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The Real Rooneys gives fans a real insight into the lives of Wayne and Coleen Rooney and also some surprising details of what goes on

The Real Rooneys throws up some interesting and surprising scenes and a lot of nuggets of information and Wayne and Coleen which will be new for fans. Coleen says of the series: “We live in this in this extraordinary world, but we are normal at the end of the day.”

Wayne adds: “When you know you’re on TV or you’re doing something, you maybe tone things down a little bit, but at home with four young boys, that’s impossible. It’s real what you see.” Here are some of the more shocking and surprising things I spotted previewing the first four episodes…

WAYNE’S WINDOWLESS REQUEST

The Rooneys live in an incredible mansion with dozens of rooms and grounds which are big enough for them to race around in go karts, as we see on the show. But despite paying for the property, Wayne had just two slightly odd requests when it was built. He says: “I only wanted two things in here, a small little room with no windows, not because I am a psycho for playing PlayStation or watching a movie. And a snooker table. I didn’t really care what else.” Thanks to Coleen there is also other great rooms which have fun things in them like a swimming pool and a boxing ring.

COLEEN LUCKY TO BE ALIVE

Coleen’s mum reveals that her beloved daughter may never have met Wayne or survived beyond a brief childhood having been very ill as a small child.

Colette McLoughlin tells the cameras: “When Coleen was three, she got really sick. It turned out it was encephalitis, and her brain was swelling. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t speak. She was stumbling her words. When we got to Alder High Hospital, she ended up in a coma. For 24 hours it was touch and go. She had to learn to walk again. All the coordination had gone, but I’m so grateful because she was alive.” This help she got at hospital is one of the reasons Coleen’s parents became foster carers.

WAYNE WATERWORKS AT TV SOAPS

Wayne admits now he is older he gets emotional about lots of things. The subject comes up when Kai’s football career is being discussed and he is asked if he will cry if his eldest son gets a scholarship at Manchester United. Wayne replies: “Probably. I cry at everything anyway. I’ve cried over some mad things, Coronation Street, X Factor, when Barry got pushed off the hill by Janine in EastEnders, I’m pretty sure I was crying.”

COLEEN CONSIDERED SPLIT FROM WAYNE

His bad behaviour down the years is well documented and Wayne is not perfect husband material in the series either. Like most married couples there are some rows and at one stage Coleen says: “There’s times where I think ‘Is the answer to see what it’s like if we were separated?’.”

She then adds: “But the we still care for each other, we still have good times. You know, we still love each other.”

At another point she tells Wayne: “It’s been a bit of a lads holiday for you, staying up all night. You can’t just keep doing what you do. It is not fair of everyone else. It is only you that can fix it because no one else is doing it. I’m just hoping that things change.”

KAI MOCKS HIS DAD

It seems Wayne struggles with early starts as he is shown sleeping through alarms and missing doing the school run on at least one occasion.

But one morning – seemingly the first time the Disney+ cameras are at the home – Wayne is seen up early, although he seems in need of coffee. His eldest son Kai is clearly not used to seeing his dad before school. With a grin he says: “Bro’s up for the cameras”.

Kai also states he is the best footballer in the family, and that he wants people to “know the name Kai Rooney” so he is a star footballer in his own right in the future.

WAYNE SOMETIMES HATES FAME

Wayne and Coleen take their two youngest children Kit, 10; and Cass, eight to Poland for an educational trip.

Initially it goes well and Wayne goes unrecognised but a trip on a horse drawn cart in Krakow blows his cover and he is soon swamped for autographs and selfies, and then family need to beat a sharp exit.

Afterwards Wayne reflects on what happened and says his level of fame has changed him as a person and he would love to be able to live unrecognised more often. He says: “I’m not a celebrity. People who know me know, know that I want to be as normal as possible.

“Back to when I was a kid, and you wanted to be a football player. That’s all I ever wanted to do, and didn’t care about fame or money or whatever. I just wanted to be a football player. I think I’d be such a better husband, dad, person, friend without it(fame). It affects places I go, things I do.

“I bought a mask I saw on TikTok[to use as a disguise], it looked incredible but it was terrible.”

WAYNE’S JEWISH ROOTS

As part of the break with Kit, 10; and Cass, the family visit Auschwitz because Kit asked to visit while learning about the Second World War at school.

Wayne tells the cameras: “I recently found out my mum’s mum, so me nan, her family were Polish Jews.”

He is told by producers that would make him technically jewish. Wayne replies: “I’m Catholic, but then I’ve always asked questions like, why aren’t we Jewish?”

Told it could make a whole spin off show he says with a grin: “Roo the jew!”

* Stream The Real Rooneys on Disney+ from September 24.

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The beautiful but small islands of the South Aegean, namely Kos, Santorini and Rhodes, recorded the highest tourism saturation of any region in the European Union in 2024

A set of beautiful European islands face becoming ‘monsters’ as locals grapple with major overcrowding.

The charming but small islands of the South Aegean, namely Kos, Santorini and Rhodes, recorded the highest tourism saturation of any region in the European Union in 2024, with visitors spending more nights per resident there than anywhere else in the bloc, according to Eurostat.

Tourists logged 127.2 nights for every resident last year, the widest gap between visitors and residents found anywhere in the EU. The figures underline the challenge the islanders face in terms of managing their huge popularity, and not losing what makes them so desirable.

When I visited Rhodes in 2023 to see how the island was recovering from wildfires that had forced thousands of holidaymakers to evacuate, a number of independent hoteliers and restaurateurs told me how hard times had been in the past decade. While they cited numerous factors, the biggest one in their minds was the arrival of several large all-inclusive hotels.Do you have a travel story or opinion to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

TUI is a big force on the island, running two of its flagship TUI Blue hotels and offering package stays at dozens of others.

Both times I visited, I stayed at the Atlantica Imperial Resort and Spa, a palatial place that stretches its Greek-style whitewashed buildings and lake-sized pool across several acres of coastline in Kolymbia, over in the east of the island.

It was a difficult place to leave, such was the comfort of the beds, the extensive options at the all-you-can-drink bars and restaurant, and the fact it was separated from the nearest sizeable conurbation, Faliraki, by 5km of motorway, with another similarly lengthy stretch to get to the old town.

But when I did make the trip, I found a place that lived up to the Eurostat figures. Quaint alleyways were packed wall to wall with tourists; restaurants were choc-a-bloc full; knick-knack shops were difficult to squeeze into and hard to navigate without accidentally causing a stack of Colossus lighters to tumble to the floor.

At the other end of the island, I found the exact same scenes in Lindos, except the beautiful village and its cliffside acropolis had been swamped by an even denser pack of day-trippers.

The island is home to 115,000 permanent residents and welcomed 3.5 million tourists between January and September 2024, giving a local-to-tourist ratio of roughly 1:30.

Such demand has led to large-scale hotel construction projects, rapidly rising rents that are making it harder for locals to find a place to live, and damage to Rhodes’ natural assets, including by increasing the risk of wildfires.

Action is being taken. The national government has placed dozens of Rhodes beaches under protected status, while some areas are to become ‘red zones’ where new hotels can’t be built.

While Rhodes is struggling with high tourism numbers, Santorini’s problems are on a different scale altogether.

For many months of the year, the postcard-worthy town is taken over by battalions of tourists armed with selfie sticks and phones, jumping off massive cruise ships and making land via dinghies, riding up the steep hills on coaches and donkeys willing to haul them up cobbled streets.

They’re mostly there for the sunset. “This has been my dream since high school,” American tourist Maria Tavarez, 40, told NBC after watching the rays disappear beneath the horizon.

Residents are increasingly worried that the island of 20,000 is being overwhelmed by the nearly four million tourists who visit it each year.

“Our standards of living have gone down. It’s as simple as that,” said hotel owner Georgios Damigos, who warned the “wonder of nature” he lives on risks being turned into “a monster”.

As on Rhodes, work is being done, including a daily 8,000-cruise-passenger limit and a per-passenger €20 fee during the summer, with some parts of the coast now given “Untrodden Beaches” protection, meaning no sunbeds, no commercial activities and no structures.

Whether the South Aegean, along with the rest of Greece, successfully grapples with the challenges that come with its popularity remains to be seen.

If it doesn’t, it risks jeopardising a huge part of its economy. Between January and June, travel receipts across Greece increased by 14.8%, reaching €8.80 billion, while inbound travel traffic rose by 15.4% to 13.49 million travellers.