Who’s propping up the bar with quizmaster Keir Starmer? Answers below (no cheating now!)

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Spotted all the famous faces? See how you did …

1 Sydney Sweeney’s on the bar there, in her denims. Does this mean she is a eugenicist? No, it doesn’t. Are you OK?

As two beloved presenters stand down, speculation is rife over who may take up the ‘very sparkly baton’

After more than two decades with Strictly Come Dancing, Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly are approaching their last tango.

The much-loved presenters will present the show’s live final on Saturday night and make their last appearance together for the Christmas Day special.

Our resident big cheese munches his way through 10 sets of crackers so you don’t have to make a snap decision

I’m treading dangerous ground critiquing classics such as Jacob’s cream crackers and Carr’s table water biscuits, some of Britain’s most nostalgic family foods. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of comfort eating, especially at Christmas, but both are also symbols of our industrial food culture: bland, beige and unadventurous. That said, maybe they’re just the ticket as a neutral vehicle for transporting cheese to the mouth.

The bottom-of-the-range crackers tested here were strikingly homogeneous: they’re essentially generic cardboard cut-outs made with commodity flour, palm oil and a plethora of raising agents. Food safe, yes, but firmly in ultra-processed food (UPF) territory. However, once the price gets up to about £2.50 per 100g, everything changes: restaurant-quality sourdough crackers, flavour-packed flatbreads and some classy products that are genuinely nourishing, minimally processed and traceable.

The actor on impersonating Elvis, her stint as a magician’s assistant on a cruise ship, and having eyes like currants

Born in Hertfordshire, Sarah Hadland, 54, attended Laine Theatre Arts college in Surrey. From 2009 to 2015, she played Stevie in the Bafta-nominated sitcom Miranda, and her other television work includes Horrible Histories, Waterloo Road, W1A, The Job Lot and Daddy Issues. This Christmas, she appears on The Festive Pottery Throwdown and The Celebrity Apprentice, and stars as the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Marlowe theatre in Canterbury. She lives with her child in London.

What is your earliest memory?
I remember putting on my sister’s dungarees – they were purple and flared – to do an Elvis impression and my family laughing, and thinking: “Oh, this is good.”

A social housing victory at the ‘luxury’ Battersea power station development shows the power of grassroots politics – and holds a lesson for all of our cities

What happens when international capital arrives on your doorstep and threatens to devour your home? The residents of the housing estates surrounding Battersea power station in London, including the Patmore where I was raised, faced that prospect when, in 2012, a consortium of Malaysian investors bought the derelict power station, decommissioned since 1983, for £400m.

Two years earlier, David Cameron had launched the Conservative manifesto in the ruined power station. He promised to increase foreign investment into the UK, and so the international investors came and bought the thing and much more. Over the years, Battersea and the adjacent Nine Elms area was refashioned as a playground for oligarchs and other international elites. The US embassy arrived, a world-first glass sky pool was commissioned, and when Battersea power station shopping centre opened in 2022, it came with Rolex and Cartier stores, luxury private members’ clubs and apartments with multimillion-pound price tags.

Jewish voices say an attack of this kind was entirely predictable given the surge in antisemitic attacks in Australia since 2023

The sun rises early at this time of year, hitting the south of the beach first before chasing the shadows north, the gradual retreat of the darkness to the light.

Hanukah, the Jewish festival of lights, was being celebrated here on Sunday evening, when the darkness came brutally roaring back.

Lawmakers voice frustration over heavy redactions and the apparent removal of files from government website

Donald Trump’s justice department was hit with legal threats and scathing outrage after authorities released a limited, heavily redacted trove of Jeffrey Epstein files in an apparent violation of the law mandating the near-complete disclosure of these documents by Friday.

“The justice department’s document dump this afternoon does not comply with Thomas Massie and my Epstein Transparency Act,” Ro Khanna, the California Democratic congressman who co-authored the law requiring full disclosure of all Epstein files by 19 December, said in a video statement.

Longstanding hosts presented with video tribute and message from queen following final victory for former England footballer and professional dancer

The former England footballer Karen Carney and the professional dancer Carlos Gu have won the 2025 series of Strictly Come Dancing.

Carney is the first football player to lift the glitter-ball trophy while Gu becomes the first openly gay and Asian man to win the BBC One dance programme.

Lawyers argue ‘cumulative disruption’ regulations were quashed in May and should therefore not be used

The Metropolitan police have been using powers they no longer have to crack down on pro-Palestine protests, according to legal experts.

Based on evidence obtained by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates, legal experts said officers had imposed restrictions on at least two protests based on their “cumulative disruption” since their power to do so was quashed by the court of appeal in May.

Senior officials face criticism after review found systemic failings plunged hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers into debt

Senior officials who oversaw a flawed benefits system that plunged hundreds of thousands of carers into debt are under mounting pressure over their “misleading” response to the scandal.

Prof Liz Sayce, the chair of a scathing review into the government’s treatment of unpaid carers, last week called for an overhaul of management and culture at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).