From Tesco checkout to The Crown

Palin’s views on ageing

Michael Palin is 74, and conscious that time is running out, says Cole Moreton in The Mail on Sunday. “I’ll come into my [sitting room] and think, ‘My God, I’m never going to read all these books.’ I’ve only got another ten years, maybe not even that.” But at least he is in good health – unlike his dear friend and fellow Python Terry Jones, who is suffering from a form of dementia that has robbed him of speech. “For someone like Terry, debating, talking, joking, arguing, it was all absolutely part of his life. That’s a very difficult thing,” says Palin, with tears in his eyes. “I still see him and he gives me a big hug. He knows who I am and I assume that things are going in, so I just talk about whatever’s been going on and all that. Whether he’s taking it in or not I don’t know.” It is this gradual vanishing of the person you love that hurts most, he says. “It’s not like somebody with a physical illness, or even a cancer or something like that, where you can see their determination. With this, they’re kind of receding into the distance. Oh, it’s horrible.”

Pink’s off-and-on marriage

In 2008, the pop star Pink wrote a hit song called So What, about splitting up with her husband, Carey Hart. (“I guess I just lost my husband / I don’t know where he went.”) But the pair reunited when she asked him to appear in the video, and now – after ten years and two children together – they seem to have found a level of normality rare in showbiz marriages. “There are moments where I look at him and he is the most thoughtful, logical, constant... he’s like a rock. He’s a good man. He’s a good dad. He’s just the kind of dad I thought he’d be and then some,” she told Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian. “And then I’ll look at him and go: I’ve never liked you. There’s nothing I like about you. We have nothing in common. I don’t ever want to see you again... Then you’ll go through times when you haven’t had sex in a year. Is this bed death? Is this the end of it? Do I want him? Does he want me? Monogamy is work! But you do the work, and it’s good again.”

Why Pullman grew his hair

Philip Pullman has been writing critically acclaimed novels since 1972, and his most famous trilogy, His Dark Materials, has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide. Yet he is still not entirely confident of his craft. While writing his latest children’s book – the first in a new trilogy – he grew a horrible ponytail. He wore it for three years, as a kind of talisman against writer’s block. “It was a silly thing to do,” he told Bryan Appleyard in The Sunday Times. “I said to myself, if I don’t cut my hair The Book of Dust will be all right. I am very superstitious, so I had this appalling thing stuck on the back of my head.” Claire Foy has relinquished the throne, says Gabrielle Donnelly in the Daily Mail. The 33-year-old actress has just finished filming her second – and last – series of The Crown, the Netflix drama in which she plays the young Elizabeth II. An older actress will now take over the role. “I’ve been released!” says Foy gleefully. “I’m no longer her, so I feel like I’ve escaped.” Not that she’s ungrateful. The role, she says, “has changed my career. In this industry you get so used to doing things and people are like, ‘OK, yeah, that was all right.’ But to do something like this, and for people to say, ‘We love watching that!’ It’s just really magical.” Foy appreciates it all the more because her career got off to a slow start. For years after leaving drama school she had to take other jobs to pay the rent. “I’ve done everything you could think of, apart from medical stuff,” she reflects. “I did telesales. I gave out magazines at Tube stations. I worked at Wimbledon as a security officer. I worked at a pub. I was a piano teacher for a while. And for a long time I worked at Tesco, which was actually a dream job, because I’d always wanted to work on a till – seriously, when I was younger I used to sit and look at tills in the Argos catalogue, I was so obsessed with them – so when I started working at Tesco, I was thinking, ‘OK! Here we go! Ping! Ping!’ I loved it.”