From Rocky Horror to the Muppets, Curry’s extraordinary career made him world-famous. Then, a stroke left him paralysed. The actor talks about his cocaine years, his friendship with David Bowie – and the moment his mother came at him with a knife

‘It’s difficult not to see it as a kind of finale,” says Tim Curry of his memoir, Vagabond. That he’s written it at all is a surprise. Curry has always liked the comfort of privacy – my efforts to persuade him to do an interview with the Guardian began more than five years ago. At 79, he still prefers looking forward, too, which is how he has covered so much ground in his career.

Boundless energy has been the actor’s hallmark. He once exerted so much while filming the murder mystery comedy Clue – in which he plays the frantic, sharp-tongued butler Wadsworth – that a nurse who took his blood pressure on set told him he was at risk of having a heart attack.

I’ve always tried to make my villains amusing. It gives them a bit more edge

From avoiding overtightened bolts to giving it a good clean, here are the easy and affordable habits mechanics swear by

• The best bike locks in the UK for all budgets

Cycling is a cheap, accessible and green way to get around, and in most cities and built-up areas it can often be faster than any alternative. But owning and maintaining a bike isn’t free. Buying one is a significant investment – even if you spread the cost using initiatives such as the cycle to work scheme. New parts and maintenance fees don’t come cheap, either, especially if you run your daily commuter into the ground without regular TLC. “If you don’t want to maintain your bike, [eventually] it’s gonna cost you,” says Lee Carter, head mechanic at Bespoke Cycling.

But you don’t need an A-level in Allen keys to make your bike last longer and keep it in working order. In fact, it’s possible to reduce trips to your local bike shop with a few simple tricks. Here, mechanics and experts share their advice and insight around cleaning, essential maintenance and when it’s best to call in the specialists.

Clubs’ plan to open new ground in 2031 has been met by local opposition but is required for hosts to stay competitive

A protester outside held a sign insisting “San Siro belongs to the citizens” but Milan’s city council was about to change all that, voting to sell one of the world’s most famous football stadiums to tenants who plan to tear it down. Milan have played home games at what is officially the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza since 1926. Inter moved in with them 21 years later. They propose to build a shared home on the same grounds.

It has been a long time coming. The clubs announced joint plans for a new stadium as long ago as June 2019, with an intention to complete work within three years. International architecture firms were consulted and designs made public, but they never progressed out of this first phase.

It’s Keir Starmer’s turn to muddle through a problem that none of his predecessors solved: can his cash-poor nation afford to offend a superpower?

It has all the makings of a gripping spy novel.

Two young men accused of passing secrets to China, who vigorously protest their innocence, are swept up in a swirling political intrigue with a shadowy semi-mythical figure (in the shape of veteran Downing Street national security adviser Jonathan Powell) at its heart. Yet the story dominating domestic headlines as MPs returned from recess this week is not fiction, or at least not entirely.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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Premium commuter cans upgraded with longer battery life, USB-C audio and improved sound, but still cost a lot

Bose has updated its top-of-the-line noise-cancelling headphones with longer battery, USB-C audio and premium materials, making the commuter favourites even better.

The second-generation QuietComfort Ultra headphones still have an expensive price tag, from £450 (€450/$450/A$700), which is more than most competitors, including Sony’s WH-1000XM6.

Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breaches

It is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.

Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say.

Defence minister says delay in returning more bodies would be a violation of ceasefire as forces open fire on people approaching troops in northern Gaza

• Israelis and Palestinians celebrate as truce brings hope of ‘era of peace’

Despite the ceasefire agreement, a medical source told Palestinian news agency Wafa today that four people were killed when Israeli drones fired at residents inspecting their homes in Gaza’s eastern Shejaiya neighbourhood. We have not yet been able to independently verify this information.

Israel’s military said it opened fire on Tuesday to remove a threat posed by several suspects who approached Israeli forces operating in the northern Gaza Strip.

Every constituency projected to be at greater risk, with many areas likely to be uninsurable, Guardian investigation finds

• The flood-prone Worcestershire town being abandoned by insurers

• Doors, drains and paving perils: protecting your home from flooding

Millions more homes in England, Scotland and Wales face devastating floods, and some towns may have to be abandoned as climate breakdown makes many areas uninsurable, a Guardian investigation has found.

New analysis from the insurance industry, seen by the Guardian, reveals the extent of concern in the sector, with bosses warning that large swathes of housing and commercial property in densely populated areas will be at greater risk.

Exclusive: 13 mainly northern MPs say a new system should better account for higher house prices in south-east

More than a dozen Labour MPs have written to Rachel Reeves calling on her to scrap council tax, as the chancellor faces mounting pressure to overhaul Great Britain’s property taxes in next month’s budget.

Thirteen MPs, mainly from seats in northern England, wrote to Reeves last month asking her to abolish the tax and replace it with another system that better accounts for the steep rise in house prices in London and the south-east over the last 35 years.

PM due to give statement on Middle East and India trip but opposition MPs likely to try to ask about claims of government interference in China case

Parents who turn to TikTok influencers and Instagram gurus for advice on everything from potty training to childhood vaccination are at risk of falling victim to misleading and poor quality information, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has warned. Sally Weale has the story.

In the Commons yesterday Kemi Badenoch quoted Mark Elliott, a public law professor at the University of Cambridge, as one of the many experts who have queried the government’s account of why the China spy prosecution failed. On the basis of what was said in the Commons yesterday, Elliott has now written a new blog, highlighting what he says are ongoing inconsistencies in the government’s story and setting out possible theories as to what went wrong. The blog is worth reading in full, but here is his conclusion.

We can, then, add a fifth possible explanation to the four set out above: that ministers prevailed over decision-making arrangements concerning highly consequential national security-related matters that afforded individual officials a wholly inappropriate degree of unilateral discretion, and that ministers failed to put in place a framework for ensuring that such decisions were appropriately stress-tested before being finalised. Like the first four possible explanations outlined earlier in this post, I do not claim that the fifth explanation necessarily describes what actually happened — but it is arguably the most likely.

The overwhelming message conveyed by the security minister [Dan Jarvis – the minister making a statement in the Commons yesterday] was that this is matter for which ministers bear no responsibility because it was handled wholly at official level. But that will not wash. Whatever uncertainties there might be about the nuances of the constitutional doctrine of ministerial responsibility, if ministers are responsible for anything, they must be responsible for ensuring that the way in which national security-related decisions are made is fit for purpose. If, then, it turns out that this is a story of official failure, it is also necessarily, and more importantly, a story of ministerial failure.

This government keeps trying to make apolitical decisions about a policy that is deeply political, and in turn essentially makes political choices but doesn’t take ownership of them.