People with vouchers for Glynn Purnell’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Purnell’s, told they cannot be refunded

A Michelin-starred restaurant run by the Saturday Kitchen chef Glynn Purnell has left customers with gift vouchers hundreds of pounds out of pocket after announcing its sudden closure.

Purnell said he could “only apologise for this difficult situation” after customers were told their vouchers, many worth hundred of pounds, could not be refunded or redeemed.

It’s time to celebrate whatever you fancy with a lovely slice of cake

An urgent need for cake. An old-fashioned one, studded with dried fruit, or perhaps a slice of something more frivolous, with a citrus filling and iced top and sides. A birthday-style cake looking for a birthday.

Rarely does an afternoon go by without a piece of something sweet on a plate eaten with a cup of tea. This week, a wedge of simple fruit cake. Not as extravagant as the recipe for Christmas cake, this one is more cake than fruit, but has the same deep butterscotch notes from dark muscovado sugar and a comforting whiff of nostalgia. It is the sort of cake no one bakes any more, and it is good to see it again.

Ambassadors; Finborough; Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London
Jethro Compton’s folky Cornish musical sweeps into the West End with fiddles and fudge; writer Ché Walker plays a fiery ex-con on a mission; and new ghost stories offer more charm than alarm

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is very curious indeed. It began as a startling short story by F Scott Fitzgerald: a baby is born as an old man who becomes younger the longer he lives; when he is over 70 he seems to be an infant. Director Jethro Compton , whose exhausting list of credits include not only composing the book and lyrics but creating the design, elaborated the plot and transplanted it from antebellum Baltimore to 20th-century Cornwall. Darren Clark added some lyrics and composed music inspired by Bellowhead, Laura Marling, Kate Rusby and sea shanties.

This folk musical, brought to swarming life by actor-musicians, opened at the small, enterprising Southwark Playhouse Elephant five years ago; now it has landed in the West End – and taken over the Ambassadors. The theatre bar has become the Pickled Crab, and sells seasalt fudge; the walls outside the auditorium are papered with headlines about the Penlee lifeboat disaster and other old Cornish news. More gumboots than glitz. Plenty of welly.

• British rider delivers victory in Singapore Criterium
• ‘I couldn’t have wished for a better send-off than here’

Mark Cavendish claimed victory in his final race as a professional cyclist. The 39-year-old produced a trademark sprint finish to cross the line first in the Tour de France Prudential Singapore Criterium.

Cavendish’s fellow competitors gave him a guard of honour before the race and the Manxman was understandably emotional at the end.

US warplanes staged multiple strikes on Houthi weapons facilities, US says; at least 13 children reportedly among dead after Israeli attack on home in Jabalia refugee camp

• See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage

At least 43,603 Palestinian people have been killed and 102,929 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Of those, 51 Palestinians were killed and 164 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.

Norwich Theatre Royal
With its tropical backdrop and Latin-infused reworking of Tchaikovsky’s score, Acosta Danza’s touring show, if not always coherent, flies by

As a dancer, Carlos Acosta had a generosity in the way he welcomed audiences into his world, exuding warmth and engagement. In creating Nutcracker in Havana , a reimagining of a Christmas classic in a Cuban mode, he reveals exactly the same spirit. This new production is as sunny and relaxing as a day on a beach. With added snow.

Premiering in the Norwich theatre that has co-produced this tour by Acosta Danza and guests, the show immediately whisks you (courtesy of designer Nina Dunn’s videos) on an aerial tour of the capital and out through lush vegetation to a farm where an extended family are happily partying. The Drosselmeyer figure is Uncle Elias, returned from Miami, and played with a sparkling waistcoat and relaxed charisma by the wonderful Alexander Varona. He has a vintage Chevrolet that drives itself, and his magic tricks provide the partygoers with bright clothes, a bigger tree and a grand staircase.

Carlos Acosta’s Nutcracker in Havana tours the UK until 28 January 2025

A second Donald Trump presidency may be darker than the first, but his victory has unleashed the creative energies of satirists and standups

“When Trump first won, there was almost a novelty to having a character such as him in a position of such vast responsibility – that was a new thing for comedy to address,” said Andy Zaltzman, chair of Radio 4’s The News Quiz and the satirist behind The Bugle podcast and multiple political comedies.

The first Trump presidency spawned debate about whether it’s possible to satirise a man whose extreme appearance and rhetoric mean he presents as a walking caricature. The New York Times even ran a piece titled “ How President Trump ruined political comedy ”.

Ancient grazing rights for the famed cattle are at risk in budget rethink

Since the middle ages, they have grazed on the commons of Cambridge, crossing paths with the scholars of colleges beside the River Cam. But the sight of cows chewing the cud on public land in the centre of the city could soon become a thing of the past.

Cambridge city council is considering budget cuts that farmers say will force them to withdraw their cattle from grazing on council-managed sites such as Midsummer Common, Coe Fen and Sheep’s Green.

Progressive postwar culture in the US – rock’n’roll, cinema and comic-book characters – no longer makes sense in a Trumpian world

The presidency of Donald Trump contaminates everything that touches it, like dogshit on the end of a pointed stick. Be careful, politicians of the world, entertainment brands, and commercial properties, that you don’t get any on you. It stinks.

On Monday night, one of my lovely rescue cats, having battled the cat flap into submission, disappeared in the stupid firework dark. He’s not back yet and I am very sad. Like me, he was abandoned to his fate as a child, but in a cardboard box outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ place rather than in the Children’s Society offices in Lichfield (a town from which I have been banned from performing by the mayor’s office since 1990). Dependent, like me, on the kindness of a chain of strangers, the cat’s arrival and survival felt like a small balancing of the book of life. But maybe, like many millions of us worldwide, he just couldn’t face Wednesday morning .