In documentary The Pink Pill, the fight to provide access to the so-called ‘female Viagra’ exposes an industry that still discounts the needs of women
Barbara Gattuso had been happily married for decades when she signed up, in the late 2000s, for a clinical trial involving a potentially revolutionary new drug. She and her husband had once had a fulfilling sex life, both pre- and post-children. But at some point during her perimenopausal years, her desire disappeared. It wasn’t stress, fatigue or relationship issues, though her lack of libido certainly contributed to those. It was more like a mysterious evaporation – like “somebody pulled the plug”, as she recalls in a new documentary on flibanserin, the experimental drug that proffered potential relief.
Originally developed as an anti-depressant by the German company Boehringer Ingelheim, flibanserin had instead shown promise as a treatment for low female libido, working on neurotransmitters in the so-called “sex center” of the brain. In a video from that trial filmed by Dr Irwin Goldstein, the “godfather of sexual medicine” and a key consultant on Viagra – that revolutionary blue pill for men with erectile dysfunction – Gattuso appears nearly giddy. She was chasing her husband around again, she said. She felt “phenomenal”, like a “new woman on this drug”. She was plugged in.
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© Photograph: Paramount
© Photograph: Paramount
© Photograph: Paramount
Regime change, nuclear threat – or something else? US officials seem unable to land on one coherent reason for war
When the United States launched Operation Epic Fury last Saturday, the Trump administration had a major communications question to figure out: how to explain to the American public, Congress, and the world why it had just started a war with Iran.
During war time, talking points and propaganda reflexively fly in every direction, but the Trump administration still hasn’t been able to land on one coherent answer.
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© Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters
© Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters
© Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters
The presenter and writer on trying to become an air steward aged seven, daytime baths, and an on-air howler
Born in London, Fearne Cotton, 44, began presenting The Disney Club at 15. She went on to become a Radio 1 DJ, hosting her own show from 2009 to 2015; she currently presents Radio 2’s Sounds of the 90s. In 2017, she started the Happy Place community and now has an award-winning podcast, an annual festival and a publishing imprint. The author of bestselling personal development books, her latest, Likeable, is out next week. She lives in London and has two children with her former husband, Jesse Wood.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Impatience. I’m not very good at waiting around or dealing with things that aren’t moving at a pace that I want them to.
© Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock
Extortionate costs, queueing in the cold and potentially life-altering injuries? No thanks. And don’t get me started on the EDM après-ski hell
There comes a time in every middle-class or upwardly mobile person’s life when they will hear the following six words: “Would you like to come skiing?” My answer: absolutely not.
Skiing, I have come to believe, is the emperor’s new clothes of leisure pursuits: a collectively sustained fantasy. People insist it’s magical in the same way they insist that cold-water swimming is “transformative” or small plates are “better for sharing”. At some point we forgot to ask whether any of this is actually true.
Emma Loffhagen is a freelance commissioning editor and writer covering culture and lifestyle
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© Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images
Billy Bragg, Sarah Lucas and Kojo Koram among those encouraging people to share cultural artefacts
For some people it’s a Morris Minor, for others, a beach windbreak, chicken tikka masala or Magna Carta.
A new campaign is aiming to collect 50 objects that sum up Englishness in an effort to move the conversation away from reductive arguments over whether to hang a St George’s flag or not.
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© Photograph: hsunny/Alamy
© Photograph: hsunny/Alamy
© Photograph: hsunny/Alamy
School caretaker who killed 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 was reportedly assaulted with metal bar
The child killer Ian Huntley has died after being attacked in prison.
The former school caretaker killed Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both aged 10, in Soham, Cambridgeshire on 4 August 2002. The girls had left a family barbecue to buy sweets.
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© Photograph: Toby Melville/PA
© Photograph: Toby Melville/PA
© Photograph: Toby Melville/PA
In reality, US president’s opposition to foreign entanglements had only ever been partial
Donald Trump ordered the launch of the war on Iran last Friday afternoon while on board Air Force One, as the presidential plane made its descent towards Corpus Christi, Texas.
Trump was on his way to the port city to give a speech titled American Energy Dominance and had spent the three-hour flight chatting to Texas Republican politicians including the state’s two hawkish senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, about his options in Iran.
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© Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
© Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
© Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Her YA classic was inspired by racism in 1990s Britain. A quarter of a century later, she talks about success, death threats and getting shoutouts from Tinie Tempah and Stormzy
‘I’m useless at this bit,” Malorie Blackman laughs, shifting awkwardly in a plum-coloured jacket and smart black trousers. It is a gloomy February evening in the back room of a theatre in west London, and she is having her photograph taken, the rain pummelling the brick outside.
Blackman is, by any reasonable metric, one of the most significant writers Britain has produced in the past quarter of a century – the closest thing my generation, who were raised on her books, has to a literary rockstar. And yet, she seems faintly baffled by the notion that the spotlight should rest on her for long. “I hate being in front of the camera!”
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© Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian
© Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian
© Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian
Former batter says Rob Key has sounded him out before
‘I would never not look at helping England out’
Kevin Pietersen has said he would “absolutely” consider becoming part of a future England cricket coaching set-up and revealed Rob Key has previously sounded him out a couple of times.
While Brendon McCullum, along with managing director Key, is expected to get the backing of the England and Wales Cricket Board to continue despite a winter of overall discontent, it is understood that there is room to tweak the coaching group.
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© Photograph: Mihir Singh/Reuters
© Photograph: Mihir Singh/Reuters
© Photograph: Mihir Singh/Reuters
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