What would you ban if you were president?

The presentable face of Germany’s far-right

Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s AfD, doesn’t fit the stereotype of a far-right radical, says Katja Hoyer in The Guardian. An economist by trade, the 45-year-old has lived and worked all over the world, from Canada and Japan to Singapore and China. She started teaching herself Mandarin from cassette tapes when she was 14, later perfecting the language while living in Beijing, and has done stints at Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China. Today, she lives in a charming little town in Switzerland with her civil partner Sarah Bossard and their two adopted sons. But don’t be fooled. The AfD’s first-ever candidate for chancellor is far from the “liberal-conservative” she claims to be.

At her party’s most recent conference, Weidel demanded “large-scale repatriations of immigrants”, the demolition of Germany’s “windmills of shame”, and an end to “queer-woke insanity”. She happily allowed the AfD to limit its definition of family to “father, mother and children”, despite being in a same-sex relationship herself, and she publicly embraced the far-right term “remigration”, telling delighted delegates that if mass deportations were on the cards then “that’s what it’s going to be: re-mi-gra-tion”. Wiedel has also “made her peace” with the AfD’s radical leader in the state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, who has been fined twice for using the Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland”. When delegates alluded to this by chanting “Alice für Deutschland”, she seemed perfectly happy with it. Let’s hope Germans going to the polls next month aren’t taken in by the “presentable face” of the AfD.

Hunter’s chicken is a “chaotic dish in many ways”, says Olivia Potts in The Spectator, but it’s also a supremely satisfying mid-week, sling-it-in-the-oven, “cheer-me-up-quickly” one. It helps that it’s utterly delicious. “No one could accuse it of being subtle, but then subtlety is overrated.” Wrap four chicken breasts tightly in smoked streaky bacon then wedge them into a snug baking tray and roast at 200C for 25 mins. Cover the cooked breasts in barbecue sauce and sprinkle generously with cheddar cheese, then stick it under the grill until the cheese is melted and bubbling. Serve immediately with a sprinkle of chopped chives on top.

The make-up man who turned Boris Karloff into Frankenstein’s monster

Jack Pierce created some of the most memorable faces in Hollywood history, says Tom Fordy in The Daily Telegraph. The Universal Pictures make-up maestro started out in movies in 1909 – when actors still did their own make-up – and made his name with extremely detailed hand-crafted designs. Lon Chaney Jr, who played the Wolf Man in 1941, endured “hours upon hours” of preparation every morning as Pierce glued yak hair to his face before singeing it with a curling iron. (Chaney later called Pierce “the greatest goddamned sadist in the world”.) For 1932’s The Mummy, it took eight hours to wrap Boris Karloff in burned bandages and cover him in muck. When the actor asked to go to the loo, Pierce simply cut a fly in the bandages.

Pierce’s big break was transforming Jacques Lerner into an ape for 1927’s The Monkey Talks. His make-up was so convincing that one critic thought Lerner was actually a monkey, writing: “the well-trained chimpanzee had almost human qualities”. His most iconic look was the original Frankenstein’s monster in 1931. With a stitched-on skull, bolted neck and hooded eyes, the image “still towers over the cultural psyche” almost 100 years on. When Karloff, who played the monster, bumped into a studio secretary while out for a walk in full make-up, she fainted in fright. After that the crew only allowed him to go out wearing a veil over his head, with Pierce leading him by the hand.