thought

Shelley Spadoni reflects on the time she interviewed comedy legend Ruby Wax and how after a wobbly start, the I’m A Celebrity star won her over completely

The one and only time I ever interviewed the inimitable Ruby Wax was in 2023, a long time before she had to contend with eating camel’s penis, or deal with run-ins with YouTube stars ‘blocking her light’.

The no-holds-barred I’m A Celebrity star, 72, has already made her mark in the jungle with her straight-talking ways and abrasive humour – and to be honest, I’m not surprised. She’s a force of nature.

Getting ready to speak to her on the phone two years ago as she prepared to set off on the UK tour of I’m Not As Well As I Thought (also the name of her book at the time), I was a little apprehensive.

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I had this idea in my head – and how wrong can these preconceived notions be – that she was a brash, at-times rude, if supremely-talented comedian, writer and TV star who if she was having a bad day, would make mincemeat out of me.

And as we began chatting, my fears were, in part. realised. I kicked off by asking Ruby about some of her favourite showbiz memories over the years, of which there are too many to mention here. In hindsight, perhaps I should have warmed her up a little first.

I recall cringing after asking how she felt about finding herself in 2000 sharing a plane with the now-US President Donald Trump, which she’s already talked about around the I’m A Celeb campfire.

Quick as a whippet, she responded, slightly irritated, with, ‘Shelley, I’ve talked about this many times before – as well as hanging out with Pamela Anderson. What else would you like to know that I haven’t said before?”

Fair play. She’s got a bag full of tricks when it comes to A-lister anecdotes. But she’s also got another huge passion in life – campaigning for mental health, and getting people to open up about theirs.

Over that little hiccup, we began discussing her stage show at the time, exploring mental health – as well as her Frazzled Cafe, the online space Ruby founded in which people can share their mental health stories and struggles in a safe space.

And the star slowly came to life. The more we spoke, the more I realised, Ruby just wanted to get to the nitty gritty, the thing that clearly is a huge part of what drives her.

And during the course of our interview, she showed not only her dark sense of humour, but also a vulnerability that is quite rare in the world of celebrity.

At one point, discussing her own mental health struggles, she brought up the idea that we all have an inner voice, ‘negative loops’ inside our head s that try to bring us down, and which she still has to try very hard to ignore.

Hers, she admitted with that throaty laugh, tells her, “I’m old, I’m finished and nobody likes me. And I tend to hear them when I’m feeling anxious. It’s like chewing a wad of gum and feeling exhausted.”

Her honesty was disarming. Mindfulness, she confessed, helps her deal with those intrusive thoughts. With her typically dark humour, she said she had first read about it while being treated in a mental institution, following a devastating bout of depression.

She suggested I try it, that we all do. And by the time we said goodbye to each other, I was a big fan – and have been, ever since.

We haven’t seen much of this vulnerable, reflective side of Ruby in the jungle yet, but I think we will. And though she may have divided fans at times, the more we see of her, the more viewers will understand what makes her tick.

Meanwhile, of course, she’ll continue to be absolute TV gold. She may say it like it is if someone rubs her up the wrong way, but she’s hugely entertaining.

The mother of three is also very insightful about the human condition, something that is sure to come through Down Under, during those famous deep and meaningfuls around the campfire at night.

As she told me before I hung up the call, “We’re all on different boats Shelley, but believe me, we’re in the same storm!”

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Clarkson’s Farm has been popular with viewers since it first aired back in 2021 on Prime Video.

For the last four years, fans of Prime Video have been engrossed in Jeremy Clarkson’s exploits as he navigates the challenges of running Diddly Squat Farm on his popular show. This follows a recent heartfelt announcement from the presenter.

Clarkson’s Farm quickly became a fan favourite when it debuted in 2021, with viewers captivated by the comedic hurdles and blunders the former Top Gear host encountered while trying to run his Cotswolds farm.

Throughout his journey, Jeremy has been assisted by a cast of characters including Kaleb Cooper, Charlie Ireland, Gerald Cooper, Harriet Cowan and his partner Lisa Hogan, all of whom have become beloved figures on the show.

However, Jeremy’s long-time producer Andy Wilman revealed that the presenter didn’t believe he would ever have another hit after leaving the BBC motoring programme.

Speaking on Wednesday’s episode of The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X, Andy confessed that they never anticipated the success of the show, reports Gloucestershire Live.

He said: “That was absolutely out of the blue. Jeremy never thought he was going to have another hit, you know? We were done.”

As Dominic Byrne praised the quality of the show, Andy explained that they had an agreement with Amazon for Grand Tours which required them to continue working, leading to individual projects.

He added: “Jeremy went, ‘I want to do life on my farm.’ And if I had a quid for every exec who rang me and went, ‘Can you talk him out of that?'”

Admitting he rang the TV personality to explain that nobody fancied him doing a programme about farm life, Jeremy confessed he couldn’t fault people for attempting to dissuade Andy from it.

Andy revealed that Jeremy was anxious as he reckoned it might be ‘the most boring thing’, but the personalities on Clarkson’s Farm made a massive difference to its triumph.

He added: “We didn’t see that cast coming.”

Thanks to Clarkson’s Farm’s popularity, it’s led to Kaleb securing his own show which he’s presently shooting in Australia.

The fresh four-part series on Prime Video will witness the TV personality exchange Chipping Norton for existence down under.

Discussing the forthcoming programme, he said: “I spend most of my time with the most travelled man in the world, so I got brave and booked my first ever flight to see what all the fuss was about. Australia here I come!

“And Australia, you’ll be gaining a new farmer for a couple of months as I discover if I can make my farming contracting business go international.”

Clarkson’s Farm is available to watch on Prime Video. Tune into The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X weekdays from 6:30am – 10am and on Global Player

WHEN her best friend and co-star Ariana Grande was ambushed on the red carpet, quick-thinking Cynthia Erivo rushed to the rescue.

A prankster grabbed Ariana at the Singapore premiere of their new film Wicked: For Good on Thursday, but Cynthia, 38, stepped in and strong-armed the invader away.

The British actress admits she feels protective over Ariana, saying: “I love her, she’s a bright spark but you just want to take care of her.  And we really took care of each other.”

Luckily loyal pal Cynthia was already fighting fit thanks to the ­gruelling stunts she had to perform for the eagerly anticipated sequel.

“The flying in harnesses, ­chafing, we had it. Chafing was like a funny word to me until I realised what chafing actually looked like when you had it, repetitively.

“It took months for my hips to heal, scratched palms bleeding, bloody nose, like it was bad.

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“We were willing to do whatever it took to do this, but this one was a big one for us.”

Meanwhile, Cynthia  says she and  Ariana  prefer to go to bed early — like a pair of “grandmothers”.

The star revealed that because of the time difference and their schedules, they often struggle to catch up when she is in London and Ariana is at home in LA.

SHUNNED BY DAD

But while gearing up for the long-awaited sequel of the big-screen musical,  32-year-old Ariana, who plays Glinda, broke routine to make sure they could chat.

Cynthia, who plays Elphaba in the films,  said of one recent late-night text exchange with Ariana: “She’s a sweetheart. I was like, ‘Why are you up so late?’ Because we’re like grandmothers, the two of us.

“We like to sleep early. For some reason I was up at 11 here, which meant she was up at two wherever she was. I said, ‘Why are you up so late?’ She was like, ‘I know, it’s new, isn’t it? I’m never up this late’.

“I said, ‘No you’re not, what’s going on?’. And she said, ‘I’m taking every second I can get right now because you’re usually asleep by now’.”

The  first Wicked movie became the highest-grossing UK release of 2024, taking £59.6million at the box office.

It led to Cynthia being nominated for an Oscar, Bafta, Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Actress.

The sequel, Wicked: For Good, is expected to be just as big and hits UK cinemas on Friday, continuing the tale of the  witches of Oz.

Adapted from the hit musical, Wicked follows Elphaba, a student sorceress shunned by her own father for her green skin, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, while her spoiled roommate Glinda ends up as the Good Witch of the North.

Cynthia tells how she endured ­similar heartache when her own dad walked out of her life for good when she was a teenager.

She and her sister Stephanie were very young when their Nigerian father left their mother Edith, a nurse, to bring up the girls alone.

Edith remarried when Cynthia was five and she continued to see her dad “two or three times a week”.

I think he just was not set up to be a dad. I don’t think it was his bag

Cynhtia

She told The Armchair Expert ­podcast: “My mum was really, I think, kind and gave him the space to come and visit if he wanted to.

“We would go over to him from time to time as well. She really made the space for us if he wanted to build a relationship.

“And he just didn’t. I think he  was just not set up to be a dad. I don’t think it was his bag.”

Recalling how she became estranged from her father,  Cynthia added: “I was 16 when my dad decided not to be a part of my life.”

By then, she had already joined a local youth theatre group and was singing hymns at a Catholic church near her home in Stockwell, South West London.

She went on to start a degree in musical psychology at the University of East London, but quit after securing a place at top acting school Rada.

Her early bid to break into UK telly flopped with an appearance on Channel 4 reality show Trust Me, I’m A Teenager and a small part in ITV period drama Mr Selfridge.  Hopes of a breakthrough  in Simon Cowell and

Harry Hill’s £6million X Factor ­musical, I Can’t Sing, were dashed as the run closed after seven weeks.

But her singing voice impressed casting directors.

She made her West End debut in the stage musical The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and, in 2013,  won a place in a British stage adaptation of The Color Purple, the 1985 movie that starred Whoopi Goldberg.

Since then, her roles have included Harriet Tubman in the film Harriet and a part in Netflix thriller Luther: The Fallen Sun.

But the one person  she always wanted to impress was her father.

She secretly hoped with her  ­becoming famous, he would change his mind about being in her life. Cynthia said: “I think I was using, for a small amount of time, my career as a conduit to find a way to get him back.

‘Look what you gave up, you’re going to regret leaving this’. Yeah, that kind of thing.”

Cynthia has turned to therapy to help her deal with the trauma.

‘MAKE MISTAKES’

She said: “Until you get your head around it and get some control on what it is that you’re actually looking for, what you’re trying to fix in that, it will keep going.

“Thank goodness for a good therapist — that s**t really helped.”

Now, she has finally let go and learned to forgive.  She told The Cruz Show podcast: “It took me ages to let go of parents. It’s like my father, I had to let that go and it’s taken me a long time to get there . . . to realise that it’s a human being who is also fallible and who will make mistakes.”

Cynthia admits that clinging on to that pain for such a long time held her back.

She said: “When you let go, you have to start living. What I keep doing is trying to find the things that challenge me the most, that force me to learn more, that keep me honest  in my craft, that don’t let me get complacent and lazy.”

Wicked was a challenge. The movies were filmed in the UK in chronological order,  back-to-back,  between Dec- ember 2022 and January 2024, with a break in 2023 due to an actors’ strike.

Cynthia, who is dating Lena Waithe, an American actress, producer, and screenwriter, admits that even today she still gets crippled by anxiety.

She explained: “I think if I lose the nervousness, then I know something’s wrong. Because my nervousness tells me I care. The second that disappears, we’ve got a problem.

“So I relish the moments when my heart’s beating fast and I’m nervous. I always forget the first line. Whenever I’m about to go on, the first line will go out  my head.  That’s nerves.

“But when I stand in front of people, it always comes back. It means I care about being here, I care about the people watching.”

Thank goodness for a good therapist, that s**t really helped

Cynthia

When those jitters hit, she relies  on strict pre-performance rituals. She said: “Breathing for me is always key.

“And I always say a prayer before I go on stage. Also, nervousness can sometimes be the mirror looking at yourself.

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“So what I try to do is turn the performance into something I can give. So I ask to be used like a vessel.

“Let whatever I’m singing be for whoever is out there listening. For whoever needs it.”

NEW YORK — When he first came to the United States after escaping civil war in Sierra Leone and spending almost a decade in a refugee camp, Dauda Sesay had no idea he could become a citizen. But he was told that if he followed the rules and stayed out of trouble, after some years he could apply. As a U.S. citizen, he would have protection.

It’s what made him decide to apply: the premise — and the promise — that when he became a naturalized American citizen, it would create a bond between him and his new home. That he would have rights as well as responsibilities, like voting, and that as he was making a commitment to the country, the country was making one to him.

“When I raised my hand and took the oath of allegiance, I did believe that moment the promise that I belonged,” said Sesay, 48, who arrived in Louisiana more than 15 years ago and now works as an advocate for refugees and their integration into American society.

But in recent months, as President Trump reshapes immigration and the country’s relationship with immigrants, that belief has been shaken for Sesay and other naturalized citizens. There’s now fear that the push to drastically increase deportations and shift who can claim America as home, through things such as trying to end birthright citizenship, is having a ripple effect.

What they thought was the bedrock protection of naturalization now feels more like quicksand.

What happens if they leave?

Some are worried that if they leave the country, they will have difficulties when trying to return, fearful because of accounts of naturalized citizens being questioned or detained by U.S. border agents. They wonder: Do they need to lock down their phones to protect their privacy? Others are hesitant about moving around within the country, after stories like that of a U.S. citizen accused of being here illegally and detained even after his mother produced his birth certificate.

Sesay said he doesn’t travel domestically anymore without his passport, despite having a Real ID with its stringent federally mandated identity requirements.

Immigration enforcement roundups, often conducted by unidentifiable masked federal agents in places including Chicago and New York City, have at times included American citizens in their dragnets. One U.S. citizen who says he was detained by immigration agents twice has filed a federal lawsuit.

Adding to the worries, the Justice Department issued a memo this summer saying it would ramp up efforts to denaturalize immigrants who’ve committed crimes or are deemed a national security risk. At one point during the summer, Trump threatened the citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City, who naturalized as a young adult.

The atmosphere makes some worried to speak about it publicly, for fear of drawing negative attention to themselves. Requests for comment through several community organizations and other connections found no takers willing to go on the record other than Sesay.

In New Mexico, state Sen. Cindy Nava says she’s familiar with the fear, having grown up undocumented before getting DACA protections — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is the Obama-era program that protected from deportation people brought to the U.S. illegally as children — and gaining citizenship through her marriage. But she hadn’t expected to see so much fear among naturalized citizens.

“I had never seen those folks be afraid. … Now the folks that I know that were not afraid before, now they are uncertain of what their status holds in terms of a safety net for them,” Nava said.

What citizenship has meant, and who was included, has expanded and contracted throughout American history, said Stephen Kantrowitz, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said that while the word “citizen” is in the original Constitution, it is not defined.

“When the Constitution is written, nobody knows what citizenship means,” he said. “It’s a term of art, it comes out of the French revolutionary tradition. It sort of suggests an equality of the members of a political community, and it has some implications for the right to be a member of that political community. But it is … so undefined.”

American immigration and its obstacles

The first naturalization law passed in 1790 by the new country’s Congress said citizenship was for any “free white person” of good character. Those of African descent or nativity were added as a specific category to federal immigration law after the ravages of the Civil War in the 19th century, which was also when the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution to establish birthright citizenship.

In the last years of the 19th century and into the 20th century, laws were passed limiting immigration and, by extension, naturalization. The Immigration Act of 1924 effectively barred people from Asia because they were ineligible for naturalization, being neither white nor Black. That didn’t change until 1952, when an immigration law removed racial restrictions on who could be naturalized. The 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act replaced the previous immigration system with one that portioned out visas equally among nations.

American history also includes times when those who had citizenship had it taken away, such as after the 1923 Supreme Court ruling in U.S. vs. Bhagat Singh Thind. That ruling said that Indians couldn’t be naturalized because they did not qualify as white, leading to several dozen denaturalizations. At other times, it was ignored, as in World War II, when Japanese Americans were forced into incarceration camps.

“Political power will sometimes simply decide that a group of people, or a person or a family, isn’t entitled to citizenship,” Kantrowitz said.

In this moment, Sesay says, it feels like betrayal.

“The United States of America — that’s what I took that oath of allegiance, that’s what I make commitment to,” Sesay said. “Now, inside my home country, and I’m seeing a shift. … Honestly, that is not the America I believe in when I put my hand over my heart.”

Hajela writes for the Associated Press.

The official cause of death for Ace Frehley, the guitarist who was a founding member of hard-rock band Kiss, has been released, confirming details his family shared in October.

The medical examiner for New Jersey’s Morris County said in a report, published by TMZ, that Frehley died of “blunt trauma injuries” to his head suffered during a fall. His death was ruled an accident. The report listed injuries including a brain bleed and fractures to his skull.

Frehley’s death on Oct. 16 was announced by his family, which said he had recently suffered a fall. “In his last moments, we were fortunate enough to have been able to surround him with loving, caring, peaceful words, thoughts, prayers and intentions as he left this earth,” the family said in a statement at the time. Frehley was 74.

“We cherish all of his finest memories, his laughter, and celebrate his strengths and kindness that he bestowed upon others,” the statement continued. “The magnitude of his passing is of epic proportions, and beyond comprehension.”

Frehley, known also for his Spaceman alter ego, died less than two weeks after canceling the remainder of his 2025 live performances due to undisclosed “onging medical issues.” He was also hospitalized in late September after suffering a “minor fall” in his studio, his tour manager John Ostrosky announced. Though the rocker was “fine,” doctors urged him to take time from the road to recover, prompting him to cancel his appearance at the Antelope Valley Fair.

The musician was among the original members of Kiss, playing with the band for about a decade, from 1973 — when he formed the group in New York with Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — until 1982, when he quit not long after Criss left.

The band, which had its final show in 2023, was known for flamboyant performances, and costumes and heavy makeup. Despite his relatively short tenure, Frehley proved instrumental in creating the band’s stomping and glittery sound, as heard in songs like “Detroit Rock City,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Strutter” and “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” He was part of a reunion tour with the band from 1996 to 2002.

“He was an essential and irreplaceable rock soldier during some of the most formative foundational chapters of the band and its history,” the band said of Frehley following news of his death. “He is and will always be a part of KISS’s legacy. Our thoughts are with Jeanette, Monique and all those who loved him, including our fans around the world.”

The 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is survived by his wife, Jeanette; his daughter, Monique; his brother, Charles; his sister, Nancy; and several nieces and nephews.

Times pop music critic Mikael Wood contributed to this report.