Maria Sharapova 'puts LA mansion with bowling alley and stunning views on the market for £18.5MILLION!' As ex-tennis star and British fiance Alexander Gilkes 'set sights on European return'
The five-time Grand Slam winner is ready to move out of the luxury home - which boasts an indoor bowling alley and gorgeous sea views - after 13 years, a report has claimed.
Sharapova is engaged to British businessman Alexander Gilkes, 46, and the couple are understood to be keen on moving to Europe, the Sun has claimed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the minimalist Japanese-inspired home - fit with exposed concrete walls and a large pool - is up for sale for £18.5m.
The 38-year-old showed off her extraordinary home in an interview with Architectural Digest in 2019 and hailed the 'indoor-outdoor' feel she was able to achieve in its design.
On her striking pool, placed right outside the dining area, she said: 'Usually you have a pool and then a lawn and then a home. But I wanted the pool really close to the home.
'I didn't want that space between, I wanted to see the water from kitchen so getting it a close as possible to the home was a challenge but we managed it.'
Elsewhere, Sharapova's pad includes a second-floor balcony which provides stunning views across Los Angeles, with Catalina Island visible in the distance.
The former Wimbledon champion rocketed to fame when she beat top seed and defending champion Williams 21 years ago to win her first Grand Slam at just 17.
During her storied time on court, Sharapova become the first Russian player to complete the career Grand Slam after wins in Melbourne, New York, Paris and London and the third-youngest woman to triumph at Wimbledon.
But her career was marred by a 2016 failed drugs test, which saw Sharapova suspended for two years after she was found to have ingested meldonium, a substance which had been banned at the start of that year, ahead of the Australian Open.
Her suspension was later reduced to 15 months after she was found to have taken the drug as per her doctor's advice, and Sharapova returned to competition in April 2017, and won the Tianjin Open seven months later.
After struggling with chronic shoulder issues for a number of years, Sharapova announced her retirement in 2020, sharing an emotional goodbye message with her followers that spoke to her deep connection to the game.
Maria and Alexander first started dating in 2018 just two years after Alexander - who has deep royal ties - ended his seven year marriage to Meghan Markle's best friend Misha Nonoo.
The former tennis star is engaged to British businessman Alexander Gilkes (right) and the pair have one child together
The British businessman proposed to the five-time Grand Slam tennis champion in December 2020. He presented her with a dazzling £300,000 diamond engagement ring.
The couple welcomed their first child in 2022.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
4 minutes ago
- Times
Tom Lehrer obituary: devilish musical satirist
Before Tom Lehrer opened his mouth, he seemed the image of decency. Sitting at the piano in a tux as sharp as his jawline, looking a little nerdy with his slicked-back hair, large-framed glasses and bow tie, he could have fooled his listeners into thinking that they were about to hear a mild selection of show tunes. Yet as soon as his fingers hit the keys he revealed himself as the imp he really was, gleefully mocking staid mid-century morals, goading his listeners to clutch their pearls. He sang The Masochism Tango, exclaiming that 'I ache for the touch of your lips, dear/ But much more for the touch of your whips, dear.' And he sang about that bucolic way to spend a Sunday afternoon: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. In I Got It From Agnes, he sang about the transmission of 'it', a venereal disease, through a series of increasingly depraved couplings. Masterfully avoiding recourse to a single rude word, he made eyes bulge with tell of how 'Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/ She got it from her daddy who just gives her everything/ She then gave it to Daniel, whose spaniel has it now/ Our dentist even got it and we're still wondering how.' He won renown among those of discerning bad taste in the Fifties and early Sixties for 37 such songs. They also included I Hold Your Hand In Mine — the seemingly sweet murmurs of a lover who has in fact murdered his darling and kept her hand as a souvenir — and When You are Old and Gray, in which, inverting Yeats's poem, he pleaded: 'So say you love me here and now, I'll make the most of that/ Say you love and trust me, for I know you'll disgust me, when you're old and getting fat.' He sang such lyrics with blithe zest and remarkable vocal dexterity, wending his way through the most tangled tongue-twisters. As if to prove a point, he arranged all the known elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Major General's Song. Part of the joy of listening to him sing was the thrill of hearing him vault such high hurdles as 'Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium/ And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium/ And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium/ And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.' Lehrer was such a confident performer that his songs could seem like spontaneous outbursts, but really he laboured over them intently, shaving off spare words and notes until they were as elegant as equations. A Harvard mathematician who retreated from the limelight back to his alma mater, he found the same satisfaction in fitting a satirical message into verse as he did in solving such abstruse mathematical problems as 'the number of locally maximal elements in a random sample'. Many of his songs originated as party pieces to play to his friends at Harvard, where he matriculated in 1943 at only 15. He made a record of a dozen of his songs to give to them as a memento, hoping to sell the rest of the 400 copies at gigs. Having managed to sell them in a couple of days, he printed more, and employed freshmen to help him to dispatch them by mail order. His fame spread by word of mouth, and by 1954 he had sold 10,000 records. He also began playing in nightclubs such as The Blue Angel in Manhattan and the Hungry I in San Francisco, and at benefits for liberal and anti-war groups. A left-winger of the strait-laced sort who would soon be drowned out by the hippy movement, he endeared himself to his comrades with an 'uplifting song in the tradition of the great old revival hymns' about nuclear annihilation. It went: 'We will all go together when we go/ What a comforting fact that is to know/ Universal bereavement, an inspiring achievement/ Yes we will all go together when we go.' By 1957 he was performing at Carnegie Hall. Lehrer's fame reached Britain that year, when Professor JR Sutherland, awarding an honorary music degree to Princess Margaret from the University of London, let it be known that she was a fan of his music. Talk of his songs spread through university papers and record shops, prompting the BBC to ban most of them from the airwaves the following year. In 1959 he recorded a second album, More of Tom Lehrer, and sold out several venues in the United Kingdom. Yet it was at this moment that he began to tell his friends he wanted to stop performing. He had never gone out of his way to seek fame. At Harvard, once inundated with invitations to perform at parties, he had doubled his fee. The number of invitations halved, which suited him just fine. At the end of 1959, having toured Australia, and the UK once more, he decided to let his records earn his living for him, and return to Harvard to try to finish his PhD. He soon concluded, however, that he had nothing original to offer academia, and gave up on the PhD in 1965. He continued to dabble with songwriting, submitting tapes of his music to That Was the Week That Was — a precursor to Saturday Night Live — and releasing a third album, That Was the Year That Was. But it tired him to tour the world, playing the same songs over and over, and he all but gave it up. On a short tour of Scandinavia in 1967 he joked that all of his songs were 'part of a huge scientific project to which I have devoted my entire life, namely, the attempt to prolong adolescence beyond all previous limits', but it seemed that experiment had reached its conclusion. It was not only out of weariness that he retreated from the limelight, but out of a sense that popular culture had left him behind. His brand of dissent — droll, insouciant, recognisably an undergraduate parlour game — seemed an anachronism to the earnest and righteous rebels of the counterculture. About them he joked, 'It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favour of the things everybody else is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.' Contrary to a biographical note on one of his LPs, Thomas Andrew Lehrer was not 'raised by a yak, by whom he was always treated as one of the family', but born in Manhattan in 1928, the son of Morris Lehrer, a non-practising Jew and necktie manufacturer whose Gilbert and Sullivan records he would listen to constantly, and Anna (née Waller). He began piano lessons at the age of eight, and spent the summers of his boyhood at Camp Androscoggin in Maine, where he bumped into a younger boy whose music he would later idolise: Stephen Sondheim (obituary, November 27, 2021). Educated at Horace Mann, a private high school in the Bronx, Lehrer skipped three years to keep himself amused. His application to Harvard took the form of a poem, the last stanza of which ran: 'But although I detest/ Learning poems and the rest/ Of the things one must know to have 'culture',/ While each of my teachers/ Makes speeches like preachers/ And preys on my faults like a vulture/ I will leave movie thrillers/ And watch caterpillars/ Get born and pupated and larva'ed/ And I'll work like a slave/ And always behave/ And maybe I'll get into Harvard.' He chose to study mathematics, judging that English involved too much reading and chemistry too much grubbing around in foul-smelling laboratories. Once there he began writing scurrilous songs with which to entertain his peers, and surrounded himself with pranksters who would later become eminences in their respective fields: Philip Warren Anderson, who won the Nobel prize in physics; Lewis Branscombe, who became the chief scientist at IBM, and David Robinson, who became the executive director of the Carnegie Corporation. In 1951 he staged the Physical Revue (a play of words on the Physical Review, a scientific publication), a musical drama incorporating 21 of his songs. Invitations to perform at parties poured in, and steadily he acquired a following. By 1954 he was selling records from the second floor of his house, and working as a defence contractor to avoid being conscripted. Despite his best efforts, the following year he was drafted into the Defence Department's cryptography division, which would later become the National Security Agency. He maintained that his only contribution to the NSA was a way to get around its prohibition against staff drinking alcohol at parties — jelly vodka shots. Lehrer gave his last public performance for many years at a fundraiser for the Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. Looking for a sunny climate and a quieter life, he began teaching a course in musical theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He would later teach mathematics there too. It was tacitly understood in his classes that nobody was to mention his career as a performer. Despite his on-stage effervescence he was a deeply reticent man, whose friends hardly got a glimpse into his private life. Once asked whether he had a wife or children, he replied 'not guilty on both counts'. Lehrer claimed that he stopped writing satire partly because 'things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.' Indeed, he famously said a year after he retired from performing that 'political satire became obsolete when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize'. Having relinquished fame so flippantly, he affected to care little about his legacy. When one would-be biographer came knocking, he rebuffed his offer to write his life story, but gave him the original recordings of his second album as though they were worthless to him. He felt no need to give an answer to those who wondered why one of the great lyricists of the 20th century would seem so indifferent to the fate of his own art. In 2020 he put his songs in the public domain. Yet as a younger man he did claim to feel a degree of emotional investment in the reception of his work, saying:'If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.' Tom Lehrer, musical satirist, was born on April 9, 1928. He died on July 27, 2025, aged 97
The Sun
4 minutes ago
- The Sun
People say I'm setting women back, but they're mums relying on boyfriends or benefits says Bonnie Blue in shocking chat
'DON'T stand too close to me, you might catch something,' quips Bonnie Blue as we pose for pics. As The Sun's Sexpert, there's not much that shocks me. I've been to swinging parties, witnessed 50-strong orgies and even taken part in an orgasm contest in New York. 5 5 You could say I'm unshockable, and I'd have agreed with you — until Bonnie burst on to the scene. I've covered the industry long enough to know what's what, and I count porn stars, escorts and OnlyFans models as friends. But such is Bonnie's determination to perform the most degrading stunts imaginable, she's a tough one to defend. Her shock claim to fame — bedding over 1,000 men in 12 hours — and filming sex content with 'barely legal' students saw her accused of 'setting women back 100 years'. She has even been branded as dangerous for women as toxic masculinity influencer Andrew Tate, not least for referring to herself as a 'slut'. 'I love sex with public' So today, I'm sitting down with the 26-year-old to find out what really drives her — and maybe even get under her skin. Readers will know that The Sun does not make a habit of interviewing porn stars. But Bonnie is more than that. She is the disturbing reality of what happens when pornography and the world of 'influencers' collide, just as much a staple on the unregulated social media pages your kids scroll through as she is on adult sites. Bonnie is riding a new wave of anything-goes promiscuity that's genuinely worrying — and that's coming from someone who has built a career on being 'sex positive'. Real name Tia Billinger, she grew up in Draycott, a village between Derby and Nottingham, and was virtually unknown until she catapulted to fame in October last year. Bonnie Blue CANCELS disgusting 'petting zoo' event after extreme backlash, but reveals 10 THOUSAND men applied Her extraordinary story is laid bare in new fly-on-the-wall Channel 4 documentary, 1,000 Men And Me: The Bonnie Blue Story, airing tomorrow. With immaculately blow-dried blonde hair and a preppy style, she's far from the stereotypical porn star. There's an old-money vibe about her — part of her appeal no doubt, and the shock factor. I ask her about being permanently banned from adult platform OnlyFans last month, after inviting men to have sex with her in a twisted so-called 'petting zoo'. Claiming to be inspired by David Blaine, she wanted to tie herself up inside a glass box in the centre of London, which would be 'open for the public' to do 'whatever they want' with her. 'It's frustrating, I've never broken a single f * g rule,' she fumes. 'I went from earning £2million a month to zero. It makes me look like I lie to my fans. "They [OnlyFans] would prefer me to do a cooking show or a dog's yoga retreat, but it's a sex site. People say I'm setting women back, but when I check their profiles, they're often stay-at-home mums relying on a boyfriend or benefits. Bonnie Blue 'I love having sex with the public and that is not going to stop. OnlyFans has tried to cancel me, but it's done the opposite.' So does Bonnie think she's setting women back with such degrading behaviour, teaching young men that it's OK to treat them as objects? 'I say I'm not a feminist, but a lot of my views are,' she says. 'I believe in equality, women being in control and not feeling intimidated by men. I do what I want, when I want, and I feel safe doing it. 'People say I'm setting women back, but when I check their profiles, they're often stay-at-home mums relying on a boyfriend or benefits — and I think, hang on a second.' Bonnie's controversial bonkfest during Nottingham Uni Freshers' Week, which saw her have sex with 150 18-year-olds — many of whom she claimed were virgins — made news. But it was her stunt in January that really caused outcry, as she claimed to have slept with over 1,000 men in 12 hours, working out at less than 45 seconds per fella. 5 5 She later revealed she was left covered in bruises and bite marks from the sex marathon and issued a thank-you to 'all the barely legal, barely breathing and the husbands'. One of the first things that strikes me about Bonnie is how tiny she is. When I go to give her a hug, she's so delicate and pint-sized I worry I might crush her. I can't help but think about her being thrown around in her infamous gang bangs and wonder how she wasn't seriously damaged. I imagine my young kids — already exposed to social media — stumbling across her content and shudder. I'd be heartbroken if my three-year-old daughter ever thought this was inspirational, and asked Bonnie what led her down this path. 'Everyone wants me to say I've been through something traumatic in my past,' she says. 'But it's not true. They just can't accept that I want to do this because I enjoy sex.' I enjoy sex, too, but I find it hard to believe anyone could genuinely enjoy a 1,000-strong orgy. I ask her if she actually orgasms during these stunts and how her body felt the next day. 'Oh it's completely hit and miss,' she explains. 'Even in my personal sex life, I have to remind them how I like it. "Most of these men are inexperienced, so I don't, but I enjoy giving them a good experience. My jaw hurt more than I did down there after the 1,000 challenge,' she adds nonchalantly. 'My legs were burning, too.' Bonnie says she ordered a burger and watched Dexter on Netflix that evening as she was 'too excited to sleep', then treated herself to a massage and facial at a spa the next day. Another Brit OnlyFans content created, Lily Phillips, pulled a similar stunt in December, bedding 101 men in 24 hours and documenting it for YouTube. Unlike Bonnie, Lily, from Derbyshire, claims the experience left her in tears — yet she still pledged to go a step further and sleep with 1,000 men in 24 hours. But Bonnie nailed the challenge first — and in half the time. The pair previously made joint content, but Lily has since claimed their views 'don't quite align'. Last month, Bonnie sat down to debate with misogynist Andrew Tate, who described her as 'the end point of feminism'. 'I'd been called the female version of Andrew Tate for a long time,' she tells me. 'His opinion is that women have fought for years to be in control and have their say and do what they want with their bodies. I do exactly that. So if that's the outcome, so be it.' Like Andrew, she's a Marmite figure — loved by some, loathed by others — and receives hundreds of death threats a day online. 'Last time I went out by myself was six months ago,' she explains. 'It's not safe.' It's hard not to find this incredibly sad. What's the point of making big money if you can't actually enjoy it? 'I want to be the best at what I do,' explains Bonnie. 'I'm not driven by material things and would rather be at home doing a puzzle than glammed up at a red carpet event.' 'Part-time nun' When she's not filming controversial content, she spends her time fishing, surfing and doing jigsaws. She says the only time she's been hurt was when someone uploaded a photo of her late grandad and falsely claimed he had sexually assaulted her. 'My family are getting double looks in the street,' she revealed. 'It made me realise the impact I was having on my family.' So how did someone like Bonnie, who seems to have it all, end up here? 'Growing up, I loved dancing,' she explains. 'But you've got to have money to make it. All the big dance schools are in London and I couldn't even afford a train ticket there.' Bonnie was studying midwifery before she dropped out of college and worked for the NHS doing recruitment finance. She later moved to Australia in her early twenties with her ex-husband Ollie, an estate agent. 'The move really helped me become a sex worker,' she recalls. 'It got me out of that small-town mindset where you're constantly comparing yourself to others.' She was inspired by women on TikTok flaunting their sex work earnings and decided to give it a go. 'I wanted money, freedom and to feel in control,' she says. Bonnie was racked with nerves before starting, but her ex-husband was her rock. 'My palms were sweating. I had no idea what I was doing — I didn't even know all the sex terms,' she recalls. 'I had a separate laptop next to me and any time someone asked something I didn't understand, I'd quickly Google it because I was too embarrassed to admit it. They expect me to drop my pants because they're famous. Bonnie Blue 'Some guys were just lonely and wanted a conversation, other guys wanted me to strip down within 60 seconds with a sex toy inside of me.' Bonnie claims that, before she got into sex work, she'd only slept with five people and described her sex life as 'vanilla'. 'We had sex three or four times a week after watching Netflix,' she recalls. 'My friends would say they had a threesome at the weekend and I'd say, 'Oh my God that's crazy. I'd never even had a one night stand.' Bonnie separated from Ollie last year and their divorce will be finalised next month. 'I'll always love and care for my ex dearly,' she explains. 'But I didn't look at him in the end and think, 'Oh I want to have sex with you'. We became brother and sister in the end.' Bonnie tells how big celebs slide into her DMs, but she's not interested. 'They expect me to drop my pants because they're famous' she laughs. 'But unless they'll film content and be identified, I'm not going to sleep with them. I'm like a part-time nun. I'm one extreme to the next.' She would like to start dating, but it's not a priority. 'I've done what people think is happiness,' she says. 'Marriage, buying a house, a nice car, having money — and they didn't make me happy.' Bonnie struggled to conceive with her ex and isn't naturally maternal. If she decides to have kids, it would be through IVF or adoption. I like Bonnie — she's witty and self-deprecating, cracking jokes at her own expense and clearly enjoys shocking people. But I can't help wondering if it's her armour against the world. As we talk, I wonder what her life will be like five years from now. When her looks fade, will she have to go to even greater extremes for attention? 'If it doesn't make me happy, then I'll be the first to stop,' she explains. 'I'm in control.' Bonnie tells me she hopes the documentary will shift public perception — not just of her, but of the men who sleep with her. 'I want people to know these men aren't disgusting,' she says. 'They're nice people. 'I'm also happy because everyone assumes that behind the cameras, I must be crying, upset or broken — but that's not the case. 'People think I must be sick in the head to enjoy this. But I'm living a life I'm incredibly grateful for. I feel very, very lucky.' But at what cost?
Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Jay Leno blasts late-night comedy hosts
Jay Leno is taking aim at modern late-night comedy shows, claiming the hosts are isolating half their viewers in an interview released just days after Stephen Colbert got the boot from CBS. The former Tonight Show host, 75, reflected on the shift in late-night culture during a sit-down interview with Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation president David Trulio. The candid conversation was taped two weeks ago but was recently shared and quickly circulated online. They spoke openly about comedy, politics, and what's changed in the late-night world. Trulio began by mentioning to Leno that his jokes had a reputation of being equally balanced in his time on air. 'I read that there was an analysis done of your work on "The Tonight Show" for the 22 years and that your jokes were roughly equally balanced between going after Republicans and taking aim at Democrats. Did you have a strategy?' Trulio asked. 'I got hate letters saying, "You and your Republican friends," and another saying, "I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy" – over the same joke,' Leno said. 'That's how you get a whole audience. Now you have to be content with half the audience, because you have to give your opinion.' 'Rodney Dangerfield and I were friends,' continued Leno. 'I knew Rodney 40 years and I have no idea if he was a Democrat or Republican. We never discussed politics, we just discussed jokes.' 'I like to think that people come to a comedy show to get away from the pressures of life. I love political humor – don't get me wrong. But people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.' 'Funny is funny,' Leno said. 'It's funny when someone who's not... when you make fun of their side and they laugh at it, you know, that's kind of what I do.' 'I just find getting out – I don't think anybody wants to hear a lecture,' he continued. 'When I was with Rodney, it was always in the economy of words – get to the joke as quickly as possible.' He criticized comedians who inject their political opinions into every monologue and said he preferred making the whole audience laugh rather than pushing an agenda. 'I don't think anybody wants to hear a lecture … Why shoot for just half an audience? Why not try to get the whole? I like to bring people into the big picture,' he said. 'I don't understand why you would alienate one particular group, you know, or just don't do it at all. I'm not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what's funny.' His comments come in the wake of Colbert's dramatic departure from The Late Show. A media frenzy engulfed The Late Show after Colbert publicly slammed the CBS show's parent corporation, Paramount Global, for settling a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $16 million, calling it a 'big, fat, bribe,' in his opening monologue. Just days after the searing call-out, Colbert told his studio audience that the network was ending The Late Show in May 2026. Speculation has loomed over why the show was canceled, with A-listers and fellow talk-show hosts coming to the comedian's defense. Colbert won an Emmy for his work on The Colbert Report, a satirical show that ran on Comedy Central from 2005 to 2014. After he replaced David Letterman on The Late Show, the program was nominated for the most Outstanding Talk Series at the Emmys from 2017 to 2022. Meanwhile, other late-night legends have rallied behind Colbert in the wake of his show's cancellation. Jimmy Fallon said: 'I don't like it. I don't like what's going on one bit. These are crazy times,' Fallon said, referencing how 'everybody [was] talking about' the decision. 'And many people are now threatening to boycott the network', he said, setting up another punchline. 'Yeah – CBS could lose millions of viewers, plus tens of hundreds watching on Paramount+.' David Letterman also backed his successor and suggested CBS canceled The Late Show because he was 'always shooting his mouth off' about Donald Trump. The 78-year-old late-night legend created The Late Show in 1993 after NBC denied him the chance to succeed Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. In his first comment on the show's cancellation, Letterman noted that his show was more about political satire than his version of The Late Show but was still complimentary, calling the decision by CBS 'pure cowardice.' 'I think one day, if not today, the people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this, they're going to be embarrassed, because this is gutless,' he told former Late Show producers Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay.
