From Lady Marmalade to Rufus Sewell, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which football director sold her future husband for £400,000?
2 Which comedy character’s look was modelled on 60s singer Peter Asher?
3 John Wheeler coined what term for an intergalactic shortcut?
4 The earliest firearms used what plant as a barrel?
5 Which North American province contains the names of two dogs?
6 Which monarch is the son of Antoinette Gardiner?
7 Which extinct marine creature had a name meaning “three lobes”?
8 What is the busiest UK railway station outside of London?
What links:
9 Lady Marmalade; Michelle; Psycho Killer; Sunday Girl; You Never Can Tell?
10 Head; three-quarters; kit-cat; bishop’s half-length; whole-length?
11 Clipper in Greenwich; flat bonnet; Salinger bestseller; Steinbeck novella?
12 Novak Djokovic (twice); Robin Söderling; Alexander Zverev?
13 Central Park, NY; Victoria Embankment, London; Place de la Concorde, Paris?
14 Tom Byrne and James Murray; Rufus Sewell; Michael Sheen?
15 Grey (5); red (10); blue (20); orange (50); green (100)?

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As a phone bank volunteer, I hoped to counter the Republican attacks and half-truths, but people really believed them

It has been an extraordinary week for US politics – and a very depressing couple of days for those such as me who spent hours on the phone to people, trying to persuade them to vote for Kamala Harris and not Donald Trump. This is what voters told me time and again, and why so many did vote for Trump .

The first type of voter I encountered as a volunteer on the Harris phone bank was the one focused purely on the economy. It is hard for us to grasp on this side of the Atlantic that soaring growth rates and low unemployment in the US would not be seen positively in the eyes of an American voter. But it was clear in my conversations that the Trump campaign was extremely effective at countering that story. Wages may well be rising at all levels, but everyday inflation was more discernible to voters.

Oliver Hall is a journalist and podcaster

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After spending years in and out of hospital with my daughter, I know the patients’ food isn’t usually very good. But does it have to be this way?

• The best and worst of hospital food around the world – in pictures

‘We tend to think of this as a nutritional holiday,” said the dietician, as we looked down at the blue plastic tray on my four-year-old daughter Vida’s overbed table. Vida was about to start a long-awaited bone marrow transplant at a major London hospital, a process requiring an intensive chemotherapy programme that would affect her appetite and ability to eat. We needed to prioritise her weight over healthy eating, said the dietitian. It was mission Calories Over Carrot Sticks. In normal times, this would worry me profoundly.

Looking at that tray, it struck me that the food here would probably force anyone to take a nutritional holiday, bone marrow transplant or not. There was a plate of soggy battered fish and some cardboard-looking chips, long‑life apple juice, a bag of Quavers, Ambrosia custard, a KitKat and a token easy peeler. Vida wasn’t due to start chemo until the following day, but the fish and chips went untouched. For her first few weeks as an inpatient, I would order her the most basic offerings available in the hospital – an anaemic-looking omelette, overcooked pasta that collapsed on your tongue, a chicken breast so tough that it could have taken down a man – but Vida never tried more than a mouthful before pushing the food away.

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Smoked salmon, artisan cheese and fine wine among food and drink lost by European outlets

Small food producers are increasingly being targeted by organised crime gangs and rogue industry insiders looking to exploit national and global supply chain challenges , according to food crime experts.

The warning comes after several food businesses in the UK and continental Europe revealed how they had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in scams where thieves apparently posed as legitimate buyers.

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The cast are so incredible that even the bit parts feel like stars of the future. Peter Kosminsky’s rich, clever adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels needs to be plunged into without distraction

It has been nine years since the first blockbuster run of Wolf Hall shot complete unknown “Mark Rylance” to critical and commercial acclaim, and a smarter TV columnist who pays more attention to geopolitics would draw out a doomed attempt at a metaphor here. One about how the world has so drastically changed since 2015 – all those prime ministers and monarchs and presidents, and also Brexit and Bake Off going to Channel 4 – and I’d nod at the returning treacle-moving drama of court intrigue and everyone caring slightly too much about blood and go: “See? It’s like that, isn’t it. It’s all sort of like that.” That’s the kind of thing writers who get tie-in TV podcasts say in their opening paragraphs, and I would quite like one of those.

Sadly, I think Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (Sunday 10 November, 9pm, BBC Two) might be cleverer than that. A moment for the cast, which – because they all fit so perfectly and believably into this rich world – it’s oddly easy to take for granted, but I mean, come on: Damian Lewis as Henry VIII on a delirious quest for a son before the gout really sets in; Kate Phillips as the doomed Jane Seymour, always staring nervously at her stomach and navigating the etiquette of royal court about as elegantly as I might get a big table through a small doorway; Jonathan Pryce’s Cardinal Wolsey creaks into rooms with that wry Prycean smile, always knowing more than you do by two or three magnitudes; Timothy Spall’s Duke of Norfolk does the same thing but in reverse, stumbling round marble columns and looking as confused as a dog does when you pretend to throw a stick but don’t actually throw it.

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‘TV industry would not exist without freelancers, yet it bullies us “lucky” ones into fearing about future work if we complain’

“Have chest pains. If I die, these are the stats: I have worked 16 days in a row and worked every waking minute for 18 hours of every day. Sue the fuck out of the BBC.”

These are the words I text to my partner, whil taking yet another deep breath, trying not to panic, attempting to remain focused on the job in hand – leading a large cast and crew shooting a new BBC series for a leading independent production company. The irony that my role as a senior member of the production team includes a drummed-in responsibility for the duty of care of cast and crew is not lost on me.

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From subscribing to apps to who should foot the cost of nights out, it’s worth getting your finances right

Putting yourself out there always comes at a cost: you have to be vulnerable, open yourself up and risk rejection. These days it can also come with a hefty price tag.

It’s not just the cost of drinks or dinner to consider. Before you’ve even got to the awkward, age-old dance of who is going to foot the bill, you might have already forked out hundreds of pounds on a dating site to be in with the shot for a date.

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Police say army personnel targeted in possible suicide bombing in country’s south-west and many of more than 40 injured in critical condition

At least 24 people have been killed and more than 40 injured in a bomb blast at a railway station in Quetta in south-western Pakistan, police and other officials have said.

The target was “army personnel from the Infantry School”, said the inspector general of police for Balochistan, Mouzzam Jah Ansari.

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If you catch wilted salad leaves before they turn completely, you can use them in soup much as you would spinach or cabbage

There’s a fine line when a bag of salad turns. One minute, it’s perfect, and the next it has turned into compost. To save a wilting salad, chefs are taught to refresh it by picking out and discarding any imperfect leaves and gently plunging the rest into ice-cold water (the addition of a large pinch of salt and acidulating the water with a splash of vinegar or lemon juice will help clean the leaves and remove any unwanted odours). Carefully lift the leaves out of the water rather than drain them, otherwise sand and dirt might cling to them.

If your leaves are no longer fresh and appetising-looking, but still fine to eat, why not cook them? Salad leaves make a great substitute for leafy greens such as spinach, kale or cabbage. Just about all bagged salads, which often contain baby spinach, rocket and beetroot leaves, can be turned into the most delicious soup.

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