Throw

THEY are marking 25 years with a record-breaking anniversary tour.

But despite celebrating a quarter of a century together, Westlife say they have never felt younger — thanks to fans still throwing their bras onto the stage.

Kian Egan, Shane Filan and Nicky Byrne have been inundated with fans throwing their undergarments on to the stage during their gigs at Dublin’s 3Arena.

Speaking to Biz on Sunday’s Emily backstage on Friday night, Kian said: “We have a B-stage where we get quite close to the audience. One bra got thrown up, and before we knew [it], it started growing to ten, 14 . . .  It is a bit of fun, and nostalgic.”

Shane added: “We aren’t leaning into it too much or the stage would be covered!”

The Irish hitmakers are on track to surpass 150 dates on their 25th Anniversary World Tour and completed a record-breaking 13-show residency at the 3Arena last night.

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They head to Aberdeen on Tuesday before playing dates across England, Wales and Scotland for their diehard fans.

Shane said: “We have 150 dates and it is growing. We don’t know how many it is going to be, but it is going to be more than 150 for sure.

“You keep yourself fit, you go to the gym, go for a run or surf — you just want to be in good shape for it. It is a very physical show.

“We aren’t out drinking every night, but we still get to enjoy it. We came off stage on the first night with a few pints of Guinness together. It was a lovely moment.”

The boys were fresh-faced twenty-somethings when they embarked on their first tour, East Meets Westlife, in 2000.

Asked if they feel fitter now, Shane said: “Without a doubt. We are getting older but we feel the same on stage.”

Now on their 15th tour, the band have made sure their hits World Of Our Own and Flying Without Wings still form part of their two-hour set.

“All these people have been with us since day one and now they get to relive these 25 years in one show for two hours,” Shane said.

The band are also keen to get former One Direction singer Niall Horan up on stage with them.

Kian said: “It has never been discussed, but you never know.”

Niall, over to you . . . 

NEW LOOK IS A CARDI BY GUCCI

CARDI B looked ready for winter in her furry white jacket at Milan Fashion Week on Friday.

The American rapper was spotted out in the Italian city, where she proved she’s quite the fashion queen herself.

Cardi teamed the Gucci coat with tights from the same Italian luxury fashion house.

And she shared snaps of her look to her 160million online followers, captioning them: “Lord that new Gucci collection.

“So clean, sickening, sexy and detailed.

“Go ahead, just take my whole wallet.”

If I had Cardi’s money, I’d do the same.

ENGLAND rugby legend James Haskell would love to follow ex-footballer Vinnie Jones into acting in a gangster drama, like Guy Ritchie’s hit Netflix series The Gentlemen.

He told me: “I met Guy once. We didn’t talk about roles but if there was ever the opportunity, I’d 100 per cent do it.”

SINGER TALIA MAR has released her video for track Pyscho On A Couch.

The Stay The Night hitmaker stars in the video as herself and a therapist as she explains her troubles.

Fans can catch Talia at Koko in London on October 6.

If this video is anything to go by, Talia will certainly put on a show.

PALOMA HAS FAITH IN VOICE

PALOMA FAITH is ready to teach contestants on The Voice how to make their own kind of music.

The singer will join Sir Tom Jones as one of the guest mentors as the ITV show’s Battles – in which teammates duet – kick off on October 10.

Delta Goodrem joins Kelly Rowland’s group; Cheryl Tweedy works with WILL.I.AM’s team; and McFly’s Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd assist bandmates Danny Jones and Tom Fletcher.

Next Saturday, viewers get a glimpse of the guests at London’s Alexandra Palace, discussing which acts should make the semi-finals.

A source said: “Watching Cheryl’s return to TV and a glimpse of her role as a coach next series will give fans plenty to look forward to.

“Alongside the experience brought by Paloma, Delta, Dougie and Harry, the Battles will be a series highlight.”

In a small coastal town just south of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, a young Rumesh Pathirage daydreamed about running away from school to a field where he could practise fast bowling, running, or anything other than being buried in books.

Academic excellence was not the promised path to glory for him. No, his path was on a synthetic rubber track, from which he would launch his javelin until it landed in the history books and made him world number one. Pathirage was destined to carry Sri Lanka to the upper echelons of sporting glory.

Losing is not in Pathirage’s vocabulary for 2026. Since February, he has won all but one of the competitions he has contested. He is the only thrower this year and the fourth in history to breach the 92-metre mark twice in a season — rare in the javelin books — and the only Sri Lankan to win the prestigious Diamond League final, the island nation’s first Commonwealth gold medallist in 20 years and the only South Asian to win a medal at the inaugural Ultimate Championships this month.

Come Saturday, the 23-year-old from Kalutara will attempt to win his final title of the season — the Asian Games gold — and attempt to break the 92.97m Asian record en route to continental triumph.

“The biggest prize is winning Olympic gold for Sri Lanka,” a nonchalant Pathirage told Al Jazeera in an online interview after the Zurich Diamond League victory, which saw him cross the 92m mark for a record second time. Given his track record, the 6-foot-1-inch (185.4cm) phenom could very well make that happen too.

An Olympic gold would be a first for Sri Lanka, as many of Pathirage’s accolades have been. But an Olympic podium finish was first achieved by Susanthika Jayasinghe, Sri Lanka’s track star who won bronze in the women’s 200m sprint at Sydney 2000, before it was upgraded to silver due to a doping disqualification.

Like Pathirage, Jayasinghe found international success in the junior circuit before bagging major wins in the big league. Her legacy, however, was bittersweet, marred by political interference, alleged tampered drug tests and sexual violence by federal sports officials, and next to no support from Sri Lanka’s athletics federation. But it paved the way for young athletes like Pathirage to dream of a future as track and field’s biggest stars.

Pathirage is already paying his success forward. When well-wishers offered financial assistance to replace his javelins broken days before the Asian Games, he requested that the money be redirected to struggling athletes instead. After all, he was in their shoes not too long ago.

His main source of support has been the Sri Lankan air force, which Pathirage represents as an athlete, and a generous diaspora have helped fund his training, equipment and extensive international travel for competitions.

That no major international sportswear brand has signed Pathirage, despite him being world number one, speaks volumes about the European chokehold that overshadows success from South Asian athletes like Pathirage and Pakistani javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem.

“If you take athletes of my level, I’m the only one who doesn’t have international brand sponsorship,” Pathirage rued of the “sorry situation”, although he understands that Sri Lanka is a small market for sportswear giants. In comparison, European athletes who are nowhere near the top even in their region have sponsorship deals with brands like Adidas, Puma and Nike.

That the Sri Lankan diaspora has repeatedly stepped up to support Pathirage en route to sporting greatness reflects just how much his triumphs at this level mean to them.

They have followed him across the Diamond League circuit, cheering and waving the Sri Lankan flag, stepped in spontaneously to translate English to Sinhalese for media interviews, and waited patiently for an autograph after he’s bagged yet another gold medal.

Many were Pathirage’s age when they fled Sri Lanka during the devastating 1983-2009 civil war. For them, he is the future of a nation they never experienced, his translator Ranil Jayaneththi told Al Jazeera from Zurich, Switzerland, where the Sri Lankan businessman is now based.

“He’s the most exciting thing to happen to us since Susanthika,” said Jayaneththi, whose smile seemed permanent from the night before when he saw the javelin star in all his glory.

“To go through the history that Sri Lanka went through,” he paused before continuing, “it was sports that gave people hope.”

Meanwhile, his family has always been his pillar of strength, safety net and loudest cheerleaders.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without them,” Pathirage said of his parents and two siblings. “Right from when they let me pursue athletics full-time instead of academics till my early career, I owe them everything.”

Athletics is somewhat of a family thing; Pathirage occasionally mentors his younger brother in javelin, which he switched to after excelling in discus throw, the event their father contested decades ago.

Sri Lanka is not a sporting powerhouse, nor does it boast exceptional facilities, but it gave the likes of Pathirage and Jayasinghe a grassroots platform to springboard to global stardom.

Across the country, school- and regional-level competitions prepare younger athletes for the national stage under the guidance of local coaches, some of whom receive international training. Coaching and sports management are also offered at several Sri Lankan universities now.

Under the tutelage of Tony Prasanna, Pathirage’s throws have steadily progressed from the 60m range in 2019 to mid-80m figures more recently that have secured gold at the Asian Throwing Championships. He also competes regularly in Australia, home to a sizeable Sri Lankan population who fled the civil war.

It was there that Pathirage met Ella Wardlaw, an athlete representative who manages his competition schedule, media commitments and sponsorships.

“Rumesh is unstoppable; he’s been hungry for wins all season,” Wardlaw told Al Jazeera from Zurich. The Australian lawyer-turned-manager has seen Pathirage’s rise from an underdog nervously navigating the international stage to dominating it.

“He thrives on pressure, but he’s really in competition with himself a lot of the time.”

When asked whether the goal is consistency with his wins or 90m-plus throws, Pathirage said, “The goal is to improve on what I have achieved … My mindset is to stay a winner. I concentrate on achieving what I can.”

He is indifferent to the media hype that many of his competitors crave. “I’m only doing this interview because my manager said I have to,” he joked. Neither does he care for celebrity status. His humility is apparent in the low-key social media presence he maintains, the demure victory celebrations born of a performance that does all the talking for him.

What he really wants is to be a role model for future athletes in the cricket-crazy nation.

“I want to inspire the younger generation to see my success and know that other pathways await them,” said Pathirage.

Donald Trump Jr. has a lot more in common with his dad than just a name, sharing the president’s penchant for shady dealings and for kleptocratic Russians. Sometimes the two proclivities go together. That was the case in May, we learned this week from ProPublica, when Don Jr. married his second wife during a three-day Bahamian bacchanal bankrolled partly with hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Putin-allied oligarch the Trump scion met only recently.

I had to wonder — recalling Don Jr.’s response in 2016 on learning Russia helpfully wanted to dump dirt on Hillary Clinton — whether he replied in kind when his new Russian friend, Umar Kremlev, offered the wedding grift, er, gift: “If it’s what you say I love it.”

My second thought was that Don Jr. is just like his dad in wanting to spend other people’s money, even as the Trump family has accrued billions since President Trump has been back in office. (Cue the continued silence from the sleuths of Hunter Biden’s laptop.)

Just days before ProPublica’s exposé, at last week’s midterm Republican convention in Dallas, the elder Trump proffered a gift of $5,000 to every one of the roughly 270 million adult Americans. But the eponymous “Trump dividend” would come only if Republicans keep their House and Senate majorities after the November midterm elections.

The tab? More than $1 trillion, roughly $1.3 trillion. How generous Trump is with the U.S. Treasury, despite the news just last month that rattled bond markets and raised interest rates: The United States’ gross debt has exceeded $40 trillion. As Trump told CNBC in 2016: “I love debt. I love playing with it.” We can’t say he didn’t warn us. Even before his proposed 5K giveaway, Trump was on track to break his first-term record for adding to the unsustainable U.S. debt ($8.4 trillion).

Trump’s unprecedented offer of a post-election payout provoked predictable cries of “bribery” from Democrats and other critics. But legality aside, even the appearance of a bribe isn’t what bothers me most about the proposal.

For one thing, it won’t happen. No one will be receiving a $5,000 Trump dividend, just like no one received the DOGE dividend or $2,000 tariff refund he previously promised. Even if Republicans pull off a miracle and retain control of Congress, those in power show no zeal for his budget-buster, not after their complicity in adding trillions to the debt since last year with tax cuts, war costs and this, that and the other Trump pet project. And Congress indeed would have to act, under the Constitution, despite suggestions from the obsequious Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, that Trump could act alone. (But “I’m not ready to discuss it at present,” Bessent told a House committee on Tuesday.)

No, what bothers me most about Trump’s idea — what outrages me — is the damnable fiscal irresponsibility of it.

Trump has turned much of historical Republican orthodoxy on its head, including on immigration, trade and policy toward Russia. But his utter disregard for annual deficits — a record $2 trillion for this fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 — and his shameful profligacy with taxpayers’ money is something Americans haven’t seen in their lifetimes, in either party. Worse, Trump implies otherwise, that he is fiscally responsible, and he does it with lies that are so easily refuted, so often contradicted by his own words, that it’s a marvel that even such a chronic prevaricator as himself can utter them.

This week Trump is still claiming that the $5,000 dividend will be paid for because “we’re taking in trillions and trillions of dollars” in revenue from his inflationary tariffs on more than half of the goods imported into the country. The actual number isn’t even close to that, and he should know it: The data that nonpartisan analysts are crunching are from the government he supposedly runs.

In 2026, tariff revenue through August was just under $200 billion, but more than half of that already has been spent on refunds to big corporations including Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot, in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling against some of Trump’s tariffs. And as if Trump’s dividend proposal weren’t mendacious enough, in making it he seems to have forgotten his claim in his State of the Union address in February that he would use the tsunami of tariff revenue to abolish the federal income tax.

And one last thing: Even if each adult American got $5,000, subtract from that the nearly $2,000 that each household has paid, on average, because of higher tariffs since Trump took office, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

In this one dumb idea, in sum, the giveaway manifests just about all that is wrong with Trump as president: The lying, of course. Fiscal recklessness. The trashing of commendable Republican doctrines. The Trump bubble of sycophantic yay-sayers. And, in turn, the seat-of-his-pants policy idiocy, from war-making to White House demolishing.

The lack of any actual policy deliberation behind Trump’s $5,000 shocker was clear in his lackeys’ flailing and contradictory reactions — not just Bessent’s specious claim of presidential authority, but also Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s inane insistence the administration could somehow “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out” and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett’s comment, contrary to Bessent’s, that the White House is indeed looking to Congress for funds.

The good news? Americans get it. Recent polls have the percentage approving of Trump’s handling of the economy as low as 28%. Significant majorities say they are worse off since he became president again.

Such numbers portend an election result that isn’t likely to be changed by a promise of $5,000. Especially from a serial promise-breaker.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
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The Great Celebrity Pottery Throw Down sees six stars take on a new challenge in the pottery barn.

Viewers of The Great Celebrity Pottery Throw Down have issued their verdict on host Liza Tarbuck.

The Channel 4 series launched on Sunday, September 13, with six celebrities taking on a new challenge. They include Lucy Beaumont, Fatiha El-Ghorri, Richard Herring, Paul Merson, Layton Williams, and Denise Van Outen.

With little to no pottery experience, they braved the pottery studio, hoping to impress judges Keith Brymer Jones and Rich Miller to earn a place in the grand final and be crowned winner. But unlike the original format, the celebrity edition has no weekly elimination rounds.

Channel 4 had earlier teased: “Viewers can expect a few wonky edges, and some cracking clay creations as each celebrity grows in confidence and ability. But who will be holding their breath, waiting to see if their muddy masterpieces emerge from the kiln intact, who will reduce Keith to tears with their creative ceramics, and who will crack under the pressure as the competition gets more competitive over the weeks?”

After being announced as presenter, Liza previously shared: “I knew I’d enjoy Keith and Rich’s company and I did. People flourish around emotionally intelligent people, and the boy’s encouragement and kindness really promoted a growth in our newbie potters that was a pleasure to witness. I absolutely loved being there.”

Viewers have now declared their support for the former BBC Radio 2 presenter, who announced her radio show exit earlier this year, saying that after 36 years, it was “time to go”. Demanding to see more of her on their screens, one fan wrote: “Liza Tarbuck is such a natural presenter, yet television companies consistently use the same faces. Liza is a great addition to #potterythrowdown.”

Another said: “LOVING Liza Tarbuck on #PotteryThrowdown Always loved her on Radio2.. but she is PERFECT for this! What a signing @Channel4.” Someone else wrote: “Never watched Celeb Pottery Throw Down before… It’s brilliant, loving Denise, Layton, Lucy, Richard, and Liza Tarbuck presenting is brilliant… she always is, why doesn’t she get more TV time?”

“More Liza Tarbuck on the telly box please!” one viewer added, as another said: “I’d love to see more of Liza Tarbuck – she’s absolutely hilarious! Make her the permanent presenter for #potterythrowdown.”

Another wrote: “Liza + Pottery Throwdown is a dream come true! But seeing the skill level they’re all starting this, I feel this is going to be an emotional journey of a series.” Yet another echoed: “@PotteryThrow great to see Liza on the TV again, funny lady, love her.”

Meanwhile, Liza spoke about working with judges Keith and Rich in an interview with The Guardian ahead of the new series airing. “Keith is fabulous,” she said. “A really good laugh. But trust me, Rich is the one slyly holding it all together.

“They’re both open-hearted and emotionally intelligent, which is a lovely quality in men of a certain age. That makes it a safe space and brings people’s barriers down. Celebrities aside – what a horrible label – they’re just humans. Keith said to me early on: ‘Just watch the clay work as therapy,’ and it really did.”

After being announced as the presenter of the series, Liza was flooded with support from fans. One person said: “Yay, so excited to see Liza Tarbuck!!”

Another said, “Yay, Lisa Tarbuck,” while a third added, “So excited to see this … and Lisa Tarbuck.” Someone else wrote: “Never watched this before… Liza Tarbuck appears- I’M IN!”

The Great Celebrity Pottery Throw Down is available to watch on Channel 4.