WELCOME TO GB NEWS

davidlittleuk

GB News has launched this evening.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of the team at the new channel all the best in the days, weeks, months and years ahead.

I particularly like breakfast news but Sky, ITV and the BBC have lost the plot so I’m hopeful of news from a fresh and different perspective with GB News.

RUSSELL T DAVIES BASED IT’S A SIN SCENES ON HIS HUSBAND’S DEATH

davidlittleuk

Russell T Davies, the writer of It’s a Sin, the Channel 4 drama about the Aids epidemic in the late 1980s, has revealed that the death of Colin, one of the show’s characters, was based on the death of his partner.

Speaking to the food writer Grace Dent in a new Guardian podcast, Comfort Eating, which launches on Tuesday, Davies said he had drawn on the experience of watching his husband, Andrew Smith, die from brain cancer in 2018 to write the scenes.

“He said a few last sentences and then there were 10 days after that when his eyes stayed open and he was just staring,” Davies said.

“I love Colin, I created Colin. I wanted to write his death to be as powerful … to do them justice you have to use that stuff. You have to dig it up and be raw.”

He had wrestled with whether it was appropriate to put such a private moment on public show, and what the response from Smith’s family might be. He has not previously disclosed the inspiration for the scenes, including to Callum Scott Howells, the actor who played Colin.

It’s a Sin follows a group of young gay men who move to London in the 1980s. Colin dies after contracting the Aids virus. The scenes in which his health deteriorates and he is cared for by his mother and friends have been described as some of the most moving in the drama, which has been viewed more than 6.5m times on Channel 4’s streaming platform.

Dent said: “That scene of him, when he’d lost dignity, it really cut me. I thought to write this, you have to have seen it.”

Davies shared how food had shaped his relationship during Smith’s illness. He gave up his job for several years to care for him and cook “incredibly healthy” meals of fish and eight vegetables every night. “It’s the greatest act of love I’ll ever go through,” he said.

Each week, Dent will ask guests to select their favourite comfort food. Davies chose plain white rice with “a wodge” of butter, with black pepper. “It’s surprisingly lovely,” he said. But most importantly, “it made my husband laugh so much, it became one of our running jokes.”