From being homeless to becoming one of Emmerdale’s most adored stars, one cast member has an incredible backstory
Emmerdale legend’s epic rise from being homeless to ‘earning thousands’ on ITV soap
An Emmerdale icon has an off-screen story even more remarkable than some of the soap’s biggest storylines.
Over the years, viewers have been introduced to several stars who have joined the long-running programme. And while plenty have left, several have remained in the Dales, including Bob Hope actor Tony Audenshaw.
Tony shot to fame playing Bob Hope on the ITV soap back in 2000. Since then, he’s become a firm favourite and has been involved in a ton of memorable soap moments.
And in Wednesday’s episode (July 15) episode, the Woolpack Batman was seen spilling the beans to newcomer Serena Sugden (Casey Al-Shaqsy) about her newfound family.
However, for actor Tony, life hasn’t always been plain sailing as he has endured tough times trying to make ends meet while chasing his dream of acting.
Tony’s real-life homeless experience
In 2019, Tony opened up about being homeless back in the day, before having his big break in the TV world. The actor revealed he could not afford to stay in a BnB when he worked in Thorpe Park back in the 1980s, so was forced to sleep in his car in order to make ends meet.
“There were occasions where I didn’t have enough for a B&B, so I just parked up and tried to get some kip. It wasn’t easy, but you do what you have to do,” he said on Loose Women.
“I used to work at Thorpe Park, the theme park, I used to be the Thorpe Park rangers and do the voices. Up North things are much cheaper. I came down here in the 80s, and it was £70 for a BNB.
“If I was down for five nights I would sleep in the car, because I didn’t have much money coming in. I’d never do it two nights on the trot because you couldn’t really function well. It was Monday in a B&B, Tuesday in the car – the things you saw in those car parks, torches in the window.”
Tony’s reported soap earnings
Bob’s perseverance paid off as after an early stint in Brookside in the mid-90s, he was first seen on Emmerdale in 1996 in a minor role before landing the part of Bob Hope four years later.
Since then, he has clocked up more than 2,500 episodes, making him one of the soap’s longest-serving cast members.
Due to his status on the show, it’s believed Tony. could be earning thousands. Cast members earn between £400 and £2,000 per episode, which translates to annual salaries ranging from roughly £12,000 for newer cast members to over £200,000 for top, long-standing stars, like Tony.
Tony’s world record
Away from the Yorkshire set, Tony is renowned for his love of running; a hobby that has taken him all around the world, from London to Amsterdam and New York.
In 2010, he entered the London Marathon in a giant baby outfit — and crossed the line in just 3 hours and 13 minutes. The remarkable time earned him a Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon dressed as a baby, but the record has since been broken.
Running was also a hobby he shared with his late wife Ruth, who died from cancer in April 2017, when she was 43 years old, after a 16-month battle with the disease. Tony and Ruth had been married since 1996 and had two children together, a son George and a daughter Emily.
Emmerdale airs Monday to Friday at 8:00pm on ITV1 and ITVX
The embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority sued the Trump administration on Monday to stop it from depriving the region of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, saying the effort is unwarranted and violates federal laws.
The authority, better known as LAHSA, said in its Monday filing that cutting off the funds would put more than 11,000 people — 1,900 of them children — at risk of losing housing or other services.
LAHSA, a joint city-county agency overseen by political appointees, is seeking a temporary restraining order to bar the federal Housing and Urban Development Department from suspending the funds.
“The people who will be harmed by this decision are not bureaucrats,” said Gita O’Neill, LAHSA’s interim chief executive officer, in a statement Monday. “They are families, veterans, seniors, and formerly homeless Angelenos who rely on these resources to remain housed.”
The filing in federal court comes nearly three weeks after HUD officials said they were suspending LAHSA from applying for or receiving federal funds, citing financial mismanagement, fraud and a lack of safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest.
In its 46-page lawsuit, LAHSA pushed back on HUD’s allegations, saying they were not supported by the evidence. Lawyers for LAHSA portrayed HUD’s actions as part of a larger political agenda — elimination of the federally approved “Continuum of Care” system, which makes LAHSA the overarching applicant for most federal homelessness funding across Los Angeles County.
The Trump administration “has made clear it wants to scrap the program entirely in favor of a homelessness policy favoring criminal enforcement, drug treatment, institutionalization and civil commitment of the mentally ill,” the lawsuit states.
HUD officials have said they are barring LAHSA from applying for funds on behalf of the Continuum of Care, which covers 85 cities, including Los Angeles. LAHSA secured $220 million in federal funds for various agencies in 2024 and $944 million since 2021, according to the June 11 letter from HUD Deputy Secretary Andrew D. Hughes.
HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the letter, Hughes said his agency had received information that LAHSA “may have committed violations of federal law” while carrying out its obligations as part of its HUD grant agreements.
“HUD has evidence that LAHSA’s repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls, and safeguards against conflicts of interest, pose a threat to HUD, the public, and those living on the streets of Los Angeles,” he wrote.
In the letter, Hughes said that HUD’s inspector general had opened an investigation. Depending on the outcome, the money could be restored or LAHSA could be permanently barred from receiving funds.
LAHSA, in its lawsuit, said HUD has not provided any investigative findings to show violations of the funding agreements. Instead, agency lawyers said, federal officials relied on “a mash-up of old news articles, comments from public officials taken out of context, and findings from routine public audits that included recommendations that were all appropriately actioned.”
Lawyers for LAHSA contend that HUD’s actions violate the U.S. Constitution and override the dictates of Congress, which established many of the processes for distributing federal homeless funds.
The vast majority of the federal funds secured by LAHSA as a grant applicant goes toward permanent housing, agency officials said.
LAHSA, created in 1993, is overseen by a 10-member commission, half from the city and half from the county. Among those commissioners is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who has made homelessness a central part of her agenda. Each of the five county supervisors has an appointee.
At stake in the battle between HUD and LAHSA is an array of services affecting some of the region’s most vulnerable residents.
LAHSA oversees the Homeless Management Information System, the federally-mandated software that tracks homeless people across the county. It has 8,000 individual users and is used by more than 300 agencies, according to the lawsuit.
HUD’s plan to suspend the funding would prevent LAHSA from using the system to match Angelenos — those on the street and in shelters — with housing and services, the lawsuit said.
LAHSA also oversees the annual “point in time” homelessness count across the county. Agency officials have pointed to the results from those counts as evidence that they have been making steady headway, with homelessness decreasing 4.3% countywide and 5.5% within Los Angeles between 2023 and 2025.
Unsheltered homelessness, which tallies the people living outside or in their vehicles, fell by a larger margin, declining 14% across the county and 17.5% within L.A. during that period.
Despite those numbers, LAHSA’s reputation has been battered by some highly critical assessments.
Last year, a global consulting firm retained as part of a federal lawsuit over the city of L.A.’s response to homelessness found that homeless services provided by LAHSA and the city lacked adequate financial controls, leaving the system vulnerable to waste and fraud.
Several months earlier, county auditors identified lax accounting procedures that resulted in LAHSA’s failure to pay its contractors on time. Even after that report was issued, nonprofit groups with LAHSA contracts continued to report that payments were behind schedule.
Last year, the county Board of Supervisors reached a breaking point, pulling more than $300 million — the vast majority of its funds — out of LAHSA and creating its own homelessness department. City officials have been weighing a similar move in recent months.
Big Brother star Lily Benson drunkenly booked herself into The Savoy days after she spoke of how she was about to be made “homeless” and was to be evicted from her flat
Lily Benson has treated herself to a night in The Savoy(Image: INSTAGRAM)
Big Brother star Lily Benson has treated herself to a night in The Savoy – just days after she claimed she was being made homeless. The The reality star, 21, has carved out a career as an influencer since she shot to fame as a housemate on the 2024 series of the ITV2 reality show, and has kept fans up to date with her day-to-day life since.
Earlier this week, Lily told her followers that she was about to be evicted from her flat and Sunday was her moving out day, but left her packing to the the last minute after getting tickets to a Harry Styles gig.
In her first update on the hectic day, Lily posted a video on Instagram where she looked panicked as she wheeled her belongings out of the flat and wrote: “Note to self. Don’t leave moving to the last day.”
In the next update, Lily wrote: “My temporary housing accommodation,” and could be heard thanking a doorman who helped her with her luggage as she revealed she was staying in the luxury hotel. She added: “I booked this drunk last night.”
In the next slide, Lily had donned the complimentary robe and slippers with the hotel’s branding on them and Kerry Riches, who found fame on the first series of the ITV version of Big Brother and has since appeared on Good Morning Britain as a disability campaigner, commented: “I’m hpwling but you’re gonna absolutely love it. It’s my favourite hotel ever! Xx”
It comes after Warrington-born Lily, who famously spoke about working in a Chinese takeaway whilst in the house and, since moving to London for her showbiz career, has documented long-running sagas such as getting her broken Louboutins fixed, took took to TikTok on Tuesday with a far more bleak update for her followers.
But Lily didn’t seem too bothered about her living arrangement, and was more concerned about getting a tan in the coming days as she expressed her confusion over the “retirement” of the Prime Minister.
She said: “So I’m probably just gonna have to get an Airbnb or summat. Or I could go back to Warrington but the UV here is so high. Why would I go back to Warrington when I can’t get a tan there? My Stranded in London content is coming soon.”
“But my main priority right now is I have the Maybelline summer party, and the UV is eight degrees, I’m gonna get a killer tan and listen to heartbreak music. That’s my life update. It’s very solemn. I found out today that Keir Starmer has retired – what the f*** is going on?”
Lily has amassed almost half a million followers across both Instagram and TikTok since rising to fame but admitted that at the time she applied for the reality show, which has launched the careers of This Morning stars Alison Hammond and Josie Gibson as well as fellow presenters like Brian Dowling and Kate Lawler, she only did it as an act of revenge against an ex-boyfriend.
At the time, she told ITV: “I originally applied because it was my ex’s favourite TV show because we broke up. I thought ‘I’m going to go on his favourite TV show.’ I’d never heard of it.
“When I dated him, he was obsessed with it and I was like ‘What is it?’ because he was older. When we broke up, I saw the advert and I thought I’m going to apply for his favourite TV show and get on it – I didn’t think I would!”
Spencer Pratt is a showboat, a loudmouth, a troll and a self-proclaimed villain who seems willing to say anything in his quest to be the next mayor of Los Angeles.
Little wonder that his critics rolled their eyes when the former reality television star told CNN host Elex Michaelson a few weeks ago that his campaign role model is Jesus Christ, because “he was a politician.” How on earth did Pratt — a man who tosses insults with the ease of someone spitting loogies — come off boasting that his political hero was the Prince of Peace?
But anyone who ridicules the exchange as a blasphemous moment by a deluded wannabe isn’t paying attention — which is exactly the error that has allowed Pratt to storm L.A. politics. He isn’t running on an explicitly Christian message — that would be risky in a city with large Jewish, Catholic and secular constituencies. But the proud born-again evangelical is channeling the zeal of an old-fashioned tent revival, even if some of his rhetoric falls far outside the bounds of the Good Book.
In his recent memoir, Pratt recounted his conversion — actor Stephen Baldwin baptized him in a river during the 2009 season of the reality show “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.” Before that, his Christianity had consisted of wearing a black diamond cross necklace he described as “thirty grand of Jesus bling” bought from a Beverly Hills boutique. Pratt credits his faith with providing direction at a low moment in his life, as he embraced Jesus with such fervor that a pastor told him to stop joining altar calls so much during church services — once was enough.
“I needed the receipt stamped weekly,” Pratt wrote, “like a parking validation, just to make sure it stuck.”
Seventeen years later, he’s still seeking that affirmation.
The memoir comes off as a millennial version of “The Confessions of St. Augustine” — perhaps the most famous literary example of someone who saw their wreck of a life not as a series of mistakes to apologize for but as necessary failures on the road to grace. That’s why Pratt and his followers don’t see his sketchy past as a disqualifier, but rather his biggest strength. Only someone who says he was reborn in the inferno of the Palisades fire could possess the clarity and willpower needed to bring salvation to an accursed land, they argue.
In another era, Pratt would have been a welcome edition to the roster of bombastic Southern California preachers a la Aimee Semple McPherson, Chuck Smith and Gene Scott, as well as radio titans such as George Putnam and John Kobylt. His claims that only he can deliver us from damnation and that we need to repent of City Hall’s status quo at the ballot box are nothing less than a modern-day gospel to his followers. Pratt feels the pulse of L.A.’s civic malaise far better than Mayor Karen Bass or another of his opponents, City Councilmember Nithya Raman. Like any good pastor, he knows how to distill that discontent into soundbites and stories.
That’s why the self-designated “Pratt Daddy” has cast this moment in L.A. history as a modern-day Armageddon, urging voters to wage war against apostates and usher in a Second Coming, lest the city continue its supposed descent into hell. He admits in his memoir to holding “epiphanies and apocalyptic visions” in equal measure — no wonder he told a Canadian podcaster in March that life for him is a “spiritual battlefield” where “however I can be to stop evil at this point feels like a purpose.”
Spencer Pratt is shown on a television while journalists work during the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral debate at Skirball Cultural Center on May 6.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Far from me to criticize someone’s faith. But I urge Pratt to reacquaint himself with the words of the messiah in whose path he professes to follow. Humility, frugality, turning the other cheek — it’s what Jesus taught and what Pratt has long rejected.
Instead of offering compassion or viable initiatives, Pratt consistently calls the unhoused “zombies,” “vagrants,” “drug addicts” and “bums,” with a particular fixation on the naked ones. He vowed to ABC 7 recently that he would push people off L.A.’s streets and onto federal land — like herding stray wildlife. The mayoral hopeful added that “scam homeless nonprofits” exacerbate homelessness, which must have been news to Scripture-based organizations such as the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, Union Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army, which have been trying to help homeless people since before Pratt was born.
“These people, when I unplug them … they’re all going to Seattle, where the mayor will welcome them,” Pratt proclaimed.
Jesus would not only roll out the welcome mat for homeless people — he would embrace them.
Spencer, what New Testament book says that your crude campaign against the most destitute among us is holy?
Christ never looked down on itinerants, famously saying, “The Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” In the Book of Mark, when Jesus sent his disciples out into the world, he told them to bring no food or money, because good people would take care of them.
“And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them,” Jesus said.
Christ did do some name calling, but his ire was directed at the powerful, the braggarts, the hypocrites — the Pratts of his time. The Nazarene saved his kindest words for the meek, the poor, the peacemakers — who are sorely lacking in Pratt’s caravan of disaffected liberals, Trumpers and the wealthy. Christ didn’t offer counsel to the comfortable but to outcasts — lepers, prostitutes, people possessed by demons or afflicted with disease — whose modern-day contemporaries live on our streets and whom Pratt World blames for all of L.A.’s ills.
Jesus especially embraced outsiders — the Canaanite woman he initially compared to a dog because she sought help for her daughter, the Samaritan lady at the well, the Roman centurion in the Book of Matthew of whom Jesus proclaimed, “I have not found so great faith” anywhere in Israel. Pratt would have rounded up all of them in donkey carts and dumped them in Babylon, if he had been around back then.
I understand how frustrating it is to see homeless encampments in neighborhoods and to deal with unhoused people who disrupt one’s day, as my wife does at her restaurant in Santa Ana. But whenever annoyance gets the better of me, I remember what Jesus told his followers: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” warning that he would keep this in mind on Judgment Day.
Those who didn’t take his advice? “Depart from me, ye cursed,” Christ thundered, “into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Christianity — and good society — calls for us to look to our better angels, not to demonize others, as Pratt regularly does. He knows this too.
“When the whole world hates you,” Pratt wrote, “it’s comforting to think at least the big guy upstairs has your back, so long as you repent.”
But repentance means admitting you’ve done wrong. Instead, Pratt is doubling down on his anti-homelessness nastiness as more and more people join his crusade.
Let’s see how many Angelenos embrace this false prophet on election day.
Sabah fire displaces 445 people as relief efforts focus on safety and immediate aid for victims in affected areas.
Published On 19 Apr 202619 Apr 2026
Hundreds of people have been displaced after a fire destroyed about 200 homes in a coastal village in Malaysia’s Sabah state, the state news agency Bernama reported.
Authorities were notified of the fire in Sandakan district at about 1.32am on Sunday (17:32 GMT, Saturday), the district’s fire and rescue chief, Jimmy Lagung, was quoted as saying.
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“Strong winds and the close proximity of the houses caused the fire to spread rapidly, while low tide conditions also made it difficult to obtain an open water source,” Bernama quoted Lagung as saying.
The fire broke out in one of Sabah’s water villages, which feature wooden houses built on stilts and are home to some of the country’s poorest communities, including many stateless and indigenous groups.
About 445 people have been displaced so far, Bernama said, citing unofficial figures of people registered at a temporary relief centre in Sandakan.
Datuk Walter Kenson, head of the Sandakan District Disaster Management Committee, said examination of the village found the homes of the affected residents “are no longer safe to live in”.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said the federal government was coordinating with Sabah authorities to provide basic assistance and temporary relocation for those affected.
“The priority now is the safety of the victims and immediate assistance on the ground,” he said in a Facebook post.
