The Guardian

Lunch with my agent is going nowhere, so I decide to share my latest motoring anecdote

I’m having lunch with my agent – an infrequent occurrence, because neither of us ever has any good news for the other. This lunch is no different.

“Sorry to make you come all this way,” she says, “but I had to be near the office today.” She hints at some complex contractual negotiations involving an author for whom, I suspect, she always has good news.

Alexandrea, 32, a lawyer, meets Pardis, 32, a doctor

The Derry Girls actor has always loved food, so who better to take over as the new presenter of the Guardian’s Comfort Eating podcast?

Siobhán McSweeney is teaching me her preferred way to enjoy a packet of cheese and onion crisps. She has arranged two matching slabs of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, two piles of Tayto crisps and two cans of Guinness on the table in front of us – and is issuing strict instructions. “Don’t swallow!” she booms theatrically, and I freeze, my mouth full of Taytos. The trick, McSweeney explains, is to get the crisps, chocolate and Guinness into your mouth at the same time, and then swill it all around a bit to make a kind of boozy, oniony soup. “See?” McSweeney is watching me carefully to check I am putting all the ingredients into my mouth in the correct order. “It’s delicious! Just delicious!”

McSweeney burst into the public consciousness back in 2018 with Derry Girls, a comedy series about a group of Catholic schoolgirls, set against the background of the Troubles in 1990s Northern Ireland. McSweeney won a Bafta playing the girls’ headmistress, Sister Michael – a potty-mouthed, judo-loving nun – and can count Martin Scorsese as a fan. Asked for a TV recommendation during a panel discussion in 2022, the director name-checked Derry Girls and then lifted his fist in the air in a kind of salute, exclaiming rapturously, “Those nuns!”

People living in tents in northern France hoping to find asylum in England face increasing intimidation from police and far-right agitators

In the decade since the demolition of the “Jungle”, an area of Calais where thousands of asylum seekers set up makeshift shelters before embarking on Channel crossings to the UK, everything and nothing has changed.

This week, in a woodland clearing not far from one of Calais’s busy main roads, several brightly coloured tents are pitched. A jacket hanging from a tree branch blows in the brisk autumnal breeze alongside a belt decorated with union flags. It is only October but the wind makes the temperature feel several degrees chillier.

The base of this easy roast pumpkin soup is rich, nutty, Halloween heaven – you can go wild with the garnishes

A lot of my early life in professional kitchens was spent making vegetable purees, which I find rather tiresome, not least because they can often lapse into baby food: creamy, bland and flattened by a cosseting blanket of dairy. With a judicious and considered approach, however, they can also be incredibly vivid, explosive and concentrated expressions of the very essence of the vegetable in question. I love this seasonal (not to mention Halloween-appropriate) soup for its simplicity of approach – essentially, you just roast a beautiful pumpkin with caramelised butter – and the remarkable complexity of its result.

Jackson Boxer is chef/owner of Brunswick House, Vesper and Dove, all in London, and culinary director of Cowley Manor near Cheltenham and the Henrietta in London

Sandra Hüller excels as Thomas Mann’s daughter in a fine historical drama, and a BBC documentary about the Welsh mining tragedy will enrage. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Anination studio Laika takes flight with a grownup stop-motion tale, while the Grammy-, Oscar- and everything-winner returns with a Pharell-produced 11th album

Wildwood
Out now
If Pixar was a chocolate bar, it would be a Mars, while Laika – whose new film Wildwood incorporates themes of war and child abduction – would be something like Green & Blacks. Darker and with more esoteric flavours, this stop-motion animation is not so much for the nursery school crowd, but for discerning pre-teens and adults alike.

Ghosts: The Possession of Button House
Out now
The beloved BBC TV comedy gets a big-screen outing, with Simon Farnaby’s trouserless Tory MP ghost, Jim Howick’s dead scoutmaster, shot by a member of his own troop, Ben Willbond’s closeted second world war officer and the other regular cast members all returning.

Fatherland
Out now
Joint winner of the best director prize at Cannes, Paweł Pawlikowski’s latest is set during the cold war, and sees an actor, writer and rally driver, Erika (Sandra Hüller), set off on a road trip across Germany with her dear old dad, the Nobel prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler).

Ali G: Who Iz I?
Out now
Twenty four years after Ali G Indahouse opened at No 1 at the UK box office, Sasha Baron Cohen revives his alter-ego for a followup, making his directorial debut in the process. Morgana Robinson also stars. Catherine Bray

Former USA team doctor Larry Nassar’s 2018 conviction sparked a global reckoning in gymnastics, yet gymnasts say they are still being let down

It has been 10 years since the Indianapolis Star published allegations of sexual abuse by Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for USA Gymnastics, setting off a chain of events that would lead to a reckoning for the sport. Hundreds of women came forward with their own allegations against Nassar, who also worked at Michigan State University, leading to his conviction and jailing.

The exposure of his crimes sparked a wider investigation into how gymnastics had allowed predators to abuse young athletes around the world. While Nassar was the worst recorded case, it emerged many other countries had questions to answer about the failure to protect victims from not only sexual but physical and emotional abuse. But a decade later, on a large houseboat moored in Rotterdam three tram stops away from the Ahoy Arena, where the World Gymnastics Championships are taking place this week, survivors and advocates raised fears about the slow pace of change.

Chancellor says government to commit hundreds of millions to develop ‘distinctively British’ approach to AI

John Healey has pledged to use Wednesday’s budget to harness the power of artificial intelligence to bolster Britain’s security and prosperity against the risks in the accelerating global technology arms race.

As he prepares for his debut budget, the chancellor said that Andy Burnham’s government would commit hundreds of millions of pounds to develop a “distinctively British” approach to AI that would capitalise on the benefits of the frontier technology.