Baron Cohen’s live-ammo prankster is back, 20 years on, but has to battle with his own irrelevance in search of big laughs and the approval of a new generation

• Exclusive: Republican leader embarrassed by film says he plays to sue Sacha Baron Cohen: ‘A liar and a pervert’

If you liked Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G the first time around, you’ll like this less; if you disliked it, you’ll dislike this more; if you suspected it was racist, you’ll be more emboldened to say so – especially as Baron Cohen has dreamed up a whole new character apparently to pre-empt and mock precisely that objection. Broad and crass as it often is – in fact always is – this Ali G sequel is sometimes funny: the athletic vigour of our hero’s pranking and punking is like the umpteenth Jackass film at which you might find yourself laughing, and Baron Cohen blunders with the semi-intentional force of an XL bully into the issue of whether jokes are still allowed.

Unlike the first film, Ali G in Da House from 2002, this is not a full written-through narrative. It is basically another live-ammo series of hoaxes with some spectacular bad taste perpetrated upon the deserving and less deserving; it satirises the shamelessness of anti-woke free speech martyrs, punching up and down with grossout cringe, and the targets include some big names who shouldn’t be revealed here. There are two other subordinate characters: Erran Morad, a sinister Mossad/IDF officer turned US security consultant (who appeared in Baron Cohen’s Who Is America? TV series), and a new figure: Dr Nira Cain-N’Degrocello, a grotesquely supercilious white liberal who is the self-appointed scourge of cultural appropriation. The dupes are built into a big silly climax fabricated with body doubles and (presumably) covert reshooting.

Turnaround initiated by the now prime minister and led by the actor could provide blueprint for other neglected areas

• Save high street by taxing online sales at higher rate, Burnham urged

• What makes a good town? Here are five key ingredients

The former England footballer Paul Scholes and the actor Steve Coogan stare out from beside a fish and chip shop in Middleton, near Manchester. Looming over a mural of the pair – and the whole town – is an enormous former cotton mill that powered its economy a century ago.

The deafening looms and spindles of Warwick Mill fell silent decades ago, replaced in recent years by TikTok “urban explorers” who share videos of themselves crawling through its abandoned shell.

A decade after his final album, and his death, we rate the best of the Canadian singer-songwriter who brought a deep, spiritual wisdom to love and grief

The synth-heavy production on 1988’s I’m Your Man has always been divisive – even Leonard Cohen’s longtime collaborator Anjani Thomas subsequently expressed misgivings – but on its opening track, it really works. The Pet Shop Boys-ish arrangement chafes against Cohen’s growling vocal, amplifying First We Take Manhattan’s shiver-inducing sense of brooding menace.

How can it be right that undercover reporters failed to ask permission to expose party’s racist and misogynist views?

The world has gone mad. What has happened to the country when you can’t even have a bit of racist and sexist banter with your mates at work? Time was when up to 20 million viewers would settle down to watch Till Death Us Do Part, for 30 minutes of laughter with Alf Garnett moaning about black people while calling his wife “a silly old moo”. That was a Britain that was worth living in. These days the thought police are everywhere. The wokerati from London, Oxford and Cambridge who are out to ruin everyone’s lives. What’s wrong with letting sleeping racists lie?

Well, Zia Yusuf has had enough and he’s not going to take it any more. After the ITV exposé which revealed racist remarks by members of the party, he has posted a six-and-a-half-minute video on social media promising extreme retribution against the undercover journalists who posed as Reform-friendly.

Fearing future catastrophe is nothing new – ancient Greek and Roman philosophers all visualized the apocalypse

Do your feelings of existential dread extend beyond your own personal mortality? Do they include fears about the survival of our culture and institutions, our species, nonhuman life and the Earth itself? Do you feel like there’s nothing that can help to wrap your head around the biggest problem we face: the end of the world as we know it?

Apocalyptic expectations are on the rise. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 39% of Americans believe that we are living in the end times.

The Scrubs and Garden State star answers your questions about working with megastars, getting his hair to look good and being brutally killed on BoJack Horseman

How do you manage not to act starstruck when directing people like Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Harrison Ford? TopTramp
That’s where my acting comes in – I pretend that I don’t know how famous they are. Every actor really wants a leader. They want someone who knows the script really well, has a plan for how the scene is going to be executed, and – in the case of comedy – knows how to make it funny. The last thing any of those guys wants is someone coming in starstruck and wide-eyed. So I use my acting skills to pretend I’m not starstruck and treat them like normal people.

Your Fake Doctors, Real Friends podcast was a real help through lockdown. You were very emotionally open and personal; it was like catching up with friends. I still think about your line that making it in acting, even if you’re talented and good-looking, is like winning the lottery. Do you think that early 00s Zach Braff would make it in the present day the way you did? KamesJ
Back then, the broadcast networks were making so many pilots, at least it was work for people. Now, I think it’s a much harder landscape to break through. I firmly believe that you can be talented and good-looking, but success is still like winning the lottery. I know plenty of brilliant actors whose lottery ticket hasn’t come up yet. I started auditioning at 14 and barely got anything for years, so I’ve always felt very lucky.

Exclusive: Sasan Ghandehari’s partnership with religious foundation raises questions about past dealings with republic criticised by Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage’s newest billionaire donor was in business with a powerful Iranian religious foundation under the authority of the country’s supreme leader, raising questions about his past dealings with the hardline republic.

Hossein Ghandehari, also called Sasan, was little known in the UK until he pledged to give millions to Reform UK this summer and donated £50,000 to Farage to cover the cost of two passes for the Davos World Economic Forum.

Miatta Fahnbulleh says reference to ‘awkward’ interview was meant to be lighthearted and self-deprecating

The energy secretary has been forced to clarify that she backs Shabana Mahmood’s migration policy, after earlier joking that she had not been able to “lie” about supporting a key element of the changes.

Miatta Fahnbulleh made the original remarks to a journalists’ event in Westminster, referring to an “awkward” Sky News interview in which she repeatedly refused to say she was in favour of plans to make foreign workers wait 15 years to get permanent residency.

PM pledges commitment to address climate crisis, saying in Guardian article that his ‘determination is unwavering’

• Andy Burnham: We will make the net-zero transition work for Britain

Andy Burnham has said he will not “abandon the responsibility” of fighting the climate crisis after the government approved the Jackdaw gasfield, pledging to block new North Sea licences and keep Britain on track for net zero by 2050.

The comments are the prime minister’s most forthright yet on net zero, after many MPs have privately cast doubt on the authenticity of his commitment to tackling the climate crisis.

Judge threatens to dismiss Trump’s BBC lawsuit unless he cooperates with discovery process and sits for deposition

Donald Trump has been ordered by a US judge to cooperate with the discovery process mandated for his lawsuit against the BBC and to sit for a deposition by 11 December – or else he could be subject to sanctions, including the possible dismissal of the $10bn lawsuit.

The lawsuit stems from a Panorama documentary aired by the BBC that spliced together comments made by Trump during a rally on 6 January 2021, before the US Capitol riot. While the broadcast was not readily available to view in Florida, Trump’s team has argued that he was personally damaged by the broadcast under Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.