he is the only the team is so young? he is the only one who cares out the three of us. give me formula 1 and i am there. really? really? i think give me formula 1 and i am there. really? really? ithink he give me formula 1 and i am there. really? really? i think he probably picked the best players but you could argue some of the experienced players are experienced in players —— in failure and you hope a different mindset but i'm not sure that increases the chances of winning the world cup which remain very slim. let's go to cycling. chris. i am aware of this. there is a headline were it says chris froome hits back? it sounds like he rode over a bridge. he was like the billy goat gruff and i've enjoyed that more than other people. i'm fine with that. are you following the cycling? it's finished. he's won, he is holding a cup. well done him.|j ama is holding a cup. well done him.|j am a team sport person, so it is a lone pursuit and i don't know as much. you are good at snooker.

you've played ronnie o'sullivan. that is objectively true.|j you've played ronnie o'sullivan. that is objectively true. i will have you both back again. in about half an hour. i will tell you about when i beat ronnie at snooker. natalie and rob, thank you so much. this is a serious news programme. that is if the papers. rob and natalie will be back atjust gone 11:30 p:m.. next, it is met the author. meet the author the most inhospitable deserts in the world are places where you will confront danger, from heat and thirst, from storms. but also, where you'll find peace. and that conundrum drove william atkins onwards, when he decided to explore some of the loneliest places on four continents. his book, the immeasurable world, is the story of those journeys. rich in history and typography and graced with many tales of human endeavour. all in search of an answer

to the mystery, why do such hostile places, where life is so hard, cast such a spell? welcome. what's your own explanation for the lure of these dangerous and hostile places? i think we are, sometimes, guilty of making the mistake of confusing flight with quest. and, often, i think our attraction to the desert emerges from flight, rather than quest. and so, i think of somebody like te lawrence or wilfrid thesiger in the empty quarter in the 1930s and 405,

and i think they recognised something in that landscape that reflected a sense of their own sense of being marginal, in british society. and, so, it was a form of escape. and, yes, it was exploration, yes, they carried out these extraordinary adventures and discovered routes across the empty quarter and the peninsula that were unknown, until then. but they were seeking some kind of comfort. solace, of some kind? yeah, solace. you talk about the empty quarter in the middle east, this vast, pretty hostile terrain. what was your own experience like, when you first got a feel for it, when you first got there? what was your reaction? it's the most beautiful place i've ever been. it's like entering the world

of a dream or another planet. it feels entirely unlike anything i've experienced in my life. the shifting sands, the shadows... the shifting sands, the sheer grandeur, the enormity of the place. the sparsity of the place. we come from a very relatively low—lying, green island next to the sea. and this is another part of what i think appeals, particularly to british explorers about deserts. it's completely unlike any environment we've experienced. near the beginning of the book, you talk about the history of people seeking solitude, really. going to deserts, finding it, you know, sparse, godless. you know, completely barren. and, yet, discovering there, tranquility and a deep

sense of the spiritual. it seems a contradiction. yes. and the tranquility is associated with that barrenness. the desert fathers, the founders of christian monasticism in the second and third centuries, had a concept, panaremos. victorian travellers in the sahara talked about the absolute desert. both of these concepts referred to the idea of the absolute desert, the most deserted desert. where everything is taken away. exactly. the centre of the desert. and so, this is kind of a concrete image of transcendence that this idea somehow represents the infinite, the eternal, the absolute. and so, i think it's true of the desert fathers as well as explorers and probably myself, that you're seeking this desert absolut, this panaremos. you travel all kinds of places. to china, to australia, to the aral sea in kazakhstan. and to the united states,

arizona, the dusty, hot places in the south west. there, you discover that the desert, although it is forbidding and dangerous and beautiful and all the rest of it, it is the border. that is your interest when you get there. the deserts of the south west, particularly the borderlands of arizona and mexico effectively are a wall. we don't need a wall. we know this. because a wall already exists. it's a barrier. it's the most extraordinarily, insurmountable barrier. if anyone can cross that desert, they can get over any wall. many people watching this will not have experienced a desert, even the fringes of a desert. proper desert. explain what it is like when night comes down in a desert place.

a very, very long way from anyone else, what does it feel like? there's an idea, i think, that we, we go to the desert to find ourselves. but i think there's an argument that says you go there, in a sense, to lose yourself. and night comes down and i think one of the things you're most aware of, the stillness of the desert. but the silence. the silence. and one of the things i realised, through spending quite a few nights in desert places is that when the silence comes, you understand that there's no such thing as silence. because you are, as they say, thrown back upon yourself and you lie there and listen to yourself breathing, you listen to yourjaw clicking, your eyes

opening and closing. so, in a way, everything is magnified and not taken away. your body is magnified and far from somehow escaping the body, which, i think, was the idea of the desert fathers, you're thrown back upon it. and your body, your sense of your own body is magnified. say there's a heightened consciousness? a heightened sense of embodiment, a heightened sense of one's self. and yet, that corresponds to a diminishment of oneself. because of the enormity of the landscape. and you understand your place in this creation is quite a small one and a fragile one. so, your vulnerability is underlined. yes. and your insignificance. in a way, you're trying to discover that sense of solace that some of the explorers you talked about were clearly in search of.

did you find it? solace? no. these are highly contested, conflicted landscapes, almost invariably so. britain's nuclear test zones in southern australia. the borders of the southwest, us, that we have just talked about. the taklamakan desert in xinjiang, northwest china, the aral sea, the destroyed aral sea. these are places that are challenging to be, but also challenging in terms of the political situation. which was your favourite desert place? i love arizona. i spent a week in a straw—bale hut, not very far from tucson, 60 miles from tucson. in the sonoran desert. it's exceptionally dry, hundreds of people there die every year trying to cross into the usa. and yet there's vegetation, there's the sound of the cicadas every night, there's the sound

of foxes and coyotes yapping. and it's one of the safest places i've ever been. i've never felt so safe. i would sleep outside under the stars and never feel a sense of the remotest threat. the magic of the desert. william atkins, the author of the immeasurable world. thank you very much. thank you. just to update you on how we see the rest of the holiday weekend panning out across the british isles. before we look into the future, let me take you back to last night where we had the most amount of the storm activity drifting across the british isles. some 50,000 lightning flashes

recorded in a few hours. a big area of low pressure churning away, throwing these thundery plumes across the british isles and here is the thing, we have done pretty much the thing, we have done pretty much the same thing in the first part of this evening and will continue to do, possibly in slightly different areas over the next few days. the thunderstorm risk persisting. part of the reason is that things are on the mild side so as we moved to temperatures —— the evening, temperatures —— the evening, temperatures around 20 in the south—east but many more of you will notice as the thunderstorms fade that we will see an incursion of low cloud from the north sea to give a pretty dull start to the new day across the greater part of central britain, a bit of sunshine further south but pretty sultry and temperatures never lower than 15 overnight. a fresh start of the day across the north of scotland but gloriously sunny away from the eastern shores. as the heat of the

day pours through and it will be another close day there will be more thunderstorms across southern counties of england and wales and some of us will see 26 or 27, even into northern ireland with the temperature comfortably into the 20s ina number of temperature comfortably into the 20s in a number of locations and eventually the low cloud will peel back towards the eastern shores but as we get on through the evening and into tuesday there will be a blanket of cloud coming from the north seat pushed in by a gentle north—easterly breeze, so tuesday start cloudy amber sunshine pops through and temperatures go into the low 20s and this time it is the far south of the british isles likely to see the greatest number of thunderstorms. into the middle of the week, not a great deal changes and perhaps we will develop thunderstorms drifting towards the northern parts of scotla nd towards the northern parts of scotland but still the threat of thundery showers into the southern parts as we get into the second half of the week.

this is bbc news. the headlines at 11pm: after celebrations in dublin — calls for change in the north — where abortion remains largely illegal. our policy is the same from the north of ireland right through to the bottom of ireland, we want to see the same policy, we need to show ca re see the same policy, we need to show care and compassion towards women. see the same policy, we need to show care and compassion towards womenlj think it is a popular opinion throughout northern ireland that we should not have liberalised abortion regime. a teenage girl — and a 20—year—old man — die at a music festival in portsmouth. no end to the political deadlock on italy, as the man designated as the country's prime minister gives up his bid to form a government. also ahead: chris froome makes cycling history in italy. he becomes the first brit to win the giro d'italia after a final race through the streets of rome.