I'm happy to be mummy's boy

William Sutcliffe is a novelist concerned to celebrate an important relationship

William Sutcliffe is not anticipating a call from the compilers of the Man Booker Prize shortlist for his new novel, Whatever Makes You Happy (Bloomsbury £10.99). “If you are writing about young people, you are disqualified from every literary prize,” Sutcliffe claims. “You are also disqualified if you are funny, use lots of dialogue, or write about contemporary Britain — everything I tend to do.”

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The baroness leading a grey-power rebellion

Julia Neuberger is fed up with the way society marginalises older people. It’s time they fought back, she tells Alex Kasriel

Julia Neuberger has a thing about loos. She wishes there were more public ones. Why? Because she feels that without them, old people are too scared to go out. 

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How Michael Jackson’s rabbi moved on to Oprah

Minister Shmuley Boteach left Britain nine years ago amid controversy. He talks about embracing fame, TV Judaism and his London appointment with a leading evangelical

Shmuley Boteach is struggling with his chicken kebab. He is sitting outside Reuben’s restaurant in Central London, on a flying visit to Britain — his first in over two years. Such is the velocity of his answers that the special of the day remains largely untouched on his plate. In the short breaks in conversation, he launches into his food like a man possessed, but to no great avail.

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Taking Shatila to Cannes

Ari Folman made his animated documentary about the Israeli army’s role in a massacre of Palestinians as a way of exorcising personal demons. Now the film could win him the top prize at Cannes.

If Israel’s Ari Folman wins the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow for his harrowing animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, it will be the perfect end to a journey that he never dreamed he would take.

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The junkie rock star who was saved by the Torah

Depression and drugs made David Berman suicidal. That’s all over.

David Berman, published poet and singer-songwriter with American band Silver Jews, has just been reading the Torah. He does this every day for several hours, in between coming up with the country-inflected rock music and wry, confessional lyrics for his group, most recently for their sixth album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea.

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Painting by numbers, with a dash of Mr Bean

Tal R paints using only seven colours — and sees the Rowan Atkinson character as a good analogy for art.

Tal R certainly set himself strict parameters when preparing work for his current London exhibition in London. Sixteen paintings are on show, all of them the same size (250 x 250cm), and all painted in the same fixed palette of seven colours. 

Tal R was born in Israel in 1967 but has lived most of his life in Denmark. “I was born during the Six-Day War in Tel Aviv,” he says.

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What Caro can't carve

Sir Anthony Caro is regarded as the world’s greatest living sculptor. He talks about why he designed a church chapel but not a Holocaust memorial, and how he put his wife’s face into his latest exhibition

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‘I’m the ultimate Jew... Well, bigger than Bibi’

Jackie Mason, the former rabbi and diminutive, stocky motormouth with the thick New York Jewish accent, is one of the world’s greatest stand-up comedians. His routines, heavy on the differences between Jews and gentiles, have been making people laugh for over 45 years. As notorious as he is famous, he once made an obscene gesture at America’s leading TV host, Ed Sullivan, live on air. He was also allegedly threatened — with bullets — by Frank Sinatra after poking fun at his then-wife, Mia Farrow.