Champions League Match of the Day pundit Guillem Balague, who attended Real Madrid’s match at Benfica on Tuesday, explains the aftermath of the alleged racist incident between Vinicius Jr and Gianluca Prestianni.
READ MORE: Vinicius: Eight years at Real Madrid, 20 cases of alleged racist abuse
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Miss J speaks out in Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model(Image: Courtesy of Netflix)
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GORDON Ramsay has revealed what REALLY happened at Brooklyn Beckham’s wedding – including THAT dance with mum Victoria.
Last month, Brooklyn posted an explosive statement claiming his mum danced “inappropriately on” him at his lavish wedding in 2022.
The 26-year-old’s camp said it involved the former Spice Girl grinding against him for the first dance in 2022.
They claimed he was left in tears while wife Nicola Peltz, 31, was devastated — with the events captured on videotape.
Victoria has since become victim to hundreds of online memes, mocking the couple’s first dance.
Unnamed “friends” of the Beckhams, however, have furiously hit back at the allegations.
READ MORE ON THE BECKHAMS
And now Gordon has set the record straight.
”We were there at the wedding,” he says. “There was nothing salacious. There was nothing inappropriate. Everyone was having fun, having a dance.”
But, Gordon, DID SHE GRIND???
”No! Nothing of the sort. It was fun.”
He added: “I haven’t seen any of the memes, I heard about them of course, but Victoria’s got a great sense of humour. She’s great.
“She’s right to be upset (about the wedding) but she can bat that other s*** away in a heartbeat.
”Victoria and Tana have spoken a lot, they are probably closer than ever – they’re like two peas in a pod, those two. She has offered lots of support.”
During the interview, Gordon also insisted that good friend David WILL end the ongoing feud with son Brooklyn.
The star has been in contact with the aspiring chef, offering messages of support and encouraging the 26-year-old to heal the heartbreaking rift.
The Michelin starred restauranteur said: “Victoria is upset, and I know 24/7, seven days a week, just how much David loves Brooklyn.
“Brooklyn and I have messaged a little bit, our relationship is solid. I love him – his heart is incredible.
“But it’s hard, isn’t it, when you’re infatuated. Love is blind. It’s easy to get up on that roller coaster, and get carried away. But it will come back.
“I’ve seen first hand just how good parents they are. David as a dad is just incredible. They have both put so much energy into their kids, and I know just how many times they have got Brooklyn out of the s***.”
Gordon continued: “I think it’s going to be a matter of time before Brooklyn takes a good look at himself and understands just what his parents mean to him.
”He’s desperate to forge his own way, and I respect that from Brooklyn. It’s such a good thing to do. But remember where you came from.
”And honestly, one day you’re not going to have your mum and dad, and you need to understand that. That penny will drop.
”I just want Brooklyn to take a moment to himself. And remember: You’re half mum, half dad. And you’re an amazing young man. But, boy, they’ve done more for you than anyone did in your entire life.
”Time’s going to be the best healer, and David will absolutely get that relationship back on track.”
While Brooklyn has blocked many of his family members on Instagram, he and Gordon still follow one another.
The chef, who has almost 20mn followers, has helped the youngster, and publicly backed his cooking endeavours where others were quick to mock.
Friends for almost two and a half decades, meanwhile, Posh and Becks, and Gordon and Tana have been there, through thick and thin, for one another.
The donkeys are pissed off. Put upon, out of work and victims of decades-long systemic abuse, it’s time, they have decided, to protest.
The donkeys, metaphorically, are us.
At least that’s the premise of “asses.masses,” a video game played by and for a live audience. It’s theater for the post-Twitch age, performance art for those weaned on “The Legend of Zelda” or “Pokémon.” Most important, it’s entertainment as political dissent for these divisive times. Though the project dates to 2018, it’s hard not to draft 2026 onto its narrative. Whether it’s unjust incarceration, mass layoffs or topics centered around tech’s automation of jobs, “asses.masses,” despite generally lasting more than seven hours — yes, seven-plus hours — is a work of urgency.
The audience cheers various decisions made during the playing of “asses.masses” at UCLA Nimoy Theater.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
And for the audience at the Saturday showing at the UCLA Nimoy Theater, it felt like a call to arms. Citizens executed in the street for exercising their right to free speech? That’s in here. Run-ins with authorities that recall images seen in multiple American cities over the past few months? Also in here, albeit in a retro, pixel art style that may bring to mind the “Final Fantasy” series from its Super Nintendo days.
In a city that’s been ravaged by fires, ICE raids and a series of entertainment industry layoffs, the sold-out crowd of nearly 300 was riled up. Chants of “ass power!” — the donkey’s protest slogan — were heard throughout the day as attendees politely gathered near a single video game controller on a dais to play the game, becoming not just the avatar for the donkeys but a momentary leader for the collective. Cheers would erupt when a young donkey reached the conclusion that “I kinda think the system is rigged against everyone.” And when technological advances, clearly a stand-in for artificial intelligence, were described as “evil, soulless, job-taking, child-killing machines,” there were knowing claps, as if no exaggeration was stated.
“Our theater is supposed to be a rehearsal for life,” says Patrick Blenkarn, who co-created the game with Milton Lim, interdisciplinary artists from Canada who often work with interactive media.
“We grew up in a radical political tradition of theater,” says Patrick Blenkarn, right, who co-created “asses.masses” with Milton Lim.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“We grew up in a radical political tradition of theater, where this is where we can rehearse emotional experience — catharsis,” Blenkarn says. “That is what art is supposed to be doing. We have been very interested in the idea that if we come together, what are we going to do and how are we going to do it? What we are seeing in your country, and other countries, is the question of how are we going to change our behavior, and will the people who currently have the controller listen? And if they don’t, what do we do?”
Video games are inherently theatrical. Even if one is playing solo on the couch, a video game is a dialogue, a performance between a player and unseen designers. Blenkarn and Lim also spoke in an interview prior to the show of wanting to re-create the sensation of gathering around a television and passing a controller back and forth among family or friends while offering commentary on someone’s play style. Only at scale. And while I thought “asses.masses” could work, too, as a solitary experience at home, its themes of collective action and reaching a group consensus, often through boos or shouts of encouragement, made it particularly well-suited for a performance.
The UCLA Nimoy Theater played host to “asses.masses” this weekend.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Beginning at 1 p.m. and ending shortly after 8 p.m., coincidentally, says Blenkarn, the length or so of a working day, not everyone made it to the “asses.masses” conclusion. About a quarter of the audience — a crowd that was clearly familiar with the multiple video game style represented in “asses.masses” — couldn’t stand the endurance test. But in a time of binge-watching, I didn’t find the length prohibitive. There were multiple intermissions, but those became part of the show as well, as there was no set time limit. Blenkarn and Lim were asking the audience, via a prompt on the screen, to jointly agree upon a length, emphasizing, once again, the importance of collective cooperation.
And “asses.masses” holds interest because it, in part, embraces the animated absurdity and inherent experimentation of the medium. While often in a retro pixel art style, at times the game shifted into a more modern open-world look. And the story veers down multiple paths and side-quests — some requiring wild coordination such as a rhythm game meant to simulate donkey sex, and others more tense, such as “Metal Gear”-like sneaking, complete with the donkeys hiding in cardboard boxes.
Audiences vote, often by cheering or booing, on choices in “asses.masses.”
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The way “asses.masses” shifted tones and tenor recalled a game such as “Kentucky Route Zero,” another serialized and alternately realistic and fanciful game with political overtones. Other times, such as the surreal world of the donkey afterlife, I thought of the colorfully unpredictable universe of the music-focused game “The Artful Escape,” a quest for personal identity and self-actualization. The donkeys in “asses.masses” are an ensemble, often trying to steer the audience in different directions. As much as some push for a protest as a way for communal healing and progressive action, others take a cynical outlook, viewing that path as “intellectually compromised” by a “commitment to past ideals.”
The goal, says Lim, is to create a sort of game within a game — one that’s being played with a controller and one of debate among a crowd. “It’s not about having a billion endings,” Lim says. “We understand it’s a theater show, and we as writers have objectives for what we want it to go towards. But the decisions people make in the room really matter. The game is half in the room and half on the screen.”
The audience, for instance, can play a role in keeping certain donkeys alive. Or what jobs a group of renegade donkeys may choose. Our audience voted for the donkeys to enter the circus, at least until they were deemed obsolete and sent to detention centers, which felt uncomfortably of the moment. Such topicality is what drew Edgar Miramontes, leader of CAP UCLA, to the show, despite his admittance to being largely unfamiliar with the world of video games.
“It doesn’t shy away from the nuances of when organizing happens and what we’re seeing in our world right now,” Miramontes says. “There are instances in which a donkey may die because, in organizing to achieve their goals, these things happen. We have seen this in our Civil Rights Movement and other movements and the current movement that’s happening right now around ICE.”
The Nimoy event, part of UCLA’s current Center for the Art of Performance season, was the 50th time “asses.masses” had been performed. The show will continue to tour, with a performance in Boston set for this upcoming weekend and it will reach Chicago later this year. Our donkeys on Saturday didn’t solve all the world’s inequalities, but they did live full lives, attending raves, engaging in casual sex and even playing video games.
A player celebrates during “asses.masses,” live action theatrical video game.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The show is an argument that progress isn’t always linear, but community is constant. As one of the donkeys says at one point, “If you aren’t doing something that brings you joy, do something different.”
“In case anyone is like, ‘I don’t want to be lectured at,’ or I don’t want to do all this work, it feels like you’re just having fun with friends,” Lim says. “Maybe revolution doesn’t always look like just this. Maybe it’s also this.”
And like many a video game, maybe it’s a chance to live out some fantasies. “We do beat up riot cops in the game,” Blenkarn says, “in case anyone is hoping for that opportunity.”
ACTRESS Helen Flanagan has spilt the tea on her relationship with former Towie star James Argent – and what happened with a big X Factor singer.
As well as detailing behind-the-scenes beef on the Coronation Street set, Helen, 35, has lifted the lid on her time on Channel 5 reality show, Celebrity Super Spa.
Helen took part alongside Towie’s James Argent, celebrity chefs Rusty Lee and John Burton-Race, Shameless actor Jody Latham and Most Haunted’s Yvette Fielding.
The show aired in 2013 and followed six celebrities as they worked in a real-life spa in Liverpool.
The actress has now spilled the beans in her explosive new memoir, Head & Heart: Break-ups, Breakdowns and Being Rosie on her romances on and off screen.
The former Corrie star, who shares three kids with ex fiance Scott Sinclair, spoke about chemistry with Towie star Arg while they were on Channel 5’s Celebrity Super Spa.
She revealed: “I became firm friends with James ‘Arg’ Argent from The Only Way is Essex and we would spend all our time together.
“I know the producers were hoping for a show romance to develop and they’d try to push me towards him, dropping hints like, ‘Ah, you and Arg are so cute together…’
“But I was too mixed up over Scott and I didn’t even know if I actually fancied Arg although I did like him a lot.
“He definitely wasn’t my usual type. I usually went for sporty guys who were into their health and fitness whereas Arg would eat four Greggs sausage rolls for breakfast.
“I think he was probably more into me than I was him, but there was a brief moment of heat between us which felt… weird.
“We were in my hotel room, lying on the bed while he was stroking my back – I think it could have spilled over then, but there was something holding me back.
“And when that moment passed, it was like it was done. I wasn’t over Scott so it would have been a mistake to use Arg as a rebound.”
Opening up about a flirtation with former The X Factor star James Arthur, she said: “When I got back, I was booked to do a BBC Three comedy panel show called Sweat the Small Stuff which was presented by Nick Grimshaw and had Rochelle Humes and Melvin Odoom as the team captains.
“The episode I was on also happened to feature James Arthur who had won The X Factor in 2012 and you could say that we, erm, hit it off.
“Egged on by Grimmy, me and James flirted pretty outrageously throughout the filming and swapped numbers afterwards with a loose arrangement to meet up for a drink in the not too distant future.
“Nothing ever came of it apart from the exchange of some harmless WhatsApps, but once the episode aired a few days later, the press got hold of it and ran multiple stories saying we were dating.”
The Celebs Go Dating star added: “Scott was livid about it and tried everything he could to get hold of me, ringing my mobile and calling my parents’ landline.
“I didn’t want to speak to him. He’d been so horrible to me and I was trying to get over him, something I felt like I was making good progress with.”
The soap star split from her “toxic” relationship with her footballer ex in October 2022 after 13 years together and share three children – Matilda, Delilah and Charlie.
Following her split from footballer Scott, Helen enjoyed a “situationship” with boxer David Hayes.
While she first met David on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here back in 2012, things didn’t turn romantic until 11 years later – but they broke off their fling in December 2023.
She also revealed that she once batted off the attention of disgraced influencer Andrew Tate after matching with him on a dating app.
The actress shot to fame as a child star on the ITV soap playing tearaway Rosie Webster.
The mum-of-three now works as an influencer and model, and has starred in reality shows like Celebs Go Dating.
The Rosie Webster star on the ITV soap opera also confirmed a rift with Corrie co-star Ryan Thomas at the time of her soap departure.
She revealed she told him to “f*** off” during one tense moment on set before she quit altogether.
Helen’s book Head & Heart: Break-ups, Breakdowns and Being Rosie is out now
