Mel

MELANIE C is in fine shape after raking in £1million last year from her solo work and Spice Girls royalties.

New accounts for Mel’s touring company, Red Girl Media Ltd, show Sporty Spice raked in £550,000 from solo shows in the year to 31 August 2025.

During that time Mel embarked on a DJ tour of the UK, Ibiza and Australia.

Latest paperwork for her publishing firm, Red Girl Productions Ltd, shows she took home a further £300,000 last year from solo royalties.

She also earned her share of Spice Girls royalties worth £600,000.

The money is set to keep rolling in for the recently married singer, as the accounts don’t cover the release of her latest album Sweat earlier this year.

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The 52-year-old, is also set to start a solo world tour, including gigs in London, Birmingham and Glasgow in October.

Last week Mel shared her new tattoo tribute to her summer nuptials and wild honeymoon.

The Spice Girl married partner of three years Chris Dingwall in a stunning ceremony in the grounds of The Country House Cumbria in July.

The happy couple were surrounded by their loved ones and a host of celeb guests, including her bandmates – bar Victoria Beckham who was away supporting husband David at the World Cup.

Shortly after saying I Do, Mel and Aussie model Chris were seen snogging in the sea during their Ibiza honeymoon – and her latest body art marks their first trip as husband as wife as well as her work on the White Isle.

In a new video posted to TikTok, Mel was seen having a cherry icon tattooed onto her forearm.

The cute design, which featured the striking red fruit on its stalks, also commemorated her fifth year DJing at Ibiza club Pacha, which has the twin cherry as its emblem.

Andrew Griffith has replaced Sir Mel Stride as shadow chancellor as part of Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s reshuffle of her top team.

Claire Coutinho, previously the shadow energy secretary, after her maternity leave will replace Griffith as shadow business secretary and act as his deputy in the ongoing shake-up.

Badenoch is forming a new shadow cabinet before the party’s conference in October.

Dame Priti Patel has also been replaced as shadow foreign secretary by Tom Tugendhat.

Badenoch paid tribute to Sir Mel’s work as shadow chancellor saying he helped the party rebuild economic credibility and become an effective opposition.

A senior Conservative source said: “Kemi is changing the way the Conservative Party approaches economic policy and creating a new economic leadership team for the next phase, focused on growth, higher living standards and fiscal credibility.”

Sir Mel, who was appointed to the role following Badenoch’s leadership election in 2024, described his time in the senior Tory role as a “great honour”.

“I am now looking forward to continuing to make a real contribution to the Conservative team in Parliament and beyond, to build and amplify our vision for Britain, from the back benches.”

New shadow chancellor Griffith said the Tories will deliver “an economic revolution” with lower taxes, Britain drilling again to bring energy costs down, slashing red tape and Labour’s Employment Rights Act.

“The Conservatives will always back the risk-takers and wealth creators who deliver growth, investment and jobs,” he said.

A senior Conservative source described Griffith as a “no-nonsense, pro-growth shadow chancellor with real business experience”.

Before he became MP for Arundel and South Downs in 2019, he served as a top executive at Sky and as chairman of Just Eat.

As Treasury minister Griffiths defended Liz Truss’ 2022 mini-budget. He also served as City minister responsible for financial services policy.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper said: “Griffith helped deliver the Truss mini-budget that sent mortgages soaring and the economy into turmoil.

“It’s clear Conservatives haven’t learned a thing. His appointment to shadow chancellor shows they’re happy to forfeit any claim to economic credibility in their race to the bottom with Reform UK.”

Badenoch will also need to select a new shadow health secretary after Stuart Andrew confirmed he will be returning to the backbenches.

Dame Priti, who had been shadow foreign secretary since 2024, said she will take on a new international role strenghtening the Tories relationship with sister parties and centre-right movements abroad.

On Saturday Sir James Cleverly quit the front bench announcing he wants to run for London mayor.

It would be great if “The Hangover” screenwriters-turned-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore would leave moms well enough alone. After the one-two punch of 2016’s “Bad Moms” and 2017’s “A Bad Moms Christmas” (both bad comedies), they’ve returned with “Spa Weekend,” which isn’t about bad moms but good moms who could stand to be a little bad.

If you’re not sure how much misbehavior a few friends can get up to at a luxury resort spa, you haven’t met Isla Fisher’s Mel. Yes, “Spa Weekend” is a plate of reheated “Wedding Crashers” nachos, because no one stirs up cheerful chaos like the spirited Fisher. Her Mel brings a delightfully vulgar joie de vivre into the over-scheduled lives of her lifelong friends: workaholic lawyer Jane (Leslie Mann), bitter divorceé Coco (Michelle Buteau) and people-pleasing pushover Sophie (Anna Faris).

“Spa Weekend” is built around the same fearsome foursome ethos as shows like “Sex and the City” and “Girls,” with several different character types and lots of available friction between them. More recently, golden-years comedies like “Book Club,” “80 for Brady” and way too many movies starring the late Diane Keaton have sent friend groups on journeys that have them reevaluating relationships and life goals. Romantic, criminal and naughty hijinks ensue and bonds are tested — and ultimately reinforced. Roll the blooper reel.

Mel might be a disaster with her loud mouth and impolite antics, but her over-the-top meddling does her buddies some good. She helps uptight Jane hook up with a hunky yoga instructor (Adam Demos), gets Sophie fired from her toxic job and lures Coco’s ex-husband Roger (Dominic Ona-Ariki) to the resort for a little reconciliation. Her friends are furious, but while they might not get what they want (relaxation), they get what they need (liberation). All it took was some coke and strippers (Lucas and Moore have a bizarre fixation on moms and male strippers).

You know what? Fine. It’s true that working moms often put themselves last and “Spa Weekend” is an argument for them to come first. It’s a film about embracing the craziest friends because they bring excitement to an otherwise boring and overscheduled life. All of these things are true. They’re just executed here with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. In case we didn’t get it, these themes and lessons are spoken out loud by Jane in big declarative speeches.

One of the most distracting things about “Spa Weekend” is its uncanny geography. It’s set in Los Angeles but the cafés and shops are obviously not local and the worst, most dated stock L.A. traffic footage can’t cover that up.

They drive what seems to be about 45 minutes to the resort, through wooded forests on windy roads, and arrive in a tropical location overlooking miles of white sandy beach. At one point, Jane claims they’re 100 miles away from home. Ain’t no way this is Encinitas. Nothing about it makes sense until the credits roll and you learn the film was shot entirely in Queensland, Australia. But if one’s thinking about the geography that much, it means the story isn’t all that compelling.

Call it nitpicking but it’s indicative of how much care and craft — or how little — goes into a movie like this, aimed at female audiences. Much like the “Bad Moms” movies, “Spa Weekend” isn’t insightful, isn’t interesting and isn’t funny. It’s condescending and hacky and the humor always aims for the lowest common denominator. Please don’t expect me to laugh at the goats from goat yoga rampaging through a hotel lobby or a high-speed golf cart chase. Guess what? Mel has brought a suitcase full of dildos.

Worse than tired gags, we don’t get a sense of who these women really are in relationship to themselves or other women. We only know them through the prism of men: Jane lusts after Yoga Dude, Coco rages at Roger, Sophie is bullied by her boss. We know nothing about them outside of their superficial signifiers.

That’s why Fisher’s Mel feels so radical. She might be a grifter and a liar (a vastly underexplored subplot) but she has fully decentered men — so hard that no rule of polite society can hold her. If that’s a disaster, sign me up. But please don’t let Lucas and Moore make more comedies for women. They can stick to the frat houses and bachelor parties they’re used to.

SHE may have been married for over two decades, but Mel Giedroyc says she had quite the wild single life before settling down.

And she even had a drunken snog with telly colleague Dermot O’Leary, the presenter, 58, has hilariously recalled.

Mel admits she and 53-year-old Dermot – who is now married to producer Dee Koppang – used to have a ‘flirty relationship’.

“Dermot O’Leary and I once had a little snogette,” she divulged to woman&home during an interview for their upcoming October issue.

The comedian continued: “He was our warm-up guy on Light Lunch back in 1997. It was a live show and he basically used to charm the audience.

“We used to flirt quite a bit, then there was a very drunken
end-of-series party.

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“Nothing untoward happened – it was just snoggery. God bless him, Dermot’s a bit younger than me, so that pair of sliding doors was never going to open!”

Mel continued that she had a ‘really fun’ reunion with Dermot last summer when the whole Light Lunch cast came back together – almost three decades after the Channel 4 show ended.

While he’s a household name now, Dermot began as a TV runner and researcher on shows like Channel 4’s Light Lunch before appearing on Big Brother‘s Little Brother, and eventually catching his big break with The X Factor.

Mel, on the other hand, rose to fame with her comedy partner Sue – with the pair going on to host several shows as a duo.

The comedian and presenter is married to Ben Morris, a television director and teacher at the world-leading drama school LAMDA.

They tied the knot in 2002 after meeting at a dinner party two years prior.

Mel’s interview comes as she is promoting her new fiction Novel, The Comeback.

The October issue of woman&home is on sale 27th August 2026, while Mel’s book, The Comeback, is out this week.

Mel Brooks has been watching movies for about as long as anyone alive. The comedy icon, who turned 100 in June, was born in the silent era and grew up in Brooklyn devouring double bills at his neighborhood theater in the 1930s. That movie-mad kid would go on to become one of the giants of filmmaking, directing classics like “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” and giving us a song-and-dance Frankenstein’s monster, cowboys farting around a campfire and the mystical power of the Schwartz.

So when the American Cinematheque recently invited Brooks to program a series of his favorite films — something he had never done before — there was no telling where his tastes might lead.

Beginning Sept. 3, the Cinematheque will bring Brooks’ 20 selections to the big screen in “Programmed by Mel Brooks: 100 Years at the Movies,” running through Nov. 12 at the Aero, Egyptian and Los Feliz 3 theaters. The lineup spans nearly nine decades of Brooks’ own lifetime: The oldest film he chose was released when he was 4; the newest came out when he was 93.

What made the cut? Some choices make perfect sense for Brooks: comedy classics like Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” (1931) and the Marx Brothers’ “A Night at the Opera” (1935). Others are more surprising, from Kevin Costner communing with the Sioux in “Dances With Wolves” (1990) to Eddie Murphy resurrecting a blaxploitation legend in “Dolemite Is My Name” (2019). The list is overwhelmingly American with just one foreign-language film, Federico Fellini’s bittersweet 1953 comedy “I Vitelloni.”

For Brooks, the exercise offered a chance to reconnect with what drew him to movies in the first place.

“It was wonderful compiling a list of all these marvelous movies for American Cinematheque,” Brooks said in a statement to The Times. “It reminded me about why I first fell in love with the art of film.”

Earlier this year, with Brooks’ centennial approaching, the Cinematheque began thinking about how to mark the milestone. The organization has screened his films regularly for decades and Brooks has appeared at its theaters a dozen or so times to discuss his work and collaborators. Simply putting “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” back on the marquee wasn’t going to cut it.

“The question was: How do we do something different and interesting?” says Chris LeMaire, the Cinematheque’s director of programming, in a phone interview. “Then it became: What if we reached out to Mel and asked if he wanted to put his programmer hat on and take over our calendar and see what he would come up with?”

The Cinematheque already invites filmmakers and other guests to choose individual films for its weekly Sunday Print Edition series, but handing someone an entire series to program was another matter.

“We didn’t even say how many films it could be,” LeMaire recalls. “We kind of said, ‘How many do you want to show?’ ”

Brooks conveyed his selections through his assistant, who would speak with him by phone and relay the titles to the Cinematheque by email. Rather than arriving all at once, the list grew over several days as Brooks kept thinking of movies he wanted to add.

“It was really neat to see it unfold because he sent an initial list and we were like, ‘Wow, this is great,’ ” LeMaire says. “Then a few hours later, he thought, ‘Well, we can’t forget John Ford. We’ve got to throw in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ Fast-forward a few more of these cycles where he was thinking about it and that’s how it got up to 20.”

Brooks is letting the selections speak for themselves, offering up the movies he loved without feeling the need to make a case for them.

“He didn’t provide much explanation, didn’t say why he was picking all these films,” LeMaire says. “I think that’s really beautiful in that sense.”

To LeMaire, the breadth of the list reflects both Brooks’ long view of movie history and the eclecticism of his own work.

“He was born before the sound era, so you get the sense that he’s put this list together based on actual experience, watching firsthand as cinema evolved over the decades,” LeMaire says. “There’s such a mix of genres on this list, and that mirrors how his films work — the love of cinema history and the lovingly satirizing ways of dealing with genre.”

Some connections to Brooks’ own career are particularly direct. He produced David Lynch’s 1980 drama “The Elephant Man,” while Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror classic “Psycho” inevitably calls to mind Brooks’ 1977 Hitchcock spoof “High Anxiety.” Brooks also included one of his own films, “The Twelve Chairs,” his 1970 comedy based on the Russian novel.

Hardly one of his best-known films, “The Twelve Chairs” has proved one of the trickier titles for the Cinematheque to screen. LeMaire says it and Paul Mazursky’s 1986 comedy “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” another Brooks selection, lack readily available digital restorations, making suitable screening materials harder to track down.

Brooks left the screening order up to the Cinematheque. LeMaire chose “City Lights” to kick off the series. “When Mel Brooks says he wants to show a Charlie Chaplin film, it just seemed like: Well, that’s the way we’ve got to open,” LeMaire says.

Brooks is not currently expected to appear at any of the screenings. Could he nevertheless turn up as a surprise? LeMaire isn’t making any promises.

“I wouldn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,” he says. “I’ll be there with everybody else, wishing and hoping.”

Asked to name his own favorite Brooks film, LeMaire doesn’t hesitate: “Young Frankenstein.”

“I might have seen that more than any other film ever, honestly,” he says. “So it really is such a dream come true that he responded with enthusiasm and put this together for us. It’s a dream come true for me personally.”

Here is the complete lineup for “Programmed by Mel Brooks: 100 Years at the Movies”:

Sept. 3 — “City Lights” (1931), Aero Theatre
Sept. 4 — “When Harry Met Sally…” (1989), Aero Theatre
Sept. 5 — “I Vitelloni” (1953), Aero Theatre
Sept. 6 — “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), Aero Theatre
Sept. 9 — “The Elephant Man” (1980), Aero Theatre
Sept. 19 — “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984), Los Feliz 3
Sept. 20 — “Shane” (1953), Los Feliz 3
Sept. 23 — “The Miracle Worker” (1962), Los Feliz 3
Oct. 6 — “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (1986), Los Feliz 3
Oct. 10 — “Top Hat” (1935), Aero Theatre
Oct. 11 — “Dances With Wolves” (1990), Egyptian Theatre
Oct. 16 — “Jojo Rabbit” (2019), Los Feliz 3
Oct. 17 — “Double Indemnity” (1944), Egyptian Theatre
Oct. 18 — “Schindler’s List” (1993), Egyptian Theatre
Oct. 20 — “A Night at the Opera” (1935), Los Feliz 3
Oct. 22 — “Dolemite Is My Name” (2019), Los Feliz 3
Oct. 24 — “Broadway Melody of 1940” (1940), Los Feliz 3
Oct. 25 — “Ed Wood” (1994), Egyptian Theatre
Oct. 31 — “Psycho” (1960), Egyptian Theatre
Nov. 12 — “The Twelve Chairs” (1970), Egyptian Theatre