Listeners to LBC on Thursday night were concerned for Andrew Marr as he appeared breathless
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(Image: LBC)
Listeners to Andrew Marr’s LBC show feared the presenter was seriously ill after listening to him struggle on Thursday night.
In a clip which has been shared widely on social media and heard by more than 140,000 people, Marr appears breathless and anxious, but bravely battles through reading a section about prisons in Alabama.
The audio, at 6.35pm, has led to fears he may have suffered a serious medical issue, with a number of people who heard the clip on X replying “I hope he is OK”.
But the Mirror can reveal Marr is absolutely fine aside from suffering from a heavy cold.
A source who works with Marr told the Mirror: “Andrew has had a stinking cold all week. He finished the show and is fine and will be back on air on Monday.”
Marr was due to be off air today anyway, as Tonight with Andrew Marr is on LBC Monday – Thursday from 6-7pm.
The three day weekend will hopefully give him time to rest up and sound more like his usual self next week.
Concerns from fans for former BBC veteran Marr were genuine and also reflect the fact he suffered a stroke in 2013.
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In November 2021 he announced he was leaving the BBC to “get his voice back” and host a more opinion led show. He had joined the broadcaster as political editor in 2000 and presented a Sunday morning programme from 2005-2021. Born in Glasgow, Marr, 53, began his career in journalism on The Scotsman newspaper in 1981, later moving to London to become its political correspondent.
He was part of the team which launched The Independent in 1986, later becoming its editor. He joined the BBC as political editor, in May 2000.
Princess Beatrice has been seen heading to the pub with friends to celebrate her daughter Athena’s christening – but her parents disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson were absent
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Princess Beatrice and husband Edo head to the pub to celebrate after the christening of their daughter Athena(Image: w8media)
Princess Beatrice celebrated her daughter’s christening with a trip to the pub – but her disgraced parents were nowhere to be seen. Beatrice and husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi had their youngest daughter Athena baptised at the Chapel Royal in St James’ Palace this morning in front of close family and friends.
Her parents shamed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson left exile to attend their first major royal event since they were stripped of their titles. The former prince arrived at St James’s Palace in London in a green Range Rover this morning, quickly entering via a side gate away from waiting media.
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Meanwhile, Fergie arrived separately, crouching forwards in the back of a Mercedes people carrier with blacked out windows. The christening appeared to feature just immediate family, and no senior royals were present. Beatrice’s sister Princess Eugenie, her husband Jack Brooksbank and their two sons August and Ernest were spotted arriving.
Also joining them was the singer James Blunt and his wife, Sofia Wellesley, who were seen arriving on foot at the venue. After the service, Beatrice was seen arriving at a pub with her husband, sister Eugenie and a group of pals including Princess Nina of Greece to celebrate her daughter’s big day.
Beatrice could be seen carrying a large bag in a red dress with a long navy coat, while husband Edo held a large white box. Eugenie was seen making her way into the pub as was singer-songwriter Blunt. But Andrew and Fergie did not join them.
The King officially stripped his disgraced brother Andrew of both his HRH style and his prince title because of his “serious lapses of judgment” over his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Fergie, who is also embroiled in the scandal, lost her Duchess of York courtesy title too.
Athena is Andrew and Fergie’s fourth grandchild and is the second daughter of Beatrice and her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. She was born several weeks early in January, with her middle name Elizabeth paying tribute to her late great-grandmother, the Queen.
The couple also has an older daughter called Sienna, while Edo has a son, Christopher Woolf, from a previous relationship. The christening marks the first royal event attended by Andrew and Fergie since the funeral of the Duchess of Kent at Westminster Cathedral in September.
Weeks later, the King officially stripped his disgraced brother of his HRH style and his prince title, and removed his dukedom from the Roll of the Peerage over Andrew’s “serious lapses” of judgment.
The move followed the publication of a posthumous memoir by Andrew’s accuser, Virginia Giuffre, and the US government’s release of documents from Epstein’s estate.
It emerged that Andrew had emailed Epstein in 2011 saying “we’re in this together”, three months after he claimed he had broken all contact with the paedophile. Andrew denies all wrongdoing.
As well as being stripped of his titles, he has also been forced to give up his sprawling Royal Lodge mansion and will move to a much smaller property on the King’s private Sandringham estate in the New Year.
Fergie also got caught up in the Epstein scandal after it emerged that she sent the paedophile financier an email calling him a “supreme friend” – despite previously publicly condemning him.
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In September, it was revealed that she apologised to the sex offender in April 2011 after publicly disowning him in the media. Her spokesman alleged that she had sent the email as the disgraced financier had threatened to sue her for defamation
It led to the former Duchess being dropped as patron by numerous charities, including the Teenage Cancer Trust and the British Heart Foundation.
India Twenty20 captain Suryakumar Yadav and his deputy Shubman Gill continued their run drought, but the team management has backed the duo to regain their form before the home World Cup early next year.
Returning from a neck injury, opener Gill managed four and zero in the first two T20 matches of the ongoing home series against South Africa. The right-hander has now gone 17 innings in this format since his last half-century.
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“I thought he got (dismissed by) a good ball today, which can happen when you are short on form,” assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said after Gill, who has an impressive record in the Indian Premier League (IPL), fell for a first-ball duck against South Africa on Thursday.
“But we also know the class. If you look at his IPL record, where he stacks up 700 runs, 600 runs, 800 runs, 600 runs.
“We believe in his class and we believe he will come good.”
T20 specialist Suryakumar has endured worse. Across his last 20 innings in this format, he has compiled 227 runs at 13.35 with no fifties.
“It’s exactly the same with Surya,” ten Doeschate said. “Personally, I think you back quality players and quality leaders like that and they will come good.
“I can understand from the outside it looks like a concern, but I have got absolute faith in both of them coming good at the right time for us.”
Former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan said the duo’s recent run of poor form was “a real cause of concern for India”.
“Surya will be under pressure because he’s the captain, and as a captain, your slot in the playing 11 is secured automatically,” Pathan told JioHotstar.
“As a player, if you haven’t scored runs in a year, you are under pressure. His form has to come back before the World Cup. He needs the right batting position and better shot selection.”
Ukraine says it has retaken parts of Kupiansk, a town in the northern region of Kharkiv, which Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed to have seized on November 21.
On Friday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Kupiansk and hailed the defending troops, a Ukrainian commander said Russian forces in the city had been completely surrounded.
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“Today, we can say that the Russians in the city are completely cut off. For a long time, they couldn’t understand what was happening. But now they know they are surrounded,” said Ihor Obolienskyi, head of the Khartiia Corps of the National Guard, as quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet.
The battlefield unit said it had liberated northern districts of the town.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy self-records a video in front of a sign that reads ‘Kupiansk’ in the front-line town in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on December 12, 2025 [Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via Reuters]
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Kupiansk had been “practically in the hands of Russian forces” on November 4.
“Our guys, so to speak, were finishing mopping up isolated neighbourhoods and streets. The city’s future had already been determined at that point,” Putin told his National Security Council.
“The volume of Russian lies far exceeds the actual pace of Russian troop advances,” Oleksandr Syrskii, the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, wrote on the Telegram messaging service. “The enemy uses disinformation and fake maps in a hybrid war against Ukraine.”
(Al Jazeera)
Meanwhile, Ukraine has continued to fight in its contested eastern city of Pokrovsk this week, despite Russian claims to have seized it entirely.
“The defence of Pokrovsk continues, our troops control almost 13 square kilometres [five square miles] in the northern part of the city,” Syrskii said on Tuesday, calling it an “extremely difficult phase” of the fight.
Geolocated footage showing Russian drones striking there on Wednesday confirmed the presence of Ukrainian troops.
Russia had claimed complete control over Pokrovsk on December 2.
Syrskii later explained that Ukrainian forces had tactically retreated from Pokrovsk, but fought their way back in.
“At a certain stage in the autumn, there were no more of our troops in Pokrovsk due to limited capabilities,” he told Ukrainian media executives on Wednesday.
He also said Ukrainian forces held 54sq km (21 square miles) west of the city.
Ukrainian forces were also resisting Russian advances in Myrnohrad, east of Pokrovsk, Syrskii said.
The two cities are almost surrounded by Russian forces, with supply lines and evacuation routes running only through a narrow neck to the west.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said their troops were still repelling attacks in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad on Thursday, as well as in outlying villages near the two towns.
(Al Jazeera)
Russian narratives were part of a campaign to force Ukraine to sign a peace agreement that United States President Donald Trump presented last month, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
That plan demands that Ukraine hand over Pokrovsk and the rest of a “fortress belt” of cities in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine invested an estimated billion dollars last year to defend the region.
“ISW continues to assess that the Russian campaign to militarily seize the rest of Donetsk Oblast, including Ukraine’s heavily fortified Fortress Belt, would likely take at least two-to-three years, pose a significant challenge, and result in difficult and costly battles that the Russian Federation may not be able to sustain,” the ISW wrote.
(Al Jazeera)
Zelenskyy said Ukraine had not agreed to any territorial concessions demanded in the original plan, and was continuing to negotiate the proposal, though many observers believed it was a dead end.
“I don’t think the current US-managed Ukraine peace process is serious,” wrote Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash on his Substack newsletter. “Trump wants the quick win, in effect. He is not really bothered to understand the core drivers of the conflict.”
Putin repeated on December 9 that Russia’s wartime goals had not changed, including the seizure of Donetsk, casting doubt on whether Moscow was serious about negotiating.
Despite highly publicised seizures of villages and rural terrain, Russia’s progress has been slow for the past two years of the war, figures show.
Last year it seized 4,168sq km (1,609sq miles), equivalent to 0.69 percent of Ukraine. So far this year, the ISW estimated it has seized 4,669sq km (1,802sq miles), or 0.77 percent of Ukraine. During that time, Russia has suffered an estimated 820,000 casualties.
Ukrainian servicemen prepare targets with images depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin during shooting practice between combat missions in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on December 10, 2025 [Sofia Gatilova/Reuters]
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov this week said Russian manufacturing, construction, agriculture and services faced a shortage of 2.3 million workers.
After weathering the first three years of war well, the Russian economy slowed down in 2025 and its treasury, central bank and energy corporations are running out of cash, leading to cuts in defence spending.
The European Union aimed to deal Russia another economic blow on Friday, freezing 210bn euros ($246bn) in immobilised Russian assets indefinitely rather than in rolling six-month periods, in a step towards using the cash to finance Ukraine’s war effort.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops, though outgunned, have not lost their will to fight, according to the testimony of a Russian assault company commander, identified as Vladimir, in a Telegram post published by Russia’s Defence Ministry.
The ministry said he led the seizure of the village of Rovnoye in Donetsk.
Jimmy Carr has opened up about the heartbreaking reason behind why he has had botox and undertaken a strict diet, and described his cosmetic procedures as ‘addictive’
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Jimmy Carr shares real reason he’s had botox after changing face(Image: Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Jimmy Carr has shared the real reason he gets botox and keeps to a strict diet. The comedian recently opened up about his struggles with body image, which he links to the death of his mother almost 25 years ago.
Jimmy’s mother, Nora, died aged 57 in 2001, after being diagnosed with pancreatitis. The stand-up comedian and TV presenter has said that he tries to stay as healthy as possible to avoid dying young like his mother.
On The Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth podcast, he told Gyles: “My mother didn’t look after herself, was maybe a little bit overweight. She was unhealthy and then she got sick and then she died. And that’s not lost on me in terms of, I’m very particular about trying to keep myself trim.”
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He admitted to having a “strange relationship” with food, but insisted he does not have an “eating disorder”. “I have something like – I don’t think I have an eating disorder – but I certainly have a strange relationship with food,” he said.
Jimmy added that he’s not just a fan of “tweakments” such as botox and veneers, but has found them to be “addictive”. He also told Virgin Radio: “I’ve had a little bit done, like a little bit of filler here and there, a little bit of Botox, a little bit. I had a hair transplant. That was kind of fun to do.”
Fans have noticed that Jimmy’s appearance, particularly his face has changed over the years. Jimmy himself has joked about his altered looks. He has previously said that “very little” of his original face still exists.
Back in 2021, he told the Happy Hallow Jeans podcast that being on TV had made him more critical of his looks. “It’s the illusion of being on TV – you see yourself in full make up looking your best and lit well, then you look in the mirror and go, ‘Oof, that’s disappointing’.”
Also on Gyles Brandreth’s podcast, Jimmy added that his mother’s death was the “catalyst” behind becoming estranged from his father. He also credited puberty with their “falling out”.
“[Her death] was the catalyst, I think, although, in maybe a more reflective tone, we talk a lot about the teenage transition and those teenage years that we go through in puberty,” he started.
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Later, he continued: “And I think maybe around that age was when everything changed for me. My belief in God went. Everything changed around those years. And part of that was we had a falling out. And that’s fine.”
Retail expert Mary Portas opened up about her brother being a sperm donor for her son Horatio in an emotional interview on Jamie Laing’s podcast
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Mary Portas has opened up about her brother Lawrence being the biological father to her son
Mary Portas has opened up about her family arrangement and revealed that her brother Lawrence is the biological father of her son. The retail guru fought back tears as she spoke to Jamie Laing on his Great Company podcast.
Mary, 65, humorously clarified that her brother didn’t sleep with her now ex-wife Melanie Rickey, but expressed her desire to “have a bloodline” when Mel suggested starting a family.
“So, Mel decided she wanted a child, and I was very clear that I wanted to have a bloodline,” said Mary, who is also mum to twins Mylo and Verity from her first marriage to Graham Portas.
“I wanted, if I was going to have another child, I wanted to make sure that it was related in some way and biologically related to my other kids.”
She explained that due to the “particular bond” she shares with her younger brother Lawrence, and knowing he “didn’t particularly want to have children”, she asked him to be her sperm donor.
“He looked after me,” she said. “It was a real symbiosis. And Lawrence turned up to the old donor place and said, ‘Done it, sis!'”.
Mary also mentioned that her son Horatio, who was carried by Mel and born in 2012, is the spitting image of her side of the family. “Lawrence lives abroad now, but he rings us regularly and they talk about football,” she added. “God, it’s so boring!”
Mary became emotional as she recalled the moment Lawrence held Horatio for the first time. “The most beautiful time is when, you know… he came into the world and I rang Lawrence and Lawrence turned up and picked him up,” she said. “And it was like, it was his gift to me. God, I get emotional. It was his gift. And it was the greatest gift.”
“Why the greatest gift?” Jamie asked. “Oh my God, you know, like because of the years that we helped each other,” she said. “You know, I was always his big sis,and then he was able to give me this gift.
“Social media users were quick to share their thoughts on Mary’s unique family situation. One commenter posted: “That is still quite a weird family setup. Is it his uncle or his dad?”
“I consider myself open minded but that is very strange,” another pondered. “I’m confused and can’t get my head around this,” a third admitted.
However, some defended the unconventional arrangement. “I would have 100% put this option on the table if my ex and I had got this far,” one person shared. “I wanted to be genetically related to the baby that she would carry from her egg. I think it’s beautiful that her and her brother have that relationship.”
“For all the people saying this is weird or odd, I am donor conceived and in my community this is actually considered to be the most ethical way of having a donor conceived child,” another argued.
“They will always know the donor, they will know how many siblings they have, they will know his medical history and the non genetic mother will have a genetic connection to her own child (as the genetic aunt).
“What a beautiful gift to give to your sister,” a third praised.
The Mary Queen Of Shops star and Melanie Rickey separated after 17 years together and have already sold their shared £5milion north London mansion. Fashion writer Melanie gave birth to the couple’s son Horatio – using Mary’s brother Lawrence’s sperm – six years ago, and the pair converted their civil partnership to a full marriage in 2014.
In a statement explaining their split, the exes insisted there was no third-party involvement. “After 17 years together we have decided to separate. There is no one else involved,” they said. “We have spent the last year consciously managing our separation in as good-heartedly, open, and mature a way as possible to ensure a smooth, amicable evolution for us.
“We remain a family, and are committed co-parents to three wonderful humans (plus Walter the dog!) who are our priority. We remain good friends, and will share much together going forward.”
A friend of the couple added to the Sun at the time: “In the end they decided they were better off as wonderful friends.”
Mary started dating Melanie in 2003. She was previously married to Graham Portas, the father of her two adult children. Their 13-year marriage came to an end that same year. The TV presenter and former government adviser spoke about discovering her true sexuality when falling for her future wife.
“It wasn’t a case of, ‘Ooh, I’ve been thinking about Linda Evangelista.’ So in one way, it was just about Melanie. But there was a sexual attraction. I do love women. What surprised me after was that so many women are fluid in this way. I’d meet them and they’d say, ‘I was married, now I’m with a woman’,” she added.
