scandal

POSING in the exclusive £300-a-night Soho Farmhouse wearing a pair of £100 wellington boots, Elle Swift proudly showed off her latest brand – a collection of oversized tracksuits.

But what should have been a defining moment swiftly turned sour and sparked a huge backlash. It’s the latest scandal to engulf the 29-year-old star after she was accused of racism, her American dream collapsed, and both her and husband Connor’s dads’ prison stints came back to haunt them. Here, we take a look at the struggles Elle and Connor have faced along the way.

Three years ago, popular TikTok influencer Elle was close to losing it all when a series of highly offensive racist tweets she had written as a teenager re-emerged online – she was dropped by her management, lost over 100k followers and was forced to publicly apologise.

Elle and Connor – who she married that same year in 2022 – made the decision to relocate to America for a fresh start, but after just 12 months the pair returned to the UK, with their future very much up in the air.

Eight months on, Elle was finally ready to reveal her rebrand. And last weekend, after much teasing, she finally unveiled Our Good Sunday, her new clothing line and latest bid to secure fame and fortune.

She was once very down to earth and while people get she wants to be aspirational, it is in fact just unaffordable.

Insider on her launch

But almost immediately, a notably slimmed-down Elle was hit with criticism, with an insider telling us: “The launch of Our Good Sunday wasn’t as good as they had been hoping at all.”

Fans questioned the extortionate price point and a rival social media couple teased their own very similar product.

While she has waxed lyrical about the high quality materials used to make the clothes, the price tag is nothing short of eyewatering. 

A plain hoodie will set you back £66, the sweatshirt is £60, a t-shirt £40 and a tote back £45.

The aesthetic Elle is aiming for is clear – the luxury location she shot the collection in and the expensive clothing she’s used to accessorise it are a clear sign. 

But the move has left her fans feeling angry and alienated – with one person commenting: “I was hoping the prices would be a bit more affordable, as a parent myself I can’t afford this luxury.”

Another added: “Most women/Mums won’t be able to afford this. Such a shame. I really think you should review the prices.”

The insider explained: “People are very confused about the whole launch and are struggling to understand why she would be charging so much for simple clothes. She was once very down to earth and while people get she wants to be aspirational, it is in fact just unaffordable and pricing out her core audience.”

Further questions were raised when she initially told her followers there was limited stock – but days later said they had ordered lots of stock to ensure fans would be able to get their hands on it. Her fans speculated that she had been hoping to sell out, so backtracked over how much stock she had.

A representive from Elle’s legal team told us: “We are informed by Elle Swift that she is proud to launch Good Sunday. The first limited edition collection is made in small batches from certified organic fabrics in Portugal, reflecting Good Sunday’s commitment to ethical production and sustainable practices. Each piece is designed to be special, and once sold out, it won’t be restocked.”

RIVAL CLOTHING LAUNCH

Negative comments appeared to have been deleted and a week on – plenty of stock is still available despite Elle and Connor relentlessly plugging the brand and hinting there will be more than just tracksuits. 

And in a twist that the couple weren’t expecting – social media’s most famous couple, Alfie Deyes and Zoe Sugg used this weekend to tease their new brand, which rather unfortunately is called Dear Sunday.

Our insider said: “Zoe knows Elle well and actually stood by her when a lot of people didn’t. There is no way she knew that Elle was doing something so similar but it’s all very bad timing. At the end of the day Zoe and Alfie still have the ultimate pulling power.”

Those who have followed Elle for a while will know it’s not the first time she’s launched a clothing brand.

The social media star, who went by the name Elle Darby before she tied the knot, was initially known for posting vlogs about her trips to the gym, plus the usual make up tutorials and get ready with me videos.

She launched Angelle clothing in 2019 – it featured a range of tracksuits and tote bags and was affectionately named after her followers, who she refers to as angels. It was a huge hit.

I didn’t speak to my dad for an entire year when he was in prison because he was too emotional to speak on the phone to his kids.

Elle on her dad

But in 2022, she announced that the brand was taking a break and she wasn’t sure what its future would hold.

Elle married Connor earlier that year after the birth of their son Romeo.

They went on to have son Saint in 2023 and in December 2024 they welcomed daughter Honey Jane.

RACISIM SCANDAL

The break from Angelle came shortly after her horrifying racist comments, which she wrote when she was 15, circulated online. She has since apologised.

In March of last year the couple decided to start afresh in America and set up home in Houston. It ended up being an incredibly expensive relocation and after having her third child, Elle and Connor decided to move back home.

Our insider said: “The whole America move ended up being a bit of a disaster really and Elle really didn’t want to admit defeat.

“It cost them a lot to move out there but also life there was very pricey and at the end of the day they were homesick. It’s also a lot harder to be a stand out social media creator in a country with many established names.”

Since coming back to the UK, Elle has been inundated with comments about how ‘glowing’ she is and how happy she looks.

Fans also questioned how trim Ellie has been looking just months after giving birth, with one person commenting: “Girl we need a weight loss journey.”

Another added: “I can not get over your hair and your body transformation, mum goals and motivation.”

AMERICAN DREAM AND PRISON DADS

The move to America was tinged with sadness – her mum Deborah had passed away in 2020 and her dad – Giles – is prohibited from visiting the States, so it meant she would be completely isolated from her family. 

Elle’s love of America actually started when her dad – a multimillionaire banker – was convicted of fraud and extradited to the US,  in the wake of one of the biggest scandals in business history.

The family spent nearly two years in and out of court in the US and Elle has admitted she loved that time, saying her dad made it a ‘positive’ experience. 

Giles, along with Gary Mulgrew and David Bermingham, was one of the NatWest Three – a trio of British bankers convicted of fraud and sentenced to 37 months in separate American jails in 2002.

Elle – who is one of five girls – was 10 when her dad went to prison for two years but has insisted it didn’t affect her. 

The brave influencer explained: “I think surrounding issues caused a lot more impact on my childhood than him actually being a prison.

“I missed him, I didn’t speak to my dad for an entire year because he was too emotional to speak on the phone to his kids.”

Interestingly, Connor’s dad was also in prison – and was absent from the first two years of his life, even missing his birth. 

The insider said: “The fact that both Connor and Elle’s dads have been in prison was a bonding experience for them. It does however haunt them both and no matter how hard they try to portray a picture perfect image, it does hang over them.”

In 2020, Elle suffered more heartache when her mum Deborah passed away on Mother’s Day after battling a brain tumour for five years.

The moment changed her life forever and while she spoke about gratitude a fair bit before, it took on a whole different meaning to her.

As she remembered her mum this year, she told her followers: “Five years ago this week my entire life changed forever. I said goodbye to my mum and had a humbling life lesson that the things we ‘think’ matter.. just don’t. Here’s your reminder that if you’re lucky enough to have love, you have it all.”

Elle might have had a few hiccups along the way – and her latest launch might not have had the impact she hoped, but she’s determined to succeed. And despite everything, it looks like this time she might just.

The Sun has contacted Elle for comment.

Victor Conte, the architect of a scheme to provide undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes including baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Marion Jones decades ago, has died. He was 75.

Conte died Monday, SNAC System, a sports nutrition company he founded, said in a social media post. It did not disclose his cause of death.

The federal government’s investigation into another company Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, yielded convictions of Jones, elite sprint cyclist Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Conte, who served four months in federal prison for dealing steroids, talked openly about his famous former clients. He went on television to say he had seen three-time Olympic medalist Jones inject herself with human growth hormone, but always stopped short of implicating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

The investigation led to the book “Game of Shadows.” A week after the book was published in 2006, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig hired former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids.

The Steroids Era

Conte said he sold steroids known as “the cream” and “the clear” and advised on their use to dozens of elite athletes, including Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

“The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game,” the Mitchell report said. “Widespread use by players of such substances unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the validity of baseball records.”

Mitchell said the problems didn’t develop overnight. Mitchell said everyone involved in baseball in the previous two decades — including commissioners, club officials, the players’ association and players — shared some responsibility for what he called “the Steroids Era.”

The federal investigation into BALCO began with a tax agent digging through the company’s trash.

Conte wound up pleading guilty to two of the 42 charges against him in 2005 before trial. Six of the 11 convicted people were ensnared for lying to grand jurors, federal investigators or the court.

Bonds’ personal trainer, Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges stemming from his BALCO connections. Anderson was sentenced to three months in prison and three months of home confinement.

Bonds was charged with lying to a grand jury about receiving performance-enhancing drugs and went on trial in 2011. Prosecutors dropped the case four years later when the government decided not to appeal an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the Supreme Court.

A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 homers, surpassing the record of 755 that Hank Aaron set from 1954-76. Bonds denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bonds didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Conte told the Associated Press in a 2010 interview that “yes, athletes cheat to win, but the government agents and prosecutors cheat to win, too.” He also questioned whether the results in such legal cases justified the effort.

Conte’s attorney, Robert Holley, didn’t respond to an email and phone call seeking comment. SNAC System didn’t respond to a message sent through the company’s website.

Defiant about his role

After serving his sentence in a minimum security prison he described as “like a men’s retreat,” Conte got back in business in 2007 by resuscitating a nutritional supplements business he had launched two decades earlier called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He located it in the same building that once housed BALCO in Burlingame, Calif.

Conte remained defiant about his central role in doling out designer steroids to elite athletes. He maintained he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world already rife with cheaters.

To Dr. Gary Wadler, a then-member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Conte might as well have been pushing cocaine or heroin.

“You are talking about totally illegal drug trafficking. You are talking about using drugs in violation of federal law,” Wadler said in 2007. “This is not philanthropy and this is not some do-gooding. This is drug dealing.”

The hallway at SNAC System was lined with game jerseys of pro athletes, and signed photographs, including athletics stars Tim Montgomery, Kelli White and CJ Hunter, all punished for doping.

Conte wore a Rolex and parked a Bentley and a Mercedes in front of his building. He told the AP in 2007 he wouldn’t drive over the speed limit.

“I’m a person who doesn’t break laws anymore,” he said. “But I still do like to look fast.”

Years later, he met with the then-chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Dick Pound.

“As someone who was able to evade their system for so long, it was easy for me to point out the many loopholes that exist and recommend specific steps to improve the overall effectiveness of their program,” Conte said in a statement after the meeting.

He said that some of the poor decisions he made in the past made him uniquely qualified to contribute to the anti-doping effort.

SNAC System’s social media post announcing Conte’s death called him an “Anti-Doping Advocate.”

Conte was also a musician, serving as a bass player for the funk band Tower of Power for a short time in the late 1970s. He is pictured on the back of the band’s 1978 “We Came To Play” album.

“He was an excellent musician and a powerful force for clean sports and he will be missed,” band founder Emilio Castillo posted on X.

Associated Press sports writers Janie McCauley and Chris Lehourites contributed to this report.

Shaquille O’Neal said he’s “ashamed” of the people involved in the gambling scandal that rocked the NBA on Thursday.

Charles Barkley called two of the individuals involved in the matter “stupid.”

Kenny Smith said the situation is “super unfortunate.”

One day after the “Inside the NBA” crew made its ESPN debut, the three analysts, as well as host Ernie Johnson, had a huge story to discuss that had little to do with the actual game of basketball.

On Thursday morning, federal prosecutors unsealed two indictments that outlined separate schemes to rig sports bets and poker games. More than 30 people were arrested, including former Clippers player and current Portland head coach Chauncey Billups, who was charged with participating in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games run by Mafia families.

Also arrested were Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, who is accused of being part of a scheme to provide private insider NBA information to help others profit from online bets, and retired player Damon Jones, who has been charged with taking part in both schemes.

“All these guys knew what was at stake, and I’m just ashamed that they put themselves and put their family and put the NBA in this position,” O’Neal said during Thursday’s broadcast. “We all know the rules. We all know the letter of the law. And it’s just unfortunate — you know, innocent till proven guilty, but usually when the FBI has something, they have you.”

He added: “I know Chauncey. I know Damon very well, played with Damon. … I’m ashamed that those guys will put their families and their careers in jeopardy. There’s an old saying in the hood, all money ain’t good money. So if you’re making $9 million, like, how much more do you need? Especially if you know you get caught, you can do jail time, lose your career, put a bad image on yourself or your family or on the NBA.”

Smith pointed out that “gambling is an addiction which could make you make illogical decisions,” but Barkley interjected his opinion that addiction had nothing to do with the decision Jones and Rozier made to help others make fraudulent bets.

“This ain’t got nothing to do with addiction. These dudes are stupid,” Barkley said. “Why are they stupid? You under no circumstances can you fix basketball games. Under no circumstances. … Like, Rozier makes $26 million. Him betting, giving people information or taking himself out of games — how much is he going to benefit taking himself out the game to get unders?”

Barkley added: “You can’t fix ball games. Like I said, this is separate from Chauncey, but the notion that guys are making all this money and giving information — come on, man, stop that. That got nothing to do with addiction. That’s just total stupidity on these two dudes parts.”

Billups — a five-time All-Star who was the 2004 NBA Finals MVP as a member of the Detroit Pistons and is in his fifth season as Portland’s coach — and 10-year NBA veteran Rozier were placed on immediate leave, the league announced Thursday.

Billups’ attorney issued a statement Thursday night strongly denying the allegations against his client.

“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity,” attorney Chris Heywood said. “Men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others.”

Jones played three seasons with LeBron James on the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2005 to 2008 and was an assistant coach during the Lakers star‘s second stint in Cleveland. In one of the indictments, prosecutors allege Jones was an unofficial coach with the Lakers from 2022 to 2023 when he used inside information for sports betting.

Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry says he “wouldn’t worry” about the NBA’s integrity despite a FBI investigation into illegal sports betting.

Miami Heat player Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups are among dozens arrested as part of a sweeping investigation that also includes allegedly rigged, mafia-linked poker games.

Rozier and Billups were named by federal prosecutors in two separate indictments on Thursday. Both men deny the allegations.

Rozier, 31, is among six people arrested over alleged betting irregularities. They include NBA players being accused of faking injuries to influence gambling markets.

There is greater concern about the impact of gambling on the integrity of American sports, with most US states having legalised sports betting since the US Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018.

“I think on the whole, everybody’s very mindful of what to do, what not to do, and understanding the landscape of sports right now in general,” said Curry, who has twice been the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.

“And that’s not just a NBA thing, this is new territory for everybody. So I think, on the whole, we all are very responsible.

“The integrity of the game is fine, and then obviously we let the situation play out, whatever happens. But I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”

Warriors team-mate Draymond Green, who has won four NBA championships with Curry, added: “I was shocked. It’s a tough moment for the individuals involved, a tough moment for the league.

“But I’m not going to sit here and be like, ‘man, you all partner with a gambling company, you open a can of worms’. That can of worms can be open with partnering with gambling companies or not.

“Partnering with a gambling company is not going to make gambling more accessible to us. The accessibility is what it is.”

T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach, the former “Good Morning America” co-anchors who were embroiled in a cheating scandal in late 2022, are ready to tie the knot.

“We are sharing with all of you that we are engaged and we’ve been engaged for a month now,” Robach, 52, announced Tuesday on their “Amy & T.J.” podcast.

“We’re actually surprised we’re just now talking about it,” Holmes, 48, added. “We wanted to let you all know before anybody was able to. We learned that lesson I guess in the past about our relationship: We want to be the first to talk about it.”

The former ABC News personalities infamously found themselves at the center of controversy in December 2022, when several outlets reported they had engaged in a monthslong affair while they were still with their respective partners. Both Holmes and Robach began their ABC News tenures in 2014 and co-hosted the daily program “GMA3: What You Need to Know” starting in 2020. They were known among viewers for their playful interactions and onscreen chemistry.

News of the affair dominated headlines, prompting ABC to bench the anchors. Weeks after news of the scandal broke, ABC News parted ways with both Holmes and Robach. “We all agreed it’s best for everyone that they move on from ABC News,” a representative for the news division said at the time.

ABC filled the former co-anchors’ positions, and Holmes and Robach went Instagram official. Their respective ex-spouses also found comfort in their shared experiences and sparked up a romance of their own.

In December 2023, Holmes and Robach finally broke their silence together about their “year of hell.” The pair said they wanted to disclose their relationship before outlets including Page Six and the Daily Mail ultimately beat them to the punch. They also discussed the scandal’s toll on their mental health.

“We have had each other through it all,” Robach said during the debut of their podcast. “It has been the most beautiful relationship I have had in my life.”

IF a Chinese bloke had been caught spying for the UK in Beijing, he’d currently be hung up by his toes in a cell, awaiting execution.

That’s how the Chinese sort things out. Nobody in Beijing would be worrying much if the UK is a threat or not.

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Bullet or lethal injection, Wu’s yer uncle.

Or maybe they would be pawed to death by an angry panda.

But it’s more often a bullet between the eyes.

Most countries take spying and espionage very seriously.

Indeed, ensuring we are safe from foreigners who might do us harm is the first duty of a government.

But clearly it is a duty that Sir Keir Starmer does not take remotely seriously.

Last week, two Brits were due to be tried for spying for the Chinese.

They were Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a researcher who works in China.

Both deny any wrongdoing.

But suddenly, at the last minute, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case.

It didn’t bother explaining why — one minute the trial was on, the next it was dead meat.

Industrial secrets

It now transpires that the CPS took advice from British government officials.

It is entirely possible that the UK’s National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, a good mate of Keir, was one of the officials involved.

Shortly after their meeting with the CPS, the decision was taken to drop the case.

Why? They apparently told the CPS China couldn’t be called a “threat” to the UK.

Instead, it was just a “geo-political challenge”.

And so the charges against Cash and Berry wouldn’t stick.

In a previous spying case it was decided that charges were relevant only if it involved “a country which represents, at the time of the offence, a threat to the national security of the UK”.

Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?

If China isn’t a threat to the UK, then who is?

The head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, has reported that the Chinese have tried to entice 20,000 Brits to act as spies for them, against our interests.

Did nobody think to ask Sir Ken if he thought China was a threat? I suspect I know the answer that would have been forthcoming

He also claimed that 10,000 UK businesses were at threat from the Chinese trying to nick industrial secrets.

In addition, he said that MI5 had 2,000 current investigations into Chinese spying activity — and that a new case was opened on the Chinese — behaving very deviously indeed — every 12 hours.

Did nobody think to ask Sir Ken if he thought China was a threat?

I suspect I know the answer that would have been forthcoming.

Of course the country is a threat.

It is menacing other nations down in South East Asia.

It has a whole bunch of nukes pointed directly at the West.

It arrests dissidents who want western-style freedoms.

And it does everything it can to undermine the UK’s politics and industry.

Truth be told, anybody who is working secretly for a foreign country in the UK is a threat to this country.

Especially if they are working in the House of Commons.

This seems to me so obvious that it should not need stating.

If their secret outside income involves a vast load of Yuan, some fortune cookies and cans of bubble tea, then we should investigate very seriously.

The truth in this particular case, though, is particularly damning.

It seems almost certain that Whitehall officials intervened at the behest of the Government.

And that they did this so as not to p**s off the Chinese — because aside from being a threat to the UK, which China certainly is, we are going cap in hand begging for investment from them.

Other nations don’t have a problem with employing a dual approach.

Make no mistake, we may need to do business with the likes of China, much as we did once with Russia — but they ARE the enemy

They understand that while they all need to do trade with horrible totalitarian countries such as China, they also need to count their spoons, if you get my meaning — and at the slightest sign of devious behaviour, call them out.

The Chinese understand this too.

Yes, being caught with a bunch of spies in our Parliament may be embarrassing for a short while.

But it won’t be allowed to get in the way of China making more money.

It seems that our government was too frit to risk it.

Too scared that the Chinese might react nastily and pull investment.

Or decide not to invest in the future. We mustn’t offend the Chinese.

Strategies like this simply do not work — and the Chinese, just like their big mates the Russians, will continue to spy on our institutions and do everything they can to harm our state.

Enemy is laughing

Make no mistake, we may need to do business with the likes of China, much as we did once with Russia — but they ARE the enemy.

And currently an enemy that is laughing its head off.

The government officials involved will be coming before the House of Commons Joint Committee on National Security Strategy.

If it is discovered that Jonathan Powell did warn off the CPS from pursuing the cases against Cash and Berry, then Powell should resign or be sacked.

Unless, of course, Powell was simply doing the bidding of the Prime Minister or the then Foreign Secretary, the intellectual colossus who is David Lammy.

If that’s the case then THEY should resign.

One way or another, we cannot allow Chinese spies to run amok in this country of ours just because we want to trouser some more wonga down the line, through Chinese investment.

This is a truly important week for Starmer.

The Chinese spygate scandal is the most serious he has faced since taking office last July.

It could yet be the finish of the man.

Which won’t make me lose a terrific amount of sleep, I have to tell you.

THE Man Who Never Sweats is probably feeling a bit moist under the armpits right now.

It has been discovered that Prince Andrew was still sending chummy texts to disgraced paedo Jeffrey Epstein long after the royal said he was.

Andrew is alleged to have messaged him to say: “We are in this together.”

This happened 12 weeks after the point at which Andrew claimed, in that BBC interview, to have cut off all contact with the odious slimeball.

It’s high time King Charles took action and kicked Andrew out of his Royal Lodge home in Windsor Great Park.

I’M sure there must be some people on those pro-Palestinian marches who are not actually dyed-in-the-wool antisemites.

But if so, how do they react to a comrade saying that they “don’t give a f***” about the Jewish community?

Or the protesters in Glasgow who unfurled a banner praising the “martyrs” of Hamas for murdering about 1,200 Israeli civilians and taking 251 hostage on October 7, 2023?

Or the chants about killing the IDF?

Or the demands for Israel to cease to exist?

Or for a global intifada?

It is one thing to have a few doubts about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It is altogether another to stand alongside rabid, Jew-hating jihadis, chanting their odious slogans.

Isn’t it time these fellow travellers had a Mitchell and Webb moment and asked themselves: “Hey . . . are we the BAD guys?”

Betty Brown, from County Durham, ran a Post Office with her late husband and was affected by the scandal

Betty Brown, 92, believed to be the oldest victim of the Post Office scandal said she was “disgusted” at the treatment of sub postmasters as she pledged to continue her fight.

Betty from County Durham, operated the Annfield Plain Post Office with her late husband. She has previously revealed that she spent thousands of pounds of her own savings covering shortfalls that never actually existed after faulty data made it appear money was missing from the branch.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain on Friday (October 10), she discussed the “heartbreak” the victims had suffered, reports Wales Online.

“Totally disgusted that a government could treat their own people in the manner that they have treated the sub postmasters,” she said.

“Every one of us, not only me, every one of us. They’ve killed a lot of them.”

Betty told the ITV programme’s presenters Kate Garraway and Adil Ray: “They haven’t taken the one iota of care to any of the people left on their own, the families left, the struggles that they’ve had to go through and all the heartbreak and everything associated with it.

“And they’ve stood back, not our fault, we don’t want anything to do with it and if, when they’re forced to do with it, it’s as little as possible and how they can turn it over upside down so that the blame doesn’t go on to them, it’s all the postmasters.”

Viewers at home were moved by Betty’s comments, with one writing on X: “Get a government minister on at the same time as Betty so she can get them told!!”

“I’m so sorry for Betty,” another person penned on the platform, previously known as X. “Another person let down by government after government like so many.”

The scandal and its magnitude have come to light in recent years, with the Post Office later expressing regret to those affected, stating they were “deeply sorry for the suffering caused to so many people by Post Office’s past actions”.

In a statement, the Post Office further added that “we will continue to learn from past mistakes and are committed to continuing to transform today’s Post Office, rebuild trust, and move forward for our current postmasters and the 10 million customers who rely on us each week”.

This week the government announced that all victims of the scandal who are claiming compensation will be entitled to free legal advice to help with appeals.

Good Morning Britain airs on ITV.

Rebekah and Jamie Vardy have signed a huge TV deal with ITV which will give viewers an insight into their personal and professional lives as they start a new life in Italy

Rebekah Vardy may be able to put the humiliation of Wagatha Chrisitie firmly behind her after landing a lucrative TV deal to film a reality show with her husband and family. According to reports, Rebekah, 43, will document the couple’s personal and professional life as they film their transition to Italy.

Jamie has now signed for football team US Cremonese. As yet an official title has not been confirmed but The Sun has reported a working title of The Vardys. The family have already relocated to Lombardy with their five children.

And a source told the publication: “There is huge interest in Becky and her life as a Wag, a mother and a TV personality, not to mention the relationship between her and Jamie.”

They added: “She’ll be seen opening up her home and heart as she provides unprecedented access at a crucial point in their history. It’s a real coup for her to have this with a channel as huge as ITV.”

ITV declined to make an official comment. Rebekah was caught in a legal dispute with Coleen Rooney after she was accused of selling information to the media about Coleen’s private life.

News of Rebekah and Jamie’s TV deal with ITV comes after it was confirmed by Disney+ that Wayne Rooney and Coleen have signed a ten-part series focusing on their family life.

Viewers will get to see how Coleen deals with her business life while Wayne, who has retired as a professional footballer, now takes on the school run. Keen to give viewers a real insight into their life, fans will witness the highs and the lows.

Sean Doyle, Executive Director of Unscripted at Disney+, said: “We’ve seen great success over the past couple of years with our Disney+ Original unscripted series such as Finding Michael, Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story and more recently, Flintoff.”

He added: “Our distinctive offering of combining the most talked-about household names and their incredible life experiences has hit the right note with our audiences who are looking for authentic and captivating real-life stories.”

Sean went on to say: “As our slate evolves, we want to continue working with world-class producers and homegrown talent in the reality space, with a focus on female-skewed factual.”

Another addition to the reality TV sector of the streaming platform is Jamie Laing and his wife Sophie, who were on Made In Chelsea.

Due to the success of their podcast the couple have become popular with the nation.

READ MORE: Little-known benefits of bamboo bedding as shoppers ditch cotton for this unusual material

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One civil service whistleblower told ITV filmmakers he was “disgusted” by amount of profits some companies made

Details of how the Tories presided over one of the biggest government spending scandals of all time are to be revealed in a shocking new documentary.

Eye-watering waste running into many billions of pounds resulted from huge Covid contracts for mountains of personal protective equipment and medical tests.

One civil service whistleblower told ITV filmmakers: “I was disgusted at the amount of money that these companies were making. It was just ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching for them.”

Some companies with little or no track record in supplying PPE landed massive contracts, including many introduced by ministers and key government figures via the high-priority VIP lane.

One firm, linked to Baroness Michelle Mone, is being sued by the Department for Health for more than £120 million for allegedly supplying unusable gowns. But the documentary names other previously unknown corporate winners.

Instead of buying four months of PPE stock as planned, within months of lockdown the government stockpiled years’ worth – including enough goggles to last 15 years.

One million pallets of unwanted PPE ended up being incinerated in what Gavin Hayman, of the Open Contracting partnership, says represents “probably the biggest government misspending scandal in the UK of all time”.

As the UK’s expensive Covid-19 inquiry rumbles on largely unnoticed by the public, new ITV documentary Exposures asks how we went from having almost no PPE to having more than we could possibly use.

The Mirror has previously revealed how thousands of ­ventilators bought for £50,000 each during the pandemic were sold off for as little as £100 via online auctions last year.

We also exposed how the NHS flogged 6,000 unused Nightingale hospital beds it had bought for £13million for just £410,000 as they were not suitable for hospitals. When the country went into lockdown in March 2020, the UK’s hospitals were woefully lacking in supplies of PPE.

Boris Johnson set up a new procurement unit run by Matt Hancock ’s Department of Health, with many of its staff coming from Michael Gove ’s Cabinet Office. The government put out public appeals to help source PPE from new suppliers, and the normal tender and competition rules were suspended.

Under pressure to respond quickly, a secret VIP lane was also set up by civil servants to deal with credible offers coming via ministers, MPs or senior officials.

According to the documentary, this is when things started to go wrong. A whistleblower who was working in the department at the time was exasperated that companies with a background in supplying PPE were being sidelined in favour of VIPs.

The source tells the programme: “It was very frustrating because you’ve done a lot of the background work, taking the time to find out about the companies, see who their manufacturer was, so that we could check the manufacturer had the capability of producing as many items as they said, and then to find out none of your deals have gone through.

“The VIP lane was obviously the Premiership, and all the rest of the suppliers were in the second division.” Mr Gove and Mr Hancock say the VIP lane was created by officials to effectively prioritise significant offers, that ministers were not involved in decisions to award contracts and just forwarded promising leads to civil servants. They say their priority at the time was to “save lives and protect the NHS”.

The ITV film shows how two previously unnamed Covid-testing companies, Tanner Pharma and Nationwide Pathology, both made huge profits thanks to their contracts.

Nationwide made £40million over the pandemic, while Tanner was given testing contracts totalling £1.4bn after it contacted a Department of Health official.

Tanner went from a pre-pandemic loss off £678,000 to a cumulative profit over the pandemic of £193m. Its American owner, Banks Bourne, paid himself a £148m dividend, courtesy of the British taxpayer.

Another company called Innova appeared from nowhere in March 2020. It was set up by Charles Huang, who rain a private equity firm in California.

Innova got its contract after it reached out to Dominic Cummings, who was Boris Johnson’s advisor at the time. By the end of the pandemic, Innova had been paid over £5bn by the UK government despite having no track record in supplying medical goods.

By contrast, Arco is a leading UK supplier of PPE with over 50 years’ experience. It sent 750,000 PPE kits to Sierra Leone during the ebola epidemic. But when Covid arrived, nobody was returning their calls.

Arco chairman Thomas Martin tells Exposure: “We used the government portals, we used all of our existing contacts. There would be 50 or 60 attempts every day to break through, and we were coming up against the closed door. I couldn’t understand why anyone in charge would choose to ignore the expertise on tap.

“The safety industry was not mobilised.” In all, the UK spent around £15bn on PPE. The whistleblower adds: “We had so much, but we were still buying when we didn’t need any more. We weren’t able to warehouse it, and it was getting left at docks.”

By March 2022, the UK had 300 pieces of unused PPE for every person in the country. Companies that were hired to supply PPE were now being rewarded again to store it. Much of it ended up incinerated. The whistleblower concludes: “We were wasting so much money.”

Tanner Pharma said: “Tanner Pharma was selected to provide lateral flow tests because they were determined by UKHSA to have high specificity and sensitivity. We were not referred to the high-priority lane and delivered over 480m reliable, accurate testing kits.”

Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Michelle Mone and Nationwide Pathology all declined to comment.

* The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money is on Sunday night on ITV at 10.15pm.

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

On the night Los Angeles police claim he carried out an act of gangland vengeance, Oscar Eagle could barely walk.

In March 1998, Eagle was only 17 and using crutches to get around after he was wounded in a drive-by shooting. The bullet is still in his leg to this day, marked by a coin-shaped indentation on his calf.

At the same time that police allege Eagle opened fire on an 18th Street gang member in an act of retribution, he says he was at an East L.A. hospital because a friend’s cousin was giving birth, according to court records.

Oscar Eagle in his childhood neighborhood of Pico-Union in 1996.

(Courtesy of Megan Baca)

Eagle knew he was innocent. Witnesses placed him at the hospital and he said medical records could prove he wasn’t mobile enough to carry out the crime.

But a combination of dubious legal representation and an arrest made by members of a notoriously corrupt unit in the Los Angeles Police Department saw Eagle sentenced to 25-years-to-life in prison.

In July, a judge granted a joint motion from the California Innocence Project and the L.A. County district attorney’s office to vacate Eagle’s conviction, citing ineffective assistance of counsel and questions about the behavior of LAPD detectives on the case.

For reform advocates, Eagle’s case epitomizes the problem with prosecuting teens as adults, but it also marks a positive sign for the L.A. County district attorney’s office’s conviction review unit under Nathan Hochman, who personally appeared at the hearing where Eagle was set free.

“This is what I’ve been dreaming of every day,” a tearful Eagle, 45, said during an interview in late July.

Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California is surrounded by razor wire, tall fences and towers manned by guards with rifles.

(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Formed in 2015 and expanded under former Dist. Atty. George Gascón, Hochman has shown a continued commitment to the conviction review unit. After facing criticism for recording just four exonerations from 2015 to 2020, the unit has been involved in 12 in just the last four years, according to a district attorney’s office spokesperson.

“I think that a D.A. sends a strong message when you appear in court, that it’s both a case of serious concern to the D.A.’s office, and it’s one where you want to see justice done,” Hochman said.

Seeing L.A. County’s top prosecutor personally endorse his release is a stark turnaround for Eagle, who spent most of his life believing police would do anything to keep him behind bars.

After entering California’s adult prison system as a teenager, Eagle said he watched a friend die in a riot at Pelican Bay. He spent years in isolation after he says he was erroneously connected to the Mexican Mafia. Both of his parents died while Eagle was locked up, and he can’t even mention their names without tearing up to this day.

Eagle said he grew up in a section of Pico-Union where all his neighbors were affiliated with a local gang set, the Burlington Locos. A young tagger who went by “Clown,” he too wound up part of the crew.

In the late 1990s, Eagle became a target of detectives with an infamous LAPD unit known as C.R.A.S.H., short for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums.

At the time, the LAPD’s Rampart division was home to C.R.A.S.H. officers who falsified reports and framed civilians, later triggering a scandal that ended with the U.S. Department of Justice placing the LAPD under a consent decree.

Officers watch from inside the front entrance of the LAPD’s Rampart Station in the Westlake district in 2010 as protesters demonstrate outside against police brutality.

(Reed Saxon / Associated Press)

Eagle says that in 1996 he was wrongfully arrested for gun possession as a juvenile by Rafael Perez, the central figure of the Rampart scandal. Perez later admitted the report that led to Eagle’s first arrest was falsified, according to court records.

But it was Eagle’s next run-in with police that proved far more consequential.

In March 1998, 18th Street Gang member Benjamin Urias was shot twice on Burlington Avenue in what police believed to be retribution for a prior attack on a Burlington Locos member, court records show. Urias, who was hospitalized for two days and released, told police the shooter walked with a limp.

Investigators from a C.R.A.S.H. unit based in Rampart locked onto Eagle, due to his gang connections and the fact that he was said to be walking with a limp after he was injured in a shooting, according to his attorney, Megan Baca, of the California Innocence Project.

Charges against Eagle were initially dismissed after Urias failed to show up for a preliminary hearing. But a month later, LAPD homicide detectives Thomas Murrell and Kenneth Wiseman prodded the shooting victim to pick Eagle out of a photo lineup, according to the motion to vacate his conviction.

Urias initially told police he did not recognize anyone in the lineup, records show.

“OK, circle that guy … Number 4 is the one you were pointing to,” Murrell said to Urias, according to a recording of the interview described in court records.

An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment. The audio recording that called the validity of the identification into question was never raised at Eagle’s trial, according to Baca.

Despite concerns about the behavior of the detectives, Hochman said he was not immediately ordering a review of other cases involving Murrell and Wiseman. Neither Rampart detective was part of a C.R.A.S.H. unit.

Murrell denied any wrongdoing and told The Times he remembered Eagle’s name because the then-teenager was a suspect in multiple gang homicides at the time.

He did not offer specifics, but dismissed Eagle’s medical alibi, contending the teen “wasn’t on crutches” when police arrested him.

“If he made an ID, we didn’t cheat, I can tell you that … I’ve never done that,” said Murrell. “We did everything by the book.”

Attempts to contact Wiseman were unsuccessful.

Eagle said things were only made worse by his former attorney, Patrick Lake, who didn’t make an opening statement at trial or raise any of Eagle’s alibi evidence. When Eagle questioned his lawyer, Lake joked that he was “saving the best for last.”

Oscar Eagle with his defense attorney, Megan Baca of the Innocence Project.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

As Eagle’s family grew frustrated in the gallery, he said his mother passed him a note that simply read “fire him.” Eagle tried to get rid of Lake, but a judge denied his request. Eagle was convicted of murder. And since he was tried as an adult, he faced 25-years-to-life.

Lake did not respond to a request for comment. Baca said she had one conversation with Lake, in which he claimed he didn’t remember Eagle or his case.

At the time, prosecutors in California could directly file charges against teens in adult court, sending hundreds of children every year to adult prisons such as Pelican Bay, where Eagle wound up. That practice has been abolished by a change in state law, but Baca said she’s encountered too many cases where teens had their lives stolen because they were wrongfully convicted and tried as adults.

“It’s egregious, but I think that it happens all the time,” Baca said. “So many of my clients were juveniles and they got adult life.”

Eagle said his stay in prison was long and painful. He spent six years in segregated housing, essentially isolation, after Baca said her client was wrongly labeled as a Mexican Mafia associate. He denied any affiliation with the powerful prison-based syndicate. Eagle said prison officials took a leap in logic to link him to the gang based on a “kite,” or prison note, sent by another inmate.

As he grew older behind bars, Eagle started to read voraciously. His father sent recommended books. Eagle says he gravitated toward the Bible.

Oscar Eagle at an L.A. County juvenile detention camp in 1997.

(Courtesy of Megan Baca)

Even though he knew he hadn’t committed the crime that put him in prison, Eagle said he still realized there were things about his life that needed to change.

“I was 30 years old. My perspective started to change. And I started to see this past life that I was living was nonsense,” he said. “I started to have a conscience.”

In 2023, after repeated failures to get his case overturned on appeal, some of Eagle’s friends got the attention of Baca and the California Innocence Project, which worked to bring the case before the conviction review unit. At the same time, Eagle said, he started exchanging letters with an ex-girlfriend from high school, a woman named Monica.

In July, the two squeezed next to each other on Baca’s couch at the lawyer’s Long Beach home, hands interlocked. They’ve since gotten married and are looking to move to Arizona, away from the city and county that nearly took everything away from Eagle.

There’s still a lot for Eagle to get used too — he’s never driven a car, the concept of Uber is still bizarre to him — but Monica says there’s one silver lining to the prison term Eagle never should have served. She wouldn’t have married the guy who was sent away all those years ago.

“He’s a whole new person from when he went in,” she said.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Prep Rally. I’m Eric Sondheimer. It was another week of scandal in high school football. And also games with top performances. It’s an interesting balancing act for sportswriters.

Scandal widens

There’s continuing fallout from an Archdiocese of Los Angeles investigation that self-reported violations by Bishop Montgomery’s football program to the Southern Section, resulting in the school ending its varsity season after playing one game and forfeiting another. Now the rest of the season will be forfeits as the school investigates its 24 transfer students.

President Patrick Lee has been placed on administrative leave, according to a parent who says faculty were told of the decision. The Archdiocese has declined to confirm, saying it doesn’t comment on personnel matters. Most interesting is that Lee was brought in last school year as Bishop Montgomery’s first president. Also faculty members have been directed not to speak to the media. The school’s principal resigned from her role as president of the Camino-Del Rey Athletic Assn.

The school is trying to play a junior varsity schedule while allowing eligible varsity players to participate, but that’s unlikely to gain traction. Hart canceled this week’s JV game with Bishop Montgomery, not wanting to subject its regular JV players that include freshmen to a game against possible varsity players out of concern for player safety.

The Southern Section has to decide whether eligible Bishop Montgomery varsity players can transfer and be eligible immediately since the school dropped its varsity program.

An attorney is representing fired head coach Ed Hodgkiss and five ineligible players. Legal action is expected.

The Southern Section has continued its crackdown of transfer students who submitted inaccurate paperwork. Long Beach Millikan had to forfeit two games for using ineligible players and most of its transfer students are now listed under review on the Southern Section transfer web page. One of those players who didn’t play Friday after previously being cleared was quarterback Ashton Pannell, who transferred from Loyola after previously attending St. John Bosco. Other schools are also dealing with issues involving transfer students.

The Archdiocese held a scheduled meeting with principals and athletic directors. The Catholic schools chief indicated changes are coming on how to handle transfer students within Archdiocese high schools.

Remember, under CIF rules, you have to move physically with the entire family unit to be eligible immediately. Otherwise you get a one-time sit-out period transfer status that lasts for a portion of the season. Schools confirm the transfers through paperwork requirements. The Southern Section appears to be using AI technology to catch students using addresses that had previously been used. That can result in a violation of bylaw 202, which prohibits providing false information. It also is a violation to receive inducements to transfer, such as housing, known as bylaw 510, undue influence.

One good thing is the early season attention on ineligible players can prevent numerous forfeits at the end of the football season that could prevent a school from entering the playoffs because of an anonymous tip.

Marine League coaches who forfeited to Narbonne last season alleging money payments feel vindicated after a booster confirmed during a podcast that he paid parents to transfer their sons to Narbonne. Here’s a report.

Madden Williams of St. John Bosco prepares to make a game-tying 51-yard touchdown catch against St. Frances.

(Craig Weston)

It was the Madden Williams show in Bellflower. He made two spectacular catches in the fourth quarter to rally St. John Bosco to a 21-14 victory over Baltimore St. Frances. Here’s the report.

Los Alamitos improved to 4-0 with a 41-21 win over Gardena Serra. There’s no doubt no coach has done a finer job in the first month of the season than Ray Fenton.

Mission Viejo exposed the weakness in Northern California football, routing one its top teams, Folsom, 53-14. Folsom and De La Salle are considered the top Northern California teams in contention for a CIF state championship Open Division bowl spot. San Mateo Serra comes to town to play St. John Bosco on Friday.

Jason Miller, the Leuzinger coach who used to coach in Northern California, was asked to explain the downward trajectory.

“Lots of traditional football families have moved out of the Bay Area, replaced by tech families,” he said. “Black and white families with generations of football players have found the Bay Area unaffordable. Interest has lacked in college football as well. East Palo Alto and West Oakland were once treasure chests of athletes that have been watered down by gentrification.”

Bishop Amat came up with an upset win over Valencia behind a game-winning 79-yard touchdown run from Ryan Salcedo. Here’s the report.

Huntington Beach quarterback Brady Edmunds.

(James Carbone)

Quarterback Brady Edmunds of Huntington Beach had a big game in win over Western. Here’s the report.

Here’s this week’s top 25 football rankings by The Times.

Here’s the top performers from the weekend games.

Here’s this week’s schedule of games.

City Section

Hamilton coach Elijah Asante poses next to campus mural of Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

The City Section’s top teams continue to struggle in nonleague games against Southern Section opponents, but the strategy is designed to prepare them for league play. Birmingham lost to Moorpark, Carson lost to Palos Verdes and San Pedro lost to Great Oak.

Meanwhile, Palisades and Granada Hills engaged in a passing vs. running scoring marathon before Palisades prevailed 59-44 behind 387 yards passing and six touchdowns from quarterback Jack Thomas.

Robert Garrett, the longtime coach at Crenshaw, continues to be on administrative leave. The Cougars suffered their first team in falling to Hamilton 23-6. Jacob Riley of Hamilton had three interceptions. Here’s the report.

Garfield got its first win for new coach Patrick Vargas over La Palma Kennedy. All-City running back Ceasar Reyes rushed for 172 yards and had 12 solo tackles on defense.

Here’s this week’s top 10 City Section rankings.

Verbum Dei rising again

Verbum Dei President Father Travis Russell finally got around to putting up a photo of the new Pope.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Verbum Dei is preparing to play its first football game later this month after dropping its varsity season last year for lack of players. It’s a re-start with a new coach and the backing of an energized school president who carries around a tool box acting like a handy man for any and all problems.

Here’s the report.

Girls volleyball

The Stillwell volleyball family. Sophomore Lucy (left), father Tom, a former UCLA All-American, and senior Maya. The daughters play at Harvad-Westlake.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Tom Stillwell won three NCAA titles playing volleyball for UCLA. Now he has two daughters playing for Harvard-Westlake. He’s enjoying life as a Girl Dad. Here’s the report.

Four-year starter Abby Zimmerman has led Redondo Union girls volleyball.

(Steve Galluzzo)

What a week it was for Redondo Union volleyball with wins over previously unbeaten Marrymount and powerful Mater Dei. Here’s the report from the Marymount victory.

The schedule doesn’t get any easier with a home match against Sierra Canyon on Tuesday.

Venice handed Palisades its first defeat in winning its own tournament championship. Gaia Adeseun-Williams and Samantha Lortie was named co-tournament MVPs from Venice.

JSerra is 11-0 and continuing to look like one of the best flag football teams in the Southern Section. The Lions began the El Toro tournament with shutout wins over Classical Academy of San Diego and Edison.

Freshmen receivers Tessa Russell and Ava Irwin continue to be impact players.

Panorama is off to 7-0 start in the City Section behind quarterback Yadhira Hermenegildo.

Prep talk

A look at the positives from high school sports last week.

All-American Kami Miner dropped by Redondo Union to offer a pep talk to the girls volleyball players.

Louie Vargas (left) with his son, Danny, has been officiating for 52 years.

(Courtesy Danny Vargas)

It’s year No. 52 as a high school sports official for Louie Vargas, who’s 80 years old and still a head linesman for football games.

The Slye brothers, Jordan Jr. and Marty, are lifting up Salesian football and a third brother will arrive next season.

First-year coach Derwin Henderson has Rialto off to a 3-0 start.

Notes . . .

Infielder Trevor Deack of Orange Lutheran has committed to Utah Tech. . . .

Pitcher Damian Catano of Arcadia has committed to St. Mary’s. . . .

A refurbished outside basketball court at Crenshaw High was dedicated Saturday and painted in the school’s colors. . . .

Sophomore point guard Josh Lowery has transferred to Sierra Canyon. . . .

Swimmer Tori Yamamura of Valencia has committed to Missouri. . . .

Bishop Alemany baseball has picked up Mikey Martinez from Crespi. He was a starting infielder and top relief pitcher as a sophomore for the Mission League champions. Also senior pitcher Jaden Lee, the younger brother of UCLA pitcher Justin Lee, has left Sherman Oaks Notre Dame for Alemany. . . .

Casey Patterson is the new boys volleyball coach at Newbury Park . . . .

The stadium fields at Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks and Westlake will be receiving refurbishment beginning Dec. 1, forcing soccer teams to seek alternative sites. . . .

Long Beach Millikan has forfeited wins over Las Vegas Foothill and Newbury Park for using ineligible players.

From the archives: Ty Dieffenbach

Former Agoura quarterback Ty Dieffenbach

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Former Agoura quarterback Ty Dieffenbach, who originally signed with and spent two years at Pittsburgh, made his debut for Cal Poly last week and passed for 263 yards and ran for 69 yards in a win over San Diego. He accounted for three touchdowns and was named the Big Sky player of the week. On Saturday, things didn’t go as well in a 63-9 loss to Utah. He passed for 82 yards.

Here’s a story from 2022 looking at Dieffenbach’s potential as a quarterback.

Recommendations

From Burlisononbasketball, a story on top girls basketball players making an impression at a local camp.

From Communityforwardredlands, a story on the return of Hall of Fame football coach Dick Bruich.

From SFGate.com, a story on the rapid growth of girls flag football.

From the Los Angeles Times, a story on the soccer Thompson sisters gaining money and attention.

From the Los Angeles Times, an excerpt from a book on Newbury Park’s cross-country success.

Tweets you might have missed

Until next time….

Have a question, comment or something you’d like to see in a future Prep Rally newsletter? Email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @latsondheimer.

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Sept. 5 (UPI) — British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced Friday she will resign following a scandal over her underpayment of taxes on her home.

“Given the findings, and the impact on my family, I have therefore decided to resign as Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, as well as Deputy Leader of the Labor Party,” Rayner said in a press release.

“I have long believed that people who serve the British public in government must always observe the highest standards, and while the Independent Adviser has concluded that I acted in good faith and with honesty and integrity throughout, I accept that I did not meet the highest standards in relation to my recent property purchase,” she added.

Rayner had stated Wednesday that she referred herself to Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, in order to reach a determination on her realization that she paid an incorrect rate for Stamp Duty Land Tax on a home she purchased in May.

According to Raynor, she paid for her new home with a combination of a mortgage and money acquired from selling her stake in the residence she maintained with her former husband and their kids.

She alleges that she was given bad advice from her lawyers in regard to how much tax, or stamp duty she owed.

“I deeply regret my decision to not seek additional specialist tax advice given both my position as Housing Secretary and my complex family arrangements,” Rayner said.

“I take full responsibility for this error,” she added. “I would like to take this opportunity to repeat that it was never my intention to do anything other than pay the right amount.”

Magnus issued a judgement Friday in which did note that “I believe Ms. Rayner has acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service.”

“I consider, however, that her unfortunate failure to settle her SDLT liability at the correct level, coupled with the fact that this was established only following intensive public scrutiny, leads me to advise you that, in relation to this matter, she cannot be considered to have met the ‘highest possible standards of proper conduct’ as envisaged by the [Ministerial Code],” he added.

The Ministerial Code are the standards all ministers are expected to uphold.

“Accordingly, it is with deep regret that I must advise you that in these circumstances, I consider the Code to have been breached,” he concluded.

She also said she had resigned because of media pressure on her family.

“While I rightly expect proper scrutiny on me and my life, my family did not choose to have their private lives interrogated and exposed so publicly. I have been clear throughout this process that my priority has, and always will be, protecting my children and the strain I am putting them under through staying in post has become unbearable,” Rayner explained.

“Thank you for informing me of your decision to resign from the Government,” wrote Prime Minister and leader of the Labor Party Keir Starmer in a handwritten letter. “I am very sad that your time as Deputy Prime Minister, Secretary of State and Deputy Leader of the Labor Party has ended in this way.”

She also received praise from Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and former Labor Party leader Ed Miliband, who called her “one of the great British political figures of our time” in an X post Friday.

“I know she will continue to stand at the front of the fight for social justice in this country,” he added.

However, other British political parties criticized Rayner and Starmer.

“What did Keir Starmer know, and when?” asked Conservative Party leader and Member of Parliament, or MP Kemi Badenoch in a video clip posted online. “Did he mislead the public?”

“He has now lost a Deputy Prime Minister after losing a Transport Secretary, an Anti-Corruption minister and a Homelessness minister to scandal,” she continued, noting other members of Starmer’s administration who have resigned over varied reasons.

“You can’t be Housing Secretary, and avoid [$53,731] of stamp duty,” said Reform UK leader MP Nigel Farage in an online video. “Angela Rayner is gone.”

FORMER Prem stars who lost tens of millions in failed investments are demanding justice.

TV pundit Danny Murphy, 48, said he was a victim of “financial abuse” — turning to booze, drugs and gambling after losing about £5million.

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He was among up to 200 players who invested with Kingsbridge Asset Management in the 1990s and 2000s.

It attracted up to £417million before failed ventures led to loss of homes and bankruptcy.

Investors were deemed to be “victims of crime” in a police investigation but are still being chased for millions in tax.

Murphy is one of 11 stars, including ex-Arsenal ace Michael Thomas, calling for more protection from tax charges.

David McKee and Kevin McMenamin, who ran Kingsbridge, denied wrongdoing on BBC’s Panorama last night.

Murphy said he feels “shame” over his involvement.

“It’s the shame, embarrassment and guilt of getting yourself in a position that you think you’re better than,” he said.

“I’ve lost four – maybe five – million, roughly.

“The financial abuse I’ve suffered has caused me monumental problems in my life.”

He added: “The financial abuse in football and the dark side of football, is something that has gone under the radar for too long.”

When billionaire casino mogul and top Republican donor Steve Wynn was accused of a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct in the midst of the #MeToo movement, elected officials across the country quickly distanced themselves from him.

The news broke in January 2018, and some Republicans immediately called on their colleagues to return donations from Wynn, who was accused of pressuring employees to perform sex acts.

Sen. Susan Collins told CNN, “I don’t even think it’s a close call to return the money.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham also chimed in: “We should do of ourselves what we ask of the Democratic Party. So I don’t think we should have a double standard for ourselves.”

Within months, Wynn started to donate again, and by 2020, he was once again a major GOP donor, giving millions of dollars to conservative super PACs, President Trump’s reelection campaign, candidates and state Republican parties across the nation.

This year, Wynn gave more than three-quarters of a million dollars to a joint fundraising committee aimed at helping Republicans retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and that group gave donations to dozens of incumbents across the country, including nearly every member of California’s Republican delegation to Congress.

The recipients include Reps. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita and David Valadao of Hanford, whose seats will be hotly contested in next year’s midterm elections because they are key to GOP hopes to retake control of the House.

Elections experts said Wynn’s reemergence in the political arena and the candidates’ willingness to take his money were unsurprising, and unlikely to move voters.

“In politics in general, I think the hope of people who have been accused of wrongdoing is that we’re all amnesiacs. And eight times out of 10 we are,” said Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Law School. “Republicans in tight races — very few people are going to vote against them because they got money from a PAC that got money from Steve Wynn.

“At this point, because we’re not in that cycle of breaking news about Steve Wynn, I think it’s probably a pretty reasonable calculation, one, because time has faded and two, because it’s not a direct contribution.”

Wynn donated $771,900 — the maximum allowed — to the Take Back the House 2022 joint fundraising committee on March 26, according to the Federal Election Commission. From that day through the end of the month, the committee, which is controlled by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, sent $5,800 max-out donations to more than 40 members of Congress, with FEC documentation citing Wynn as the source of the money.

The California Republicans who received these donations are Reps. Devin Nunes of Tulare, Darrell Issa of Bonsall, Doug LaMalfa of Richvale, Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, Michelle Steel of Seal Beach, Valadao, Garcia and McCarthy. Rep. Young Kim of La Habra also received a donation from Take Back the House 2022 on March 31, but her FEC filing does not identify the donor.

McCarthy was the only one to respond to requests for comment.

Asked about the new donations, McCarthy said in a statement, “Steve Wynn is one of the great innovators in the history of modern capitalism. I thank him for his continued support, and I look forward to working with him to retake the House Majority.”

In 2018, McCarthy reportedly gave a Wynn contribution to charity in the aftermath of the sexual misconduct allegations.

Three years ago, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that Wynn had engaged in sexual misconduct for decades. Among the cases cited was one by a casino hotel manicurist who claimed Wynn forced her to have sex with him and who received a $7.5-million settlement, the Journal reported.

Wynn, now 79, responded to the investigation by denying that he had ever assaulted any woman and by blaming his ex-wife for airing the allegations as she sought to revise their divorce settlement.

Though Wynn was never charged criminally, the fallout was severe. He resigned as the head of his namesake company. Gambling regulators in Nevada and Massachusetts fined Wynn Resorts tens of millions of dollars for its executives covering up or ignoring Wynn’s alleged behavior. Wynn agreed to pay Wynn Resorts $20 million to partly settle shareholder lawsuits against the company.

Wynn, who previously had supported Democrats including President Obama, stepped down as finance chair of the Republican National Committee. His name was stripped off a commons at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater where he once served as a trustee.

Among the politicians who returned or donated Wynn contributions were Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dean Heller of Nevada, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

McCarthy is in line to take the speaker’s gavel if Republicans win control of the House next year. His Take Back the House 2022 is a joint fundraising committee of 59 members of Congress and 20 other political committees that raised nearly $22 million in the first quarter of this year, according to the Federal Election Commission. Wynn was one of 11 people who maxed out to the committee.

Wynn’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment, but he told the Associated Press that Wynn “has the same rights and entitlements as any other private citizen in the United States of America.”

Four of the Californians who received donations from the PAC — Garcia, Valadao, Steel and Kim — are among the 22 incumbent Republicans targeted by Democrats in the 2022 election. The four seats are in traditional Republican strongholds but their demographics are changing. Mirroring a national trend, these suburban districts have grown increasingly competitive as their residents have grown more diverse. Democrats won the four seats during the blue wave in 2018; Republicans flipped them back last year.

An added uncertainty is redistricting because California lost a congressional seat based on the latest census report. Garcia’s northern Los Angeles County seat, which he won by 333 votes in November, may shift closer to Los Angeles when the redistricting commission redraws the maps, a move that would make it more Democratic.

There’s another Catholic school sports scandal under way, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles apparently was the only one who didn’t see it coming.

On Saturday, Bishop Montgomery in Torrance announced football coach and co-athletic director Ed Hodgkiss was no longer employed by the school.

In other words, he was fired.

He’s apparently going to be the fall guy for five Bishop Montgomery transfer students being declared ineligible by the Southern Section, multiple Bishop Montgomery suspensions imposed after players left the bench with 24 seconds left in a loss in Hawaii and Bishop Montgomery having to forfeit to No. 1 Mater Dei on Friday because of lack of players.

People in the Southern California football community have been talking about Bishop Montgomery for months as they saw one transfer after another welcomed to the school. Southern Section officials waited for weeks to receive the transfers’ paperwork. Five players were declared in violation of CIF bylaw 202, which includes providing false information.

If a school trying to rapidly improve its football program with short cuts sounds familiar, it is.

In 2020, St. Bernard turned to former Narbonne coach Manuel Douglas, who won eight City titles. Douglas was forced out at Narbonne and didn’t coach in 2019 after a nine-month Los Angeles Unified School District investigation. Narbonne was banned from the 2019 playoffs and forced to forfeit its 2018 City title for use of an ineligible player.

Douglas later resigned in the spring of 2020 when he came under an FBI and IRS investigation over money received from a Narbonne booster to pay for a trip to Hawaii while coaching at Narbonne.

St. Bernard proceeded to drop its football program in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

This past week, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese wrote in an email in response to a request for an update about Bishop Montgomery, “The investigation is ongoing and there are no developments to share at this time. The school and the Department of Catholic Schools are in communication with the CIF Southern Section office as the investigation continues.”

Last spring, Bishop Montgomery’s new principal, Michele Starkey, was asked by The Times in a phone call, whose participants included new school president Patrick Lee, if she was aware of any involvement by the same Narbonne booster tied to Douglas’ resignation in Bishop Montgomery’s program. She said no.

The archdiocese should start its investigation right there. Players don’t start suddenly showing up from all over Southern California with no reason.

Lessons were not learned. Players from last year’s Bishop Montgomery team saw what was happening and transferred out. Maybe the Archdiocese should ask them what was happening.

A Bishop Montgomery parent wrote in a letter to The Times, “Returning players were demoted, excluded from trips or quit; Archdiocesan Catholic values appear secondary to short-term athletic exposure; despite my June outreach to the school, no reply ever came.”

Messages left for Hodgkiss and Lee on Saturday were not returned.

It’s another big mess for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to clean up, and it was very much preventable if lessons from the past had been learned.

The Torrance Police Department and the California Attorney General’s Office have entered into an “enforceable agreement” meant to reform the troubled agency following a scandal that led prosecutors to toss dozens of criminal cases linked to officers who sent racist text messages, officials said.

Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced the reforms — which will include changes to the agency’s use-of-force and internal affairs practices, along with attempts to curtail biased policing — during a news conference in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday morning.

Bonta credited former Torrance Police Chief Jeremiah Hart with approaching him after the scandal first erupted in 2021, leading to collaborative reform efforts.

“The Torrance Police Department has demonstrated a commitment to self reflection to looking inward … to address systemic challenges,” Bonta said Thursday.

The California Attorney General’s Office announced its Torrance investigation in December 2021, the same day a Times investigation first revealed the contents of the text messages and the names of most of the officers involved. Court records and documents obtained by The Times showed the officers made offensive comments about a wide range of groups. They joked about “gassing” Jewish people, attacking members of the LGBTQ community and using violence against suspects.

The worst comments were saved for Black men and women, who the officers repeatedly called “savages” or referred to with variations of the N-word. One officer shared instructions on how to a tie a noose and posted a picture of a stuffed animal being hung inside police headquarters. Another message referred to the relatives of Christopher DeAndre Mitchell, a Black man shot to death by Torrance police in 2018, as “all those [N-word] family members,” according to court records.

Sometimes, the officers blatantly fantasized about the deaths of Black men, women and even kids.

One officer shared pictures of tiny coffins intended to house the bodies of Black children they would “put down.” Another imagined executing Black suspects.

“Lucky I wasn’t out and about,” one officer wrote in response to a text about Black men allegedly involved in a Torrance robbery, according to records reviewed by The Times in 2022. “D.A. shoot team asking me why they are all hung by a noose and shot in the back of the head 8 times each.”

The officers also suggested a political allegiance in their hate-filled text thread. In a conversation about needlessly beating a female suspect, Sgt. Brian Kawamoto said he wanted to “make Torrance great again,” a play on President Trump’s ubiquitous campaign slogan.

The texts were sent between May 2018 and February 2022, according to investigative reports made public by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. Bonta said Thursday that roughly a dozen officers were involved in the thread. At least seven of those officers are no longer employed by the agency, according to court records and a POST database.

The group of officers that The Times linked to the texts has been involved in at least seven serious use-of-force incidents in Torrance and Long Beach, including three killings of Black and Latino men, according to police use-of-force records and court filings.

The officers actions were initially found to be justified in each case, though prosecutors later revisited Mitchell’s death and indicted Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez on manslaughter charges.

While Concannon and Chavez were investigated as part of the scandal, The Times has never seen evidence that they sent racist text messages. In the past, authorities have said, some officers under investigation were aware of the texts but did not send any hateful messages themselves.

David Chandler is also awaiting trial on assault charges for shooting a Black man in the back in 2018. In total, five officers linked to the text thread have been charged with crimes.

The scandal may not have come to light if not for the actions of former officers Cody Weldin and Michael Tomsic, who were charged with spray painting a swastika inside of a vehicle that was towed from a crime scene in 2021. That incident prompted former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón to launch an investigation into possible hate crime charges. While a hate enhancement was never charged in the vandalism case, it led to the execution of warrants on the officers’ cellphones that unveiled the texts.

Tomsic and Weldin pleaded guilty to vandalism earlier this year and gave up their right to be police officers in California. Disciplinary records made public earlier this year identified Weldin as the “owner” of the group text in which many of the racist remarks were found. The group was dubbed “The Boys,” records show.

By engaging in “collaborative reform,” Bonta chose the least forceful method of reform in Torrance. Often, the attorney general’s office will seek court-mandated reform through a settlement, as it has with the Los Angeles County sheriff’s and probation departments, so that it may ask a judge to force change if a police agency doesn’t comply.

Bonta is now seeking to take over the county’s juvenile halls after the probation department failed to honor its settlement with the state.

In 2021, Hart personally approached Bonta’s office, seeking to work together on reform, which may have led the attorney general to use a softer method. Interim Police Chief Bob Dunn, who came to Torrance in 2023 after a long career with the Anaheim Police Department, said he believes Hart’s actions should show the department is committed to reform in the wake of the ugly scandal.

“It was the department that identified the behavior, the department that did the investigation and the department that took the case for criminal filing on the initially involved officers,” Dunn said of the city’s reaction to the revelation of the text messages in 2021.

In recent years, Dunn said, the department has taken steps to improve its use-of-force and police pursuit review processes by deploying sergeants to respond to any force incident. The hope, Dunn said, is to collect better information from individual cases that can be used to train officers in deescalation. Hart also created a Chief’s Advisory Panel to collect greater community input on issues facing the department, including bias allegations, according to Dunn.

WASHINGTON — The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein is back in Washington as Congress prepares to return for the fall.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson called an early start to summer break in July, attempting to shut down bipartisan clamor for the full release of the Epstein files. But Democrats are eager to launch back into a scandal that has dogged President Trump and divided his MAGA base.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, plans to partner with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky to quickly force a vote on the House floor ordering the Justice Department to release its entire trove of documents from the investigation of Epstein, a convicted sex offender who abused hundreds of women and girls.

The success of the measure is far from guaranteed. It is unclear whether the Justice Department would even abide by it. But Democrats plan to make sure the issue does not go away, regardless of its outcome, multiple Democratic aides said.

Democratic lawmakers’ focus on Epstein will be “high” out of the gate once Congress returns after Labor Day, one senior House Democratic staffer told The Times.

Republicans “will not want to be put in a position of voting against disclosure,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity to share internal discussions. “The same thing that tripped up Johnson in July is still there.”

California Dems lead charge for release

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) has pushed for the release of the Epstein documents.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Epstein, a wealthy financier with a deep bench of powerful friends, died in a New York City prison in August 2019 facing federal charges in a sprawling child sex trafficking conspiracy.

The charges followed reporting by the Miami Herald of a scandalous sweetheart deal brokered by federal prosecutors in Florida that had allowed Epstein to serve a months-long sentence, avoiding federal charges that could have resulted in life imprisonment.

The chief prosecutor in that case, Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, went on to serve as Labor secretary in Trump’s first term.

Acosta has agreed to sit for a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee on Sept. 19.

It is just one of several milestones coming up for the Oversight Committee, which voted to subpoena all Justice Department records in the case before dismissing for recess. Democrats, partnering with Republicans rebelling against the party line, forced the subpoena vote.

The first set of those documents were delivered last week. But Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), the top Democrat on the committee, said that 97% of the 33,000 pages of documents handed over by the Justice Department so far were already public.

The Justice Department and the Oversight Committee said that the records would be released on a piecemeal basis as department officials work to redact sensitive information on Epstein’s victims.

Garcia and Khanna have been leading the charge for an expansive release of documents in the Epstein case — a call that has drawn fierce pushback from Trump, who had a close friendship with Epstein for roughly a decade.

“There is no excuse for incomplete disclosures,” Garcia said. “Survivors and the American public deserve the truth.”

‘Gentleman in all respects’

Democrats never made an issue of the Epstein files when they held Congress and the White House under President Biden, dismissing the story as another right-wing conspiracy theory. But Democratic lawmakers now see the issue as an opportunity to cause a split between Trump and his supporters, highlighting his resistance to releasing the files for a voter base that has called for their disclosure since Epstein’s 2019 death.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the Oversight Committee, issued a new subpoena this week to Epstein’s estate for all material from 1990 through his death that references presidents and vice presidents, as well address books, contact lists, and videos recorded at Epstein’s properties.

That could result in the disclosure of a book compiled for Epstein marking his 50th birthday in the early 2000s, first reported over the summer by the Wall Street Journal, that allegedly includes a letter from Trump featuring a lewd doodle and a note that reads, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has denied he wrote the note.

The Oversight Committee has also voted to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s close associate who is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls.

Maxwell and her attorneys are openly angling for a pardon from Trump, raising suspicions among Democrats over the reliability of her testimony. But any appearance by Maxwell on Capitol Hill would become a media sensation, drawing national attention back to the case.

The second most powerful figure in the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, personally interviewed Maxwell in July over the course of two days. She absolved Trump of any criminality in the interview without even being asked to do so.

“The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” Maxwell said, according to a transcript released last week.

“In the times I was with him,” she added, “he was a gentleman in all respects.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Why the Grateful Dead are one of California’s greatest natural phenomena
The deep dive: Will your congressional district shift left or right in Newsom’s proposed map?
The L.A. Times Special: Why COVID keeps roaring back every summer, even as pandemic fades from public view

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
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TAMZIN Outhwaite appeared to extend an olive branch to ex-husband Tom Ellis a decade after their split.

The former couple’s seven-year marriage ended in 2014 after Tom allegedly confessed to cheating with American actress Emilie de Ravin in 2013.

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Over the years, actress Tamzin, 54, has taken aim at her actor ex, who is best known for roles in Miranda and Lucifer, for “walking out” on her and their two children.

However, she appears at peace with their difficult history now, re-sharing pictures Tom, 46, uploaded to Instagram from the premiere of Netflix‘s The Thursday Night Murder Club.

They featured a suited Tom linking arms with daughter Marnie, 12, who stood beside brother Flo, 17.

Tamzin added: “My heart is bursting #suchaproudmama [love heart emoji].”

The positive post was very different in tone from a tweet she posted in 2023.

It read: “Ten years since the father of my kids walked out on us for the final time. I still meet new people on jobs who reveal more infidelities and lies he committed. 

“But thankfully my heart and soul are clear and clean and I could not be happier right now.”

After removing the post, the former EastEnders star explained: “Thank you all for your messages re my now deleted tweet.I was marking the 10 year anniversary with pride,a feeling of triumph & genuine gratitude.

“I understand it has triggered some people. For anyone struggling, the most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself.”

Last year Tamzin split from boyfriend of six years Tom Child. That relationship ended on much more civil terms, and she still refers to him as her “best friend”.

She credited him with being supportive throughout her eldest child’s transition to identifying as a boy.

Tamzin said: “[He] has been around for the whole of like Flo’s transitioning period, for the whole of Marnie becoming a girl that was discovering all sorts of stuff and boys, and so he is still a member of the family. We’ve been not together for over a year. 

“The kids often say to him ‘When you meet someone, or even if you have, how are you going to explain this situation to your girlfriends?'”

She’s in no rush to find a new man and hasn’t found dating apps to be fruitful.

Tamzin told The Sun last month: “I’m single, I’ve tried the dating apps. I’m on one now but I keep forgetting to check it.

“I just can’t imagine actually going on the date and going back to the small talk. It will happen one day but I’m certainly not waiting for it.

“I’ve been single for over a year now and I’m loving it too much.

“I owe it to myself to be single, because I haven’t been single for this long, ever. I have always been in relationships. I actually like being on my own, it’s really nice.”

Tamzin became a household name in 1998 when she joined the cast of the BBC’s EastEnders as Mel Owen, and went on to win several Sexiest Female awards as well as Best Actress.

She has also starred in army series Red Cap, crime drama New Tricks and played Rebecca Mitchell in drama Hotel Babylon.

Recently she played a recovering drug addict in ITV’s police series The Tower, and last year played sex-loving Sylvie in Channel 5’s six-part drama The Wives.

Tamzin says that after reading the script for The Wives, she overhauled her health and figure ready for the camera.

She said: “I lost weight before we started filming The Wives last February.

“I read that I was in a bikini a lot and a swimsuit. So, between Christmas and the New Year, I didn’t drink any alcohol and I exercised every day. I didn’t ever weigh myself, but I just knew I could fit into things that I didn’t used to.

“I went down a dress size. It took me six weeks. Now it’s just keeping it off.”

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Former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Wynne Evans appeared on a BBC show over the weekend despite his apparent departure from the corporation earlier this year

Former Strictly Come Dancing star Wynne Evans made an unexpected appearance on a BBC show tonight. It comes after the corporation said it had “no plans” to work with him following his exit from the live tour and his radio show.

Wynne, 53, however, appeared on an episode of Pointless Celebrities that aired on BBC One earlier tonight. He was paired up with Joanna Page, who was his co-star on Wynne & Joanna: All at Sea, which isn’t set to have a second series as the BBC said in June that it has “no plans” to renew it.

It comes following his apparent departure from the BBC earlier this year. It had been reported that it had severed ties with the opera singer, known for the Go Compare adverts, and had confirmed that it didn’t plan to work with him further.

READ MORE: ITV axes Noel Edmonds’ big TV comeback after just one series despite huge launchREAD MORE: ITV makes major decision on I’m A Celebrity’s future after talks with officials

The pre-recorded episode of Pointless Celebrities that aired tonight saw Wynne and Joanna make it to the penultimate round, but they missed out on reaching the final together. The other team, Jane Hill and Ben Boulos, who both work on BBC News, became the finalists instead after winning the round.

They had competed against two other pairs earlier in the episode. RuPaul’s Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard had been with impressionist Jess Robinson, whilst comedians Esther Manito and Rich Hall had worked together.

Prior to the episode airing tonight, Wynne had told fans on Instagram that he would be in it. He wrote beside a photo of himself and Joanna on the set: “Tonight back on [BBC One] for Celebrity Pointless with [Joanna].”

Some viewers seemed surprised to see Wynne on the show this evening. One wrote on X: “Wynne Evans? This must have been recorded 10 years ago?” Another said: “Seriously??? Who the hell thought Wynne Evans appearing would be a good idea.” A third wrote on the platform though: “Well done [BBC] – Wynne on Pointless – common sense at last.”

It’s not been confirmed when the episode was filmed. One viewer suggested it could mark Wynne’s final appearance on the BBC though. They wrote in a post on X earlier tonight: “This could be Wynne Evans’s last BBC appearance.”

The episode’s broadcast this weekend comes after the BBC was said to have cut its last remaining ties with Wynne. He had worked with the corporation for years, including hosting his own BBC Radio show for almost a decade.

it was announced back in May that the BBC had “no plans” to work with him in the future though. It comes following a series of scandals during his time on Strictly Come Dancing last year and its subsequent tour earlier this year.

During the tour, it was reported that he had used the term ‘spit roast’ to host Janette Manrara at a photocall. Wynne has, however, since insisted that it was instead part of a nickname for fellow contestant Jamie Borthwick and that it “wasn’t meant sexually”.

Wynne subsequently left the tour and his BBC Radio Wales show after the scandal broke back in January. It was said at the time that the decision had been made in agreement with the BBC and to “prioritise” Wynne’s wellbeing.

It was then announced in May that Wynne would not be returning to his radio show, which he had hosted since 2016. In a statement at the time, a spokesperson for the BBC said: “[Wynne] is not under contract with the BBC. He is not returning to the mid-morning show on BBC Radio Wales, and there are currently no plans to work with him.”

Whilst Wynne, who has since criticised the BBC, told fans in a statement: “It breaks my heart to say the BBC has decided not to renew my contract, so I won’t be returning to my radio show. I’m gutted. That show wasn’t just work – it was home. It was us. We laughed, we cried, we sang like nobody was listening. And somehow, through the airwaves, we became a family. Thank you for welcoming me into your homes. Into your hearts.”

He instead announced that he would host the Wynne Evans Show on other platforms. He’s since launched his new weekday radio and later told his followers on social media that he had more than 40,000 listeners for the first episode.

More recently, it was reported in June that the BBC had cut its last remaining ties with him. It was confirmed at the time that the corporation had “no plans” for a second series of his travel show Wynne & Joanna: All at Sea, which ran for six episodes between January and February.

A source had told the Sun that the decision to not renew it “marks the end” of a relationship between Wynne and the BBC. They said: “It means that Wynne has no TV show or radio show with the Beeb, and effectively marks the end of their ­relationship.”

Pointless Celebrities is available on BBC iPlayer.

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