French opera. The outcome was The Sicilian Vespers , a five act grand opera in French, complete with ballet, depicting the Sicilian rising against French invaders in 1282. It is a work of uncommon musical fascination, in which Verdi subjects his art to a form of self-renewal in something of the manner that Dylan would also do more than a century later. The score, much admired by Berlioz, is full of new forms of declamation and controlled grandeur. But it has never held a position in the repertoire to compare with its predecessors.

The personable presenter, who has died aged 79, was a rarity in the world of television: beloved enough to front any show at any time – from showing up fraudsters to reporting from war zones and hosting every breakfast show

Personable looks and an engaging manner made John Stapleton attractive to producers of populist TV shows. He presented 232 episodes of the BBC consumer action show Watchdog – working with his wife, Lynn Faulds Wood , who died in 2020 – and was a stalwart of cornflakes broadcasting for both main networks in the UK: presenting the BBC’s Breakfast Time and four iterations of ITV daybreak shows, including Good Morning Britain.

But Stapleton, who has died aged 79 , was at core a serious and brave reporter. He made films for the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight and for ITV’s World in Action, frequently covering international conflicts, including the 1982 Falklands Conflict and the 2003 Iraq War, for which he won a Royal Television Society prize.

The actors on forming a close bond on Two Pints, why it’s important to have rows, and how they feel about ageing

Born in Stockport in 1976, Will Mellor is an actor known for his role as Jambo in Hollyoaks and a decade-long run in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. His co-star in the latter show was Ralf Little, born in 1980 in Oldham, who starred in The Royle Family before joining the sitcom in 2001. Mellor has since appeared in Mr Bates vs the Post Office , Line of Duty and Broadchurch, while Little has been in Inside No 9, Doctor Who and Death in Paradise. The pair host the Two Pints podcast , and the second series of Will & Ralf Should Know Better airs from 29 September on U&Dave.