morning

This Morning presenter Alison Hammond has addressed the 22-year age gap between her and her boyfriend David Putman, as she issued an update on their relationship

Birmingham-born telly star Alison Hammond has addressed the 22-year age gap between herself and her partner, Russian model and massage therapist David Putman, telling the Daily Mail: “I completely understand why people are interested when there’s a 22-year gap,” before questioning: “But what I find interesting is that it’s not as interesting when it’s the man who is older. Why is that? I just want people to be happy for us. We are absolutely in love.”

The presenter first encountered the towering 6ft 10in model after booking him for a £150 massage. Sparks flew instantly between them. According to Alison, they complement each other perfectly, with David being “mature and sensible”, while she admits she’s “so not”.

Gushing about her beau, Alison said: “He just has the most beautiful energy and everyone feels it when they’re in his presence. It’s very rare. I am so grateful that he chooses to spend his life with me.”

Wedding bells aren’t ringing quite yet for the loved-up couple, though Alison playfully teasedThis Morning audiences about a possible engagement during a celebrity gossip segment last summer.

While discussing the day’s headlines alongside co-presenter Dermot O’Leary, Alison spotted articles about herself: “Oh my God! Apparently I am engaged?” she gasped, before joking, “Let me swap it over to stop these rumours,” as she shifted her eye-catching diamond ring to another finger.

Alison revealed in December that neither she nor her partner feels any urgency to tie the knot: “We live together, and we’re happy the way it is. I don’t need a ring to show my love to somebody. What I will say is, if he asked me tomorrow to marry him, it wouldn’t be a ‘no’. That’s all I’m going to say to you.”

The mother-of-one, whose wealth is estimated at around £4 million, has previously stated she prefers to keep details of her personal life private. She said: “I don’t like to go into detail about him, because it’s my private life, and I want to respect his life as well.”

Nevertheless, she noted that those close to her are fully aware she is completely “loved-up.”

The Bake Off and Love of Dogs presenter shared that being in a relationship makes her “more patient” and “kinder”, adding that she cherishes having someone to “care for”.

The sole difficulty in their romance appears to be David’s mother, Olga, who is said to disapprove of the age-gap relationship. A source close to the pair told The Sun that Olga, 64, believes Alison is too mature for David and is uncomfortable with how Alison’s fame has thrust him into the public eye.

“She’s uncomfortable that her son is with someone who has so much more financial power than him,” the insider revealed. “Olga’s traditional values don’t sit well with their relationship. She’s told him in no uncertain terms that he must end it.”

Another source added: “Olga raised her children in the Orthodox Church. This kind of relationship doesn’t fit her beliefs.” She has reportedly made several calls to David from her home in Sochi, on the Black Sea coast, urging him to rethink his decisions.

Despite his mother’s misgivings, David remains content with how his romance with Alison is progressing, and it seems unlikely that her concerns will have any bearing on his choices.

SACRAMENTO — Every morning, Jack Kavanagh brews himself a cup of coffee or tea, pads down a short hallway, past the dining room, and turns left into his small home office, where he brings California to the world.

It’s been his routine for decades, through all manner of upheaval and events — social, political, natural and man-made.

Kavanagh, a somewhat-retired former TV newsman, has documented the policy and personalities behind those developments one curated paragraph at a time, complete with links, so others can follow his trail, feel the pulse of the state and take away what they will.

California: Unbiased and unvarnished.

What began as a summary for colleagues at a television station in Sacramento has developed a worldwide following, an achievement noteworthy not just for its duration — Kavanagh’s catalog may be the state’s longest-running news aggregator — but for all the things his website is not.

There are no flashy graphics on Rough & Tumble. No eyeball-grabbing videos, no partisan commentary or agenda, and none of the edge or snark that greases the gears of the perpetual-political-outrage machine.

There are just headlines and short summaries, presented as simply and unadorned as the plain-spoken Kavanagh himself. “The bottom line,” he said, “is trust” — vouching that an article is credible and worthy of a reader’s time.

“It all comes down to that. And now, with the age of AI fakes and all the other social media and stuff like that, it’s even more important. It’s even more unique.”

Kavanagh, 78, is a New Englander by birth and Californian by choice.

He grew up in Providence, R.I., and by his own account was aimless until his 21st year. One night, in June 1968, Kavanagh watched the small black-and-white television in his bedroom as live coverage of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination unfolded. Captivated, he knew from that moment on what he wished to do with his life.

A low-level job at a local radio station led to an on-air position at its TV affiliate, where Kavanagh’s big break came in 1978 when a massive blizzard hammered the Northeast. His marathon coverage garnered national notice and, two years later, an offer to move to a larger market in Milwaukee. He was prepared to go, when another offer came from a TV station out West.

“Do you know many nanoseconds it takes,” Kavanagh asked rhetorically, “to make a decision between Milwaukee, Wisc., and Sacramento, Calif.?”

Especially after an epic snowstorm or two.

Kavanagh had never set foot in the state and part of his steep California learning curve was devouring as many newspapers — back when they abounded — as he could. He noticed a large stack that sat untouched each day in the newsroom; most of his colleagues, he said, were simply too busy to dive in. So he began typing up a summary of the top headlines and stuffing copies in people’s mailboxes.

When the internet was still in its infancy — Kavanagh guesses the year was 1994, or so — he began putting his compendium online, so those working at the station’s Stockton bureau could partake as well.

There wasn’t much interest. But people in the capital began noticing. Kavanagh’s daily wrap-up developed an audience among political insiders — lawmakers, lobbyists, legislative staffers — and then a following that grew to include other reporters and, eventually, readers throughout California and beyond.

Rough & Tumble — the name captures the sweat and grit of politics — has continued without interruption for 30-plus years. In that time, Kavanagh has missed only a few days here and there.

That includes in 2004, when he underwent quadruple bypass surgery. Another time, when Kavanagh was suffering ulcerative colitis, he brought his laptop and worked from a hospital bed. (The laptop also accompanies Kavanagh and his very indulgent wife of 42 years on their vacations.)

Kavanagh typically starts each morning scanning dozens of news sites. He posts the big headlines of the day. He also looks for trends and stories that connect the dots, which are collected beneath subheads — AI, water, housing, education and the like.

“I want it to be a tip sheet for anybody who is in a Fortune 500 company, or who is a kid on a scholarship in a high school somewhere,” Kavanagh said over lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant. “I want them both to be able to zoom through this and figure out what’s going on and move onto something else.”

Mindful of his global audience, he updates his site with fresh headlines starting in the late afternoon. (Analytics allow Kavanagh to watch as the world wakes up and readers from as far away as Russia and China, represented by a blue dot, begin showing up on his computer monitor.) In all, he said, he devotes four to five hours a day to his one-man enterprise.

Rough & Tumble gets about 1.1 million page views a year, Kavanagh said, and while it’s not a huge moneymaker, the business allows him to write off his many subscriptions. A small amount of advertising also helps pay for the occasional trip.

Years after leaving the television business and a brief career as a media coach, Kavanagh runs the site as a kind of public service and a way to stay engaged and keep mentally fit. He’s still captivated by his adopted home state. “Every day,” he said, “I learn something new about California that I didn’t know yesterday.”

Kavanagh has no succession plan. He said Rough & Tumble will end the day he does — or sooner, if artificial intelligence renders Kavanagh and his role as host, news-gatherer and California guide obsolete.

Either way, it will be a loss.

Chip Taylor, the songwriter behind the Troggs’ rock hit “Wild Thing” and actor Angelina Jolie’s uncle, has died. He was 86.

Taylor died Monday in hospice care, according to Page Six, citing Taylor’s longtime friend, producer Billy Vera.

Taylor, born James Wesley Voight in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1940, was actor Jon Voight’s brother, but built a formidable music career outside of his famous sibling’s shadow.

As a teen guitarist, he joined the band Town & Country Brothers, which toured with Neil Sedaka. His songwriting submissions to RCA Records impressed the artist Chet Atkins, who championed his tunes in the country music scene. Taylor also wrote out of the same 1650 Broadway building in New York where Gerry Goffin and Carole King were based.

In 1966, Taylor penned “Wild Thing” for the garage-rock band the Troggs, which rocketed to No. 1 and kicked off a new mode for rock ’n’ roll that favored grungier musicianship and more overt sexuality. “That upstrum, there? You wouldn’t play that if you were properly schooled,” he told the Independent in 2023. “I did it because I didn’t know any better. I ended up with this innocent energy. It came out of me looser that way, the feeling just flew out of me.”

Jimi Hendrix famously performed the song at Monterey Pop in 1967 in a fever of sexual tension (it featured in the 1968 concert documentary), making it an era-defining rock hit and Taylor’s most famous tune. He also wrote “Angel of the Morning,” popularized by Juice Newton and Merrilee Rush, and penned songs performed by Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin, among many others.

Taylor’s career pivoted in the ’80s, when he became a professional gambler and a rogue on the Atlantic City casino strip. Yet he had a later career resurgence in the 2000s, after he met fiddle player Carrie Rodriguez at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas. The pair released several acclaimed alt-country albums together. Taylor’s 2012 single “F— All the Perfect People” prominently featured on the soundtrack for the hit Netflix series “Sex Education.”

Taylor said the song was inspired by performing concerts for prisoners, some of his favorite gigs. “I’ve always liked talking to prisoners because, for the most part, they’re extremely honest,” he said. “I never met a prisoner I didn’t have empathy for. I wrote that at 6 a.m. one morning when I realized I had some shows for prisoners coming up and I wanted to write something that was just for them.”

Taylor’s final album was 2025’s “The Truth and Other Things.” He is survived by several children and grandchildren. His wife, Joan Carole Frey, died in 2025.

This Morning star Sharon Marshall has spoken out for the first time, revealing she was taken to hospital in an ambulance after her severe hay fever saw her almost go into cardiac arrest

This Morning star Sharon Marshall has revealed for the first time her terrifying health ordeal, as she was carted off in an ambulance over fears she was in cardiac arrest – but she was actually suffering from hay fever.

Sharon, 54, spoke candidly about how her complex hay fever – which was misdiagnosed as adult asthma – once saw her collapse in the doctors office, which lead her to being rushed to hospital in an ambulance as paramedics feared she was going into cardiac arrest. The Queen of Soaps sat on the This Morning sofa today to reveal her complex health woes and how the ordeal unfolded.

Speaking to Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley on the This Morning sofa, alongside Professor Adam Fox, Sharon revealed she got ill when she was training to run the marathon and initially ruled out symptoms as being unfit. She recalled waking up in the middle of the night not being able to breathe – which Sharon didn’t realise was an asthma attack at the time.

READ MORE: This Morning chaos as ITV show forced to make last minute change live on airREAD MORE: Huw Edwards’ publicist leaves GMB hosts speechless as ‘car crash’ interview sparks backlash

**Ensure our latest headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. **Click here to activate** or add us as your Preferred Source in your Google search settings.**

Sharon explained that the ordeal happened in the middle of the night so she decided to wait until the morning to see the doctor. She recalled: “I remember sort of waiting until nine o’clock, ringing the doctor’s surgery and they were like, ‘oh God, come in immediately,’ going out the flat and luckily a black cab came past, got me in the back, took me in and he helped me to the door. And I don’t really remember much past that because I just collapsed in the doctor’s surgery and I came round in the back of an ambulance.”

She continued: “I said, ‘Oh what’s happening’ and they said, ‘we’re taking you to hospital’ and my first reaction was, ‘will I be going back’ and I they said, ‘No probably not’ and I said, ‘well can I just go by the house and feed my cat’. And this lovely guy who was just saying: ‘You’re going into cardiac arrest, we’re trying to take you into hospital to save your life no you can’t feed your cat’.”

Sharon stayed in hospital for a week but doctors struggled to get to the root cause. Sharon was then diagnosed with adult onset asthma. She explained: “So for years and years, I started taking asthma inhaler and then every year, not realising pollen season would come around and I would start getting asthmatic again. I was on the strongest asthma inhaler every single day. I was going through an asthma inhaler set in a week – horrible steHowever, Sharon revealed that every spring she would continue to get “really breathless and really ill”. Sharon continuned to go to the doctors in search for more answers and even struggled to wak up the stairs in the doctor’s surgery.

At one point, Sharon was even tested for lung cancer. She revealed: “So every year it was just this terrifying thing of, ‘I can’t breathe’ – stronger and stronger steroids and asthma inhalers.” Sharon revealed a visit to the This Morning studios changed her health for good.

Sharon had come into the studio and struggled to breathe while having her makeup done, which saw the crew call a medic as she was going into another asthma attack.

She added: “And, lukcily, in the studio, doing an item about allergies was our lovely professor here, who was able to work out, ‘Oh there’s a time of year that this seems to be happening’.”roids, Mysoline [an anticonvulsant medication] and all these things.”

However, Sharon revealed that every spring she would continue to get “really breathless and really ill”. Sharon continuned to go to the doctors in search for more answers and even struggled to wak up the stairs in the doctor’s surgery.

At one point, Sharon was even tested for lung cancer. She revealed: “So every year it was just this terrifying thing of, ‘I can’t breathe’ – stronger and stronger steroids and asthma inhalers.” Sharon revealed a visit to the This Morning studios changed her health for good.

Sharon had come into the studio and struggled to breathe while having her makeup done, which saw the crew call a medic as she was going into another asthma attack.

She added: “And, luckily, in the studio, doing an item about allergies was our lovely professor here, who was able to work out, ‘Oh there’s a time of year that this seems to be happening’.”

Professor Adam then explained Sharon has seasonal allergic asthma. Professor Adam then explained: “So the problem isn’t chronic all the time asthma, it’s just that when your hay fever is bad enough, if you imagine the lining of your nose is connected to the lining of your lungs. So if your upper airway because of the hayfever is really angry, can send really angry signals down to your lower airway, your lungs, and give you what listens will be an asthma attack. And of course, that can be very, very severe.”

Professor Adam then explained: “So the problem isn’t chronic all the time asthma, it’s just that when your hay fever is bad enough, if you imagine the lining of your nose is connected to the lining of your lungs. So if your upper airway because of the hayfever is really angry, can send really angry signals down to your lower airway, your lungs, and give you what listens will be an asthma attack. And of course, that can be very, very severe.”

Professor Adam then explained Sharon was then treated using ‘desensitisation’, which is a treatment that retrains to immune system to tolerate pollen. Sharon said of the new treatment: “It’s miraculous, it’s completely life changing.”

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

I have never managed to score a reservation to Bar Cecil, the restaurant that opened in April 2021 as an homage to Sir Cecil Beaton, the famously flamboyant British photographer, designer, author and all-around Renaissance man who died in 1980. It remains, almost comically after five years in business, the most difficult place to book a table in the Coachella Valley. Long ago I made my peace with lining up before the restaurant opens at 5 p.m. and starting early at the unreserved 12-seat bar, or slipping in between 6:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. when the first wave of bar seating turns over. We all show up, whenever we can, for potent drinks and chef and partner Gabriel Woo’s menu, a worldly mix of Continental swagger, global-minded modernism and California realness.

In January, the same team branched out with Beaton’s at Bar Cecil, a posh affair next door that flips the script on the restaurant: more cocktail-centric, mostly snacky food you stretch into a meal. Tufted red velvet cascading from the ceiling drives the louche vibes. The mid-20th-century-era sketches and prints adorning the walls are significant enough that the staff composed a booklet full of descriptions and biographies. (You’ll need a phone light to read through it.) There’s an enclosed terrace where VIPs seeking privacy tend to hang out as the night wears on. Precision-engineered cocktails cover the spectrum of tastes: not-too-sweet Singapore slings, a sharp-tongued Vesper with lemon oil, a retro-chic grasshopper blending Creme de Menthe and pandan for a nightcap. I have always been fascinated that certain Hollywood hangouts serve pigs in a blanket, and here they are, mustardy and easy to down one after another alongside shrimp cocktail, duck-meat bao, oysters, fries and, of course, caviar. Beaton’s also takes reservations but walk-ins, however variable the wait, are welcome. Try your luck. This is absolutely the place to be in Palm Springs right now.