Drugs, defence, discrimination … we want to hear from people across the UK who hold different views on some of the more divisive issues of our time for our series Dining across the divide

Are flags hung from lamp-posts intimidating? Do we need to spend more on defence? Should we legalise drugs? Where do you stand on these or other issues – and could you persuade someone with a different view?

For the Guardian series Dining across the divide, we would like to hear from people living in the UK who have differing viewpoints about some of the most divisive issues that affect us now.

Our aim is to find out whether encountering someone with the opposite point of view can make a difference. We’re interested in hearing from adults from every part of the UK with an interest in meeting and discussing opposing views with another reader.

‘The art director wanted it to read “1999”. But Prince wasn’t having that. So the next thing I knew, I was writing “Free” on him with my fingers in cold paint’

I grew up loving Prince’s music and remember thinking: “I’m gonna work for that guy one day.” Through high school and college I photographed local bands. I’d say I worked for a newspaper but I didn’t tell them it was the high-school newspaper, so they’d give me passes to U2 or Boy George. Once, when I went to photograph Lionel Richie, Sheila E was supporting, who I knew had a Prince connection. I ended up talking to her guitar-player and told him I was a photographer and artist. He asked me to draw something, so I did a quick portrait of him on a napkin and he said we should stay in touch.

Around the Sign o’ the Times album he called to say he was joining Prince’s band, and said: “I’m gonna take you with me.” He showed Prince some of my artwork, which he apparently liked. I was asked to paint a stage for him – that was the first job I did, and one day he asked: “Have you ever taken photos?” I was in the right place at the right time. I got a digital camera and became in-house art director at Paisley Park, taking photos from 1988 until 1996.

In this week’s newsletter: the creator of All Will Rise standing up to the tech giant –and joining the No Games for Genocide movement

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Video games are in a funding crisis. Investor money flowed freely during the pandemic gaming boom , but now the well has run dry. It is increasingly difficult, for indie developers especially, to get the capital to make games. And it is extremely unusual, then, to hear of a developer returning an investor’s money. Yet that is what Speculative Agency, developers of All Will Rise, have just done.

Last year, All Will Rise, a deck-building game about a team of activists fighting for the future of their oligarch-run city, received money from Microsoft as part of a developer acceleration programme. In late-2025, however, the team became aware of No Games for Genocide , a collective of developers, journalists, union organisers and others that came together as a result of Israeli assault on Gaza to protest against “material and commercial ties between the games industry and enabling genocide, war crimes, and the military industrial complex”.

Producers say alleged victim of grooming was ready to tell his story and show raises urgent issues around online safety

Channel 5 has defended its controversial drama about the downfall of Huw Edwards, saying it raises the “urgent” issue of grooming and online safety and gives voice to his alleged victim, who worked with the programme to tell his side of the story so “no one who has been silenced feels they are alone”.

Starring Martin Clunes as the disgraced former BBC newsreader, the drama charts the claim of a relationship and texts between Edwards and a vulnerable young man who was at the centre of a scandal reported by the Sun in 2023, which alleged the presenter made payments to a 17-year-old for sexually explicit images.

Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards will air at 9pm on 24 March on Channel 5.

They’re one of the most-hyped kitchen appliances of the last decade, but are these low-fat cookers worth the cost and counter space?

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I owned an air fryer long before they attained peak ubiquity, and I use it on a daily basis, so I’m surprised when people express zero interest in them. For my lifestyle, air fryers are brilliant: I’m usually multitasking, so being able to pop chicken, veggies or sausages in a drawer and walk away frees me up.

But if you’re thinking of buying one, it’s worth exploring whether it will work for how you live – and the food you cook – to avoid cluttering your kitchen counter with another underused gadget, and needlessly spending money.

Olivier theatre, London
Writers Nina and Moses Raine add comedy and raunch to Maxim Gorky’s satire of the holidaying elite

In 1898, Maxim Gorky wrote a fan letter to Anton Chekhov. Gorky was just starting out, and the leading light in Russian theatre convinced him to try his hand at plays. Summerfolk was written a few years later as a response to The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov’s elegiac last play about the downfall of the ruling class.

It features languid members of the elite gathering for the summer at a dacha belonging to Sergei Bassov (Paul Ready) and his wife, Varvara (Sophie Rundle). This setting is stunningly designed by Peter McKintosh as the exoskeleton of a house, rather like the construction of a draughtsman’s sketch in the middle of the woods.

Marius Borg Høiby accused of 39 offences, but denies the most serious charges of four rapes

Marius Borg Høiby, the son of Norway’s crown princess, should receive more than seven years in prison if he is found guilty of 39 offences, including four rapes and assaults, according to prosecutors.

On Wednesday, the penultimate day of the more than six-week-long trial at Oslo district court, the prosecution said it believed that Høiby was guilty of 39 of the 40 offences with which he was charged, which, as well as rape and domestic abuse, include multiple breaches of restraining orders, assault, drug and driving offences.

Move comes as president attempts to mitigate rising price of oil while carrying out war on Iran

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Donald Trump is trying to make it easier for foreign tankers to move around the US, temporarily allowing foreign-flagged ships carrying oil and gas to travel between US ports, the White House announced Wednesday.

The move comes as the president tries to manage a delicate balancing act, attempting to mitigate the increasing price of oil while also carrying out the US-Israel war on Iran.

A new documentary delves into the phenomenon of men who pay women to role-play their romantic partners. The masked 27-year-old at its heart, and director Ben Zand, tell all

‘From the get go, T was incredibly transparent about the fact that he wants a completely subservient woman he can control. He didn’t even necessarily know that what he was saying was offensive.” Ben Zand is a 35-year-old documentary-maker, right in the eye of the millennial cohort that sees the contours of the manosphere, takes it seriously, but understands its logic for what it is: misogynistic neofascist swill. Through his independent production company, Zandland, he has made films about “incels”, QAnon and looksmaxxing – along with tangential matters, such as: what does a Mexican drug overlord have for breakfast (in the Bafta-nominated film he made for Channel 4, Kingpin Cribs).

Inside the Incels Who Rent Girlfriends is an intense one-to-one with T, a British 27-year-old with a good job, who over the past eight years has spent £50,000 renting girlfriends. In the film, his voice is disguised and he is wearing an Anonymous-style mask, which does nothing to offset the menace of the whole picture. He is, as Zand says, completely open about what he wants: a girlfriend who always says yes. I speak to him with his camera off but he’s using his regular voice, so he sounds – well, obviously – much more human and more vulnerable.