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Children’s television programmes including Blue Peter and Newsround will be moved off BBC1 and BBC2 as part of the corporation’s cost-cutting measures. The shows will move to digital channels CBBC and CBeebies as part of the Delivering Quality First scheme. The plans, part of a process which has seen the BBC commit to saving billions [...]

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Forget the reductions in news, arts and music programming announced in the BBC’s latest round of cost-saving alterations to the entertainment schedules – there is only one change that really matters. After 60 years on the flagship – or, in lay terms, “proper” – channel, BBC1, Blue Peter is to be moved to CBBC, the [...]

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Critics also warn that the move will make it harder for parents to regulate their children’s television viewing.   The corporation announced that all shows aimed at children will be moved off BBC One and BBC Two and onto digital channels dedicated to young viewers. They claim the move will save money while at the [...]

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Women’s empowerment guru, Tyra Banks, has spoken out in support of Vogue’s decision to ban rail thin models from its pages. The 38-year-old media mogul and former supermodel praised the fashion glossy’s 19 editors today for banding together to put a stop to ‘thinspirational’ editorial and called for a toast ‘over some barbecue and burgers’. [...]

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A TV ad for Center Parcs resorts has been banned for promoting a family deal for when parents would least be able to take it. The £249 holiday promoted by the company was only available midweek  – and only in school term time. Both British and foreign holiday companies, together with airlines, routinely push up [...]

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The final of the competition, which was broadcast on Sunday night on BBC2, was won by teenage cellist Laura van der Heijden. However Norman Lebrecht, the arts critic and BBC Radio 3 presenter, criticised the corporation’s coverage as being “low-key to the point of torpor”. Viewers also accused the corporation of using a lightweight production [...]

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A balmy evening in South-West London, and I’m trying to convince a handsome chap called Jake to cha-cha-cha. I’m hoping that as a couple we have the potential to dance in perfect harmony, and to encourage him I’ve brought along his favourite food (cocktail sausages) and put on his favourite CD (Strictly Dance Classics). But [...]

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Fifteen-year-old cellist Laura van der Heijden has won the BBC’s Young Musician prize for 2012. The teenager played Sir William Walton’s Cello Concerto with the Northern Sinfonia at the competition’s final at The Sage in Gateshead. Accepting the £2,000 prize, van der Heijden, from East Sussex, said she felt “amazing” and “so, so lucky”. She [...]

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Grownup children still living with their parents get a pretty bad press. In Britain and America they’re labelled “Kippers” (Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings) or “Yuckies” (Young Unwitting Costly Kids). In Australia it’s “Slops” (Singles Living Off Parents). In Italy it’s “Bamboccioni” (Big Babies). The Japanese are even less delicate: their “parasaito shinguru” [...]

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Simon Cowell predicts Britain’s Got Talent winner Pudsey will become the most famous dog in the world. He’s probably right. I can just see Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence being cast as Ashleigh and Pudsey portraying himself – and maybe Colin Firth playing Simon since he’s putting up the money? There simply isn’t a Hollywood [...]

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Marvel’s The Avengers movie won big on Twitter and in the box office when it premiered May 4. However, one joke from the movie has set off bloggers from the adoption community and fueled an online petition seeking an apology from Marvel Comics. Jamie Berke created a Change.org petition, “Marvel Comics – Apologize to Adoption [...]

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Although billed as a “modern take” on the children’s classic using a mix of CGI and live-action, the movie will go back to the beginning of the story and explain how the little bear from Darkest Peru was discovered in Paddington Station. It will also keep all of Paddington’s quirks, from his penchant for marmalade [...]

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Karen David is wearing a vibrant floral vintage dress and a beaming smile when we meet at Soho House in Los Angeles. She has a lot to feel happy about. The actress and singer is soon to marry Swedish record producer Carl Ryden, she’s starring with Kiefer Sutherland in his new TV series Touch, and [...]

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If tattooed warriors can win an audience by chanting Shakespeare in Maori and shaking the hallowed foundations of the Globe Theatre then, come on, there’s hope for us all.   That thought took me back to an evening last year, when I found myself at the Lyric in the West End for a programme of [...]

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Lady Gaga admitted she was nervous filming a part for the 23rd season finale of The Simpsons, which celebrated its 500th episode in February. The Simpsons is the longest-running prime-time scripted programme on US TV and is contracted to run for another two seasons.   The episode entitled ‘Lisa Goes Gaga’ is being shown on 20th [...]

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It’s one thing to encourage your child to pursue their dreams, but sometimes encouragement comes at a price. A mother and daughter who live in Los Angeles told Anderson Cooper that moving to Hollywood so the young girl, Presley Cash, could become an actress has so far cost them over $160,000. Not only that but the [...]

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The third Wizarding World of Harry Potter is to be built at Universal Studios Japan, in Osaka, with work starting in the next few weeks and the park scheduled to open in late 2014, the operator of the park announced on Thursday.   Universal’s first wizarding attraction, in Orlando, Florida, has already attracted millions of [...]

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Labour’s shadow media minister Helen Goodman has called for curbs on merchandising by children’s television programmes, insisting that the proliferation of products is placing an intolerable burden on hard-up parents. Speaking at Tuesday’s Westminster media forum, Financing Children’s Media, Goodman called for “limits” to the “growth” of merchandising. “Speaking as a parliamentarian I am not [...]

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For decades, millions have followed the lives of the Seven Up kids – 14 children who were plucked from different walks in life to take part in a documentary on their hopes for the future growing up in 1960s Britain. The show was originally intended to be a one-off, but after the cameras returned to [...]

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Like most children, the year 5 pupils at Cheddar Grove primary used to believe the adverts on the telly. Not any more. “Do you know that with some models they plaster about 10 layers of make-up on, and then they make their hair all wavy with a fan, and they can even change how they [...]

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Seven Up! first hit the screens in May 1964, and was intended as a one-off programme, a snapshot of the British class system and the way it conditioned so much of life. Tim Hewat, the Australian founding editor of World in Action, had the idea for the programme, and took as its starting point the [...]

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Gypsy communities across America who appear on TLC’s show My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding continue to shock the ‘gorgas’ – that is, anyone who is an outsider. So news of 14-year-old Priscilla’s imminent arranged marriage will be sure to raise a few eyebrows among fans of the TV show, especially considering that in her [...]

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The one-minute short features the pair preparing to mark the royal celebrations. They have already received the royal seal of approval, with the Duchess of Cornwall revealing that the pair are her husband’s “favourite people in the world”. Bristol-based animator Park at Aardman Studios teamed up with the National Trust to make the film, A [...]

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One of Toddlers & Tiaras’ most controversial mothers has lashed out at Vanessa Williams for criticising children’s beauty pageants. Wendy Dickey from Georgia, the mother who dressed her three-year-old as a prostitute, shot back at the actress who said her children will never compete in pageants because ‘that’s not my world.’ The reality TV star [...]

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Disney used to just rerelease their films on a decade-long cycle, ripe for capturing new generations; now they can spruce them up a little more with 3D conversion. Their 1991 effort holds a special place in company folklore: it was the first cartoon to be nominated for a best picture Oscar, and followed The Little [...]

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The corridors of Television Centre often reeked of the class B drug as BBC employees and visiting pop groups regularly smoked joints. On one occasion, Rick Jones and Lionel Morton, presenters of Play School, got stoned before filming the children’s programme, it is claimed. As well as drugs, the BBC was apparently also a hot [...]

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The Queen is to make a guest appearance in children’s hit cartoon Peppa Pig – when the character visits Buckingham Palace. And the royal guest star is even seen joining in Peppa’s favourite activity, donning her wellies and jumping in muddy puddles. The show– to be screened next month – is designed to get young [...]

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He may not be able to visit it for real, but one Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fanatic is doing his very best to create his own Willy Wonka world. Former set designer Nicholas Franklin, 33, has spent £30,000 transforming a bedroom in his home into a shrine to the films, based on the famous [...]

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Miss Wanamaker said she was angry at the way the corporation had handled the cancellation of the programme – which was at one time the UK’s most popular sitcom – after 121 episodes. Executives were believed to have worried that BBC output had become too focused on one social group, with shows such as My Family [...]

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Documentary on Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind one of the best-loved Sesame Street characters – Elmo. Follows Clash from his tough Baltimore upbringing to his work with Jim Henson and Kermit Love on the Muppets and explores why Clash and Elmo have been described as “Brad Pitt for five-year-olds”. Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg via Being [...]

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A new arena show based on the Ice Age movie trilogy will feature some of the world’s most advanced animatronics. Performers in Ice Age Live! A Mammoth Adventure will wear animal suits on top of ultra-light carbon-fibre skeletons which use the latest electro-mechanical technology. The creature’s faces and other features are controlled by the actors and [...]

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An eight-year-old child featured on Toddlers & Tiaras has been shown telling the camera she believes it is vital for youngsters to have beautiful faces. In a teaser clip from tonight’s episode of the TLC reality series, a little girl named Daisey Mae from Camden, Indiana, is shown telling the camera that children are at a [...]

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Disney and Pixar animation chief John Lasseter revealed the plans for a 2015 film inspired by the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos, which celebrates the dead. Lasseter announced the plans at the annual CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas yesterday.   It will be directed by Lee Unkrich, and produced by Darla K. Anderson, both of [...]

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Daddy always provided Anysha Panesar with the very best that money could buy – including a £30,000 15th birthday party featuring an X Factor judge and a personal video message from Nicole Kidman. He also bankrolled her dream to become a beauty queen and model. But the teenager may have to make do with a less [...]

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The National Theatre’s hit play War Horse has been voted as Best Play in the inaugural Mousetrap awards – voted on exclusively by young people aged 15 to 23. Mervyn Millar, creative associate and artistic director of War Horse, accepted the award for Best Play, while Andy Bryant, who plays Boq in Wicked took home [...]

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Never mind that cinema is the most popular storytelling medium of our time, and that if Bill Shakespeare were alive today, he would be writing screenplays, not stage plays; some people still think that, as an artform, it’s automatically inferior to literature or theatre. So Heather Stewart, creative director of the BFI, caused a stir [...]

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To all appearances, it was an ordinary digital alarm clock. Except that it wasn’t. It was a high-resolution, 30-frame remote video surveillance clock purchased for £20 on eBay, and I had bought it for one specific purpose: to record 24 hours in the life of my elderly mother at her North London care home. My [...]

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A well-dressed 12-year-old girl will shock the Britain’s Got Talent judges tonight when she chooses a ‘gangster song’. Simon Cowell labels schoolgirl Lauren Thalia ‘posh’ but was left impressed after her rendition of Keri Hilson’s Turn My Swag On. Wearing a blouse with butterflies on it, red tights and a flower in her hair, the [...]

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Young Londoners are being offered the chance to experience live opera free. Opera Holland Park is making 300 tickets available for nine- to 18-year-olds, for performances in the temporary pavilion erected each summer in the park in Kensington. The offer was made as research for the company’s summer season sponsor, Investec Wealth and Investment, suggested [...]

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She has appeared in five Harry Potter movies and makes her London stage debut tonight, but Katie Leung is going back to school — to learn how to act. Following her run in Wild Swans, an adaptation of the bestselling book, Leung, 24, will take up a place at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in [...]

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Sitting in a café near the north London home he shares with his wife, comedy writer Abigail Burdess, and their two young daughters Esme, two, and Dory, 11 months, Robert Webb is trying to explain why narrating a new Winnie the Pooh TV series may be his most challenging role yet. Famed for his appearances [...]

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A mother of three was left fuming after being forced to buy a cinema ticket for her baby son – even though the tiny film-goer is just 10 weeks old. Lynsey Calvert, 37, from Benfleet, Essex had taken her other sons, Oscar, five, and Max, two, for a family day out to see kids’ comedy [...]

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Your background is in music and presenting – how did you get onto a technology show? I’ve always been a technology fan. I thought my Game Boy was the most amazing thing ever as a kid. At 16 I got a mobile – a real brick – and I was obsessed. Since then I’ve loved [...]

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A nine-year-old prodigy who lives in a council house is set to perform in front of thousands of ballet fans at the London Coliseum.   Charlie Salsen, from Ilford, has overcome shyness and bullying at school to land a starring role in an adaptation of Tolstoy novel Anna Karenina by acclaimed Russian choreographer Boris Eifman. [...]

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Laurence Clark is a stand-up comedian who has cerebral palsy. He lives with his wife Adele and his two sons Tom, seven, and Jamie, nine months. Here he describes both the challenges and the attitudes people have towards families like his. I guess my family does not fit with the typical image of 2.4 children. [...]

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In the long-running tradition of cute kids narrating things on YouTube, BBC America presented this gem Thursday: children supposedly auditioning to replace narrator David Attenborough on its hit nature series Planet Earth. In honor of Earth Day, BBC America is playing the full, uncut version of the nature docu-series for the first time on April [...]

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Karl Markovics is the Austrian actor known best for his leading role in 2007 Oscar winner The Counterfeiters, in which he played a Jewish forger, imprisoned in a Nazi camp and forced to take part in a scheme to flood Allied economies with fake banknotes. Now Markovics has made his debut as a writer and [...]

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Readers of a sensitive disposition may wish to look away now. Please, click back to the homepage; forget you ever came here; retreat while your mind is still as pure and unsullied as a recently-laundered doily. This article contains explicit, harrowing details of the violence depicted in The Hunger Games, and they cannot be unread. [...]

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The tiny Andalucian settlement of Júzcar (population 200) has received around 125,000 visitors after its striking makeover in June last year, its mayor told Sur. “The number of visits is not going down,” David Fernández Tirado said. “Apart from colder, wintry days, it’s been quite the opposite – it’s continuing to spark a lot of [...]

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Louis Theroux explains why he’s as proud of his new series – on the demented elderly and autistic young – as anything he’s ever done. Over the past 15 years, I’ve carved out a niche for myself as a maker of documentaries about people whose choices in life seem odd, offbeat or at the very [...]

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