Investment firm Abrdn will add the vowels back into its name after dropping them in a rebrand that was widely mocked.

The firm said it will now be called aberdeen group, with no capital letter at the start. In the past it has been Aberdeen Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management.

Its rebrand to Abrdn in 2021 was largely derided, with some saying it seemed like a typo, and others joking the firm had “irritable vowel syndrome”. The company said the mockery amounted to “corporate bullying”.

Chief executive Jason Windsor said the latest name change would remove “distractions”.

“This is a pragmatic decision marking a new phase for the organisation,” said chief executive Jason Windsor, as he revealed a strategy revamp.

The firm has faced a barrage of mockery over the last four years since rebranding to Abrdn under previous boss Stephen Bird.

It attracted reaction on social media with one user posting a mock-up of word game Countdown. The letters ABRDN are shown on the letter board behind presenter Rachel Riley, with the words “another consonant please Rachel…”

A new version of the image was posted on Tuesday with one user joking that reinstating the vowels was responsible for the firm’s share price rising.

When a senior executive said in 2024 that mockery around its name was corporate bullying, the Financial Times responded by publishing a post that read “Lv Abrdn aln” (Leave Abrdn alone), while City AM ran with a front page that read “Abrdn: an apology – sry we kp tkng th pss ot of yr mssng vwls”.

Rebrands for big firms have in the past proven tricky to navigate. Royal Mail, for example, caused a public outcry after it suggested a name change to “Consignia” in 2002.

A few years ago, Volkswagen was greeted with derision after an April Fool’s joke misfired. The German car giant was forced to deny that it was changing its name to “Voltswagen” in the US, despite having said in a press release that it would.

Tuesday’s announcement from aberdeen group came as it revealed a return to profit in 2024 with pre-tax profits of £251m.

As part of Mr Windsor’s new strategy, he said he was starting the search for a new chairman and increasing targets for profit growth.

The company said it expected costs associated with the name change to be “negligible”.

Scottish painter Jack Vettriano, best known for his painting The Singing Butler, has died at the age of 73.

His publicist said the artist was found dead at his apartment in Nice, in the south of France, on Saturday.

It is understood there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

Vettriano, who was born Jack Hoggan on 17 November 1951 in Methil, Fife, was a self-taught artist.

He left school at 16 years of age to become a mining engineer.

For his 21st birthday, he was given a set of watercolour paints and, from then on, he spent much of his spare time teaching himself to paint.

He drew inspiration from works at Kirkcaldy Galleries, studying paintings from artists such as Samuel Peploe and William McTaggart so intently that he feared arousing the suspicions of gallery staff.

His breakthrough came in 1998 when he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy’s annual show and both sold on the first day, inspiring him to become a full-time artist.

While often dismissed by critics, his works garnered international acclaim, leading to exhibitions in cities such as Edinburgh, London, Hong Kong, Johannesburg and New York.

His best-known work, The Singing Butler, sold at auction in 2004 for £744,800 – a Scottish record at the time.

It depicts an elegant couple dancing on a storm-swept beach accompanied by their butler and maid.

Among those who acquired Vettriano paintings were Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Tim Rice and Robbie Coltrane.

His publicist said: “Jack Vettriano’s passing marks the end of an era for contemporary Scottish art.

“His evocative and timeless works will continue to captivate and inspire future generations.”

Families of children and young people with cancer are struggling financially for several months waiting for benefits to help cover extra costs caused by the illness, according to a charity.

Young Lives vs Cancer says families need “immediate” help with additional living costs, which amount to £700 a month on average – and is calling for quicker access to the funds.

One family has said they were left “financially broken” by the extra living costs after their 16-year-old son Oliver’s leg had to be amputated because he had a rare type of cancer.

The government says it is committed to giving people access to benefits in a “timely manner”, but acknowledges that “waits are too high”.

Kerry Bolton, from Solihull, said she had to wait five months before a decision was made on her benefits application after her son Oliver was diagnosed with cancer, aged 16.

“The hospital is an hour away from us and I don’t drive. It was costing us £48 a day for us to travel in taxis there and back.”

Oliver later underwent a leg amputation, meaning his family had to buy new clothes to fit him.

They also faced higher electricity bills to charge his prosthetic leg, Ms Bolton said.

“Ollie’s leg needs electricity…if I don’t have electricity, he can’t walk.”

Ms Bolton said she also had to use more energy to heat her home to keep Oliver warm, because of his immunosuppression treatment.

During a child’s cancer treatment, families may need to travel to distant appointments, buy special food, use more electricity and heating, pay for childcare for siblings, and stay in hotels.

Under UK law, cancer patients may be entitled to benefits to help with costs.

However, patients are not eligible for financial support until they have been ill for three months.

They then face a further wait of four months on average for their application to be assessed, according to Young Lives vs Cancer, which has interviewed hundreds of patients and put out a new report.

The charity is calling for families to qualify for benefits immediately following a diagnosis.

Danielle Roberts, from North Wales, told the BBC that she experienced financial “strain” as soon as her nine-year-old daughter Jasmine was diagnosed with cancer last year, but she did not receive any benefits for eight months.

“We were just thrown into this world where…our child’s got cancer and we don’t know if she’s going to survive, along with dealing with the financial impact.

“You’ve still got all these bills to pay on top of going back and forward to hospital, which was an hour and 15 minutes away, extra food, accommodation”.

Ms Roberts said having to take long periods off work added to the financial strain.

“My income was dramatically reduced because it’s hard to work when your child is in hospital… and you don’t want to work, you should be able to spend time with your child when they’re poorly.”

“What we’re seeing is heartbreaking,” Young People vs Cancer’s chief executive Rachel Kirby-Rider told the BBC.

“People don’t have that disposable income, they don’t have that money in savings.

“Having to wait seven months for disability benefits is driving a lot of families into debt and impacting families at a time they just want to concentrate on getting their child well.”

The charity is also concerned about the application process, as the 50-page forms were “tricky, long and complex”, asking families for detailed descriptions about their child’s needs.

The process should be made “simple and efficient”, it says, by using medical evidence alone to make applications.

Ms Roberts said she struggled to find the “head space” to complete the application form when her daughter Jasmine was ill.

“They asked so many questions and you’ve got to send added proof… you don’t want to have to think about that really as well as ‘is my child going to be OK?’.

“It’s something that shouldn’t have to be done when you’re going through that traumatic time.”

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring people can access financial support through Personal Independence Payment and Disability Living Allowance for children in a timely manner.

“But we recognise waits are too high, and we have increased the number of staff to respond to the increase in claim volumes.”

The Covid public inquiry will start four weeks of hearings on Monday, looking into the purchase and distribution of billions of pounds’ worth of medical equipment during the pandemic.

In total, it’s thought £48bn was spent on personal protective equipment (PPE), the test-and-trace programme, hospital supplies and the vaccine rollout.

Nearly 10% of contracts were awarded to firms with a link to the Conservative government in power at the time, according to the organisation Transparency International.

Bereaved families have accused the inquiry of a “potential whitewash” after it emerged representatives of PPE suppliers will not be called upon to give evidence.

This fifth section of the inquiry will hear from 50 witnesses, expected to include law experts, civil servants, politicians and transparency campaigners.

Questioning will cover the value of contracts awarded to companies in the pandemic, spending controls, the prevalence of fraud and the steps taken to eliminate it.

The inquiry will also look in detail at the use of the so-called “VIP lane” – officially known as the high priority lane – to award government contracts.

Introduced in April 2020, the idea was to treat offers to supply PPE with greater urgency if they came with a recommendation from ministers, MPs, members of the House of Lords, or other senior officials.

At the time the government said there was a “desperate need” to protect health and social care staff, and it was argued swift action was required to secure PPE.

A National Audit Office report later found that up to the end of July 2020, about one in 10 suppliers in the high priority lane was awarded a contract, while the figure was less than one in 100 for other suppliers.

The government ordered more than 30m masks, gowns and other items of PPE during Covid, with contracts totalling £14.6bn.

This part of the inquiry will also look at the purchase of ventilators to help patients breathe, as well as millions of lateral flow and PCR tests.

Bereaved families have accused the inquiry of “protecting PPE suppliers from scrutiny”, after it emerged the inquiry would not seek evidence from commercial firms involved in the contracts.

Lobby Akinnola, whose father Femi died in April 2020, said individual suppliers need to be held to account.

“If people are not called to give evidence, then how are we ever going to know what went wrong?” he asked.

“Covid cost the lives of nearly 250,000 people in the UK, and if we don’t take every step we can to learn from mistakes, we are going to leave a weakness in our response.”

A spokesman for the Covid inquiry said it did not need to hear evidence directly from PPE firms as the focus “is on how the government responded to suppliers’ offers”.

“Our role is not to pursue criminal investigations into individuals or suppliers – that is a matter for law enforcement,” he said.

The inquiry also ruled in January that any sensitive evidence about PPE Medpro, the supplier linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman, would be held in private to avoid prejudicing any criminal investigation.

The inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett, has already taken evidence on other subjects including pandemic planning and political decision-making, the impact on the NHS and the vaccine rollout.

Future phases later this year will cover the care sector, test-and-trace, the impact on children, and the economy.

The latest increase in rail fares in England and Wales is set to pile “further misery on hard-pressed households”, a campaign group has said.

From Sunday, regulated rail fares in England and Wales have risen by 4.6% and the price of most railcards has increased by £5.

The government says fares need to rise so it can invest in the rail system, but Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander acknowledged passengers were “frustrated” by delays and cancellations.

The Campaign for Better Transport said people were being “priced off the railways” by fare increases.

The rail fare rise for regulated tickets includes most season tickets covering commuter routes in England, which can cost thousands of pounds.

Some off-peak returns on long-distance journeys, and flexible tickets for travelling in and around cities will also rise.

Train operators set their own prices for unregulated fares, but these tend to increase by a similar amount to regulated fares, including on lines that have already been renationalised.

About 45% of train fares are regulated in England, Wales and Scotland, but the 4.6% rise relates to travel in England and Wales only.

In Scotland, rail fares are set to increase by 3.8% in April.

In Northern Ireland, the nationalised Translink service said no decision had yet been taken by the Department for Infrastructure on whether rail fares will go up in 2025.

The cost of most railcards has also gone up by about £5, from about £30, but disabled railcards remain the same price.

The Campaign for Better Transport said the fare increases would add to the pressure on households, coming on top of higher food and energy costs.

Michael Solomon Williams, head of campaigns at the group, said high ticket prices were the “number one barrier to getting more people travelling by rail”, and called on the government to bring down fares as part of rail reforms.

“People are being hit hard,” he told the BBC. “People want to take the train and they’re being priced off the railways.

“At the same time fuel duty’s being frozen. Government has the choice, it can choose to intervene.”

The campaign group said out of 40 commuter routes into London, annual season tickets for three will top £6,000 for the first time, with 10 others already there.

Annual season tickets from Canterbury and Southampton into London will go up by more than £300 to £7,100 and £7,477 respectively.

Adrian Rose, 50, from Sittingbourne in Kent says hiking rail fares when they are already “crazily expensive” is not justifiable.

For him and his wife and two daughters to drive from Kent to see relatives in Newcastle is no more than £100 in fuel for the family, whereas to go by train can cost more than £400 if booking close to the departure date.

“The cost is prohibitive,” he says.

“I would happily take the train, but for over four times the cost? I could have a week’s holiday for that money.”

But Celia Downie, who uses the train regularly for work and leisure, says she will continue to do so “however much it costs”, because “I can work on the train and I believe it is environmentally proper to do so”.

But the 68-year-old from Bristol, who has a Senior Railcard, also believes prices are too high for families and says sometimes the experience of cramped carriages is “absolutely appalling”.

Heidi Alexander said she understood passenger frustration that fares keep rising “despite unacceptable levels of delays and cancellations”.

However, she said it was the lowest absolute increase in fares for three years.

“We inherited a railway that was not fit for purpose, and I know it will take time for trust to be restored, with trains turning up on time, when and where they’re needed.”

Alex Robertson, chief executive of watchdog Transport Focus, said its research had found a “a clear mismatch between ticket prices and the service people receive”.

“This needs to change,” he added, saying that passengers “rightly expect… to see improvements for the money they have paid”.

The government plans to renationalise rail firms as operators’ contracts either end or reach a break.

However, although three rail operators are set to be renationalised this year – South Western Railway, C2C and Greater Anglia – this is not expected to bring ticket prices down.

It is setting up a new arms-length body, Great British Railways (GBR), to take over service contracts currently held by private firms as they expire in the coming years.

Conservative shadow transport secretary Gareth Bacon said price increases showed that Labour’s pledges to make rail fares cheaper were “meaningless” and commuters were instead facing “chaos, confusion and cancellation” on the railways.

“Labour’s radical plans to hand control of the railways to the unions will only worsen services,” he said.

“Under new leadership, the Conservatives would put passengers first, ensuring that any fare increases are fair and proportionate.”

Additional reporting by James Kelly

In Union County, South Carolina, the sprawling cotton mills that once put bread on the table for many are long gone. Union is also what is termed a “food desert”, where many residents live far from the nearest supermarket. So in 2016, local non-profit director Elise Ashby began working with farmers to deliver discounted boxes of farm-fresh produce across the county, where 30% of the population is black and roughly 25% live in poverty.

To fund this, Ms Ashby first relied on her own savings and then some small-scale grants. But in 2023, the Walmart Foundation – the philanthropic arm of one of America’s largest corporations – awarded her over $100,000 (£80,000), as part of a $1.5m programme to fund “community-based non-profits led by people of colour”.

“I cried a little bit,” she says. “It was just one of those times where, like, somebody actually sees what you’re doing.”

Two years ago, this was the kind of programme that attracted sponsorship from major companies across America, as the country grappled with racism past and present following the murder of George Floyd, a black man suffocated under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer during an arrest in 2020.

But now, those same companies are pulling back. Walmart announced in November that it was ending some of its diversity initiatives, including plans to close its Center for Racial Equity, which supported Ms Ashby’s grant.

Corporations from Meta and Google to Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s have all announced similar changes as part of a larger retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion programmes (DEI) across the corporate landscape.

The moment represents a stark cultural shift, fuelled in part by fears of lawsuits, investigations, and social media backlash, as well as relentless pressure from the new president of the United States.

Since assuming office in January, Donald Trump has aggressively sought to “terminate DEI” and “restore merit-based opportunity” in the US. He has directed the federal government to end its DEI programmes and investigate private companies and academic institutions thought to be engaged in “illegal DEI”.

In the early days of his second term, the Veterans Affairs department has closed its DEI offices, the Environmental Protection Agency has placed nearly 200 employees who worked in its civil rights office on paid leave and Trump has fired the top military general, a black man whom his defence secretary had previously said should be fired because of his involvement in “woke” DEI.

At first sight, it may appear that the US’s experiment with policies designed to improve outcomes for specific racial and identity-based groups is finished. But some experts suggest there’s another possibility, that some such efforts will continue – but in a different guise, one more suited to the political mood of a country that has just elected a president who has pledged a war on “woke”.

Programmes resembling DEI first emerged in earnest in the US in the 1960s, in the wake of the civil rights movement that fought to protect and expand the rights of black Americans.

Under names like “affirmative action” and “equal opportunity”, initially their aim was to reverse the damaging effects of centuries of enslavement of African Americans and decades of discrimination under “Jim Crow” laws that enforced racial segregation.

As the movement evolved, promoting the rights of women, the LGBT community, and other racial and ethnic groups, use of the terms “diversity”, “equity” and “inclusion” became more widespread.

DEI programmes in the corporate world and government agencies have often focused on hiring practices and policies emphasising diversity as a commercial benefit. Their supporters say they aim to address disparities affecting people from a range of backgrounds, though a significant emphasis tends to be on race.

The programmes saw a huge upswing in 2020 during the social unrest of the Black Lives Matter movement. For example, Walmart committed $100m over five years to its racial equity centre. Wells Fargo appointed its first chief diversity officer; Google and Nike already had theirs in place. After adjusting their hiring practices, companies listed on the S&P 100 added more than 300,000 jobs – 94% of which went to people of colour, according to Bloomberg.

But almost as quickly as the pendulum swung left, a conservative backlash began. For Stefan Padfield, executive director of conservative think-tank the National Center for Public Policy Research, DEI programmes are based on a premise that “divides people on the basis of race and sex”.

More recently, these arguments that programmes intended to combat discrimination were themselves discriminatory, particularly against white Americans, have been made with increasing force. Training sessions emphasising concepts like “white privilege” and racial bias have drawn particular scrutiny.

The roots of this opposition took hold in conservative opposition to critical race theory (CRT), an academic concept which argues racism is endemic to American society. Over time, the campaign to remove books from classrooms that allegedly indoctrinated students into CRT thinking evolved into one focused on “punishing woke corporations”.

Social media accounts like End Wokeness and conservative activists such as Robby Starbuck seized the moment to target companies accused of being “woke”. Mr Starbuck has taken credit for changes in policy at the likes of Ford, John Deere and Harley-Davidson after he publicised details of their DEI initiatives to his social media followers.

One of the clearest signs of this movement’s strength came in spring 2023, after a Bud Light partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked right-wing outrage and calls for a boycott of the beer and its parent company Anheuser-Busch. In the aftermath of the campaign, Bud Light sales were 28% lower than usual, a Harvard Business Review analysis found.

Another major victory for conservatives arrived in June 2023, when the Supreme Court ruled that race could no longer be considered as a factor in university admissions, reversing decades of affirmative action-based policy.

The ruling also cast the legal standing of corporate DEI policies into uncertainty. When Meta made the internal announcement it was cancelling DEI programmes, the company told staff “the legal and policy landscape” surrounding DEI had changed.

The speed at which some large corporations have shed their DEI policies raises the question of how genuine their commitment to diversifying their workforces was in the first place.

Martin Whittaker, chief executive at JUST Capital, a non-profit that surveys Americans on workplace issues, says much of the backtracking comes from companies who were “rushing to kind of look good” at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.

But not all are yielding to political and legal pressure. Conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation noted in a November report that although DEI programmes appear to be trending downwards, “nearly all” Fortune 500 companies still list DEI commitments somewhere on their websites. Apple shareholders recently voted to continue diversity programmes at the company.

Surveys that measure Americans’ support for DEI offer mixed results. JUST Capital’s survey suggests support for DEI has declined, but support for issues closely linked to it – such as fair pay – have not. A 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center suggested most employed adults (56%) believed “focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing”.

Much rests on the question of whether DEI is actually effective in the first place.

Some research has suggested that DEI programmes like diversity training can in fact be harmful. According to one study by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Tel Aviv, trainers commonly report hostility and resistance from employees who feel forced to do the training and threatened by what they see as reverse discrimination; it also says the programmes can often leave trainees feeling more hostility towards other groups.

This research has been seized on by DEI’s opponents as part of the evidence that “the best way to improve the lives of all our citizens, and all our neighbours, is to allow the free market to lift all the boats”, as Mr Padfield puts it.

The problem with this kind of thinking, according to Siri Chilazi, a researcher focused on gender equity at Harvard University, is that there is no historical precedent to suggest that racial and gender imbalances will correct themselves. Mrs Chilazi says racial and gender barriers still exist and believes DEI solutions focused on “levelling the playing field for all” are needed.

She cites multiple experiments that show white men disproportionately receive more responses after applying for jobs than women or people of colour. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research sent identical CVs to roughly 100 of the largest US companies and found that applicants presumed to be white were contacted by employers 9.5% more often than applicants presumed to be black – with one company contacting presumed white applicants 43% more often.

But Mrs Chilazi also says there are genuine issues with many DEI programmes, adding that the most common programmes – including diversity and unconscious bias training and employee resource or affinity groups – are often the least effective. A recent study highlighting the ineffectiveness of some DEI practices said a common issue was treating them as an end goal in themselves, without measurable outcomes.

And when it comes to large corporations donating money towards DEI initiatives – like Walmart’s equity centre – Mrs Chilazi says the problem is that there is not much data to show how effective this is. “This is an area where we actually don’t have good research,” she says.

Where studies have shown DEI to be effective is when it comes to making “small systemic changes”, she says. There is evidence to suggest replacing open-ended questions in performance evaluations with more specific ones, such as “what’s the one biggest accomplishment of this person last year?”, has shown significant reductions in gender and racial evaluation gaps that can affect pay, according to Mrs Chilazi.

Supporters of DEI say the real-world impact of the shift from it can be seen at Harvard University, which was targeted in the landmark Supreme Court case.

Last autumn, Harvard Law School reported having only 19 first-year black students among more than 500 students that enrolled, according to the American Bar Association. That was less than half the number from the previous year – 43 – and the lowest since the 1960s. The law school also saw a significant decline in Hispanic student enrolment, which dropped from 63 to 39 between 2023 and 2024.

Colleges and schools have already begun making adjustments in response to the new climate. At one university, a lunar new year celebration was cancelled; another ended a decades-long forum on race. Elsewhere, social clubs for black and Asian students have been disbanded.

But the ruling’s impact does not appear straightforward. Enrolment numbers for black and Hispanic students at some other top US colleges have actually increased since the Supreme Court’s decision.

For the freshman class that arrived in the autumn, Northwestern University saw an 11% rise in enrolment for black students and a 13% increase for Hispanic students.

Because of results like these, some DEI opponents have accused universities of flouting the court’s ruling.

But another explanation offered for the increase in diversity at some universities is a shift towards “socio-economic inclusion” instead of race and ethnicity – which nonetheless appears to have achieved the same objective.

Dartmouth University’s Hispanic student enrolment jumped from 9.7% to 12.7% last year, after adjusting to make the school “more accessible for low- and middle-income families”, it said in a press release.

It’s clear that the anti-DEI campaigns are having a significant real-world impact. “I think we are in the midst of a big shift,” says Mrs Chilazi.

Michelle Jolivet, author of Is DEI Dead?: The Rebranding of Inclusive Organizations, says she is worried that the anti-DEI movement will lead to progress stalling for historically disadvantaged groups.

“Things that matter are measured, and when you stop measuring them, they stop happening,” she says. “Then you do stop making progress.”

But as to the question at the centre of her book – is DEI dead? – Jolivet says the answer is no.

The companies that appear to have cancelled their DEI programmes are not really eliminating them, she says. Instead, they are just rebranding and reorganising to escape potential lawsuits.

She gave the example of Walmart renaming its chief diversity officer to chief belonging officer. Similarly, McDonald’s gave one of its programmes a facelift, changing the name of its Global DEI Center of Excellence to the Global Inclusion Team.

“DEI has become more of a controversial word,” she says. “If I just take that word out, I can still do the same thing.”

But not everyone is reassured.

Back in the fields of Union County, Elise Ashby looks towards the future with uncertainty. The grant from Walmart gave her access to capital that she argues black-owned businesses often struggle to obtain.

She fears a return to when she “stayed up nights” wondering where the next cheque would come from and facing the kind of obstacles “white men don’t have”.

She says: “Am I concerned about the future? Absolutely.”

Additional reporting by Natalie Sherman

Top image credit: Getty Images

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Many of the stars of Toxic Town had not heard of the scandal the drama is based on, but are hoping the Netflix retelling will bring it into the spotlight.

The show follows the real-life battle of families in Corby, Northamptonshire, whose children were born with defects in the 1980s and 90s.

In court it was argued that toxic airborne pollutants from the town’s demolished steelworks had harmed unborn babies.

Actor Brendan Coyle, who was born in Corby, admitted he had been unaware of the story, but said there was excitement in his hometown to see it told to the world.

“One of the mothers has been in touch… It’s kind of the talk of the town. People are excited about it,” he said.

“For them, the mothers and these children, to have their story told… it’s amazing. It’s something that’s been buried for a long time in terms of people’s perception.”

In the drama, the Downton Abbey star plays Roy Thomas, a fictional Corby borough councillor.

The 62-year-old actor explained that, like many in the town, his family had moved from Scotland to work at the Corby Steelworks, which in 1979, just before its closure, had about 10,000 employees.

“When I was born in Corby, 80% of the population of that town had been born in Scotland,” he said.

“My granny and granddad came down from Bellshill, which is a mining community outside Glasgow. They never lost their accent because you’re in amongst it, you know?”

Members of his family, including his brother, still live and work in the area.

“My brother asked ‘Is there any craic in this?'” he laughed.

“On the surface it’s very bleak… but in the documentary [the Horizon programme on the case] you see the women they talk to and there’s great spirit and humour and great craic.

“I think Jack [Thorne, writer of the drama] has captured that brilliantly.”

For executive producer Annabel Jones, humour was an important part of the storytelling.

She said: “Corby is known for its sense of humour; known for its warmth. I wanted to make sure that comes across through the characters as well, because I want it to feel true to Corby.

“I didn’t want it to feel that people didn’t have a sense of hope at that time.”

The Emmy and Bafta-winning Welsh producer first heard about the scandal while in lockdown during the pandemic.

A friend, from Corby, told her about the case while they were on a masked-up walk in a park.

She recalled: “I was absolutely gobsmacked that, firstly, I have never heard of this story, and secondly, why have I never heard of this story?

“This really needs to be pulled into the public consciousness; we need to be made aware so things like this don’t happen again.”

From that point, the 53-year-old began speaking to as many people involved in the case as possible to ensure their stories were told story accurately.

One of the nuances of the adaptation is the Corby accent, which Coyle compared to a “diluted” Scottish accent.

He said: “It’s an odd one but I can recognise it anywhere. I’ve been on a tube before and been like ‘Are you from Corby?’ There is nothing like it.”

The executive producer added: “It’s such a particular accent because obviously Corby has lots of different influences… We did work with lots of accent coaches to try and perfect it.

“Jodie Whittaker really worked hard. It was probably the thing she was most nervous about. When she met with Susan she very kindly reassured her and told her she’d done a good job.”

Other members of the cast met or emailed the people they played to help craft their performance.

However, this was not an option for Robert Carlyle. The man he portrayed, Corby borough councillor Sam Hagen, died in October 2022, a year before filming began.

To help, the production team sourced hours of video footage in which the real-life politician told his story.

Carlyle, who starred in The Full Monty, said: “He’s got a straight kind of voice; a slightly higher kind of Glasgow man that talks like that… I thought… ‘That just sounds like my dad.’

“I thought ‘There’s elements here of my dad in Sam’ and that was my way in.”

The Trainspotting actor described his character as “a hero with a small h” who “fundamentally wants Corby to succeed”.

Carlyle said: “He was determined to make the best of his life down there to try and regenerate this town. He’s the kind of man who made sure the traffic lights are working correctly and there’s a zebra crossing in the right place.

“He does the right thing. It’s lovely; a lot of my characters aren’t like that. It’s nice to have a chance to play somebody who is inherently good.”

Castmate Rory Kinnear, who played solicitor Des Collins, explained the show never made a judgement on any of the characters, one way or the other

“Everyone believes they’re doing the right thing,” he said.

“It allows an audience to decide whether they think those people did do the right things at the right time for the right reason.”

Kinnear did not speak to the real-life lawyer while preparing for the role.

He said: “The choice of casting me means they were taking it in a slightly different way. I knew they were creating a version of Des in terms of age; in terms of look; in terms of lots of other things”

The real Des Collins, however, thought the Bond actor’s portrayal was very close to the truth: “He got me down to a tee. He was more me than I am,” he said.

“I ended up on a couple of occasions, having seen it, saying ‘Oh, I wish said that’ and then I realised it wasn’t me doing it, it was Rory Kinnear pretending to be me.”

The actor hopes the drama will get people talking. “As the sibling of a disabled person myself, one is well aware that they are not at the forefront of public interest,” he said.

“What excites me about this is, not just the story itself, but the fact Netflix are doing it and it’s a departure for them to do a four-part series like this of this subject matter.

“You could well imagine this being on late on BBC2 or Channel 4, and 250,000 loved it and watched it, but it doesn’t have any impact.

“I think Netflix’s ambition with it is to make sure it’s something everybody watches, talks about and is made aware of.”

The Israeli government has approved a temporary extension of the Gaza ceasefire for the next six weeks, covering the Muslim Ramadan and Jewish Passover periods.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office made the announcement shortly after the first phase of the previously agreed ceasefire expired at midnight on Saturday.

Netanyahu’s office said that under a ceasefire proposal by US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, half of the hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza – both alive and dead – would be released on the first day.

The remaining hostages would be freed “if an agreement on a permanent ceasefire is reached”.

Hamas has not publicly commented on the latest Israeli move.

The Israeli government backed the ceasefire extension after a four-hour meeting called by Netanyahu.

The prime minister’s office claimed that Hamas “has so far refused” to back the Witkoff plan, adding that Israel would immediately start negotiations if the group changed its position.

The US envoy’s plan envisages that Israel could return to fighting after 42 days if it believed negotiations on a second phase had failed.

On Friday night, Hamas said it would not agree to any extension of phase one without guarantees from American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators that phase two would eventually take place.

Hamas seems determined to remain a force in Gaza, even if it might be willing to hand over day-to-day governance to other Palestinian actors, including the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the BBC’s Paul Adams reports from Jerusalem.

The first phase of the ceasefire that came into force on 19 January expired on Saturday.

It halted 15 months of fighting between Hamas and the Israeli military, allowing the release of 33 Israeli and five Thai hostages for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

But negotiations on phase two, including the release of all remaining living hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, have barely begun.

There are believed to be 24 hostages alive, with another 39 presumed to be dead.

Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage.

Israel responded with an air and ground campaign in the Gaza Strip, during which at least 48,365 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

When Luna Sofia Miranda approached Sean Baker in a strip club in New York in 2022, she tried her best to charm him.

But he “very clearly did not want to buy a lap dance,” she says.

Miranda, who was 23 at the time, started asking why he and his wife were there.

“I’m very nosy,” she says. “So I kept asking them questions and I finally got it out of them. They were making a film about strippers.”

She told them she had studied acting, and – after a successful audition – got a call on her 24th birthday, to offer her a part in the film.

That film, Anora, is now seen as one of the frontrunners heading into the Oscars on Sunday.

It’s directed by Baker, and stars Mikey Madison, who is up for best actress for her role as a New York stripper.

Madison, 25, relied on real-life strippers to help her perfect the part.

When she won a Bafta film award last month, she dedicated it to the sex worker community.

“I have been able to meet some of that community through my research of the film, and that’s been one of the most incredible parts of making the film,” she told us backstage.

They “deserve respect and don’t often get it. And so I had to say something,” she added.

We’ve been speaking to the actresses, strippers and dancers in the film about their experiences of working on it – and their thoughts on the finished product.

Some praised the film as realistic, particularly in its portrayal of the rejection and exhaustion that sex workers often feel. But others said the film was “limited”.

Edie Turquet was initially unsure whether to take part in the film.

The 21-year-old, who is British and appeared in Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts as a child, now lives in New York where she’s a student and a stripper.

She got cast as a background dancer in Anora after a casting agent spotted her in the club where she was working. But Turquet says the night before filming, she debated not showing up.

“I didn’t want to be part of a bad stripper film, or anything doing a disservice to our industry, so I was apprehensive,” she told me.

“Most films about strippers are super over-aestheticised, or bad and exploitative.”

Edie points to 2020 film Zola, about a waitress who goes to Florida for a weekend of stripping for quick cash. “I found it hyperbolic, totally overglamourising the work, and it felt like it was talking down to women,” she said.

“And don’t get me started on Pretty Woman, which is infuriating, especially the idea of a street worker played by Julia Roberts. Come on.”

But when Turquet realised Anora was a Sean Baker film, she changed her mind.

“His films are based on realism, he has a fly-on-the-wall style of filmmaking, which I love,” she said. “So I was down.”

Baker’s filmmaking skills were also what attracted Lindsey Normington to the film. The actress and stripper stars as Diamond, Anora’s workplace enemy.

She says she saw him at afterparty for a film premiere, and went up to him to tell him she was a fan.

They connected on Instagram, and months later, he contacted her to tell her he might have a role for her in a new film. “I fell to my knees in my house,” Normington said.

In the film, Anora is offered a chance at a fairytale escape when she meets and falls for the son of a wealthy Russian.

Miranda, an actress and stripper who plays Lulu, Anora’s best friend, says she was tasked with helping Madison sound like a real sex worker from New York.

“I shared a PDF of language and slang terms that only strippers from New York will understand,” she said.

One of those words was “whale”, which, Miranda explains, “is a customer who is like a bottomless pit of money. He will make your night. And he won’t make you work very hard for it at all.”

Also involved in the film was Kennady Schneider, a Los Angeles-based stripper and choreographer who trained Madison to dance.

She says Madison installed a pole at her house in LA, and the pair began working on her “sexy routine”.

“She put in so much work,” Schneider, 28, said. “She was so determined.”

This section contains spoilers for Anora

Miranda said a lot of the film’s themes, on heartbreak and rejection, were relatable for her.

“Sometimes I feel like this shiny toy, that people want to play with. They go, ‘wow like you’re a stripper. You’re so cool.’ And then they just cast you aside and abandon you,” she said.

“I think about the ending a lot because I feel like Anora a lot.”

Turquet agrees, calling the ending “very relatable and poignant”, adding that it accurately depicts the “exhaustion and fatigue” strippers often feel.

“The sex industry has trauma built into it. It felt so real. It’s an incredible vulnerable industry,” she said.

“You’re putting yourself in danger every time you go to work. It’s a complex and exhausting job.”

But overall, she said has mixed feelings about the film.

“What a lot of stripper films miss – and what Anora starts but doesn’t go far enough on – is the moral question around men who buy sex,” she said.

“It’s the question of consent. Most of these films shy away from answering it, or looking into it.”

She said it also frustrates her that these characters “never exist outside their profession”.

“[Anora] is a pretty limited character,” she said. “We never learn anything about her. The film takes the perspective of [male leads] Igor and Vanya, in defining who she is.”

“It’s better than any film I’ve seen about it, but ultimately it’s limited as it’s not told by a sex worker,” she added. “I can’t wait till we’re telling our own stories and hopefully this opens the door to that.”

For Normington, the film reflected “the insecurity and competition and jealousy” that she has personally experienced in clubs.

“I appreciate that it’s not attempting to be a quintessential stripper movie.”

For Schneider, meanwhile, it was the film’s portrayal of the mundane nature of the job that struck a chord.

In the film’s early scenes, we see Anora at work, talking to clients in the club.

We also see her and the other strippers on a lunch break, eating from Tupperware boxes in a back room.

“It felt really accurate,” Schneider said.

“A lot of the time in [stripper] films, you have glamorisation, with money falling from the ceiling. Those moments do happen but they’re few and far between,” she said. “It’s much more of a quiet hustle.”

When Anora came out, special screenings were held for sex workers in New York and LA.

Footage circulated on social media shows the strippers banging their high-heeled platform pleaser shoes together over their heads, to show their appreciation at the end of the screenings.

“That is the most beautiful applause I’ve ever received, I don’t know if that will ever happen again,” Madison told us.

Now, all eyes are on the Oscars.

Miranda and Normington will both be attending. “It’s kind of silly to think that I’m going to the Oscars, but [at the same time] I’m at the club arguing with a stupid man over $20,” said Miranda.

“I feel like I’m living two lives.”

She said that Madison is “spot on” to say the sex worker community doesn’t get the respect it deserves, and said she hopes that Anora’s success will change that.

“My hope is that if this film wins an Oscar, it marks the beginning of a shift in Hollywood, where sex workers are respected, as workers in their own fields, but also as entertainers,” she said.

“If this film wins an Oscar, I want to see that.”

A little boy, who has earned the nickname “Sweet Tub Teddy” after saving thousands of confectionery tubs from landfill, has been gifted a bench made from his recycled plastic tubs.

The six-year-old from Netley, Hampshire, collected more than 2,500 tubs through the Tub2Pub scheme to make outdoor furniture.

Arriving at school on Thursday, he was surprised to find the “buddy bench” in the playground.

“Everyone can make a difference, it doesn’t matter how small you are,” said Teddy, as the bench was unveiled.

A plaque on the purple seat reads: “With thanks to Teddy for your outstanding efforts contributing to Tub2Pub 2025 from Greene King, co-cre8, DCW Polymers and Macmillan Cancer Support.”

Teddy, whose hero is David Attenborough, previously told the BBC he was “angry” when he found out that the containers could not be recycled in his family’s normal recycling bin.

Some authorities in the UK have the capacity to recycle the tubs via kerbside collection but Hampshire currently does not.

Teddy set about collecting the tubs from people’s houses and bins and wrote a letter to his school, which in turn wrote to parents.

With help from his mum Laura, he put up posters at local businesses and got his grandad to go to the local tip to ask them to save any tubs that people had binned.

A post from Teddy on Facebook, in which he described himself as an “eco warrior on a mission” and telling of how “hundreds of thousands of [tubs] go to landfill or the ocean”, helped gather further momentum.

Georgia Harlow, from Co-cre8, said Teddy “epitomises the willingness of the public to engage with recycling”, adding that he is a “fantastic example of what can be achieved”.

She said: “The bench we are donating to Teddy’s school is not only to show our appreciation for his amazing efforts but also to demonstrate how he has helped to turn used plastic tubs that may have otherwise been discarded as general waste, into a new, useful product that will be used at the school for many years to come.”

The day before, Teddy visited a recycling facility to learn how they use the plastic collected through the scheme to make outdoor furniture.

You know what they say every day is a learning day – and at the DCW Polymers warehouse in Exeter, although Teddy wasn’t at school, he was learning nonetheless.

Teddy helped staff to load sweet tubs on to a conveyor, which sent them to be shredded.

The shredded material is then mixed with UV additives to avoid being bleached by sunlight.

It is then heated up and pushed into a mould before being cut into planks and sent upstairs to be made into furniture.

As part of the scheme, Teddy’s tubs were first taken to the Shamblehurst Barn pub before being moved to a plastic reprocessing centre.

The pub’s general manager Kieron O’Donnell said: “Huge congratulations to Teddy on collecting over 2,500 tubs for Greene King’s Tub2Pub campaign this year.

“We are all so proud of his amazing efforts and enjoyed hosting a celebratory meal for Teddy and his family.

“It is brilliant that he cares so much about the environment and good to see how the tubs saved from landfill have been recycled into this bench for the school.

“Well done Teddy, from everyone at Greene King!”