No one loves a side project like Jack White. But now that he's gone solo, the blues-rock maestro can, finally, do what he does best: shred that guitar

Rachida (not her real name) was playing badminton in a Blackburn sports centre when I asked her if she'd talk to me about politics. I was making a Beyond Westminster programme for Radio 4 about how British Asian voters were deserting the three main parties. This young woman was initially very reluctant to contribute, and when she saw a middle-aged, male Labour councillor from her community trying to eavesdrop, she begged me to send him away.

Gareth Southgate is the leading candidate to become the Football Association's first technical director in 10 years. The former Middlesbrough manager, who is currently the FA's head of elite development, was part of a delegation the governing body sent to Brazil last week to scout out training base camps for the 2014 World Cup finals.

As tension mounts 30 years on from the Falklands War, Argentina's leader is seizing the moment

Literary biography is haunted by the ghosts of the wives of famous writers, most of whom had a pretty rough ride. Catherine Hogarth (Dickens), Jane Wells, Nora Barnacle (Joyce), Vivienne Eliot: a literary wife's lot was rarely a happy one, and most of the time she went unnoticed. In this account of her mother Nancy's first marriage to novelist and travel writer Lawrence Durrell, Joanna Hodgkin is mindful enough of a history that places wives on the margins. This is not just a memoir of her mother. This is the history of a literary wife.

Imagine turning on the TV to watch I’m Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan’s celebrated sitcom, and hearing your name mentioned over and over again. It’s something Sue Cook has had to get used to. The comedian constantly talks about her in his show, although she insists their association is pure fantasy.

Paul Jewell has vehemently denied that his criticism of assistant referee Amy Fearn following Ipswich's defeat to Birmingham last night contained a sexist remark.

Rant

Rant

Several times this week I have been on the receiving end of benevolent prejudice. A male shop assistant addressed me as "young man", a clear and unashamed reference to the fact that I am not young. A woman referred to a group of men of which I was part as "the boys". Serving me in the local shop, Linda – something of a serial offender in this regard – has quite shamelessly called me "darling", "babe" and "lovey", when I am clearly none of these things to her.

There is more to the Ed Balls papers leaked to the Daily Telegraph than plotting and bile against Tony Blair. One of the most revealing document is the long memo written by Gordon Brown around October 2005, when he was exasperated by Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party conference, and accused Blair of "self promotion".