While most hospitality venues are struggling, there has been an enormous rise in ‘competitive socialising’. But why? And could I find the answer while dressed in a prison jumpsuit and drinking a daiquiri?

British hospitality is in crisis. In the first quarter of 2026, three hospitality sites closed every day, while one in five remaining businesses fear collapse over the next year owing to rises in tax and employment costs. For those venues struggling to make ends meet in London in particular, there is the added worry of increasingly stringent licensing rules and influential lobby groups making once-thriving areas such as Soho a ghost town after 11pm.

And yet one hospitality niche seems to be bucking the trend: themed bars. Blending booze with, say, axe-throwing, darts, immersive theatre or adult-sized ball pits, these experiential venues have seen a boom in recent years. A report from Savills estate agents found a 58% increase in “competitive socialising” venue openings in 2025 compared with 2018, while another survey found one in three adults had visited one of these venues in the UK in 2024-25. Photo-friendly interiors have made many of them a hit on social media, too.

His church thinks electric guitars are the devil’s work. But Father Tabakis is on a mission to change that – with Paradise Metal, a religious dubstep album that outdid Daft Punk and Aphex Twin

‘The guitar was made by God,” says Father Dionysios Tabakis, sitting in the living room of his flat in Nafplio, a city on Greece’s Peloponnesian coast, surrounded by a huge assortment of musical instruments and religious icons. Dressed in long black robes and sporting a fine grey wispy beard, Tabakis sounds as if he could be speaking from the pulpit when he adds: “The devil cannot create something. God has created all.”

His favourite is an adapted Harley Benton R-457. Bought for only €135, it’s a striking electric guitar, yielding chords that are more wobbly and atonal than those of an ordinary guitar, but also warmer. Tabakis likens the sound to the “waves” of the human voice.

Reasons for increase not clear but experts say it could be welcome sign marine ecosystem is becoming healthier

The Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast have long drawn fans of the natural world keen to catch sight of the resident guillemots and puffins.

But as recently as last week, another much bigger black-and-white animal has been delighting wildlife spotters. Orcas have been appearing more regularly than ever before.

She radiated love as the narrator of Gogglebox, created one of the most emotional sitcom moments of all time and asked Debbie McGee a question she’ll never forget. Ten years on from her untimely death, we remember the TV legend

It’s 10 years since the tragic loss of TV genius Caroline Aherne. The brilliant but too brief career of the actor, comedian, writer and director was cut heartbreakingly short on 2 July 2016 when she died at 52 from lung cancer.

A decade on, we pay tribute by selecting 10 Aherne highlights. From The Royle Family to rude nuns, here are her best bits …

This shadowy treaty on medicine imports will cost the NHS billions and take funding away from doctors, nurses, cancer scans and the rest

For all the crowd noise and heavy-breathing match analysis, British democracy is a simple sport. We elect politicians to serve our interests. They direct the vital services that look after our families and communities, such as our healthcare and our schools. The entire political system rests on one basic premise: they work for us.

Believe that, as I do, and this week is one of vast democratic failure. Rather than working for us, Keir Starmer and his ministers are acting against us. They have rammed through parliament a sweeping law that will, independent experts agree, harm the public; and they have done so without even coming clean on the costs or the consequences. What’s worse, MPs and the press have failed to put this under scrutiny.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

The pop and football giants’ combined star wattage will be united in matrimony this weekend – probably – in an event shrouded in secrecy. But here’s what we’ve gleaned

After an agonising 10 months’ wait, the wedding of the century is apparently here: if the reports are true, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will be tying the knot this weekend, uniting the houses of sports and entertainment in holy matrimony. When the couple announced their engagement on Instagram in August, as part of a carefully coordinated album rollout/podcast promotion tie-in, it shattered platform records, drawing 14m likes in its first hour. (It’s now up to 37.4m.)

Yet it’s remarkable, given the couple’s profile and the investigative horsepower apparently dedicated to cracking this wedding wide open, just how little we know for sure in this, the (purported) week of the event. We’ve sifted through all the speculation, sources “close to the couple” and scarcely concealed grumbling from spurned guests to answer the burning questions.

Analysis reveals extent of impact on NHS of placating Donald Trump over price of British medicine exports

The NHS will have to divert £45bn from essential services to pay for new medicines under the terms of the UK-US trade deal agreed last December, leading to more than 200,000 avoidable deaths of patients, analysis has found.

Ministers have defended the deal as a way of helping British drug exports to the US avoid tariffs, and giving patients in England access to potentially life-extending drugs that would otherwise be denied.

Thomas Tuchel’s mission to put a second World Cup star on the England shirt did not look as though it would reach the second knockout round. On a fraught and chaotic occasion in Atlanta, his team flirted aggressively with disaster. For 75 minutes, England mixed loose defending with an inability to take their chances. Which were plentiful. The Democratic Republic of the Congo goalkeeper, Lionel Mpasi, had the game of his life. Who needs Lionel Messi?

It was easy for England’s long-suffering fans to feel their minds being taken to dark places. Iceland 2016, anyone? They had only ever lost once to an African team – to Senegal in a friendly in June last year. The DRC, who have brought the romance to this tournament, a team to unite a war-torn nation, led through Brian Cipenga’s seventh-minute goal. They were primed to do something utterly extraordinary.

Exclusive: Poll shows policies such as rent control and higher wealth taxes could fend off Reform UK in key seats

Andy Burnham is being urged to adopt an “economic populist” approach to combating the cost of living crisis if he becomes prime minister, as a detailed opinion poll shows radical policies could help Labour to retain its majority at the next election.

Senior figures advising the Makerfield MP have been circulating a seat-by-seat poll showing Labour’s majority could be demolished at the next general election with the party on course to win fewer than 100 seats.

Multiple explosions heard in Kyiv with a hotel and several residential buildings on fire

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones overnight into Thursday, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more.

The intense strikes hit residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggered ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.