My Week In Cars: New Steve Cropley/Matt Prior podcast (ep.143)
This week Steve Cropley and Matt Prior meet in a top designer's office to talk about some secret Rovers, why the upcoming death of the Ford Focus ST means to much, Steve's newly shiny Alpine A110, the Audi A3 PHEV, and much more besides, including your correspondence.
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Daily Mail
a minute ago
- Daily Mail
Barbara Windsor's widower Scott Mitchell admits it was 'horrible to witness the terror' his late partner experienced amid her dementia battle
Barbara Windsor 's widower Scott Mitchell has admitted it was 'horrible to witness the terror' his late partner experienced when battling dementia. Barbara, known for her portrayal of Peggy Mitchell in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, died from Alzheimer's Disease in 2020 at the age of 83. Scott, 62, who became Barbara's carer in 2014 when she fell ill with the disease and has now spoken to BBC Newsnight about her illness and the impact it had on him. Speaking about her being 'slowly taken away' by the disease he also opened up about some of the most challenging behaviours he had to deal with. He said on the show: 'With Barbara, you know, I watched this incredibly vibrant lady, highly intelligent with the most wonderful memory. 'Vibrant wasn't the word for Barbara. You all saw her, you all knew who she was. And I just saw her being slowly taken away from me by this cruel, horrible disease.' On the show he was also asked what tips he would give to others dealing with a loved one who is losing their memory. Scott explained: 'Try not to argue. I learnt the hard way. You know, it's no good contradicting. What you do is you enter their world. You go with their journey because their reality is a lot different than yours. 'And for their benefit, so you don't distress them, just go with it and smile. I used to smile a lot to Barbara. 'When she was on a repetitive loop, she'd ask me something for the 15th time and in my head I was screaming because it's overwhelming for a carer to go through that every night, night after night. 'But I would just try and smile and give her just a little bit, as if it was the first time that I heard it. That's very sad. It's a horrible thing to witness and the terror that I witnessed her go through as well.' It comes after earlier this year Scott shared that he 'still wakes up in panic' worrying about the late star, like he did when she was still alive. He told The Mirror: 'I've never recovered from my sleep from when I was caring for Barbara. I'll fall asleep at 11 but I can be waking up through the night. 'I was so aware of when she used to get up in the night because she used to have falls in the night. So I never really used to sleep. I used to constantly be alert.' He added: 'There are times when I wake up and I panic because I think, is she OK? Like I used to. I have to talk to myself and say, 'it's OK. She's at peace'. It's a lot less than it used to be now.' Scott has now found love with new partner Tanya Franks and previously spoke about their romance on Lorraine. In the wake of the loss of his wife, Scott detailed how his 'incredible friendship' with Tanya, 57, became a romance. Speaking to hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard, he said: 'We forged an incredible friendship over the four years and something wonderful blossomed out of it... 'The exact opposite of what dementia is. I'm very fortunate that I have a partner that doesn't mind me speaking about my late wife.' Scott and Tanya forged a close friendship over the years as they worked together to raise awareness about Alzheimer's with 'Bab's Army'. Alzheimer's is close to Tanya's heart with her running in the London Marathon as part of Bab's Army for her step-father Derek. Tanya, who knew EastEnders star Barbara and played drug addict prostitute Rainie Cross on the soap, admitted she can do 'nothing but support' Scott discussing Barbara's battle and his work in caring for the TV icon. Tanya said: 'I can do nothing but support him in talking about it. You often feel alone in it when you are caring for someone with Alzheimer's... 'The communication allowed the support system to grow. Barbara is as much about the legacy of Alzheimer's as it is me going through it with my step father. It is hundreds of thousands that we've raised from doing the three marathons.' Scott echoed: 'If for next year's marathon someone would like to give a million pounds, a big company or sponsor, I will do another marathon and shave my hair off as well, and that is the big one, shaving my hair off.' 'I don't want people to go through the latter stages of what I went through with Barbara.' He said: 'She's a wonderful lady who knew Barbara. It can't be easy to be with someone who was the other half of Barbara Windsor, especially the fact that I still put myself out there and talk about her. 'So, it says to me the type of person that Tanya is, that she can deal with that. She's very sure of herself as a person. Just because you're not with someone for whatever reason, it doesn't mean to say that you just switch off some valve of love.'
The Guardian
a minute ago
- The Guardian
Circular Motion by Alex Foster review – what if the world spun faster and faster?
Alex Foster's sparky debut novel is built around a new technology of travel. Pods launch high into the sky and connect with one of thousands of 'circuit vessels', all orbiting the world from east to west. Travellers then descend in another pod, arriving wherever they choose. Spring-loaded pads store the pod's kinetic energy when they land, and propel them up again when they launch. It's so cheap, so rapid and so ubiquitous that everyone uses it. You can work in London, meet a friend for lunch in New York and come back to work that afternoon. The novel's narrator, Tanner Kelly, has grown up in rural Alaska, a backwater without a pod station. He is only too glad to escape, getting a glamorous job in London as personal assistant to scientist Victor Bickle, who works for CWC, the company that runs the network. Bickle's job is selling CWC's services and whitewashing their effects. As the company's booming chief of communications, Cromwell Grant, tells Tanner: 'every CWC customer demands two things. He demands the products and services we provide. And he demands a clean conscience with which to consume them.' The clean conscience is an issue because the pod technology is harming the world, accelerating the Earth's rotation. CWC deny that 'day contraction' has anything to do with pod transportation, but this is a lie. This effect is small-scale at first, days becoming a few minutes shorter, but across the course of the novel we go from days of 23 hours and 45 minutes to days of 22 hours, of 20 hours, of 12 hours, the Earth spinning more and more rapidly. Foster likens it to ants on a floating log. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, 1,000 ants all running on top of the log in the same direction will spin the log beneath them. Workdays contract, circadian rhythms are shattered, people take stimulants to stay awake and then sedatives to get any sleep. It is a metaphor for climate change, of course, and a good one: the novel dramatises people's incapacity, or more precisely their unwillingness, to address the problems they are causing the world. Pod travel is so convenient, and it is so important to the economy, to transport and trade, that people will not give it up. Days pass in six hours, rotation becoming so fast that the centrifugal effect counteracts gravity, with the oceans and atmosphere bulging at the equator and the ground in the northern and southern hemispheres starting to slope, turning the world into a surreal funhouse environment. Rather than ban pods, 'the shell' is created, a world-encircling ceiling built on gigantic pillars to keep the air inside and to recycle water through pipes to where it is needed. This isn't very plausible, and requires humanity missing more obvious solutions (since the day contraction is caused by the pods and circuit vessels travelling east to west, couldn't we just reverse their direction of travel and slow the rotation down?). But by this point in the novel realism has been superseded by satire. Rather than dialling down pod transport, the network is hugely expanded. The inside of the shell has adverts projected upon it. A protester explodes a bomb at a CWC event, shouting, ironically, 'revolution!' Days pass in three hours, then two, and the momentum of the story hurtles to its unavoidable catastrophic finale. It is a sharp conceit, and would make for a memorable short story. Foster expands it to novel length by developing his main characters, and dwelling on their relationships. Tanner, working for CWC, is complicit in the global disaster, but he is not consumed by guilt: on the contrary, he loves his job, is glad to have escaped his backwater religious-fundamentalist home, excited by big-city living, falling in love with his dishy co-worker Miguel. As the days shorten and work becomes increasingly exhausting, things sour with Miguel and the story gives us a great deal of to and fro of their breakup: too much, really. A second main character, teenage Winnie Pines, whose father has disappeared and whose mother is in a coma, self-harms by giving herself electric shocks. As the world accelerates, she overcomes her shyness and low self-esteem, gets a job, and her storyline converges with Tanner's. A nuanced and interesting character, Winnie is the work of a writer with real talent. The prose is lively, too: vivid, full of lovely touches, and equally able to describe the large-scale disasters, thunderstorms, earthquakes, end-of-days big-screen doom, and the minutiae of ordinary living. The book isn't flawless. The realness of Winnie throws into relief the two-dimensionality of many of the other characters, and the warping of time makes it hard to be sure what the pacing is. But this is an impressive debut about people struggling on with their lives in a world literally spinning out of control. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Circular Motion by Alex Foster is published by Grove (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
Tyler West gets emotional on live TV after Molly Rainford engagement
DJ Tyler West and actor Molly Rainford have announced their engagement, three years after meeting on Strictly Come Dancing. The couple were both contestants on the 2022 series of Strictly Come Dancing. Rainford reached the final of the competition, whilst West was eliminated in the seventh week. West became emotional discussing their engagement on This Morning, describing Rainford as his best friend and the best thing that has ever happened to him. Watch the video in full above.
