Musician says he has ‘no choice’ after being ‘burnt out by any and all connections’ to his former bandmates

Morrissey has announced that he “has no choice” but to put up for sale the entirety of his business interests in the Smiths “to any interested party/investor”.

The deal, made in apparent seriousness on his website, Morrissey Solo , in a post titled “A Soul for Sale”, would include the band’s name and artwork, which he created, as well as his share of merchandising rights, lyrical and musical compositions, synchronisation, recordings and publishing contractual rights.

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After Swift and Kelce’s blowout news, some diehard fans are eager to be engaged at the same time as their pop idol

Colleen O’Connor knows it sounds strange, but she thinks of Taylor Swift as a friend. The pop singer is 35; O’Connor, who works in public relations and lives in Long Island, New York, is just one year younger. “I’ve been a fan since day one, back in high school, and she’s been there through every phrase and journey of my life,” O’Connor said.

So when Swift announced her engagement to NFL star Travis Kelce last week, O’Connor reacted as many thirtysomething women do when they learn that a girlfriend secured a ring. First, she screamed so loudly her boyfriend thought someone had died. Then she wondered aloud to him: “When’s it going to happen for us?”

The day
Taylor Swift
got engaged,

little girls screamed,
grown women cried,

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Their origin story may have been quintessentially New York, but the ‘discodelic soul’ band are now spread across the US – and they’re more determined than ever to be heard

Say She She’s origin story is so perfectly New York it could have been lifted from a more racially diverse episode of Lena Dunham’s Girls . It involves a “gnarly” eight-floor apartment block on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a rooftop party turned sing-off and a debut show at Brooklyn’s coolest bar. So it’s mildly disappointing to discover that only one member of the trio still calls the Big Apple home.

“I’m the last one standing,” Sabrina Cunningham confirms as she appears on Zoom, calling from her home in Brooklyn. She’s followed by Nya Gazelle Brown, who completed the band’s recent European tour, including a sold-out show at north London’s 3,000-capacity Roundhouse, while seven months pregnant. “I moved to Maryland over Covid,” Brown says. “I needed to stretch out and I wanted to be around family.” The last to arrive is London-born Piya Malik, who now lives in Los Angeles. “We are just very nomadic,” she says.

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After 28 years of scandal, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s eviscerations of Donald Trump are some of their greatest work. We rate their most explosive storylines … from ruining Ed Sheeran’s life to episodes banned to this day

It has been hailed as the most important TV show of the second Trump presidency. It’s currently in the form of its life and clocking up record ratings. Not bad for a cartoon about four potty-mouthed Colorado schoolboys.

NSFW sitcom South Park might have been been on air since 1997, but it has never been more relevant. In an era when satirical talkshows are being axed, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s creation fulfils a vital function as it mercilessly mocks both sides of the political spectrum. Written and made the week of transmission, it has been able to incorporate topical stories and hold power to account. No wonder parent company Paramount recently won a $1.5bn bidding war for a five-year, 50-episode deal.

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Prop from first in franchise series one of several from science fiction and fantasy films to sell for large sums

The lightsaber used by Darth Vader in the original Star Wars film has sold for £2.7m at auction in Los Angeles.

The prop, which also featured in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, was sold on Thursday, and is one of more than 400 authentic film props auctioned by Propstore, a movie memorabilia outlet, as part of their “entertainment memorabilia live auction”.

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With no home ground and one match away from non-league competition, the Seagulls’ climb up to the Premier League is one of the game’s great success stories

The tidal wave of streaming landfill, football club reality series, part of the seemingly bottomless pit of sport industry content, means that cutting through is tougher than ever, especially for single-instalment films that can’t rely on surfing some sort of wave of tournament triumph nostalgia. Access isn’t enough; you really need a good story, and this account of the rise, fall and rise again of Brighton & Hove Albion – while “authorised” up the wazoo – has certainly got that.

Brighton’s top-flight exploits in the late 1970s and early 1980s may feel like ancient history – and are presented here as such – but their 1983 FA Cup final defeat by Manchester United marked the beginning of an extended spell in the wilderness, capped by the still-outrageous plan by the club’s board to sell the Goldstone Ground, Brighton’s home since 1902, to property developers without any concrete plan for a replacement. (Of the two executives cast as the bad guys, David Bellotti, former MP and the club’s CEO , is no longer with us but Bill Archer, DIY retail tycoon and then Brighton chair, is very much still around, so the film treads carefully where the latter is concerned.)

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A forthcoming display of the singer’s archive includes sticky notes detailing a theatrical work called The Spectator, about a petty thief and high-class gangs in London

David Bowie’s final project prior to his death in 2016 was an 18th-century musical called The Spectator, a forthcoming extensive exhibition of Bowie’s archive at the V&A East Storehouse has revealed.

The work was based around a daily newspaper of the same name that ran between 1711 and 1712, documenting the mores of society in London. Bowie’s notes reveal that he considered the publicly beloved petty thief Jack Sheppard as a potential lead character, as well as Jonathan Wild, the vigilante who was responsible for Sheppard being arrested and executed. He also focused on the Mohocks, a notorious gang of high-class young men who would get drunk and attack people on the streets.

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With 71 singles and three albums so far this year, the teenage MC is keeping the quality control high as he swerves across cloud rap, grime and more

From Leicester
Recommended if you like Bladee, OsamaSon, Clams Casino
Up next A self-produced album, plus UK live shows

Snoa is prolific even by the standards of underground rap: the 19-year-old from Leicester has released 71 singles so far this year, plus three albums. But while some of his peers casually throw any old chum into the sea knowing that fans will still feast on it, Snoa keeps his quality at a remarkably high level.

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48Kg by Batool Abu Aklee; Paper Crown by Heather Christle; New Cemetery by Simon Armitage; Red Carpet by Steve Malmude, edited by Miles Champion

48Kg by Batool Abu Akleen, translated by the poet , with Graham Liddel, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti and Yasmin Zaher ( Tenement, £17.50 )

This remarkable debut by a 20-year-old Palestinian, born and raised in Gaza, stands out among poetry of witness on the genocide there. It contains 48 poems, each representing a kilogram of bodyweight, with the book literally thinning as the pages turn. The final poem declares: “I die without a voice. / He skins me, flesh from bones. / Cuts me into forty-eight pieces. Distributes the parts in blue plastic bags / & throws them to the four corners.” Unlike the Muses who buried Orpheus’s dismembered limbs, the poem ends with the paramedic guessing “which of these bags / contain my flesh”. Written in Gaza between 2023 and 2025, Abu Akleen’s poems disassemble and painstakingly reassemble the body to interrogate injustice, death and grief. She creates a world where absurdity and reality, irony and humanity coexist – from the ice-cream man crying out “corpses for sale” while noting that “no grave buys them”, to death wanting to have a birthday party and picking “an arm the missile hadn’t shattered”. Abu Akleen self-translated 38 of the 48 poems, describing the process of translation as making “peace with death”, while writing in Arabic meant being “torn apart without … anyone there to recollect it”. The book articulates the vital linguistic bridge she establishes in the present between Arabic and English, and includes historical photographs of Gaza from 1863 and 1908 and the 2022 discovery of a fifth-century Byzantine mosaic, highlighting the city’s rich cultural history. Throughout 48Kg Abu Akleen transforms witnessed details into fragile interpretations: the “broken plates they make homes for their younger siblings”, the “moment War became a school”, and the “Ring Finger I lend to the woman who lost / her hand and her husband”. She notes that poetry gives “a form to feelings in order to understand them”, and these heartbreaking and risk-taking poems protest with uncompromising clarity and tenderness against continuing atrocities.

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