show biz

THE Nineties might have been ruled by boybands and girl-bands, but life at the top of pop could be tough.

And it was probably worse for the girls, as putting on extra pounds, dating the wrong guy or, heaven forbid, having a baby were hugely frowned upon by management teams.

New BBC documentary Girlbands Forever, the follow-up to last year’s three-parter about boybands, delves into an era where record companies had less regard for duty of care, days off or mental health.

It features members of Atomic Kitten, Eternal, Sugababes, Mis-teeq and Little Mix, providing insight into what it was like being in an all-female group in the Nineties and early Noughties.

The dream was to replicate the success of the Spice Girls, the all-conquering icons who sparked the girlband explosion.

And record labels invested millions in a bid to find the next big thing.

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But as the Spice Girls’ rivals All Saints found out, the pressure became unbearable.

So much so that when founding member Melanie Blatt informed managers that she and bandmate Nicole Appleton were pregnant, both were told to abort their babies.

The reason? They had just cracked America with No1 hit Never Ever and momentum could be lost.

Melanie, 50, explains: “I hadn’t been with my partner for very long, it was definitely a bit of a surprise It wasn’t people congratulating us. It was more like this look of dread and worry and the realisation that things are going to change.

“We flew to LA and at [airport] LAX our manager, he was behind us, was telling us to abort our babies.”

She added that her bosses told them they were “going to ruin everything” and “it was the end of the band”.

Melanie ended up having her baby with her partner, Stuart Zender, the bassist for band Jamiroquai.

‘Vomiting in toilets’

But Nicole, who fell pregnant with then boyfriend Robbie Williams, did not, which Melanie admits caused issues with their relationship.

She explains: “Nic and I had been best friends since we were 11. We took pregnancy tests in a hotel in Canada and spent that whole night discussing bringing our kids up together. It was one of the best nights ever.

“And it’s not really my place to talk about it, but unfortunately . . . it was a very uncomfortable situation because I kept mine, she didn’t. That was a really tricky part of my and our existence.”

All Saints, which consisted of Melanie, sisters Nicole and Natalie and main songwriter Shaznay Lewis, were always deemed a “cool version” of the Spice Girls and were far more rock ‘n’ roll.

Whereas Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton and Mel B found love with a footballer, an R&B singer and a dancer respectively, the All Saints girls dated rock stars, with Nicole marrying and having a son with Liam Gallagher.

Melanie says: “We were turning up to kids’ TV shows on a Saturday morning without having one wink of sleep. We looked fine, just a bit of vomiting in the toilets prior to CD:UK.”

After two albums, All Saints split in 2001, a disparity in earnings between Shaznay and the rest of the band being a major factor.

By the end of their existence as a group, Melanie says they “hated each other”.

She adds: “We’d fallen out, it was hell, it was ‘separate’ everything.

“It was just ridiculous but literally one of the proudest moments of being in that band was calling it quits because we didn’t stay for the money. We wanted to be done, we didn’t want to be with each other any more and we made that decision.

“We were in control. We were supposed to go on tour and we gave the money back and I’m so proud of that. That’s one of the only decisions we were all happy to make together, telling each other to f*** off.”

• Girlbands Forever begins on Saturday at 9.20pm on BBC Two.

Little Mix

AS girlbands moved into the 2010s, life did not get any easier, with social media now to contend with.

With Little Mix, Perrie Edwards, 32, bore the brunt of the online abuse due to her relationship with One Direction heart-throb Zayn Malik.

She explains: “Social media was dark, especially back in the day.

“Me and the girls used to get a lot of stick. Things we would wear or how we would look, people would pick us apart.

“You’re hurting enough as it is, never mind everybody having an opinion on it. Everyone wants to know your business and everyone feels like they have ownership in that.

“You can’t escape it. So you may as well sing about it.”

Life in girlbands was relentless, so Little Mix lasting ten years was a monumental achievement.

But Perrie, below, admits she almost quit when she was at her lowest ebb ahead of a gig in Las Vegas.

She says: “I didn’t want to go, I was so exhausted. I tried getting out of the trip and when I got there, I started experiencing panic attacks.

“I didn’t know what was happening at the time, I’d never experienced a panic attack.

“I ended up in a hospital. I didn’t want to let the girls down. They had to do it without me and I hated it and I really resented myself for it.”

She adds: “When you’re in a group dynamic, even though you’re going through stuff individually, you can’t just be selfish so I kind of put a brave face on a lot of time.

“I didn’t want to let the team down.”

Eternal

ETERNAL had a No1 smash hit with I Wanna Be The Only One in 1997, but their looks soon became a concern.

Founding member Kelle Bryan, 50, reveals: “People were always voicing concerns about my weight and about our weight as a band. Stylists would come along and say, ‘This doesn’t fit you, this doesn’t fit you’.

“We’re talking about an era where being a size zero was popular, so they sent us away to this place in the countryside where they were able to control what we ate.”

Atomic Kitten

WHILE on the 1999 Smash Hits Tour, Atomic Kitten’s Kerry Katona fell for Westlife singer Brian McFadden, but was ordered not to date him by management.

Kerry, 45, says: “They all went absolutely f*ing apes**t. I remember [Westlife manager] Louis Walsh saying, ‘I don’t like you, you’re trouble’.

Bandmate and best pal Natasha Hamilton, 43, adds: “It was definitely bad for the brand. Not from my point of view but from the label and management. They said girls can’t be seen with one of the boys in the biggest boyband in the UK because fan jealousy is a thing.”

Mis-Teeq

BEING an all-black group who rose up from the “underground scene” in 1999, Mis-Teeq felt they were discriminated against and given fewer opportunities.

Su-Elise Nash, 44, says: “We weren’t invited to the same premieres. Some magazines wouldn’t consider us for the cover because they didn’t think three black girls would sell.

“Our struggle to get there was definitely not as easy as it would have been if we had one white member or we’d all-white.”

Sugababes

WHEN Sugababes founding member Mutya Buena gave birth to her first child aged 19 – while the band were working on their fourth album – there was no let-up.

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Mutya, now 40, quit the group that same year in 2005 and was later diagnosed with post-natal depression.

Record label exec Darcus Beese says: “I remember standing in my kitchen trying to talk her down. I had no concept of post-natal depression. I would ask questions now like, ‘How’s your mental health?’.”

Jack DeJohnette, the prolific and versatile jazz drummer who played with Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Charles Lloyd, Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis — including on Davis’ groundbreaking 1970 album “Bitches Brew,” which helped kick off the jazz fusion era — died Sunday. He was 83.

His death was announced in a post on Instagram, which said he died at a hospital in Kingston, N.Y., near his home in Woodstock. DeJohnette’s wife, Lydia, told NPR the cause was congestive heart failure.

As a member of Davis’ band in the late ’60s and early ’70s — a group that also counted Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett and Billy Cobham among its members — DeJohnette pumped out psychedelic rock and funk rhythms that put Davis’ music in conversation with that of artists like James Brown and Sly Stone. In addition to “Bitches Brew,” which was inducted this year into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, DeJohnette played on Davis’ “At Fillmore,” “Live-Evil” and “On the Corner” albums, the last of which was panned by critics when it came out but now is regarded as a jazz-funk landmark.

DeJohnette won two Grammy Awards on six nominations; in 2012, he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts.

Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, who played on DeJohnette’s 1992 album “Music for the Fifth World,” called DeJohnette “the GOAT” on social media on Monday and wrote that his “influence & importance to Jazz, and contemporary improvised music can not be overstated.”

DeJohnette was born Aug. 9, 1942, in Chicago. Encouraged by an uncle who worked as a jazz radio DJ, he learned to play piano as a child and went on to play with Sun Ra as he circulated among the forward-looking artists of Chicago’s Assn. for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He moved to New York in the mid-’60s and joined Charles Lloyd’s quartet before collaborating with Evans and then with Davis.

“We couldn’t wait to play,” he said of his tenure in Davis’ band in a 1990 interview with The Times. “Miles developed our talents by allowing us to progress naturally, having us play his music and accept the responsibility that goes with discipline and freedom. He learned from us, and we learned from him.”

After leaving Davis’ band, DeJohnette continued collaborating with Jarrett, the influential pianist; the two formed a long-running group known as the Standards Trio with the bassist Gary Peacock that focused on material from the Great American Songbook. The drummer also led the bands New Directions and Special Edition and formed groups with Ravi Coltrane and with John Scofield.

In 2016, he released “Return,” a solo-piano album that served as a sequel of sorts to 1985’s “The Jack DeJohnette Piano Album.” According to the New York Times, DeJohnette’s survivors include his wife, who also managed his career, and their two daughters.

One Corrie star is celebrating their little sister’s huge new career move as she joins the cast of the hit ITV soap in an episode as the daughter of an iconic character

Coronation Street is becoming a family business for one of its stars as his little sister is set to join the show. The ITV soap’s newest cast member is making her debut on the show in Monday’s (27 October) episode.

Bobby Bradshaw, who plays Jake Windass, is the older brother of Aurora Bradshaw. He announced on his Instagram that his sister was joining Corrie as Susie Price, the daughter of Catherine Tyldesley’s Eva.

He posted a picture of the new family, the Driscolls, which feature both Susie and her mother, and captioned it: “The news is finally out!!! Congratulations to my little sister aurora! She is part of the new family and her first episode airs 27th October.”

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Fans will remember Susie as the baby Eva had in 2018. When Eva learned she was pregnant, she struck a deal with Toyah Battersby (Georgia Taylor) to give the child to her and Peter Barlow (Chris Gascoyne) after their surrogate had a miscarriage. Toyah faked a birth certificate so that Peter would never know Susie wasn’t born via the surrogate.

Eva struggled being away from her baby, but eventually the two ended up together and have been living away from Weatherfield since 2018. But Eva and Susie are now returning.

The mother and daughter are moving into the Rovers Return alongside Eva’s new husband Ben Driscoll (Aaron McCusker). Ben is the person the pub was sold to, as he bought it as a surprise for his wife. Alongside Ben, his mother Maggie Driscoll, played by Pauline McLynn of EastEnders fame, will also be moving in. Catherine Tyldesley told the Mirror that Maggie is the “mother-in-law from hell”.

“There are so many twists and turns with the Driscolls. The mother-in-law from hell feels like a harsh title but I don’t think I am far off,” she said. “The constant swipes at each other, and Ben is very much stuck in the middle. Things do start to come to a head and he has to make that decision of whose side are you on here. They both get frustrated with him.”

These Driscolls are relatives of Ollie Dirscoll (Raphael Akuwudike), who is already on the show and dating Dee-Dee Bailey (Channique Sterling-Brown). Dee-Dee is more than a girlfriend to Ollie, she is also his legal representation after he was involved in a car accident.

Though Aurora and Bobby are siblings, their characters are not. Jake Windass is the son of Gary Windass and Izzy Armstrong, born via surrogacy with the help of Tina McIntyre. Jake currently lives with his dad and his step-mother Maria Connor, who is not best pleased to see Eva return.

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

HE’S got some time on his hands after pushing back the release of new album Britpop until February.

And after announcing he was planning on opening a luxury hotel in Dubai, Robbie Williams is now working on another madcap idea.

“I want to open a University of Entertainment,” Robbie, right, revealed. “I did notice nobody else is doing it.”

He said of the inspiration behind his dream school: “I grew up as a vaudevillian. That’s what I am. I am cabaret.

“I spent all of my youth watching my dad do cabaret and watching all of the acts that he would bring off and on stage — and how talented and hard-working they were, and how genuinely funny the funny acts were, and how genuinely amazing the vocalists were.”

Robbie, who left Take That in 1995 before launching his hugely successful solo career, added: “I arrived in 1995, after Take That, I want to be Oasis.

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“I want to be Radiohead. Then, when I opened my mouth and my mind, I came out instead and I’m not cool. And you go, ‘OK, so what am I? Oh, I’m all of these people that I loved — Tommy Cooper, The Two Ronnies and Morecambe and Wise.

‘In a different place’

“The way they made me feel is how I want to make people feel.”

Robbie will be back on stage next year, kicking off a mini-tour in Glasgow on February 4, before playing three more intimate shows in Liverpool, London and Wolverhampton.

And until then, he said he’s going to be busy working on his new plans.

He told the Heretics podcast: “I’ve got so many fingers in so many pies, giving me so much to peruse. My ambition and my want and my need and my desire has not abated. But the oxygen I once had in my career, where I couldn’t miss every time I went to the table, has been taken away from me just because I’m an older pop star now.

“The rise was a long time ago, 1990 till, say, 2010.

“It’s only different as it’s different for everyone else lucky enough to have had my kind of career. I was the most played artist for ten years in a row.

“And, you know, thank you. I’ve had a nice run, but I’m in a different place now.

“And it’s not over. Where does all of that naked ambition and drive go?

“It goes into purpose. It goes into creating.”

If it ever gets off the ground, I’ll make sure to sign up for a night class.

Good friendships in the Mix

THEY may no longer be making music together, but Little Mix are still best of pals.

Pregnant Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock were backstage at the Roundhouse in Camden to support Jade Thirlwall at her gig.

Leigh-Anne shared this sweet snap of them together, and one of my mates spotted them dancing and singing along to Angel Of My Dreams.

Jade, whose debut album, That’s Showbiz Baby, peaked at No3 when it came out last month, is now preparing to head Stateside in the New Year.

Let’s hope she can do what Little Mix couldn’t and crack America.

Jade kicks off a run of 14 shows in San Diego on January 30.

Fergie up fur reunion

IT looks like Fergie can’t decide if she’s too hot or too cold.

The Black Eyed Peas singer teamed this crop-top with a faux fur jacket as she performed at One Musicfest in Atlanta, Georgia.

The I Gotta Feeling singer wowed fans at the event in Piedmont Park, belting out some of her biggest hits including amazing 2006 single London Bridge.

Earlier this year, I revealed that Fergie had created a whole new music video for the track in the capital as part of Lena Dunham’s Netflix series, Too Much.

Fergie left the Black Eyed Peas in 2018, but I told you this summer that discussions are under way about a possible reunion with her bandmates Will.i.am, APL.DE.AP and Taboo.

I’d love to see this happen.

Jovi’s got the Midas Tuchel

I TRIED my hardest to make Jon Bon Jovi a Spurs fan when I hung out with him last week, but his legendary PR Alan Edwards – a die-hard Gooner – persuaded him to follow the reds.

Jon was obviously something of a lucky charm as Arsenal managed a 1-0 win over Crystal Palace on Sunday.

He later hung out with England boss Thomas Tuchel and Jason Sudeikis.

It was Jon’s first Premier League game and I bet my last quid it’ll be his last given how rubbish Arsenal are.

You should have watched Spurs instead, Jon.

We battered Everton 3-0.

Is Geri in a bad Spice?

THE Spice Girls were all smiles at the launch of Victoria Beckham’s Netflix documentary this month.

But insiders say those grins were more like grimaces once the cameras were off – and the finger of blame is being pointed at Geri Horner.

A well-placed mole told me that while Mel C and Emma Bunton were together on row D, Geri was placed in a different area with her husband Christian Horner.

And the apparent snub is now the talk of the town.

Our source explained: “All people are still talking about what happened with Geri that night.

“She was seated away from Mel C and Emma, which seems weird given they were there to support Victoria. Inside the party she only seemed to talk to Victoria, too. It all felt rather frosty. No one has seen a photo of the four of them together either.”

Something is definitely up.

Last November, I revealed how Geri was dragging her heels over a new Netflix band biopic.

And last week, The Sun reported the band – completed by Mel B – were planning on implementing a “rule of four”, to allow the show to go ahead even if Geri wasn’t on board.

A telly insider said: “Geri has been dragging her heels for almost a year now and the rest are keen to plough ahead, as next year marks the 30th anniversary of first single Wannabe.”

Get it together, Ginger.

Cops get Raye on track

RAYE has revealed the police have found her stolen car – with her songwriting books on the backseat.

The Where Is My Husband! singer was forced to push back her second album after the thieves nicked her motor last year.

But now Raye is busy putting the finishing touches to the record after getting them back.

Appearing on Global’s Big Top 40, Raye, right, said: “It was a rollercoaster journey but what I didn’t tell people is that the police called me two or three months ago and said, ‘We’ve found your car.’

“Not only did they get it back but not one thing had been taken out of the car.

“All my songwriting books were there untouched.

“There was so much important stuff in there and when I was flicking through it I was like, ‘Thank God this has been returned to me’.”

Mark: I still get nervous

MARK RONSON has a load of hits to his name but has admitted he still questions if he’s any good every time he gets into the studio.

On Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years, which airs all this week on Vernon Kay’s morning show, Mark said: “Every time I get into the studio with somebody for the first time, or even if it’s someone like Dua Lipa, or someone I’ve worked with a lot, it’s that combination of like, before the first day of school meets a blind date, meets every insecurity.

“Am I going to think of an idea? Am I going to be able to deliver?

“I still have that and I know people might be like, ‘That’s ridiculous, you’re good, don’t worry about it’.

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“But I think it’s served me well in my career because it’s always made me work extra hard.

“I wouldn’t know what to do if I fully lost that.”

One of the biggest players in television is changing teams.

“Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan will leave his longtime home at Paramount and move his overall deal to rival NBCUniversal in 2029, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment.

Sheridan’s deal with Paramount concludes at the end of 2028. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The move is a blow to Paramount, which has focused on wooing high-profile talent to the studio since its takeover by tech scion David Ellison and his Skydance Media.

The media company — which is now angling to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — has shelled out massive sums to acquire sports media rights, keep the iconic “South Park” cartoon and lure filmmakers away from competitors, including “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer and “A Compete Unknown” director James Mangold.

The NBC deal, first reported by Puck, will take effect in 2029.

Sheridan’s universe of “Yellowstone” shows, in particular, has been a key franchise for Paramount. Company executives specifically mentioned the creator’s shows as a “cornerstone” of the Paramount+ streaming service during a luncheon with reporters this summer.

The western-themed show, which debuted as a cable series in 2018, became one of the hottest scripted series on TV, a remarkable turnaround from its early days when “Yellowstone” was passed on by a number of potential homes before landing at Paramount.

The popularity of “Yellowstone” was a boon to Sheridan, leading to spinoffs such as “1923” and other shows from his production company including “Tulsa King,” “Landman” and “Mayor of Kingston.”

Representatives for Paramount and Sheridan did not respond immediately to a request for comment. NBCUniversal declined to comment.

A nostalgic follow-up to one of Nickelodeon’s most beloved comedies is in the works at Netflix

Netflix has just announced a highly anticipated spin-off to one of the most popular classic Nickelodeon shows over a decade after it came to an end.

The original series ran for four smash-hit seasons and introduced young fans to several major stars, including one of the world’s biggest pop icons.

Now, filming is currently underway in Vancouver for Hollywood Arts, which will return fans to the world of Victorious.

Starring the likes of Victoria Justice, Elizabeth Gillies and Wicked’s Ariana Grande, the original series took place at an elite performing arts high school where ambitious teens learn the ropes of showbiz.

Original star Daniella Monet, who starred as Trina Vega, the older sister of Justice’s Tori, will reprise her role for the long-awaited follow-up.

Several years after the events of the series, Trina still hasn’t gotten her big break, so she heads back to her alma mater to teach a new generation of fame-hungry students.

Monet shared via Tudum: “Coming back as Trina alongside such a dynamic, powerful cast of newcomers is something I feel very lucky and grateful to do.

“Victorious was in a lot of ways life-changing for all of us. Our cast is forever bonded by that experience, and to think that I have an opportunity to steward anything close to that is a feeling I can’t begin to describe.”

A synopsis reads: “Trina is back at Hollywood Arts High School, and this time she’s stepping behind the desk.

“The struggling performer finds herself filling in as a substitute teacher at the prestigious school, where she surprises herself by inspiring a group of ambitious teens.”

Joining Monet is a talented crop of up-and-coming stars, including Alyssa Miles (Hanging out with Alyssa and Xavier), Emmy Liu-Wang (Raven’s Home), Peyton Jackson (Woman in the Yard), Erika Swayze (Workin’ Moms) and Martin Kamm (Unsung Hero).

Plus, Community’s Yvette Nicole Brown will also be making a guest appearance as Principal Helen, having appeared during Victorious’ original run as well as Nickelodeon’s equally beloved teen comedy, Drake and Josh.

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This lets members watch live and on-demand TV content without a satellite dish or aerial and includes hit shows like House of Guinness.

Jake Farrow (Victorious, iCarly) and Samantha Martin (Henry Danger, Danger Force) will be showrunning and executive producing, and Monet is also on board as an exec. producer.

An exact release date has yet to be revealed, but Netflix has confirmed Hollywood Arts will be dropping its first season in 2026.

In the meantime, streamers can currently catch up with every episode of the original series while they wait for the sequel.

Victorious is available to stream on Netflix.

METALLICA are bringing the M72 World Tour back to the UK in summer 2026, and demand is sky high.

If you missed out on the first wave, do not panic—here are the confirmed dates, who is supporting, and the most innovative ways to still grab seats for Glasgow, Cardiff, and London.

What are Metallica’s UK tour dates 2026?

Metallica have set four massive UK shows for June and July 2026 as part of the M72 World Tour, with different setlists and support lineups across the weekend.

• Glasgow, Scotland
  Venue: Hampden Park
  Date: Thursday, June 25, 2026
  Supporting acts: Gojira and Knocked Loose 
• Cardiff, Wales
  Venue: Principality Stadium
  Date: Sunday, June 28, 2026
  Supporting acts: Gojira and Knocked Loose
• London, England
  Venue: London Stadium
  Date 1: Friday, July 3, 2026, with support from Pantera and Avatar
  Date 2: Sunday, July 5, 2026, with support from Gojira and Knocked Loose

The M72 World Tour is built around the No Repeat Weekend format, which means two different shows and two different setlists in the same city, plus a rotating cast of special guests.

It is designed so fans can go twice and get a completely fresh night each time.

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Two‑day tickets for the 2026 European leg went on general sale on May 30, 2025, with fan club presales earlier that week.

For London specifically, single‑day tickets were released later and went on sale on Friday, July 25, 2025.

How can I still get tickets for Metallica’s UK tour?

If your chosen date is now sold out, you still have a few solid routes to get in. Some are official and face value, others are resale and often carry a markup.

Here is what to try, in order.

1. Check primary sites for drops and verified listings

Start with the official primary agents. Inventory does move.

Extra production holds and restricted views can be released closer to the show, and Ticketmaster remains the key place to check for any new London Stadium allocations and verified listings when they appear.

Keep refreshing on on-sale anniversaries and ahead of staging deadlines.

2. Try official hospitality for guaranteed seats

Hospitality and VIP packages are often still available even when standard tickets are sold out.

Seat Unique is the official hospitality partner for Metallica’s UK dates, with packages for London and Cardiff that bundle premium seats, lounge access and extras.

These are pricier but secure, and availability tends to last longer than standard tickets. 

VIP options typically include fast‑track entry, lounge access, premium seating and early access, which can be a game-changer if you want a smoother day out.

3. Look at Enhanced Experiences and fan club options

Metallica also run official Enhanced Experience packages via their own channels for the M72 tour.

Perks vary by city, but expect premium views, early entry or special access, plus exclusive merch.

The band have also offered an I Disappear ticket for this tour, granting general admission floor access with early entry across multiple shows, subject to availability and terms.

If you are flexible and planning more than one date, that pass can be highly valuable.

4. Use trusted secondary marketplaces carefully

If the primary route is tapped out, secondary marketplaces can help.

Sites like Viagogo and StubHub may have tickets listed by other fans.

Prices can be above face value, and fees add up, so read the listings closely and check seller guarantees before you buy.

Ticombo is another option some fans use for peer‑to‑peer resales.

Only purchase from platforms that offer clear protection in case of event changes or invalid barcodes.

5. Set alerts and keep checking back

Speed matters. Set up alerts so you are first in line when something drops.

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Services like Twickets let you create notifications for specific dates and price points, and receive them from other fans at face value.

It is also worth checking the venue sites in the final run‑in, as Hampden Park, Principality Stadium and London Stadium sometimes free up last‑minute seats after production is locked.

All over Los Angeles, Zachary Asdourian hunted for the music of an Iran that could have been.

The co-founder of the L.A. record label Discotchari scoured for dust-caked Persian pop records at Jordan Market in Woodland Hills; scanned the fliers for shows at Cabaret Tehran in Encino, and combed shops in Glendale looking for Farsi-language tapes cut in L.A. studios in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Most of the songs he and his label partner, Anaïs Gyulbudaghyan, sought were long-forgotten dance tracks, culturally-specific twists to the era’s disco boom. They’re poignant reminders of a time in L.A.’s Westwood “Tehrangeles” neighborhood when, in the years just after the 1979 Iranian revolution, immigrants here made music while their homeland roiled with ascendant theocracy.

Discotchari’s new crate-digger compilation “Tehrangles Vice” collects some of the best of them. Its 12 tracks were made in L.A. and circulated within the Iranian diaspora, then smuggled back into Iran on dubbed tapes and satellite broadcasts. They’re largely lost to time here, but fondly recalled there as bombastic dispatches from a cosmopolitan yet heartbroken immigrant community in L.A.

The music has lessons for artists watching the revanchist conservatism creeping over the United States today.

“These songs were supposed to represent the next step in Iranian music,” Asdourian said. “These artists were geniuses at shaking up what was happening in the ‘80s and ‘90s to produce an Iranian version of it. This music was meant to be heard at a party while dancing and drinking in Tehrangeles, but it also provided solace during the Islamic revolution, the Iraq war and the Iran-Contra affair. For citizens of Iran, this was giving hope as bombs were literally falling.”

The music scene this compilation documents came after a period of more stable relationships between the U.S. and Iran. Thousands of Iranian students immigrated to L.A. in the ‘60s and ‘70s and stayed, some opening restaurants and nightclubs in Westwood, Glendale and the San Fernando Valley where they could hear Iranian music.

“A lot of these clubs in L.A. pre-dated the revolution. Artists like Googoosh were already coming in from Iran to perform. Many musicians who were in U.S. when the revolution happened thought they were having a little sojourn and intended to go back someday,” said Farzaneh Hemmasi, a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto who wrote the book “Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California’s Iranian Pop Music” and contributed the liner notes for “Tehrangeles Vice.”

An insert from a cassette tape that Farokh “Elton” Ahi previously worked on.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

“But after the 1979 revolution, musicians in Los Angeles were told by family in Iran not to go back, that they were rounding up artists, that people associated with westernization and immorality will be targeted,” Hemmasi said. “So they stayed and worked.”

One of them was Farokh “Elton” Ahi, who came to L.A. at 17 to study architecture at USC, but left that career to produce for Casablanca Records, the premier disco label of the era. He DJ’ed at Studio 54 in NYC and elite nightclubs in L.A., and produced for the likes of Donna Summer and Elton John at his Hollywood studio, Rusk (Ahi got his nickname from an interviewer who called him “Elton Joon,” a Farsi-language term of endearment).

Even in the decadent disco era, he felt an obligation to champion Iranian music in L.A.

“We wanted kids to enjoy the link between our culture and western culture,” Ahi said. “But we were also trying to bring what was happening in Iran to people’s attention with our music, which was one reason I could never go back there. Kids who had come from Iran loved Prince and Michael Jackson and were becoming super American, so we had to do something to keep them engaged in our music as well.”

During the 1979 hostage crisis, Anglo nightclubs and radio in L.A. were not keen on Persian pop music, to say the least. Ahi led a double life as an Americanized disco producer, while also writing for his immigrant community.

“Those days, because of the hostage crisis, it wasn’t fun and games having Iranian music in the club. People were against Iranians and it wasn’t a happy time,” Ahi said. “But we were making quality music with limited resources. There were not many musicians here who could play Iranian instruments, so I had to learn a bunch of them. I felt a duty to keep our music alive.”

Two ‘80s-era tracks he produced, Susan Roshan’s “Nazanin” and Leila Forouhar’s “Hamsafar,” appear on “Tehrangeles Vice,” which brims with the only-in-L.A. cultural collusion of mournful Persian melodies and lyrics about exile, paired with new wave grit and ‘80s synth-disco pulses. Aldoush’s “Vay Az in Del” has sample-blasted horns right out of the ‘80s TV show that gives the compilation its name. There’s even a strong Latin percussive element on tracks like Shahram Shabpareh and Shohreh Solati’s “Ghesmat,” which showed how Iranian artists dipped into the global crossroads of Los Angeles.

Even if this music didn’t make an impact on the charts here, it found its way back to post-revolution Iran clandestinely, on tapes and music video satellite broadcasts. Club-friendly pop music made in L.A. took on new potency abroad.

“The official culture in Iran in the ‘80s was very sorrowful because of the war, and Shiite Islam was very oriented towards mourning. Ramadan was a sad time with no music,” Hemmasi said. “But in L.A., you’ve got Iranians dancing and singing, which was not happening within the country where people needed to sing and dance even more. This music had a contraband quality that was underground in Iran itself.”

“A lot of Iranian artists wouldn’t like this comparison, but this music was really punk at its core,” Asdourian agreed. “You’d have people standing on street corners in trench coats selling cassettes. People had illegal satellite hookups to hear news and ideology from the diaspora that contradicted what they were being fed. This music was a means to restore values they felt were lost in the revolution.”

Top to bottom, Farokh “Elton” Ahi with record label Discotchari founders Zachary Asdourian and Anais Gyulbudaghyan in Los Angeles.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

As contemporary Angelenos rallying for this era of Iranian music, Asdourian and Gyulbudaghyan of Discotchari will stop at nothing to ship murkily-sourced tapes from Iran, western Asia and the Caucasus for their label. “In January, we went to Armenia and met a guy who knew a guy at a restaurant in Yerevan who had someone drive tapes in from Tabriz in Iran,” Asdourian said. “They sent us GPS coordinates to pick them up, and we ended up in this abandoned former Soviet manufacturing district getting chased by a guard dog. But he had 30 cassettes, all still sealed in their boxes.”

Yet some of the acts on “Tehrangeles Vice” are still active, living and working in California. After a long hiatus, Roshan recently released new music inspired by Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom Movement, and Ahi is a sound engineer and mixer for film (he worked on “Last of the Mohicans,” which won an Oscar for sound mixing). He recently contributed to a remix of Ed Sheeran’s “Azizam,” which sprinkles Farsi phrasing into upbeat pop and became a global hit. “Ed reached out and asked me to write some melodies that matched Googoosh’s singing to make it more international, we put our minds together and I’m so proud of it,” Ahi said.

As the United States now reckons with its own powerful right-wing religious movement in government, one eager to clamp down on cultural dissent, “Tehrangeles Vice” has lessons for musicians in the wake of a backlash. The compilation is both a specific document of a proud music culture clamping down at home and flowering abroad. But it’s also a reminder that, whether made in exile or played under attack, art is a well of possibility for imagining another life.

“Even if the geographical location isn’t same, for Iranians, L.A. represents this exiled piece of history, an Iran that could have been,” Hemmasi said. “It’s a message in a bottle from another time.”

The upcoming documentary dives deep into the disappearance of a schoolgirl.

Netflix has released details of a new factual show exploring the media coverage and shifting public interest around “one of the most closely watched unsolved missing-persons cases of the century”.

The documentary attempts to find answers in the disappearance of Alissa Turney, who vanished in 2001.

The 17-year-old went missing on the last day of her junior year of high school in Phoenix, Arizona.

Alissa’s case was initially labelled as a runaway, and a missing-persons investigation was not launched straight away.

To this day, Turney’s whereabouts remain unknown. The documentary comes from the producers of American Murder: Gabby Petito. Alissa’s parents divorced when she was three years old and her mother, Barbara, remarried a man named Michael Turney.

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Michael, who had three children of his own, adopted Alissa and her older brother John. Michael and Barbara then went on to have a child together- Sarah.

Tragically, Barbara died after a cancer battle when Alissa was just nine years old, leaving Michael to raise all six children.

At the time of her disappearance, Alissa, who had a boyfriend, lived with Michael and Sarah and worked at the fast-food restaurant Jack in the Box.

On the last day of her junior year at Paradise Valley High School, Michael had picked her up from school at lunchtime and she had allegedly stormed off after an argument.

Later, he and Sarah found a note in her bedroom, saying she was running away to California, but she had left her phone and other personal items behind.

She had been planning to go to a party that night, but never attended.

A week after she disappeared, Michael said he received a phone call from a California number where Alissa swore at him before hanging up.

In 2008, Michael claimed Alissa had been killed by two “assassins” from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

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However, the spotlight then shone on Michael as at the same time, detectives were raiding Michael’s home when they found explosive devices and firearms amongst other weapons.

They also found a manifesto outlining his plans for a rampage against the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers building in Phoenix.

Turney admitted to unlawful possession of unregistered destructive devices and was sentenced to 10 years in jail, being released in August 2017.

In August 2020, he was indicted and charged by a Maricopa County grand jury on second-degree murder charges relating to Alissa’s disappearance.

However, all charges were dismissed in July 2023 and Alissa’s body has not yet been found.

LILY Allen was stopped awkwardly in her tracks as she was asked “Who is Madeline?” following the release of her bombshell new album.

On the LP, West End Girl, Lily, 40, accuses her ex David Harbour, 50, of infidelity with someone called Madeline – though she has stressed the record is a combination of fact and fiction.

Following its release, the real life Madeline spoke out, with New Orleans based costume designer Natalie Tippett, 34, claiming to have been involved in the fling.

In a new interview with Perfect magazine, Lily was put on the spot and asked to name the title of her songs as the interviewer read lyrics in a dramatic style.

It was a trip down memory lane, with Lily correctly answering Not Fair, The Kooks’ Naive, Cheryl Tweedy, Friday Night and Pussy Palace.

She was then asked directly: “Who the f**k is Madeline?”

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Pop star Lily, who was sitting on a toilet in a glamorous mini dress embellished with a large bow, momentarily hesitated before saying “erm that’s Tennis”.

On the track, which documents her discovering that her man’s connection with another woman is deeper than just sex, Lily sings: “So I read your text, and now I regret it. I can’t get my head ’round how you’ve been playing tennis.

“If it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous. You won’t play with me. And who’s Madeline?”

It has been put in the same lane as Dolly Parton classic Jolene, which sees the country star plead with an attractive woman not to steal her man, and Beyoncé’s Sorry, in which she takes aim at ‘Becky with the good hair’ after husband Jay-Z admitted to being unfaithful.

Stranger Things star David and Natalie reportedly began an affair while working on 2021 film We Have A Ghost, and he later allegedly flew Natalie to his home in Atlanta, Georgia.

He had married Lily the previous year in a Las Vegas ceremony.

Speaking from her home in New Orleans’ historic Treme district, Natalie told Daily Mail she was the woman behind “Madeline”.

When approached by Daily Mail, Natalie said: “Of course I’ve heard the song.

“But I have a family and things to protect.

“I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I understand this is going on.

“It’s a little bit scary for me.”

The affair reportedly came to light when Lily found an incriminating text on David’s phone.

The discovery inspired several tracks on her new album, which details betrayal and heartbreak.

Natalie declined to discuss the lyrics further, saying: “Yeah… I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it at the moment.”

The Sun has contacted Lily and David’s reps for comment.

Lily and David announced their split in January after four years of marriage.

It is understood they separated in December, with Lily spending Christmas alone with her children in Kenya.

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The LDN hitmaker was previously married to Sam Cooper from 2011-2018, although the relationship was understood to have crumbled some time before they made their split official.

With Sam, Lily had two children, 13 year old Ethel and Marnie Rose, 11

Cameron Crowe’s charming new memoir is an elegy for a lost time and place, when rock ‘n’ roll culture was still a secret handshake and the music press wasn’t just another publicity tentacle for giant corporations to shill their product (excepting the fine writers at the Los Angeles Times, of course). In fact, the “music press” as a concept is vestigial at best now, the internet having snuffed it out, but when Crowe was writing his features in the 1970s, primarily for Rolling Stone, only a handful of print publications allowed fans to glean any insight about the musicians they admired or to even see photos of them.

Crowe was one of those fans. He spent his adolescence in Palm Springs, a town with “a thousand swimming pools and the constant hum of air conditioners,” in a basement apartment near the freeway. A loner and a nerd raised by a former Army commanding officer and a strong-willed, whip-smart mother who had firm ideas about how young Cameron should conduct himself. Any humiliations Crowe might have suffered as an uncertain teen were for his mother merely speed bumps on the journey to self-actualization, ideally as a lawyer. She had a wealth of Dale Carnegie-esque aphorisms to pump up her young charge, such as “put on your magic shoes,” or “Mind is in every cell of the body. Thoughts are everything.”

“She hated rock and roll,” Crowe writes. “Rock was inelegant, and worse, obsessed with base issues like sex and drugs.”

(Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster)

As we have seen in the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” Crowe’s autobiographical account of his early years, young Cameron cared little about sex or drugs, music being his only lodestar. When his family relocated to San Diego, Crowe found himself in a conservative town with virtually no outlets for music except the local sports arena, where he witnessed his first big-time rock show accompanied by his mom: a post-comeback Elvis, knee deep in Vegas schmaltz, bounding onstage “in a glittering white jumpsuit …. striking karate poses.” A week later, mom and son witnessed Eric Clapton, full of fire with his band Derek and the Dominos. “I understand your music,” Alice Crowe finally conceded. “It’s better than ours.”

San Diego had little pockets of cultural insurrection that Crowe sought out like a moth to flame. When his sister Cindy nabbed a job with the local underground paper called the Door, Crowe wedged his way in, not because he had any interest in radical politics: his hero Lester Bangs, the iconoclastic rock critic whom he had read in Rolling Stone and Creem, had contributed work there.

As he does so often in this book, Crowe pulls the reader in with his keenly observant eye that would serve him so well in his second career as a filmmaker. The Door’s editor Bill Maguire “had a healthy girth, an open shirt with a silver pendant, and rippling brown hair. The kind of character Richard Harris used to play, most of the time with a goblet in his hand.” Maguire and his staff are hippie idealists, wary of sullying their political mission with trivialities like record reviews. But Crowe talks Maguire into letting him weigh in on a James Taylor record, and Crowe’s career is launched. He is 14.

Cameron Crowe, who started his music journalism career as a teen, pulls the reader in with his keenly observant eye that would serve him so well in his second career as a filmmaker.

(Neal Preston)

Crowe would encounter no such resistance as he worked his way into Rolling Stone, whose owner Jann Wenner gladly accepted record company advertising to keep his counterculture publication afloat. Crowe had found his professional home, filing long, admiring features with some of the era’s most important acts.

Crowe’s Dec. 6, 1973, cover story on the Allman Brothers was meant to atone for an earlier profile on the band written for the magazine by Grover Lewis, a brutally honest and often unsavory portrait. Crowe’s do-over feature, in contrast, is anodyne and respectful; the band is even given room to refute some of the facts Lewis included in his story.

Far more interesting is the stuff Crowe left out of that piece that he has now put into his memoir. To wit: Shortly after their perfectly lovely afternoon together, Gregg Allman, clearly in a drug-induced psychotic state, calls Crowe to his hotel room and demands that Crowe physically hand over the tapes of their interview, or else face legal consequences. “How do I know you aren’t with the FBI?” Allman asked Crowe. “You’ve been talking to everybody. Taking notes with your eyes.” It’s hard to imagine Crowe’s mentor Bangs not leading with that scene.

Crowe was covering rock music at a time when publicists had not become the human guardrails they are today, insulating their clients from anything that doesn’t celebrate them. There were no record company representatives present when Crowe sat in the lobby of an El Torito restaurant in Mission Hills with Kris Kristofferson, whose wife Rita Coolidge was waiting for the singer with her family in the bar (underage Crowe wasn’t allowed inside). Or when Crowe went long with David Bowie, interviewing him on and off for a year and a half while Bowie was making his 1976 album “Station to Station.”

Camped out with his wife Angie in a Beverly Hills mansion on North Doheny Drive, Bowie is affable and candid, despite subsisting on a diet of red peppers, milk and cocaine. “Over the months, I became acclimated to the normality within his insulated lifestyle,” Crowe writes. “Oh, sometimes there might be a hexagon drawn on the curtains in his bedroom or a bottle of urine on the windowsill.” While showing Crowe the indoor swimming pool, Bowie remarks that the only problem with the house “is that Satan lives in that swimming pool.”

Such weird scenes inside this once-mysterious world have been totally effaced, now that every musician can curate his own image on social media. Reading “The Uncool,” which touches on Crowe’s Hollywood career without delving too deep into it, reminds us of what has been lost, the myths and mystique that fueled our rock star fantasies and gave the music an aura of magic.

Weingarten is the author of “Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water, and the Real Chinatown.”

Netflix has released the trailer for the upcoming live-action Japanese original and fans are already obsessed with the epic action-packed series

Netflix enthusiasts are already going wild over a forthcoming live-action series set in the late 19th century.

The Japanese Netflix original, which is also adapted from the novel of the same name penned by Shogo Imamura, unfolds during the Meiji period.

The synopsis states: “During the Meiji era, 292 fighters came together at Tenry-ji Temple in Kyoto after sunset, drawn by the chance to win a grand prize of ¥100 billion.

“The challenge was clear: take each other’s wooden tags and make it all the way to Tokyo. The winner would get the prize. One of the warriors, Shujiro Saga, joined the dangerous contest with a personal mission: to help his sick wife and child.”

The programme in question is Last Samurai Standing, and Netflix has just dropped a trailer, reports the Express.

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Junichi Okada plays the aforementioned Shujiro Saga, alongside Yumia Fujisaki as Futaba Katsuki.

Netflix posted the trailer on X, formerly Twitter, declaring: “An epic battle royale. 292 samurais. One point per life. Last Samurai Standing premieres November 13.”

The trailer depicts Shujiro caring for his ailing family, reluctantly admitting he would be prepared to raise his sword once more to earn some cash.

He vows he will return, as he learns of the brutal rules of the competition.

Packed with spectacular fight sequences, the trailer has already captured the interest of genre enthusiasts.

Responding in the comments, Temilade simply declared: “I am definitely watching this.”

Tryp expressed their excitement, saying: “Kinda stoked for this,” while MidLifeCrixix chimed in with: “Can’t wait for this. Looks like the next big hit.”

Akin was equally enthusiastic, stating: “Oh my days, my kind of series,” and @mikaelvelli added: “I like what I see. Definitely can’t wait to see this.”

The show also features Junichi Okada, who not only stars but also serves as the producer and action choreographer.

The six-part series boasts a cast of nearly 300 actors, each donning their own unique costume. The original story was described on Amazon Reviews as “incredible” and “set us up for the series beautifully”.

Last Samurai Standing is set to premiere on Netflix on November 13.

MOLLY-MAE has revealed that her two-year-old Bambi is flying first class, despite dad Tommy Fury vowing to ban ‘five star hotels and business class flights’ for his daughter. 

It’s been a hectic year for Tommy and his partner Molly-Mae Hague, both 27, who recently confirmed they had rekindled their romance following their shock break-up.

But the rekindled pair have now jetted off on another holiday to Dubai, and showed a snap of Bambi lapping up first class service en-route.

The tot could be seen in a black and white photo with headphones on watching TV on the plane, as they jetted abroad.

Bambi looked content in her tracksuit as she reclined on the large first class seats with her legs outstretched.

But boxer Tommy, who said raising Bambi is his top priority, had warned that business class flights and five star hotels were a thing of the past for his daughter, while talking on The Good, The Bad & The Beast podcast a few months back. 

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During the interview, he said: “Today’s world is tough because you don’t wanna spoil your children, but then it’s hard to not, in a way. I just said to myself, ‘She can’t take business class flights every time, that ain’t the real world.’

“I didn’t go on a plane until I was 17! It was a Flybe flight and the propeller nearly broke.

“But Bambi’s got more air miles than me now, and she’s two and a half.”

Evidently, Tommy’s rule has gone out of the plane window as he continued to say at the time: “I want her to know the meaning of normal, which is, you know, a nice camping holiday, driving to the lake.

“Not staying in five star hotels, not going business class flights, not doing that sometimes – and that’s okay.”

It comes just days after Molly was slammed as “selfish” and “out of touch with reality” by former fans. 

Not only this, but after watching the new episodes of the influencer’s hit new Amazon docuseries, Molly-Mae: Behind It All, many viewers have admitted the Love Island star’s “bratty behaviour” has “put them off her.”

Since the release of the Amazon docuseries, former fans of the influencer have slammed the mother as “selfish” and “tone deaf.” 

A content creator named Emily Entwistle took to social media to share her thoughts on the episode as she wrote: “Why was this scene in episode three the hardest watch?

“At times she’s so relatable but this season just shows a girl who needs a wake up call.”

Not only this, but Emily also added: “Really enjoyed season one but this season is not the one.

“She’s just showing someone who’s so out of touch with reality.”

And it appears that Emily isn’t the only viewer to think this way, as her TikTok clip, which was posted under the username @emilyentwistle_x, caused a flurry of women expressing similar views.

One person said: “I genuinely thought the exact same thing and lowkey put me off her. 

“I’ve always liked her but I think she’s done so many things now that’s off putting. She’s massively out of touch with reality.” 

Another added: “She’s definitely out of touch with reality, these new episodes have made me really change my opinion of her. 

“I actually think she’s selfish and it’s not her friend or her manager’s fault that she forgot the product she was supposed to review.” 

A third commented: “It was very bratty behaviour tbh.” 

Meanwhile, someone else chimed in: “She gives spoilt brat vibes.”

At the same time, one former fan penned: “Tone deaf in today’s economic climate. She’s so out of touch with reality and spoiled.” 

However, others tried to sympathise with the busy mother.

One fan wrote: “She’s trying her best and running a business and being a mum trying to do her best. 

“Being a mum is hard work. I respect her for showing the reality of her world that everyone wants to judge.” 

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Whilst another explained: “You guys have such high standards for these influencers/celebrities. 

“This documentary was supposed to show the inside of her life and not the glitz and glams and to show the true struggles of motherhood.” 

Alex Murdaugh

Richard Alexander Murdaugh came up in a prominent family, both in the legal and social realms of Hampton County, S.C. He attended the University of South Carolina and graduated from its law school, just like his father. Three generations of Murdaugh men served as the circuit solicitor, the South Carolina equivalent of a district attorney, for a region spanning five counties in the state. Randolph Murdaugh Sr. was the first in the family to assume the role in 1920. The family held such power in the region that many locals called the district “Murdaugh Country.”

Alex was a respected personal injury attorney before being convicted of the murders of his wife Maggie and youngest son Paul in 2023. He will spend the rest of his life in prison for the killings but maintains his innocence and is currently appealing his conviction. He also admitted to committing a slew of financial crimes, for which he was cumulatively sentenced to more than 60 additional years in prison.

The family law firm he previously worked for, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, was renamed the Parker Law Group. Alex’s older brother, Randolph “Randy” Murdaugh IV, still works at the firm.

Maggie Murdaugh

Margaret Kennedy Branstetter Murdaugh, who went by Maggie, was mother to sons Paul and Buster. She met her husband Alex when she was a student at the University of South Carolina in 1991, and they married in 1993.

She was 52 when she and Paul were shot and killed in 2021 at the family’s hunting property in Colleton County. Alex and Maggie were reportedly living separately at the time of her death.

Paul Murdaugh, pictured here in court in a still from the documentary “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty,” faced significant prison time for allegedly boating under the influence.

(HBO Max)

Paul Murdaugh

Paul Terry Murdaugh was born on April 14, 1999, to Alex and Maggie. He grew up with a love of the outdoors and enjoyed hunting alongside his father and older brother. He was 22 and in his junior year at the University of South Carolina when he was killed.

Paul reportedly abused alcohol as a teenager and young adult, and his friends have said they called his intoxicated alter ego “Timmy” because his behavior changed significantly when he was drinking. In February 2019, Paul was accused of being behind the wheel of his family’s boat while drunk, crashing the boat into a bridge in the early hours of the morning. There were five other people on board with Paul, and one passenger, 19-year-old Mallory Beach, was killed in the crash.

Paul, who was also 19 at the time, had a blood-alcohol level three times over the legal limit when he was hospitalized after the crash. He was charged with felony boating under the influence two months later. He was murdered alongside his mother in 2021 before the trial for the charges he faced in connection with the crash could begin.

Buster Murdaugh

Born Richard Alexander Murdaugh Jr., the eldest Murdaugh son went by “Buster.” He attended Wofford College for his undergraduate studies and went on to study law at his parents’ alma mater, the University of South Carolina. By the spring of 2021, Buster had been kicked out of law school, reportedly for low grades and plagiarism.

Following the deaths of his mother and brother, Buster surfaced in news reports after increased interest in the family unearthed a loose connection between him and a man named Stephen Smith, a former classmate who was killed in 2015. Rumors of an intimate relationship between Smith and Buster, and of the Murdaughs’ involvement in his death, swirled, but Buster denied the allegations.

When his father was on trial for the murders of Paul and Maggie, Buster testified as a witness for the defense, saying that his father’s behavior on the night of the killings and the following weeks was not abnormal. He also said Alex was “heartbroken” on the night they died.

Buster married his longtime girlfriend Brooklynn White in May 2025. His wife is an attorney, but Buster never returned to law school.

Buster Murdaugh, left, and his then-girlfriend Brooklynn White at the double murder trial for his father. He testified in his father’s defense.

(Jeff Blake / Associated Press)

Randolph Murdaugh III

Randolph Murdaugh III was Alex’s father and one of the men who established the Murdaugh family’s legal prominence. Like his father and grandfather, Randolph served as the solicitor of the 14th judicial circuit in South Carolina, which serves Allendale, Colleton, Hampton, Beaufort and Jasper counties. In addition to Alex, Randolph had three other children with wife Elizabeth “Libby” Alexander Murdaugh: Lynn Goettee, Randolph Murdaugh IV and John Marvin Murdaugh. The couple had 10 grandchildren.

When Paul got into the boat crash in 2019, Randolph was his first call. A year earlier, Randolph was honored with the Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian honor awarded by the governor of South Carolina. A testament to his influence, the award recognizes lifetime achievements and contributions to the state.

He died in June 2021 after a long period of health problems — three days after Paul and Maggie were murdered.

Mallory Beach and her family

Beach was a teenager from South Carolina who was described by friends and family as a loving young woman with dreams of becoming an interior designer. She and her boyfriend, Anthony Cook, were friends with Paul, and in February 2019 the couple boarded the Murdaugh family boat with a few other friends before it crashed into a bridge in Beaufort, S.C.

Beach’s body was missing after the crash and was recovered about a week later. Her family brought a wrongful death lawsuit against the Murdaughs, which eventually cracked open inquiries into Alex’s finances. The family later settled with Maggie’s estate and Buster in 2023 for an undisclosed amount. They were brought into the case because Paul used Maggie’s credit card and Buster’s ID to buy alcohol. The Beach family also reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the convenience store chain where Paul purchased the alcohol, and in 2024, Alex’s insurance company agreed to pay the family $500,000.

Gloria Satterfield

Satterfield was the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper and nanny, who had a maternal-like relationship with Paul and Buster. She was the widow of David Michael Satterfield and had two sons, Michael “Tony” Satterfield and Brian Harriott.

In February 2018, Satterfield allegedly tripped and fell at the Murdaugh’s home and was hospitalized for weeks before she died at 57. Alex and Maggie were mentioned by name in Satterfield’s obituary as “those she loved as her family.”

When the cause of Satterfield’s death was being investigated, Murdaugh claimed Satterfield tripped over the family’s dogs, causing her to fall and hit her head, and he encouraged her two sons to bring a wrongful death claim against him. Murdaugh introduced Satterfield’s sons to Cory Fleming, a fellow lawyer, who represented them in the case and schemed with Murdaugh to collect on his homeowner’s insurance policies. The settlement was reportedly more than $4 million, none of which Satterfield’s sons saw.

Fleming was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for his involvement in the scheme and Murdaugh admitted to orchestrating the plot and intercepting the insurance payout meant for Satterfield’s family, depositing the money directly into his personal account. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for that crime, plus a slew of other financial crimes he pleaded guilty to in 2023.

Stephen Smith

Smith was born in Lexington County, S.C., and attended Wade Hampton High School, where he was classmates with Buster Murdaugh, graduating in 2014. He was found dead on a rural road in Hampton County in July 2015, and his death was initially ruled as a hit and run.

In 2021, South Carolina law enforcement reopened Smith’s case based on leads uncovered in the Murdaugh double homicide investigation. The Murdaugh name was mentioned over 40 times throughout the course of the investigation, according to a report from FITSNews, a local outlet. Detectives reportedly looked at Buster as a possible person of interest in the case, who was rumored to have been romantically involved with Smith, but the connection was never proved and Buster was never named a suspect.

The square root of absolutely nothing happens in each episode, but I’m still watching every week!

A lavish sci-fi series with characters so bad you find yourself rooting for the evil aliens plotting to conquer Earth, Apple TV’s Invasion is the latest show that outstays its welcome after some early success.The first series was held together by a group of child actors, the second was held together by stunning visuals, but the third season is held together by… nothing at all.

At best, Apple TV’s Invasion is a victim of its own success and has been drawn out for one or two seasons too long. With an undeserved 6.2/10 on IMDB, it’s absolutely not worth your time – but for me, it is too late.

The third season boasts the usual high production values you get from an Apple series, but the script is abysmal (featuring timeless quips like the age-old “In English, please?!”) as it follows the violent spikey black aliens who, out of nowhere, have re-launched their invasion on Earth.

I have recently found solace in a community on Reddit dedicated to trashing the programme. One person wrote: “Every single episode makes me wonder, ‘Did I fall asleep watching the last episode and miss something? Did I accidentally skip an episode?’”

I agree with them. But sifting through the exasperated posts, it seems we have more than our hatred in common. We all, like a dog with a bone, return each and every Friday for another hit of this endlessly disappointing series.

Another wrote: “The season is almost over and nothing has happened yet. We saw one clear alien with a wounded leg, who seemed to be about as aggressive as a stoned jellyfish, and three hunter killers in a hole in the ground.

“I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t a sci-fi as much as it is an unfunny sitcom with annoying characters who are always whining about the invisible aliens winning a war.” Very true.

I think the reason for our slot-machine addiction to Invasion is the promise of the first season. That was almost entirely down to the young acting prowess of Billy Barratt (Caspar Morrow), India Brown (Jamila Huston) and Paddy Holland (Monty Cuttermill). We see them overcome school bully and victim dynamics, traverse the English Channel and unlock communication with the terrifying morphing alien beasts.

The sparkly performances from all three casts a Goonies-like magic on the plot and has you gunning for the humans – unlike some of the other characters who make you wonder if it’s actually time for an alien takeover.

Huston’s performance is certainly an anchor in the third season, but she is outnumbered by griege special effects and gaping plotholes, while the loss of her schoolmates is palpable. I am convinced that some distant promise of a reunion of the young stars is what is keeping us locked in.

One Redditor wrote of Barratt’s unexplained absence in the third season: “My guess is they have left it open for him to come back. I hope he does. But, with the quality of the show in decline, the actor may decide he doesn’t want to, especially if he is getting other offers.

“With the poor quality of script writing and character development, I can’t imagine it’s a very rewarding acting experience for the cast.”

For now, we are left with an indistinguishably twisty plotline that follows some of the most annoying characters on screen, even though I will be tuning in for every single episode and beyond!

GEORDIE Shore star Aaron Chalmers’ ex Talia Oatway shared a heartbreaking post about their son Oakley.

The mum-of-three, who shares her kids with MTV reality star turned MMA fighter Aaron, has been giving fans regular updates on their youngest son’s health.

Their son Oakley has Apert Syndrome, which is a genetic disorder that causes fusion of the skull, hands, and feet bones.

On Friday, Talia shared a series of photos of herself and Oakley at hospital.

One picture showed Talia looking exhausted and tearful following another difficult week after Oakley was admitted to hospital.

She wrote: “It’s been 11 days since we got admitted to hospital, a transfer to another hospital, another 2 GAs, more training for mumma, endless tears and another diagnosis for my Oakley boy. Road to recovery now.”

Love Island star Sophie Lee commented: “My strong girl and fighter of a little cherub! You got this!”

Charlotte Trippier posted: “You are something else you girl! Absolute supermum with a warrior of a boy. Love you so much.”

Hollyoaks actress Chelsee Healey added: “One strong mumma and boy, sending so much love always.”

Earlier this month, Talia gave fans an update, and said: “I know I haven’t been on it today. Um, so Oakley had a gemranosec earlier this morning to have a CT scans on his brain just to basically out rule a lot of stuff for the sickness.

“Um, so he had that and then had to wait obviously for the neurosurgeons to look at the scans.

“I mean I’ve still got no answers but they did tell me some bits that’s going on with Oakley’s brain which obviously has petrified me.

“Um, but I’m waiting until the surgeons at Newcastle obviously speak to the surgeons in Liverpool and then I’ll have more of an understanding about the situation that Oakley is in.

“Um, but yeah it’s just been a really shit day, very emotional day.”

In the summer, Talia shared another worrying post about Oakley.

Taking to her Instagram story, the concerned mum penned: “Oakley had the worst sickness last night, from 11ish till about 5am.

“Bath after bath, bed change after bed change.

“I feel so sorry for him. The fundo surgery he’s due to have soon (after his hands) is so needed.

“It will stop him being sick completely. Currently on a meds run for him.”

Talia previously took to Instagram to post a video of her son taking his first steps and shared an update with her followers.

Alongside the clip, she wrote: “Oakley has been using a walking frame for a few months now.

“He’s had some shoes made for him as it’s impossible to get shoes that fit his feet.

“Which is common with Apert syndrome.

“Today we tried the shoes for the first time. We also had physio at home which we are doing every week.”

Aaron and Talia welcomed Oakley into the world in February 2022.

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They also share Romeo, four, and Maddox, three.

The former couple got together in 2017 but split just months after Oakley’s birth.