Republican John Hostettler has lost his House primary in Indiana, delivering a victory to pro-Israel groups who sought to block the former congressman from returning to Washington. The groups attacked Hostettler as insufficiently supportive of Israel at a time when criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has hit new highs because of the war in Gaza.

When the Associated Press called the eighth district primary race at 7.49pm ET, less than an hour after the last polls closed in Indiana, Mark Messmer led his opponents with 40% of the vote. Messmer, the Indiana state senate majority leader, will advance to the general election in November, which he is heavily favored to win because of the district’s Republican leanings. The victor will replace Republican congressman Larry Bucshon, who announced his retirement earlier this year.

The primary concludes a contentious race in which pro-Israel groups poured millions of dollars into the district to attack Hostettler, who served in the House from 1995 to 2007. The groups specifically criticized Hostettler’s past voting record on Israel and some comments he made that were deemed antisemitic.

In a book that he self-published in 2008 after leaving Congress, Hostettler blamed some of George W Bush’s advisers “with Jewish backgrounds” for pushing the country into the war in Iraq, arguing they were distracted by their interest in protecting Israel.

Those comments, combined with Hostettler’s vote opposing a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel in 2000, after the start of the second intifada, outraged groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and United Democracy Project (UDP), a Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, UDP spent $1.2m opposing Hostettler while the RJC Victory Fund invested $950,000 in supporting Messmer.

One UDP ad attacked Hostettler as “one of the most anti-Israel politicians in America”, citing his vote against the resolution in 2000. The CEO of RJC, Matt Brooks, previously lambasted Hostettler for having “consistently opposed vital aid to Israel [and] trafficked antisemitic conspiracy theories”.

But the groups’ interest in a Republican primary is a notable departure from their other recent forays into congressional races. So far this election cycle, UDP has largely used its massive war chest to target progressive candidates in Democratic primaries. UDP spent $4.6m opposing the Democratic candidate Dave Min, who ultimately advanced to the general election, and the group has also dedicated $2.4m to supporting Democrat Sarah Elfreth in Maryland, which will hold its primaries next week.

Aipac and its affiliates reportedly plan to spend $100m across this election cycle, so UDP may still get involved in other Republican congressional primaries. However, the groups will likely remain largely focused on Democrats, as Republican lawmakers and voters have generally indicated higher levels of support for Israel since the start of the war in Gaza.

A Guardian review of the statements of members of Congress after the start of the war found that every Republican in Congress was supportive of Israel. Even as criticism of Israel’s airstrike campaign in Gaza has mounted, one Gallup poll conducted in March found that 64% of Republicans approve of Israel’s military actions, compared with 18% of Democrats and 29% of independents who said the same.

Other polls have shown that most Americans support calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, and hopes for a pause in the war did briefly rise this week. Hamas leaders on Monday announced they would accept a ceasefire deal, but Israel soon dashed hopes of peace by launching an operation to take control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

Renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world’s electricity for the first time last year following a rapid rise in wind and solar power, according to new figures.

A report on the global power system has found that the world may be on the brink of driving down fossil fuel generation, even as overall demand for electricity continues to rise.

Clean electricity has already helped to slow the growth in fossil fuels by almost two-thirds in the past 10 years, according to the report by climate thinktank Ember. It found that renewables have grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year.

“The renewables future has arrived,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s director of global insights. “Solar, in particular, is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible.”

Solar was the main supplier of electricity growth, according to Ember, adding more than twice as much new electricity generation as coal in 2023.

It was the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 19th consecutive year, and also became the largest source of new electricity for the second year running, after surpassing wind power.

The first comprehensive review of global electricity data covers 80 countries, which represent 92% of the world’s electricity demand, as well as historic data for 215 countries.

The surge in clean electricity is expected to power a 2% decrease in global fossil fuel generation in the year ahead, according to Ember.

“The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable,” said Jones. “2023 was likely the pivot point – peak emissions in the power sector – a major turning point in the history of energy. But the pace of emissions falls depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues.”

Although fossil fuel use in the world’s electricity system may begin to fall, it continues to play an outsized role in global energy – in transport fuels, heavy industry and heating.

A separate study by the Energy Institute found last year that fossil fuels including oil, gas and coal made up 82% of the world’s primary energy.

World leaders are aiming to grow renewables to 60% of global electricity by 2030 under an agreement struck at the UN’s Cop28 climate change conference in December.

This would require countries to triple their current renewable electricity capacity in the next six years, which would almost halve power sector emissions.

It was a night when Borussia Dortmund penned one of the finest chapters in their history, a seemingly unremarkable team – low on stellar names – doing something utterly astonishing.

It has felt as though they have been written off repeatedly this season, starting with when they were plunged into the Champions League group of death. They won that with a measure of comfort, ahead of Paris Saint-Germain, Milan and Newcastle.

After they got past PSV Eindhoven in the last 16, Atlético Madrid were supposed to be too good for them in the quarter-finals – wrong again – while here, PSG were fancied to overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg of this semi-final.

Dortmund are at an awfully low ebb domestically, lagging fifth in the Bundesliga. But something has stirred in them whenever they have heard this competition’s aria, never more so than at the Parc des Princes. Dortmund looked like the royalty, the team that have regularly struggled to take the decisive step over the past decade or so, stunning PSG with their collective resolve, their bodies-on-the-line defending.

They rode their luck. It was always going to be a part of it at this pulsating venue. PSG had hit the woodwork twice in the first leg. Here, they did so a further four times – all of the near misses coming during a second half when they threw everything they had at Dortmund. It was incredible theatre.

Mats Hummels got the goal that meant everything to Dortmund, the 35-year-old rising unchallenged to head home from a corner shortly after the interval. He is a veteran of the club’s previous Champions League final appearance – the 2013 loss to Bayern Munich at Wembley. Dortmund are heading back there again and they could even meet Bayern, who are locked at 2-2 against Real Madrid in the other semi-final ahead of Wednesday night’s second leg.

The Dortmund celebrations exploded like a firecracker upon the full-time whistle, the players streaming over to the section by one of the corner flags that housed their supporters, a seething mass of euphoria. The players bounced up and down in front of them for what seemed like an age; they did not want to tear themselves away. The idea now will be to emulate the Class of 97 – Matthias Sammer, Paul Lambert, Karl-Heinz Riedle, Lars Ricken et al, who conquered Juventus to collect the club’s lone European Cup.

Dortmund’s joy contrasted vividly with PSG’s dejection. Luis Enrique’s team have sewn up the Ligue 1 title and they will face Lyon in the French Cup final. The treble had been on. This is a new-look team, with an emphasis on the collective in the post-Lionel Messi and Neymar era, even if one shining star has remained. Kylian Mbappé, though, will depart in the summer, the dream send-off having turned to dust.

The PSG president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, had claimed when he appointed Luis Enrique last summer that the Champions League was no longer “the obsession … that is over”. It was about building a new identity, a new culture. The bottom line was that this would have cut him to the core, together with everyone at the club, even if the diehards on the Virage Auteuil mustered a tremendous ovation for their beaten players when it was all over. PSG still cannot bend this competition to the force of their desire.

All that PSG could see in the first half was a yellow wall, the Dortmund players closing the spaces, moving as one. Edin Terzic had demanded his players cede nothing in between the lines and, with Hummels and Nico Schlotterbeck setting the example in defensive terms, PSG created nothing of clearcut note before the interval.

When PSG had the flicker of a final pass or shooting opportunity, they rushed things, Ousmane Dembélé’s slash off target in the 31st minute a good example. That was probably as close as PSG came in the first half because Dembele had been well placed. It was not very close.

The feeling nagged that Dortmund could land a counterpunch. They were composed on the ball, especially Julian Brandt, while Jadon Sancho also enjoyed some nice moments. They almost did on 36 minutes after Mbappé had failed to make a clean connection on a half chance. It was Karim Adeyemi who flicked on the afterburners, tearing the length of the field and unloading a low drive. Gianluigi Donnarumma threw out a big left hand to save.

PSG battled to master the occasion. Warren Zaïre-Emery hit a post from a tight angle upon the second-half restart; he seemed to have enough of the goal to aim at after an Mbappé cross. And when Marquinhos conceded a corner with a loose back-pass, the scene was set for Hummels. Where was the marking on Brandt’s corner? Lucas Beraldo was the closest defender to Hummels and he was nowhere near tight enough.

PSG ran on emotion, driven by increasing desperation. Gonçalo Ramos wasted a couple of half chances either side of a Nuno Mendes blast that slammed into the far post. The margins were against PSG, the feeling reinforced when Hummels fouled Dembélé on the very edge of the area and the referee, Daniele Orsato, opted for a free-kick rather than a penalty.

It was excruciatingly tight. Ditto when Mbappé and Vitinha both struck the crossbar in the closing stages, the latter with a rasping drive from distance. Something extraordinary has driven Dortmund. The ultimate prize is in sharp focus.

A security guard at the mansion of Canadian hip-hop artist Drake has been “seriously injured” in a shooting outside the musician’s Toronto home.

The victim, an adult male, was rushed to a Toronto hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries following the shooting early on Tuesday morning.

Paul Krawczyk of the city’s police service told reporters on Tuesday that investigators had little information and were studying surveillance footage for leads.

The assailant was reportedly spotted fleeing the area in a vehicle.

Drake, whose legal name is Aubrey Graham, has in recent sparred publicly with the California rapper Kendrick Lamar in a series of “diss tracks”.

Krawczyk said police were aware of the tension between the two rappers but didn’t link the high-profile spat to the shooting.

“It is so early in the investigation that we don’t have a motive at this time,” Krawczyk said.

In recent days, the superstars have made increasingly provocative and unsubstantiated allegations against each other. Lamar’s most recent track, Not Like Us, features a satellite image of Drake’s 50,000 square foot mega-mansion – the same property that was cordoned off with police tape after Tuesday’s shooting.

The ongoing dispute between the two rappers, which has made headlines, has benefited at least one local business in Toronto. After Lamar, a Pulitzer-prize winner, referenced the Chinese restaurant New Ho King, business more than tripled and the eatery, established in the 1970s, was flood with rave reviews.

“Kendrick recommended … did not disappoint … mans knows good food excellent service,” wrote one reviewer.

A British woman has pleaded guilty to being part of a global monkey torture network.

Holly LeGresley, 37, from Kidderminster in Worcestershire, admitted uploading 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured to an online chat group.

She was charged after an investigation by the BBC into the torture of monkeys overseas. The investigation exposed a global network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.

The BBC said LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey.

LeGresley pleaded guilty to charges of publishing obscene articles and intentionally encouraging animal cruelty at Worcester magistrates court on Tuesday.

The court heard West Mercia police charged LeGresley after being informed by the National Wildlife Crime Unit, a UK police department.

A second defendant, Adriana Orme, 55, of Ryall, near Upton-upon Severn, Worcestershire, did not indicate any plea to similar charges.

The court was told the women had “not carried out monkey torture themselves”.

The prosecutor, Angela Hallan, told the court LeGresley had been charged after being identified as having been part of online chat groups, after the BBC was involved in “exposing the trade”.

Orme is alleged to have published an obscene article by uploading one image and 26 videos of monkey torture between 14 April and 16 June 2022, and to have encouraged or assisted the commission of unnecessary suffering by making a £10 payment to a PayPal account on 26 April 2022.

LeGresley, who left court in a face mask, admitted uploading images of monkey torture between 25 March and 8 May 2022, and making a payment of £17.24 to a PayPal account to encourage cruelty on 25 April of the same year.

LeGresley will be sentenced on 7 June. The case against Orme was transferred to the crown court, where she was ordered to appear on 5 June.

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former chief executive of the blood-testing company Theranos, has had her federal prison sentence shortened again, new records show.

The 40-year-old Holmes is now scheduled for release on 16 August 2032 from a federal women’s prison camp in Bryan, Texas, according to the US Bureau of Prisons website.

Holmes’s sentence was reduced by more than four months, as her previous release date was set for 29 December 2032.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Holmes’s amended sentence to the Guardian but said he could not comment further due to “privacy, safety and security reasons” for inmates.

This is the second time that Holmes has had her sentence shortened. In July, was reduced by two years.

People incarcerated in the US can have their sentences shortened for good conduct and for completing rehabilitation programs, such as a substance abuse program.

The latest reduction of Holmes’s sentence still meets federal sentencing guidelines. Those guidelines mandate that people convicted of federal offenses must serve at least 85% of their sentence, regardless of reductions for good behavior.

In 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison after being convicted on four counts of defrauding investors.

She was also ordered to pay $452m in restitution to those she defrauded, but a judge delayed those payments due to Holmes’s “limited financial resources”.

Holmes’s lawyers have already begun attempts to get her conviction overturned. Oral arguments for her appeal are set to begin on 11 June in a federal appeals court in San Francisco, California, NBC News reported.

Holmes founded Theranos, a multibillion-dollar biotech startup that claimed it could run blood tests with only a single drop of blood.

Once hailed as a biotech innovator, Holmes as well as Sunny Balwani, her co-executive and former romantic partner, faced legal consequences after reporting from the Wall Street Journal and others found that the technology used by Theranos was fraudulent.

Balwani was convicted in a separate trial for his actions in the Theranos scheme, and he was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

He also had two years reduced from his sentence in July and will be released from federal prison on 1 April 2034, according to the prisons bureau website.

Dancing for worms may seem an odd pursuit, but an environment charity is calling for people across the UK to charm the creatures from the depths in order to count them.

The Soil Association is trying to get a nationwide picture of worm abundance, to track their decline and see where they need the most help.

Across May, the charity is asking people to dance on the soil, soak the earth with water or use the vibrations of a garden fork to draw worms up.

Using the data collected, specialists will create a worm map of the UK to show where the healthiest and most biodiverse soil is. Soil that is full of worms is an indicator that it is healthy.

Worms are vital for the soil; they produce a sticky mucus that binds it together, and this helps to alleviate flooding. Soil with worms is up to 90% more effective at soaking up water.

However, due to pesticides, excessive draining and the use of inorganic fertilisers, the worm population appears to have shrunk. A recent study found that earthworm populations had declined by a third over the past 25 years.

The Soil Association’s head of worms, Alex Burton, said: “It might sound wacky but dancing on the bare earth can help with science. Worm charming is fun and a little surreal, but scientists and farmers use worm counts to understand soil health. We depend on soils for 95% of our food production, and they hold more carbon than the atmosphere, so it is crucial for us to know what’s going on under the ground and worms help to tell us that.

“The data we get for the worm map will help us build a better understanding of the health of soils in gardens, allotments and green spaces across the UK. This will show where they need help to restore their numbers. Worms are in our news, films and our gardens, where children love uncovering them. We’re calling for people to become citizen scientists for our valuable pals, and if they don’t find as many as they were expecting, we have plenty of advice to help them improve the soil.”

The charity is working with the Falmouth worm charming championships, which will be handing out awards for the most worms charmed and the most creative ways of seducing them from the deep.

It can take as little as half an hour to find the worms and only requires a little piece of land, so the work can take place in gardens, farms or local parks. People interested in taking part can download the Worm Hunt Guide and get charming.

Chart-topping US rapper Macklemore has released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which gives robust support to Palestine as well as those protesting at US universities against Israel’s activity in Gaza.

Hind’s Hall is named after the Columbia University building, renamed from Hamilton Hall by occupying student protesters to reference Hind Rajab, a six-year-old child killed in Gaza.

“If students in tents posted on the lawn / Occupying the quad is really against the law / And a reason to call in the police and their squad / Where does genocide land in your definition, huh?” he raps, referring to the police crackdown against protests.

As well as condemning Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Columbia students are calling for their university to divest from companies linked to Israel – a call that has been repeated in other campuses across the US. Last week New York police arrested more than 100 people protesting at Columbia, including some occupying Hamilton Hall. More than 2,000 people have been arrested over US campus protests.

In Hind’s Hall, Macklemore characterises Israel as “a state that’s gotta rely on an apartheid system to uphold an occupying violent history been repeating for the last 75 [years]”, and says he has experienced support from Jewish people in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protests. “We see the lies in them, claiming it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist / I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and riding in solidarity and screaming ‘Free Palestine’ with them”.

He addresses Joe Biden, saying “blood is on your hands”, and says he will not be voting for him later this year.

He had previously been a supporter of the Democrats, appearing alongside Barack Obama to discuss the opioid crisis and opposing Donald Trump with chants at concerts. He released a song, Wednesday Morning, after Trump’s 2016 election win with the lyrics: “No time for apathy, no more tears and no complaining / Gotta fight harder for the next four and what we’re faced with.”

Macklemore also criticises the music industry for not being more outspoken during the war in Gaza. “The music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence,” he raps, adding “I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake” – a reference to the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar which has consumed the US music industry in recent weeks.

The tension between the rappers’ verbal conflict and the real conflict in Gaza has not gone unnoticed elsewhere: “It’s Hard to Care About a Rap War in the Middle of a Real One,” ran the headline of a Rolling Stone article last week.

Macklemore is perhaps still best known for lighthearted songs such as 2012’s Thrift Shop, which topped the US and UK charts, but he is also known for socially conscious material. His track Same Love voiced support for same-sex marriage and the LGBTQ+ community while criticising hip-hop culture for homophobia, while Wing$ lamented poverty and criticised consumerism.

He appeared incognito at Black Lives Matter protests and in 2016 examined his position as a white person at the protests and in rap culture more broadly – which had caused him to be accused of cultural appropriation – with the track White Privilege II.

One of the most famous stories ever told about “Mama” Cass Elliot was a complete lie. It didn’t help that the singer herself repeated it in scores of interviews. As the spiel goes, Cass became the last singer hired for the Mamas and Papas only after she got smacked on the head by a pipe during a construction project at a local club where they all hung out. “It’s true,” she insisted to Rolling Stone in 1968. “I had a concussion and went to the hospital. I had a bad headache for about two weeks and then, all of a sudden, I was singing higher.”

The “new” sound she supposedly produced was what allegedly convinced group’s leader John Phillips to finally bring her into the fold, creating what became one of the most famous four-way harmony groups in pop history. In fact, the real reason Phillips didn’t initially want to hire the clearly gifted Cass was simply because he thought she was too overweight to be part of a viable pop group. “The fact that she felt she had to perpetuate a false story shows the depth of what she felt she had to hide,” said Owen Elliot-Kugell, the singer’s daughter who has written a new book titled My Mama, Cass. “The truth was just too painful.”

Even with that cover story to shield her, Cass experienced relentless fat-shaming throughout the group’s career, highlighted by the main refrain in their seminal hit Creeque Alley that read “no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass”. The snarky references continued into their legacy years when, in an acceptance speech for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, fellow “Mama” Michelle Phillips said: “I have personal knowledge that Cass is looking down on these proceedings wearing a size six Thierry Mugler dress.” The swipes about her weight even played into a widely believed, but false, story about the cause of her death. (The infamous choking-on-a-ham-sandwich bit). The poignancy of it all forms a central motif in Elliot-Kugell’s book though it doesn’t overwhelm the main reason we care to begin with. The book also celebrates the singularity of Cass’ singing, the range of her creative talent, and the warmth of her character. The primary inspiration for writing the book came from a foundational trauma: Elliot-Kugell was only seven when her mother died. “When you lose somebody that young, they become a mystery to you,” she said. “Writing the book allowed me to put the pieces of the puzzle of my mom together in a way I hadn’t previously been able to do.”

Elliot-Kugell, now 57, began thinking about writing a book about her mother nearly two decades ago but, because her own experience with her was scant, she had to go on an extended journalistic mission to mine the memories of people with a far greater understanding of her life and history. “I was always asking people about her,” she said. “This book is a compilation of everything I’ve been told over the years.”

The result strikes her as especially relevant today. “My mom was a forward-thinking woman-of-size who made it in an industry that was largely controlled by men,” she said. “That makes her story timely.”

Because her story ended too soon it gains special pain as well. “My mom was just 32 when she passed,” Elliot-Kugell said. “She didn’t live long enough to write a memoir that would have her side represented. I did this because she didn’t get the chance to.”

What she uncovered was a life in which others often set the agenda, and framed the narrative, for her mother. When Cass was just a girl, she contracted ring worm, a highly contagious disease. Because her mother was pregnant at the time, the family sent her to live temporarily with her grandmother, a product of the Depression who viewed food as both a cure-all and a source of love. “They fed her like crazy,” Elliot-Kugell said. “When my mom came home a couple of months later she was heavier and her parents became concerned. They did what they knew how to do, which was to send her to a doctor. And he did what he knew how to do, which was to put her on amphetamines.”

“She was just eight!” the author exclaimed. “What does being on amphetamines do to a child’s developing brain? It’s not only altering chemically what’s going on, its sending a horrible message that there’s something wrong with you. And this pill will fix it.”

A bright spot in Cass’ early life was music. Even as a child, she had a voice that stood out, as well as an interest in acting that she avidly pursued in high school theatrical productions. Even there, she experienced judgement for her size. While behind the scenes she taught the other kids how to sing, dance and present themselves, she never appeared on-stage herself. “She knew that other people were going to judge her for her looks,” Elliot-Kugell said. “I feel terrible that she had to go through that.”

After high school, she gained enough confidence to move from her family’s home in Maryland to New York to audition for professional parts in musicals. At that point, she ditched her birth name, Ellen Cohen, to fashion a moniker combining her nickname, Cass, with that of a friend named Elliot who died in a car crash. She earned a part in the touring company of The Music Man, but only as the “the fat girl” and, though she was in the running for the role of Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It To You Wholesale, she lost to another promising star: Barbra Streisand. At the time, she lamented to a friend, “there just don’t seem to be many parts for a 200-pound ingenue.”

Luckily for her, the folk music scene was then exploding in New York’s Greenwich Village, a demimonde that celebrated alternative voices and opinions. She helped form several groups there, including the Big 3 and Mugwumps, the latter including future Papa Denny Doherty and later Lovin’ Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanovski. They recorded just one album before splitting, which paved Cass’ eventual way into the burgeoning Mamas and Papas in 1965. By year’s end the new group already scored a Top Five smash with California Dreamin’, yet internecine intrigue threatened to kill them in their crib. Members Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty had an affair, despite the fact that she was married to John and Cass had already made clear her deep crush on Doherty.

Cass’ thwarted pursuit of him emphasized a pattern in her life of going after unattainable men. Her first marriage, to Big 3 member James Hendricks, was arranged solely to help him avoid the draft. When she was 26, she became pregnant by a man who was fleetingly in her life, yet she decided to raise the child on her own as a way to insure she would always have someone in her life. (The identity of the father, a musician, wasn’t discovered by Elliot-Kugell until she was an adult). “To me, one of the most profoundly sad things in my mother’s whole story is the fact that she never got to have a relationship with another human being on equal standing,” Elliot-Kugell said.

Several years later, Cass married another man, a German journalist named Donald von Wiedenman, whom she divorced within months. Elliot-Kugell makes no mention of him in her book because, she said, “he talked shit about her. And it wasn’t like their marriage changed her life. He was just another opportunist.”

Though romance eluded her, Cass became hugely popular as both a close friend and a trusted musical adviser. From her first days on the scene, she displayed a A&R director’s skill at understanding which musicians would sound right together. During her Mugwumps days, she suggested John Sebastian work with Zal Yanovsky, in the process midwifing the Lovin’ Spoonful. In the backyard of her Laurel Canyon in 1968, she encouraged Graham Nash to harmonize with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, leading to the formation of CSN. “Denny Doherty used to refer to her as the puppeteer with the marionettes, putting everyone together,” Elliot-Kugell said.

When the Mamas and Papas broke up, the smart money was on Cass to become the solo star given the warm timber of her voice, the intelligence of her phrasing and the sheer force of what Elliot-Kugell calls “that Cohen honk. It cuts through everything.”

On her early solo albums, the label insisted she stick with the name Mama Cass, though she wanted to be billed as Cass Elliot to distinguish herself from the group. A new recording contract with RCA in 1972 finally gave her the creative freedom to record under her own name and to cut more sophisticated material by the likes of Randy Newman and Judee Sill. Even so, none of her solo albums sold well. She earned more attention through live shows and TV appearances though, even here, the fat jokes followed. On a Friars Club Roast of actor Carroll O’Connor, Dean Martin introduced her as “a very big girl”. “Today, nobody would say that,” Elliott-Kugell said. “But, at the time, it was part of the schtick of who she was.”

In those years, Cass was working so relentlessly, health problems began to develop that were, tragically, ignored. Elliot-Kugell’s book recounts at least five instances of her mother fainting or experiencing exhaustion that were not properly checked out by a doctor or seen as signs of something more serious. “It’s hard to sit here today and not say, ‘How can no one have seen this?’ she said.

In 1974, Cass was booked to an extensive, and very successful, residency in London. After completing the last show in July she retired to an apartment in Mayfair where, several hours later, she died in her sleep from a heart attack. In her book, Elliot-Kugell works diligently to uncover the origin of the ham sandwich story. She discovered it was cooked up by her manager, Alan Carr, just so no one speculated that drugs was the culprit. Well-meaning as that may have been, it turned her mother’s death into a punch line. The mere fact that people fell for it bold-faces the prejudice that surrounds weight. “It was easier for the public to accept the idea of someone being gluttonous when they’re heavy,” Elliot-Kugell said. “It made the story salacious.”

After her mother’s death, Elliot-Kugell was raised by Cass’ sister, the singer-songwriter Leah Kunkel and her husband, the famed session drummer Russ Kunkel. In her teen years, she pursued her own musical career by helping to form the group Wilson-Phillips (which combined off-spring members of Brian Wilson’s and John Phillips’ clans). Unfortunately, she got forced out before they recorded a single song because, she said, her voice was too loud. Her experiences in the music business have helped her appreciate how rare her mother’s success was in that field. At the same time, Cass’ early death makes her wonder what she might have achieved had she lived. “I think she would have ended up on Broadway and would have done a lot of residencies in Las Vegas. She probably would have owned her own production company.”

She believes, too, that in the modern era of body-positivity, she would have faced less prejudice. Regardless, her legacy lives on. Recently, Cass has experienced an unexpected resurgence on TikTok, where the audio from her 1969 anthem of individuality, Make Your Own Kind of Music has been used in 46 thousand videos, amassing over 32m views. According to Elliot-Kugell, even that dumb ham sandwich story has a positive side. “It’s just another way of remembering somebody,” she said. “It’s great to know that, even 50 years later, she’s still part of the conversation.”

This article was amended on 7 May 2024 to correct the spelling of Carroll O’Connor’s first name.

Rufus Wainwright has defended his musical Opening Night, which was forced to close early after mixed reviews, saying West End audiences lack “curiosity” after Brexit and the British press had turned on the project because it was “too European”.

Opening Night was Wainwright’s first musical and is an adaptation of John Cassavetes’ 1977 film about an actor struggling to cope, who is played by Sheridan Smith. Directed by Ivo van Hove, it opened in March at the Gielgud theatre but a month later announced it would be closing two months early.

Some audience members reportedly walked out during the performance or left during the interval. The musical included a scene where Smith staggers out into the streets of the West End while being filmed and projected back on to the stage.

Wainwright said the experimental elements of the show were too much for conservative audiences, and seeing Smith – who is a mainstream star – in something more avant garde was anathema to certain critics and audience members.

“I do feel that since Brexit, England has entered into a darker corridor where it is a little more narrow in its outlook and the vitriol because we put ‘English rose Sheridan Smith through this ordeal of European theatre’ felt a little bit suspect to me,” he told the Guardian. “I was a little surprised by that.”

Opening Night did get some positive reviews. The Guardian gave it four stars and said it was “the most unusual thing on the London stage right now”, while Time Out called Smith “superb”. But other critics weren’t convinced.

The New York Times critic Houman Barekat said the adaptation “desecrated” Cassavettes’ original film, while he dismissed Wainwright’s songs as “algorithmically bland”. The New Statesman said it was a “chaotic and masochistic project”, while Attitude called it a “missed opportunity sorely lacking in camp”.

Although Wainwright admits the show “wasn’t perfect by any means” and that there “were mistakes made on many fronts”, he believes the negative reaction to the show was partly because Britain has become more insular since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

“There’s a lack of imagination and curiosity about change,” he said. “All of the reviews from Europe were incredible for this piece; the staging and the rhythm is more European and there was a vitriolic reaction against that. I don’t think it was perfect and that I don’t deserve criticism, but this thing of shutting it down if it’s not exactly what you want is not really the theatrical lane that I want to live in.”

Opening Night’s producers, Wessex Grove, said “what is sure-fire and safe has its place” but it was proud to have taken a “risk”, when it announced the show was ending prematurely.

“In a challenging financial landscape, Opening Night was always a risk and, while the production may not have had the life we had hoped for, we feel immensely proud of the risk we took and of this extraordinary production,” they said.

Van Hove said it was “always sad” when a show was cut short.

Wainwright defended Smith, who told the Guardian she “had something to prove” because – like the character she plays in Opening Night – she had unravelled on stage in 2016. “People were saying be careful, we have to be delicate with her, and it couldn’t have been further from the truth,” he said.

“She was always excited and giving her full – I have nothing but admiration and love for her.”

The songwriter, who is the child of two famous folk singers, Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and whose sister Martha is also a famous artist, has written two operas and 11 studio albums.

Wainwright said he was “a little beaten up by” the experience but was glad the production was ambitious and stood out from what he thinks is a conservative landscape on the West End. “I think the West End has got pretty staid,” he said.

“The main objective I have is that people think about it for days and days and look: people have thought about Opening Night now for weeks. It has remained in the psyche of the press and the public … it does endure for better or for worse.”

Wainwright said he was working on the cast album of the show, which he hopes can give it another life. The final performance of Opening Night in the West End will take place on 18 May.