The Weekly Entertainment Round up. Delivered with the appropriate level of baffled enthusiasm and mild existential concern!

Well, folks, it’s been another banner week in the entertainment world, by which I mean a week in which absolutely everything feels like it was written by a committee of sleep‑deprived otters. 

Let’s begin with the biggest cultural development of the last seven days: the triumphant return of the Mother Clanger puppet, which was stolen from a London exhibition more than 50 years ago. That’s right! after half a century on the run, the puppet has finally resurfaced, presumably after a long and difficult life of crime. I like to imagine it spent the 1980s as a getaway driver for the Great Train Robbers, then retired to Marbella under an assumed name like “Señor Clango.” But now it’s back in the UK, ready to be displayed once again, probably behind a laser grid and a security guard who has been explicitly told, “If this thing disappears again, so do you.”

Meanwhile, in the world of television, Alison Hammond has announced she is too busy to host Strictly Come Dancing, which is the most British sentence ever constructed. Being “too busy” for Strictly is like being “too full” for dessert technically possible, but spiritually confusing. Hammond is currently juggling This Morning, Bake Off, and approximately 400 other national‑treasure duties, so adding Strictly would probably cause her to split into two identical Alisons, which would be great for the nation but terrible for the laws of physics.

Speaking of things nobody asked for but Hollywood is doing anyway, a Basic Instinct reboot is heading for cinemas, because apparently we have run out of new ideas and must now reboot films that were already controversial when people still used fax machines. I assume the reboot will involve fewer cigarettes, more smartphones, and an interrogation scene in which someone dramatically uncrosses their legs to reveal… a sponsored QR code! Sharon Stone will probably appear in a cameo as a wise elder who says something like, “Back in my day, we didn’t need CGI to scandalise people we had chairs.”

In the world of big money, Universal Music Group has received a takeover offer worth $64.3 billion, which is the kind of number that makes you wonder if you’ve accidentally wandered into a Monopoly game played by billionaires who don’t understand the value of human currency. UMG, of course, represents Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and Kendrick Lamar, meaning that whoever buys it will essentially own 70% of all music played in gyms, supermarkets, and TikTok thirst traps. If the deal goes through, expect your local Tesco to start blasting Kendrick’s “HUMBLE.” during the reduced‑to‑clear announcements.

Elsewhere, a signed Noel Gallagher guitar used on Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova is going up for auction, which means someone out there is about to spend a terrifying amount of money to own the physical object responsible for 30 years of blokes at parties saying, “Hang on, I can play this.” This guitar has seen things — student unions, sticky pubs, at least one bloke named Gaz who insisted on singing the high harmony. It deserves a peaceful retirement, ideally somewhere far away from anyone who uses the phrase “proper tune.”

And finally, in the world of gritty Brummie drama, a new Peaky Blinders TV series set in the 1950s is on the way, starring Jamie Bell. This is excellent news for anyone who enjoys stylish violence, meaningful hat‑tilting, and dialogue delivered in an accent so thick it requires subtitles even for people from Birmingham. Setting it in the 1950s means we can expect new threats, new suits, and at least one scene where someone dramatically lights a cigarette while saying something like, “The world’s changing, Tommy… but not fast enough.”