As a young mother, Tareena Shakil fled with her toddler from the UK to Syria and joined Islamic State. Now she’s giving dating advice on TikTok. How did she get here?

If you met Tareena Shakil today, you would have no idea that the person in front of you had served time in prison for terrorism offences and holds the dubious distinction of being the first British woman convicted of joining Islamic State. Now 36, Shakil is glamorous, heavily made-up with long, tousled hair. When we meet at a plush hotel in Birmingham, she wears a sharply tailored dress, waist cinched in with a wide leather belt, and carries a Louis Vuitton handbag. She is bubbly and warm, with a disarmingly open demeanour. In short, this isn’t what springs to mind when you hear the words “terrorism conviction”.

What Shakil actually looks like is an influencer – which is fitting, because that’s what she is trying to be. She has gained most traction on TikTok, where her profile has about 50,000 followers. She gives relationship advice, usually sitting in her car and talking straight to camera. Her content is a mix of humour (“Muslim men who go to the gym while fasting – brother, the world needs more people like you”) and advice about the dating game (“Men are natural born hunters … they love the chase” in one video; “When they block you, it’s a punishment because they know it’s going to hurt you” in another). In among this are videos that hint at something darker (“If your partner hits you, you must leave, it doesn’t matter how much they cry or say they’ll never do it again”). She never directly references her own complicated past but, she tells me: “There’s an element of my own experience in most of the videos I make.”

Stardom came fast and hard for the wunderkind who created the hit HBO series Girls aged just 23. Now she’s written a tell-all memoir about why she was forced to retreat from the spotlight

• Lena Dunham on going to rehab: read an exclusive extract from Famesick

If there is something to be learned from the words people pick for their passwords and proxies, then Lena Dunham’s choice of aliases – pseudonyms that, as a public person, she has used over the years to conceal her identity when checking into rehab or ordering room service – give us a tiny glimpse into the writer and director’s self-image. Among her staples, “Lauri Reynolds” (after her mum, Laurie, with whom she is strikingly close); “Rose O’Neill” (after the American millionaire illustrator, who lost her fortune to burnout and hangers-on); and my favourite, “Renata Halpern”, an alias Dunham shares with readers of her delicious new memoir, Famesick, without explaining the name’s origin.

“Has anyone else clocked the Renata Halpern reference?” I ask Dunham, who is in her apartment in New York, talking fast via video call while waiting for an egg-and-cheese bagel to be run up from the deli. On the brink of 40, she is in her dark-haired era – very Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – which, this morning, is set against a bright orange shirt and the pale, glowy skin she describes as the single happy side-effect of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic condition of the connective tissue with which Dunham was diagnosed in 2019. Later this month, she’ll return to London, where she has lived for the last five years with her husband, Luis Felber, and where she enjoys greater anonymity than in her native New York – although, she says, not enough to dispense with the aliases. (“Just when you think no one cares, someone does something creepy, so you have to watch out.”)

An unmissable book for every year of your early life – with recommendations from Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Katherine Rundell and more

The news about reading in general, and childhood reading in particular, is not good. Last year a National Literacy Trust survey of more than 100,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 18 discovered that the number of children who read for pleasure is the lowest since records of this sort began. Only about a third of children say they actively enjoy reading, and the number who report reading daily in their free time is has halved over the last two decades. It’s down to less than one in five.

Whether we blame this on screens, social media, or on a renewed enthusiasm for healthy outdoor activities, the facts are clear. Children are reading less, taking less pleasure in doing so, and there’s already talk of the dawning of a “post-literate age”. Yet books make available the best, wisest and most beautiful things that humankind has conceived, and children’s literature offers a host of classics, old and new, to be introduced to new generations of readers.

For the super-rich with cash to burn, all those Rolexes and rare Labubus may not fill the void. But for me, a little goes a long way

When wages have stalled for nearly 20 years and I recently came face to face with a tube of toothpaste that was nearly £7 in my local Sainsbury’s, the idea that money can’t buy happiness seems almost offensive. It ultimately comes from a blinkered concept of what money can do. Sure, if you only use your money to buy things, the happiness it provides will be shallow and fleeting.

Having said that, I refuse to believe there’s a single person out there overpaying on rent who wouldn’t be happier if they owned a house outright. Loosely speaking, yes, Rolexes and rare Labubus have nothing on, say, spending quality time with the people you love. But sadly, the latter costs money, too. Free time is part of a growing number of basic human needs that have become more or less commodified, and under whatever wacky stage of capitalism we’re currently at, more money equals more time to pursue your interests and ultimately find meaning in life.

Eleanor Margolis is a columnist for the i newspaper and Diva

Jack, 31, a nature consultant, meets Heather, 23, who works in marketing for a homelessness charity

What were you hoping for?
A nice evening, to meet someone new and see what type of person I would be matched up with.

Fanning is a young single mother who makes adult content in this hilarious series. It is smart, sexy and bold – and Pfeiffer is unmissable as her ex-Hooters-waitress mother

I promise, it’s the title that drew me in. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a new Apple TV show (out Wednesday), starring Elle Fanning as a single mum who becomes an OnlyFans model. It joins a niche canon of similarly blunt titles about generic obstacles. To wit: Fleishman Is in Trouble; Big Trouble in Little China. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is better, though. Check out the assonance, the rhythm. It has great mouthfeel, to borrow a word from food reviewing, one I instantly regret.

Our hero, Margo Millet, is a first-year college student who falls pregnant by her professor. The married academic tells her to get an abortion; her friends agree with him. She has the baby. She drops out of college, falls into money troubles. She attempts to fall out of them by joining the notorious content creation platform. She does nude video shoots, in the character of a sexy alien. If none of this inflames you, can I interest you in Nick Offerman as Margo’s pro-wrestler, drug-addicted father? Or Michelle Pfeiffer as her blue collar, ex-Hooters-waitress mother? No? Are you dead?

Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif met US and Iran delegations separately

• JD Vance warns Iran against trying to ‘play’ the US in peace talks

• Analysis: JD Vance dispatched to peace talks with few cards to play

The UK will host a strait of Hormuz meeting next week, bringing together multiple countries aiming to restore free movement of ships through the strait, which has been blockaded by Iran since the beginning of the war and inflicted heavy damage on the global economy.

A British official told AP that the meeting will oppose the idea of tolls being charged for passage through the waterway, as proposed by Iran as part of ceasefire negotiations.

A Guardian investigation reveals how the prediction market can shape news – and how it rules on ‘the truth’

“Horekunden” was rapidly losing patience.

His frustration was with the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank which produces a daily map of the frontline in Ukraine.

Officials accept that time has run out to pass law after US dropped its support for plan

The UK government has been forced to shelve its legislation to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, after the US dropped its support for the agreement.

On Friday, UK government officials acknowledged that they had run out of time to pass legislation within the current parliamentary session, which ends in the coming weeks.

⚽️ Premier League news from the 12.30pm BST kick-off
⚽️ Live scores | Latest table | Follow on Bluesky | Mail Barry

Managerial contract news: In short, there is no managerial contract news. Andoni Iraola and Mikel Arteta were both asked if either had been in talks with their respective employers during their pre-match press conferences and both men suggested they had not.

Iraola: “I’m sorry, I don’t have any news for you,” he said. “There has been no change on that side of things.”