April 26 | 2022

Angela Rayner and

Westminster’s misogyny problem
By Alice Thomson
Plus Bill Gates: how to combat the next pandemic
2 V2 Tuesday April 26 2022 | the times

times2

Some tragic stories from

Ukraine are almost
unbearable. This is one
Robert Crampton
y children were
M up close
both born in
March, so this
time of year
reminds me of
them being really
small babies, first
Sam in 1997, then
Rachel in 1999. The springs of those
years were two of the happiest seasons
of my life. I remember looking down
at Sam in the maternity ward, the
sunshine streaming in the windows in
the middle of a gorgeous London
morning. He was a day old and
knocked around a bit by a forceps
delivery. I couldn’t quite believe I
was responsible for this new
human being’s welfare. My
wife was out of the room for a
moment, and I remember telling
Sam out loud I’d do my best to
look after him. Two years later,
back home with my one-day-old
daughter asleep on my chest, I
promised her the same.
I’ve seen
Westminster’s
charity,” he told Caroline Davies, “I
ugly side —
have no need of them now.”
He was remarkably composed in his Is it really
interview. “What is happening,” he
said, “is a grief for my family, for our over for
city, for Ukraine. It’s a grief for the
whole civilisation.” I’m not sure I nose jobs?
would have been able to express such
nobly selfless sentiments. I’d have Elsewhere, moving on
been thinking, as I bet Yuriy was too, — via a grinding
and will do every day for the rest of his crunching of gears —
life, “If only I hadn’t gone out, maybe I to a stratospherically,
could have done something to protect galactically, infinitely
them.” No man rationally believes less serious subject,
he can shield his loved ones from a I learn that rhinoplasty
missile coming through the wall. But is going out of fashion.
Yes indeed, once
An anonymous MP has accused
the mainstay of the
cosmetic surgery
Angela Rayner of using her thighs
business — the
workhorse, the Ford to distract the PM at the dispatch
Fiesta, the one
treatment everyone box. Alice Thomson reports
knew about and most
of us probably thought
magine Angela Rayner lying The aged hereditary peers explained

I
was at least part-way
I don’t suppose other new understandable, even as across the green benches in the how to fillet a Dover sole and called
parents are any different. I’m we disapproved of boob Commons chamber late at night, me and Rachel Sylvester, then working
sure Yuriy Glodan said or made jobs and facelifts and one leg provocatively dangling at The Daily Telegraph, “young ladies”;
a similar promise three months collagen — the humble down, chest stuck out. Of course the doormen in their tights were
ago, when his daughter Kira was nose job is in decline. you can’t. But Jacob Rees-Mogg incredibly helpful. The MPs were in a
born in Odesa on the Black Sea There were almost didn’t think twice about doing it. different category.
coast of Ukraine. In pictures 5,000 performed in in Or picture the deputy Labour “How did you get that story?” meant
of him taken at the time, he the UK in 2013 but leader pounding along Whitehall in a “What did you do to get them to say
looks a devoted young dad, barely 1,300 last year. pair of tiny shorts like the prime that?” It was often assumed Rachel
pleased as punch to become a What’s going on? minister, or hurdling railings in a park, and I had used, as one MP called it,
father. His wife Valeria looks Some say cheaper, legs splayed, like the former health our “female wiles” to trick poor
similarly delighted — tired, but reversible fillers have secretary Matt Hancock. She just innocent men into saying something
glowing with the contentment of cornered the nasal wouldn’t. Women know their place in they shouldn’t. Another male
new motherhood — in a photo reconfiguration Westminster. Even when Rayner goes commentator nicknamed us “the
of her nursing Kira in the market. Others posit on morning TV in a demure below- killer bimbos”. I wore a navy-blue
couple’s apartment. Valeria’s that all the wonky the-knee dress, wearing black tights, trouser suit almost every day — I
mother, Liudmila, the proud hooters requiring a she’s accused of goading men. would have worn a tie if it meant I
grandma, completes the trilogy of Valeria and her daughter Kira remodel have been Poor Boris Johnson is being put off could have blended in — and I learnt
family pictures. taken care of by now. his stride by this temptress, according to talk about football as well as
The last pictures there ever will be. at a deeper, atavistic level, we all think Which I know for a fact to anonymous Tory MPs. This filibustering. Once an MP put his hand
The reason these prosaic images, maybe we could have, should have isn’t true, because I “socialist grandmother who left school on my knee at lunch, and once
charming as they are, are in the media helped. And then maybe someone, haven’t had mine done. at 16 while pregnant” has, according to between my legs. I felt lucky to get
is because three of the camera’s four maybe the baby, might have made it. Mind you, if I ever get The Mail on Sunday, been crossing her away with so little harassment. The
subjects are dead and the fourth, Like most of us, I suspect, over the round to it — and I legs on the front bench, imitating a male MPs loved joking about their
Yuriy, wants to share his grief with the past two months, I’ve gone from don’t rule it out — knickerless Sharon Stone in Basic new vibrating pagers; it soon became
world. On Saturday afternoon a devouring every last news item and I’d nip over to the Instinct. “She knows she can’t compete clear whom to avoid.
Russian cruise missile hit the family article on the war to gradually letting schnozzle surgeons with Boris’s Oxford Union debating Female MPs had a tougher time in
flat, killing three generations in, one it slip away from my attention. Even in Turkey and pay a training, but she has other skills which the chamber. Harriet Harman has
hopes, an instant. Yuriy was out the atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere quarter of the price. he lacks,” a Tory MP opined. Really? been routinely heckled as a harpy
shopping for provisions, a chore that did not alleviate what you might call Which, I suspect, is Even Johnson has apologised, saying throughout her 40-year career as an
saved his life at the very moment that “horror fatigue” for very long. But the what those other he deplores this “misogynistic” MP and told me she nearly quit
life as he knew it was destroyed. When slaughter of one man’s family cut missing thousands have briefing. His own side appears to be several times, having become an MP
he was interviewed by the BBC, Yuriy through that growing acceptance. His been doing. accusing him of upskirting. But it when the Commons was 97 per cent
afterwards asked the reporter to take pain must be unbearable. The footage doesn’t surprise any women who’ve male in 1982. By the time I arrived at
away the nappies he’d salvaged from of little Kira, giggling away on a home worked in Westminster. least there were 41 female MPs, 6.3 per
the ruins of his home. “Give them to video shot not long ago, certainly is. As a junior reporter in the early cent of the total. There were more
1990s I was sent by The Times to women in the Lords and they gave me
Kuwait during the Gulf War to advice. Shirley Williams told me that
“shall be given, and he there in West Sussex. impatiently on the interview pilots by the swimming pool, as a young Labour MP she would
shall have abundance.” The huts are worth waiting list for 21 years. to a nudist camp and to an S&M party, often find that when she went into the
Beach hut Amen to that, I about £50,000, Lucky old Kate, eh? but I never encountered as much division lobby she would be pinched
thought, when reading although no one Mind you, she is sexism as I did when I arrived at the on the bottom. Other female MPs also
envy — that Richard Branson’s really knows because married to Eve’s House of Commons as one of a suffered, so they all decided to wear
mum, Eve, had left they come up for sale grandson. Oh, and handful of female journalists. The vertiginous pairs of heels and stamp
I’ve got it Kate Winslet a beach so seldom. she also once saved Times team were faultless; the political on anyone who misbehaved. “The
hut in West Wittering Just like the beach the old lady’s life editors Peter Riddell and Phil Webster, next day this male MP hobbled into
“For unto everyone that in her will. It’s a huts I’m after in during a fire on Necker who were wonderful mentors, warned the tearooms,” she explained. “Of
hath,” it says in the particularly nice Kingsdown in Kent, Island. So, fair play to me to be vigilant late at night at the course we women all rushed up to
Book of Matthew, stretch of coast down where I’ve been sitting her, on balance. bar, particularly at party conferences. commiserate.” She would joke about
the times | Tuesday April 26 2022 V2 3
COVER: DAVID LEVENE/GUARDIAN/EYEVINE. BELOW: JESSICA TAYLOR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Angela Rayner the lack of women’s lavatories in the
boys’ club and once deliberately burnt
an MP’s shirt when he asked her to
iron it for him. Humour, then, was
women’s best weapon.
Slowly more female MPs and
journalists arrived, but the misogyny
in the house, and some newspapers,
continued. The 101 “Blair’s babes” were
made to have a photograph taken
together on their arrival in 1997,
looking like some modern-day harem.
Claire Curtis-Thomas, then MP for
Crosby and pregnant, remembers
being told by a Tory MP that it was
“nice to have a better class of totty
around”. At least one headline
contained the pun “Breastminster”. In
2007 Jacqui Smith was chastised, as
the new Labour home secretary, for
displaying too much cleavage. Three
years later “Cameron’s cuties” were
accused of being a coven who might
try to take on the chumocracy and
were graded on their looks. As one of
The male them, Claire Perry told me: “If you
MPs loved look around the chamber there are
loads of dandruffy blokes in ill-fitting
darkest of street corners where
women fear to tread”.
And some abuse is still going on
within the corridors of power. Three
cabinet ministers and two shadow
cabinet ministers are facing allegations
of sexual misconduct after being
reported to the parliamentary
watchdog set up in the wake of the
#MeToo scandal. In all, 56 MPs have
been referred to the Independent
Complaints and Grievance Scheme
over about 70 separate complaints.
Can you think of another profession
where so many men are being accused
of making sexually inappropriate
comments and more serious
wrongdoing? Or have gone to jail,
having been convicted of sexual
It was assumed
we had used our
‘female wiles’ to
trick poor men
assault, or have asked their assistant to
buy sex toys or called them “sugar
tits”? The Metropolitan Police
perhaps? I asked my husband whether
anyone in his company was under
investigation; he looked horrified.
The broadcaster Kate McCann, one of
the new generation of political
reporters, tweeted yesterday about
the Rayner story: “Nearly every
single one of us has experienced
something like this in the course of
one front page with the headline doing our jobs and we are utterly,
“Who won Legs-it?” utterly sick of it.” Female political
Male prime ministers’ partners journalists are still divided into
struggled with sexism almost as much witches and bitches by one
as the female MPs. Cherie Blair was Cabinet minister.
made to cry for having “dropped the Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons
balls” and Carrie Johnson is known as speaker, is calling for a meeting with
Princess Nut Nut, accused of leading the editor of The Mail on Sunday to
Johnson astray with her demands for discuss the story, but this is about
gold wallpaper. Meanwhile Denis MPs’ behaviour too. Rayner is tough:
Thatcher became a national treasure. she was brought up on a council estate
Philip May? We don’t know much in Stockport, she called Tory MPs
about him; he was left alone while his “scum”, she can cope with the banter,
wife, the prime minister, was derided one former MP told me. Maybe, but
for her leather trousers. she must be wondering whether this
Rachel and I have interviewed will ever stop. When she arrived in
dozens of female MPs in the past 25 Westminster she told me: “I feel like
years. During an interview we’d I’m punching above my gene pool.”
sometimes ask them about sexism and Now she may feel she’s wallowing in a
they would roll their eyes. In some foetid puddle.
ways it has got better: there are now There are many decent, caring male
225 women in the Commons, making MPs on all sides of the house as well
up 35 per cent of MPs, and there as many endearing eccentrics — well
appears to be less physical groping documented in Marie Le Conte’s book,
from male colleagues. But they suffer Honourable Misfits, which was
more online than men from abusive published last year. Many Tories
trolling and sexist keyboard warriors,
stalkers and casual sexism on the
quickly came to Rayner’s defence,
including Sajid Javid and Johnny
times2
The lowdown
Ben Affleck
Are you on any dating apps?
I may be newly single, but I’m not
desperate enough to download
Tinder just yet.
Don’t be a snob. I’m not talking
about Tinder — and you definitely
wouldn’t be accepted on to Raya.
What on earth is Raya?
Raya is the most exclusive dating
app — it only accepts celebrities
and influencers.
Ooh. Are any of my favourite hunks
swiping on there?
Possibly Ben Affleck. A star from
Selling Sunset, Netflix’s real-estate
reality show, has claimed she
matched with him on there. “He
may or may not have been texting
me. He may or may not have asked
to grab coffee a few times,” the
realtor Emma Herman said last
week in the show’s new season.
How romantic.
Not so fast. The pair are not
actually dating. He’s Jennifer
Lopez’s man — they got engaged
this month after years apart and
are nicknamed “Bennifer” by the
internet. “You could have foiled
Bennifer,” Herman’s Selling Sunset
co-star even said.
I wouldn’t want to mess with JLo.
What has Affleck said about it?
His representatives denied the
claim. They told People that the
actor hasn’t been on Raya for years.
It’s not the first time Affleck has got
into hot water about Raya, however.
Last year a TikTok user went viral
after she posted a video captioned
“Thinking of the time I matched
with Ben Affleck on Raya and
thought it was fake so I unmatched
him and he sent me a video on
Instagram”.
TikTok, Raya . . . does no one meet
in real life any more? Anyway, I want
to know how Ben describes himself
on his profile.
According to Page Six, his profile
has his favourite song listed as
Guava Jelly by Bob Marley.
Unexpected, but I approve. Maybe
Ben and I are meant to be.

joking suits slumped with their tummies out.

But they only talk about the women’s
about their outfits.” A former rower, with two
Oxford blues and an MBA from
vibrating Harvard, she quit in the end — in part
because she says she was worn down
pagers. It by “the laddish banter”.
Many MPs at the time were married
became to feisty independent women. They
wouldn’t have dared patronise their
clear who wives, but seemed to forget themselves
to avoid in the Commons, when they reverted
to acting like teenage boys in the back
row at school. Remember David
Cameron’s “Calm down, dear” to
Angela Eagle, the shadow Treasury
chief secretary, or male MPs talking
about Jeremy Corbyn’s “Jezzabelles”?
Johnson once loved using insults like
“girly swot” or “big girl’s blouse”. The
tabloids joined in, comparing Theresa
May’s legs to Nicola Sturgeon’s pins on
street. It’s a way of keeping women in
the shadows and punishing them for
Mercer. Yesterday the Labour shadow
minister Rachel Reeves said: “MPs
You’ll have to get in line behind
Lopez, that TikToker and now
speaking out too loudly. The Labour
MP Jess Phillips once told me that she
need to treat each other with respect
and dignity.”
this Selling Sunset star too.
Georgina Roberts
had 600 rape threats on Twitter in a
single night. She thinks politics has
The former journalist and Tory MP
Anna Soubry thinks this is too vague.
developed similarities to an abusive She once told me: “I can think of an
relationship: “To isolate you, belittle MP I know who, when they get
you, wear you down, keep you quiet.” extremely drunk, just takes the view, ‘I
Most female MPs now have have the right to touch you because I
quadruple locks on their doors and want to touch you and I will enjoy it.’ ”
panic buttons all over the house and
wear flat shoes so they can run away
She has the best advice for men who
may not always know what is
from an aggressor. I remember Heidi appropriate behaviour. “Imagine if
Allen, the former MP for South your wife, partner, daughter or
Cambridgeshire, telling me her granddaughter came home and what
husband or a male member of staff you’ve just said or done [had]
always travelled with her because she happened to them, how would you
received so much abuse. Ruth feel?” If the women in their life were
Davidson, the former Tory leader in accused of uncrossing their legs
Scotland, warned us that sites such provocatively at work, I suspect not
as Twitter risk becoming “the many men would think it was funny.
4 Tuesday April 26 2022 | the times
JOHNOKEATLEY;OREUTERS;OGETTYOIMAGES

health

Bill Gates:
or decades, people told

F
the world to get ready for
a pandemic, but hardly
anyone made it a top
priority. Then Covid
struck, and stopping it
became the most
important thing on the
global agenda. What I worry about
now is that when Covid does subside,
the world’s attention will turn to other
problems and pandemic prevention
will once again get moved to the back
my 8 ways
to prevent
burner — or taken off the stove
entirely. We need to take action now,
while all of us still remember how
awful this pandemic was and feel
the urgency of never allowing another
one to arise.

We should not assume that the next
pandemic threat will look exactly like
Covid. It may be more infectious,
passing more easily from one person
to another. Or it may be deadlier.
Worst of all, it could be both deadlier
and more infectious. It might be
designed by humans in the form of
bioterrorism. Regardless of how the
next big outbreak arises, we need
to be ready.
Years ago, the eminent
epidemiologist Dr Larry Brilliant
coined a memorable phrase:
“Outbreaks are inevitable, but
pandemics are optional.” Diseases
have always spread among humans,
but they don’t have to become global
disasters. So how can governments,
scientists, companies and individuals
build a system that will contain the
inevitable outbreaks so they don’t
become pandemics?
What lessons can we learn
from Covid for next time?
Invest $1 billion a year
on a global ‘pandemic
prevention team’
A pandemic is like a fire that starts
in one building and within weeks is
burning in every country in the world.
Thus we need the equivalent of a
global fire department: a group of
experts whose full-time job is to help
the world to prevent pandemics. It
should be responsible for watching out
for potential outbreaks, raising the
alarm when they emerge, helping to
contain them, creating data systems
to share case numbers and other
information, standardising policy
recommendations and training,
assessing the world’s ability to roll
out new tools quickly and organising
drills to look for weak spots in the
system. It should also co-ordinate
the many professionals and systems
around the globe who do this work
at the national level.
Covid did not happen because there
were too few smart, compassionate
people trying to prevent it. Covid
happened because the world hasn’t
created an environment in which
smart, compassionate people can
make the most of their skills as part
of a strong, well-prepared system. This
global organisation would have full-
time experts in all the necessary areas,
the credibility and authority that come
with being a public institution. I call it
the Germ — global epidemic response
and mobilisation — team, and the job
of its people should be to wake up
every day asking themselves the same
questions: “Is the world ready for the
next outbreak? What can we do to be
better prepared?”
I estimate it would need about 3,000
full-time employees in epidemiology,
genetics, drug and vaccine
the next
pandemic
Before we forget the horror of Covid,
we need to act to stop another
disease becoming a disaster. It starts
with $1 billion a year, says Bill Gates
in an extract from his new book
development, data systems, diplomacy,
rapid response, logistics, computer
modelling and communications.
Germ should be managed by the
World Health Organisation, with a
decentralised staff working in places
around the world.
I estimate it would cost $1 billion
a year to run. This is less than one
one-thousandth of the world’s annual
spending on defence. Given that it
would be an insurance policy against
a tragedy that costs the world trillions
of dollars, a billion dollars a year
would be a bargain.
Enable every country to detect
an outbreak within seven days
People get sick all the time, but not
every illness leads to an outbreak. The
task of watching for the cases that
are merely troublesome, distinguishing
them from the ones that could be
catastrophic — and ringing the
alarm bell when necessary —
is known as epidemic disease
surveillance. And as Covid has made
clear, the world woefully underinvests
in disease surveillance. Without a
stronger system, we won’t detect
potential pandemics soon enough to
prevent them.
One step is to invest in all the
elements of a robust health system
that make it possible to detect and
report diseases as well as treat them.
That’s especially true in low and
middle-income countries, whose
health systems are often underfunded.
If doctors and epidemiologists don’t
have the tools and training they need,
Bill Gates. Right, from or their national health agency is weak
top: a Unicef worker or non-existent, we’re going to keep
at a camp for internally seeing outbreak after outbreak. Every
displaced persons in community in every country should
Juba, South Sudan be able to detect an outbreak in seven
in April 2020; the days or less, report it and begin
intensive care unit investigation within another day, and
of a hospital in Wuhan implement effective control measures
in February 2020 within another week.
Governments and funders should
find ways to test mass numbers of
people in a short time, with a
particular focus on high-throughput
PCR tests, which have all the benefits
of a typical PCR test but are
remarkably fast. They’re also very
cheap, they don’t require the supplies
of reagents that limited our diagnostic
capacity during Covid and they’re easy
to adapt to detect a new pathogen as
We need soon as its genome has been
to take sequenced. And genetic sequencing
needs to expand dramatically so we
action now, know the enemy we’re up against.
Finally, we need to invest in the
while all promise of computer modelling. More
data, more accurate data and constant
of us still feedback on their models will make
all of us safer.
remember Help people to protect
how awful themselves right away
Even if you’re not in a position to help
this scientists to find a cure or a vaccine,
pandemic you can still choose to wear a mask,
stay home if you’re feeling sick and
was postpone your big parties.
After two years of studying these
measures (which are broadly called
NPIs or “non-pharmaceutical
interventions”) in the real world, we
know a great deal about their
effectiveness, at least for Covid.
These interventions are what we use
to flatten the curve — that is, to slow
down transmission so that hospitals
don’t get overwhelmed with patients.
I don’t mean to suggest that NPIs are
a painless solution. Measures such as
closing businesses and stopping big
public gatherings have a huge impact
on the public and implementing them
is a massive undertaking. But we can
do them right away, and we know how
to do them better than we did before.
We need treatments as
well as vaccines
In the next outbreak, even if the world
is able to develop a vaccine for a new
pathogen in 100 days, it will still take
a lot of time to get the vaccine to most
of the population. If the pathogen is
especially transmissible and deadly,
tens of thousands or more could die
without a therapeutic drug. We may
also need ways to treat a pathogen’s
long-term effects.
As we’ve seen with Covid, not
everyone who can take a vaccine will
choose to do so. Unless the vaccine
completely prevents breakthrough
cases, some vaccinated people will still
get sick. If a variant comes along that
the vaccine doesn’t protect you from,
we’ll want to have treatments on hand
until the vaccine can be tweaked.
I feel sure we will have better
treatment options in the next big
outbreak than we did for Covid. One
of the keys to making that happen will
be big libraries of drug compounds
the times | Tuesday April 26 2022
that let us quickly scan to see if
existing therapies work against new
pathogens. We have some of these
libraries already, but we need more.
There are some types of drugs that
should be a top priority. The most
promising, in my view, are the ones
known as pan-family and broad-
spectrum therapies — either
antibodies or drugs that can treat
a wide range of viral infections,
especially those that are likely to
cause a pandemic.
We could also have better ways of
activating what’s known as innate
immunity, which is the part of your
immune system that kicks in just
minutes or hours after it detects any
foreign invader: it’s your body’s first
line of defence.
To deliver on these promising
approaches, the world needs to invest
more into understanding how various
dangerous pathogens interact with our
cells. Scientists are working on ways to
mimic these interactions so they can
quickly figure out which drugs might
work in an outbreak. With advances
in artificial intelligence and machine
learning, it’s now possible to use
computers to identify weak spots on
pathogens that we already know
about, and we’ll be able to do the
same when new pathogens arise.
Although therapeutics didn’t
rescue us from Covid, they hold a lot
of promise for saving lives and
preventing future outbreaks from
crippling health systems. But to make
the most of that promise, the world
needs to invest in the research and
systems we’ll need to find treatments
much faster.
Develop better, more
accessible vaccines
The fact that scientists were able to
create multiple successful Covid
vaccines is itself unusual in the history
of disease. The fact that they did it in
roughly a year is miraculous.
Because we can’t assume we’ll be so
lucky next time — and because there
are phenomenal opportunities for
saving lives — the world should be
pursuing an ambitious agenda to make
vaccines even better.
One of the big hurdles in Covid
vaccination has been the need to
deliver multiple doses and the need to
keep them cold. We need to find new
formulations of vaccines that would
give you the same protection with one
shot as you now get with two and,
given the work that’s already under
way, I think this is an achievable
medium-term goal. And an ideal
vaccine would protect you for your
whole life. Research into the immune
system should allow us to figure out
how to provide such long-lasting
protection.
We also need to make vaccines
easier to deliver, particularly in the
developing world. Researchers have
been working on this problem since
at least 2003 and we still don’t have a
complete solution. If we did, it would
revolutionise the field of vaccine
delivery in poor countries.
We should also develop vaccines and
transmission-blocking drugs that you
could take as a pill or inhale with
a nasal spray, which would be
much easier to administer than
ones that have to be injected.
You could pick one up at the
supermarket and apply it yourself,
without help from a healthcare
worker who has to put a needle in
your arm, and it might not even
need to be kept cold.
Researchers are already testing
prototypes that deliver measles
vaccines and, although this work
is moving ahead fast, we need
more effort to get them ready for
market and produce huge volumes
of them.
For all these advances to have an
impact, developing and approving
them won’t be enough. We’ll also
need to manufacture them in
massive volume — enough for the
entire world — and within six
months. To do that, we’ll require
production capacity throughout
the world, including in regions with
the worst disease burden. And we’ll
need to be creative about how all
this new infrastructure can stay in
business even when there isn’t a
pandemic threatening to emerge.
We need to practise
for a pandemic
For as long as I’ve been learning
about pandemic preparedness and
prevention, I’ve been amazed that
there isn’t an ongoing series of full-
scale exercises designed to test the
world’s ability to detect and respond
to an outbreak.
There have been many tabletop
and functional exercises for disease
outbreaks, but perhaps only a
handful of country-scale ones
designed to simulate an outbreak
of flu or coronavirus.
There have been no exercises
involving entire regions throughout
the world. Although details are
sometimes murky because
governments make some of the results
Don’t miss classified — especially for full-scale
Bill Gates exercises — it appears that the
history of these simulations is spotty.
on being On the positive side is Vietnam,
which has held frequent simulations
single and at various levels of complexity, taken
action to fix problems that were
saving the revealed and set itself up to respond
especially well to Covid.
world But just as often, in other countries,
these exercises end with a series of
Interview what-ifs and missed opportunities. For
example, the United Kingdom ran
this weekend an exercise called Winter Willow in
2007 and another, Cygnus, in 2016,
both focused on flu outbreaks.
Cygnus in particular highlighted
problems with the government’s
readiness and produced a series of
classified recommendations that
went unheeded.
Now, though, the idea of a virus
spreading around the world, killing
millions of people and doing trillions
of dollars in damage, is very real for
all of us.
To keep Covid from happening
again, we need to practise stopping
pathogens early, learn which parts of
the system need to improve and be
willing to change even when it’s
difficult to do so.
Keep tackling infectious
diseases in poorer countries
How to Prevent the Many of the tools used against Covid
Next Pandemic by have their roots in efforts to fight
Bill Gates is published other diseases, including in low-
by Allen Lane on May 3 income countries. In fact, at virtually
at £25 every step in the Covid response, there
5
health
is an essential tool or system or team
that exists only because the world
has invested in improving health for
the poor.
For example, early in the pandemic,
scientists needed to know what they
were dealing with. To find out, they
turned to genetic sequencing, the
technology that sped up vaccine
development (by quickly revealing
the genetic code of the Covid virus)
and made it possible to detect and
monitor variants as they spread
around the world.
It’s not surprising that the first Covid
variants were discovered somewhere
other than the United States. The US
was slow to gather virus samples and
get them sequenced; the lab capacity
to do this existed — it just wasn’t used.
Several countries in Africa —
especially South Africa and Nigeria
— were better prepared, having
spent years building a robust network
of sequencing labs. The original
intent was to help with diseases
that affect the continent
disproportionately, as polio does, but
when Covid came along, these labs
were ready to pivot; South Africa’s
labs were the first to discover the
Beta variant of Covid, as well as the
subsequent Omicron variant.
Later, when it came time for human
trials of vaccines, researchers turned
to the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. As
the name suggests, it was established
to create an infrastructure that could
speed up trials of HIV vaccines, a
system that proved crucial for Covid
vaccines. Although very few Covid
vaccine trials took place in Africa,
most of the ones that did relied on
South Africa’s strong clinical trial
infrastructure, which had been built
with funding for work on HIV
vaccines. The first evidence of how
effective Covid vaccines would be
against a variant came from trials in
South Africa.
Every country should
have a national plan for
preventing pandemics
Regardless of how the next big
outbreak arises, the key is to have
better plans than we do today and
tools that can be deployed quickly.
What’s lacking in most countries is
a concrete plan, a national approach to
research that funds the best scientific
ideas. It needs to be clear who is
driving the pandemic-related agenda,
monitoring the progress on that
agenda, testing ideas, implementing
the most successful ones and making
sure they’re turned into products
that can be manufactured at mass
volumes quickly.
Without a plan in place, when
the next major outbreak happens,
governments’ actions will be reactive
and too late. We’ll have to try to figure
out a plan after the pandemic is
already spreading. That’s no way to
protect people.
Over the next decade, if
governments expand their
investments in research and adopt
evidence-based policies, we can
develop most of the tools we need
to keep an outbreak from turning
into a disaster.
The fact that we now understand
the threat like never before should
inspire the world to take action — to
invest billions now so we won’t lose
millions of lives and trillions of dollars
in the future. This is an opportunity
to learn from our mistakes and ensure
that no one ever has to live through
another disaster like Covid.
6 Tuesday April 26 2022 | the times

health
Why there’s an HRT shortage
(and what you can do about it)
Dr Mark Porter

S
emiconductors, vegetable most women now struggle to get. So
oil, cars and hormone what can you do about it?
replacement therapy As ever with any repeat prescription, What’s the
(HRT) may seem an it pays to plan ahead (although most
eclectic group, but the link systems limit how far in advance you
alternative?
becomes more obvious can order your next prescription). 6 In most cases
when you try to obtain The more notice your pharmacist has your prescriber
any of them. All are in the greater the likelihood they can fill should be able to
short supply thanks to global issues your prescription in time. suggest a closely
such as the pandemic and the war in If they can’t supply your specific matched alternative
Ukraine. But while these events may brand, then ask the pharmacist what — typically
explain record used car prices, and alternative they can obtain from their temporarily for
why sunflower oil is being rationed wholesaler. They will not be able to three months — if
by some supermarkets, women were dispense this immediately — a new you are struggling to
struggling to fill prescriptions for HRT prescription will have to be issued by obtain your normal
long before either hit. So what’s going the prescriber — but at least you will brand, so you should
on and, more to the point, what can know what is available. I have seen never have to go
be done about it? plenty of women who, due to poor without any HRT.
HRT comes in myriad forms under communication, have had to go 6 Hormone-based
numerous brands, but it’s the patches backwards and forwards between preparations are
and gels that have caused the most their GP surgery and pharmacy by far the most
problems for my patients over the past because second-choice alternatives effective treatments
few years. The typical story is of a for menopausal
woman ordering a repeat prescription symptoms but
of their HRT only to be told that their other options are
pharmacy — local or online — cannot
obtain it from any of their wholesalers, Over five years available, ranging
from lifestyle
and to go back to the prescriber (eg
the GP) for an alternative. All of which
the number of measures and
medication to help
is a pain if it happens once but which
starts to get really frustrating — for
prescriptions has with flushes to
herbal supplements.
all concerned — when the alternative
is also out of stock (something the
nearly doubled 6 The British
Menopause Society
pharmacist may not know until the have not been available either. has produced an
order fails to materialise). If your chosen pharmacy can’t get overview of
The drug companies cite your HRT then you can always take alternatives that
manufacturing and supply chain the prescription elsewhere (different are prescribable on
“issues” but have offered precious little chemists use different wholesalers), the NHS and you
detail of what is actually going wrong. but be warned this can involve a lot can download it
Increased demand is another factor of running around and wasted trips. from thebms.org.uk
that is easier to confirm. HRT has had And you may still end up needing 6 In my experience
something of a resurgence in recent to switch to a brand that is more most herbal
years as the menopause has moved up widely available. remedies offer little
the health agenda (not before time) Help is at hand online thanks to real benefit and,
and continuing research has confirmed the British Menopause Society’s while rare, some
that it is safer than many thought. regular report on current supply can have significant
Suffice to say that conflicting issues, which you can access here: side effects too. For
science around HRT over the past thebms.org.uk/news/british- an overview, visit
20-30 years has created confusion menopause-society-update- the “What are
about the relative benefits and risks. on-hrt-supply/. the alternative
The problems started with the Million At the time of writing it was treatment options
Women Study in 2003, which linked last updated on April 12 and to HRT?” page on
HRT to breast cancer, heart disease, highlights problems with the BMS website.
stroke and blood clots. The findings Oestrogel due to high 6 You can read the
caused widespread alarm and the demand, suggesting latest guidance
number taking HRT in the UK halved Sandrena gel or from Nice on
within 18 months. However, just a few Lenzetto spray managing the
years after the Million Women Study as alternatives. menopause
made headlines around the world, In most cases (updated 2019)
newer data started to contradict the a suitable at nice.org.uk/
findings. Fast-forward to the latest alternative can guidance/ng23
guidance from the likes of the be supplied
National Institute for Health and and there is no
Care Excellence (Nice), which has need to risk
encouraged wider prescribing again, buying on the
and it’s obvious that confidence in online black
HRT — among women and their market (something
doctors — has returned. at least one of my
The number of prescriptions issued patients has resorted to).
each month in England has nearly On a brighter note,
doubled in the past five years, from manufacturers appear
about a quarter of a million in early confident that supply
2017 to well over half a million now. will improve this year
And there has been a change in (but they have been saying
prescribing too, away from tablets this for a while) and the
and towards safer, transdermal health secretary, Sajid
preparations such as patches and Javid, is appointing an
gels that mimic the gradual release “HRT tsar” to make sure
of hormones from the ovary. Little it does. What could
surprise that it is patches and gels that possibly go wrong?
the times | Tuesday April 26 2022
How to fix your back — what
spinal health scientists recommend
Exercise, osteopathy, ‘rewiring’ your
brain: experimentation is key to
staying free from pain. By Peta Bee
E
ight in ten adults in the
UK will experience back
or neck muscle pain at
some point in their lives.
Despite this prevalence,
a cure for back pain
remains elusive and
those experiencing it
face a bewildering array of options,
from gadgets and therapies to exercise
classes and supplements promising to
treat it. With so much conflicting
evidence and advice, where to start?
For a recent BMJ study, a team led
by Professor Paulo Ferreira and Emma
Ho from the University of Sydney’s
medicine faculty attempted to provide
clearer guidance for people with
chronic low back pain, defined as pain
that lasts more than 12 weeks.
It is well known that those living
with the condition not only experience
physical pain but often also suffer
psychological distress in the form of
anxiety, depression or fear of pain
from movement, so the researchers
analysed close to 100 trials involving
more than 13,000 patients, comparing
17 treatments including “talking
therapies” such as cognitive
behavioural therapies (CBT),
mindfulness, counselling and pain
education programmes as well as
physiotherapy and general GP care.
Their conclusion? A gold standard
approach doesn’t just focus on physical
elements of back pain by correcting
issues such as posture but incorporates
approaches that strengthen the mind.
“Treating back pain is never
straightforward,” says Jack Chew, a
musculoskeletal specialist
physiotherapist and spokesman for the
Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.
“We do know there is no single
treatment approach that works in
isolation.” What works for one person
will not necessarily work for the next,
which can complicate the process of
prescription and recovery. “Each of us
has highly individual levels of pain
tolerance,” he says. “Some people feel
a lot of pain when there is very little
muscle tissue damage, others don’t
present with back pain until a point
when damage is quite severe and yet
they have felt little discomfort.”
Ultimately, he says, relief from back
pain comes down to trying different
things to find out what works for you.
“There are treatment trends that
come and go, but some facts remain
constant. For a strong, healthy back
you need to move more, and relief
from chronic back pain means
addressing body and mind.” Here’s
the latest thinking on how to do it.
Don’t ignore your core
A weak core is a known risk factor
for back pain and strengthening the
muscles that comprise it — including
the pelvic floor muscles, the deep
transversus abdominis, and muscles
such as the internal and
external obliques and erector
spinae that wrap around your
middle like a corset to improve
control of the spine and pelvis
— can help to prevent pain.
A study of recreational
runners published in the
Journal of Biomechanics
suggested that those with weak
deep core muscles were at
higher risk of low back pain
because other more superficial
muscles were forced to work
harder to support the body
during exercise. “That
increases the load on your
spine in a way that may lead to
low back pain,” said the lead
author of the paper, Ajit
Chaudhari, associate professor
of physical therapy and
biomedical engineering at
Ohio State University.
Ironically, training routines
focused on the core in
isolation are not a solution.
When he reviewed benefits of
specific types of core-
strengthening and other
exercises for a 2020 study in
the British Journal of Sports
Medicine, Daniel Belavy, an
associate professor at the
Institute for Physical Activity
and Nutrition at Deakin
University in Australia, found Pilates
and stabilisation exercises that subtly
target specific core muscles are helpful
for many people. However, he stressed
that they should form one part of an
overall activity routine that also
includes resistance training for
stronger back muscles and aerobic
activity for improvements in
functional movement and pain relief.
Rewire your brain
Chronic musculoskeletal pain is not
just physical, and experts believe that
pain signals continue to be fired off
even after healing of muscles and
tissues has occurred. If you’ve had
back pain, this could prompt a fear of
it recurring, which could become the
biggest stumbling block to recovery.
“Unfortunately, pain is not a very
distinguished alarm system,” Chew
says. “Sometimes it signals danger,
but it can also keep sounding when
our backs are relatively OK, which
means we adapt behaviour and are
overcautious with the way we move.”
Rewiring your brain to think
differently about pain and disability
can be hugely beneficial. Chew says:
“Rewiring the brain entails adopting
psychological approaches such as CBT
and mindfulness as well as exposing
yourself to movements such as
twisting, lifting and bending that you
might perceive to be harmful.”
In the University of Sydney BMJ
paper Ferreira and Ho found that CBT
GETTY IMAGES
and an education programme that
teaches people how to deal with pain
alongside conventional physiotherapy
Walking is worked best at reducing fear
avoidance and improving physical
one of the function in the first two months of
treatment, with continuing pain
best things education work and physiotherapy
helping to keep back pain at bay.
you can do
Consider seeing an osteopath
for back A newly published scientific paper
health suggests osteopathy, which involves
manipulation of the body’s tissues
and bones, “could be effective in the
management of musculoskeletal
disorders” including back pain.
Researchers from the School of
Osteopathy in Turin published their
findings in the BMJ Open journal after
reviewing 55 trials carried out by
registered osteopaths or doctors with
osteopathic training and involving
3,740 participants. They compared the
treatment with physiotherapy, other
complementary approaches, and the
usual advice to exercise, use painkillers
and apply hot and cold compression,
and found osteopathy to be helpful for
some people.
Others have shown massage to be
helpful. Manual therapies in general
are gaining in credibility and you can
now see an osteopath on the NHS.
Belavy’s research suggested that
most popular treatments have little
impact unless combined with exercise,
7
health
and Nice guidelines recommend
manual therapies alongside
physical activity as a treatment
option for lower back pain.
Dig the garden
Nils Niederstrasser, a senior
lecturer in the department of
psychology, and his team at the
University of Portsmouth recently
reviewed data from 5,802 people
aged 50 or older over ten years and
reported that activities such as
digging the garden can strengthen
back and core muscles and lower the
risk of developing back pain in the
long term. However, you do need to
do this high-effort work regularly for
benefits. “At least once a week you
need to do an activity that is
vigorous enough to leave you
sweating and digging the garden with
a spade counts,” Niederstrasser says.
Walk daily for analgesic benefits
Like other aerobic activity, walking
stimulates the brain into releasing
serotonin and endorphins,
neurotransmitter chemicals that
make you feel better even when you
have finished. One study of more than
5,000 adults over the age of 50, some
of whom had experienced back pain
for a month or more, found that those
who walked for up to an hour at least
three times a week were less likely to
have low back pain. “Walking is one
of the best things you can do for back
health,” Chew says.
Gadgets might bring relief
Although the market for back pain
aids is huge, few gadgets have been
shown to make a significant difference
in the long term. But Chew says that
we shouldn’t discount them because
some might bring short-term relief.
“People might take a painkiller to help
them through the day and recognise
it helps but is not a cure for back pain,”
Chew says. “The same is true of
gadgets from massage guns to foam
rollers and muscle taping to heat pads,
which essentially administer pleasant
feelings and some transient relief but
won’t prevent pain from recurring.”
Try yoga and meditation
For some people a daily yoga and
meditation combo is more effective
at easing back pain than taking over-
the-counter painkillers. In one study
published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association a group
with long-term back pain were
assigned an eight-week course of yoga
and mindfulness meditation, a CBT
talking therapy or to stick with their
usual approach and take ibuprofen for
pain. Results showed that 47 per cent
of those in the yoga and mindfulness
group said their back pain had
improved; a similar number (52 per
cent) reported improvements with
CBT, with both proving more effective
than painkillers. A year later 68 per
cent of the group who continued with
their yoga practice, and 59 per cent of
the CBT group, had less back-related
disability. “The effects seem to get
stronger,” the researchers said.
8 Tuesday April 26 2022 | the times
arts
From the Albert
Hall’s first gaming
Prom to the return
of the Berlin Phil,
Richard Morrison
and Neil Fisher
pick the hot dates
Cynthia Erivo: Legendary Voices
Prom 4 July 17
The immensely talented south
Londoner already has an Emmy, a
Tony and a Grammy — now Erivo
makes her Proms debut with the BBC
Concert Orchestra in a celebration of
singers such as Nina Simone, Shirley
Bassey, Billie Holiday and Gladys
Knight. No shrinking violets in that
lot. Also on BBC2. NF
Dido and Aeneas
Prom 7 July 19
Henry Purcell’s masterpiece is
performed by David Bates’s La Nuova
Musica, who have a reputation for
bringing baroque operas vividly to life.
An outstanding cast (including Nicky
Spence as the Sailor and the fast-rising
baritone James Newby as Aeneas) is
led by Alice Coote as Dido, the
spurned Carthaginian queen. Hearing
this most intense of singers perform
the great final lament should be one
of the emotional highlights of the
season. RM
Seascapes
Prom 16 July 27
Like Clara Schumann and other
female composers throughout history,
Doreen Carwithen — born 100 years
ago this year — was overshadowed in
Game on! A dozen
her lifetime by her husband, in her
case the composer William Alwyn. Yet
she wrote highly evocative music, as
her overture Bishop Rock will show. Its
briny atmosphere (Bishop Rock is a
lighthouse off the Scillies) is continued
Proms to book
in this Prom by the Sea Sketches by
Grace Williams, another neglected
20th-century composer, and then by
Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony.
Also on BBC4. RM
Gaming Prom: From 8-Bit to Infinity
Prom 21 Aug 1
Anyone who thought that the scores
for computer games were just a
combination of bleeps and bloinks
hasn’t picked up a console since
Super Mario World. An industry
that’s now bigger than movies, the
gaming world attracts big-name
composers who craft suitably epic
scores. Conducting the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert
Ames will be guiding the audience
through 40 years of game music,
including the European premiere
of a suite from Battlefield 2042,
co-written by Hildur Guonadottir,
who won an Oscar for the score
of Joker and was responsible
for the haunting score to the
television series Chernobyl. Also
on BBC4. NF
Aurora
Prom 22 Aug 2
The Aurora Orchestra’s memorised
performances of symphonies have
been high peaks in recent Proms
seasons. This year they have chosen
the most famous symphony of all:
Beethoven’s Fifth. It could be upstaged,
however, by what precedes it. Patricia
Kopatchinskaja is the soloist in
Shostakovich’s anguished First Violin
Concerto. To hear this mesmerising
Moldovan violinist interpreting the
music of a Russian dissident at a time
like this could be unforgettable. RM
Tredegar Band
Proms 30/32 Aug 8, 9
Brass bands are a bedrock of British
musical life yet rarely celebrated at
the Proms. Great news, then, that
one of the best — Tredegar Band,
from south Wales — are featured
twice in quick succession. First,
alongside the BBC National
Orchestra of Wales, they
premiere Concerto Grosso for
Brass Band and Orchestra by
Gavin Higgins, who grew up
in brass bands. The next
evening the Tredegar
musicians give a late-night
Prom ranging from Berlioz to a
Judy Garland tribute. RM
Cynthia Erivo
BRIAN RASIC/GETTY IMAGES; ERIC RICHMOND
Top: Nicola Benedetti.
Left: Chineke! Orchestra.
Above: Kirill Petrenko
Daniele Rustioni and Louise Alder
Prom 31 Aug 9
The Italian conductor Rustioni is a
frontrunner to succeed Antonio
Pappano at the Royal Opera and the
British opera star Alder is a creamy-
voiced soprano who just seems to get
better. In a concert packaged as a
celebration of German Romanticism,
Erivo adds a
Proms debut to
her Emmy, Tony
and Grammy
Rustioni leads the Ulster Orchestra in
works by Mahler, Schumann and
Wagner. Alder is the soloist in Strauss’s
luscious Four Last Songs. This has
“date night” written all over it. NF
Earth Prom
Proms 53/54 Aug 27 (mat & eve)
There are plenty of navel-gazing
Proms about BBC history to avoid in
Auntie’s centenary year. This family-
friendly celebration of the
corporation’s celebrated Natural
History Unit looks like a safe bet
for restless children (and grown-ups),
with big-screen footage of land and
sea beasts and music by composers
including Hans Zimmer, who
recently won an Oscar for Dune,
and George Fenton, who scored
many of David Attenborough’s
watershed series. Also on BBC2. NF
The Dream of Gerontius
Prom 59 Aug 31
Fresh, if that’s the word, from
performing the title role in the
Royal Opera’s stupendous Peter
Grimes, Allan Clayton takes the main
role in another epic English
masterpiece with Elgar’s oratorio. The
tenor plays the part of the man
who journeys through death to the
afterlife, as fancifully imagined in
Cardinal Newman’s poem. Whether
you subscribe to that Catholic vision
or not, Elgar’s music should sound
magnificent under Edward Gardner’s
direction, with Jamie Barton singing
the part of the Angel. RM
Chineke! perform Beethoven’s Ninth
Prom 61 Sept 2
Back in pre-pandemic times the
Proms programmed Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony every season. It’s
back now with Chineke! Orchestra
and the pioneering group’s associated
chorus, Chineke! Voices, as well as a
strong line-up of singers that
includes the BBC Cardiff Singer
of the World winner Nicole Cabell.
The symphony is preceded by
Lilacs by the centenary composer
George Walker, the first African-
American to win a Pulitzer prize.
Also on BBC4. NF
Berlin Philharmonic
Proms 62/65 Sept 3, 4
Foreign orchestras are back at the
Proms after the Covid hiatus, and
none will be more warmly welcomed
than the Berlin Philharmonic. They
play two programmes under Kirill
Petrenko, the Russian-born musician
who succeeded Simon Rattle as the
orchestra’s chief conductor (and who
recently condemned the Russian
invasion of Ukraine as “a knife in the
back of the entire peaceful world”).
Two concerts: Mahler’s turbulent
Seventh Symphony in the first,
Schnittke and Shostakovich in the
second. RM
RSNO/Nicola Benedetti
Proms 67/68 Sept 6
The Scottish violinist, recently
announced as the next boss of the
Edinburgh International Festival, picks
up yet more jobs in this brace of
concerts. In the first performance
with the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra under Thomas Sondergard
she plays Wynton Marsalis’s
sprawling Violin Concerto (a piece
written for her), and in the second
evening, a relaxed performance,
she is also the presenter. Music
from Adès’s Powder Her Face and
Bernstein’s West Side Story joins
the Marsalis on the bill. Also on
BBC4. NF
The BBC Proms run from July 15
to September 10. Booking opens on
May 21 at 9am, bbc.co.uk/proms.
Promming day tickets will also be
available at £6
the times | Tuesday April 26 2022
Encore, Brigitte, the first lady of chic
Macron has been
re-elected. Hooray!
That means five
more years of his
wife’s French style.
By Harriet Walker
S
he wears skinny jeans on
the campaign trail, but
describes herself as an
18th-century creature at
heart. With Emmanuel
Macron’s re-election on
Sunday comes the
reassuring continuity of
many things, not least the Sun Queen
presence of his 69-year-old wife,
a former teacher and now an
intellectual sounding board on the
world’s political stage.
Forget the old saw about there being
a great woman behind every great
man, Brigitte Macron has always been
more à côté de than derrière: she is
famously her husband’s right-hand
woman. Many French voters might
have held their noses in the polling
booths at the weekend but, for the rest
of us, five more years of Madame
Macron offer a welcome spritz of
Chanel No 5 after the stink kicked
up by Marine Le Pen.
From her signature blonde bouffant,
St Trop perma-tan and regulation
stilettos to an armoire full of Parisian
couture, Macron (née Trogneux)
might seem just another well-heeled
political spouse, but she quotes
Flaubert and is nearly 25 years
older than her husband. It’s as if
she has been created specifically
for a Netflix drama designed to sate
the algorithmic Venn between Borgen
and Emily in Paris.
A former high-school Latin and
drama teacher who taught her classes
in leather trousers (she wore them out
canvassing in 2017 too), Macron’s look
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Brigitte and Emmanuel is part Brigitte Bardot, part Catherine
Macron celebrate his Deneuve. She sticks to a roster of
victory on Sunday. clothes that suit her and she looks at
Right: Brigitte in ease in: high but walkable heels,
2017 and 2016 zero cleavage, smart and structured
tailoring and tight, tight, tight, tight
trousers. Leather leggings, skinny
jeans, cigarette pants. Parisiennes don’t
do leggings — “It looks like you are
She sticks walking around in your tights,” the
Chanel muse Inès de la Fressange
to clothes once told me — but they do like
that suit second-skin trews.
Against a backdrop of political
her — WAGs in midiskirts and coat dresses,
all this makes Madame Macron stand
including out — although she seems to have
phased out of circulation some of the
tight, tight shorter hemlines she wore during her
husband’s first rodeo. Against a
trousers broader backdrop of all-too-obvious
nips and
tucks, she
embodies the
French code of
perfecting what
you have rather than
faking what you don’t.
In 2019 there were 517,000
cosmetic procedures in France. In
the UK that year there were 27,000,
but you won’t find a trout pout in Paris
beyond the bar at Hotel Costes.
“If a facelift shows, we think it’s a
disaster,” says the Parisian plastic
surgeon Olivier Claude. “My patients
live in fear of the Hollywood look.”
Macron’s mystique is part of a much
older obsession with the chic and
sultry ways of the women just across
the Channel that began with Anne
Boleyn. An entire genre of literature
9
times2
dedicated to emulating them is proof
enough of our national obsession with
their make-up bags, underwear
drawers and hygiene standards. Books
such as these are usually penned by
the likes of the socialite Caroline de
Maigret, the Insta It girl Jeanne
Damas and the aforementioned
de la Fressange; but when it comes
to the ancient art of Gallic
fabulousness, France’s first lady is
an object lesson. That’s saying
something when previous
occupants of the Élysée Palace
include the supermodel Carla
Bruni, who has returned to the
catwalks of Paris fashion week in
recent seasons. In France the
pressure on la première dame to
scrub up isn’t just a matter of
media scrutiny but one of
national pride.
The silver-frogged blazer and
slim-fitting trouser suit that
Macron wore for her husband’s
victory speech on the Champs
de Mars on Sunday was made
bespoke for her by Nicolas
Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton’s
creative director, who has
created much of her working
wardrobe. Macron often
carries the brand’s £2,000-
plus Capucines handbag. She
is good friends with Delphine
Arnault, daughter of LVMH’s chief
executive, Bernard, and executive
vice-president of the label, and is
often to be seen front row at its
fashion week shows.
While in this country that might
draw criticism, the French view
fashion as an economy-growing force
rather than women’s business. During
the pandemic their PPE was made by
Hermès and Chanel rather than
sourced on the shonk by Matt
Hancock’s local pub landlord. As first
lady, Macron is a power player in the
nation’s social and economic fabric —
and what she wears matters.
“I don’t feel like a ‘first’ or a ‘lady’,”
she has said in the past. “I am Brigitte
Macron!”
Dix points for nonchalance.
10 Tuesday April 26 2022 | the times

times2

Your weekday brain boost

More
puzzles
Pages 14-16

Every day, Monday to Thursday, a page of extra Sudoku fiendish Train Tracks
puzzles to give your brain an extended workout Lay tracks to enable the train to travel
from village A to village B. The numbers
indicate how many sections of rail go in
each row and column. There are only
Samurai medium straight rails and curved rails. The track
cannot cross itself.
Fill each grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box
contains the digits 1 to 9. Where the puzzles overlap, the rows and
columns do not go beyond their usual length.

Killer tricky
Fill the grid so that every column, every row and
every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. Each set of
cells joined by dotted lines must add up to the target
number in its top-left corner. Within each set of cells
joined by dotted lines, a digit cannot be repeated.
Futoshiki
Fill the blank squares so that every row and
column contains each of the numbers 1 to 5
once only. The symbols between the squares
indicate whether a number is larger (>) or
smaller (<) than the number next to it.

Codeword
Every letter in the crossword-style grid, right, has been
substituted for a number from 1 to 26. Each letter of the alphabet
Yesterday’s SAMURAI

appears in the grid at least once. Use the letters already provided solutions
to work out the identity of further letters. Enter letters in the
main grid and the smaller reference grid until all 26 letters of the
alphabet have been accounted for. Proper nouns are excluded.

Quintagram® Suko
Solve
Solveall
allfive crypticclues
five cryptic cluesusing
using
each
eachletter
letter underneath onceonly
underneath once only
1 Flee wolf? (4)

-2 Refuse
- -pile-in centre of study (6)
-3 Humiliating
- - - when - -Swedish group
QUINTAGRAM
1 Tiara FUTOSHIKI CODEWORD
2 Halter
3 Radial
half-heartedly perform (7) 4 Old maid
5 Brothers
-4 Carelessly
- - -tear-old-dancer’s
- SUKO

costume (7)

-5 One- won’t
- -fight- if-one’s
- in
Place the numbers 1 to 9 in
agreement (8) the spaces so that the SUDOKU KILLER
TRAIN TRACKS
-------- number in each circle is
equal to the sum of the four
A A A A B B C D surrounding spaces, and
D D E E F G I I each colour total is correct
I I L L M N N O
Solutions in
O P R S S T T T tomorrow’s Times2
the times | Tuesday April 26 2022 11

television & radio

Margolyes: a treasure, and an editor’s nightmare SIMON SCHLUTER/GETTY IMAGES

you had your first f***?” “Er, probably Another gift to directors is Alexei
Carol about f-fifteen,” Alan mumbled, adding:
“I’m not sure we can leave this in.”
Navalny. Not just because of his
charisma and that he has the second
Midgley They did leave it in, happily. To chop
it would have been a travesty. I loved
the superb timing of her anecdote on
biggest cojones in the world, after
Volodymyr Zelensky, but because his
story is the stuff of fantastical spy
TV review The Graham Norton Show telling how
she was arrested after being rude to a
thrillers and yet it’s true. Navalny,
an emotional rollercoaster of a film
policeman and subjected to an internal even though we know Navalny’s
examination. “They examined my present fate, is a man Vladimir Putin
front botty and my back botty,” she fears so much that he Novichoked
said, slight pause, “and of course they his underpants.
thought I wouldn’t like it.” Some of what appeared in Daniel
Margolyes is a one-off, a treasure, Roher’s film you had probably seen
a fearless taker of no prisoners who before and it did rather skim Navalny’s
produces a laugh a minute and says previous associations with far-right
Imagine what others dare not. I imagine that activists, but it deserves five stars for
BBC1 editing this Imagine was a nightmare that prolonged, jaw-dropping scene
{{{{{ because there must have been so in which Navalny, pretending to be a
much gold they had to leave out. OK, government goon, prank-called the
Navalny we could live without the farting and chemist who prepared the Novichok
BBC2
{{{{{ I wasn’t keen on the Real Marigold and he spilt everything, even detailing
Hotel stuff but no one’s perfect. where on the crotch, the “codpiece”,

W
hatever your view of
Miriam Margolyes (I
think she’s fabulous),
you cannot deny that
she comes with a
guarantee: she is biologically incapable
of being dull. But Imagine: Miriam
Margolyes — Up for Grabs surpassed
all expectations. It was a joy from
start to finish and easily the best one
I’ve seen.
Who did not savour the queasy look
on Alan Yentob’s face when she asked
him sweetly: “How old were you when
She is a vocal magician, slipping into
accents like butter. Her voice talent
allows her, said Richard E Grant, to
shape-shift in a way that her body
can’t. I had no idea she was the voice
of the female Cockney chimpanzee
in the PG Tips ad and the Cadbury’s
Caramel bunny; she is, I thought by
the end of it, seriously underrated as
an actor. Only Margolyes would say
of her younger years: “I did a great
deal of sucking off as I seemed to be
good at it.” Long may she live because
we won’t see her like again.
they put it. The faces of Navalny’s
team, in real time, unable to believe
they were hearing a confession from
the horse’s mouth, made for great
television. Striking too was Navalny’s
immediate empathy for the duped
scientist who tried to kill him. “Poor
guy,” they said. “He’s a dead man.”
Ominously he hasn’t been seen since.
It was grim to see that final, brief
footage of Navalny in Pokrov Penal
Colony, thin and with his head shaved.
Given Putin’s present mood, you
Miriam Margolyes took no prisoners in her Imagine film worry what “illness” might befall him.

Radio choice Times Radio 1.00pm Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

Ben Dowell
Colm Tóibín —
A Life of Writing
World Service, 11.30am
There are few more
interesting voices in
contemporary letters than
Colm Tóibín, above, the
author of many superb and
widely translated novels
such as Nora Webster, The
Master and Brooklyn, which
was adapted into an Oscar-
nominated film starring
Saoirse Ronan, and also
journalism, criticism, drama
and more. Alongside the
release of his debut
collection of poems,
Vinegar Hill, Tóibín gives
his fellow Irish writer Helen
Cullen an insight into how
he works, taking her
through his writing process,
how he gets his ideas and
his own particular approach
to refining his work.
our tv newsletter
Sign up to a weekly briefing of
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5.00am Calum Macdonald with Early
Breakfast. Early morning headlines 6.00
Aasmah Mir and Stig Abell with Times Radio
Breakfast. All you need to know for the day
ahead 10.00 Matt Chorley. A lighter take on
Westminster goings-on 1.00pm Mariella
Frostrup. Conversation about the issues that
matter 4.00 John Pienaar at Drive. In-depth
discussion of today’s news 7.00 Phil
Williams. The day’s news, sport and
entertainment news 10.00 Carole Walker.
Late night news and tomorrow’s front page
1.00am Stories of Our Times 1.30 Red Box
2.00 Highlights from Times Radio
Radio 2
FM: 88-90.2 MHz
6.30am The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show 9.30
Ken Bruce. Chesney Hawkes chooses the
Tracks of My Years 12.00 Jeremy Vine
2.00pm Steve Wright 5.00 Sara Cox 6.30
Sara Cox’s Half Wower 7.00 Jo Whiley’s
Shiny Happy Playlist 7.30 Jo Whiley. A mix
of new music from all genres of the musical
spectrum and quality vintage songs 9.00 The
Jazz Show with Jamie Cullum. The pianist
and songwriter plays classic tracks and new
music from the world of jazz 10.00 DJ
Spoony’s Magnificent 7. DJ Spoony spins
tunes and essential throwbacks 10.30 DJ
Spoony’s Rhythm Nation 12.00 OJ Borg
3.00am Sounds of the 20th Century —
The 90s (r) 4.00 Vanessa Feltz
Radio 3
FM: 90.2-92.4 MHz
6.30am Breakfast
Petroc Trelawny presents the classical
breakfast show. Including 7.00, 8.00 News.
7.30, 8.30 News headlines
9.00 Essential Classics
Georgia Mann presents music and features,
with this week’s Essential Performers
focusing on the clarinettist Sabine Meyer
12.00 Composer of the Week:
Brahms (1833-1897)
After a year feeling on top of the world,
Brahms and Joachim’s world came crashing
down when their mentor, Robert Schumann,
suffered a catastrophic breakdown in 1854.
Brahms would then deal with further
heartache as his First Piano Concerto is
ravaged by critics. Brahms (Regenlied,
Op 59 No 3; Geistliches Lied, Op 30; Piano
Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 35 — third
movement; and Violin Sonata in G, Op 78) (r)
Hannah French presents the first in a
series of Lunchtime Concerts devoted to
Saint-Saëns and his circle. Today, the Nash
Ensemble play music by Saint-Saëns and his
pupil Fauré. Recorded at LSO St Luke’s in
London on March 25, 2022. Saint-Saëns
(Caprice sur des airs danois et Russes for
piano, flute, oboe and clarinet; and Tarantelle
in A minor Op 6 for piano, flute and clarinet);
and Fauré (Quartet in G minor Op 45)
2.00 Afternoon Concert
Daniel Barenboim conducts the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra and Radio Chorus
in Verdi’s Requiem, plus music from
Mendelssohn, Schumann, Grieg, Pergolesi
and Augusta Holmes. Presented by Ian
Skelly. Mozart (Overture: Marriage of
Figaro, K.492); Mendelssohn (String
Quartet No.1 in E flat, Op.12); Augusta
Holmes (Allegro Ferroce); Schumann
(Arabesque in C, Op.18); Verdi (Requiem);
and Grieg (Peer Gynt Suite No.1)
5.00 In Tune
A selection of music, arts news and guests.
Including 5.00, 6.00 News
7.00 In Tune Mixtape
An eclectic non-stop mix of music, featuring
old favourites together with lesser-known
gems, and a few surprises thrown in
7.30 Radio 3 in Concert
The violinist Hugo Ticciati directs
the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a
programme inspired by the natural
world, featuring works by Tarrodi,
Erkki-SvenTuur, Vasks and a new commission
by Karine Polwart and Pippa Murphy
10.00 Free Thinking
Catherine Fletcher explores Cymraeg, the
Welsh language, with RIchard King whose
book Brittle with Relics is an oral history of
Wales in the second half of the twentieth
century, award winning novelist Caryl Lewis
who has written for TV shows Hinterland
and Hidden, Dr Elen Ifan from Cardiff
University, and composer, performer and
actor Seiriol Davies whose new musical Milky
Peaks is set in the ‘bosom of Snowdonia’
10.45 The Essay:
New Generation Thinkers 2021
The New Generation Thinker
Mirela Ivanova’s essay considers the
complications of basing ideas about
nationhood upon medieval history
11.00 Night Tracks
An adventurous, immersive soundtrack for
late-night listening, from classical to
contemporary and everything in between.
Presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch
12.30am Through the Night
Radio 4
FM: 92.4-94.6 MHz LW: 198kHz MW: 720 kHz
5.30am News Briefing
5.43 Prayer for the Day
5.45 Farming Today
5.58 Tweet of the Day
6.00 Today
8.31 (LW) Yesterday in Parliament
9.00 Positive Thinking
Examining the possible benefits of
on-demand buses (4/6)
9.30 One Direction
Jerry Brotton focuses on north, asking why
north is at the top of most world maps (2/5)
9.45 (LW) Daily Service
9.45 Book of the Week:
Nothing but the Truth
By the Secret Barrister (2/5)
10.00 Woman’s Hour
Presented by Emma Barnett
11.00 Putin
Jonny Dymond considers how Putin views
history and his place in it (7/8)
11.30 Mary Portas: On Style
Mary looks at menswear past, present and
future, including a visit to the V&A’s
exhibition Fashioning Masculinities:
The Art of Menswear (1/4)
12.01pm (LW) Shipping Forecast
12.04 Call You and Yours
1.00 The World at One
1.45 The Bear Next Door
The novelist and commentator Emmi Itaranta
speaks about Finland (2/5)
2.00 The Archers (r)
2.15 Drama: Brave Old World
By Mike Harris. Post-apocalyptic drama
set in a world where self-sufficiency is
strictly enforced, about a woman who
dares to embrace the old ways (r)
3.00 The Kitchen Cabinet
With guests Melek Erdal, Rob Owen Brown,
Nisha Katona and Dr Annie Gray (4/7) (r)
3.30 Costing the Earth
The impact of the recent storms on forests,
both present and future (9)
4.00 Word of Mouth
The ways people talk about weather (4/6)
4.30 Great Lives
Lolita Chakrabarti celebrates the
19th-century actor Ira Aldridge (4/9)
5.00 PM
5.54 (LW) Shipping Forecast
6.00 Six O’Clock News
6.30 Teatime
By Katherine Jakeways (4/4) (r)
7.00 The Archers
Tracy tries to make a good impression
7.15 Front Row
8.00 Connections
Douglas Alexander examines whether recent
crises have helped bring people together
8.40 In Touch
News for people who are
blind or partially sighted
9.00 All in the Mind
The human mind (1/10)
9.30 Positive Thinking
New approaches to problems (4/6) (r)
10.00 The World Tonight
Presented by Ritula Shah
10.45 Book at Bedtime: These Days
By Lucy Caldwell (7/10)
11.00 Fortunately
With Shaun Keaveny
11.30 Today in Parliament
Political round-up
12.00 News and Weather
12.30am Book of the Week:
Nothing but the Truth (2/5) (r)
12.48 Shipping Forecast
1.00 As BBC World Service
Radio 4 Extra
Digital only
8.00am The Goon Show 8.30 One Foot in
the Grave 9.00 The News Quiz 9.30 Do
Nothing ’Til You Hear From Me 10.00 Kipps
11.00 Lynne Truss: Did I Really Ask That?
12.00 The Goon Show 12.30pm One Foot in
the Grave 1.00 A Walk in the Dark 1.30
Proof 2.00 The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
2.15 The Invention of Murder 2.30 Death by
Chocolate 3.00 Kipps 4.00 The Museum of
Curiosity 4.30 Do Nothing ’Til You Hear
From Me 5.00 Fags, Mags and Bags 5.30
Teatime 6.00 The Interplanetary Notes of
Ambassador B 6.15 Ghost Story 6.30 Soul
Music 7.00 The Goon Show. Neddie Seagoon
must recover a lost ancient manuscript 7.30
One Foot in the Grave. Comedy with Richard
Wilson 8.00 A Walk in the Dark. Crime
drama by Chris Boucher 8.30 Proof. Thriller
by Dick Francis. Originally broadcast in 1987
9.00 Lynne Truss: Did I Really Ask That? The
journalist shares her interviews of leading
theatrical figures. From 2009 10.00 Comedy
Club: Teatime. Comedy by Katherine
Jakeways 10.30 The Nick Revell Show. The
writer’s mate Craig proves a headache 11.00
The Pin 11.30 The Million Pound Radio Show
Radio 5 Live
MW: 693, 909
5.00am Wake Up to Money. News and
insight 6.00 5 Live Breakfast 9.00 Nicky
Campbell 11.00 Naga Munchetty 1.00pm
Nihal Arthanayake 4.00 5 Live Drive
7.00 5 Live Sport 8.00 5 Live Sport.
Manchester City v Real Madrid (Kick-off
8.00). Coverage of the UEFA Champions
League semi-final first leg 10.30 Colin
Murray 1.00am Dotun Adebayo
talkSPORT
MW: 1053, 1089 kHz
5.00am Early Breakfast 6.00 Breakfast
10.00 Jim White and Simon Jordan 1.00pm
Hawksbee & Baker 4.00 Drive 7.00 Kick Off
10.00 Sports Bar 12.00 Extra Time
TalkRadio
Digital only
5.00am James Max 6.30 Julia
Hartley-Brewer 10.00 The Independent
Republic of Mike Graham 1.00pm
Ian Collins 4.00 Jeremy Kyle 7.00 The
News Desk 8.00 Piers Morgan Uncensored
9.00 The Talk 10.00 Daisy McAndrew
11.00 Piers Morgan Uncensored
12.00 Petrie Hosken 4.00am The Talk
6 Music
Digital only
5.00am Chris Hawkins 7.30 Lauren Laverne
10.30 Mary Anne Hobbs 1.00pm Craig
Charles 4.00 Steve Lamacq 7.00 Marc Riley
9.00 Gideon Coe 12.00 6 Music Artist in
Residence 1.00am The First Time with Yoko
Ono 2.00 The First Time with Laurie
Anderson 3.00 6 Music Festival Live Set
Virgin Radio
Digital only
6.30am The Chris Evans Breakfast Show
with Sky 10.00 Eddy Temple-Morris
1.00pm Tim Cocker 4.00 Gaby Roslin
7.00 Bam 10.00 Olivia Jones 1.00am
Sean Goldsmith 4.00 James Merritt
Classic FM
FM: 100-102 MHz
6.00am More Music Breakfast 9.00
Alexander Armstrong 12.00 Anne-Marie
Minhall 4.00pm John Brunning 7.00
Smooth Classics at Seven 8.00 The Classic
FM Concert with John Suchet. Handel
(Arrival of the Queen of Sheba); Mozart
(Piano Concerto No 25 in C K.503); Gershwin
(Walking the Dog); Dvorák (Symphony No 8
in G Op 88); Alma Deutscher (Summer in
Mondsee); Albinoni (Oboe Concerto in D
minor Op 9 No 2); and Tomlinson (Suite of
English Folk Dances) 10.00 Smooth Classics
1.00am Bill Overton 4.00 Early Breakfast
12 Tuesday April 26 2022 | the times

television & radio

Viewing Guide history in which white government oppression. forced to flee. Sephy’s visit a psychiatrist in
people live under the It concluded with them father, the hard-line
Life After Life London to help with
DNA Journey
Ben Dowell BBC2, 9pm ITV, 9pm
yoke of often brutal escaping together. Now prime minister Kamal her dark thoughts,
black oppressors. The this four-episode series Hadley (Paterson This excellent chaperoned by her ITV’s answer to the
Noughts + Crosses first season followed promises to bring their Joseph) is cracking adaptation of Kate Aunt Izzie (Jessica BBC mega-hit Who Do
BBC1, 10.40pm
the interracial couple tale of star-crossed love down on insurrections Atkinson’s 2013 novel Brown Findlay). You Think You Are?, a
It’s series two — the white, or to a conclusion. The and desperate to find of death and second “Only very special kind of semi-
Topof the drama “Nought”, Callum (Jack action opens with them his daughter, who he chances continues with people have powerful competitive DNA
based on the
pick Rowan) and the in a lakeside retreat, at believes has been Ursula beset by horrific imaginations — you sleuthing game
former privileged politician’s peace and kissing. “I brainwashed. The dreams and confiding are extra interesting,” involving celebrities,
children’s laureate daughter and “Cross” wish . . . it was you and lovers may be forced to in her mother, Sylvie Sylvie tells Ursula, not continues with the
Malorie Blackman’s Sephy (Masali Baduza), me, no one else,” Sephy flee “Albion” altogether (Sian Clifford), that she knowing quite how former champion
bestselling novel series, who found love in a says, but their for a new life in thinks she has already special and interesting skaters Jayne Torvill
which imagines an divided community tranquillity is short- Muscovy, which is free died many times before. she is. Lesley Manville and Christopher Dean
alternative world beset by racist lived and they are of colonial rule. Sylvie wants Ursula to narrates. uncovering their family

BBC1 BBC2 ITV Channel 4 Channel 5

6.00am Breakfast. News, entertainment and weather 6.20am The Bidding Room. Featuring a fairground game, 6.00am Good Morning Britain. Morning magazine 6.05am Countdown. John Thomson joins Susie Dent in 6.00am Milkshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine. The broadcaster
Early

reports 9.15 Morning Live. Magazine show hosted by
Gethin Jones and Sam Quek 10.00 For Love or Money.
A woman who lost thousands of pounds to an online
investment mentor 10.45 Dom Digs In. Dom Littlewood
learns about harvesting peas — the UK’s favourite frozen
food (AD) 11.15 Homes Under the Hammer. Properties in
Clapham, Maidstone and Whitehaven (r) (AD) 12.15pm
Bargain Hunt. Two teams compete in Builth Wells, Powys
(r) (AD) 1.00 BBC News at One; Weather 1.30 BBC
Regional News; Weather 1.45 Five Bedrooms. Heather
shares a home truth or two, leading to further revelations
(r) (AD) 2.30 Virtually Home. Kunal Trehan comes up
with a new look for a dingy hallway in Surrey 3.00 Escape
to the Country. Jonnie Irwin helps a couple find a home in
the Worcestershire countryside (r) (AD) 3.45 Antiques
Road Trip. The trip continues in Wiltshire for Paul Martin
and Raj Bisram (r) 4.30 The Bidding Room. Items include
puppets from children’s television show Rainbow, and
a decorative Koran stand 5.15 Pointless. Quiz hosted
by Alexander Armstrong (r) 6.00 BBC News at
Six; Weather 6.30 BBC Regional News; Weather
a 1920s music box, and a work of comic book art (r) 7.05
Sign Zone: Earth’s Great Rivers II. Cameras focus on the
Yukon, a river of wild extremes (r) (AD, SL) 8.05 Lifeline.
On behalf of military charity Walking With the Wounded
(r) 8.15 The Super League Show. Tanya Arnold introduces
action from the latest fixtures, including Castleford Tigers
v St Helens, Wigan Warriors v Salford Red Devils and Hull
FC v Catalans Dragons (r) 9.00 BBC News 10.00 Live
Snooker: The World Championship. Coverage of the
morning session on day 11 at the Crucible Theatre in
Sheffield, where two quarter-finals get under way
12.15pm Politics Live. The latest stories from
Westminster and beyond 1.00 Live Snooker: The World
Championship. Coverage of the afternoon session on day
11 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where two more
quarter-finals get under way, with eight frames in each
scheduled to be played 6.00 Richard Osman’s House of
Games. Sarah Kendall, Jay McGuiness, Linda Robson and
Bobby Seagull go toe-to-toe testing their general
knowledge skills 6.30 My Unique B&B. Creating
a unique B&B with a celestial theme in Devon (AD)
featuring a lively mix of news and current affairs, plus
health, entertainment and lifestyle features 9.00
Lorraine. Entertainment, current affairs and fashion news,
as well as showbiz stories and celebrity gossip. Presented
by Lorraine Kelly 10.00 This Morning. A mix of chat,
lifestyle features, advice and competitions. Including
Local Weather 12.30pm Loose Women. More interviews
and topical debate from a female perspective 1.30 ITV
News; Weather 2.00 Dickinson’s Real Deal. David
Dickinson and the dealers are in Hartlepool, where Karen
Dalmeny is kept on their toes by one of the youngest
sellers the programme has ever seen (r) 3.00 Lingo.
Competitive brothers from Stockport, a married couple
from Hull, and quiz fans from Chester compete (r)
4.00 Tipping Point. Ben Shephard hosts the
arcade-themed quiz in which contestants drop tokens
down a choice of four chutes in the hope of winning
a £10,000 jackpot 5.00 The Chase. Bradley Walsh
presents as four contestants work as a team to take
on one of the ruthless Chasers and secure a cash prize
6.00 Regional News; Weather 6.30 ITV News; Weather
Dictionary Corner (r) 6.45 Cheers (r) 7.35 The King of
Queens (r) 9.00 Frasier (r) (AD) 10.30 Celebrity
Undercover Boss USA. Former Hootie & the Blowfish
frontman Darius Rucker tries to find America’s next great
recording artist, donning disguises to work at an open mic
night, as a roadie and as a busker (r) 11.25 Channel 4
News Summary 11.30 Couples Come Dine with Me. Three
couples in Co Antrim compete for the cash prize of £1,000
(r) 12.30pm Steph’s Packed Lunch. Weekday magazine
show hosted by Steph McGovern 2.10 Countdown. Justin
Webb joins Susie Dent in Dictionary Corner 3.00 A Place
in the Sun. A couple search Kapparis in Cyprus for a
holiday home (r) 4.00 A New Life in the Sun. The
Spanish summer threatens work on a golf course (r)
5.00 Sun, Sea and Selling Houses. A family throws
a housewarming party with a difference 6.00 The
Simpsons. Marge’s aggressive new driving habits catch
the eye of Chief Wiggum (r) (AD) 6.30 Hollyoaks.
John Paul refuses to talk to Sally, so she turns to
Mercedes for help. Later, Ethan makes a shocking
accusation, and Felix decides to open a youth club (r) (AD)
and guests discuss the issues of the day, with co-host
Storm Huntley joining him for phone-ins and reading out
viewers’ correspondence 12.15pm George Clarke’s Build a
New Life in the Country. George finds out how a former
couple have fared since the pressures of moving to
Cornwall to start a new business led to money problems
and divorce (r) 1.10 5 News at Lunchtime 1.15 Home and
Away. Mia tries getting her life back on track, starting
with the gym (AD) 1.45 Neighbours (AD) 2.15 Hailey
Dean Mysteries. The investigation into the murder of
Hailey’s ex-fiancé from 15 years previously is reopened.
Whodunit starring Kellie Martin and Giacomo Baessato
4.00 Bargain-Loving Brits in the Sun. A woman and her
fellow animal-loving friends enjoy a fundraising quiz for
the Busot Animal Rescue Concern, and a new face invites
a local photography club to her tranquil home 5.00 5
News at 5 6.00 Neighbours. When Freya brings Levi a
peace offering, he feels betrayed and refuses to hear her
out. Harlow is bemused to find Corey still in Erinsborough,
and Barbara arrives at the vineyard (r) 6.30 Eggheads.
Go to Blazes try their luck against the Eggheads

7.00 The One Show Presented by 7.00 Live Snooker: The World 7.00 Channel 4 News 7.00 Dogs with Extraordinary Jobs
7PM

Lauren Laverne and Jermaine Jenas
7.30 EastEnders Harvey gets a phone call
to say Aaron is injured and in hospital.
Sam looks for somewhere to stay (AD)
Championship Coverage of the
evening session on day 11 at the
Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, featuring
the second sessions of two quarter-
finals. Coverage continues on BBC4
Documentary about dogs that help
humans in surprising ways, including a
Great Dane that has helped a girl with
7.30 Emmerdale Jai and Laurel are a muscle-wasting condition to walk,
hopeful. Marlon starts choking and swim and ride a bike (1/5) (r)
April is terrified, while things are
moving fast for Marcus and Ethan (AD) 7.55 5 News Update

8.00 MasterChef Semi-finals week begins 8.00 Yorkshire Midwives on Call 8.00 Love Your Garden Alan Titchmarsh 8.00 The Great Celebrity Bake Off for 8.00 The Yorkshire Vet New series.
8PM

with the studio turned into a
restaurant, giving the 10 hopefuls their
first taste of working in a live service
setting. With judge John Torode
running the pass, the contestants are
split into three groups responsible for
the starters, mains and desserts (AD)
Midwives care for an 18-year-old who
wants to give birth at home with her
mum and boyfriend. A mum-to-be is
under the watchful care of a team
leader for her water birth (4/8) (AD)
and his team take on the challenge of
creating a wildlife wonderland
complete with a giant pond and rockery
in a suburban garden in West
Bromwich for a local fund raiser (AD)
Stand Up to Cancer Louis Theroux,
Jenny Eclair, Russell Howard and Ovie
Soko take part in a charity edition of
the culinary challenge, and must depict
their perfect day in choux pastry.
Hosted by Sandi Toksvig and
Noel Fielding (1/5) (AD)
Documentary about vets Julian Norton
and Peter Wright and their teams
as they administer medical and
surgical aid to creatures across
the county (1/12) (AD)

9.00 Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof 9.00 Life After Life Ursula visits a 9.00 DNA Journey Olympic legends Torvill 9.00 Derry Girls The Quinns prepare for 9.00 Rob & Dave’s Big Texas Rodeo
9PM

The famous faces are introduced to a
surprise visitor who is close to Wim’s
heart, and face an extremely powerful
man-made blizzard in nothing but
their swimwear. Presented by Holly
Willoughby and Lee Mack (3/6) (AD)
psychiatrist to help with her dark
thoughts and disturbing dreams.
A birthday has shocking repercussions,
and help comes from an unexpected
place. See Viewing Guide (2/4) (AD)
9.55 The Archiveologists Spoof on what
to do at a business meeting (5/6) (r)
and Dean embark on a journey that
brings them even closer as they
uncover their family history using DNA
and genealogy. See Viewing Guide (AD)
the annual train journey to Barry’s
amusement park in Portrush.
See Viewing Guide (3/6) (AD)
9.35 Hullraisers Paula discovers the
advantages of private medicine, and
Toni takes home a Gucci coat belonging
to Grace’s classmate (3/6) (AD)
The duo visit Dealey Plaza, the location
of JFK’s assassination back in 1963,
and Southfork Ranch, the setting
for the American television series
from the 1980s, Dallas (2/2)

10.00 BBC News at Ten 10.00 QI Bill Bailey, Colin Lane and Desiree 10.05 Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist The 10.00 Ben Fogle & the Lost City
10PM

10.30 BBC Regional News and Weather
10.40 Noughts + Crosses New series.
Callum and Sephy’s peaceful life is
disturbed, forcing them to take
extreme measures to flee Albion
for good. Meanwhile, hate crime
11PM
Burch join regular panellist Alan Davies
to answer host Sandi Toksvig’s
questions on the theme “Overseas” (r)
10.30 Newsnight Analysis of the day’s
events with Mark Urban
10.10 ITV News documentary hears how Nick and The presenter heads to Slab City
Rachel’s crimes escalated to bigger in the Sonora desert, California, to
stars — just as CCTV footage of the explore a unique, off-grid, alternative
Hollywood Hills burglars began to lifestyle community who live in the
10.40 Regional News circulate the gossip blogs (2/3) (AD) “last free place in America” (r)
10.55 On Assignment Ria Chatterjee
explores intensifying divisions
between Hindus and Muslims in the
country. Nina Nannar is in Los Angeles

against Noughts is on the rise.
See Viewing Guide (1/4) (AD)
11.30 Love in the Flesh The heat is turned
up when six new singles enter the
beach house, and Zara McDermott pops
into the house for a chat (3/8) (r)
11.15 Snooker: World Championship
Highlights Action from the
evening session on day 11 at the
Crucible Theatre in Sheffield,
featuring two quarter-finals
asking whether the trillion-dollar
wellness industry really can offer
people a happier and healthier life
11.30 The Great British Treasure Hunt
Henry Cole and the teams are in
Hutton in the Forest in Cumbria and
they make amazing finds (4/5) (r)
11.10 Gogglebox The armchair critics share
their opinions on Britain’s Got Talent,
The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe,
Romeo and Duet, and Freeze the Fear 11.30 UFOs: Caught on Camera The work
with Wim Hof (r) (AD) of secret US government department
investigating credible sightings of
unidentified aerial phenomena (r)

12.05am Snooker: World Championship Extra 12.25am Teleshopping 3.00 Loose Women. More 12.10am Gogglebox (r) (AD) 1.10 Chivalry (r) (AD) 1.00am The LeoVegas Live Casino Show 3.00
Late

12.15am Love in the Flesh Relationships are tested to
the max after the arrival of six new guests, and it
remains to be seen which couples will survive. It is
crunch time as all the couples are asked to define
their status (r) 1.05-6.00 BBC News
Extended highlights of a quarter-final from the Crucible
Theatre in Sheffield 2.05 Sign Zone: Muhammad Ali.
Double bill (r) (AD, SL) 3.45-4.45 MasterChef.
William Sitwell sets a brief to cook a dish inspired
by a favourite ready-bought food item (r) (AD, SL)
celebrity interviews and topical debate from a female
perspective (r) 3.50 Unwind with ITV. Daily escape
5.05-6.00 Tipping Point. Ben Shephard hosts the quiz in
which contestants drop tokens down a choice of four
chutes in the hope of winning a £10,000 jackpot (r) (SL)
2.05 FILM: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (15,
2016) Five sisters try to find suitable husbands while
battling hordes of the living dead. Comedy adventure
starring Lily James (SL) 3.55 Grayson’s Art Club (r) (AD)
4.50 Moneybags (r) (AD) 5.40-6.05 The Perfect Pitch (r)
Entertainment News on 5 3.10 Coastal Britain with Kate
Humble (r) 3.55 The Funny Thing About Dating (r) (SL)
4.45 Wildlife SOS (r) (SL) 5.10 House Doctor (r) (SL)
5.35 Peppa Pig (r) 5.40 Paw Patrol (r) 5.50-6.00
Milkshake! Monkey’s Amazing Adventures (r)
the times | Tuesday April 26 2022 13

television & radio

history using DNA and the wrong platform, whether he committed
genealogy. For Dean,
Derry Girls have to rush for their
The King suicide or was killed.
Film Oliver Twist
Channel 4, 9pm Sky Atlantic/Now, 10pm Talking Pictures TV, 2.10pm
growing up in a tiny train and arrive, in He also needs answers
family with his father The gang are off to the Michelle’s words, It’s the second part of before outside Two years after
and stepmother, it’s a seaside in another “sweating like a hooker the eight-episode investigators take his directing Great
profoundly moving hugely enjoyable in Mass”. They also Italian prison thriller throne (well, he is not Expectations, David
journey as he discovers episode of Lisa McGee’s discover one of their starring Luca Zingaretti known as the King for Lean revisited Dickens.
living relatives on his superbly raucous number is missing and, (best known as nothing). The tension Alec Guinness is a
mother’s side he never comedy. Mammy has in even worse news, Inspector Montalbano) between his complex slippery monster as the
knew existed, including made enough have a set-to with the as Bruno Testori, the life outside the prison arch-villain Fagin, Kay
some in Utah, home to sandwiches to feed an train guard, who deputy head of a prison. and the moral Walsh is a brassy
the Mormons. Torvill army and nothing refuses to sell them With the death of his compromises and codes delight as Nancy and
uncovers an astonishing threatens to dampen any Kit Kats from the boss leaving the prison Testori presides over a young Anthony
connection to West their spirits. Until, of snack trolley. It’s not world reeling, Bruno is inside continue to make Newley plays the Artful
Ham United FC. course, they arrive on the first mishap. determined to discover for compelling drama. Dodger. (U, 1948)

Sky Max
6.00am Stargate SG-1 (r) 8.00 The Flash (r)
9.00 DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (r) (AD) 10.00
Supergirl (r) (AD) 11.00 NCIS: Los Angeles (r)
1.00pm Hawaii Five-0 (r) 2.00 S.W.A.T (r) (AD)
3.00 DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (r) (AD) 4.00
The Flash (r) 5.00 Supergirl (r) (AD)
6.00 Stargate SG-1. The team helps
the crew of a stranded ship (r)
7.00 Stargate SG-1. Teal’c experiences
a series of recurring dreams (r)
8.00 The Flash. Barry has an opportunity to end
his lifelong battle with Reverse Flash
9.00 Peacemaker. After Adebayo’s surprise,
Murn reveals his greatest secret
10.00 Strike Back: Retribution. Section 20 tries
to track down an ex-CIA contractor (r) (AD)
11.00 SEAL Team. Jason must confront his
deepest fears on the road to healing (r)
12.00 A League of Their Own Road Trip: Dingle
to Dover (r) 1.00am Road Wars (r) 2.10 The
Force: Manchester (r) 3.05 Hawaii Five-0 (r)
4.00 S.W.A.T (r) (AD) 5.00 Highway Patrol (r)
Sky Atlantic
6.00am Fish Town (r) 7.55 Big Love (r) (AD)
10.05 Devils (r) (AD) 12.15pm Game of
Thrones (r) (AD) 1.20 Six Feet Under (r) 3.35
Boardwalk Empire (r) (AD) 5.45 Devils (r) (AD)
6.50 Devils. Massimo’s traders disobey
his orders and fall into a trap (r) (AD)
7.55 Game of Thrones. House Lannister
prepares for conflict, Ned confronts Cersei,
and Khal Drogo vows revenge (r) (AD)
9.00 Julia. A bad roll of videotape leads to
reshoots and a dubious decision to replace
chicken with a less savoury meat (6/8) (r)
10.00 The King. Prosecutor Lombardo is
increasingly suspicious and does not believe
Lackovic committed suicide. Testori asks his
team to behave with greater rigor towards
the prisoners. See Viewing Guide (2/8)
11.00 Big Love. Alby warns Nicki to stay on the
compound, while Barb fears she will be
excommunicated from her church (9/10) (r)
12.10am Big Love (r) 3.30 In Treatment.
Eladio is left shaken (r) 4.00 Fish Town (r)
Sky Documentaries Sky Arts
6.00am The Guest Wing (r) (AD) 7.00
Discovering: Ginger Rogers (r) 8.00 The
Directors (r) 9.00 The Vow (r) 10.00 Richard E
Grant’s Hotel Secrets (r) (AD) 11.00 UFO (r)
(AD) 12.00 FILM: Missile from the East
(U, 2021) A motorcycle racer who defected to
West Germany (AD) 2.00pm Chernobyl: The
Lost Tapes (r) (AD) 4.00 Discovering: Ginger
Rogers (r) 5.00 The Directors (r)
6.00 The Vow. Building evidence (r) (AD)
7.00 Richard E Grant’s Hotel Secrets. The actor
visits the French Riviera (8/8) (r) (AD)
8.00 UFO. A sighting in 2004 (r) (AD)
9.00 FILM: Apollo 11 (U, 2019)
Documentary about the moon landings (AD)
10.50 The Lady and the Dale (1/4) (r)
12.00 FILM: Going Clear — Scientology
and the Prison of Belief (15, 2015)
The history of the Church of Scientology’s
leaders (AD) 2.15am Michael X: Hustler,
Revolutionary, Outlaw (r) 4.05 Discovering:
Ginger Rogers (r) 5.00 UFO (r) (AD)
6.00am Giselle 8.00 Great Film Composers:
The Music of the Movies 9.00 Tales of the
Unexpected (AD) 10.00 Discovering: Diane
Keaton 11.00 Creedence Clearwater Revival:
Music Icons 11.30 Video Killed the Radio Star
12.00 Lucian Freud: A Self Portrait 1.00pm
Tales of the Unexpected (AD) 2.00 Hepworth
3.00 The Impressionists and the Man Who
Made Them 4.00 Tales of the Unexpected (AD)
5.00 Discovering: Morgan Freeman
6.00 Portrait Artist of the Year 2014
7.00 Raphael: Revealed. Raphael’s ingenuity
8.00 Art Traffickers: Treasures Stolen from the
Tombs. The most sensational thefts
9.00 FILM: Pompeii: Sin City (12, 2021)
10.25 Canaletto & the Art of Venice
11.25 FILM: The Go-Go’s (15, 2020) (AD)
1.15am Cyndi Lauper: Austin City Limits 2.30
Pretenders: Music Icons 2.55 Eric Idle: Off
Camera 4.10 Harold Lloyd: Hollywood’s
Timeless Comedy Genius 5.05 Inside Art:
Bristol Street Art at M Shed (AD)
Sky Main Event
6.00am Sky Sports News 7.00 Good Morning
Sports Fans 7.30 Early Kick-Off. The latest news
from the Sky Sports News studio 8.00 Good
Morning Sports Fans 10.00 The Football Show
12.00 Sky Sports News 1.00pm Live Raceday.
Coverage of flat racing at Brighton and
Yarmouth, plus a group race from Compiegne in
France 3.00 Live Indian Premier League: Royal
Challengers Bangalore v Rajasthan Royals.
Coverage of the T20 match from Maharashtra
Cricket Association Stadium, Pune
7.00 Soccer Special. Julian Warren and guests
keep viewers up to date on tonight’s games
7.30 Live EFL: Fulham v Nottingham
Forest (Kick-off 7.45). Coverage of the
Championship encounter from Craven Cottage
10.15 Soccer Special Post-Match. All the
reaction from tonight’s football fixtures
11.00 Live: Path To The Draft. News, reports
and analysis ahead of this week’s NFL Draft
12.00 Total Access. A round-up of the latest
NFL News 1.00am Sky Sports News
Vari ati ons
BBC1 N Ireland
As BBC1 except: 6.55pm-7.00 Party Election
Broadcast (r) 10.40 True North: One Lady
Owner! 11.10 Noughts + Crosses. New series.
Callum and Sephy are forced to extremes in a
bid to flee Albion for good. See Viewing Guide
(AD) 12.00 Love in the Flesh (r) 12.45am
Love in the Flesh (r) 1.30-6.00 BBC News
BBC1 Scotland
As BBC1 except: 6.55pm Party Election
Broadcast 7.00-7.30 River City (r) 11.30 The
Edit (r) 11.45 Love in the Flesh (r) 12.30am
Love in the Flesh (r) 1.15 Weather for the
Week Ahead 1.20-6.00 BBC News
BBC1 Wales
As BBC1 except: 11.30pm Rookie Cops (r)
12.00 Love in the Flesh (r) 12.45am Love in
the Flesh (r) 1.30-6.00 BBC News
BBC2 Wales
As BBC2 except: 11.15pm Welsh First
Minister’s Questions 12.05am-2.05 Snooker:
World Championship Highlights

STV
As ITV except: 6.25pm-6.30 Party Election
Broadcast 8.00 Paul O’Grady: For the Love of
Dogs (AD) 8.30-9.00 Animal 999 10.40 STV
News 10.50 Scotland Tonight 11.20 On
Assignment 11.55 Long Lost Family Special:
Shipped to Australia (r) (AD) 12.45am-3.00
Teleshopping 3.50-5.05 Unwind with STV

UTV
As ITV except: 6.25pm-6.30 Party Election
Broadcast 8.00 Rare Breed — A Farming Year
8.30-9.00 Hidden Northern Ireland
11.30-12.25am Love Your Garden. Creating
a wildlife wonderland in West Bromwich (AD)

TalkTV BBC4 Talking Pictures Film4 More4 BBC Scotland

6.00am James Max 6.30 The Julia
Hartley-Brewer Breakfast Show 10.00 The
Independent Republic of Mike Graham. The host
looks through the morning newspapers 1.00pm
Afternoons with Ian Collins. Monologues,
debates and dedicated time for viewers’ calls
4.00 Jeremy Kyle. Political debates, the latest
from Parliament, and interviews with celebrities
7.00 The News Desk. Tom Newton-Dunn is
joined by Tan Dhesi, Kate McCann and Isabel
Oakeshott to tackle the biggest stories
8.00 Piers Morgan Uncensored. The host
presents more from his interview with the
former President Donald Trump
9.00 The Talk. Join Sharon Osbourne and a panel
of famous faces from the worlds of politics,
showbiz, business and current affairs to debate
the topics everybody is talking about
10.00 Daisy McAndrew. The host is joined by
a leading journalists and commentators to
discuss the day’s big stories and look forward
to the following day’s newspapers
11.00 Piers Morgan Uncensored (r)
12.00 Petrie Hosken. The latest news stories
overnight 4.00am The Talk (r) 5.00 James Max
ITV2
6.00am Totally Bonkers Guinness World
Records (SL) 6.25 Dress to Impress (AD, SL)
7.30 The Ellen DeGeneres Show 8.25 Secret
Crush 9.20 Hart of Dixie 10.15 One Tree Hill
11.10 The O.C 12.00 Secret Crush 1.05pm
Dress to Impress (AD) 2.05 The Ellen DeGeneres
Show. With Mark Wahlberg 3.00 Hart of Dixie
4.00 One Tree Hill 5.00 The O.C
6.00 Celebrity Catchphrase (AD)
7.00 Superstore. Amy and Cheyenne attend
Cloud 9 Academy to advance their careers (AD)
7.30 Superstore. Corporate introduces a
friendly step-tracking challenge (AD)
8.00 Bob’s Burgers (AD)
8.30 Bob’s Burgers (AD)
9.00 Family Guy (AD)
9.30 Family Guy (AD)
10.00 Plebs (AD)
10.30 Plebs (AD)
11.00 Family Guy (AD) 11.30 American Dad!
(AD) 12.00 American Dad! (AD) 12.25am Bob’s
Burgers (AD) 1.25 Superstore (AD) 2.20 Totally
Bonkers Guinness World Records 2.50 Unwind
with ITV 3.00 Teleshopping
7.00pm Johnny Kingdom — A Year on Exmoor.
The red deer’s rutting season begins (2/10)
7.30 A Pembrokeshire Farm. The Pembrokeshire
project is interrupted by nature (2/5)
8.00 Live Snooker: The World Championship.
Further coverage of the evening session on day
11 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, featuring
the second sessions of two quarter-finals
9.00 Novels That Shaped Our World. The
documentary examines race and colonialism,
including the books Robinson Crusoe, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Lonely
Londoners, Kim and Noughts & Crosses (2/3)
10.00 Toni Morrison Remembers: Imagine. Alan
Yentob talks to the author Toni Morrison, who
was born into poverty in Ohio and went on to
win critical acclaim for her novels
11.05 The Secret Life of Books. Bidisha
examines Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
11.35 Wild West: America’s Great Frontier.
America’s mountain regions (2/3)
12.35am The Wonder of Bees with Martha
Kearney 1.05 Johnny Kingdom — A Year on
Exmoor 1.35 A Pembrokeshire Farm 2.05-3.05
Novels That Shaped Our World (SL)
ITV3
6.00am Classic Coronation Street (AD) 7.00
Classic Emmerdale 8.05 On the Buses 9.10
Upstairs, Downstairs 11.30 Heartbeat (AD)
1.45pm Classic Emmerdale 2.45 Classic
Coronation Street (AD) 3.50 Agatha Christie’s
Marple (AD) 5.50 Heartbeat (AD)
6.55 Heartbeat. A man begins receiving
nuisance calls after a mysterious stranger
moves into the village. Rural police
drama starring Nick Berry (AD)
8.00 Midsomer Murders. The peace in a sleepy
hamlet is disturbed when a man’s body is
found tied down in a miniature village —
just like the hero in Gulliver’s Travels (AD)
10.00 Law & Order: UK. While investigating the
fatal stabbing of a psychiatrist, Ronnie and Joe
find evidence suggesting he was having an affair
with one of his underage patients (2/8) (AD)
11.05 Scott & Bailey. As the team makes a
significant breakthrough in the case, Rachel’s
position as acting DI is jeopardised, while
Janet’s faith in justice is tested (3/3) (AD)
12.05am The Trouble with Maggie Cole (AD)
2.05 Unwind with ITV 2.30 Teleshopping
6.00am FILM: Caravan (PG, 1946) (b/w)
8.30 Breaking the Codes 9.00 Stagecoach
West (b/w) 10.00 FILM: Scarlet Web
(15, 1954) (b/w) 11.15 FILM: My
Favourite Brunette (PG, 1947) (b/w)
1.00pm FILM: Small Hotel (U, 1957) (b/w)
2.10 FILM: Oliver Twist (U, 1948)
Charles Dickens’ drama starring Alec Guinness
(b/w). See Viewing Guide
4.30 Look at Life 4.45 FILM: Witness In The
Dark (U, 1959) Thriller starring Patricia
Dainton (b/w) 6.00 Dial 999 (b/w)
6.30 FILM: Our Relations (U, 1936)
Comedy starring Laurel and Hardy (b/w)
8.00 Maigret (b/w)
9.05 Van der Valk (3/7)
10.05 Public Eye (b/w) 11.05 The Outer Limits
(b/w) 12.00 Cellar Club with Caroline Munro
12.05am FILM: Death Dream (15, 1974)
Horror 1.50 Cellar Club with Caroline Munro
1.55 FILM: The Atomic Brain (18, 1963)
(b/w) 3.15 Cellar Club with Caroline Munro
3.20 FILM: The Terror (1963) 4.55 Cellar
Club with Caroline Munro 5.00 FILM: Penny
and the Pownall Case (PG, 1948) (b/w)
ITV4
6.00am The Derby Through the Years 6.15 The
Protectors (SL) 6.40 The Saint 7.30 Robin of
Sherwood 8.25 The Avengers (SL) 9.30 The
Professionals (AD) 10.25 Minder (AD) 11.30
The Saint 12.40pm Extreme Salvage Squad
1.35 Robin of Sherwood 2.45 The Avengers
3.55 The Professionals (AD) 4.55 Minder (AD)
6.00 Giant Lobster Hunters
7.00 BattleBots. Five American robots take
on five contenders from other countries in
a special competition for bragging rights
8.00 World Superbike Highlights. Action from
the second meeting of the campaign in Assen
9.00 FILM: Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
(18, 1995) A Navy veteran on board a train
battles hijackers who possess a weapon with
the potential to trigger earthquakes. Action
adventure sequel with Steven Seagal
11.10 All Elite Wrestling: Rampage.
Hard-hitting, high-flying wrestling action
12.10am FILM: The Purge — Anarchy
(15, 2014) Horror sequel starring Frank Grillo
and Carmen Ejogo 2.10 The Protectors (SL)
2.40 Unwind with ITV 3.00 Teleshopping
11.00am Texas Lady (U, 1955) Western with
Claudette Colbert 12.45pm 12 Angry Men
(U, 1957) Legal drama starring Henry Fonda
(b/w) 2.40 Legend of the Lost (U, 1957)
Adventure starring John Wayne and Sophia
Loren 4.50 A Shot in the Dark (PG, 1964)
Inspector Clouseau comedy starring Peter Sellers
6.55 Central Intelligence (12, 2016) A rogue
CIA agent turns to an old classmate for help
when he is targeted by his own organisation.
Action comedy starring Dwayne Johnson (AD)
9.00 Chaos (15, 2005) A veteran cop and
his inexperienced new partner take on the
mysterious criminal masterminding a series
of hi-tech heists. Crime thriller starring
Jason Statham and Wesley Snipes
11.10 The Old Man & the Gun (12, 2018)
Cop John Hunt becomes determined to catch
veteran bank robber Forrest Tucker. Fact-based
crime drama starring Robert Redford
1.00am-3.25 Force Majeure (15, 2014)
A man finds his relationship with his family
unravelling after he runs away and leaves
them during an avalanche. Drama starring
Johannes Kuhnke and Lisa Loven Kongsli
Drama
6.00am Teleshopping 7.00 Ever Decreasing
Circles 7.45 Bergerac 8.40 The Bill 9.40 Classic
Holby City 11.00 Casualty (AD) 12.00 The Bill
1.00pm Classic EastEnders 2.15 Bergerac 3.20
Lovejoy 4.20 Pie in the Sky 5.20 Ever
Decreasing Circles. Starring Richard Briers
6.00 Butterflies. Ria bumps into Leonard
6.40 Last of the Summer Wine
7.20 Last of the Summer Wine.
Barry is caught acting suspiciously
8.00 Dalziel & Pascoe. A brewery heiress
appears to be the sole witness to the murder
of a serial killer — the only snag being, she
was herself presumed dead (1/4) (AD)
10.00 New Tricks. The team reinvestigates the
murder of a man found in an alleyway when
he is identified on a website covering
unexplained disappearances (9/10) (AD)
11.15 Silent Witness. A horrific car crash poses
troubling questions for Nikki and leads her to
doubt the conclusions she made in an earlier
investigation. Emilia Fox stars (AD)
1.45am Dalziel & Pascoe. Cherie Lunghi
guest stars (AD) 4.00 Teleshopping
8.55am Kirstie’s House of Craft 9.15 A Place in
the Sun 11.05 Find It, Fix It, Flog It 1.05pm
Heir Hunters 2.10 Four in a Bed 4.50 Find It, Fix
It, Flog It 5.55 Escape to the Château: DIY (AD)
6.55 Love It or List It Australia. A couple
disagree over their home in Melbourne (AD)
7.55 Escape to the Château. Dick and Angel
continue renovation work on their château in
France, and despite two-and-a-half years of
attention, lots of problems remain (1/3) (AD)
9.00 24 Hours in A&E. A 27-year-old is brought
in after being thrown from his motorbike at
speed, and a 10-month-old is treated after his
mum caught him sucking on a bleach tablet (AD)
10.00 999: What’s Your Emergency? Situations
in Northamptonshire when people are taken
into police custody, with the rising number of
first-time offenders in custody often leaving
resources stretched to breaking point (AD)
11.05 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. Jimmy
Carr hosts the quiz, with Sean Lock, Johnny
Vegas, Alan Carr and Lou Sanders
12.05am 24 Hours in A&E (AD) 1.10 999:
What’s Your Emergency? (AD) 2.15 24 Hours in
A&E (AD) 3.20-3.45 Food Unwrapped (AD)
Yesterday
6.00am Restoration Workshop 8.00 True Evil:
The Making of a Nazi 9.00 Narrow Escapes of
World War Two (AD) 10.00 Abandoned
Engineering (AD) 12.00 The Architecture the
Railways Built (AD) 1.00pm Great British
Railway Journeys 2.00 Abandoned Engineering
(AD) 4.00 True Evil: The Making of a Nazi 5.00
Narrow Escapes of World War Two (AD)
6.00 Antiques Roadshow. From Cardiff Castle
7.00 Great Continental Railway Journeys.
Travelling through Bohemia and Bavaria
8.00 Scouting for Toys. A Lego enthusiast
prepares to release some of his prized
sets at auction (4/10) (AD)
9.00 Secrets of the London Underground. Tim
Dunn and Siddy Holloway have a night-time
track walk exploring long forgotten stations on
the District Line in Whitechapel (5/6) (AD)
10.00 Bangers and Cash. The actor Cliff Parisi
drops off his Bedford CA campervan (AD)
11.00 Abandoned Engineering (11/12) (AD)
12.00 Great Continental Railway Journeys
1.00am Restoration Workshop. An automobilia
auction at Silverstone 3.00 Teleshopping
7.00pm Born to Be Wild (r) (AD) 8.00
Paramedics on Scene (r) (AD) 9.00 The Nine
10.00 The Hermit of Treig (r) 11.00-12.00
Inside Central Station (r) (AD)
BBC Alba
6.00am Alba Today 5.00pm Pompon Am
Mathan Beag/Pompon Little Bear (r) 5.10
Peataichean/Pets (r) 5.15 Nannag a’ Noo/
Huggleboo (r) 5.25 Ainmhidhean CBeebies (r)
5.30 Rita is Crogall (r) 5.40 Shane an Chef (r)
5.50 Stòiridh (r) 6.00 Na Dana-thursan aig
Tintin/The Adventures of Tintin 6.20 Damhan
& Durrag/Pipas & Douglas (r) 6.30 Clann
Na Cruinne (r) 6.45 Uaine (r) 6.50 Coig
Criomagan CBBC ALBA (r) 7.00 Gaisgich Oga an
Darna Cogaidh (r) 7.25 Dan (r) 7.30
SpeakGaelic (r) 8.00 An Là (News) 8.30 Na
Tiristich (From Tiree with Love) (r) 9.00
Gaisgich sna Glinn (r) 10.00 Trusadh —
Parkinson’s (r) 11.00 Machair. Gaelic soap (r)
11.25 Fraochy Bay (r) 11.30 Slighe Anndra (r)
11.55 Dan (r) 12.00-6.00am Alba Today
S4C
6.00am Cyw: Crads Bach y Traeth (r) 6.05
Jamborî (r) 6.15 Abadas (r) 6.30 Bach a Mawr
(r) 6.45 Sbarc (r) 7.00 Caru Canu (r) 7.05
Timpo (r) 7.15 Fferm Fach (r) 7.30 Pablo 7.45
Deian a Loli (r) 8.00 Shwshaswyn (r) 8.10
Halibalw (r) 8.20 Digbi Draig (r) 8.30
Llan-ar-goll-en (r) 8.45 Twt (r) 9.00 Nico Nôg
(r) 9.10 Sam Tân (r) 9.20 Rapsgaliwn (r) 9.35
Stiw (r) 9.45 Gwdihw (r) 10.00 Sali Mali (r)
10.05 Jamborî (r) 10.15 Twt (r) 10.30 Cei
Bach (r) 10.45 Guto Gwningen (r) 11.00
Anifeiliaid Bach y Byd (r) 11.10 Shwshaswyn
(r) 11.20 Da ’Di Dona (r) 11.30 Pablo (r)
11.45 Awyr Iach (r) 12.00 News; Weather
12.05pm Dau Gi Bach (r) (AD) 12.30 Heno (r)
1.00 Trysor Coll y Royal Charter (r) (AD) 1.30
Ffermio (r) 2.00 News; Weather 2.05
Prynhawn Da 3.00 News; Weather 3.05 Iaith
ar Daith (r) 4.00 Awr Fawr: Sali Mali (r) 4.05
Patrôl Pawennau (r) 4.20 Anifeiliaid Bach y
Byd (r) 4.30 Pablo (r) 4.45 Awyr Iach (r) 5.00
Stwnsh: Gwboi a Twm Twm (r) 5.10 Un
Cwestiwn (r) 5.30 Arthur a Chriw y Ford Gron
(r) 5.40 Boom! (r) 5.55 Ffeil 6.00 Celwydd
Noeth (r) 6.30 Ffilmiau Ddoe (r) 6.35 Bex
6.57 News 7.00 Heno 7.30 News; Weather
8.00 Pobol y Cwm. Kath returns from hospital
(AD) 8.25 Rownd a Rownd (AD) 8.55
News; Weather 9.00 Ffit Cymru 10.00 Y
Gyflwynwraig 11.00-11.35 Nyrsys (r)
 14 Tuesday April 26 2022 | the times

MindGames
Tetonor Moderate No 251 Codeword No 4572 Train Tracks No 1616

© PUZZLER MEDIA
330 43 174 61

35330 306
43 36 61147
174

35 306 36 147
99 20 264 33
99 20 264 33
52 52 162
162 41 288288
41
Lay tracks to enable the train to travel from village A to village
B. The numbers indicate how many sections of rail go in each
2 3 23 3 3 3 63 6 18
18 33
3349 58
49 58 row and column. There are only straight rails and curved rails.
The track cannot cross itself.

When complete, the strip below the grid can be split into eight pairs of
numbers. Adding the numbers in a pair gives one of the 16 numbers in
the grid. Multiplying them gives a different number in the grid. For
Win a Dictionary & Thesaurus
example, a 4 and 6 in the strip could be paired to make 10 (4+6) and 24
(4x6) in the grid. Enter each sum below the corresponding number in the Fill the grid so
grid. The blanks in the strip must be deduced, bearing in mind the that every
numbers are listed in ascending order. column, every
row and every
3x2 box contains
Solutions tomorrow. The next Tetonor puzzle will appear on Thursday Every letter in this crossword-style grid has been substituted for a number from 1
the digits 1 to 6
to 26. Each letter of the alphabet appears in the grid at least once. Use the letters
already provided to work out the identity of further letters. Enter letters in the main
grid and the smaller reference grid until all 26 letters of the alphabet have been
For more puzzles, accounted for. Proper nouns are excluded. Yesterday’s solution, right

including an extra Codeword, Cluelines Stuck on Codeword? To receive 4 random clues call 0901 293 6262 or
text TIMECODE to 64343. Calls cost £1 plus your telephone company’s network
Train Tracks and Futoshiki access charge. Texts cost £1 plus your standard network charge. For the full solution
call 0905 757 0142. Calls cost £1 per minute plus your telephone company’s network
access charge. SP: Spoke, 0333 202 3390 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5.30pm).
go to page 10
Lexica No 6323 No 6324
Winners will receive a Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus
D G I E N C O C T K E Solve the puzzle and text in the numbers in the three
Winning Move shaded boxes. Text TIMES followed by a space, then
G A T M your three numbers, eg, TIMES 123, plus your name,
address and postcode to 84901 (UK only), by midnight.
W________WBlack to play. Or enter by phone. Call 09012 925274 (ROI 1516 303 501)
A R T U
áWDbDW4kD]This position is from Gusarow-
Reutsky, Swidnica 2000.
by midnight. Leave your three answer numbers (in any
order) and your contact details.
àDWDW0pgp] O I I T
Calls cost £1 (ROI €1.50) plus your telephone company’s
ßWDW0WDpD]The positions this week are all
from games that started with the G V A L network access charge. Texts cost £1 plus your standard
ÞDWDWhWDW]Sicilian Dragon variation (1 e4 c5 network charge. Winners will be picked at random from
all correct answers received. One draw per week. Lines
2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 O E C U
ÝWGWDPDPD]Nc3 g6). This is a dynamic line close at midnight tonight. If you call or text after this
ÜDPDWDPDW]that often leads to creative
attacking play. The key piece for
L E K
time you will not be entered but will still be charged.
SP: Spoke, 0333 202 3390 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5.30pm).
ÛWDP!BDW)]Black is the powerful “Dragon” E R D G I R B U O A I T
Ú1NIRDWDR]bishop on g7. How did it emerge
as the principal player in the
Slide the letters either horizontally or vertically back into the grid to produce a What are your favourite puzzles in MindGames?
WÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈWdrama that followed? completed crossword. Letters are allowed to slide over other letters Email: puzzles@thetimes.co.uk

KenKen Medium No 5564 Futoshiki No 4202 Kakuro No 3161

Fill the grid

using the
8 3 23 13 16 34 20 numbers 1 to 9
6 16 24 only. The
numbers in each
24 12 horizontal or
16 28 vertical run of
6 white squares
add up to the
32 12 total in the
© 2010 KENKEN PUZZLE & TM NEXTOY. DIST. BY UFS, INC. WWW.KENKEN.COM

33 32 triangle to its left

14 3 8 or above it. The
same number
16 17 13 3 may occur more
19 11 than once in a
row or column,
but not within
21 21 the same run of
4 18 white squares.
11 3 13
23 13 6
8 15
16 13 16
28 32
© PUZZLER MEDIA

All the digits 1 to 6 must appear in every row and column. In Fill the blank squares so that every row and column contains
each thick-line “block”, the target number in the top left-hand each of the numbers 1 to 5 once only. The symbols between 23 4 14
corner is calculated from the digits in all the cells in the block, the squares indicate whether a number is larger (>) or smaller
using the operation indicated by the symbol. (<) than the number next to it.
the times | Tuesday April 26 2022 15

MindGames
times2
T2 Crossword No 8888
CROSSWORD No 8888 Brain Trainer Cell Blocks No 4455
Just follow the instructions from left to right, starting with the number given to reach an answer at the end.
Divide the grid

© PUZZLER MEDIA
ANSWER ANSWER ANSWER
1 2 3 4 5 6
into square or
7 8
EASY 24 – 2 ÷ 11 SQUARE
IT
+9 x 3 – 12 2/
3
OF IT
–7 x5 rectangular
blocks, each
containing one
9 10 digit only. Every
block must
MEDIUM 97 x 6 – 88 + 1/2
OF IT
– 65
3/
4
OF IT
– 17 80%
OF IT
+ 66 50%
OF IT
contain the
number of cells
11 12 indicated by the
digit inside it.
13
HARDER 126 x 4 + 341 4/
5 x 4 + 862 50% + 555 x 3 – 345
OF IT OF IT
14 15 16

17

18 19 20
Polygon Set Square No 3164

21 From these letters, make words of Enter each of

three or more letters, always including the numbers
the central letter. Answers must be in from 1 to 9 in
22 23
the Concise Oxford Dictionary, excluding the grid, so that
capitalised words, plurals, conjugated the six sums
verbs (past tense etc), adverbs ending work. We’ve
in LY, comparatives and superlatives. placed two
24 How you rate 10 words, average; numbers to get
14, good; 18, very good; 23, excellent you started.

© PUZZLER MEDIA
Each sum
Across 18 First painter to be given a Yesterday’s answers should be
1 Mentions one by one (10) peerage in 1896 (8) calculated left
ash, ashy, dash, dosa, dosh, dosha, sad,
to right or top
20 Scots family group (4) saw, say, shad, shadow, shadowy, shady,
9 Surface for vehicles (7) to bottom.
22 Informal language (5) shaw, shay, show, showy, shy, sod, soda,
10 Using sound waves (5) soh, sow, soy, soya, sway, swy, wash, washy
23 Wind bringing rains (7)
11 Biblical first man (4) 24 A return to parliament (2-8) Please note, BODMAS does not apply
12 Len —, author (8)
14 Hill; elevation (6) Down Killer Moderate No 8272 Solutions
15 Heaviness (6) 2 Tailed amphibian (4)
3 Chaos (6) Quick Cryptic 2120 Codeword 4571 Kakuro 3160
Solution to Crossword 8887
4 Calmly submissive (8) F L A T OU T T I D Y 3 1 9 7 3 1
B I C E P S MA SO N
E O A S O T O 5 Principle, belief (5) L N M O E I 1 2 4 6 8 9 7 1 2
A S K B UNG A L OW 5 7 9 8 8 9 6 4
L UN G I P ER F EC T 6 Unsurpassed (6,2,4) T L U G C P
5 6 9 8 9 6 5
I T S E A A L O 7 Driver's alcohol detector (12) T R E A D UN C L E A R
9 8 6 7 8 8 1 5
SMA L L RE L E AR N E S E H S O
8 Spicy sausage (6) R E S UME C A R E S S 7 9 8 1 3 5 2 1
H I E E G Y I A A C P P 9 7 8 7 1 3 2
ANN OY S A PO L L O 13 City in the Netherlands
N OM I N A L E E R I E 8 9 3 1 2 9 3 7
B V T A A U (3,5) G O O R A R 6 7 1 2 5 4 8 8 9
EMB A S S Y T I ME R E S P R E S S O T OO
16 Eight pints (6) A E E N E U
1 3 3 1 9 7
A O E RA T I L 17 Prepare (a disk for data) (6) U S E D T R E L L I S Train Tracks 1615
CAD EN CE ENNU I
O G S S R A F 19 Silly (5) Sudoku 13,161 Quintagram Suko 3473
N I E CE UN T RU E 21 Facts, knowledge (4) 1 Crook
2 Clark
Need help with today’s puzzle? Call 0905 757 0143 to check the 3 Beat it
answers. Calls cost £1 per minute plus your telephone company’s 4 Half-inch
network access charge. SP: Spoke, 0333 202 3390 (Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm). 5 Fishbowl

Brain Trainer
Bridge Andrew Robson Easy 55; Medium 229; Harder 6,669

Cell Blocks 4454 Set Square 3163 Lexica 6321

The English women’s team had a Dealer: South, Vulnerability: Neither
very good 45th World Sudoku 13,162
W Z O O
Teams ♠ 52
Championships (for the Venice A I L I
Cup), which finished just over a ♥A K J 5
fortnight ago in Salsomagiorre, ♦A K 7 3
♣K J 5 Killer Tough No 8273 L I D L E

northern Italy. They finished sec- ♠ KJ4 ♠ 10 9 8 6 L L

N
ond (out of 24) in the round-robin ♥6 2 W E ♥ 10 8 O V A L
stage then promptly defeated the ♦9 6 5 4 2 S ♦Q W C
always-fancied France in the quar- ♣A 10 9 ♠ AQ 7 3 ♣8 7 6 4 3 2
ter-final. Actually, when I say ♥Q 9 7 4 3
“promptly”, the quarter-finals were Futoshiki 4201 KenKen 5563 Lexica 6322
♦J 10 8
not prompt as an unscheduled ♣Q W I S D O M
day-off occurred after a covid out- Sudoku 13,163
break almost caused the knockout S(Dhondy) W N(Senior) E R C

stages to be cancelled/postponed. 1♥ Pass 2NT(1) Pass Y E S C

Always vital to get off to a good 4♥ (2) Pass 5♦(3) Pass
A C H U M
start in long head-to-head matches, 6♥ (4) End
K A R
this was Board Three (of 96) from (1) The excellent Jacoby convention —
that quarterfinal (which England Nevena Senior from Nottingham shows her A N Y

won 219-170). game-forcing heart raise.

When Heather Dhondy of
Dorset was declaring, the French
West attacked with a spade lead.
This could have been the killer
lead if East had held the queen.
Not this time. Declarer happily
won the queen, drew trumps,
forced out the ace of clubs, and
was soon claiming her slam.
At the other table, Catherine
Draper of Lancashire sitting West
led a passive heart. The French
declarer won in dummy, drew a
second heart, and led a club to the
queen. West won the ace and led
another club. Declarer won in
dummy and discarded a diamond
from hand. Fatally. She then led a
spade to the queen and conceded
one down when the finesse lost.
Declarer missed a small cost-
nothing extra chance. When West
returns that second club, she
should discard a spade from hand.
She then cashes the ace of dia-
(2) Minimum.
(3) Still worth a try for slam. 5♦ is a control
bid, implying weakness in the black suits.
(4) With controls in both blacks, South
accepts.
Contract: 6♥ , Opening Lead: ♥ 2
monds. If both opponents follow
small (as they will the vast majori-
ty of the time), she can cash the
other club, discarding a diamond
this time, then take the spade
finesse. As she did.
Here, however, the bare queen
of diamonds falls under dummy’s
ace. No longer does declarer need
the spade finesse because she has
four diamond tricks — to go with
five hearts, two clubs and the ace
of spades. Slam made. In effect,
declarer discarded (what would
transpire to be) a winning dia-
mond, not a losing spade, on
dummy’s second club.
andrew.robson@thetimes.co.uk
Chess — Winning Move Word watch
1 ... Nc4! threatens the white Decimo-sexto (c) An
queen as well as 2 ... Qb2 mate. insignificant person or thing
At first 2 Bc3 looks like a (Brewer’s)
Killer 8270
defence but 2 ... Qb2+! 3 Bxb2 Urostege (b) A plate on a
Bxb2 is a beautiful mate snake’s tail (Collins)
Wimble (b) A tool for boring
holes (Chambers)
Quiz
As with standard Sudoku, fill the grid so that every column, Killer 8271 1 The Barber of Seville by Rossini 2 Lung
every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. Each set 3 Luxembourg 4 Biennial 5 Travelling Post Office
of cells joined by dotted lines must add up to the target number 6 Barclays Bank — the world’s first ATM was
in its top-left corner. Within each set of cells joined by dotted inaugurated by On the Buses star Reg Varney
lines, a digit cannot be repeated. 7 Superman & Lois 8 Vishnu 9 DeBarge 10 Babies
11 Cod tongue cutter 12 Persis Khambatta
Cluelines Stuck on Sudoku, Killer or KenKen? Call 0901 293 13 Harry Potter 14 Saïd Aouita 15 Harley-Davidson
6263 before midnight to receive four clues for any of today’s We apologise for the error in Q6 of yesterday’s Times
puzzles. Calls cost £1 plus your telephone company’s network
Daily Quiz. Raine Spencer was Barbara Cartland’s
access charge. SP: Spoke, 0333 202 3390 (Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm). only daughter, not her only child.
 26.04.22

For extra
puzzles
See page 10

Word watch Sudoku Mild No 13,164 Difficult No 13,165 Super fiendish No 13,166
David Parfitt

Decimo-sexto
a A 16th birthday
b A large brass
instrument
c An insignificant
person or thing

Urostege
a A bear handler
b A plate on a snake’s
tail
c A later-life student

Wimble
a A nun’s headdress
b A tool for boring holes
c A litter-picking device

Answers on page 15

© PUZZLER MEDIA
Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9.

The Times Daily Quiz Olav Bjortomt Suko No 3473

ALAMY
1 The Looney Tunes 11 In northern Norway,
cartoon Rabbit of what is the fishing
Seville (1950) features season job of
music from which 1816 children known as
opera buffa? “tungeskjaererne”?

2 A pulmonary 12 Which Indian model

lobectomy is surgery played Lieutenant Ilia
to remove part of in Star Trek: The Motion
which organ? Picture (1979)?

3 The Low Countries 13 What novels inspired

are Belgium, the the upcoming open-
Netherlands and which world video game
landlocked country? Hogwarts Legacy?
15
4 Which word describes 14 In 1987, which
a flowering plant that in Enfield, North London which Hindu god? Moroccan became
requires two years to on June 27, 1967? the first athlete to run
complete its life cycle? 9 Rhythm of the Night was the 5000m in under
7 Tyler Hoechlin and a 1985 No 4 hit for which 13 minutes?
5 Which term for a Elizabeth Tulloch play Motown family group? Place the numbers 1 to 9 in the spaces so
type of mail train used the married title DC 15 Which US that the number in each circle is equal to
in Great Britain is Comics characters in 10 At the El Colacho company’s Electra the sum of the four surrounding spaces,
abbreviated TPO? which TV series? festival in Castrillo de Glide Standard and each colour total is correct
Murcia, Spain, men motorcycle is pictured?
6 Which bank unveiled a 8 Mohini is the only dressed as devils jump For interactive puzzles visit
cash machine at a branch female incarnation of over who? Answers on page 15 thetimes.co.uk

The Times Quick Cryptic No 2121 by Orpheus

1 2 3 4 5 6 Across Down
1 Empty-headedness and spite 2 Bungling councillor — like
7 associated with son (10) Perkins, ultimately (5)
8 American attorney with face- 3 Daughter in coach finally
8 9
covering — silk or linen, organising buying and selling
perhaps (6) (7)
9 Farm animal outside possessed 4 The Italian king’s type (3)
tail (6) 5 Former version of Welsh rite
10 A way one identifies sparkling (9)
10 11 wine (4) 6 Begin second baked dish (5)
11 Commercial centre of Newry, 7 Shore bird raised tail, having
for example? (8) intelligence (6)
12 Ugly old women consuming 11 Ignore police officers on patrol,
12 13 14 15 US soldier’s Scottish dish (6) it’s said (9)
14 Eg prisoner’s trendy sidekick 13 Dismount in flames (6)
(6) 15 Small carnivore: no more than
16 Unattached girl’s mountainous a moggy, do we hear? (7)
16 17 18 19 island (8) 17 Greek island favoured at first
18 Old Norse poems from some in my university (5)
unremembered days (4) 19 Go ballistic making ring-
20 Female artist capturing shaped cake across the pond!
head of plucky Asian (5)
20 21 mountaineer (6) 21 Watering hole buffaloes and
21 Cooking a bannock finally in rhinos initially used (3)
Crosby (6)
22 Make little of being subject to
22 body politic (10)
Yesterday’s solution on page 15