They’re often compassionate good listeners who focus on their clients’ needs – so is it any wonder many patients find themselves with a crush? A writer, who is in exactly this position, talks to people on both sides of the couch

I was half-watching the latest series of the Netflix romcom Nobody Wants This when suddenly things got interesting. Spoiler alert: it had just been revealed that one of the characters (Morgan) was in a relationship with her newly ex-therapist (Dr Andy). While some of the characters freaked out, declaring the relationship very concerning, I felt a frisson of excitement. Because I, too, have harboured the desire to date my therapist.

As it turns out, this fantasy is neither unusual nor unexpected. “Psychoanalysis almost insists on transference,” explains psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber, using the term coined by Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, in his 1895 work Studies on Hysteria. The basic premise is that the patient projects old feelings, attitudes, desires or fantasies on to their therapist. This can manifest in numerous ways – often at the same time – covering the whole gamut of emotions and relationships, from love to hate, maternal to erotic, and everything in between.

Six wins for US director’s ICE-baiting film of American resistance recognised Anderson’s commitment to complex drama, while best actor win for rising British star was thoroughly deserved

• News: One Battle wins six Baftas

• Full list of winners

• The night as it happened

• Best quotes from the 2026 Baftas

This turned out to be a very British night for the Baftas, a smidgen more British than usual in fact. It started out with the Hollywood A-listers in the audience being presented with hilarious British snacks, of whose existence they had no more idea than they had of life forms on the moons of Saturn. Emma Stone got some Hula Hoops, Timothée Chalamet had a bag of Scampi Fries and Leonardo DiCaprio got his laughing gear around a Hobnob flapjack.

The other intensely British thing was the red-carpet appearance of the Prince and Princess of Wales (the former being Bafta’s president); their presence enforced that other terribly British tradition of everyone, as if in a Mike Leigh film, avoiding the subject. Everyone trying not to talk or think about the elephant in the room or the elephant slumped and stricken in the speeding car on the way home from the police station. Well, at least William never liked him.

If you’re hoping for a sensitive depiction of the sad story of Sarah Ferguson’s royal aide who murdered her partner, don’t bother. It’s a gaudy mess, whose version of Ferguson overshadows everything

‘This drama has been inspired by a true story,” announces The Lady, ushering us into the solemnly lit antechamber that is the miniseries’ introductory disclaimer. The italics continue: “Some names have been changed,” they read, “and some characters, events and scenes have been created and merged for dramatic purposes.” Hmm, we think, as a queasily off-balance piano lurches and stumbles in the background. “Created and merged”? This, surely, is the language of a school theatre project, with its glue guns and earnest pretensions, not that of a lavish ITV four-parter that focuses on the very real rise, fall and eventual conviction-for-murder of Jane Andrews, a former M&S employee from Grimsby who served, from 1988 to 1997, as a dresser to Sarah Ferguson, the then-Duchess of York. This does not, surely, bode well.

Still. The Lady is produced by Left Bank Pictures, who also made The Crown. And it’s written by Debbie O’ Malley, who did many wonderful things with Channel 5’s unexpectedly excellent “reboot” of All Creatures Great and Small. So, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. And we do. Until, that is, 16 minutes into the first episode, when Sarah Ferguson (Natalie “Game of Thrones” Dormer) bursts into Jane Andrews’ (Mia “Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials” McKenna-Bruce) job interview at Buckingham Palace and … Oh. Oh dear. Any hopes that The Lady might offer a serious and sensitive depiction of the complex real-life events that led a mentally unstable young woman to brutally murder her partner instantly wilt. What we get instead is a gaudy mess; a strange and exasperating thing that clomps between aerated royal soap, plodding police procedural, exuberant coming-of-age period piece and hand-wringing domestic drama with the grace of a pantomime horse at a black-tie buffet.

It’s tempting to dismiss the proliferation of labels as a fad, but there’s more to this phenomenon than a simple culture-war reading allows

My psychological research rarely makes good comedy material, but in a standup show in London recently, those two worlds collided. One of the jokes was about how everyone is getting diagnosed with ADHD these days – about the social media videos that encourage viewers to identify common human experiences, like daydreaming or talking a lot, as evidence of the condition. The audience laughed because everyone got it – they’ve all witnessed how common it seems to have become in the last few years. When something becomes this prevalent in society, and this mystifying, it’s no surprise it ends up as a punchline.

Part of my work as an academic involves trying to solve the puzzle of why so many more people, especially young people, are reporting symptoms of mental illness compared to even five or 10 years ago. (ADHD is a form of neurodivergence, rather than a mental illness, but both have seen an increase, so they are related questions.) Whenever I talk about this – to colleagues, school staff, parents – it doesn’t take long until someone brings up that judgment-laden, hot-button word: overdiagnosis.

In an edited extract from her latest book, Hazel Sheffield sets out a new blueprint for community stewardship

It was a Saturday in February 2020 when the flood came. It had been a wet winter, so wet it seemed that before the month was out, the brown trout of the River Taff might be washed clean out into Cardiff Bay before the fishing season had even begun. But this is Wales. People are used to a spot of rain. No one realised how bad it would get.

For two days, it hammered on the windows of the houses at the top of the South Wales Valleys, where people tucked in their children before a sleepless night. It poured into the rivers at the bottom. By the time the rain departed again, many people would be standing in water up to their knees.

Nigel Farage’s man in Gorton and Denton has a huge public platform, and a taste for culture war. What happens when he concerns himself with bin collections?

On a bracingly cold February night in Levenshulme, a black Volkswagen people-carrier draws up outside a little parish church, around which a small crowd has begun to gather. From behind the car’s darkened windows steps the Reform candidate for the Gorton and Denton byelection, dressed in the trademark gilet that makes him look less like a politician and more like a man who has come straight from a grouse shoot. As he enters the church where the electoral hustings will take place, a leaflet is thrust into his hand, which as he will later discover with a horrified grimace, is a flyer for the local branch of the Communist League, bearing policies such as “amnesty for all immigrants” and “defend Cuba’s socialist revolution”.

But then, when you are trying to attract the attention of someone as elusive as Prof Matt Goodwin, you have to seize your opportunities whenever they arise. Over recent weeks the former academic and rightwing firebrand has been a curiously intangible presence in the constituency whose representation he is seeking: perpetually detectable but not remotely approachable, always visible without ever really being seen.

‘Generational’ reforms are a key moment for Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, and for Keir Starmer

Ministers will unveil a “generational” overhaul of special educational needs and disabilities (Send) support, pledging £4bn to transform provision in schools in England and warning councils they could lose control of Send services if they fail to meet their legal duties.

The reforms are expected to be a key policy moment for Keir Starmer and for the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson – who delayed the changes last autumn after a ferocious backlash from MPs and parents.

Nigel Farage’s party plans to deport up to 288,000 people a year on five flights a day and expand stop and search

Reform UK would create an ICE-style agency dedicated to deporting hundreds of thousands of people, as well as terminating the status of those with indefinite leave to remain (ILR), the party will say.

It would also ban the conversion of churches into mosques and fund a radical expansion of stop and search, the party’s new home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, will also say in a speech on Monday. The deradicalisation programme Prevent would also have its mandate redrawn to focus on Islamist extremism.

Authorities say agents confronted a white male in his early 20s carrying shotgun and gasoline can early Sunday

The US Secret Service shot and killed an armed intruder who breached the perimeter of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida residence and private club in Palm Beach, early on Sunday.

Although the US president often spends weekends at the oceanfront resort, he was at the White House in Washington during this incident, as was first lady Melania Trump.

Fresh Geneva negotiations suggest Trump’s team believes the Iranian government is making serious proposals

Iran and the US are expected to meet for a further round of talks in Geneva this week in a sign that Donald Trump’s team believes Tehran is making serious proposals to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and show it is not seeking a nuclear weapon.

As fears loomed of renewed conflict after Washington carried out a major redeployment of military assets to the region, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he thought there was still a good chance of finding a diplomatic solution.