Louis

A CLIP of a ‘baby’ Louis Tomlinson on Waterloo Road, long before he was a global superstar, has tickled fans.

The BBC soap dug through the archives to unearth a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from former One Direction star Louis.

As the school drama celebrates its 20th anniversary, the official social media site posted the vintage footage and asked: “Do you think he was scared of Janeece?”

The clip shows a baby-faced Louis playing an extra during the show’s very first series in 2006.

In the footage, a concerned-looking Louis can be seen in the background of the school playground as fan-favourites Janeece Bryant (Chelsee Healey) and Donte Charles (Adam Thomas) get into a heated row.

To help fans catch the four-second appearance, the clip has been given the slow-motion treatment, asking: “Can you spot One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson in Waterloo Road?”

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Fans commented: “Baby Louis Tomlinson.”

“He was so young,” noted a second.

“What a babbyyyyyy,” cooed a third.

Before his X Factor audition in 2010, Louis was a budding actor with a string of background roles.

Along with his stint at the fictional Greater Manchester school, he also popped up in Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends and the drama film If I Had You.

Louis, 34, recently opened up about one of his pre-fame jobs.

Speaking to Radio 2’s Scott Mills, he shared: “I did work at Toys R US. It was one of my favourite jobs.

“I absolutely loved it. I loved it. Honestly. I was just on the tech.

“I had to just do the tech basically, giving tech demos to people. 

“Do you remember Guitar Hero? Well, they’d just released DJ Hero. 

“I just spent hours on my working day demonstrating to other customers.

“I loved that job though, I loved it.”

Fans commented: “He came from a working class and despite his global success he keeps being so down to earth.”

A second added: “Love that he did all these jobs. And he’s still so humble.”

A third penned: “The cutest role mode.”

The singer has recently dropped his third solo album, How Did I Get Here?.

The Lemonade and Sunflowers star has spoken about his ‘terrifying’ world tour which lands in the UK for a run of dates throughout April and May.

Louis got his big break on The X Factor but he recently said the show is unethical and “could do better” for its contestants.

The singer was put into One Direction by the show’s judges and rocketed to superstardom – then returned as a judge in 2018.

Recently, Louis paid a heartfelt tribute to tragic bandmate Liam Payne with a song on his new album.

Louis sings about loss on the track Dark to Light and asks if he could have done more to help someone in need.

Liam was just 31 when he died in October 2024 after falling from his hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Louis has been dating Zara McDermott since last March and they recently spent their first Valentine’s Day together.

This comes after the loved-up pair celebrated their first Christmas together at his home in Hertfordshire.

The Sun were the first to reveal at the start of the year that Zara and Louis had begun dating each other just weeks after she split from long-term partner, reality star Sam Thompson.

Fronted by James Blake, the hour-long film exposes a heartbreaking side to the manosphere’s influence

Louis Theroux’s deep dive into the manosphere is officially the most-watched film on Netflix right now, with the documentary lifting the lid on the lives of some of the most well-known content creators in the space.

The respected documentary-maker meets influencers across Miami, New York and Marbella who all have amassed huge online followings by promoting an uber-macho way of life. Among those he meets is Fresh and Fit Podcast host Myron Gaines, who has carved out a niche humiliating female adult content creators on his show.

Louis also shadows streamer Harrison Sullivan who goes by the moniker HS Tikky Tokky and has developed a following for his fitness , dating and finance content. When viewers meet him in the film, he has half a million followers on Telegram alone who are consuming his tips on how to make a quick buck, though Louis finds little success with his own £500 investment.

However, months before Louis made his documentary on the topic, TV presenter James Blake fronted one for the BBC titled Men of the Manosphere. Rather than focus on the loudest voices in the space and give them an even bigger platform, he met three young men based in the UK and Northern Ireland who had been taken in by the manosphere’s messaging.

It makes for a heartbreaking watch, showing how the words of manosphere influencers can have dangerous consequences for those that buy in to it all. Rather than stoke fury and anger at the subjects on screen, it encourages tenderness, kindness and understanding in the face of horror.

Sam, an isolated 16-year-old is one of the subjects in the film. He admits he has swapped real-life friendships for an online community made up of like-minded males all seeking self-improvement.

One of these boys is a 17-year-old from the US named Vincent, who Sam says is his best friend, despite never having met in person. He shows Vincent’s attempts at making his own YouTube videos, in which he tells his viewers: “You should do things that hurt every single day because that’s what makes you grow. You should hate your body so that you have the motivation to get nice and strong.”

Elsewhere in the film, James also meets university graduate Shayne, from Liverpool, who struggles to feel secure in his relationships and finds solace in the ‘red pill’. Meanwhile builder Jack, from Northern Ireland, is chasing discipline, status and direction when James meets him.

Documentary host James said his film was about “understanding”, and this is clear from the opening minutes. His calm approach and genuine curiosity results in some fascinating – and deeply disturbing – revelations from his interview subjects, with the consequences of the manosphere’s insidious messaging laid out plainly for all to see.

Men of the Manosphere is now available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

Antoine Dupont is arguably the best player of all time.

Dupont lifted back-to-back Six Nations titles on Saturday as France edged England 48–46 in an epic finale in Paris.

What eluded the 29-year-old during the early part of his international career was trophies, but that has now certainly changed.

His CV may lack a Rugby World Cup, but it continues to strengthen the debate that he is rugby’s GOAT.

Outshining the star of French rugby has not even been worth entertaining over the past few seasons.

The France captain won the player of the Six Nations in 2020, 2022 and 2023.

However, Dupont is still not long back from a nasty anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury suffered against Ireland in round four of last year’s Six Nations.

He missed the end of that tournament and France wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey rightfully took the limelight.

The 22-year-old bagged a record eight tries to win player of the championship.

Roll on 12 months and he scored four tries against England to help Les Bleus win another title, taking his tally in this year’s tournament to nine – breaking his own record.

Bielle-Biarrey, who has a strong chance of winning the player of the championship for a second successive year, has now scored in 10 straight Six Nations games, a record he will look to extend next year.

Ireland legend Brian O’Driscoll is the tournament’s highest-ever try-scorer with 26 – eight clear of Bielle-Biarrey, who has only played in 14 Six Nations games.

The French flyer, who is showing no signs of slowing down, is scoring at a rate rarely seen in international rugby.

Bielle-Biarrey showed excellent footballing ability to nudge the ball in front of England’s Jack van Poortvliet for his vital fourth try.

“He is running at over 10 metres per second – the fastest player in the Six Nations – and he has the deftest of touches. Dennis Bergkamp would be thrilled with that,” former England wing Ugo Monye told BBC Rugby Union Weekly.

“He is the Erling Haaland of the rugby world. Give him the ball and he will finish.”

Louis Theroux has spoken to key male influencers on social media in the Manosphere for new Netflix project

As a concerned father-of-three, Louis Theroux has admitted he doesn’t know what his own kids are looking at online half the time. So this might explain why he has got involved with male content creators online, with millions of followers, who are part of what is dubbed “The Manosphere” for his new documentary.

Louis says: “These aren’t figures on the margins – anyone who’s got kids, and especially boys, will know that they are making inroads into the culture. Their influence is being felt in schools, in the workplace and all across the internet.

“Going back to the earliest days of my programmes I’ve always been interested in the taboo and people who believe things which run against the grain of values I’ve grown up with. Those in the manosphere embody a swaggering machismo that is by turns misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic and racist. So there’s a whole bunch of red flags there which I find interesting.”

TV host Louis, 55, starts the Netflix documentary by saying he noticed a few years ago “parts of the internet were being taken over” by a collection of male influencers who claim to give young men “cheat codes to win at life”.

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Asked about his own sons and what they are watching, Louis replies honestly: “I think as a parent you hope that your influence will outweigh whatever they’re being fed online, but truthfully they probably spend more hours looking at their phones than they do talking to us and we don’t always know what they’re looking at.”

In his 90-minute film, Louis explores how key figures, including Harrison Sullivan (known online as HSTikkyTokky), Myron Gaines, Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy (AKA Sneako), Justin Waller and Ed Matthews, are helping to reshape young men’s ideas about masculinity and fuelling a resurgent global men’s rights movement.

Louis immerses himself in their world, encountering prominent figures within the movement, each presenting their own interpretations of traditional gender roles and values.

Sullivan, 24, was handed a one-year suspended prison sentence at Staines Magistrates’ Court in November last year after pleading guilty to dangerous driving and driving without insurance.

He has also been disqualified from driving for two years. Asked what his message is, he tells Louis: “I coach boys how to be f**king boys, how to make money, how to be outside the system, how to not have a boss telling you want to do.

“I teach guys to be proper boys and not gimps that walk around in the modern world.”

These men online have similar ideas to those of influencer Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist.

A 2025 YouGov poll suggested one in eight Gen Z men (aged 14-29) had a “favourable view” of Andrew Tate, one of the leading figures of the manosphere, while more than one in three believed misandry – hatred or discrimination against men – was widespread in the UK.

Sounding worried about their impact, Louis said: “It was my kids who first made me aware of Andrew Tate – it would have been around 2022 and they kept referencing him and what he was saying – I had no idea who he was. Four years later, he’s still got cultural influence because he has millions of hours of content sitting out there for people to discover.

“As a parent I’m obviously concerned about the impact that that has, and it would be easy to say; ‘oh well, they don’t take it too seriously’, which a lot of the time I think they don’t, but at a certain point, a joke is no longer a joke – especially when it’s unchallenged and repeated. So we try to stay on top of what they’re watching and try to have conversations with them about it, but it’s hard.”

Louis encounters difficulties in the film which see the male influencers film him for their own social media and subject him to abuse and questions they receive from their followers whilst streaming footage live. It leads to Louis being abused about his previous documentary with the late Jimmy Savile.

He also witnesses homophobic behaviour by HSTikkyTokky whilst Myron Gaines speaks in front of his girlfriend about wanting multiple wives in the future.

Sullivan says he would “disown” his own daughter if he had one and she joined Only Fans, despite claiming to own an agency that represents girls on there. He also says he could not have a son who was gay.

There is also much discussion in the documentary on the notion of ‘red-pilling’ which Louis explains can mean “that men and women are fundamentally different and that women don’t want what they say they want – all they actually care about is big, rich guys with big dicks.”

Asked why he thinks the manosphere is attractive to many teenagers, Louis said: “I think there’s a lot of lonely men out there, and there’s now a whole industry dedicated to them. There are millions of hours of podcasts that talk about the masculinity crisis – how we’ve seen a decline in manufacturing jobs in the west and how there’s been efforts to correct the patriarchal skew in society that has in turn triggered a backlash.”

Louis also defended his decision to make the documentary in the first place, which could be seen as amplifying potentially harmful ideologies and helping the men to get even more followers thanks to them being shown on Netflix.

For him it is a case of trying to understand and challenge the ideas which are being pushed to youngsters.

He said: “My view is always I’m not trying to embarrass them or trick them in any way. I am trying to tell the truth and I will confront them appropriately. I’m not trying to pick a fight. I’m just trying to understand them, get my questions answered and then challenge and push back on the parts that don’t make sense to me or strike me as dangerous. At the end of the day I’m trying to make TV that engages people – so a few fireworks don’t go amiss and some raised voices or a sense of menace is actually quite helpful.”

In the concluding moment of the documentary, after spending weeks with these male influencers, Louis concludes: “In a world that’s changing at dizzying speed with narrowing opportunities, where the old entitlements of manhood have been challenged. It is perhaps not surprising that some have sought the comfort of a simplified world of game hacks and conspiracy theories. It struck me that the matrix they rail against more accurately describes the algorithmic prison they’ve created for their followers, an illusion of endless wealth and power that actually only enriches a few at the top.

“We are in a world where the fringe is no longer fringe. Where we are all increasingly, inside the manosphere, and it’s up to us how we get out.”

* Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere is available on Netflix from March 11.

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Joel Hofer made 22 saves for his fifth shutout of the season, Jonathan Drouin scored in his Blues debut and St. Louis beat the Ducks 4-0 on Sunday night to sweep a four-game trip.

Jordan Kyrou, Jimmy Snuggerud and Pius Suter also scored to help St. Louis win for the fifth time in six games since the Olympic break.

Drouin was acquired from the Islanders on Friday at the trade deadline in the deal that sent Blues captain Brayden Schenn to New York. The left wing scored the second of three second-period goals, firing a slap shot past Ville Husso on a power play with 9:53 left.

Kyrou opened the scoring at 4:22, snapping a shot from the right side to the far post on a 3-on-1 break. After helping set up Drouin’s goal, Snuggerud added one of his own on a one-timer with 7:49 to go.

St. Louis failed to add to the lead on an extended power play that spilled into the third when Ross Johnston received a major penalty for boarding Justin Holl, the defenseman who also made his Blues debut after coming over from Detroit.

After the Ducks successfully challenged Snuggerud’s apparent goal midway through the third for offsides, Suter scored into an empty net with 4:02 to go.

Husso stopped 31 shots. The Ducks completed a nine-game homestand, splitting the last four after winning the first five. They were 0 for 6 on the power play against the Blues.

John Carlson, the defenseman acquired from Washington on Thursday, missed his fifth straight game because of lower-body injury. Ducks center Mikael Granlund returned after missing six games because of an upper-body injury sustained playing for Finland in the Olympic bronze-medal game.

Up next for the Ducks: at Winnipeg on Tuesday night.