SHOW BIZ

Monday’s The Chase saw contestants Victor, Sadie, James and Amy attempt to beat Anne Hegerty

The Chase viewers had the same observation over the latest episode.

On Monday, 7 September, ITV viewers were delighted to see a new episode of the quiz show favourite hosted by Bradley Walsh. It comes as a The Chase star has confirmed there’s the ‘best episode we’ve ever had’ in the new series.

The contestants included Victor, 50, a photographer from Great Yarmouth, Sadie, 26, a pharmacy assistant from Stockport, James, 41, a copywriter from Coventry, and Amy, 38, a barrister originally from Hereford.

As part of the show, the Cash Builder round saw Victor earn £7,000 and he managed to beat Chaser, Anne Hegerty, bringing the money back to his team.

Next up it was Sadie, who revealed she had previously got to the semi-final of Mastermind last year. Sadie had an incredible Cash Builder round, where she secured £9,000.

However, Sadie unfortunately didn’t manage to beat Anne, 68, and was subsequently eliminated. Host Bradley, 66, said: “Wow, gutted! You are seriously a good player and that is a big loss for the team, seat number two.

“Sadie, so sorry to see you go, good luck with the Lego, however, you have been caught and The Chase is over!”, adding she was a “massive loss” to the team.

Anne also said that Sadie was “very, very good” and admitted she had done herself a “huge favour” by eliminating her on the show.

Taking to Twitter, now X, viewers were gutted to see Sadie go after an incredible Cash Builder round and complained that her questions seemed particularly hard.

One person said: “Sadie was robbed. #thechase”, a different account put: “Ahhhhh Sadie what a shaaame #TheChase” while another viewer added: “Tough questions Sadie #thechase”.

Elsewhere, a different viewer wrote: “Aww those questions were mean #thechase”, another wrote: “Tough questions to be fair #TheChase” while a different show watcher added: “Unlucky with those questions #thechase.”

Meanwhile, another fan wrote: “Wow. £9K is actually very good, Sadie. #TheChase” to which a different viewer added: “Sadie, good player. #thechase.”

However, it was bad news for the rest of the players too as later on the show, they were caught by Anne with just six seconds remaining.

The Chase continues on weeknights at 5pm on ITV and ITV X.

OASIS have teased more huge gigs with a cheeky nod to their chaotic first tour that saw Liam Gallagher deported from Holland.

The band have been drip-feeding fans cryptic videos hinting at 2027 shows in the UK and Europe ahead of an official announcement.

So far sleuthing supporters have decoded gigs at the Etihad Stadium, Celtic Park and Munich’s Allianz Arena.

Now they’re convinced the band is heading to Amsterdam — two days after The Sun exclusively revealed the band will play shows at the Johan Cruyff Stadium as part of an extended world tour.

Back in 1994, the boozed-up band set sail for the Dutch city’s Paradiso Club only to clash with rowdy West Ham fans on the ferry.

All hell broke loose and Liam famously ran from police in scenes reminiscent of a Benny Hill sketch.

definitely, maybe

Full list of UK dates for Oasis tour 2027 and what we know about tickets

roll with it

When Oasis documentary Don’t Look Back in Anger is released & how to watch it

Noel Gallagher wasn’t involved in the fracas, having headed to his cabin early, however, the damage was done and he joined Liam and the rest of the band on the next ferry home, with the scheduled gig cancelled.

The new clip sees two plucky young lads sprinting through a shipping yard, stopping to stick their fingers up at police officers in pursuit.

One fan commented on X: “I instantly thought of Liam getting arrested on the ferry in Amsterdam!!!”

Another said: “Ferry containers, running from the police, it’s Amsterdam just like they were deported by the police in Amsterdam in 1994.”

A third said: “Fighting on the ferry to Amsterdam?”

The Gallaghers have been promoting the band’s new Don’t Look Back In Anger documentary this week that documents last year’s comeback tour after the brothers ended their 16 year feud.

Today, directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern revealed on Radio X the lengths they went to to ensure they didn’t jeopardise the brothers’ fragile relationship.

Will said: “Day one of shooting was day one of their rehearsals which they hadn’t done before. No one had ever filmed; they hadn’t allowed cameras into rehearsals. The first day of filming was them getting in a room together.

Dylan continued: “Genuinely, other than the photograph to launch this whole tour, it was the first time they’d spent time together in 15 years, so we didn’t want to be the people to ruin this for everybody, so our whole approach was to be invisible.

“We rigged cameras in the room – 12-14 cameras and just left them to film and we had to hide in a portacabin for the whole summer which had no air conditioning during a heat wave.

“We were like CCTV security guards, but we had to be watching the preparation for the biggest rock and roll comeback ever.”

Inside the Universalist Unitarian Church of Riverside, a line of masked people filed into the red-lighted chapel, one by one, to take part in the rite of confession.

The private booth was framed in flowers, and rather than a priest listening inside, it was a microphone recording their confessions, to be played at an upcoming art exhibition. The brick triangle-roofed church that held the booth has stood since opening in 1892; that night, it was the site of a masquerade, or as Riverside artist Perry Picasshoe called it, the “Masqueerade.”

Picasshoe, whose real name is Neveah Marquez, hosted the event, which had an entirely LGBTQ+ guest list and one requirement: Bring a mask, whatever that looks like to you.

Marquez, a 26-year-old transgender woman robed entirely in red, stood at the pews and danced to the experimental electronic DJ sets and drag performances as guests entered in masks that ranged from papier-mâché deer antlers to collaged photos of eyes and lips.

The event came as a celebration ahead of the Riverside native’s first solo exhibition, “SagradX,” which will open Saturday at Riverside Art Museum and remain through Jan. 31.

The recorded confessions, layered over one another until they become an unintelligible cacophony, represent just one piece of the 25 paintings, photographs and interactive displays in the exhibition. The show explores the meaning of “sacred” as Marquez documents her most private places and experiences, and asks viewers to consider what they hold sacred.

The exhibition, she says, began with heartbreak.

Neveah Marquez (Perry Picasshoe), 26, sits inside the Riverside Art Museum.

(Carlin Stiehl / For De Los)

“The first time I started thinking about sacredness … was when my ex-partner brought somebody into our bed,” said Marquez.

“I was crying, distraught, and drove over to these hills over Lake Mathews [in Riverside] and I realized: The bedroom was sacred to me. That’s why it hurt so much. And I started thinking, if it wasn’t sacred to them, how do we decide what is sacred to each of us?”

The very headboard of that bed sits in the exhibition; on it, Marquez painted fairy-tale creatures representing the lovers gallivanting across the woods.

While Marquez’s experience with betrayal sparked the idea, the exhibition explores sanctity in many different scenarios: In one, the artist plays with the concept of the digital safe space by inviting guests to look through her phone as she is tied on a handmade iron-wrought cross. Inside the exhibition space, she uses a small painter’s brush to slowly paint the white walls red over the course of the show.

In curating the exhibition, Marquez began to look inward, painting and photographing herself in ways she never had before: through the lens of femininity. She lived the previous 26 years of her life as a man, growing up religious to the point that she once considered becoming a priest. The paintings serve as portals into a part of her that she long held inside.

“I describe it like having blurry vision your whole life and not realizing how clearly you can see, until you put glasses on,” Marquez said. “That’s how painting myself as a woman felt.”

Neveah Marquez (Perry Picasshoe) considers what is sacred.

(Carlin Stiehl / For De Los)

Though she initially identified with her male birth name, the more she painted herself in Venus-like, feminine poses and with longer hair, her understanding of her identity shifted. Illuminated by her signature scarlet red clothing and tastefully shrouded in sheets, the soft expression on her face was inspired by Raphael’s “La Fornarina.”

“I wasn’t thinking much of it in the moment, but as I kept painting these portraits, I was thinking a lot about myself and thinking about gender and my identity,” Marquez said. “Through my art process, I realized: ‘Maybe I would be a pretty woman.’ That’s what scared me the most from transitioning, was not feeling like I would be beautiful enough.”

In “SagradX,” Marquez’s body is documented vulnerably; easing into her own identity becoming a painfully honest artistic process, which the audience is now invited to watch.

“I feel like I don’t paint very often because when I do, it’s just so emotionally intense. Like when Olivia Rodrigo wrote that she’s scared of her guitar because she couldn’t lie to it, that’s how I feel about painting,” Marquez said. “I can’t lie to my painting.”

Neveah Marquez (Perry Picasshoe) wears long, flowing red clothes.

(Carlin Stiehl / For De Los)

Aside from her self-portraits, Marquez includes photographs of her ice blocks project, in which she placed 25-pound blocks where immigration enforcement raids took place in the Inland Empire last year. These were once safe places that she says have been “desecrated with fear.”

Marquez’s personal journal, which documented her inner joys and struggles over the last year, is also open on a table in the exhibition for guests to read through, draw over, or tear. For Marquez, “SagradX” was the catalyst to “let everything out.”

“If the show is about vulnerability, I need to practice that for myself as well. Otherwise, you would see in the work that there’s a blockage, you can sense when artists aren’t fully honest,” Marquez said. “I want people to question, ‘What is sacred to you?’ If I give you access to something sacred to me, what will you do with that?”

Stars including Kate and Rio Ferdinand as well as Venezuela Fury and new husband Noah have flown into Vancouver for the new series, of I’m A Celebrity: Wild Frontier, it has been reported

A trailer for I’m A Celebrity’s new Canadian spin-off show has been released as Ant and Dec embrace the outback.

I’m A Celebrity…The Wild Frontier will be hitting our screens in 2027 with filming said to be starting soon. But in a unique twist on the Australian version, the new programme will feature celebrities competing in pairs.

ITV say we will see they will undertake gruelling trials and take on action-packed challenges to win food, all aiming to become the last pair standing. After weeks of shocks and survival in the Canadian wilderness, viewers will have the power to decide which duo is crowned the overall winners.

Viewers will be able to have their say and cast the final vote in a live grand final broadcast direct from London. Kate and Rio Ferdinand and Venezuela Fury and new husband Noah have already flown into Vancouver, it has been reported.

Brian McFadden and Keith Duffy have also been linked with the show, as has ice-skating stars Christopher Dean and Karen Barber.

Eternal singer Louise Redknapp will join the series, alongside her brother, Joe Nurding – with influences Paul Olima and Jeremy Lynch also set to fly out, reports state.

Ant said: “This brand new series is I’m A Celebrity… like you’ve never seen before. It’s a brand new format with lots of twists and surprises”.

His co-star Dec added: “We’re also making sure to retain some of the elements that we know viewers love from the Australian series. Buckle up, it’s going to be brilliant.”

Set in the untamed wilderness of Canada, the series will feature celebrities competing as pairs alongside relatives, loved ones or even fellow celebrities. So for example it could be two celebrities together, a celebrity and a family member, or a celebrity and their best friend.

Katie Rawcliffe, Director of Entertainment, Reality & Daytime ITV said: “I’m A Celebrity…The Wild Frontier is a brand new series from the award-winning I’m A Celebrity… team. The format takes duos to the most spectacular locations in Canada. The duos enter as a pair, play as a pair and leave as a pair.

“With all the brilliant DNA of I’m A Celebrity…, brand new gameplay and the dynamics of living and playing with your spouse, best mate or sibling, it promises to be a treat for audiences in 2027.”

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

It was 1963 and up-and-coming freelance journalist Gloria Steinem had been a working writer in New York City for roughly three years when Show magazine sent her on an undercover assignment that she was uniquely qualified for: to infiltrate Manhattan’s “greatest new showbiz gimmick,” the Playboy Club. She already had the beauty and brains, all she’d need was an alias, a leotard and a notebook. The assignment would change the course of her career, but not in the way that she’d hoped.

“GIRLS:

Do Playboy Club Bunnies Really

Have Glamorous Jobs,

Meet Celebrities, And

Make Top Money?

Yes, it’s true! Attractive young girls can now earn $200-$300 a week at the fabulous New York Playboy Club, enjoy the glamorous and exciting aura of show business, and have the opportunity to travel to other Playboy Clubs throughout the world.”

Armed with the above ad and welcomed by a grinning private guard calling, “Here bunny, bunny, bunny!” Steinem set out to expose the working conditions and interior lives of the bunnies slinging booze to the playboys who patronized the club. She subjected herself to the wardrobe fittings, which included getting her bunny suit stuffed to boost her breast size; she was poked and prodded during an invasive physical exam; she strutted through the club near-naked with sore feet and a suit so tight, she had to wrap gauze around her midsection where her skin had been rubbed raw; and various other indignities she underwent for the sake of journalism.

Documenting a lunch shift at the club, Steinem wrote, “Somehow, the usual tail pullings and propositions and pinching and ogling seemed all the more depressing when, outside this windowless room of perpetual night, the sun was shining.”

Steinem’s article accomplished what it set out to do, and not only were the working conditions at the club exposed, but some were subsequently improved because of her work. In her essay collection “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,” Steinem wrote that in response to the story, Hugh Hefner wrote her a letter saying that her “beef about the physical given [to] the girls before they start work at the club prompted my eliminating it.”

Also as a result of her piece, she was slapped with a $1-million libel suit, subpoenaed as a witness in a liquor laws case against the Playboy Club, and received “obscene and threatening” calls.

Most notable, of the short-term results of the story, was the immediate impact it had on her career. Sure, in a lot of ways it had put her on the map, but she struggled to land serious journalistic assignments because, as she put it, “I had now become a Bunny — and it didn’t matter why.”

Steinem, a feminist icon and one of the most widely recognized leaders of the second-wave women’s movement, died on Wednesday at 92. Since she shed the bunny suit after her 11-day stint on the job at the Playboy Club, she went on to cofound New York Magazine and Ms. Magazine, which changed the course of the abortion rights movement with its “We Have Had Abortions” petition in which high-profile women admitted to having illegal abortions, Steinem among them. She played a pivotal role in spearheading some of the most influential and successful women’s rights efforts. And in 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her lifetime of work as a journalist and activist.

Still, with all the aforementioned accomplishments, and decades later, Steinem said that her naysayers used her bunny work in an attempt to discredit her. For decades she considered the story a “professional error of gigantic proportions.” But later, she changed her tune.

“I’m not sorry I did it,” she told Ronan Farrow in 2020, when she was 86 years old. “But it is true that as old as I am, when anybody wants to put me down, they say, ‘Well, she was once a bunny.’ ”

In Steinem’s “Famous Last Words” interview, released on Netflix following her death, she closed the segment by addressing the audience. “Please tell your own story,” she said. “This is the most important thing we can do for each other: is to know each other through stories.”

I was hesitant to tell this story, and stewed over the potential risks I would be taking by telling it, but then I thought of the risk Steinem took. She dealt with fallout and she grappled with the ways the article may have hurt her career more than helped. But of the ample wisdom she imparted, its the power of women’s stories to shift culture, change policy and empower other women that feels most resonant.

I didn’t discover Steinem’s “I Was a Playboy Bunny” exposé until I was in college. I was in my late twenties at the time because I’d taken a few detours after I left high school, most of them dead ends.

One such detour led me through the massive hedge-lined gates of the Playboy Mansion. I was 18, and the E! reality series “The Girls Next Door” sparked renewed interest in Playboy bunnies. I wish I could say that I’d arrived at the mansion on an undercover magazine assignment, but the reality was different. I’d been watching a rerun of the E! show from a bedbug-ridden townhome in downtown Los Angeles, and earlier that day I grappled with whether I should pay my parking debt or buy a burrito.

I watched as the girls bounced around the mansion, appearing carefree, bedbug-free and parking ticket-free. Their lives, produced and edited as they were, appeared to be stable and glamorous, and I thought, “Hmm, maybe I should do that.” If Hefner was good at anything, it was creating a facade.

Like Steinem found, applying to be a Playboy bunny was surprisingly simple. I emailed a photo of myself in a swimsuit and shortly afterward, an invitation to a casting call at the mansion arrived.

At the casting call, I was handed a satin robe and pointed toward a small tent where I could change and a large tent with the photo crew inside. Steinem had likened wearing the bunny suit to feeling like meat on a hook. I, too, couldn’t shake the thought of a meat factory and almost instantly, realized I wanted off the conveyor belt.

My trip to the mansion and endeavor to become a bunny was short-lived. I’d driven there feeling like a femme fatale, and left feeling naive and out of my depth. Worse, it was just another humiliating misadventure that I’d carry around for years with shame.

That is until I came across her story in her essay collection “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.”

Steinem said that she was pigeonholed because of the story. She struggled afterward to be taken seriously and that may be true, but I’d argue an opposite point. Because Steinem was ultimately held in such high regard as a journalist and activist, and because she was an undercover bunny along the way, she helped the bunnies of the world to take themselves a little more seriously, to see that beyond the bunny suit, there is a world of possibilities waiting for them.

In the collection, originally published in 1983 and reprinted several times, Steinem wrote that after a town-hall meeting in New Bedford, Mass., a little girl of 6 or 7 gave her a crayon drawing of her in the bunny costume copied from a photo that had circulated online. “ ‘Even if a girl looks silly,’ she said, ‘boys should know that’s she’s smart.’ ”

“This story may outlast me,” she wrote. “but it’s not going to outlast or outsmart that little girl.”

In the book, Steinem wrote that one longer-term result of the article was “realizing that all women are Bunnies. After feminism arrived in my life, I stopped regretting that I had written the article.”

The line “All women are Bunnies” stands out. But what I imagine she meant is, bunnies are just women.

TELLURIDE, Colo. — The Telluride Film Festival has always enjoyed keeping a secret. Tucked away in the Colorado mountains with nary a red carpet or paparazzo in sight, the low-key film festival doesn’t announce its lineup until the day before opening and surprise additions have long been a fixture of the event.

But even by Telluride standards, organizers went to unusual lengths this year to keep their biggest surprise under wraps. They had carved out a prime Sunday evening slot for a world premiere that, fingers crossed, would remain unknown until the audience was seated inside the theater. Festival director Julie Huntsinger offered only a few clues beforehand. The film involved some “very known names,” she told The Times. “Do not miss it. Your jaw will be on the ground for the entire length of the film.”

For three days, trying to crack the mystery became Telluride’s unofficial parlor game. Was it Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning”? Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three”? Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary “Musk”? By Sunday, the mounting speculation had become fodder for jokes: Introducing his new movie “Club Kid” earlier in the day, writer-director-star Jordan Firstman announced that the evening’s TBA would be a newly restored print of Jerry Seinfeld’s 2007 animated film “Bee Movie.” “Just kidding,” he added. “I love Jerry.”

The festival kept the suspense going right up to showtime. Before entering the Werner Herzog Theatre on Sunday evening, hundreds of moviegoers were required to lock their phones in pouches to prevent spreading the word. Inside, they were warned that security guards equipped with night-vision goggles would be watching for anyone who managed to keep a phone accessible.

Taking the stage, Huntsinger made one last plea for secrecy. “What happens in Telluride stays in Telluride,” she told the crowd, before bringing out Nathan Fielder, the deadpan comic mind behind the reality-bending television shows “Nathan for You,” “The Rehearsal” and “The Curse.”

What Telluride had been guarding so carefully was “You Can See Everything,” a nearly three-hour documentary about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by Fielder and documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim. The film, which A24 will release theatrically in October, had been made largely in secret over three years.

“For those of you who don’t know who we are and are disappointed, I apologize,” Fielder, joined onstage by Oppenheim, told the crowd to laughs. “But hopefully by the end of the film, you’ll be slightly less disappointed.”

The movie begins 34 days before Holmes is due to report to federal prison, with Fielder, Oppenheim and a small crew given extraordinary access to her life with her partner, Billy Evans, and their young children. Holmes and Evans embrace what they call “radical transparency,” opening their home to the cameras in hopes of convincing the filmmakers — and eventually the world — that the public has fundamentally misunderstood her.

But as anyone familiar with Fielder’s reenactment-heavy work can imagine, “You Can See Everything” quickly becomes something far stranger than a conventional documentary. Fielder finds himself drawn from behind the camera into the story, struggling to determine whether Holmes and Evans are being candid with him or manipulating him. From there, the movie takes a series of increasingly surreal turns, including elaborate reenactments involving a Hollywood actress (her arrival is too good to spoil) that further scramble the line between reality and performance.

During a post-screening Q&A moderated by Emma Stone, who co-starred with Fielder in the darkly comic A24 series “The Curse,” Fielder said that his own inability to get a firm grip on what he was witnessing became one of the forces driving the project.

“We’re all smart and we’re really working at the top of our intelligence,” he recalled thinking as he and the crew tried to make sense of their time with Holmes and Evans. “Why can’t we make sense of what’s happening in this house?”

The project began, appropriately enough, with a magic trick.

Oppenheim said he and Fielder were at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles several years ago when a magician asked the audience to name a celebrity. Someone called out Elizabeth Holmes. Afterward, Oppenheim told Fielder he had heard through a friend of a friend that Holmes was looking for someone to document her life.

Fielder had read John Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood,” the bestselling 2018 account of Theranos’ rise and collapse and initially saw little reason to make another documentary about Holmes.

“I thought the story was really fully told,” he told the Telluride crowd. Holmes, however, had largely disappeared from public view, and Fielder was curious about what she might have to say for herself.

Meeting her only deepened that curiosity. Sitting across from Holmes, Fielder said, he found her “sort of honest and charming,” even as his brain was warning him, “No, don’t trust.” That disconnect — between what he knew about Holmes and what he felt in her presence — became central to the movie.

A24 gave Fielder and Oppenheim unusual freedom to pursue the project without any deadline or obligation to turn what they captured into a finished film. If nothing came of it, Fielder recalled being told, “you can just throw everything away.”

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 and became one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated young entrepreneurs by claiming the company could perform a wide range of medical tests using only a few drops of blood. The company collapsed after investigations exposed serious problems with its technology and business practices. In 2022, Holmes was convicted on four counts related to defrauding investors and later sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison.

As shown in “You Can See Everything,” once Holmes reports to federal prison, the filmmakers’ access to her changes dramatically, with Evans — who takes over Holmes’ Twitter feed and assumes power of attorney over her decisions — becoming their main conduit. Fielder said the relationship grew strained as Evans tried to exert greater control over the project. Neither Holmes nor Evans has seen the finished movie.

Fielder is hoping to keep the film’s biggest surprises under wraps. During the Q&A, he told the Telluride audience he hoped future viewers could experience the film without knowing where it was headed. Stone seconded the request.

“You won’t be upsetting me,” Fielder joked. “You’ll be upsetting Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone.”

Fielder said that even after three years immersed in her world, he still doesn’t know quite what to make of Holmes — or how much of what she says can be believed.

“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced in this,” he said. “I don’t quite know what I went through.”

As the crowd filed out of the Herzog, one reaction seemed to recur more than any other: “That was wild.”

EXCLUSIVE: There were arguments aplenty and several walkouts – but Jackie Bassett and Peter Davies say they’d still do it all over again, given the choice

In 1964, 14 children aged seven were plucked from obscurity to take part in the TV experiment Seven Up!, which would follow them every seven years to see how their different starts in life would affect them.

The nation has long been fascinated by these kids, who have now (mostly) reached the grand age of 70. Two of them have died, along with the show’s long-term director Michael Apted, who went on to have a career making films in Hollywood.

Two of the most outspoken were Jackie Bassett and Peter Davies – and both say that, despite everything they didn’t like over the decades, they’d do it all again.

Left-wing Peter, from Liverpool, was working as a teacher at a comprehensive in 1984 when 28 Up aired. He was vilified by the right-wing press for calling the Thatcher government “the most incompetent, uncaring bloody shower we’ve ever had” and pulled out for many years after that, not returning until 56 Up, when he realised it was a good way to promote the music he was releasing.

“I think for a long time I felt cynical about the programme and the way in which individual stories were shaped,” he says now. “I’m thinking particularly back to when I did 28 Up – I think one of the headlines was, ‘Would you let this man teach your children?’

“At the time I was quite shocked because I’d never experienced anything like that – the sheer level of vitriol involved in some of the comments. I was quite taken aback.”

He held Michael partly responsible for the way in which he was portrayed. “I actually spoke to Michael and said, ‘You know, you’ve really condensed me there almost to a caricature – the angry young man from the North of England.’”

But “on balance” he’d still do it all again, because of how it turned out. “It’s not a decision I’d have taken lightly because there has been a downside as well.” This downside, in turns out, is the fame that the show has inevitably brought the participants. “I’ve found that intrusion difficult at times,” he admits.

Jackie has now left Scotland, where she brought up her three sons, and moved to the Norfolk coast. “I love my children, I love my grandchildren, but it was time for me to have a life and that’s what I’m doing now,” she declares. “It only took me 65 years to get there, but I’m finally pleasing myself.” She agrees that sometimes the public’s reaction to the show can feel a bit much. “The thing is, they see you for 15 minutes on that screen and suddenly believe they know everything about you. And that’s ridiculous, as most normal people would understand.”

Peter feels the show’s aim of showing the class system evolved into “something much bigger” but still didn’t explore certain areas enough. “I think something they missed was the emergence of a new lower middle class perhaps – people like myself whose parents were working class, but who were able, by virtue of a properly resourced welfare state and state education system, to move out of that background, go to university, change our lives.”

Prior to film-maker Michael’s death in 2021, Jackie enjoyed sometimes putting him in his place, famously challenging him on camera in 2005 for asking the women about marriage and children rather than anything else.

Later, she would point blank refuse to speak about certain topics. “He never saw us, never had contact with us. So he’d come back from America to do a film with me, or Peter, or whoever, and he just sat down and started throwing questions at you. And sometimes he didn’t like the fact that we didn’t want to answer them. I was not going to talk about something that would affect my family, my children – so I basically just told him no. He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.”

That said, she also had warm feelings for him, and knew he gave her opportunities she wouldn’t otherwise have had. “I probably would do it all over again yes,” she confesses. “Because Michael opened up a whole different world to me with the screenings of his films and things like that. Obviously there’s points on the programme that I’ve not enjoyed, usually because I sort of opened my mouth without engaging my brain, but I think I would do it.”

She thinks it was outrageous to only have four girls alongside ten boys – comprised of herself and two friends Lynn and Sue, all from the same primary school in working class East London, along with solo upper-class Suzy, who liked ballet and thought she’d probably hire a nanny one day.

“The quote wasn’t ‘show me the boy and I’ll give you the man,’ it just says ‘give me the child at seven’,” Jackie points out. “I think it was partly because at that time women were mostly at home looking after children. Women didn’t have careers – you may have had one or two, but they were few and far between. It was just, ‘well, we’ll keep it to a minimum because they’re not going to go very far and they’re not going to do very much.’ But they knew they made a mistake. They really did.”

Peter says Michael actually admitted he’d got that wrong. “It was outrageously sexist, but this was the early 60s and people behaved in outrageously sexist ways all the time.”

They have not yet seen the final films and know that watching themselves for a final time is going to feel emotional. “I’ve been told to take plenty of tissues. I have no idea what to expect, and it’s probably going to feel strange,” Jackie says. Peter believes it will be “momentous”, reasoning: “It’s just the culmination of so much, isn’t it?”

The pair of them enormously enjoyed making the double-bill 70Up finale, with new director Asif Kapadia. “I think it had become a little formulaic,” Peter says. “So having someone new on board was going to shake things up a bit. And I think he did. Some of the questions he asked were difficult to answer, but they were interesting and made me work a bit harder.”

Jackie concurs. “I’ll second that. I think it had got very staid and in its box, and Asif came in like a breath of fresh air. It was far more relaxed, nowhere near as formal. I think it actually should have worked pretty well, fingers crossed.”

They feel that now is the right time to pull the plug. “The last thing we want is us all walking in with Zimmer frames or in wheelchairs or whatever age does to us. I think it’s very appropriate to end on 70,” Jackie says., laughing: “I have no idea why it fascinates people, not really.”

“It can’t go on forever,” Peter agrees. “Two of the cast members have gone, Michael’s gone. So yeah, this feels like the right time to end it.”

Seven Up! launched in 1964 with 14 participants – 10 boys and four girls – picked to represent different elements of the UK’s class structure. They are:

• Andrew Brackfield – Upper class schoolboy who read the Financial Times aged 7, went to Oxford and became a solicitor
• Bruce Balden – Schoolteacher who attended a prestigious boarding school and wanted to be a missionary
• Charles Furneaux – Kensington prep school boy who became a documentary producer and left after 21 Up, returns this time – but only in audio
• Jackie Bassett – Working class schoolgirl from East London who moved to Scotland and had three sons
• John Brisby – Upper class schoolboy whose father died when he was nine, he became a barrister and is angry over his portrayal
• Lynn Johnson – Jackie and Sue’s friend Lynn died from a brain condition in 2013. She thought she would work in Woolworths but was a children’s librarian
• Nick Hitchon – Yorkshire farm boy who became a nuclear scientist and moved to the US in 1982. He is featured despite his death, from throat cancer, in 2023
• Paul Kligerman – A carehome resident who moved to Australia and settled in to family life
• Peter Davies – A middle-class lawyer and musician from Liverpool who dropped out after 28 Up but returned for 56 Up
• Neil Hughes – Peter’s classmate, wanted to be an astronaut but became a local politician and preacher and has experienced homelessness
• Sue Davis – Jackie’s schoolfriend who was a single mum in 42 Up and became a university administrator who has remarried
• Suzy Lusk– Upper class schoolgirl who dropped out of education at 16 and later became a bereavement counsellor
• Symon Basterfield – Brought up in a Barnardo’s children’s home, he has fostered more than 120 children.
• Tony Walker – Working class “cheeky chappie” from Essex who dreamed of being a jockey but became a London cabbie.

– 70 Up: The Final Chapter, 15 & 22 September, 9pm, ITV and ITVX

REBEKAH Vardy is to swap the dolce vita of Italy for Burnley FC after hubby Jamie joined the Clarets yesterday.

The Wag, 44, will have to pack up her glam dresses to make the move from their £2million villa in Salò, Lake Garda, where former England striker Jamie played for Cremonese last season.

He is returning to England on a deal to the end of the season.

It means he is likely to relocate to the Lancashire town — 137 miles north of the family home in Grantham, Lincs.

It is hoped he will revive the Clarets after a bad start to the season.

Jamie, 39, said: “This club has a proper footballing history and passionate fans who deserve a team that represents them and their town. I can’t wait to get going on the pitch and help the team move in the right direction.”

VARDY PARTY

Jamie Vardy ends Everton transfer links as free agent joins struggling Burnley

STEP TOO VAR

Vardy show insider lifts lid on what crew really thought of Mike Dean comments

Rather than move full-time to Burnley, it is expected Becky will remain at their Grantham home near to where their children, Sofia and Ella, go to school.

She faces a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Turf Moor to see Jamie in action.

Becky is a regular at his games and previously spoke about getting more nervous than he does during matches.

She said: “Jamie is so laid back about football, he doesn’t get nervous.

“The only time I get nervous is when he has to take a penalty.

“It’s anxiety-inducing and I’m always so relieved when he hits the back of the net.”

Becky faced a public backlash after losing her 2022 “Wagatha Christie” High Court libel case with Coleen Rooney, over leaked Instagram stories.

A MARRIED At First Sight star has tearily opened up about a five-year health battle she’s been going through.

Erica Roberts, who rose to fame on the dating show in 2023, took to social media to share her frustration as she’s been left with even more unanswered questions following further medical tests.

In a new video, the reality star explained that she has been having blood tests for the last five years which have consistently come back with worrying results – including a low white blood cell count.

Erica recently underwent yet another blood test and was met with the same results.

After being told by doctors that they don’t know the reason for the abnormalities in her results, Erica explained that she’s feeling sick of the ongoing situation.

“It’s just frustrating because I really feel like I’ve been trying to change my lifestyle, do what I can to be healthy and just try to figure out what’s going on with my body and It’s just frustrating, I feel like I’ve been the healthiest that I’ve ever been in my whole entire life, so why are my levels dropping?

split swipe

TikTok star Max Balegde takes cryptic swipe at ex with very telling comment

PETE ICKS

Olivia Attwood reveals what gives her ‘the ick’ about boyfriend Pete Wicks

“Why is it getting worse? I just don’t know what to do anymore, it’s so frustrating,” said Erica with tears in her eyes.

She continued: “This has been going on for five years, like, every single time I get my bloods done with my doctor I’m like, ‘What can we do?’ and they’re just like, ‘Oh we’ll just keeping checking it’ and I just don’t feel like that’s good enough.”

The emotional star explained that undergoing a blood panel test with private brand Biosensitive meant she was able to see her results more in depth – and has caused her to become more worried about the situation.

“Now I know that I just need to push my GP or just go private because there is clearly something going on and it needs to be fixed,” said Erica.

The star explained in the video that she suffers from health anxiety and told fans in the comment section she has already been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and an underactive thyroid.

Hashimoto’s disease is an autoimmune condition that attacks the thyroid gland and can lead to an underactive thyroid.

Rob Reiner has won a posthumous Emmy for his appearance in Season 4 of “The Bear.”

On Sunday, the Television Academy hosted the second night of Emmy ceremonies, where guest actor awards were among those announced. Reiner, who died in December, won for guest actor in a comedy series for his appearance as Albert Schnurr, a consultant who mentored line cook Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson), on the FX show’s fourth season. It was his third Emmy Award, having previously won twice for supporting actor in a comedy for “All in the Family.”

While Reiner largely focused on directing, writing and producing in the latter part of his career, he would occasionally make appearances on TV shows and in films. He was most recently seen in an episode of Larry David’s HBO series “Larry David in Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America,” which aired in July. In the final season of “The Bear,” which premiered at the end of June, the show nodded to Reiner, referencing a line from his 1987 film “Princess Bride.”

Guest actress in a comedy series was awarded to Betty Gilpin for “Widow’s Bay.” In the Apple TV horror-comedy series, she plays Sarah Westcott Warren, wife of the founder of the town at the center of the show.

On the drama series side, Ernest Harden Jr. won for guest actor in a drama series for “The Pitt,” while Shailene Woodley won for guest actress in Season 2 of “Paradise.” It is the first Emmy Award for both actors.

In HBO’s medical drama, Harden played Louie, an alcoholic who was a regular visitor at the Pitt, befriending many of the doctors and nurses on staff. However, tragedy strikes after a medical emergency, leaving the staff to mourn him during the Fourth of July shift. Meanwhile, in Hulu’s postapocalyptic series, Woodley played Annie, a former tour guide at Graceland and survivor of the Day. Her storyline dovetails with Xavier, played by series lead Sterling K. Brown, and the pair share an intense and emotional moment.

Also announced were supporting actor and actress in a limited series, which went to David Harbour and Linda Cardellini, who both won their first Emmys, for “DTF St. Louis.” In the series, they play a husband and wife whose marriage is struggling, and they become enmeshed with a local TV weatherman, played by Jason Bateman, who was also nominated in the category.

The first pair of Emmy ceremonies, formerly called the Creative Arts Emmys, were held over two nights two weekends before the Primetime Emmy Awards and honored many of the behind-the-scenes workers and craftspeople in television. An abridged version of the ceremonies will be broadcast Sept. 12 on FXX and stream on Hulu the following day. The Primetime Emmy Awards will be held Sept. 14 in Los Angeles with Mariska Hargitay as host.

The winners from Sunday’s ceremony:

Television Movie
“Remarkably Bright Creatures”

Supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or movie
David Harbour, “DTF St. Louis”

Supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie
Linda Cardellini, “DTF St. Louis”

Guest actor in a comedy series
Rob Reiner, “The Bear”

Guest actress in a comedy series
Betty Gilpin, “Widow’s Bay”

Guest actor in a drama series
Ernest Harden Jr., “The Pitt”

Guest actress in a drama series
Shailene Woodley, “Paradise”

The complete list of winners for Sunday’s ceremony can be found at televisionacademy.com.