Stephen Colbert on Trump’s ‘gold card’: ‘Pay-to-play program for rich foreigners’

Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s new “gold card” immigration program and his many weird tangents about grocery prices.Stephen Colbert opened Thursday’s Late Show with a new Christmas jingle about the president: “He’s making a list, checking it twice, then handing that list to the people at ICE. Donald Trump … ruins everything he touches,” he sang. “And lately he’s been pretty handsy, slapping his face on anything in sight.”On Wednesday, Trump put his face on what Colbert called “his long-promised pay-to-play program for rich foreigners”

‘Like lipstick on a fabulous gorilla’: the Barbican’s many gaudy glow-ups and the one to top them all

The brutalist arts-and-towers complex, where even great explorers get lost, is showing its age. Let’s hope the 50th anniversary upgrade is better than the ‘pointillist stippling’ tried in the 1990sThe Barbican is aptly named. From the Old French barbacane, it historically means a fortified gateway forming the outer line of defence to a city or castle. London’s Barbican marks the site of a medieval structure that would have defended an important access point. Its architecture was designed to repel

‘Astonishing’: how Stanley Baxter’s TV extravaganzas reached 20 million

The description “special” is overused in television schedules; Stanley Baxter’s programmes justify it. The comedian is one of the few stars whose reputation rests on a handful of astonishing one-offs – standalone comic extravaganzas screened in the 1970s and 1980s, first by ITV’s London Weekend Television and then the BBC.In both cases, the networks ended their associations with Baxter not because of lack of audience interest – at their peak, the shows reached more than 20 million viewers – but due to the colossal costs demanded by the performer’s vast and perfectionist visual ambition. One of Baxter’s favourite conceits was to re-create, in witty pastiche, scenes from big-budget Hollywood movies that made it look as if his versions had also spent millions of dollars.Cashflow was further stretched by the fact that Baxter played multiple roles – 18 of them in one sketch

Seth Meyers to Trump: ‘You can’t convince people the economy is good when they can see the truth’

Late-night hosts recapped Donald Trump’s attempts to reassure Americans on the economy as the private sector sheds jobs and grocery prices keep rising.Seth Meyers devoted his main segment on Wednesday’s Late Night to the US economy, which has seen better days. “Costs of everything, from food to electricity, are soaring while employers are shedding jobs,” he explained. “This is when a president needs to show empathy and demonstrate that he knows the plight of hardworking Americans, and – oh no, as I’m saying this I’m remembering who I’m talking about and realizing that there’s no fucking way he’s going to do that.”Instead the president, in an interview with Politico this week, gave the economy the grade of “A+++++”

The world’s most sublime dinner set – for 2,000 guests! Hyakkō: 100+ Makers from Japan review

Japan House, LondonThe fruit of a two-year odyssey through the workshops of artisans using ancient techniques, this delightful show features rippling chestnut trays, exquisitely turned kettles and vessels crafted from petrified leatherAs a retort to the doom-mongering prognostications of AI’s dominance over human creativity, it is momentarily comforting to tally up the things it cannot do. It cannot throw a pot, blow glass, beat metal, weave bamboo or turn wood. Perhaps, when it has assumed absolute control of human consciousness and the machinery of mass production, it will be able to. But for now, throwing a vessel and weighing its heft in your hand, or carving a tray and sizing up its form with your eye are still the preserve of skilled craftspeople, using techniques their distant ancestors would recognise.On show at London’s Japan House is the work of more than 100 pairs of eyes and hands, constituting an overwhelming profusion of human creativity, corralled into an exhibition of laconic simplicity

Jon Stewart on Fifa’s peace prize: ‘An entirely fictitious golden butt plug’

Late-night hosts mocked Donald Trump for gleefully accepting the inaugural Fifa peace prize ahead of the World Cup in the US.On the daily show on Monday evening Jon Stewart roasted Donald Trump for accepting the inaugural Fifa peace prize at the World Cup draw on Friday. “Oh my God, he won the prize specifically created to appease him!” he joked. “The Fifa appease prize!“I don’t know if you guys got a good look at the trophy, but come on,” he laughed before a photo of the trophy, sculpted to appear as though several hands rising from below cupped the world.“I think its design somewhat reflects, in all likelihood, how it was conceived