Blog

A man has completed his first-ever Parkrun at the age of 91.

Michael Thorley finished the 5km (3.1-mile) run on Mersea Island, Essex, in just over an hour.

He met both his aims for the run – to finish the course and to not come last – and said he wanted to encourage people to have a go and make some more friends.

“If I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it? I’m getting older by the day,” he said.

Mr Thorley first signed up for Parkrun – a weekly, timed 5km event which takes place in more than 20 countries across the world – four years ago, just one year after undergoing heart surgery.

But he did not take part until a fortnight ago, clocking a time of 1:03:04.

“It’s a question of ‘Carpe Diem’ [‘seize the day’ in Latin],” he said.

He is not the oldest person to have taken part in Parkrun, however.

Harold Messam was a regular at a Parkrun in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, at the age of 95, while Colin Thorne marked his 101st birthday in style in January by completing his 217th Parkrun in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Mr Thorley’s wife Sarah, 69, is a regular Parkrunner, last week completing her 100th, with a time of 32:15.

She comes back “enthused” from the event, thanks to the “wonderful, friendly and encouraging people”.

She said: “The real stars are the people who set it all up; all the volunteers every week.

“Some people are here every week and they mightn’t even ever have done a run, but they’re here because they like it. It’s a really nice, friendly place.”

Race director Viv Fox said: “We’re just really lucky to have a core group of people who like coming here week in and week out and just enjoy the atmosphere.”

One Night

9.30pm, ITV1

Wealthy women glugging wine? Check. A dark secret from the past exposed? Check! This Liane Moriarty-coded Aussie drama (which streamed on ITVX in 2023) tells the story of Simone (Nicole da Silva) who is about to publish her first novel, One Night, which is based on a devastating event that happened 20 years earlier. But when her two estranged friends Tess (Jodie Whittaker) and Hat (Yael Stone) re-enter her life, it becomes clear that they were a bigger part of the story than she was. HR

24 Hours That Changed the World

8.10pm, Channel 4

Why was Japan so reluctant to surrender at the end of the second world war? This documentary explores the second half of 1945 – the European war was over, nuclear bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but Japan fought on. Factors included military “honour” and Emperor Hirohito’s status as an apparently infallible living god. Phil Harrison

Beck

9pm, BBC Four

The Beck team, weakened by their staff being suspended from work or traumatised by it, look into the case of a sexist podcaster whose throat has been cut. The denouement, with the instability of Vilhelm (Valter Skarsgård) ready to cause further calamity, is super-tense. Jack Seale

The Count of Monte Cristo

9pm, U&Drama

The epic tale of revenge continues with Dantès (Sam Claflin) finally escaping prison. He befriends a fellow fugitive who helps him find the hidden treasure that Abbé Faria (Jeremy Irons) told him about. Before that, the most precious item Dantès could discover is a razor to get rid of that ridiculous beard. HR

Annika

9.10pm, BBC One

Letting Nicola Walker address the camera as Scotland-based detective Annika Stranhed still makes this crime drama feel fresh and alive. Her musings here on Jekyll and Hyde lead us into the case of a slain millionaire, but the real drama is in Annika’s odd work/family unit: the interplay between Walker and Jamie Sives as DS Michael McAndrews is beautifully brittle. JS

Griff’s Great American South

9.10pm, Channel 4

Griff Rhys Jones continues his rollicking journey and this week ends up in Birmingham, Alabama – considered the “true” deep south and which, according to Jones, is the state that Americans least want to visit. But a rise in hi-tech organisations means that more people are moving there. HR

Film choice

Night Always Comes, out now, Netflix

Musician/author Willy Vlautin’s modern noir novel is brought to the screen in gritty style by two alumni of The Crown – director Benjamin Caron and lead Vanessa Kirby – though the subject matter couldn’t be more different. Set over a taut 24 hours, it follows Kirby’s Lynette as she races around the city to find the $25,000 needed to buy her home before she, her brother and feckless mother are evicted. A drip-feed of revelations about her traumatic past life accompany the desperate quest, with Kirby superb as a woman torn between what she wants and what she needs. Simon Wardell

Ill Met By Moonlight, 3pm, U&Yesterday

The great British partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was nearing its end in 1957 when they produced this fact-based second world war drama. It isn’t up there with their many classics (Powell himself was particularly scathing about it) but there’s a surprising jollity to its story of a mission to kidnap a German general (Marius Goring) in 1944 Crete and spirit him off the island. Dirk Bogarde is the nonchalant leader of the operation, Maj “Paddy” Leigh Fermor, while the local resistance are a fun-loving bunch despite the occupation. SW

Hounds, 10.30pm, BBC Four

In a Casablanca far from the tourist traps, petty criminal Hassan (Abdellatif Masstouri) and his as-yet untainted son Isaam (Ayoub Elaid) are hired by Hassan’s boss to abduct a man. Unfortunately, the victim suffocates in their van, so they set off across the city in an error-strewn attempt to dispose of the body before daylight. Kamal Lazraq’s neorealist Cannes winner offers a raw but sometimes comic closeup on the underbelly of Moroccan society, while the shifts in the father-son relationship give the film dramatic heft, despite the leads being nonprofessional. SW

Live sport

Premier League Football: Aston Villa v Newcastle, 11am, TNT Sport 1 Followed by Wolves v Man City at 5pm on Sky Sports Main Event.

Championship Football: Wrexham v West Brom, noon, ITV1 From StōK Racecourse.

Athletics: Diamond League Silesia, 3pm, BBC Two The 12th meeting, from Silesian Stadium in Chorzów, Poland.

When ‘Border’ actor Sunny Deol once opened up about his career choices, he made a point that still resonates today. Speaking at the trailer launch of ‘Blank’ in 2019, Sunny was asked about the rising trend of patriotic films in Bollywood. His reply was as candid as it was heartfelt. “First and foremost, are we patriotic or not? Do we love our mother, do we love our country? That is most important. It should not be taken like some kind of saleable thing,” he said, underlining that for him, cinema was never about chasing market trends.

‘Some of the films I’ve done are patriotic in nature’

Sunny reflected on his filmography, where characters were often strong, upright, and fighting for something larger than themselves—values he connected to deeply on a personal level. Border, Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, and 23rd March 1931: Shaheed weren’t made to capitalize on patriotic sentiment, he explained, but because those stories spoke to his own beliefs. “That is my nature too. I am not the kind of person who gives up,” he remarked.He also noted how times had changed, pointing out that filmmaking had become increasingly driven by marketing cycles. “Some of the films I’ve done are patriotic in nature and people somehow connect with me more. It was never a saleable thing which we did. But now the whole world is changing, everything has become marketing,” he said. His words reflected not just an actor’s perspective, but also a concern about how stories were being packaged for the audience.

‘Border 2‘ Independence Day poster

Cut to the present, and Sunny Deol is once again set to carry the torch of patriotism with Border 2. On India’s 79th Independence Day, the makers unveiled the first poster of the highly anticipated war drama, scheduled for release on January 22, 2026, just ahead of Republic Day.

It is a much remarked phenomenon that two of the most important British bands since the Beatles – The Smiths and Oasis – were almost entirely Manchester-Irish.

Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr, whose parents were from Athy, Co Kildare, told The Irish Times some years ago: “I’ve never described myself as British or English. I’m either Mancunian or Mancunian Irish – that is a culture and a nationality that is a thing unto itself.”

Oasis, too, come from a working-class Irish background. Along with the Gallagher brothers, original members Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan, Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs and Tony McCarroll all have Irish roots.

The Gallaghers’ father Tommy was from Duleek, Co Meath; their mother Peggy Sweeney from Charlestown, Co Mayo, a place synonymous with mass Irish emigration.

Peggy was one of 11 children and emigrated to Manchester at the age of 18 in 1961 sending back £1 a week to help her family. Many of the Sweeney family moved to Manchester – five of Peggy’s sisters lived nearby.

Tommy Gallagher worked as a builder in Manchester and moonlighted as a country and western DJ at the Carousel Club. Big Tom MacBride of Big Tom and the Mainliners fame remembers attending the club and seeing Noel and Liam there. “They were only skitters of gossons at the time.”

When the Gallagher brothers were young, their summers were spent in either Charlestown or Duleek. Noel Gallagher told Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show in 1996 that his mother used “to drag us religiously by the earhole for six weeks because we had never seen the likes of nettles. We run around the fields throwing things at cows. She was determined to introduce us to Irish culture.”

[ Being the sons of emigrants helped Oasis Opens in new window ]

It was a bit of a culture shock but “we grew to love it and we still love it,” he added.

For their parents, the summers provided an antidote to the concrete jungle they grew up in.

Tommy Gallagher bought Noel his first guitar and brought him to Maine Road to see Manchester City, but Noel has no time for him.

Peggy later left Tommy and recalled years after: “I left him a knife, a fork, and a spoon. And I think I left him too much.”

She and her children left the family home in Burnage for a council flat. She took several jobs to provide for her three boys, Noel, Liam and Paul and kept the family together saying in later years: “We’re Irish Catholics and we’re that kind of family.”

Tommy became completely estranged from his family. In one notorious incident at the height of the band’s fame in March 1996, he turned up at Dublin’s Westbury Hotel where his sons were staying.

He arrived in the bar at 2am and ended up in a screaming match with Liam. Tommy had to be escorted off the premises.

Noel said of his father: “As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t got a father. He’s not a father to me, y’know? I don’t respect him in any way whatsoever.”

Tommy would continue to pontificate on his estranged sons saying that reports of him being a bad father were exaggerated. He even held out hope of a public reconciliation with his sons, but it never came.

The question of Oasis’ links with Co Meath came up, inevitably, at a press conference to announce their gig at Slane Castle in 2009. Noel Gallagher recalled that approximately 80 relatives turned up to the band’s earlier Slane gig in 1995 when they played support to REM.

Both Tommy and Peggy Gallagher are still alive.

Peggy’s family home, which she later used for holidays, was sold last year for €300,000. Locals said Mrs Gallagher was no longer able to come over to the house on her own and there was no one locally to look after her any more.

As a Manchester City fan, Noel was asked last year about the club’s midfielder Phil Foden.

“Do you care how he plays for England in the Euros this summer?” asked the interviewer.

“I’m not an England fan, I’m Irish,” Gallagher replied. “Good night!”