Scotland prop Zander Fagerson has been ruled out of the British and Irish Lions’ tour to Australia with a calf injury and replaced by Ireland’s Finlay Bealham.
Fagerson’s club, Glasgow Warriors, confirmed the news on X, adding: “We’re all behind you, Z – we know you’ll come back even stronger.”
The 29-year-old last featured for Glasgow in early April and was absent as they lost Saturday’s United Rugby Championship play-off semi-final to Leinster in Dublin.
Capped more than 70 times by Scotland, the tighthead toured South Africa with the Lions in 2021 and featured against Sigma Lions.
Australian-born Bealham, who qualifies for Ireland through his grandmother, moved to Ireland in 2010 and made his international debut in 2016.
With Tadhg Furlong injured, the 33-year-old Connacht prop started every game of Ireland’s 2025 Six Nations campaign, winning his 50th cap in the defeat by France in the penultimate round.
Andy Farrell’s Lions face Australia in Tests on 19 July, 26 July and 2 August and will play seven other matches on tour.
Saracens hooker Jamie George, 34, and his fellow Englishman Asher Opoku-Fordjour, 20, of Sale Sharks, will travel to Portugal to train with the squad.
‘Cruel and heartbreaking for Fagerson’
Andy Burke
BBC Sport Scotland Senior Reporter
It’s a sad reality that many players achieve their ultimate goal of being selected for the Lions, only to see injury snatch that dream away before they get their hands on that famous red jersey. It happens every four years.
It’s particularly cruel that’s it’s happened to Zander Fagerson, though. He was the only Scot out of eight selected for the 2021 tour to South Africa that did not see any action in the Test series.
On the day it was announced he had been selected for this summer’s tour to Australia, Fagerson spoke to BBC Scotland of how he felt he had not done himself justice four years ago, hampered by niggling injury problems, and the drive he had to go Down Under to show the best of himself.
It has been a tough five years for TV favourite Fern Britton after her stalker hell and divorce but she is loving her new life in Cornwall – and her incredible new look
Fern Britton says she has had a demanding few years (Image: Mike Marsland/Getty Images for Good Housekeeping Live)
Fern Britton has revealed how she has overcome a “catalogue of difficulty” in the past few years amid her incredible weight loss success.
Last year, James Haviland was handed a 10-year restraining order after pleading guilty to stalking the TV presenter. She also had to come to terms with her divorce from Phil Vickery, and has battle health issues.
There’s been some creature comforts to help get her through it all and Fern hopes her new slim look makes her perfect for also heading back to the small screen and more TV work in the coming years if she returns to London. Losing five stone, the This Morning legend is feeling better than ever.
She told The Sunday Times: “When I’m not feeling well, one of my cats will always sit on my bed with me. They take it in turns, like a shift pattern. This has been particularly comforting in recent years because I’ve had a catalogue of difficult things to face, from getting my home together here in Cornwall to discovering that I had a stalker.”
Fern announced she was ending her 20-year marriage to chef Phil back in January 2020(Image: @Fern_Britton/Twitter)
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Fern is back in great shape but is not hankering for a TV comeback or a man in her life. Instead she wants to continue to write bestselling books from her Cornwall home. At 67, it is now five years since her 20-year marriage to TV chef Phil Vickery ended, but Fern insists: “I’m not looking for love.”
She told Woman & Home: ‘I’m still a bit too wary of losing my liberty. There’s nobody to run something past but, on the other hand, I think back to running things past people and it never really worked out, so why don’t I just make my own decision? Then I’m the only person who can go, ‘I f***ed up there’.”
Her stalker hell was her biggest challenge since the collapse of her marriage. Haviland, 63, drove 200 miles to stay in 66-year-old Fern’s holiday cottage in the village where she lived and last week admitted he’d stalked ther for two years. He started by sending Fern flowers and cards before embarking on a mega journey to be close to her – staying in the village she lives – Cornwall’s Padstow.
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Fern first met Phil when she hosted Ready Steady Cook in 1999, and they married the following year, having daughter Winnie in 2001. They also appeared regularly on ITV’s This Morning, which Fern fronted for a decade from 1999 and Phil joined as chef in 2006, with Fern quitting in 2009 while Phil still makes occasional appearances.
Appearing to have one of the strongest marriages in showbiz, no one expected Fern and Phil’s split announcement in January 2020. “After more than 20 happy years together, Phil and I have decided to go our separate ways,” Fern tweeted. “We will always share a great friendship and our lovely children . We would appreciate it if our privacy is respected at this time. Thankyou for your continued kindness and support.”
Shoppers can currently save a whopping £300 on a Google Pixel Pro smartphone that shoppers have touted as ‘much better than iPhone’ as it gets its price axed in an Amazon flash sale
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Amazon sale axes Google Pixel Pro that’s ‘much better than iPhone’ by £300(Image: Google)
If you’ve been looking for an excuse to pick up a new smartphone without having to splash out for its full price, look no further than this Amazon sale. A Google Pixel 9 Pro is up for grabs with a massive discount, saving shoppers £300 while this deal lasts.
The Google device has become a serious contender in the Android mobile market, and this deal makes it even more irresistible. The Pixel 9 Pro is touted as the most powerful Pixel yet. It is armed with Gemini’s built-in AI assistant and has a pro-level rear camera that gives you super-close close-ups, sharp selfies, and rich colours—even in low light.
The Google Pixel 9 Pro is available in four colourways and has three storage options: 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB. All three options are currently sporting a major £300 discount, though prices will vary depending on the storage size you opt for.
READ MORE: Amazon rivals Argos deal on multi-charging stand for Nintendo Switch 2 controllers
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This Google Pixel 9 Pro has £300 off on Amazon(Image: Amazon)
Armed with a game-changing Google Tensor G4 chip and a Snapdragon CPU, this smartphone provides 16GB of RAM and promises up to 24 hours of battery life. With seven years of security updates and Pixel Drops, this Google smartphone is built to keep up with you all day long and promises longevity.
Not to mention the revolutionary in-built AI, which helps get things done faster. Gemini makes complex projects easier, searches and organises info, and jumpstarts your creativity in just a few taps.
Another feature of the Pixel 9 Pro that’s supported by AI is the Add Me feature, which ensures no one is left out of a photo—you can take a picture with the group, then swap in the photographer with ease, as Pixel seamlessly merges both photos. Plus, the Magic Editor can suggest the best crop and reframe your photo to ensure you get the best results to post online. It even expands your image to get more of the scene.
Backed by Gemini, Pixel Screenshots helps you save info you want to remember later – like events, places, and appointments. So you can find what you need, right when you need it.
Normally retailing for £999 (128GB), this Pixel 9 Pro is now up for grabs for the majorly reduced price of £699 while this Amazon sale lasts. This model is also available at Argos for the same cost, which is the lowest ever price it’s sold for at that retailer. Currys and Very are also offering this Google Pixel model for £699.
Amazon shoppers can’t stop raving about this smartphone, with plenty of 5-star reviews pouring in. One saitisifed customer shares: “This phone is fantastic. Great photos and ways to adjust photos. Clear sound screen is Sharp. Highly recommend. This is the best phone I have owned. It is smaller than I use to but you lose nothing. Texting is smooth.”
Another buyer beams: “It’s a Fantastic phone— I can’t fault it. I came from iPhones after the damp squib of iPhone 16. It’s seamless for me– feels very much like an iPhone but just much better and customisable. Camera is excellent, even the capacity to swipe back with your thumb is a revelation.”
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A thrid raves: “The cameras are insanely good thanks to Google’s AI Processing, they fixed the slow Tensor chipset performance issues, everything is snappy now you would think it has a Snapdragon if you didn’t see the specs. Battery life is stellar, I can get 1 to 1.5 days easily with moderate usage and it looks perfect, people always think I have an iPhone 16 Pro when they see the phone which is a good thing as it has a flat screen and very easy to hold.”
Pittsburgh, America’s historic steel city also famed for coal mining, is known as a hub for hard industrial labour.
And these qualities extend to its most famed golf course. There are few, if any, tougher more uncompromising tests than Oakmont Country Club, the home of this week’s US Open.
This is a place where players have to roll up their sleeves and get on with it despite the golfing environment’s stark harshness.
Defending champion Bryson DeChambeau summed it up for his legion of YouTube followers when he said: “This course doesn’t just challenge your game, it challenges your sanity.”
This is the latest in a long line of observations about a course that will stage the US Open for a record 10th time, starting on Thursday. Seven-time major winner Gene Sarazen started the trend when he said Oakmont possesses “all the charm of a sock to the head”.
‘A poor shot should be a shot lost’
Getty Images
Huge undulating, sloped greens are lightning fast. Another legend, Sam Snead, joked: “I put a dime down to mark my ball and the dime slipped away.”
It was seeing a Sarazen putt run off an Oakmont green at the 1935 championship that inspired Edward Stimpson to invent the measuring device known as a “Stimpmeter” to calibrate just how fast a green is running.
Six times major champion Lee Trevino noted the difficulty of the greens when he observed: “Every time I two putted at Oakmont, I was passing somebody on the leaderboard.”
The rough is thick and juicy and its 175 bunkers are harsh, penal hazards. Phil Mickelson, who this week plays his 34th and most likely final US Open, thinks it is “the hardest golf course we have ever played”.
Geoff Ogilvy, the champion in 2006 at Winged Foot – another brutal venue, said: “Playing Oakmont was like the hardest hole you have ever played on every hole.”
The course was built in the early 20th century by Henry Clay Fownes after he sold his burgeoning steel business to Andrew Carnegie. The Fownes family were among the best players in Western Pennsylvania at the time.
Now they had the wealth to indulge their sporting passion and they transformed 191 acres of farmland at a place called Plum on the outskirts of Pittsburgh into one of the most feared pieces of golfing architecture ever built.
It was the only course HC Fownes designed and it has more than stood the test of time. He did not see golf as any kind of beauty contest.
“Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artists stand aside, a poor shot should be a shot irrevocably lost,” he stated.
When the course opened in 1904 it measured 6,406 yards and was par-80. This week it is stretched to 7,431 yards and the par score is 71.
Dubbed “Soakmont” when it last staged the US Open, heavy rainfall softened fairways and greens, Dustin Johnson’s winning score was still only four under, admittedly including a controversial penalty for unintentionally moving his ball on the fifth hole of the final round.
Joint runners up Shane Lowry, Jim Furyk and Scott Piercy, who were three shots behind, were the only other players to beat par.
‘Bunkers not designed to be a bail out’
Getty Images
This time we can anticipate a similar scenario to the one that yielded Johnson’s first major nine years ago because the Pittsburgh area has suffered its wettest spring on record.
The greens will still be very quick but perhaps more likely to hold approach shots than they were in 2007. But the five-inch deep rough will be damp, lush and brutal.
And unlike most recent US Open venues it will not be ‘graduated’ with shorter grass nearer the immaculate fairways. It will be short grass and then long grass with nothing in between – classically uncompromising in the finest Oakmont tradition.
The bunkers are not designed to be a bail out. The sand is unsympathetic and forms a genuine hazard, as do strategic ditches that criss-cross the layout.
Between the third and fourth fairways lies the famous ‘Church Pews’ bunker, more than 100 yards long and up to 43 yards wide with a dozen turf islands (the pews) striped across to punish wayward tee shots.
The par-three eighth could be stretched to more than 300 yards and is the longest ‘short’ hole in championship golf. “I haven’t played it since they lengthened it to be a short par five,” Jack Nicklaus, the winner at Oakmont in 1962, recently joked.
Some hate the idea of par-three holes playing at such length. Nicklaus called it “crazy” but it is a good golf hole and par is just a number, albeit one that can mess with a player’s head.
And therein lies the ultimate aspect of US Open golf. Yes the United States Golf Association want to test every club in the bag but they also want to examine the 15th club – the one that resides between the ears.
The winner will be the player who deals best with the inevitable setbacks inflicted by a course known as “the beast” but who also plays the best golf.
That might seem an obvious statement, but accurate driving and unerring approach play can yield rich rewards. After a third-round 76, Johnny Miller fired a final-round 63 to win in 1973 with what is still regarded as one of the greatest rounds ever played.
In 2016 Lowry shot a 65 to take the 54-hole lead, so low scores are possible.
But over four long days, which may well suffer weekend weather interruption, there will be sufficient snakes to counterbalance the very few ladders afforded by this ultra-demanding course.
Pittsburgh, America’s historic steel city also famed for coal mining, is known as a hub for hard industrial labour.
And these qualities extend to its most famed golf course. There are few, if any, tougher more uncompromising tests than Oakmont Country Club, the home of this week’s US Open.
This is a place where players have to roll up their sleeves and get on with it despite the golfing environment’s stark harshness.
Defending champion Bryson DeChambeau summed it up for his legion of YouTube followers when he said: “This course doesn’t just challenge your game, it challenges your sanity.”
This is the latest in a long line of observations about a course that will stage the US Open for a record 10th time, starting on Thursday. Seven-time major winner Gene Sarazen started the trend when he said Oakmont possesses “all the charm of a sock to the head”.
‘A poor shot should be a shot lost’
Getty Images
Huge undulating, sloped greens are lightning fast. Another legend, Sam Snead, joked: “I put a dime down to mark my ball and the dime slipped away.”
It was seeing a Sarazen putt run off an Oakmont green at the 1935 championship that inspired Edward Stimpson to invent the measuring device known as a “Stimpmeter” to calibrate just how fast a green is running.
Six times major champion Lee Trevino noted the difficulty of the greens when he observed: “Every time I two putted at Oakmont, I was passing somebody on the leaderboard.”
The rough is thick and juicy and its 175 bunkers are harsh, penal hazards. Phil Mickelson, who this week plays his 34th and most likely final US Open, thinks it is “the hardest golf course we have ever played”.
Geoff Ogilvy, the champion in 2006 at Winged Foot – another brutal venue, said: “Playing Oakmont was like the hardest hole you have ever played on every hole.”
The course was built in the early 20th century by Henry Clay Fownes after he sold his burgeoning steel business to Andrew Carnegie. The Fownes family were among the best players in Western Pennsylvania at the time.
Now they had the wealth to indulge their sporting passion and they transformed 191 acres of farmland at a place called Plum on the outskirts of Pittsburgh into one of the most feared pieces of golfing architecture ever built.
It was the only course HC Fownes designed and it has more than stood the test of time. He did not see golf as any kind of beauty contest.
“Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artists stand aside, a poor shot should be a shot irrevocably lost,” he stated.
When the course opened in 1904 it measured 6,406 yards and was par-80. This week it is stretched to 7,431 yards and the par score is 71.
Dubbed “Soakmont” when it last staged the US Open, heavy rainfall softened fairways and greens, Dustin Johnson’s winning score was still only four under, admittedly including a controversial penalty for unintentionally moving his ball on the fifth hole of the final round.
Joint runners up Shane Lowry, Jim Furyk and Scott Piercy, who were three shots behind, were the only other players to beat par.
‘Bunkers not designed to be a bail out’
Getty Images
This time we can anticipate a similar scenario to the one that yielded Johnson’s first major nine years ago because the Pittsburgh area has suffered its wettest spring on record.
The greens will still be very quick but perhaps more likely to hold approach shots than they were in 2007. But the five-inch deep rough will be damp, lush and brutal.
And unlike most recent US Open venues it will not be ‘graduated’ with shorter grass nearer the immaculate fairways. It will be short grass and then long grass with nothing in between – classically uncompromising in the finest Oakmont tradition.
The bunkers are not designed to be a bail out. The sand is unsympathetic and forms a genuine hazard, as do strategic ditches that criss-cross the layout.
Between the third and fourth fairways lies the famous ‘Church Pews’ bunker, more than 100 yards long and up to 43 yards wide with a dozen turf islands (the pews) striped across to punish wayward tee shots.
The par-three eighth could be stretched to more than 300 yards and is the longest ‘short’ hole in championship golf. “I haven’t played it since they lengthened it to be a short par five,” Jack Nicklaus, the winner at Oakmont in 1962, recently joked.
Some hate the idea of par-three holes playing at such length. Nicklaus called it “crazy” but it is a good golf hole and par is just a number, albeit one that can mess with a player’s head.
And therein lies the ultimate aspect of US Open golf. Yes the United States Golf Association want to test every club in the bag but they also want to examine the 15th club – the one that resides between the ears.
The winner will be the player who deals best with the inevitable setbacks inflicted by a course known as “the beast” but who also plays the best golf.
That might seem an obvious statement, but accurate driving and unerring approach play can yield rich rewards. After a third-round 76, Johnny Miller fired a final-round 63 to win in 1973 with what is still regarded as one of the greatest rounds ever played.
In 2016 Lowry shot a 65 to take the 54-hole lead, so low scores are possible.
But over four long days, which may well suffer weekend weather interruption, there will be sufficient snakes to counterbalance the very few ladders afforded by this ultra-demanding course.
Nicole Scherzinger reveals career plans after Tony Awards Win
Nicole won the best actress honour for her role on Sunset Boulevard(Image: FilmMagic)
Nicole Scherzinger says her Tony Award win is part of a “healing process” after years of feeling disrespected and disregarded by the entertainment industry. Former X Factor judge Nicole broke down in tears when accepting the best actress honour for her role on Sunset Boulevard praising her family and fiance Thom Evans for his continued support
She had detailed her upset and frustration at being treated like a pop flop and “put in a box” for over a decade after the Pussycat Dolls success.
The American star now plans to build a movie career and continue stage shows, including creating her own, asserting: “I’d love to do it all.”
Nicole, 46, was told applying for stage and screen roles was a “a waste of time” for over a decade and branded nothing more than a past it girl band star.
The star feels vindicated to have financially banked and created her own solo show, performing show tunes, at small venues across London and the US. Nicole, who won an Olivier Award for her debut role portraying Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, celebrated her victory with a pizza.
Nicole admitted: “This has been a very healing process for me. I always felt like I wasn’t living in my full potential and full purpose. I was never happy with myself. It is because I knew I had so much more to give. And this role and this opportunity allowed me to give all of me. It’s changed my life.
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“But it has been hard. It has not been an easy road. I am so grateful that I am able to connect to people on a spiritual and soulful level and I could make a difference in these people’s lives.
“That is exactly what we do it for. So I am thankful.”
She added: “I am living in my dream. This is my childhood dream come true. I feel like I win every night when people tell me the impact of how my performances impact them. This has been 30 years in the making and I’ve been working and fighting for this my whole life.
“I am completely out of my mind. I just want to go home and cry for a very long time. I won a Tony against an unbelievable category of (women) But I have come home (Broadway) and am back where I was born to be. I mean this – Love always wins.”
On stage collecting the gong at the NYC Radio City Music Hall event, she praised her rugby star partner Thom Evans for his ongoing support.
“For my fiance Thom who believes in me, when I forget to believe in myself.” She added “Andrew Lloyd Webber, it’s happened. It’s been such an honour to create with you.”
Her desire is to continue singing and making music, but in movie musicals or create her own stage show.
Nicole, who wore a blood red custom dress to resemble the final scene of the Broadway hit, added: “I want to do it all. I would like to do movies and movie musicals. I would like to build my own show. There are roles I would like to create.
“It’s validating and it’s fulfilling because I know that I’m on the right path. I know I’m back where I was born to be.
“When you see the show, you see the real depths of me as an actor and as a singer and your voice and the range as well. I want to encourage people to keep an open mind and an open heart. You never know where your unexpected dream opportunity is going to come from.”
Nicole reflected on her tough mental battle to bounce back from constant rejection after being written off as a failed pop artist
Nicole admitted: “Like so many people, I was put in a box. it is hard when you feel like your whole career, you’ve been fighting to be seen and fighting to show what you’re truly capable of.
“Ten years back after The Dolls, I really wanted to go back to doing musical theater stuff. It’s like where my heart whisper is. And there was no path to do that.
The Pussycat Dolls (L-R, Kimberley Wyatt, Jessica Sutta, Nicole Scherzinger, Ashley Roberts, Carmit Bachar and Melody Thornton) (Image: Getty Images for MTV)
“People weren’t even allowing me to be seen for filmed musicals and some live stuff going on.
“They just wouldn’t even consider seeing me, (they were saying) ‘ that’s going to be a waste of our time. ‘ I was like, ‘they’re not taking me seriously.
“So I got to educate them. “So I put on a show exactly six years ago in 2019, I put my money up and did all the songs and the roles I always dreamed of playing that nobody would let me. I created my own show of an hour and 20 minutes.
“I brought it to New York, London, and la and I just put it out there in the universe.”
Nicole is grateful that respected producer Jamie Lloyd took a chance on her talent as “Nobody else would’ve have asked me.
“He came to me with the idea of playing Norma Desmond. He actually dreamed of me. Isn’t that crazy?”
Nicole and the team were huge Olivier Award winners with seven gongs. including best musical revival.It equalled the record for the most prizes for a musical at the ceremony.
Nicole thanked Thom Evans in her acceptance speech(Image: Thom Evans/Instagram)
Other winners included Succession star Sarah Snook taking best leading actress in a play, for performing all 26 roles in a one-woman stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. And Purpose, about an African-American family who reunite in Chicago, was named best play, a month after winning the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
One of the original Desmond Broadway performers, multiple Oscar nominee Glenn Close has publicly praised Nicole’s work.
She added to Sirius XM: “Glenn was intense, because she originated the role. She wrote to me in a card ‘to my soul mate’.
“It is validating. It is words of affirmation when what you put out, what you’re so passionate about and what you put out is being received with the intention that you put it out and received not from your peers, but even giants before you. It’s affirming,”
The 46-year-old recently spoke of how Thom has been a rock to her during her two year run and they plan to wed after her show run.
Asked directly “will you get married soon? ” , Nicole relied: “Yes, we will get married. We’re engaged – to be married when I’m not working.
“Thank God he is so patient. We’ll get married back home in Hawaii, where my family is from.”
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Dolls founder Robin Antin installed Nicole as lead singer in 2003, leading them to huge hits, tours and endorsements until 2010.
