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Influential rightwingers from around the world are to gather in London from Monday at a major conference to network and build connections with senior US Republicans linked to the Trump administration.

The UK opposition leader, the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage of the Reform UK party, her hard-right anti-immigration rival, will compete to present themselves as the torchbearer of British conservatism.

Conservatives from Britain, continental Europe and Australia attending the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference will seize on the opportunity to meet and hear counterparts from the US, including those with links to the new Trump administration. The House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson, had been due to attend in person but will now give a keynote address remotely on Monday.

Other Republicans due to speak include the US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Vivek Ramaswamy – who has worked with Elon Musk on moves to radically reshape the US government – and Kevin Roberts, the president of the US Heritage Foundation, the thinktank behind the controversial “Project 2025” blueprint for Trump’s second term.

The conference, which is intended to be a gathering of influential intellectuals shaping global rightwing thinking, has a distinctly anti-environmental and socially conservative theme. It pledges to build on “our growing movement and continue the vital work of relaying the foundations of our civilisation”.

ARC was co-founded in 2023 by the Canadian psychologist and self-help author Jordan Peterson and the Tory peer Philippa Stroud. Financial backers include Paul Marshall, one of the owners of GB News, and Legatum, the private investment firm.

After last year’s first event at the O2 Arena, it has moved to a larger venue this year at the ExCel centre. About 4,000 people from 96 countries are due to attend this year, compared with 1,500 last year.

Badenoch returns to the lavish three-day event as leader of her party after last year using an appearance to launch a “culture war” attack on the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall. But while she will give a welcome address to the conference on Monday morning ahead of a keynote speech by Johnson, there is no escape from the challenge her party faces from the hard-right anti-immigration Reform UK.

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Farage, the party’s leader, will be interviewed on stage on Tuesday by Peterson while Reform’s chair, Zia Yusuf, is expected to later take part in a panel for a session called “The choices we face: unilateral economic disarmament or a pro-human way?”

Figures on the advisory board of ARC include the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, the Tory MP Danny Kruger, the self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg and the Tory peer and financier Helena Morrissey.

It also includes Maurice Glasman, the Labour peer associated with the socially conservative “Blue Labour” strand of thinking, who recently appeared on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, the US Republican strategist and on-and-off Trump ally.

Peterson will also interview Peter Thiel, the US Republican donor and Silicon Valley billionaire known for controversial views such as asserting that democracy is not compatible with freedom and that he has “little hope that voting will make things better”.

A list of attenders seen by Guardian Australia showed more than 50 Australians, including figures from rightwing thinktanks and churches, were intending to go to the gathering. Among those travelling are Bridget McKenzie, a senator for the National party, along with key figures from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Those involved in ARC are keen to promote the gathering as more about the formulation of big ideas than political policy or campaigning and point to conference’s inclusion of scientists and figures from the arts.

While religious faith does not explicitly feature in promotional material for the event, there is a strong religious influence on its direction from Peterson, who draws on the Bible in his work, and Stroud, a committed Christian credited with shaping many of the policies of the Conservative party during the 2000s.

During 2014, hundreds of photographers, amateurs and professionals, Londoners and tourists, snapped images of 58,000 London streets. The vast project – inspired by the novel Bleeding London – culminated in an exhibition at City Hall and prompted imitation by camera enthusiasts elsewhere in Europe. It was one of the high points of the 50-year career of the author Geoff Nicholson, who has died aged 71.

Bleeding London was the 10th of 17 novels that Nicholson wrote between 1987 and 2024, alongside 10 works of nonfiction, a plethora of short stories and anthology contributions, and several popular blogs. His surreal, complex and sometimes transgressive comedies were only erratically successful from a commercial point of view, although his third novel, What We Did on Our Holidays (1990) was turned into a 2007 film, Permanent Vacation, starring David Carradine.

But several of his works won critical acclaim. Bleeding London (1997) itself and his debut novel, Street Sleeper, were shortlisted for literary prizes. Bedlam Burning (2002) was a New York Times notable book of the year and Day Trips to the Desert (1993) was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime.

Nicholson did not capitalise on these early successes and remained – unlike the more celebrated figures to whom he was sometimes compared, such as Jonathan Coe or Will Self – something of an outsider, at least in the UK. But his work attracted a cult following, nowhere more so than in Los Angeles, where he lived and worked between 2006 and 2018.

Living near Hollywood with Dian Hanson, his second wife, whom he married in 2006, Nicholson was a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an established presence on the local literary scene. It was there that he began to write more insistently about maps and walking – exploring the relationship between emotions, behaviour and geographic location – a focus which has chimed with growing interest in psychogeography.

Nicholson was born in Hillsborough, a working-class suburb of Sheffield, the only son of Geoffrey, a carpenter, and his wife, Violet. After passing his 11-plus, he attended the city’s King Edward VII grammar school, and then, from 1972, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied English. After a further degree in drama at Essex University, he settled in and around London, working in bookshops and pursuing literary ambitions in the evenings.

He scripted a play for Radio 4, wrote travel pieces, food and theatre reviews for Time Out and sundry other outlets and sold sketches for TV shows such as Not the Nine O’Clock News and Chris Tarrant’s Saturday Stayback. He had stories published in Ambit, the quarterly counterculture literary magazine. In 1987 JG Ballard, the science fiction writer whom Nicholson succeeded as Ambit’s fiction editor, described Street Sleeper as “witty, zany and brilliantly comic”.

The lead characters in Nicholson’s novels are often slightly lost, unsure what to make of what is happening to them. Not infrequently their dilemmas lead to violence. Usually, the denouement is humorous, with multilayered plots resolved in elaborate, improbable, even apocalyptic farces. Having little control over their lives, his characters seek comfort in an intense attachment to things. Nicholson writes a lot about – variously – the electric guitar, deserts and cocktails.

He had a lifelong love of the Volkswagen Beetle, and collected hundreds of toy models of the car. The motor features prominently in two of his novels. Sexual fetishism crops up a lot too, most notably in Footsucker (1995), whose hero is aroused by women’s feet, and Sex Collectors, a work of nonfiction published in 2006 that is based on interviews with collectors of pornography.

But as Nicholson got older, his engagements with the world became simpler. Walking is the theme of five of his last eight published works, albeit that in The Miranda (2017), the perambulation comes only after an episode of ultra-violence. The note, though, in this later writing is gentler and the prose ever more crystalline.

Nicholson could dissect and explain the most abstract ideas. As one New York Times reviewer put it, he was “the rare writer capable of making reference to Jacques Lacan [the French psychoanalyst] without inspiring the reader to toss his book out the window”.

It was a time that coincided with a calmer period in his life. After Dian and he divorced, Nicholson returned to Britain in 2018 and settled in the Essex town of Manningtree. Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. For the most part that was controlled and he had a new partner, Caroline Gannon, whom he had first met during the Bleeding London project.

He went out walking, every day, padding streets near and far. Always armed with a camera, he did his research, took photos, picked up items of interest – an unusually coloured rock, a discarded magazine or an item in a junk shop that took his eye.

Much of this discovery fed its way into The Suburbanist, published in 2021, in which Nicholson poked fun at the staid, predictable routine of lower middle-class life and the arrogance of its intellectual detractors. In his final work, the nonfiction Walking on Thin Air (2023), he wrote candidly about his illness, although it was more a celebration of life than of mortality. He did not expect this to be his swansong, but A Life’s Journey in 99 Steps proved to be a prophetic subtitle.

He is survived by Caroline.

Geoffrey Joseph Nicholson, writer, born 4 March 1953; died 18 January 2025

A fire that tore through a luxury London hotel popular with celebrities was caused by wood falling from a pizza oven.

The Chiltern Firehouse, which had been due to host a post-Bafta film awards party on Sunday evening, was partially destroyed by the fire on Friday

Flames spread through the four-storey hotel in central London via ducting, damaging parts of the ground floor and half of the second floor and destroying the third floor and roof, the London fire brigade (LFB) said on Monday.

The fire service said the blaze started accidentally “by burning wood falling from a pizza oven and igniting the void between the basement and ground floor”.

The Marylebone venue was formerly a fire station, which was repurposed as a five-star hotel and restaurant, which is a regular celebrity haunt.

LFB’s assistant commissioner, Paul McCourt, said: “Crews worked incredibly hard for over eight hours in arduous conditions. Presented with a complex fire in a historically significant building, formerly Manchester Square fire station, firefighters successfully contained the fire, preventing it from spreading to neighbouring properties.”

About 100 people were evacuated and there were no injuries as a result of the blaze, which was tackled by about 125 firefighters using 20 fire engines.

‘Cor, stinks in here, dunnit?” At 7pm on 19 February 1985, we heard Simon May’s now-familiar theme tune and watched those wriggly River Thames titles for the first time – followed by that aromatic opening line of dialogue.

The BBC’s new soap opera was its attempt to make a mass-market, twice-weekly rival to ITV’s Coronation Street. Co-created by the producer Julia Smith and the writer Tony Holland, the gritty saga was set in a Victorian square in the fictional east London borough of Walford. Working titles for the show included Square Dance, Round the Houses and London Pride. They settled on EastEnders.

Overnight ratings were an impressive 17m. Audiences would peak at an astonishing 30m the next year. To this day, four EastEnders episodes feature in the UK’s Top 10 most-watched TV programmes of all time (not including sports or news coverage).

After more than 7,000 episodes, the BBC is celebrating this week’s 40th anniversary with misty-eyed documentaries, interactive storylines and a fully live edition. Here, we mark the milestone by recounting its 40 most memorable moments, aided by its creators and stars. Altogether now: “Get outta my pub!”

Our arrival in E20 was a portent of the dark drama for which the soap would become known. Neighbours broke into 23 Albert Square, worried about Reg Cox (Johnnie Clayton). They found the pensioner dead in his armchair, killed by “Nasty” Nick Cotton (John Altman) for his war medals. Welcome to Walford.

The teenage pregnancy of Michelle Fowler (played by Susan Tully) prompted the show’s first talking-point mystery: the identity of the father. Four Walford men were in the frame. At a canalside rendezvous, it was revealed to be the Queen Vic’s publican, Den Watts (Leslie Grantham). He wasn’t nicknamed “Dirty Den” for nothing.

Among the most famous scenes in ’Enders history. A record 30.1 million viewers spat out their Babycham in shock when dastardly Den handed his wife, Angie (Anita Dobson), divorce papers and growled a festive platitude for the ages.

Driven to desperation by unemployment, the Fowler patriarch, Arthur (Bill Treacher), “borrowed” the Christmas Club money to pay for Michelle’s wedding. His mental collapse culminated with “Arfur” smashing up the decorations and falling in a sobbing heap by the tree.

The actor turned activist Michael Cashman sparked media hysteria before his character even appeared on screen. When Cashman was cast as the gay graphic designer Colin Russell, the Sun ran the front-page splash “EastBenders”. “In the midst of the Aids pandemic, Thatcher’s government and widespread homophobia, the fact that they were introducing a gay character at all knocked me sideways,” says Cashman. “It took huge courage from the BBC. That headline was a foretaste of what was to come.”

The News of the World outed Cashman’s real-life partner, Paul (“I was fair game, but to come after Paul was unforgivable”), even identifying the area where the couple lived. Within hours of the edition hitting newsstands, a brick was thrown through their window. “In a strange way, it gave me strength,” says Cashman. “As I picked up the brick, I vividly remember thinking: ‘If you think you can intimidate me …’”

Colin was already trailblazing as the first openly gay character in a British soap. He made TV history when he kissed his boyfriend, Barry (Gary Hailes), on the forehead. “The enormity of it didn’t occur to us. There were questions in parliament. Rent-a-quote politicians said the show should be taken off-air. But judging by the many letters I received, the public was much more tolerant. At a time when there were no role models on TV, it made gay people feel less alone. We broke stereotypes and helped push forward positive change.”

A year later, Colin kissed his new boyfriend, Guido (Nicholas Donovan), on the lips. “Apart from Piers Morgan, who described it in the Sun as ‘a love scene between yuppie poofs’, the second kiss passed without much outcry. The first one caused a storm. This time, there was hardly a breeze.” (Morgan subsequently apologised for his offensive remarks.)

Cashman capitalised on his primetime fame to lead the campaign against section 28 – government legislation that banned the teaching, publication or promotion of homosexuality. “To their credit, not once did the BBC warn me off. The only person I checked with was June Brown, who played Dot Cotton, because we were supposed to be filming together on the day of the protest march. June was a one nation Tory, but she arranged for me to get time off. That moment defined the rest of my life. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have founded Stonewall with Ian McKellen or be in the House of Lords now. EastEnders helped me find my voice – and the conviction to use it.”

The show ventured into cockney gangster territory when bad boy Den was shot by a hired hitman, concealing his gun in a bunch of daffodils. The publican fell into the canal and was presumed dead.

In a groundbreaking Boxing Day episode, Mark Fowler (Todd Carty) told his parents he was HIV positive – the first major soap character to be diagnosed. The storyline was written in collaboration with the Terrence Higgins Trust.

It has to be a big scandal to be awarded the “gate” suffix. This love triangle inspired by Tristan and Isolde made the grade. Grant (Ross Kemp) and Sharon Mitchell’s stormy marriage led to her crying on the shoulder of her brother-in-law, Phil (Steve McFadden). It soon tipped over into an affair. Sharon drunkenly confessed one night to her best mate, unaware they were being recorded. A devastated Grant discovered the tape and played it to a packed pub at Phil’s engagement party – before drying his eyes and beating his big brother unconscious.

“Sharon and Phil always had a spark,” says Letitia Dean, who plays Sharon. “It had been breadcrumbed throughout, so it was exciting to bring it to fruition. None of us predicted what an impact it would have. Reaction went through the roof. People came up to me in supermarkets and said: ‘She’s a naughty one, that Sharon. But I get it; Phil is much kinder to her.’ I’m still asked about it to this day – and it happened over 30 years ago.”

The pub showdown took two days to film. “Most of the cast were involved and you need to capture the drama from multiple perspectives. When Grant played the tape, you could’ve heard a pin drop.” She laughs. “Trust me, it’s rare to have complete silence in the Vic during filming.”

Phil’s fiancee, Kathy, reacted to the betrayal by slapping Sharon and calling her a slut. “Back in the day, we didn’t have a stunt coordinator and slapped each other for real,” says Dean. “All I said to Gillian Taylforth, who plays Kathy, was: ‘Mind my ear.’ The fashion was very much of its time, so I had big earrings that would make Pat Butcher proud. I’m old school: I prefer a real slap for authenticity. But it was quite a gentle, showbiz one.”

The slow-burn storyline took two years, pulling in 25 million viewers at its peak. “That’s what I love about EastEnders,” says Dean. “Plots are given time to build and then bang, the drama hits.” After four decades, Dean still savours those episode-closing “doof doof” moments: “You have to hold the position and the emotion for longer than usual. After the director calls cut, I always burst out laughing.”

“You bitch!” “You cow!” A textbook battle of the matriarchs erupted and peroxide-blond blows were traded as Peggy Mitchell (Barbara Windsor) fought Pat Butcher (Pam St Clement) for the affections of Frank (Mike Reid).

“Tiff the Stiff” screamed the Daily Star. When her abusive ex, Grant Mitchell, snatched their daughter, Courtney, the beloved barmaid (played by Martine McCutcheon) chased them across the road and was run over by Frank Butcher.

When an old flame, Saskia (Deborah Sheridan-Taylor), taunted the nightclub owner Steve Owen (Martin Kemp) about aborting his baby, Steve hit her with a marble ashtray, buried her body in Epping Forest and framed his resident DJ. Charming.

The siblings fought over Grant sleeping with Phil’s ex, Kathy. A tearful Phil held Grant at gunpoint, forced him to drive at high speed and the car plummeted into the river. Bang went their no-claims bonus.

Knock knock. Who’s there? Frank on Pat’s doorstep, wearing nothing but a light-up dickie bow. A seduction technique that remains seared in viewers’ memories.

“Dorothy Cotton, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possessing class B drugs.” Dear old Dot became an accidental stoner when she mistook cannabis for herbal tea, served a cuppa to a policeman and got nicked. No wonder she fainted in shock.

The cult heroine Sonia (Natalie Cassidy) will soon depart after a 32-year stint on the show. She was once the centre of a teen pregnancy storyline. The trumpet-playing schoolgirl had no idea she was pregnant – until she went into labour and gave birth to a daughter.

It was decades before the assisted dying debate when terminally ill Ethel Skinner (Gretchen Franklin) begged her best friend, Dot, to help end her life. Conflicted by her Christianity, Dot eventually agreed and they bade an emotional farewell.

The Slater sisters took Albert Square by storm when they arrived in 2000 – except, of course, there was a twist in store. Young Zoe (Michelle Ryan) fell out with protective Kat (Jessie Wallace), storming off with the words: “You can’t tell me what to do. You ain’t my mother.” The country gasped when Kat screamed back: “Yes I am!” It became one of the most quoted lines in soap history.

The gravel-voiced hardman was the subject of a JR-from-Dallas-style whodunnit when he was gunned down on his doorstep by a mystery assailant. The culprit turned out to be his ex-girlfriend Lisa Fowler (Lucy Benjamin). That’ll teach him. (Spoiler: it didn’t teach him.)

Little Mo Slater (Kacey Ainsworth) suffered horribly at the hands of her abusive husband Trevor Morgan (Alex Ferns). On New Year’s Eve, he attacked her yet again and she hit him with an iron in self-defence. Little Mo thought she had killed him, only to return with her sisters to find Trevor gone.

“His first line back had to be: ‘Hello, princess.’ Anything else would have been a letdown,” says the screenwriter Sarah Phelps, who worked on EastEnders for more than a decade, penning nearly 100 episodes. These included the momentous week when the original Queen Vic landlord, Den Watts, swaggered back into Albert Square and surprised his daughter Sharon – who, like 16 million viewers, thought he was long dead.

“Being let loose on such an iconic character was a joy,” says Phelps. “It was so embargoed and secretive. We went for a drink after a script meeting and I left my notes in the pub. I realised in a panic and have never run so fast in my life. Thank God the folder was still there.” In the reunion scene, Sharon is stunned into silence, then vomits in a nightclub toilet. “It was shellshock,” says Phelps. “A bomb exploded in her life. Was she going to throw herself into his arms? No, she’s going to throw up. That’s what I’d do.”

She laughs off accusations that the storyline was far-fetched. “I went on Radio 4 and Mark Lawson asked me: ‘This is nuts, isn’t it?’ I said: ‘Is it?’ Look at John Darwin, the canoe man. Nothing is more implausible than reality. People walk out of their lives all the time. Sometimes, they walk back.”

Dirty Den’s return formed part of an incest storyline. “I was pretty new to EastEnders and pitched an affair between Sharon and Young Dennis, her adoptive brother. This was really taboo. I got letters saying: ‘You are filth! I turned it off and only turned it on again to see who’d written it.’ Then we threw Old Dennis into the mix as well. The old lion comes back to find this new lion on his patch. What a gift to write.”

His homecoming sparked a ratings resurgence and was voted viewers’ favourite soap comeback. Phelps completed the circle 18 months later by writing Den’s second murder – this time for real – by three wronged Walford women: “I wanted it to be mythic. These Furies bringing down vengeance.” Now a Bafta-winner, Phelps says she learned her craft on EastEnders: “Soaps are the crucible of TV. If you can do it on a soap, you can do it anywhere. It’s the people’s theatre. Greek tragedy with acrylic nails. It’s epic, it’s huge and I love it.”

On a vitriolic rant during their Highland honeymoon, Janine Butcher (Charlie Brooks) told the buffoonish Barry Evans (Shaun Williamson) that their marriage was a sham and shoved him off a cliff. As if that wasn’t enough, she followed him down and taunted him as he died.

Festive season is always eventful in the winter wonderland of Walford. So it proved when the extended Branning-Slater family sat down to open their presents in front of the TV. Bradley Branning (Charlie Clements) was given a DVD of his wedding day. Everyone said he should play it – only to be stunned into silence when the footage included the bride, Stacey Slater (Lacey Turner), snogging her father-in-law, Max (Jake Wood).

“As soon as the audience saw that kiss accidentally being captured on a camcorder, it became like a ticking timebomb,” says Turner. “This is EastEnders – of course the affair would be exposed! Nothing stays secret for ever in Albert Square. It wasn’t a case of whether it would come out, but when. The storyline unfurled slowly, so the audience was fully invested. That made it all the more tense.”

The sitting room scene was deeply awkward, as it dawned on different generations what they were watching. “The looks on everyone’s faces were brilliantly excruciating!” says Turner, laughing. “We shot it in only two takes. It was very naturalistic, almost like it was happening in real life.”

“I grew up watching EastEnders with my family and you always knew the Christmas episodes were going to be especially dramatic,” she says. “Filming feels extra special when you know it’s the Christmas Day episode. The response was huge. I was always being told by grannies on the street that Stacey should ‘just settle down with that lovely boy Bradley’, or asking: ‘What are you doing with Max?’ I was constantly getting warned off him by viewers.”

With her husband, Jim Branning (John Bardon), hospitalised with a stroke, Dot recorded a touching half-hour message for him. The Talking-Heads-style monologue remains the soap’s only single-hander episode and earned June Brown a Bafta nod.

Larry Lamb made a textbook villain as the evil Archie Mitchell. When he was fatally bashed over the head with the Queen Vic bust, there was no shortage of suspects. In the show’s first live episode, the killer was unmasked as Stacey Slater.

This storyline saw the closeted Syed Masood (Marc Elliott) conduct a secret affair with Christian Clarke (John Partridge). Syed revealed the truth on the morning of his traditional Pakistani wedding, but his mother, Zainab (Nina Wadia), put pressure on him to go through with it anyway. Cue a spectacular but poignant horseback procession through the square.

After losing custody of his daughter, Louise (then played by Brittany Papple), Phil Mitchell turned to crack. The scenes trended on social media and drew complaints for its pre-watershed drug use. Phil soon accused his mum, Peggy, of loving the Queen Vic more than him and then set the pub on fire. Just say no, kids.

Meme immortality was assured when the vampish Vanessa Gold (Zöe Lucker) realised her lover Max Branning had gone back to his wife. In a jealous rampage, she trashed her own sitting room and stabbed a photo frame while repeatedly muttering: “Bubbly’s in the fridge.”

The plot that drew the biggest backlash in the show’s history. After Ronnie Branning (Samantha Womack) lost her baby, she switched him with Kat Slater’s newborn son. A record 14,000 complaints prompted producers to cut the divisive storyline short.

“I’ve got nothing left!” sobbed Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) after his daughter Lucy’s murder. Oddly, he sought comfort in the arms of his arch enemy, Phil Mitchell, who called him “Beale the Squeal” and once flushed his head down the toilet. It become a tear-sodden gif to rival James Van Der Beek blubbing in Dawson’s Creek.

The pub landlord Mick Carter (Danny Dyer) planned a festive proposal to his sweetheart Linda (Kellie Bright), but discovered she had been raped by his “nephew” Dean Wicks (Matt Di Angelo). As Mick tipped over the Christmas dinner table and punched Dean, the immortal words rang out: “He’s your bruvva!”

The 30th anniversary live episode was built around the unmasking of Lucy’s killer. Yet the most memorable moment came when Tanya Branning accidentally asked: “How’s Adam?” when referring to Ian Beale, played by Adam Woodyatt. Jo Joyner gamely tweeted: “At least you know it’s live #gutted”.

Nick Cotton was the bane of his mother’s life. Who could blame Dot for abandoning her religious principles? After scoring heroin for her addict son, which turned out to be “bad gear”, she ignored his pleas for an ambulance to simply “let Jesus decide”.

Sharon tottered into the Arches garage one lunchtime to find her husband Phil Mitchell harbouring a mystery woman. Spotting a discarded sandwich, Sharon muttered: “Cheese and pickle? Basic.” T-shirts were printed. Drag queens lip-synced the line.

Max Branning was wrongly convicted for killing Lucy Beale (then played by Hetti Bywater). The real culprit was Lucy’s younger half-brother. After 10-year-old Bobby (then played by Eliot Carrington) hit his mum, Jane (Laurie Brett), over the head with a hockey stick in rage, he burst into the packed pub and blurted out: “I’ve killed Mum, just like I killed Lucy.” Gasp.

With terminal breast cancer, the Mitchell matriarch, Peggy, returned for a poignant farewell. Hallucinating the smell of cigarette smoke, she saw a vision of old frenemy Pat, “earrings rattling like Marley’s bleedin’ chains”. After Pat promised to stay by her side, Peggy took an overdose of her pills.

Ronnie and Roxy Mitchell (Rita Simons) were fan favourites. Hearts were doubly broken when they were killed off together. After Ronnie’s wedding, they snuck into a swimming pool, swigging from a champagne bottle. Roxy leapt in and failed to resurface. Ronnie tried to rescue her, only to be dragged down by the weight of her bridal gown.

Sharon Mitchell fell for the teen toyboy Keanu Taylor (Danny Walters) while Phil was away doing dodgy deals in Spain. The pair acquired the portmanteau name “Sheanu”. Phil unexpectedly returned as Keanu was tied to the bed with fluffy pink handcuffs. Awkward.

When the Queen Vic won a Thames boat party for being Pub of the Year, it proved anything but a happy occasion. A fun-packed night took in fights, drug overdoses, the boat crashing, Sharon Watts (formerly Mitchell) going into labour and Ian Beale accidentally killing her son. Anchors away.

EastEnders specialises in surprise comebacks. The most recent – and with the longest gap between appearances – was Cindy Beale’s dramatic rise from the dead after 25 years.

“When I got the phone call, I had to sit down,” says Michelle Collins. “I told my agent that the only way it could be believable was if Cindy had faked her death and gone into witness protection. That was exactly what producers pitched. I gasped and went: ‘Oh my God, this could actually work.’ The sole frustration was that I had to keep it secret for a year. I went to rehearsals in a blacked-out car and had a fake name in the script.”

The new Queen Vic landlord, George Knight (Colin Salmon), arrived in the square, still mourning his fabled ex, Rose, who had disappeared without trace. After closing time, he put Seal’s Kiss from a Rose on the pub jukebox and tried to phone her. Cut to a familiar face at a poolside in France, ignoring the call: femme fatale Cindy, who had supposedly died in prison back in 1998.

“It was very camp, like: ta-da, she’s back!” laughs Collins. “I even had a wind machine on my hair. She was the cat that got the cream, sipping rosé by her swimming pool. Who wouldn’t want that life? I assumed I’d be going to France, but it was filmed in Radlett. I might not have signed up if I’d known that! Still, it got an amazing reaction. My phone didn’t stop pinging and ringing. People sang Kiss from a Rose at me. Younger people come up and say: ‘Cindy’s fierce, man, she’s sick.’ I’m like: ‘Thank you?!’”

Collins is a passionate advocate for our soaps. “There’s so much snobbery, but they’re unbeatable for working-class representation and racial diversity,” she says. “For showcasing older women, too. Telling their stories and giving them a voice. You don’t get that in other dramas. I wasn’t sure I’d know how to play Cindy any more, but it was like putting on an old slipper. She’s a survivor. We’ve got that in common. I’ll be raising a lipstick-smeared glass of rosé on the anniversary. Just don’t ask if I’ll be there in another 40 years!”

EastEnders has a strong tradition of two-hander episodes. The latest classic came when Yolande Trueman (Angela Wynter) told her husband, Patrick (Rudolph Walker), about her sexual assault by their pastor. Both performances were heartbreaking.

EastEnders’ final three 40th anniversary episodes will air simultaneously on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on 18-20 February. The first is available now on iPlayer

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For most homeowners a request from a passerby to touch the exterior of their house would probably raise eyebrows. But for the owner of Nina’s House, which is covered with unusual and striking cork insulation panels, it is not only a common occurrence but is welcomed.

The conversations may start with curiosity but much of the time lead to lengthy, passionate discussions on how to make homes more energy efficient, says the house’s owner, Nina Woodcroft. “We are new to the neighbourhood and it has been a really nice way to engage with our new community. A lot of delivery drivers will be like: ‘What’s this?’, and we’ll have a chat for 10 minutes about cork, you know, instead of just like this transactional, thank you, bye.”

Woodcroft and her family moved into their home in south Tottenham, London, at the end of 2023 and it has now been nominated for a number of awards including Don’t Move, Improve and RIBA London. The house was a “leaky” 1970s property built originally as a clergy house. Woodcroft, who runs the design company Nina+Co, decided that instead of an extension they would design a renovation, with the help of architects ROAR, to transform it into an energy-efficient, fossil fuel-free, cosy family home.

“Our architect was saying that it was unusual the way we’ve decided to spend our budget. That most clients would be like, well let’s do a loft conversion, let’s add another floor or let’s do a side return, but the motivator for us was to make what we have already future proof and really efficient,” says Woodcroft.

After removing the gas supply entirely, Woodcroft and her team installed an air source heat pump in the front garden. To maximise the pump’s efficiency the radiators downstairs were stripped out and replaced with underfloor heating. Sheep wool, wood fibre and a recycled plastic fleece, with cork granules, were used to insulate the home internally. The annual energy bill is about £1,088, significantly below the national average, with only electricity used.

They chose dark expanded cork, an increasingly popular building material, to cover the exterior of the house because of its insulating properties, sustainability as a material, and aesthetic appeal.

“The way that it’s manufactured is cork granules, bits of the bark of the cork oak tree are heated and pressed into a panel at the same time. Something is released called suberin, a natural substance as it’s heated, which is what sticks those cork granules together. So there is no added binder. And that’s what makes that product really natural,” says Woodcroft.

The inside of the property, designed with running children in mind, is as thought through as the property’s exterior, with joinery made from local and reclaimed timbers, kitchen countertops constructed from recycled plastic and a kitchen island formed from a London plane tree that was felled in Soho Square by Westminster council.

“I feel grounded and connected in this house because of the natural materials I think. It’s warm underfoot, which my feet really appreciate. The house feels enveloping and calming, like a little retreat from the busy world outside,” says Woodcroft.

The design company was born out of Woodcroft’s frustration with the lack of care for the environmental impact of materials used in the design industry. Nina’s House is the latest in a string of projects by Nina+Co to transform property interiors into sensual, textured spaces with a minimal environmental impact, such as the interiors for the restaurant Silo in Hackney Wick, east London, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant and winner of a Michelin green star. The Silo design used offcuts of timber, foraged seaweed, mycelium (a biodegradable fungal material), and crushed glass bottles.

Woodcroft says: “I am kind of always thinking about what life this [material] is going to have next: a restaurant, a shop, a home … it will have a certain lifespan that’s actually not very long in the grand scheme of things of the planet. And so I’m always trying to think what’s the next life of this and how to retain longevity and value in something.”

She hopes her renovation will inspire others to be more conscious of the types of materials used in property design and take small steps to make their homes more sustainable and energy efficient.

“I’m really up for sharing knowledge with people … Not everyone will have the financial resources to do a project like this, or the time and the energy because they’re busy with work and just need to pick a floor … but if it can inspire just doing one little thing, swap out one material, that would be amazing.”

In 2004 when her husband, the jazz musician and writer George Melly, was diagnosed with dementia and lung cancer, Diana Melly was asked by her brother if she loved George. When she got home she looked up the dictionary definition of the word “love” – “to have great attachment to and affection for; and/or in a state of strong emotional and sexual attraction”.

The first definition applied to her current feeling for George, the second to a much earlier one. Through her long, full and sometimes topsy-turvy life, Diana, who has died aged 87, loved many people, in both definitions of the word, but not always, she admitted, in the right order or at the right time.

She was married three times (at 16, 20 and 26), twice divorced, and outside those more conventional arrangements there were numerous boyfriends and lovers (some of them adorable, many not).

Her life during the 1960s was of the kind you see in films – women getting on to planes with no shoes on, and lots of hash, LSD, kaftans and sex. Her “romantic life” was distracting, as it should be, but was often distorted by her sometimes bad choices and the fact that whether girlfriend, lover or wife, she took to looking after her various sweethearts, and often at the expense of her three children, one born from each marriage.

Her relationships with men were marked by the dynamics of the time. George and Diana were married in 1963 and for the first 10 years of their 45-year marriage, she put all her energy into being attractive to him “so that he would not look away” and also made herself indispensable to him by managing his tour diary, his transport, his finances, his meals, the various homes they shared together and later his complicated medication. George called her Miss Perfect.

Her writing career, which began with a semi-autobiographical novel, The Girl in the Picture (1977), was initially born out of Diana’s need to establish herself outside the definition of “wife of George”, but went on to become an almost addictive form of self-expression and therapeutic protection.

There was a further novel, The Goosefeather Bed (1979); a small pamphlet, I Am a Cypher (2020), a wry, self-aware account of her emotional and intellectual education; and two works of non-fiction, Strictly Ballroom: Tales from the Dancefloor (2015), about what became a mild obsession with ballroom dancing that emerged in her 70s, and a memoir, Take a Girl Like Me (2005), by some distance her most significant publication.

It is an honest book, funny and knowing, and often recounting her own part in her occasional downfalls.

Diana was born in Southampton, Hampshire, the daughter of Geoffrey Dawson, a railway clerk who during her early childhood was on second world war service, and Margaret (nee Turnbull), a cleaner. After the war, the family moved to Essex, where Diana attended Colchester girls’ grammar school. She left, aged 16, having been reprimanded by the head “for letting the school down” after being spotted in the foyer of a smart local hotel with a soldier.

Her first job was in London at the Cabaret Club, a discreet Soho club with a risqué vibe, where rich men could lounge with underclothed women and where John Profumo was later to meet Mandy Rice-Davies. She was paid in tips and Sobranie Black Russian cocktail cigarettes that she took home to her mother, who was working as the housekeeper in a large Hampstead villa, where they shared small lodgings in the basement.

Diana met her first husband, Michael Ashe, whom she married in 1954, at the Cabaret; and she would meet George eight years later at the Colony Room, another famously louche Soho club, no less glamorous than the Cabaret but catering for a more artistically low-life crew (if you don’t count Princess Margaret). After that she worked as an assistant at a ladies haberdashery in Mayfair from where, she once confessed, she stole a pair of white gloves.

In 1971 she began what was to turn into nearly a decade-long stint working at Release, a progressive charity set up by the radical feminist and political activist Caroline Coon and her partner Rufus Harris. Its aim was to help addicts and lobby for the decriminalisation of drugs.

Diana’s roles included making sure there were enough teabags, working the nightshift to take calls from troubled addicts, and fundraising from any source rich enough and willing to donate.

Her major achievements included securing a donation from the Ford Foundation following a trip to New York in 1973, but, given the hippy-ish “peace’n’love” credo of Release, the gifts sometimes took unlikely forms. Victor Lownes, the Playboy entrepreneur, had been given a large gold cast of a penis by his friend Roman Polanski, the film director, but after the two fell out he donated it to Release. It is not recorded how it got cashed in.

Diana had a tremendous capacity and drive to sort things out. She was good at it and found all sorts of people and things, wastrels and strays, rackety houses and veg patches to apply her sorting-out skills to. There were many pets that required her attention and love – Tuppy, Franny and Neko (the cats), Bobbie and Joey (the Papillon dogs), Danny (the guinea pig), Eggs (the rabbit) and, most adored of all, James Sebastian Fox (the fox). And there were many friends too.

Among others she looked after were the charismatic sprite of a writer Bruce Chatwin, who wrote to her from the US asking if he might come and stay with her at the Tower (the Melly country retreat, an ancient and attractively ramshackle building in the Brecon Beacons, now Bannau Brycheiniog, in Wales).

He enticingly suggested: “We can both write during the day and share all the cooking.” His writer-in-residence period ended up lasting nearly five years, during which time he wrote most of his 1982 book On the Black Hill and “failed, ever once, to make a cup of tea”.

She went on to care for Chatwin through his illness with Aids until his death in 1989. Then there was the famously spiky, alcoholic novelist Jean Rhys, to whom Diana acted as concierge, cook and companion, and the bon vivant, writer and artist Teddy Millington-Drake. With Francis Wyndham, Diana co-edited Jean Rhys: Letters 1931-1966 (1984).

When Take a Girl Like Me was published, it received some good reviews, but also some disapproving comment of the “promiscuous, hedonistic and self-indulgent” kind. Diana’s life clearly did lean towards the libertine and sometimes happily so, but the fun was not always harmless.

It led to difficulties in her relationship with her children and she herself also suffered greatly at times from low self-esteem and depression. There were two fumbling attempts at taking her own life and two nervous breakdowns requiring hospitalisation, one following the death from a drugs overdose of her eldest child, Patrick. Her daughter, Candy, from her second marriage, to John Moynihan, a sports journalist, also predeceased her.

She wrote that she found wearing the invisible cloak that envelops most women over the age of about 50 comforting and she sailed through the often choppy waters of middle-age quite contentedly, spending much of her time raising Candy’s daughter, Kezzie, sorting out George and listening to Radio 4.

After George’s death in 2007, she swapped Radio 4 for Radio 3 and at last, with nobody to please but herself, she developed a late-life love of physics, algebra and the Greek philosophers, and a tremendous passion for opera, which took her at the age of 84 across the Atlantic, economy class, to see two performances in three days at the New York Met.

She is survived by her son Tom, and by Kezzie.

Diana Margaret Campion Melly, writer, born 26 July 1937; died 2 February 2025

Sadiq Khan has told EU diplomats Brexit was a mistake and called on the UK government to be bold as it looks to strengthen ties with the bloc, arguing this would act as a counterweight to the tariffs threatened by Donald Trump.

The mayor of London told the EU ambassador and the UK ambassadors to the 27 member states at a meeting on Tuesday that Britain’s departure from the union “continues to have a negative impact” on the country and its capital city, and vowed he would make the case for closer alignment.

Five years after Brexit, Keir Starmer’s government has described resetting relations with the EU as a priority, but it has ruled out a return to the single market, rejoining the customs union or allowing freedom of movement.

It has also resisted proposals from Brussels for a new scheme to allow under-30s from the bloc to live, study and work in the UK and vice versa.

Khan told the ambassadors he supported the government’s push for closer relations, and that he was strongly in favour of a new youth mobility scheme.

“This would help to aid economic growth across Europe, but also give young Londoners and EU citizens important life experiences – like the opportunity to work abroad and learn more about our respective languages and cultures,” he said.

“As part of this, I’m keen for us to look at how we can make it easier for schoolchildren from the EU to visit the UK and learn more about our shared ties and history.”

Describing himself as a proud European, Khan urged allies on the continent to come together to tackle a series of shared challenges including “the rise of an intolerant and anti-democratic populism” and “tariffs posing a real threat to international affairs”.

Amid the prospect of trade wars and tariffs from Donald Trump’s administration, Khan said a strengthened UK-EU relationship could act as a counterweight.

His comments come after the Labour government publicly rebuked him over his earlier warnings of “resurgent fascism” under a new Trump presidency.

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Sonny Leong, who as a Lords whip holds the same constitutional position as a minister, said he disagreed with Khan and that Trump “has a mandate and we have to work with him”. “Sometimes I would say a period of silence would be most welcome,” he said.

Khan highlighted the AfD party in Germany, the National Rally in France and Trump in the US and called them “opportunists who seek to divide people for personal and political gain” in an article for the Observer in January.

A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to resetting the relationship with the EU to improve the British people’s security, safety and prosperity. But we have been clear there will be no return to freedom of movement, the customs union or the single market.”

The mayor of London has said he hopes Donald Trump will be “different from the last time he was president”.

Mr Trump will formally become the President of the United States for a second time at his inauguration later on Monday.

The two men have had a fractious relationship since Mr Trump’s first presidency but talking to BBC London, Sir Sadiq Khan appeared to take a more conciliatory tone this time, saying he wanted to “work closely” with him.

Mr Trump’s team has been contacted for a response.

There has been no love lost in the past between Sir Sadiq and the former, and soon to be next, US President.

When Mr Trump was last in office, he called Sir Sadiqa “stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London”, and the mayor respondeddescribing Mr Trump at the time as a “poster boy for racists”.

Just last November, when Mr Trump beat Kamala Harris to the presidency, the mayor put out a statement claiming many Londoners would be “fearful” about what the election result would “mean for democracy”.

The comment sparked criticism from Conservative London Assembly member Neil Garratt, who said at the time it was “important to recognise the legitimate winner of a free and fair election”.

But since then, the new Labour government has been trying to put its own past criticisms of Mr Trump behind it in the hope of building a better relationship with the man who will determine whether the UK gets favourable trading terms with the US over the next four years.

And it seems, for now, the mayor has followed suit.

Ahead of Monday’s presidential inauguration, Sir Sadiq said as somebody “who believes in democracy, and voting and elections, we should recognise the fact that Donald Trump is the elected President of the United States”.

And he insisted he now “wanted to work closely with the American President”.

But he added: “Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this president is different from the last time he was president.”

A south London leisure centre is inviting women from the community to take part in a “winter wellness rejuvenating” session on Monday, which is being run in collaboration with women’s social enterprise She Is You.

The free event, being held at the Phoenix Leisure Centre in Sutton, will offer Zumba and Afrocentric dance sessions and access to wellness resources.

The NHS South West London Trust is sponsoring the event and will also be providing free health checks, tools and tips on staying fit and healthy during the colder months.

Caroline Odogwu, founding director at She Is You, said they hoped to make the day one of “positivity and empowerment”.

Creche and play area facilities will be available in the community hall for children, to ensure mothers feel they are able to attend.

Ms Odogwu added: “This initiative is all about empowering women to prioritise their health and well-being during what can be a quite challenging time of year.”

Spenser Pession, activity and wellbeing manager at the centre, said the session would be “an exciting day filled with movement, learning, and connection”.

“It’s a chance for women to connect with like-minded individuals in the community and leave feeling rejuvenated and inspired.”

They’re bright yellow, small, electric and look like a chunky golf cart and there are 10 of them now in Fulham.

Called Neighbourhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), they are from a small company called Yo-Go and you might see more of them in London soon.

They cost 20p a minute to hire and you have to return them to the area from where you picked them up. They have a maximum speed of 20mph and you have to be over 25 years old to drive them. You book them via an app.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council has said they can be parked anywhere free of charge.

Sam Bailey is the CEO and an inventor. His vision is to create a safe, pollution-free way of getting around for everyone. Soon the scheme in Fulham will expand to 50 vehicles.

Previously he invented a clip-on leak detection system and a thermal imaging stove monitoring system. Now he has turned his attention to urban transport.

The project has taken four years so far and the starting premise was what could they do to reduce congestion.

“What we are trying to do is create a different mode of transport, that is more affordable for people to drive a low-emission vehicle. And a vehicle that makes the streets more pleasant and safer for other road users so for cyclists and pedestrians,” Mr Bailey says.

“We want a vehicle that they feel safe interacting with. And what we also trying to do is reduce congestion. So by making the vehicles smaller, the traffic flows better, there’s less constraints on parking, and that benefits everyone in the city.”

Pay-as-you-go electric vehicle hire is not new and certainly in London there are plenty of different options.

Some cities have been trying to encourage “micro-mobility”. They want low-polluting, relatively inexpensive transport modes that help get people out of cars. But sometimes there are consequences.

In London, e-bikes like Lime are a regular sight, although how they are parked has annoyed some councils and other pavement users.

There are also docked Transport for London electric hire bikes.

There are also trials of e-scootersin some London boroughs, although private e-scooters are illegal and critics say regulation has not kept up with the increase in use.

Paris banned rental electric scooters in response to a rising number of people being injured and killed in the French capital.

The existing schemes in London do have limitations, though, when there’s more than one person or if you want to pick up some shopping. Some people are also nervous using e-bikes and e-scooters. Could these buggies fill a gap between them and motor vehicles?

The buggies are relatively cheap at £6,000 with a range of 35 miles. They are road legal and have number-plates. They also have solar panels on their roof to extend the range.

We gave the buggies a try. And at risk of sounding like an advertisement, the buggies are very easy to use and nippy. You do get some strange looks from other road users and there is definitely a film-set vibe about them. They feel more robust than a golf buggy.