Amanda Holden turned heads in a striking black outfit as she joined the judging panel on the Britain’s Got Talent red carpet in Blackpool
TV and radio presenter Amanda Holden has stunned in a black ensemble on the Britain’s Got Talent red carpet.
The judge, 54, wore black leather-look trousers with a structured, asymmetrical bandeau top to the auditions at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool on Monday.
Amanda paired the outfit with a black smoky-eye, French tips and silver jewellery, finishing the look with a black and silver belt and black and gold pointed pumps.
The TV star was joined by the rest of the judging panel on the red carpet, including YouTube star KSI, who has replaced Bruno Tonioli after he left the show due to scheduling conflicts amid his return as a judge on US show Dancing With The Stars.
KSI, whose real name is Olajide “JJ” Olatunji, stepped in as a guest judge during series 18. On the red carpet he opted for a casual look and wore a black ensemble with a bandanna.
Also opting for a streetwear look was Alesha Dixon, who wore trousers with a reptile-look print alongside an oversized khaki jacket, black sunglasses and large silver hoops. Judge Simon Cowell wore an all-black outfit, with presenting pair Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly also in casual wear.
Magician Harry Moulding won the 2025 series of Britain’s Got Talent and is to perform at this year’s Royal Variety Performance at the Royal Albert Hall.
Gavin Plumb, who has given a life sentence in prison over a plot to kidnap, rape and murder TV presenter Holly Willoughby, is set to have his appeal bid heard in court next week
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Holly Willoughby has said Gavin Plumb’s plot has been ‘life changing’ for her
The man who was jailed over a plot to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby is set to be back in court later this month. Security guard Gavin Plumb, 38, was found guilty of soliciting murder and inciting rape and kidnap.
He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 15 years and 85 days following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court. Plumb, from Harlow, Essex is now set to have an appeal bid heard in court on October 21.
According to court listings, his case will be heard at the Court of Appeal in London. Court officials had previously said they received applications for permission to appeal against his convictions and the sentence.
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Judge Mr Justice Murray described some of the plans Plumb had discussed online as “particularly sadistic, brutal and degrading”. His plan was revealed after a US undercover cop infiltrated an online group.
He became so concerned about Plumb’s posts that he passed on evidence to the FBI. Police in the UK were contacted by US law enforcement.
Essex Police raided Plumb’s flat where they found bottles of chloroform and an “abduction kit” complete with cable ties. The court heard how Plumb had planned to “ambush” the former This Morning presenter at her family home.
Plumb had argued it was just an online chat and fantasy. Yet, it was dismissed by Mr Justice Murray, who said: “I have no doubt that this was all considerably more than a fantasy to you.”
The court heard how the sinister plan had a ‘life-changing’ impact on Holly, who bravely waived her right to anonymity. In a rare interview earlier this year, Holly courageously opened up on her experience stepping back from the spotlight following the ordeal.
She left This Morning in October 2023 after 14 years on the daytime show. At the time, she said she’d made the decision “for me and my family”.
Speaking about the harrowing ordeal, Holly said: “I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anybody at all — sometimes things go wrong, but you have to keep going for it because that’s all you can do.
“You have to hold on to, ultimately, [how] all this serves its purpose. A lot of the change has been really good, you know? I’ve spent a long time not being able to take my kids to school,” she told The Sunday Times Style Magazine.
Following Plumb’s sentencing, Holly issued a statement where she praised the Crown Prosecution Service and those involved in convicting him. She said: “As women, we should not be made to feel unsafe going about our daily lives and in our own homes.
“I will forever be grateful to the undercover police officer who understood the imminent threat and to the Metropolitan and Essex police forces for their swift response.
“Thank you to the Crown Prosecution Service, the Rt Hon Mr Justice Murray, Alison Morgan KC, the members of the jury and all involved in this case for ensuring that justice was done and that the defendant will not be able to harm any more women.
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“I would also like to commend the bravery of his previous victims for speaking up at the time. Without their bravery, this conviction may not have been possible.”
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Meghan Markle took to social media to share a photo and a short video of her daughter Princess Lilibet, delighting fans with a glimpse of the youngster
Meghan Markle has often shared small glimpses of Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet on Instagram. And fans have been treated to another snap and short video of four-year-old Lilibet as her mum the Duchess of Sussex, marked a special day.
In order to mark International Day of the Girl, Meghan shared an adorable photo of Lili running across the grass in a pink outfit. It was followed by a sweet mother-daughter picture, which showed the pair admiring the garden. It was accompanied by the caption: “To all the girls – this world is yours. Do everything you can to protect your rights, use your voice, support each other. We will do the same for you. It’s your right and our responsibility. Go get ‘em girl! Happy International Day of the Girl.”
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And yet again, fans were taken by Lilibet’s long red hair, which is tied up in a ponytail, with many remarking how much she takes after her dad, Prince Harry.
One fan wrote on X: “The cutest red headed Princess, Lilibet Diana.” While another said: “As Prince Harry said, the Spencer red gene is indeed VERY strong.
Another fan posted: “Our little red hair Princess Lilibet” and another noted: “Lili has her daddy’s height as well as his hair.”
However, it wasn’t the only detail that has been noticed in the photo. As Meghan and Lili look out to a stream, the youngster can be seen wearing her £35 rainbow bag by soft toy brand Jellycat.
The soft cuddly toys have fans all around the world and it seems it is not just Lilibet who is the only member of the Royal Family who is a fan. Earlier this year, Prince William revealed how his three children were fans of the toys and described them as ‘serious currency’ for children.
It came as he and wife Kate were reunited with the family of Liz Hatton, the teenage photographer who captured the hearts of the nation with her brave cancer fight, at a Buckingham Palace garden party.
During their meeting, Liz’s younger brother gave William and Kate lemon pie and pickled onion Jellycat toys as a gift. And it prompted the Prince of Wales to say: “My children will love these. They are children’s currency.”
Lili – the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s youngest child – was born on June 4 2021 and was named Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor.
She only became entitled to be a princess when her grandfather the King acceded to the throne, because of rules set out by King George V in 1917.
Harry and Meghan started using prince and princess for Archie and Lili after the princess’s christening in 2023, following correspondence with Charles about the matter.
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Lilibet is named after her great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II. Princess Elizabeth had difficulty pronouncing her own name as a toddler and her grandfather George V would affectionately call her Lilibet, imitating her own attempts to say Elizabeth. The sweet nickname stuck and she became known as Lilibet to her family from then on.
Woody Allen has spoken publicly for the first time following the death of his longtime muse and former partner, Diane Keaton, who sadly died on Saturday at the age of 79.
The 89-year-old director, who met Keaton in the late 1960s before their romance turned into a lifelong friendship, wrote an emotional tribute in The Free Press on Sunday.
“It’s grammatically incorrect to say ‘most unique,’ but all rules of grammar and I suppose everything else are suspended when talking about Diane Keaton,” Allen wrote. “Unlike anyone the planet has experienced or is unlikely to ever see again, her face and laugh illuminated any space she entered.”
Allen and Keaton’s connection began in 1969 when she auditioned for his Broadway play Play It Again, Sam. She landed the part, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress and marking the start of a creative partnership that would define both of their careers.
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Talents actress and podcaster Joanna Page has talked about the rollercoaster ride mixing acting and marriage
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Joanna Page with husband James Thornton at the Cirque du Soleil OVO premiere in 2018(Image: Getty Images)
Joanna Page has revealed her “heart was breaking” and she was miserable in life at the same time her career took off with Gavin & Stacey. The actress loved playing Stacey Shipman but as the BBC sitcom took off, behind the scenes Joanna’s home life was not going as smoothly.
She and actor husband James Thornton were struggling to cope with him living in Leeds working on Emmerdale from 2009 whilst she remained in London.
Looking back Joanna said at Cheltenham Literature Festival: “He went off to of Emmerdale for three years. And of course, when a job comes in, you know, your first thought is you’ve got to go and do it. Because that was before we had children. And so then you’re like, a job comes in, it’s yes, yes, yes. I mean, you know, the life of an actor, it’s tough. And when a job comes in, you’ve got to go and do it.
“And so suddenly we went from being so close, and, you know, having been with each other all the time, to him off living up in Leeds, and I’m all the way down in London, and it was just after Gavin & Stacey(became successful) as well.
“So to the outside world, it looks like your life was so wonderful, and we were winning awards. And you know, it was really exciting and we were going to different things and different appearances and stuff, but inside my heart was just breaking.
“I just go back home, and I sit with Daisy our dog, and I just, you know, I didn’t go out. I didn’t want to do anything for a while, it didn’t really work as much as I could have, because I was just very miserable. I was really, really down, and I was very miserable and I found it difficult.”
Thankfully romance blossomed again when James left the soap and the pair remain in love now and have four children, Eva, 12, Kit, 10, Noah, eight, and three-year-old Boe, four guinea pigs and two dogs.
A packed house is one reason Joanna says she is not planning to do any stage work in the short term and may even cut back on acting in favour of podcasting and presenting.
Writing in her book Lush, she said: “I’ve decided that the root of what is next for me is being myself. The whole entertainment world is so different from when I first came out of RADA.
“I can wake up one morning and think, Yes, I’ve got my own platform. I can act, I can present, I can pod. That is the way that I see myself now – it’s exciting. Last year was so busy and hectic, with all the excitement, stress and secrecy of Gavin & Stacey, and then presenting Joanna Page’s Wild Life, that right now, I don’t fancy leaving the kids and going away to a film set for weeks on end. But maybe when they’re all older and in college, I’ll think, You know what? I fancy doing a play now.”
She added: “One day, I’ll belong to a theatre company again. But, for now, I don’t want to play someone else. I want to be me.”
Joanna also spoke in-depth in the book about the return of Gavin & Stacey for last year’s Christmas special, the finale of the sitcom. She recalls how emotional it was and had difficulty not crying during filming.
Gavin & Stacey: The Finale is the UK’s most-watched scripted show across all broadcasters and streamers since current records began in 2002, with ratings of over 19.3 million. It has smashed the show’s own record from the 2019 Christmas special which reached 18.5 million viewers in 28-days.
* Lush written by Joanna Page and published by Sphere is out now.
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Ian Watkins left his bandmates’ lives in tatters when his sickening crimes came to light, but the other members of Lostprophets had grown to ‘hate’ the disgraced star long before they were told of his crimes
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Ian Watkins has been killed in prison(Image: Getty)
They were one of the biggest rockbands in the UK and sold millions of albums worldwide, but Lostprophets turned to dust overnight when the darkest secret that anyone could keep was suddenly exposed.
Ian Watkins, the infamous frontman of the Welsh group, turned out to be a dangerous paedophile. In 2013, the depraved singer was jailed for 29 years for 13 horrific sex offences, including the attempted rape and sexual assault of children under the age of 13. One of the infants was just 10 months old. Watkins used his frenzied fan base of young women to gain access to children, including babies.
The “determined” sex offender had a collection of child abuse photos and films almost five times the size of the police force that arrested him. A total of 27 terabytes of data storage from computers and devices found in Watkins’ possession. His heinous online library was encrypted, and the sick pervert used a reference to child abuse as his password.
For the other five members of the band, Watkins’ crimes came as a horrendous shock and the aftermath turned their lives upside down. Lostprophets parted ways immediately after their former lead singer was found guilty and for years, the betrayal was too unbearable to speak about for many of the musicians – now they refuse to utter his name.
The disgraced singer was allegedly killed in his jail cell at HMP Wakefield on Saturday after narrowly surviving other earlier prison attacks. Two inmates have been charged with his murder.
Once Watkins was put in cuffs in 2012, some fans asked how the other band members couldn’t have known something was going on. “How could you know? How would you know?” Lee Gaze, former guitarist and joint-founder of the band, said at the time.
“Who would disclose such a thing to five people, who between them have eight children? You just wouldn’t because they would be killed on the spot.”
While no-one in the band could have known the depths of depravity that Watkins sunk into, destroying multiple lives in the process, the group had become disturbed by his increasingly erratic behaviour long before his unthinkable crimes came to light.
Ian Windwood, a music journalist and friend of the band, spent time with Lostprophets just months before the sex offender’s arrest. And he says other members of the band “had grown to hate him”.
Watkins was a prolific drug user at this stage – police only discovered his horrific sex offences while on a drug raid in his home – and the band tried to call an intervention.
When the frontman failed to turn up for a concert in Pittsburgh during their North America tour that year, he was replaced with keyboardist Jamie Oliver on vocals. Tensions boiled over after the gig, the Telegraph reports, and the band’s bassist Stuart Richardson “punched Watkins in the face for what seemed like five minutes”.
“Some of the guys came on the bus and pulled me off him, but the next day his face looked like the Elephant Man,” he told Windwood, who wrote a book about the music industry. The band had reportedly already found and chucked out crystal meth in Watkins’ bag.
The bassist told the author that Watkins “bawled his eyes out” the next day and kept saying sorry. “I told him that I was sorry about what had happened afterwards,” Richardson said. “But he just kept saying it: ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ At the time I thought, ‘What the f— is that all about?’ Now I think it was the closest he came with us to an admission of guilt.”
The ex band members have also previously revealed how before Watkins committed his crimes, he was becoming increasingly distant from the band.
“He was doing his own thing,” Gaze told Newsbeat. “That just grew worse over the years, the more he was using drugs. He could be in the same city as me and I wouldn’t hang out with him, even if we weren’t playing shows.”
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The back-up singer was left devastated when Lostprophets were forced to disband in the wake of Watkins’s heinous crimes. Earlier this year, he took to X to share his heartbreak.
He wrote in July: “It’s been 13 years since my band ended in the most unimaginable circumstances and it’s still painful to think about. Things could’ve been so different.
