The once musty old art of voice-throwing is back in vogue on stage and online. Its new hip practitioners – plus 1980s TV mainstay Roger De Courcey – explain why their vocal tricks and errant dummies are wowing audiences again

It is the greatest duet, performed solo. Ventriloquism acts became a popular entertainment in the 18th century and have flickered in and out of favour ever since, with a particular heyday on TV in the 1970s and 80s. Now a new generation of performers are reimagining the practice of “throwing your voice” to a puppet or dummy – and they are doing so not just in cabaret and comedy clubs but also on social media feeds.

The art form has such a rich history that its modern-day practitioners can be “perceived as just doing an old thing”, says 25-year-old Max Fulham, who is in Edinburgh with his debut fringe show, Full of Ham . Fulham fell in love with ventriloquism when he was nine, absorbing everything he could find about the craft online. “I watched really old-school stuff like Ray Alan, Arthur Worsley and Terri Rogers … I have a massive appreciation for them.”

• Kelly Cates due to host midweek highlights programme

• Gabby Logan will helm Sunday night’s edition this week

Mark Chapman will present the BBC’s first Match of the Day Saturday highlights programme this weekend.

Chapman is part of a three-person presenting line-up alongside Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan, who will work on rotation this season following the departure of former lead presenter Gary Lineker . Chapman will be the first of the trio to host the flagship Saturday night show.

Thangam Debbonaire says Indian visitors to the ministry should not have to walk past ‘historically inaccurate’ bronze

• UK politics live – latest updates

A prominent Labour peer has called for a statue of Clive of India to be removed from its high-profile spot outside the Foreign Office in London, arguing that visiting Indian citizens and dignitaries should not be forced to walk past it.

Thangam Debbonaire said the statue commemorating Robert Clive’s bloody establishment of British rule presented the UK in a poor light and was historically inaccurate.

Video shot by inmates opens the doors on the often painful realities of having children in the country’s jails

This documentary about motherhood in Chile’s prison system is edited down from 4,000 photos and nearly 2,000 videos shot entirely on mobile phones by inmates of the country’s largest women’s jail. Phones are banned, so the images are often fuzzy and blurred, clips ending abruptly – sometimes with a hiss of “Hide the phone!” or “The guard is coming!”. At times, it can be hard to make sense of what is happening on screen. The voiceover is spoken by Karina Sánchez, who spent more than six years in prison, and she also voices the experiences of other incarcerated women. It’s not immediately clear she is telling multiple stories, however, so the voiceover becomes mildly disorientating.

It’s estimated that 95% of women in Chile’s prisons are mothers, and their children can stay with them in jail until they turn two years old. A woman describes staying awake all night the night before her son left, watching him sleep (she had 10 years to serve of her sentence). Mums tell painful stories of losing contact with their children once they leave; one received a notification from the family court that her children had been taken into foster care, relinquished by her sister.

Like Squid Game meets Gladiators, 25 ripped strangers perform hellish tasks to win ¥30m. But where it gets really interesting is when they start bonding over their dead dreams …

In a giant TV studio somewhere in Japan, a retired baseball player and a former rugby star are 40 minutes into a competition to see who can do the most sit-ups. Lying with their feet hooked to the top of a steep, bright-pink slide that has long since become a river of sweat, they must respond to a buzzer every five seconds by hauling themselves up using just their abs and hitting a button with their foreheads. They’ve both done that more than 500 times – when someone eventually misses a rep, their feet detach and down they go.

If this were Squid Game, the slide would end with a lethal drop. But instead it’s Final Draft, a wholesome and emotional Japanese reality sports contest for ex-sportspeople, so all that’s at risk is the right to remain in the competition. As a long sequence of incredibly gruelling elimination showdowns whittles 25 contestants down to the one who will win ¥30m (about £150,000), Squid Game is an influence, but so are Gladiators and Ninja Warrior, as well as modern Netflix sports fests like Physical: 100 and Ultimate Beastmaster. Mature British viewers might think of 1970s BBC stalwart Superstars , the multi-event contest between athletes from different disciplines that briefly threatened to turn parallel bar dips into the UK’s national sport.

Catton Hall, Derbyshire
Trivium bring the bells and whistles, Gojira are supercharged and Machine Head get 1,011 crowdsurfers as they etch themselves on extreme metal’s Mount Rushmore

As Download leans further and further into stadium rock, having booked the likes of Fall Out Boy and Green Day in recent years, Bloodstock is becoming the UK’s go-to festival for true heavy metal madness. Trivium, Machine Head and Gojira headline this edition of the 20,000-capacity gathering, making for one of the most stacked lineups in recent memory.

On Friday, Emperor prove why they’re still black metal’s measuring stick, despite having released no new music since 2001. Such tracks as I Am the Black Wizards are masterpieces of infernal majesty, keyboards blaring while singer/guitarist Ihsahn shrieks and makes his instrument wail. No other band combine adrenaline, anguish and ambition this excellently. Charging back after a Bullet for My Valentine co-headline tour ended in ugly fashion , Trivium bring every bell and whistle they can. The Floridians cover Black Sabbath and Metallica, then inflate a gigantic mascot, comparable to Iron Maiden’s Eddie, to hammer home the sense of occasion. Guest appearances from Machine Head, Sleep Token, Malevolence and Emperor members reaffirm these 90 minutes as a proud celebration of all things metal.

Baxter was the sharp – if tough – TV brain behind the beloved children’s show’s most celebrated parts, from the studio pets to the coveted badges

As a child in Leicestershire in the 1940s, Biddy Baxter was a devoted reader of the writer Enid Blyton. She sent the creator of Noddy and The Famous Five a fan letter and was so delighted to receive an answer that she replied with follow-up questions. To her dismay, the response was identical to the first.

This sense of being let down by an adulated adult proved formative. When Baxter, who has died aged 92, was in charge of Blue Peter, the long-running children’s show that she essentially created, she introduced an alphabetical card index – that most efficient pre-digital database – to ensure that viewers received personalised replies.

Brando Topp’s debut feature follows a disembodied alien inhabiting a young woman’s body in a surreal exploration of music, identity and disconnection

‘You continue to play this alien part, and I’m fucking over it – I’ve had enough.” On that note, uptight boyfriend Shannon (Will Tranfo) kicks the woman he thought was his girlfriend out of the car – and perhaps echoes the audience’s thoughts about this grindingly zany indie sci-fi comedy. And that’s only 10 minutes into Brando Topp’s directing debut, in which Mika (Mia Danelle) is rocking out to gnarly sounds on her headphones when her body is hijacked by an alien soundwave that was formerly stuck in space listening to the vibrations coming from Earth.

That Alien, Sound plays out like a lo-fi LA sweding of The Man Who Fell to Earth. Stupefied at having a body, the wave – later dubbed Sound – bugs Shannon by chucking tissues around the car and trying to grab the steering wheel. Back at her bewildered parents’ house, she marvels at the five senses and, excited by a fried breakfast, burns herself on the pan. Her brother Deyo (Deyo Forteza) takes her to his band’s jam session; a chance for the once-disembodied oscillation to be in the presence of real live music.

Upstairs at Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh
Abigail and Shaun Bengson meditate on family, faith and loss in story and song, featuring a revelatory depiction of degenerative hearing

Music is a lifeline for Abigail and Shaun Bengson. Baring their souls through song, Ohio is introduced as a “death concert” in response to the indie-folk musicians’ young son asking what happens when we die. But this bittersweet story of family, faith and loss is almost ferociously about grabbing hold of life.

The Bengsons create harmonies that glide directly to the top of your spine. Both clearly feel the music in their bones, but it’s Abigail who shows it, her body unable to resist moving to the tumbling scales they create together, her bright, beaming face turned up to the sky. Director Caitlin Sullivan helps the pair gracefully shape their story on stage, treading softly between gig, presentation and choir rehearsal.

At Upstairs at Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh , until 24 August. Then at Young Vic, London , 30 September-24 October

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