Sara Pascoe: I Am a Strange Gloop review – motherhood as Sisyphean struggle

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.So goes the oft-quoted conclusion of Albert Camus’ 1942 treatise The Myth of Sisyphus – comparing all of human existence to an endless struggle.Camus has also been playing on the UK comedian Sara Pascoe’s mind, and she has a bone or two to pick with the French author in her show I Am a Strange Gloop; the name is an equally cerebral reference to a book by the philosopher Douglas Hofstadter.This new, deliciously constructed standup set overturns, examines and pokes at Pascoe’s current run of very bad days – which started with the birth of her two children and has doomed her to a Sisyphean loop of wiping things down. But at least Sisyphus gets to roll his boulder, she cries! At least it happens outside! There’s no wiping in sight!There are glancing disclaimers – Pascoe loves her children and considers them nothing short of miraculous, a gift facilitated by IVF – but these are just as quickly dismissed and forgotten as the hour becomes a funny but thrillingly relentless refusal to name a single positive thing about being a mother

Drag queen Jiggly Caliente dies aged 44 after ‘severe infection’

The drag queen Jiggly Caliente has died aged 44 after a “severe infection”, her family confirmed. The performer, whose real name was Bianca Castro-Arabejo, rose to fame after taking part in the fourth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.Caliente’s family announced on Thursday that the Filipino-American drag performer had part of her leg amputated due to the infection.Her family wrote on Instagram that she was “cherished by many” for her career, and died on Sunday at 4.42am “surrounded by her loving family and close friends”

The big finish: podcasts that really stick the landing

Headphones are essential for this atmospheric audio drama from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, released in 2022 and told over 12 parts. Tracy Letts plays radio shock jock Rick Egan, who casually, carelessly stirs up racial tensions in the post-9/11 US. Fast forward eight years, and Rick is persona non grata in the industry, a deadbeat dad and – on top of all that – has become the target of an evil parasitic force called the Blank (voiced by Taran Killam), in a series that offers thrills and chills right to the end.Megan Bhari was a teenager who – despite apparent ill health – poured her energy into founding a charity for sick children that was supported by the likes of One Direction. But, astoundingly, web sleuths alleged that Bhari was faking cancer – even claiming that she had gone to Disney World when she was supposed to be undergoing treatment

Jeanette Winterson: ‘I’d like to go up in space as a very old lady and just be pushed out’

Your debut novel Oranges are Not the Only Fruit turns 40 years old this year. How do you feel about it at this point in your life?Can you believe it? I find that astonishing. I’m always having to think about it because people keep bothering me about it! Its next iteration is a musical, and then I really hope that’s the end. Just let me go! Obviously I love Oranges and I revisited it again with [her 2011 memoir] Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? and the musical too. Surely, by the rule of three, this is it? Then I can live in peace and plant potatoes

David Tennant wishes JK Rowling no ‘ill will’ but says trans people ‘demonised’

David Tennant has criticised the “demonisation” of the trans community, saying that while he wishes JK Rowling “no ill will”, he hopes that “we can all as a society just let people be”.The Scottish actor, who appeared in the 2005 film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, likened the treatment of transgender people to the Thatcher government’s introduction of section 28 – a 1988 law that prohibited local authorities from “promoting” homosexuality.“When I was a teenager, there was this thing that Mrs Thatcher’s government introduced called section 28, which was about stopping the promotion of homosexuality in school, which was a weird umbrella term, which was basically saying it was illegal to talk about being gay in school, or to suggest that that might be a normal way of behaving,” said Tennant during an appearance on ITV1 show The Assembly.“We look back on that now as a medieval, absurd thing to try and say, and I think the way the trans community is being demonised and othered is exactly the same. It’s become this kind of political football

Sex and the City made me leave my loveless marriage

I had always avoided watching Sex and the City. I thought it looked a bit girlie for me. It was only during lockdown that I finally got round to seeing it. I found the first few episodes entertaining, but didn’t really connect with any of the storylines. I was the same age as the characters, but I had been in a relationship for four years, so Carrie’s disastrous dates felt far removed from my own experience