The actor has always been full of surprises – and now thanks to Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster he’s become a romantic lead. As the series returns, he talks about marriage, masculinity and meditation

Danny Dyer is dressed in white and carrying a huge bouquet of flowers when I drop in on his Guardian photoshoot. “Hello, baby,” he says to me in a voice so bad-boy East End, so fabulously filthy, that he sounds like a parody of Danny Dyer. We’ve never met before, but you wouldn’t guess.

Dyer has been in the limelight for 30 years, but never like this. As he approaches 50, he has become a middle-aged heart-throb. The week we meet, he’s on the front of Rolling Stone UK, and he can’t quite believe it. “I’m on it now, as we speak. And the cover before was Timothée Chalamet! Pretty cool! You know, I’ve had a long career and I couldn’t get on the cover of anything till now.”

The once inexorable rise in retiree living standards since the second world war has broken down. Can we keep the dream alive for future generations?

When you think of retirement, what comes to mind? Perhaps it is images of older people enjoying a well-deserved period of leisure and comfort in the final stretch of their lives. Cruise ships, garden centres, golf clubs and bungalows by the sea. The truth is that this image is now, in large part, the artefact of a bygone age. A long and comfortable retirement starting at 60 or 65 is beginning to look like a collective social experience whose moment has passed. The political and economic forces it relied upon appear to have run their course – and it’s time to start thinking about what comes next.

Retirement in Britain has a surprisingly short history, underpinned by dramatic improvements in older people’s quality of life over the past 50 years. Large public and private bureaucracies first started to enrol long-serving employees into pension schemes from the mid-19th century. In 1909, Britain was the first country to pioneer an old age pension, funded by the state and targeting the poorest, who could claim it from the age of 70. But it was only after the second world war that a period of leisured old age become an ordinary expectation for most British workers.

Helen McCarthy is a historian and the author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood

American soldiers have been part of life in Landstuhl since 1945, giving the area a unique US-German identity

• Germany says it expected Trump’s withdrawal of US troops – live updates

Despite Donald Trump’s frequent bluster, Nadine Firmont said the US president’s move to pull American troops out of Germany had hit her town like a bombshell.

“I have to tell you I was honestly shocked,” said Firmont, 45, who works at a high school in Landstuhl, south-west Germany, the heart of the largest American military community outside the US.

The actor on struggling with body image, her U-turn on marriage and her obsession with Instagram dogs

Born in Essex, Juliet Stevenson, 69, studied at Rada and made her film debut in Drowning By Numbers. Her other film work includes Truly, Madly, Deeply and Bend It Like Beckham. On stage, she has performed for the RSC and the National. She received an Olivier in 1992 for her role in Death and the Maiden and the 2019 Critics’ Circle best actress award for The Doctor. She is current touring By a Lady, a show about Jane Austen which is at the Buxton Opera House 10 May. She is married with two children and lives in London.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I talk too much.

‘Date My Mate’ nights, which involve pitching a friend to a room of singles, are gaining momentum across the country

For many young people, the dating game has been nothing but a thankless task of endless swiping and ghosting, with little hope of finding love.

But as dating apps fall out of favour, and a relationship recession looms, young singles have discovered a new way to revive the dating scene: talking up their pals to strangers.

The East West Rail project linking Oxford to Milton Keynes was finished in 2024. There’s just one hitch: no services

The rumbling noise in the night, still enough to waken the unhabituated, is what really goads some people living in Winslow, Buckinghamshire. Freight trains running through the new station since late 2024 prove this stretch of railway is operational. But the long-promised passenger services have yet to appear – and there is no sign of any arriving soon.

Welcome to East West Rail, open or not. For well over a decade, ministers have talked up a new railway linking Oxford to Cambridge via Milton Keynes to accelerate the drive for housing, jobs and growth – an arc of tech industry hailed as the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley.

PM worried about ‘cumulative’ effect of marches, as Met chief says Jewish communities facing biggest threat

Some pro-Palestinian demonstrations could be stopped, the prime minister has warned, as the UK’s most senior police officer said the threat to the Jewish ­community was greater than it had ever been.

Keir Starmer indicated he wanted the language expressed on some protest marches to be subjected to “tougher action” as he sought to allay the fears of British Jews after a series of attacks on their communities in recent weeks.

⚽ Updates from a crucial afternoon of football action
⚽ Ten things to look out for | Scores | Tables | Mail John

Derby v Sheff Utd teams

Derby: Zetterstrom, Ward, Langas, Clarke, Forsyth, Ozoh, Travis, Brereton Diaz, Szmodics, Banel, Morris. Subs: Vickers, Batth, Salvesen, Johnston, Sanderson, Fraulo, Eames, Clark, Allen.

Wrexham AFC, the football club part-owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, used taxpayer funds to re-lay its pitch, even though initial grant documents assessing the state investment did not make reference to it.

The club has been awarded £18m in grants, with the first £3.8m tranche in February 2022. However, legally required state aid documents relating to that initial grant made no reference to the pitch works.

Figures for England and Wales prompt calls for more rigorous police investigations of cases

Only 3% of suicides related to domestic abuse in England and Wales in the past five years have resulted in any sort of prosecution, figures show.

Between 2020 and 2025, 553 people took their own lives after suspected abuse in an intimate relationship, but only 17 posthumous charges were brought.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

German defence minister responds to US president’s announcement that 5,000 US troops will leave bases in Germany

• ‘We love our Americans’: the German town rocked by Trump’s plan to withdraw US troops

The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said suspicious activity had been reported 84 nautical miles southwest of the port of Mukalla in Yemen.

A bulk carrier reported that a small boat and a fishing vessel came within 500m of it, according to UKMTO.