Issue 1424

Where there’s muck there’s gold
Imagine Usain Bolt excelling at the 100 metres, fell running and the marathon and you have some idea of what 23-year-old Yorkshire cyclist Tom Pidcock is achieving. He tells Steve Lee how he gets ahead by viewing even the riders he once looked up to as equal competitors.

Repay and play
Robert Edric’s childhood in Sheffield was one of scraping to get by, money anxiously saved in envelopes on the mantelpiece for gas and electric and getting into debt to pay for school uniforms. It stood him well for a precarious existence as a writer and might stand our rulers well too, he writes.

Stand up speaks out
There’s no delayed reveal in Jonny Pelham’s stand-up show. The Bradford-born comedian tells Jack Walton why going in at the start with his childhood sexual abuse is how he’s unapologetically getting his laughs.

Plus: the climate disasters that never happened, Saskia Murphy on Ukrainian refugees in Britain, an interview with Liverpool author Lauren John-Joseph, a timely stage adaptation of Animal Farm, a Letter to my Younger Self from singer Lloyd Cole and more.