NICKI Chapman has revealed she’s had a FOURTH operation on her foot as she shared a snap from her hospital bed.
The TV host, 59, best known for presenting Escape to The Countryside, Pop Idol and Wanted Down Under, took to Instagram to post a health update with her 160k followers.
Nicki Chapman has opened up about her FOURTH operation on her footCredit: nickichappers/InstagramNicki has presented the likes of Escape to The Countryside, Pop Idol and Wanted Down UnderCredit: PA
In one picture she put her thumb up as she pointed at her boot while in hospital, followed by another of her out and about in London with a walking stick for support.
She captioned the post: “Every little step.
Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter
Thank you!
“Slowly getting there & managed to walk to the end of the road. Result! Note snazzy stick mainly to keep people away from my foot!
“Fourth op over the years – never gonna make Strictly Come Dancing nor run a marathon but grateful for each tweak keeping me mobile & pain free.
She’s also had problems with her ankle since she was 15 and was diagnosed with ankle spurs.
The NHS website describes it as: “Osteophytes (bone spurs) are bony lumps that grow on the bones in the spine or around joints. They form when a joint or bone has been damaged by arthritis, but do not always cause problems.”
Nicki previously recalled: “I started getting pains that felt like I’d twisted it – I couldn’t work out what I’d done.
“It was so sore I went to my doctor and was referred to a consultant who diagnosed ankle spurs. Bone spurs are tiny pointed outgrowths of bone which occur where the normal bone keeps growing.
“They were causing a restriction within my ankle, which became inflamed and excruciatingly painful.
“I had an operation to remove them, and remember my consultant warning me against pursuing any career involving standing up – otherwise I’d have serious problems by the time I was 30.
“I’d always wanted to be a theatrical make-up artist, which involves lots of standing, so my career dreams were shattered. But I followed his advice because looking after my wellbeing was paramount.”
20 years later Nicki had to have a second operation, and underwent surgery for a third time in 2015.
TAMPA, Fla. — José Ramírez’s mental mistake and fielding error cost Cleveland in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series, a day after his bat helped boost the Guardians to an opening win.
He left third base uncovered on Chandler Simpson’s fourth-inning infield chopper, then misplayed Ben Williamson’s grounder for an error that led to three unearned runs as the Tampa Bay Rays evened the best-of-seven series with a 3-1 win Tuesday night.
“It’s a little bit faster here with the surface and I was playing parallel to the base,” Ramírez said through a translator. “The ball bounced right on the edge between the dirt and the turf, and that’s what made it a little more difficult for me. I tried to knock it down.”
“It’s frustrating. I feel bad because I wasn’t able to make that play and after that the runs came in. I feel bad about that,” he added.
A seven-time All-Star who has finished among the top five in MVP voting six times, Ramírez had three hits and scored twice in Cleveland’s 7-3 win in the opener.
Game 2 was 0-0 with Victor Mesa Jr. on first and two out in the fourth when Chandler Simpson beat out a high chopper to shortstop Brayan Rocchio.
Ramírez, shifted toward second base on the left-handed hitter, took a few steps toward Simpson and watched the shortstop throw to first. Seeing third base uncovered, Mesa rounded second and sped to third standing up as Ramírez tried in vain to catch up.
Four pitches later, Williamson hit a two-hopper that struck the edge of where the artificial turf meets the dirt near third. The ball skipped between Ramírez’s legs into left, allowing Mesa to score.
“José kind of got stuck. It looked like he just didn’t move his feet,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “Just kind of looked like he sat back a little bit with his feet set instead of moving his feet. So tough break right there and obviously they capitalized.”
Liam Hicks pulled Parker Messier’s next pitch, a slider, into right-center for a two-run single and a 3-0 lead.
“They’ve done that all year. When they smell blood, they take it and run,” Vogt said. “We had some sloppy plays in the field that we need to clean up.”
Ramírez homered in Games 4 and 5 of the Division Series as Cleveland overcome an 0-2 series deficit, the first Cleveland player to homer in consecutive postseason games since Francisco Lindor in 2018.
PHOENIX — An Arizona congressional candidate says she was knocked unconscious and sexually assaulted this summer when repairing campaign signs overnight.
Bernadette Greene-Placentia told investigators that two men raped her, and she kicked her feet up at one point to try to fight back. She said she felt the weight of one of her attackers on her body, and had bruises on her arms from being held down, a bump on her head and other injuries, according to police reports.
“I knew that I had been knocked out,” Greene-Placentia told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Greene-Placentia, 52, is a Democrat who is challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh for the 8th Congressional District seat representing parts of metro Phoenix that are reliably red. She said she told her husband and campaign staff about the mid-August attack in Sun City days after it happened. The Phoenix New Times first reported on it Wednesday.
Greene-Placentia told the AP she was disgusted that two men took control of her body and she had no say in it. She said she decided to speak out publicly when she realized she was telling voters she would advocate for them when she was not advocating for herself.
“My takeaway is that I have a lot more empathy and understanding of why so many women don’t come forward,” she said. “And, and I’m hoping that I can encourage them.”
Greene-Placentia said she couldn’t recall many details of the Aug. 14 assault, including the exact location or a description of the men, though she said one wore black boots and had small feet. She told investigators one of the men used an expletive to describe her, and she believes he referenced her political party.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on its investigation of the attack.
Greene-Placentia is a former long-haul trucker and later ran a small transportation company, according to her campaign.
In a social media post supporting Democrat Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 run for the presidency, Greene-Placentia called herself a former Republican and a “never Trumper,” and said she voted Libertarian in 2016. Greene-Placentia later became more engaged in Arizona Democratic politics.
She said she often put up and repaired campaign signs overnight because it was cooler than the blistering summer days and there was less traffic.
Arizona Democratic Party treasurer Greg Freeman said he got a call from Greene-Placentia, a friend who ran his 2024 campaign for a county assessor, the morning of Aug. 17. She told him she had been sexually assaulted by two men, Freeman said, and he could tell she wasn’t ready to go to the police or share it publicly.
“Obviously she was processing it on the phone,” Freeman said. “She was just in shock. She was just horrified by what happened.”
Greene-Placentia said she wishes she had called police immediately and gone to the hospital. After the attack, she took multiple showers and washed the clothes she was wearing, police reports state.
The embarrassment and anger made it hard for her to come forward, she said. She reported the attack to police in late August.
At the opening of “The Buddhist Bug” at the Vincent Price Art Museum on Saturday, guests will see a 328-foot-long orange insect. Its body will coil around the museum’s gallery, lobby and atrium, and poke through the walls. The bug’s head, covered in a hijab, will be in one room, and its feet, which some might be tempted to tickle, will be in another.
The creature is occupied and controlled by Anida Yoeu Ali, a Cambodian-born artist who lives in Tacoma, Wash. Ali’s numerous performance-based exhibits explore her Cambodian-American identity and Buddhist and Muslim religions. The bug is her “totally humorous take on hybridity.”
As the bug, Ali doesn’t speak. She mostly stands or kneels and makes facial expressions in reaction to her surroundings and passersby. But she likes to engage with visitors, who can either touch her elaborate garment, talk to her, take pictures of her or simply observe her.
Artist Anida Yoeu Ali’s exhibit, “Anida Yoeu Ali: The Buddhist Bug,” features a 328-foot-long performance installation at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
“I get a lot of people who ask for a photo or they’ll ask for a hug,” says Ali. “There’s so many stories that get whispered into my ear. A lot happens when you can hold someone’s attention with just your eyes. There’s a vulnerability that happens when you make eye-to-eye contact without any words involved.”
Ali likes to use expansive spaces and incorporate fabrics and textiles, whether it’s a red, sequin-covered chador or a tubular-looking worm made out of polyester, Lycra and spandex. Such things make the petite artist feel “taller and larger than life.”
Ali will appear in the suit for only two hours during the show’s first and last days. But for the rest of the exhibit’s run, the museum will display the bug in its entirety, in addition to sculpture, photographs and video that document how Ali has spent the last 15 years becoming her creature alter ego.
Born in Battambang, Ali, 52, is of mixed Malay, Khmer, Thai and Cham ethnicity, and was raised Muslim in a country that’s 96% Buddhist. She and her family left Cambodia in 1979 to escape the genocide committed by the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and settled in Chicago. Ali studied at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Art Institute of Chicago. She’s currently a senior artist-in-residence at the University of Washington Bothell.
Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum Steven Wong and Executive Director Sonia Mak of Asian Arts Initiative.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Ali conceived one of her best-known performance-based works, “The Red Chador,” in 2014 after relocating to Cambodia for a few years. She wanted to address the rise of Islamophobia in the wake of major events happening at the time, including France’s ban on facial coverings (the country had already banned the hijab years prior) and the terrorist attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Ali also wanted to confront the politicization of Muslim women’s dress and contradict the “imagery of Muslim women as joyless and depressed.”
“It was an opportunity to put on a chador, but one of my choosing and one of my designs,” Ali says. “It was to also honor the Muslim women in my background. My mother, grandmother, aunties and cousins all covered and did so joyfully. That was never an issue for them.”
Ali wore the red sequin chador in 15 cities, including at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2015, where, during a 12-hour performance, she threatened to chop off 99 baguettes. The installation was meant to challenge Muslim stereotypes while making a subversive nod to the bread as a famous French symbol. “The Red Chador” also made a stop earlier this year at the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery at Cal Poly Pomona.
“The Buddhist Bug” was created in 2011, a few years before “The Red Chador,” and inspired by the pervasiveness of the saffron-colored robes worn by monks in Cambodia. The piece not only drew on the color orange but was also influenced by a collapsible play tunnel she received as a gift after giving birth to her first child.
A photo titled “Into Dreamland, The Buddhist Bug, 2015,” (photographed by Masahiro Sugano), and featured at the Vincent Price Art Museum as part of the exhibit, “Anida Yoeu Ali: The Buddhist Bug.”
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Ali wears a hijab while in the suit and uses a second person, usually a model or intern, to provide the bug’s feet — though she insists that those are the “bug’s feet.” It’s a fun, childlike interpretation of the complexities of coming from two cultures and religions.
“I wanted to do something that was tapping into my diasporic identity or what I call the ‘diasporic dilemma,’” says Ali. “This notion of going back and forth and constantly feeling like you’re not enough in one country or one culture. The bug is the result of that. You look at it and it’s a big orange creature. But for me it’s more of a tunnel structure that can double as a bridge, an entity that can connect two points or two locations. That’s the poetic part of the project.”
Sonia Mak, who co-curated the exhibit at VPAM with museum director Steve Wong, invited Ali to show in L.A. after catching one of her performances at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in 2024.
Photographs in the installation — some taken by Ali’s husband, Masahiro Sugano — capture Ali dressed as the bug in cities all over the world. Some are placed on a sculpture resembling the Rub el Hizb, an Islamic star shaped like an octagram. The rest are mounted on the walls and show the bug in places like Battambang and the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, at a restaurant, in a classroom, on a boat and a bridge.
In one image, Ali rides in a bicycle carriage. In others she stands outside a mosque while kids play with the bug’s feet and sits in an abandoned movie theater, her tail wrapped around the seats. (Angelina Jolie, whose adopted son Maddox is from Cambodia, was recently photographed visiting these cinemas and is reportedly renovating the theaters.)
Ali envisions someday performing as the bug in the desert in the Middle East and maybe building a children’s public playground as a “fun manifestation” of the project.
“I come from a country with an awful, violent history,” she says. “I have a unique set of identities and perspectives that aren’t easily explainable, which is why I make art. I want people to think about how weird and strange the bug looks, but I want them to feel happy looking at the orange. I love it when the grotesque and the beautiful sit side by side. It makes for some magical artistic moments.”
‘Anida Yoeu Ali: The Buddhist Bug’
Where: Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College, 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park When: Sept. 26 to May 22, see website for times Cost: free Info:vpam.org.
