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The Chase Celebrity Christmas Special is airing on Christmas Eve on ITV

Bradley Walsh is left gobsmacked after one star banks a ‘rare’ amount of cash on The Chase Celebrity Christmas Special.

The festive episode airs on Christmas Eve and sees comedian Lucy Porter, Countdown host Colin Murray, Strictly Come Dancing vocalist Tommy Blaize, and actor and comedian Asim Chaudhry take on five Chasers, who are dressed in festive costumes.

In an exclusive clip obtained by The Mirror, it sees Lucy, 52, impress during the cash builder round. At the start of the round, it sees host Bradley, 65, say: “Now, you and I, we’ve known each other a long while. You love quizzing, don’t you?”

To which Lucy admits: “I do, I do. My dad used to, when I was a kid, if we had dinner, you didn’t get pudding unless you could answer a quiz question.

“So, every time I would answer a question, he’d need to give me a slice of Viennetta or an Arctic roll!”

Lucy then gets stuck into the cash builder round, where each correct answer is worth £1,000. In the 60 seconds, Lucy is able to correctly answer ten questions, earning an incredible £10,000.

After the impressive cash builder round, the audience and Lucy’s fellow teammates erupt into cheers.

Meanwhile, host Bradley says: “Well that was very, very rare that we get five figures in a cash builder. Ten grand, congratulations, time to face a Chaser!”

Mark Labbett, Shaun Wallace, Anne Hegerty, Paul Sinha, Jenny Ryan, and Darragh Ennis will all appear on the special festive instalment of the ITV quiz show.

The fancy dress theme this year is Christmas Lunch. The Beast is a Christmas Pudding, The Vixen is a Brussels sprout, The Menace is a Pig in Blanket, The Sinnerman is a Turkey and the The Governess is a Christmas Cracker.

Anne looks glamorous has ever in a blonde curly wig with a glitzy red ballgown for the special occasion where the others don eye-catching costumes to get into character.

The Chase Christmas Special airs on Wednesday 24 December at 5.55pm on ITV1.

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Bowen Yang, a fan-favorite cast member of “Saturday Night Live,” is leaving the series after this week’s episode.

Representatives for Yang and “Saturday Night Live” did not comment on the move Friday. However, on Saturday, he confirmed his upcoming departure via a post on his Instagram account. “i loved working at SNL, and most of all i loved the people. i was there at a time when many things in the world started to seem futile, but working at 30 rock taught me the value in showing up anyway when people make it worthwile,” he wrote. “i’m grateful for every minute of my time there.”

Yang also thanked Ariana Grande, this week’s host and his “Wicked” co-star,” for “sending me off in the dreamiest way I could imagine.” The pair, alongside musical guest Cher, were seen in promos for Saturday’s episode.

There has been recent speculation about whether Yang would finish the current season of the show. He has appeared on “SNL” since Season 45 after a year of working on the writing staff.

Yang took on a variety of roles in the NBC sketch comedy series, including impersonating Vice President J.D. Vance, Fran Lebowitz and pygmy hippopotamus Moo Deng. Yang received his fifth Emmy nomination for his work on “SNL’s” historic 50th season.

Outside of “SNL,” Yang has appeared in several other projects recently. He co-hosts the popular podcast “Las Culturistas,” with fellow comedian Matt Rogers, and their seminal Las Culturistas Culture Awards was televised for the first time this year, airing on Bravo and streaming on Peacock. Yang also appeared in the “Wicked” film and its recent sequel, “Wicked: For Good,” and has starred in several other feature films, including “The Wedding Banquet,” “Fire Island” and “Dicks the Musical.”

In early December, Yang confirmed he and Rogers would be co-writing and starring in an untitled comedy for Searchlight Pictures. The movie will reportedly follow two Americans who fly across the world to try to get into the exclusive Berghain nightclub in Berlin.

Yang is not the first “Saturday Night Live” cast member to leave midseason — he joins the company of past “SNL” greats like Cecily Strong, Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler and a handful of others who exited the show outside of the traditional period for departures while the show is on summer hiatus.

Prior to the start of Season 51, NBC and executive producer Lorne Michaels made some major cast changes, adding five featured players after a series of departures. Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim exited the series before the season premiere in October.

Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska joined the cast for the current season. Marshall was previously on the “SNL” writing staff and is known for his on-camera appearances as a part of the Please Don’t Destroy comedy trio.

The 51st season of “Saturday Night Live” will continue in early 2026 and run through the end of the television season in May.

Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman are leaving Strictly Come Dancing the 2025 series draws to a close

Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman’s “true feelings: about leaving Strictly Come Dancing might have been uncovered.

The beloved hosting duo shocked fans back in October when they announced that they would be stepping down from the programme at the end of the current series.

They have fronted the BBC programme together since 2014, with Claudia replacing Sir Bruce Forsyth, who presented the original series with Tess from 2004.

Tess previously took to Instagram to share a statement, and was showered in support from fans and friends alike. She wrote: “After 21 unforgettable years, the time has come to say goodbye to Strictly Come Dancing.”

The star added: “This isn’t a goodbye to glitter, sequins, or Saturday night sparkle (I could never say goodbye to those!). Strictly will forever hold a special place in my heart – but it does feel like the right time to hand over the reins.”

Tess and Claudia will present their last live show tonight (Saturday, December 20), as Strictly returns to screens for this year’s grand final. The pair will then appear on the show’s festive special on Christmas Day, where they will take part in a memorable performance.

Now, a body language expert has examined Tess and Claudia’s recent TV appearances and pointed to subtle gestures that hint at unease behind the scenes.

Speaking on behalf of Betfair Casino, Darren Stanton explained that the pair’s body language suggests that they are nervous ahead of their Strictly exit.

“What stands out for me when I watch Tess and Claudia discuss their departure in interviews is how their posture, voices, and micro-expressions always soften more than usual. It’s clear they are masking a good deal of emotion beneath a very controlled surface. From a body-language perspective, it doesn’t read like a light or casual decision,” he said.

“There are clear signs of nerves from both of them about the future, visible in subtle cues such as lip biting, the way they look at each other, and how they turn toward one another when discussing their departure, almost as if they are operating as a single unit.

“It doesn’t seem to be apprehension about the future itself, but about the difficulty of leaving something familiar.

“Tess, who has been part of the show for a long time, shows small gestures and micro expressions of nerves, like wringing her hands. Claudia shows similar gestures, proving that they both feel the impact of leaving the show.”

Since the announcement of Tess and Claudia’s exits, speculation has been swirling over who could step into their shoes, with Zoe Ball, Janette Manrara, Fleur East and Rylan Clark all in the running.

Tonight, Karen Carney, Amber Davies and George Clarke will battle it out for the chance to lift this year’s Glitterball Trophy. They will each perform three dances in the hopes of impressing the judges and voting public. These include a Showdance, Judges’ Choice, and their favourite routine from the series.

Strictly Come Dancing is available to stream on BBC iPlayer

Washington, DC – For the past two years, weekdays for Susanna have meant thumbing through picture books, organising cubby holes and leading classroom choruses of songs.

But her work as a pre-school teacher came to a screeching halt in October, when she found out her application to renew her work permit had been denied.

Susanna, who uses a pseudonym in this article for fear of reprisals, is one of the nearly 10 percent of teachers in the United States who are immigrants.

But while the US has increasingly looked abroad to fill teacher shortages, some foreign-born teachers say the deportation push under President Donald Trump has threatened their livelihoods — and risks traumatising their students.

Susanna, an asylum applicant who fled violence in Guatemala nearly a decade ago, said that losing her permit meant she had to stop working immediately.

She recalls breaking the news to her students, some of whom are only three years old. Many were too young to understand.

“In one week, I lost everything,” Susanna told Al Jazeera in Spanish. “When I told the kids goodbye, they asked me why, and I told them, ‘I can only tell you goodbye.’ There were kids that hugged me, and it hurt my heart a lot.”

Looking abroad for teachers

Estimates vary as to how many foreign-born teachers currently work in the US. But one 2019 report from George Mason University found that there were 857,200 immigrants among the country’s 8.1 million teachers, in roles ranging from pre-school to university.

For the 2023-2024 school year alone, the US government brought 6,716 full-time teachers to the country on temporary exchange visas to fill openings in pre-kindergarten, primary and secondary school education.

Many hailed from the Philippines, as well as countries like Jamaica, Spain and Colombia.

The uncertainty for immigrants under Trump’s second term, however, has proven disruptive to schools that rely heavily on foreign-born teachers.

That is the case for the pre-school where Susanna worked, CommuniKids, which offers language immersion programmes in Washington, DC.

Cofounder and president Raul Echevarría estimates that immigrants — both citizens and non-citizens working with legal authorisation — comprise about 90 percent of CommuniKids’s staff.

But Echevarría told Al Jazeera that the push to rescind legal pathways to immigration has jeopardised the employment of several faculty members.

Five other teachers at the school have seen their ability to work affected by changes to the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programme.

All five, Echevarría explained, were originally from Venezuela. But in October, the Trump administration ended TPS status for more than 350,000 Venezuelan citizens, including the teachers at CommuniKids.

Their authorisation to work legally in the US will expire on October 2, 2026, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website.

“These teachers lost their ability to make a living,” Echevarria said, noting that his school requires educators with expertise in languages like Spanish, French and Mandarin.

‘Strong bonds’

For the schools themselves, the losses can be devastating. Every state in the US has reported teacher shortages to the federal government.

But advocates say the high stress and low pay of education make teachers difficult to recruit and keep.

That leads some states to look abroad for education workers. In North Carolina, for example, 1,063 foreign nationals worked full-time as grade-school teachers on temporary J-1 visas during the 2023-2024 school year.

The top destinations for such recruits were all southern states: North Carolina was followed by Florida with 996 teachers on J-1 visas, and Texas with 761.

But Echevarria said some of the biggest impacts of the deportation drive are felt by the students themselves.

“Our students develop strong bonds with their teachers, and all of a sudden, overnight, they lost their teachers,” said Echevarría.

“Their number one superpower”, he added, “is their ability to empathise and to create strong, effective bonds with people from any background”.

But when those bonds are broken, there can be mental health consequences and setbacks for educational achievement, particularly among younger children.

A 2024 study published by the American Educational Research Association found that, when teachers leave midyear, children’s language development takes a measurable hit.

In other words, the loss of a familiar teacher — someone who knows their routines, strengths and fears — can quietly stall a child’s progress. The consequences extend to a child’s sense of self and stability.

Mental health consequences

For parents like Michelle Howell, whose child attends CommuniKids, the loss of teachers has also made the classroom environment feel fragile.

“The teachers there aren’t just teachers for these young kids,” Howell said of CommuniKids. “They’re like extended family.

“They hug them, they hold them, they do the things a parent would do. When those people disappear, it’s not just hard for the kids. It’s hard for everyone.”

Howell, who is Chinese American, said the sudden disappearances reminded her of her own family’s history.

“I used to read about things like this happening in China, the place my family left to find safety,” she said. “It’s very disturbing to know that what we ran from back then is our reality now. People disappear.”

School psychologist Maria C, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her work in the Texas public school system, has noticed the children she works with struggling with instability caused by the deportation push.

The disappearance of a loved one or mentor — say, a favourite teacher — could flood a child’s body with cortisol, the hormone meant to protect them in moments of danger, she explained.

But when that stress becomes chronic, the same hormone starts to hurt more than it helps. It interferes with memory, attention and emotional regulation.

“For some, it looks like anxiety. For others, it’s depression or sudden outbursts,” Maria said. “They’re in fight-or-flight mode all day.”

She added that selective mutism, an anxiety disorder, is on the rise among the children she sees, who range in age from five to 12.

“It used to be rare, maybe one case per school,” she said. “Now I see it constantly. It’s a quiet symptom of fear.”

Preparing for the worst

Back at CommuniKids, Echevarría explained that he and other staff members have put together contingency plans, just in case immigration enforcement arrives at the pre-school.

The aim, he said, is to make both employees and students feel safer coming to class.

“We put those steps in writing because we wanted our staff to know they’re not alone,” he said. “We have attorneys on call. We’re partners with local police. But above all, our job is to protect our children.”

But as an added precaution, teachers are advised to carry their passports or work permits with them.

Even Echevarría, a US citizen born in Virginia, said he carries his passport wherever he goes. The fear of deportation has a way of lingering.

“I’m bilingual and of Hispanic descent,” he said. “Given how things are, I want to be able to prove I’m a citizen if anyone ever questions it.”

Former head coach Holley was part of the Ospreys coaching staff who between 2003 and 2012 won four league titles and an Anglo-Welsh Cup .

The 55-year-old former full-back, who hails from Aberavon, says the region’s faithful would not support losing their side.

“To Ospreys fans, it probably confirms to them what is going on behind the scenes that is not being made public,” said Holley.

“There is an air of sadness, anger, disbelief. Your average fan takes things on face value.

“Let’s talk hard facts. Who has been the most successful region?”

Holley highlights anger among Ospreys fans who he says “won’t entertain” a potential 40-mile trip to watch rugby in Cardiff.

“They are die-hard fans who have gone through the hardships of the 2000s, established a brand and have two generations of supporters who have only known Ospreys,” he said.

“Ospreys are doing good things in the community and on the field are still reasonably competitive because they have that culture.

“Ospreys people will say they are one true region. That must count for something as well as the success.

“It is a hot-bed of Welsh rugby. Swansea, Neath, Aberavon or Bridgend. But there has always been the feeling the Ospreys have been the target, the ones to go and that creates the anger.”

And Holley, who also coached Bristol to English rugby’s top-flight warns Welsh rugby has reached a critical juncture.

“We are on the precipice, we don’t realise how close we are to losing our game,” he said.