TV tonight: Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou’s side-splitting comedy

Before Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou were mothers, they were mums. In a skit from their 2019 sketch show pilot, the comedy duo play two straight-talking, hygiene-obsessed matriarchs in gilets and camel-toe-accentuating leggings who record lifestyle vlogs from a pristine kitchen while melodramatically referencing the pressures of motherhood. Ever since, the characters have become a core component of the pair’s comic universe, appearing repeatedly in the first proper series of Ellie & Natasia in 2022. Now the mums are back and moving with the times: reviewing various supermarket white breads – all reassuringly “sterile” options – as car-based food influencers for the show’s second outing. But behind the scenes there has been a bigger shift. The last time they wrote these sketches, White and Demetriou were childless; now they each have two kids. Coming up with material this time around was a different experience, says Demetriou. “I now feel quite a lot of empathy for these women,” says White. “Well, I always felt empathy – I do with all our characters – but I especially am now like: it is actually quite hard.” Even the housework obsession has become relatable.

The singer Ellie Goulding has admitted her error at having promoted diamonds at the centre of environmental concerns about Indigenous land in Australia, despite having spent years campaigning on environmental issues – including the effects of mining on ancestral lands. She appeared at a event in London earlier this month for the jewellery brand Boodles, modelling some of its newly acquired pink diamonds, some of which came from a controversial mine in Western Australia. “Protecting the environment is a cause close to my heart. I always strive to uphold those values. Regretfully, in this instance, I fell short,” said Goulding, who was made an MBE for services to biodiversity and the climate last year. “I was not aware of the concerns surrounding the Argyle mine and I am grateful that it has been brought to my attention. “You will certainly not see me wearing diamonds originating from the Argyle mine again. The Indigenous and local communities affected deserve better.

It begins on Christmas Day, 1996: “It’s been a lovely day … I realised how much I love my family.” It ends three years later: “I’m lying on the floor in floods of tears and all I want to do is die.” Say what you like about adolescence but it is nothing if not an emotional tumult. “If I’d known as a teenager,” says the comedian Jon Richardson ruefully, “that I’d one day write a book about them, I couldn’t have bookended my teenage diaries with better quotes to show what a storm of shit those years can be.”The book is The Teenage Diaries of a Stand-Up Comedian, and it has been two years in the making. Two years that, if not quite the hormonal rollercoaster the book itself records, have been quite the ride. The project is borne of a crossroads moment in the Lancashire man’s midlife, after he experienced bereavement, serious illness among family and friends, and the breakdown of his marriage to fellow comic Lucy Beaumont. The last was an inevitably very public ending, splayed across the tabloids, to a relationship which itself played out in public, courtesy of the couple’s acclaimed mockumentary about their domestic arrangements, Meet the Richardsons.

red-and-white safety barriers reimagined as public seatingA signature element of Dutch urban infrastructure, the red-and-white aluminum traffic barrier (schrikhek), serves as the primary design reference for ‘stop!’, a new collection of outdoor benches and stools by Studio Martins Mezulis and 13_0663_tsx. Typically deployed across the Netherlands to signal construction zones and redirect public traffic, these standardized aluminum structures have been reconfigured to serve a social rather than restrictive function in public spaces.all images ©Studio Martins Mezulis and 13_0663_tsx recontextualizing utilitarian infrastructure into furniture The ‘stop!’ collection by Studio Martins Mezulis and creative 13_0663_tsx reinterprets the visual language and material composition of traditional safety infrastructure into functional street furniture. Instead of diverting pedestrians and cyclists away, the modified forms invite users to pause, sit, and gather. By recontextualizing the familiar high-visibility aluminum panels into seating, the project explores how utilitarian safety elements can be adapted for community interaction.

porsche 550 spyder at 80 percent of its original sizeThere’s a tiny silver Porsche parked among a sunlit meadow in the English countryside. With its rounded rear fenders and tiny windshield, it’s quite similar to the 550 Spyder that Porsche raced in the 1950s. The proportions are familiar, but something is slightly off. This is the Porsche 550 J, a miniature, fully electric version of the historic race car, recreated by British manufacturer Hedley Studios at roughly 80 percent of its original size. Developed in collaboration with Porsche to celebrate 75 years of the company’s motorsport history, the 550 J is an officially licensed, handcrafted vehicle limited to 250 examples. The ‘J’ stands for ‘Junior,’ although the little roadster is large enough to accommodate two people. Measuring just 2.9 meters (9.5 feet) in length and 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) wide, it retains the low profile and flowing aluminum-like contours of its predecessor.the miniature Porsche 550 J’s silver bodywork recalls the original 1950s racer | images courtesy Porschea miniature tribute to porsche’s first purpose-built racing carThe original Porsche 550 Spyder holds a special place in the company’s history.

Nested in a natural lava cave in Mexico City’s Pedregal de San Ángel region, a sprawling, mosaic-laden domicile was once home to Juan and Helen Fowler O’Gorman, an architect and artist, respectively. The pair designed the icon of modernist Mexican architecture, called Casa Cueva, in 1954, although it was largely destroyed after the couple sold the home in 1969. At Museo Jumex, Álvaro Urbano presents an homage to the innovations of Casa Cueva, drawing on its gardens and the legacy that Helen left behind, particularly through her 1961 book titled Mexican Flowering Trees and Plants. Written and illustrated while she lived at Casa Cueva, the rich volume documented a variety of the region’s native specimens. For Urbano, these vegetal renderings became the basis of a new body of metal sculptures.