Category: 5. Entertainment

This Morning stars Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard hot footed it from their ITV show over to the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club for day four of Wimbledon on Thursday.

Cat dressed for the Centre Court sunshine in a pretty floral print dress, posing with her dapper co-star after speeding through the London traffic on motorbike to make it to the tournament on time after wrapping their show.

Whilst Cat enjoyed a day out with her co-star, Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch made it a family affair by treating their eldest daughter Sophia to a day at SW19.

Meanwhile TV adventurer and Wimbledon regular Bear Grylls took his seat in the Royal Box with his wife Shara on Centre Court. 

Centre Court spectators will be watching Jack Draper compete against 2017 Wimbledon finalist Marin Cilic and Dan Evans takes on Novak Djokovic.

Draper, the current world Number four, takes on 2017 Wimbledon finalist Cilic as he looks to progress past the second round for the first time.

World number one Jannik Sinner is also back in the spotlight, up against Aleksandar Vukic, whilst Iga Swiatek plays Caty McNally in the other Centre Court match.

An excited Cat could barely look at the Centre Court action, at one point covering her face with her hands

The ITV star grimaced and gasped her way through the day four matches which included Jack Draper vs Marin Cilic

Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch treated their eldest daughter Sophia, 14, to a day of tennis 

Abbey and Peter shared a kiss, with daughter Sophia caught in the middle, as they took a break from watching the on court action 

TV adventurer Bear Grylls took his seat in the Royal Box with his wife Shara for day four on Centre Court 

Meanwhile after enjoying the hospitality suites, Jack Whitehall joined Union J star Josh Cuthbert and and his model wife Chloe Lloyd, who were also in the stands.

Chloe looked gorgeous in a white dress, flaunting her long legs in the ultra mini which she teamed in polka dot heels and a micro Chanel bag. 

Singer and environmentalist Feargal Sharkey and Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden shared a laugh in the celeb-packed Royal Box, with actress Celia Imrie seen catching up with William Hague a row ahead. 

Judy Murray has opened up on the secrets of the Royal Box at Wimbledon as celebrity guests continue to flood into Wimbledon.

While there are 18 Championship grass courts at SW19, all eyes are often on the historic Centre Court, which plays host to the best stars the sport has to offer as they compete for glory.

Centre Court boasts nearly 15,000 seats, meaning lucky punters can be seen cheering on their favourites, and are joined by guests in the Royal Box at around lunchtime each day.

So far this week, the likes of David Beckham, Cate Blanchett and Olivia Rodrigo have all been present.

On Tuesday Murray, renown for her coaching work in the sport and her support for tennis-playing sons Andy and Jamie, made an appearance. 

Cat put on a very animated display in her VIP seat after a busy morning in front of the cameras 

The TV star looked gorgeous in her pretty floral dress for her sporting afternoon 

A nervous-looking Cat sat alongside Ben Shephard’s son Jack, 18

Cat dressed for the Centre Court sunshine in a pretty floral print dress teamed with lace-up sandals 

Cat and Ben had a busy morning, racing across London after wrapping This Morning to get to the tournament in time 

Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard attended as a guest of Emirates

Abbey, Sophia and Peter couldn’t stop their giggles as they enjoyed their family day out 

Sophia topped up her lip gloss as she sat alongside her parents in the VIP seats 

Peter laughed after Abbey Clancy catches him cleaning his sunglasses on her dress

The pair appeared to be having a lot of fun together 

Abbey looked effortlessly chic as she arrived for the tennis in a butter yellow pinstripe skirt and cropped blazer

The couple got animated as they watched in from the stands during one of the day’s big matches 

Abbey and Peter were joined by their 13-year-old daughter Sophia Ruby Crouch

Bear was seen shaking hands with a member of the armed forces as he mingled in the Royal Box before taking his seat 

England footballer Anthony Gordon and Jack Whitehall sat together on Centre Court 

Union J star Josh Cuthbert and and his model wife Chloe Lloyd, who were also in the stands, with Chloe wowing in a white mini dress as they sipped on Pimm’s

Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden was sat in the Royal Box, a row behind William Hague 

Singer and environmentalist Feargal Sharkey also had Royal Court seats with his wife Elizabeth

Feargal Sharkey and Deborah Meaden shared a laugh, with actress Celia Imrie was seen catching up with William Hague 

Celebrated actress Celia looked pretty in pink for her day in the Royal Box 

Prince Michael of Kent arrived in the Royal Box prior to the Gentlemen’s Singles second round match between Daniel Evans of Great Britain and Novak Djokovic

Before her trip, she opened up on what it is like in the Royal Box on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with The National Lottery on Virgin Radio UK.

‘Royal Boxing should be a verb, shouldn’t it?’ she said.’ It should be a summer verb.’

She added: ‘Well, you arrive usually around 11.30, so you go upstairs, they have a champagne reception, then you go in for lunch and you could be sitting beside absolutely anybody at lunch. There’s no seating plan, it’s just as you go into the room.

‘It’s in the clubhouse of the All England Club, and the first year that I went I took my mum, of course, and we sat with Jack Nicklaus. 

BAFTA award winning actress Naomi Ackie looked chic in polka dots for her arrival 

Singer and song writer Calum Scott, who rose to fame on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent in 2015, was also at Wimbledon as a guest of Emirates

Newcastle and England footballer Anthony Gordon was looking dapper in a cream blazer as he took in the view at Centre Court whilst EastEnders star Ben Hardy put on a smart display 

Downton Abbey star Jim Carter posed with his actress daughter Bessie Carter, who stars in Bridgerton, in the Emirates suite 

Jack Whitehall stopped by the AELTC’s Parkside Suite in No.1 Court before watching some play

Also in attendance for day four were David and Samantha Cameron 

Samantha looked chic in a teal summer dress complete with a tiered skirt and drawstring waist 

‘I sat with a few years ago a lady who was the first female Spitfire pilot. I mean it’s just you could be with absolutely anybody and the stories are fascinating.

‘It’s really tough when the sun comes round because there’s no escape. 

‘It’s actually I think worse for the guys because they have to wear a jacket and tie and they’re not allowed to take the jacket off unless the royalty in the box takes their jacket off first. That’s the protocol.’

David Beckham’s long-awaited knighthood glory might take a shocking turn amid tensions with his son Brooklyn.

Radar Online reported that the Beckham family’s ongoing family feud might ruin the retired English footballer’s knighthood.

For the unversed, Brooklyn and his wife, Nicola Peltz, are not still close to the rest of the family after snubbing the Beckham family patriarch’s 50th birthday.

Sources told the outlet that Victoria is shaking with rage over her onetime golden child for causing unnecessary stress when his father is about to be bestowed with the title of Sir by King Charles.

“David has waited for this moment for so many years; it’s literally his crowning achievement. He wants his family to celebrate with him. Sadly, there’s no question of Brooklyn being involved. The whole family is disgusted with him,” the insiders revealed.

Victoria, who will also be called Lady Beckham, “can’t fathom why he hasn’t been in touch on his hands and knees with a groveling apology,” they claimed.

“The whole family is devastated by the way things are right now. And the fact it’s all playing out in public, with Brooklyn and Peltz being open about feeling hard done by and playing professional victims, makes it 10 times worse,” the sources stated.

For those unversed, David Beckham, who shared four children, Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz, and Harper, with wife Victoria, was considered for a knighthood for the first time in 2011 after he played a pivotal role in bringing the 2012 Olympics to London.

It is pertinent to mention that it was delayed because he was linked to the tax-avoidance scheme but he was later cleared of the charges, which opened the way for him to receive the honour.

The team of Netflix’s hit show Squid Game has just gotten up close and honest about the reason they cut out so many scenes about the VIP’s.

The whole thing has been broken down by the editor of the series.

He spoke to Entertainment Weekly about everything and explained how a lot never made it.

The editor in question is named Nam Na-young and he started off by saying, “actually, there were more scenes with the VIPs.”

But “as I was editing, I did cut them a lot because when we’re in the VIP room, the tension kind of releases.”

The main reason for this creative shift was that the show’s creators wanted to focus on “the contestants’ emotions and reactions of the games” as that was what even he admits to having prioritizing.

Another major hurdle this time around was the safety of the characters, because in games like the jump rope, even a five foot height was creating fears.

For those still unversed with the series its one of the biggest global hits to date, running on its third and final season which released on June 27th, 2025.

The story focuses heavily on Gi-hun this time around as well, following his return to the deadly game that leaves only one man left standing at the end, with a promise of a lot of cash, upon survival.

IT IS THE moment rock fans thought would never happen. On July 4th Oasis, the greatest British band of their generation, will go on stage for the first time in 16 years. Such a thing seemed impossible given the group’s spectacular combustion in 2009, after a fight between Liam Gallagher, the lead singer, and his brother, Noel, the main songwriter. In the intervening years the siblings fired shots at each other in the press and on social media. (Noel famously described Liam as “the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”) But now, they claim, “The guns have fallen silent.”

IT IS THE moment rock fans thought would never happen. On July 4th Oasis, the greatest British band of their generation, will go on stage for the first time in 16 years. Such a thing seemed impossible given the group’s spectacular combustion in 2009, after a fight between Liam Gallagher, the lead singer, and his brother, Noel, the main songwriter. In the intervening years the siblings fired shots at each other in the press and on social media. (Noel famously described Liam as “the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”) But now, they claim, “The guns have fallen silent.”

When Julia Roberts gets in Richard Gere’s Lotus Esprit as it stutters along Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990 film Pretty Woman, Germans heard Daniela Hoffmann, not Roberts, exclaim: “Man, this baby must corner like it’s on rails!” In Spain, Mercè Montalà voiced the line, while French audiences heard it from Céline Monsarrat. In the years that followed, Hollywood’s sweetheart would sound different in cinemas around the world but to native audiences she would sound the same.

The voice actors would gain some notoriety in their home countries, but today, their jobs are being threatened by artificial intelligence. The use of AI was a major point of dispute during the Hollywood actors’ strike in 2023, when both writers and actors expressed concern that it could undermine their roles, and fought for federal legislation to protect their work. Not long after, more than 20 voice acting guilds, associations and unions formed the United Voice Artists coalition to campaign under the slogan “Don’t steal our voices”. In Germany, home to “the Oscars of dubbing”, artists warned that their jobs were at risk with the rise of films dubbed with AI trained using their voices, without their consent.

“It’s war for us,” says Patrick Kuban, a voice actor and organiser with the dubbing union Voix Off, who along with the French Union of Performing Artists started the campaign #TouchePasMaVF (“don’t touch my French version”). They want to see dubbing added to France’s l’exception culturelle, a government policy that defines cultural goods as part of national identity and needing special protection from the state.

Dubbing isn’t just a case of translating a film into native languages, explains Kuban, it’s adapted “to the French humour, to include references, culture and emotion”. As a result, AI could put an estimated 12,500 jobs at risk in France: including writers, translators, sound engineers, as well as the voice actors themselves, according to a study by the Audiens Group in 2023.

“Humans are able to bring to [these roles]: experience, trauma and emotion, context and background and relationships,” adds Tim Friedlander, a US-based voice actor, studio owner, musician, and president of the National Association of Voice Actors. “All of the things that we as humans connect with. You can have a voice that sounds angry, but if it doesn’t feel angry, you’re going to have a disconnect in there.”

Since the introduction of sound cinema in the late 1920s and 1930s, dubbing has grown to be an industry worth more than $4.04bn (£2.96bn) globally. It was first adopted in Europe by authoritarian leaders, who wanted to remove negative references to their governments and promote their languages. Mussolini banned foreign languages in movies entirely, a policy that catalysed a preference for dubbed rather than subtitled films in the country. Today, 61% of German viewers and 54% of French ones also opt for dubbed movies, while Disney dubs their productions into more than 46 languages. But with the development of AI, who profits from dubbing could soon change.

Earlier this year, the UK-based startup ElevenLabs announced plans to clone the voice of Alain Dorval – the “voix de Stallone”, who from the 1970s onwards gave voice to Sylvester Stallone in some 30 films – in a new thriller, Armor, on Amazon. At the time, contracts did not state how an actor’s voice could be re-used: including to train AI software and create synthetic voices that ultimately could replace voice actors entirely. “It’s a kind of monster,” says Kuban. “If we don’t have protection, all kinds of jobs will be lost: after the movie industry, it will be the media industry, the music industry, all the cultural industries, and a society without culture will not be very good.”

When ChatGPT and ElevenLabs hit the market at the start of 2022, making AI a public-facing technology, “it was a theoretical threat, but not an immediate threat”, says Friedlander. But as the market has grown, including the release of the Israeli startup Deepdub, an AI-powered platform that offers dubbing and voiceover services for films, the problems with synthetic voice technologies have become impossible to ignore.

“If you steal my voice, you are stealing my identity,” says Daniele Giuliani, who voiced Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones, and works as a dubbing director. He is the president of the Italian dubbers’ association, ANAD, which recently fought for AI clauses in national contracts to protect voice actors from the indiscriminate and unauthorised use of their voices, and to prohibit the use of those voices in machine learning and deep data mining – a proposal that’s being used as a model in Spain. “This is very serious. I don’t want my voice to be used to say whatever someone wants.”

AI’s tentacles have had a global reach too. In India, where 72% of viewers prefer watching content in a different language, Sanket Mhatre, who voices Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 superhero film Green Lantern is concerned: “We’ve been signing contracts for donkey’s years now and most of these contracts have really big language about your voice being used in all perpetuity anywhere in the world,” says Mhatre. “Now with AI, signing something like this is essentially just signing away your career.”

Mhatre dubs more than 70-100 Hollywood movies into Hindi each year, as well as Chinese, Spanish, French films; web series, animated shows, anime, documentaries and audiobooks. “Every single day, I retell stories from some part of the world for the people of my country in their language, in their voice. It’s special,” he says. “It’s such an inclusive exercise. In India, if you’re not somebody who speaks English, it’s very easy to be knocked down and feel inferior. But when you are able to dub this cinema into Hindi, people now understand that cinema and can discuss it.”

He’s noticed a decline in the number of jobs dubbing corporate copy, training videos, and other quick turnaround information-led items, but he thinks his job is safe at the moment as it’s impossible for AI to adapt to cultural nuances or act with human emotion. “If the actor’s face is not visible on screen, or if you’re just seeing their back, in India, we might attempt to add an expression or a line to clarify the scene or provide more context.” When there are references to time travel movies in a sci-fi film, he explains, a dubber might list Bollywood titles instead.

But as AI learns more from voice actors and other humans, Mhatre is aware that it is a whole lot quicker and cheaper for companies to adopt this technology rather than hire dubbing actors, translators, and sound engineers.

“We need to stand against the robots,” says Kuban. “We need to use them for peaceful things, for maybe climate change or things like that, but we need to have actors on the screen.”

A remarkable documentary is providing insight into the propaganda found within Russian schools. Mr. Nobody Against Putin, directed by David Borenstein, premiered at the 2025 Sundance film festival in January, where it won the world cinema documentary special jury award.

The film was recorded over two years by Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, an events coordinator and videographer at a high school in Karabash, a heavily polluted town in central southern Russia. The documentary records the intensification of Kremlin-directed ultra-nationalist and pro-war propaganda within the Russian schooling system, which has intensified since the escalation of the war against Ukraine in February 2022.

Talankin makes clear his view that this approach to “education” represents a moral wrong, and he is very much on point with the writings of the key ethicists on the subject. American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, wrote that “education is both a tool of propaganda in the hands of dominant groups, and a means of emancipation for subject classes”.

Niebhur was writing about the education system in the US during the 1920s, when there was a widespread understanding that propaganda was used in these two ways. Talankin’s concern is that Russia has moved to a position of imbalance, where the “dominant groups” have too much influence and are using their power to corrupt the minds of children through disingenuous narratives about national servitude, sacrifice and conformity, coupled with the unsubtle threat that those who are not patriots are “parasites”.

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In their highly respected book Propaganda & Persuasion (1986), propaganda experts Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell state that “to analyse propaganda, one needs to be able to identify it”. This is a difficult task because propaganda thrives through symbols, the subliminal and in fictional works precisely because the audience is not conscious of it.

However, the creation of an environment that uses propaganda is also depends on who is given the oxygen of publicity and who is marginalised. These are the conditions under which ideological indoctrination occurs and power is achieved or maintained.

As such, a critical analyst of propaganda must assess the linguistic strategy, the information strategy, the eminence strategy (how to ensure that the target audience are watching, reading or listening to the desired content) and the staging strategy of the communicator. This can be remembered through the helpful L.I.E.S. mnemonic.

Talankin’s footage shows how Russian schools now promote distorted versions of European history. The well-trodden narrative that Ukraine has been taken over by neo-Nazis is referred to several times in lessons. Russian flags appear with greater frequency around the school as time goes on, and assembly time becomes an exercise in pledging allegiance to the fatherland.

Teachers are expected to read from scripts prepared for them by the ministry of education. Pupils then respond with choreographed answers – some even glancing down at notes under their desks. The children are told about how dreadful life in France and the UK is because of their reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

Interestingly, the Kremlin has asked that all of this be videoed and uploaded to a central database to ensure compliance with national regulations on what is taught in schools. Indeed, Talankin complains at one point that much of his time is now spent uploading the videos rather than actually teaching the students and helping them to be creative – as his job previously was.

Shared humanity

Talankin takes us on a tour of his city. He shows a pro-war rally that is broadly supported by the townsfolk. Or at least those in opposition dare not say anything or engage in an equivalent demonstration. He takes us to the civic library, theoretically a site of independent learning but which has been hijacked by these propaganda efforts.

Perhaps the most important moments of the documentary though are the snippets of critique and the sense of “knowing” that Talankin is keen to show. The young girl who jokingly tells her teacher to “blink twice if you’re lying”, and to which all her class then laugh. His interactions with other teachers who confide in him that they know that the propaganda is bullshit, but, worried for their status and prosperity, go along with it.

The propaganda is pretty poor though. It is clunky and obvious, and, while it might generate some short-term influence, it smacks of both arrogance and desperation on the part of the Kremlin. Indeed, it shows that there is no desire on the part of central government for Russian people to thrive intellectually.

This scenario is reminiscent of the end of the Soviet era, when communist propaganda continued to prevail, but few still believed it. Nevertheless, without a clear alternative to follow, or obvious alternative leader to guide them, most people continued to abide.

The most harrowing part of the documentary comes towards the end when Talankin provides an audio recording of the funeral of a local lad who has been killed in Ukraine. He did not dare film the funeral as this is a cultural faux pas, but the screams and wails of the mother as her son is laid to rest are piercing. The scene seems intended to bring our shared humanity to bare.

Talankin is a nice guy with intelligence and ethical fortitude. The kids are funny, charming and talented. The mother is doing what we would all do if we had lost a child to a violent death. As such, Mr. Nobody Against Putin might better be called Mr. Everybody Against Putin, as should be of grave concern to everyone that Russia’s education system is resorting to such techniques.

After decades of debate over how to honour the women who used to work in the city’s shirt factories, Derry has produced a sculpture of three giant spools of thread cast in bronze.

Ranging in height from 2 to 3.5 metres (6.5-11.5ft), the monuments loom over Harbour Square to recall an era when thousands of girls and women worked in dozens of factories that made the Northern Irish city a world leader in shirt production.

However, some former workers are aghast and say the decision to use abstract symbols rather than female figures occludes their role from history. “This gesture fell way short of what we hoped for – we feel airbrushed out of it,” Clare Moore told the BBC this week.

Before the official unveiling last month, several former workers staged a protest and held a banner saying “these factory girls say no”. There had been no proper consultation and the bronze spools did not accurately resemble the ones they used in the factories, they said.

Derry city and Strabane district council had hoped the £187,000 design would draw a line under a troubled 20-year stop-start quest to represent the city’s industrial heritage with public art. The council called the artwork a “fitting tribute” and said it had fully engaged with the former workers.

Chris Wilson, the artist behind the sculpture, said at least two years of consultations included a day-long workshop that showed a model of the artwork to dozens of former workers, who at that meeting raised no objections.

“They all seemed onboard with the idea,” Wilson told the Guardian. “I’ve never worked on a project that had such an extensive and transparent process.”

The sculptures are not figurative but “almost anthropomorphic” in suggesting a group of people, with textures and shadows to evoke memory, he said. “The factories are all gone but what came across to me, in talks with the ladies, was their memories and recollections and friendships.”

One of the bronze spools emits what appears to be a loose thread around the base but is in fact quotes from some former workers, Wilson said. “I’ve been told that public art is like sport. Everybody has opinion and is entitled to have an opinion.”

JD Twitch, one half of the celebrated Scottish DJ and production duo Optimo, has been diagnosed with a brain tumour which he has been told is untreatable.

The musician, real name Keith McIvor, announced the news in a post on Instagram. He said: “My symptoms weren’t immediately diagnosed, and my health declined very rapidly over just a few weeks. Because of how rapidly everything progressed I haven’t been able to share this news personally with everyone I care about so this feels the clearest and kindest way to let you know what’s happening.”

McIvor had cancelled several recent gigs as he underwent testing. He added: “I am currently trying to process this news and prioritising spending precious time with the people I love.”

Optimo, with McIvor alongside Jonnie Wilkes (AKA JG Wilkes), are icons of Scottish and indeed British dance music culture, with their punkish and passionate attitude to DJing resulting in sets of astonishing power. Hopping from techno to disco, industrial to soft rock, their sets cover huge stylistic ground, and their weekly Optimo Espacio residency at Glasgow’s Sub Club between 1997 and 2010 became a pilgrimage for global dance fans.

The pair are musicians in their own right, creating ambitious remixes for artists including Florence + the Machine and Manic Street Preachers; McIvor also remixed the likes of Primal Scream, Hot Chip and Nightmares on Wax.

Optimo also created acclaimed DJ mix albums such as How to Kill the DJ (Part 2), Optimo Present Psyche Out and an entry in the mix series by London nightclub Fabric. They also founded a label, Optimo Music, which spawned various spinoff labels.

McIvor posted a link to a messageboard for fans to share messages of support.

Getty Images

Wilkes to continue Optimo Espacio