i think be around for a long time. he has sold out three stadium fight in11 he has sold out three stadium fight in 11 months. it to attendance of the radicals of a million people, indicating his growing appeal. the one remaining challenge is to secure that final belt, and write his name into history. so the man standing between betweenjoshua and holding all four belts is american deontay wilder. get ready for weeks of will they, won't they speculation. wilder says he wants to make the fight happen butjoshua's promoter doesn't think wilder really does. let's make this fight happen. we wa nt let's make this fight happen. we want the fight, let's make it happen. it's easy, let's make it happen. it's easy, let's make it happen. if they stepped up and acting were serious about the fight, and series about the deal that would be more than fair to opt for them, it could happen, but with them, they are so it could happen, but with them, they are so and unpredictable. i do know.

much more of that to come over the coming weeks, and that is it for sports day. now, it is time for meet the author. —— meet the author. sir antony sher‘s portrayal of king learfor the royal shakespeare company was acclaimed as a crowning achievement in a major career. the role is so demanding it is often described as the arrest of acting, and in his new book he captures every step of the journey, in a year of the mad king: the lear diaries, he charts the months involved in researching and rehearsing and performing one of shakespeare's's most challenging parts and the obstacles he encountered along the way. sir antony sher, you have played many of the greatest roles in shakespeare from richard iii to shylock and now king lear, and you have also written fiction and nonfiction and plays, so what do you see yourself as,

an actor or a writer? i quite like the fact that i do both and in fact i'm an artist as welcomer i paint and draw —— as well, i paint. many of the illustrations are in the books. i have a restless personality and i'm a workaholic. so just one of those things wouldn't be quite enough to feed my habit. it is good to be able to keep going between the three. does the writing and painting and acting, do they complement each other?

yes, well, the drawing and sketching, i do when i'm developing a character to work out how they might look or even how they feel. and the writing, well, in the theatre journals, it is a diary adapted from my diary, and ifind doing a diary every day very cathartic. you off—load all the stuff that might be troubling you or indeed exciting new about the work, so they do we've into one another. here you are, keeping this diary as you embark on what you say is one of the most challenging roles you have ever played. for people who don't know king lear that well, why is it so difficult, that part? because it has a kind of epic quality. it's no accident that at the centre

of shakespeare's's play of shakespeare's play there is this almighty storm. you find lear shouting at the storm. he's arguing with a storm. and that's the kind of size of the part, you sometimes feel that as an ordinary human being you are not enough for the part, that the part requires a force of nature. it requires you to be a storm yourself or stop especially in the first half of the play because he has these huge scenes with huge rages, one after the other. enormous power and force coming off him, and later in the play it becomes gentler and quieter which is much easier to do.

you write in the book about your fear of failure, your inability to scale this mountain that is this role, and some people might be surprised by this given your vast experience but that was how you feel? every time you come to one of the great shakespeare roles you risk failure but you also have this incredibly challenging exciting and frightening task of, can you match the genius of sha kespeare's's writing? because he creates these astonishing characters. will you be able to interpret them in a meaningful way? the production is directed by the artistic director of the rsc

who is also your partner and the man you marry in the course of the book. i was struck by how much input you had into things like the casting, the design, the cuts that were made to the text, and i wondered, is that normal or do you have special privileges because you are in a relationship with the director? i think any leading actor would be invited by the director to comment on some of the things which are going into making up the production. especially in the way the design... because, you know, if you were a direct you wouldn't want your leading actor to discover on the first aid of rehearsals that they are playing it in modern dress when they thought they might be in period costume —— if you were a director. in terms of casting, i did have much

to do with that at all, although he might say to me, what do you think of i would probably say, great, let's try and yet that person. you reflect on parallels with your life and the lives of lear, and the first issue will falter in life at times, with your bad shoulder, how useful were those real—life experiences in preparation for the role? at the time they didn't feel useful, they felt too close for comfort. i also had two members of my family passed away and some other people that i knew well passed away. it felt quite strange. running through the play king lear is to paraphrase lear, the smell of mortality, a sense of the fragility

of life and human life, that's a terribly strong theme in the play. and here i was rehearsing the part and acting those things but also experiencing them in real life. so it was a strange time. that was often a bit painful and difficult but thank goodness it worked out in the end. you mention a couple of times in the book the possibility of stopping acting. are you just toying with that idea or is this a serious possibility? apart from anything else, i've spent my career as a classical actor mainly, mainly as a shakespeare actor, and i've run out of parts because he wrote three great parts for older actors, prospero, for staff and lear, and i've done the three of them now.

i'm not quite sure where i go next. female roles perhaps? in the book you talk about approaching adrian noble who ran the rsc in the 90s about playing the pat rafter author may be this idea was ahead of its time —— about playing cleopatra. with the gender casting being something that is now up for discussion, yes, but unfortunately i'm a little too old for cleopatra now! i might stand a better chance of getting it now than i did at the time when adrian noble simply said, if i gave you cleopatra every leading actress in this

country would lynch me. so things are a bit different now. exactly, how times have changed for top so if you are toying with giving up acting, would you ever give up writing? no, i mean, that's what... the writing and painting is what i would do if acting did come to an end. let's hope it doesn't. sir antony sher, it has been lovely to talk to you, many thanks. thank you. many places started easter sunday on a promising note. there was some sunshine around, which began to diminish throughout the afternoon. scotla nd diminish throughout the afternoon. scotland became rowdy in many places. —— cloudy. this wet weather

system will bring us some severe weather in the next 2a hours. it is already bringing some weather... snack gueye snow over the high ground will become more so widespread, and then it might be on lower ground in some areas. much of scotla nd lower ground in some areas. much of scotland stays cold and dry. but, we are likely to see some hazardous weather conditions into easter monday morning. across northern ireland and induce central and southern scotland and northern england. somebody‘s heavy snow in the higher ground. some parts of the southern uplands, for example and the pennines could see around ten to 15 centimetres in snow. there will be some drifting blizzard conditions

on hill top, there. the front will move northwards into more central pa rt move northwards into more central part of scotland, bringing some heavy snow, there. further south, a bit drier. if you showers around, and much milder, temperatures of ten degree. that snow propose a problem. a lot of travel plans might be difficult. possible disruption from this note. that will continue... the weather world remain fairly i'm settled. this area of low pressure will push milder air across the uk as we had through tuesday. much milder and more springlike. that is tuesday's picture. heavy snow across the northern part of scotland. drifting and blizzard conditions, in fa ct. drifting and blizzard conditions, in fact. but, further south, a fair amount of cloud around. glad and sunny spells. very much milder.

this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines: a shortage of special needs funding means growing numbers of children in england are being left without suitable school places according to the largest union for teachers. can you imagine the torment that a parent goes through, a parent of a child where special needs where we aren't educating them at all? the newest member of the labour party's governing committee, the comedian, eddie izzard says labour must stamp out anti—semitism and rebuild relations with thejewish community. it comes as labour distances itself from some pro—jeremy corbyn facebook groups featuring anti—semitic and abusive comments. police on the spanish island of tenerife say they've arrested two people in connection with the death of a 9—year—old boy from northern ireland. four weeks after the nerve agent attack on salisbury, its bishop says the city was violated and is

only just recovering.