Baton of Hope: Britain's Got Talent group to dance after Kent leg
Ms Forsyth said she felt strongly about the campaign's message after a member of her extended family took their own life in 2023."He was fun, lovely, everybody loved him," she said, and his death came as a "big shock".
If you have been affected by the issues raised in this article, help is available from BBC Action Line.
The dance instructor added that Midlife Movers, which she started in 2022, had helped its members' mental health by establishing social groups and keeping participants busy."A lot of people say that for that hour they're concentrating on something else other than their problems," Ms Forsyth said.The group has members aged between 40 and 86 about 300 "movers" at its sessions across Kent.
More than 130 people will be involved in carrying the baton as it crosses the county.As well as raising awareness of suicide prevention support, the Baton of Hope campaign aims to encourage people to talk openly about their mental health struggles.Kent and Medway Baton of Hope Tour coordinator, Alice Scutchey, thanked the people working for helping baton bearers and communities "remember loved ones, celebrate hope and stand up to suicide stigma".
The Baton of Hope will tour 20 locations around the UK in 2025, passing through East Sussex on 23 September.It first toured the country in 2023.
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Daily Mail
7 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
With TWO disgraced presenters, BBC decision to air MasterChef is an insult to all of us and a slap in the face to everyone who has been belittled and abused on the show, says CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
How bad do things have to get before the BBC does the right thing and bins MasterChef? The return of the long-running culinary contest, after the sacking of its disgraced presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode, is an insult to licence-payers and a slap in the face for all the participants and crew who have been belittled and abused over the years. Series 21 is to air in full, supposedly because cancelling it would be unfair to this year's 60 contestants – even though one of them, Sarah Shafi, called for it to be axed. Instead, she was edited out of the show, a move that left her 'flabbergasted'. After watching the first episode, I'm flabbergasted too. It's as though the production company, Banijay, has watched the playbacks and thought: 'Don't panic! There's at least an hour of footage where Gregg has his trousers on and John says nothing racist. We're good to go!' If you've sidestepped the furore leading up to this broadcast, you might suppose I'm being facetious. But the extraordinary truth is that, following multiple complaints, Banijay carried out an investigation into Wallace's behaviour. The majority of the 83 allegations against him related to 'inappropriate' sexual language and humour – though that raises another question of whether the producers think sexual remarks and jokes are ever appropriate on a TV set. Perhaps they don't understand that 'food porn' has nothing to do with nudity. Wallace certainly didn't. Of the 45 complaints against him upheld, one related to 'unwelcome physical contact' and three to being 'in a state of undress'. In the course of their enquiries, Banijay also learned that Torode had used a racist slur. Despite protesting their innocence, both men were dropped from the show... and yet, here we are, with Wallace and Torode once again the judges. I do not believe for a second that BBC executives feel compelled to air the series as a favour to contestants, as the Corporation has suggested. The TV industry is not that sentimental. It's much more likely to be about money. The Beeb has paid for MasterChef and now it wants its pound of flesh, lightly seared and served on a bed of herby potatoes with a scatter of grated walnuts. Even now, it is entirely within the BBC's power to cancel the series. The Government would certainly support that, as would its union paymasters. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy says she won't be watching. Downing Street has welcomed the BBC's decision to 'sever ties' with Wallace. And the broadcasting union Bectu has said the presenters 'should not be rewarded with prime-time coverage'. There is strong precedent, too. BBC One removed episodes of The Repair Shop from its schedule last year after presenter Jay Blades was charged with coercive and controlling behaviour against his estranged wife. Series 21 is to air in full, supposedly because cancelling it would be unfair to this year's 60 contestants – even though one of them called for it to be axed The majority of the 83 allegations against Wallace related to 'inappropriate' sexual language and humour – though that raises another question of whether the producers think sexual remarks and jokes are ever appropriate on a TV set Yet dozens remain on iPlayer, even though Blades faced two much more serious charges of rape this week. Whether he will be edited out of old episodes if found guilty, the BBC has not said. It has to be emphasised, of course, that neither Wallace nor Torode has faced a police investigation, much less criminal charges. Yet, strict action has been taken over other controversies. In 2020, Sky chiefs were horrified to realise a heavily tattooed contestant on a forthcoming reality show was actually flaunting neo-Nazi symbols. It was only when trailers for woodworking competition, The Chop, featured contestant Darren Lumsden that social media users pointed out that elements of his body art were coded displays of support for Adolf Hitler and white supremacy. Sky could have fudged the issue. Instead, they did the right thing. The Chop got the chop. The BBC lacks the common sense to follow suit. Its solution is to sieve out all but the blandest moments featuring Wallace and Torode. We see them asking innocuous questions about dishes and then grinning silently at the answers. Almost all his cheesy banter has gone. As a result, the hour is as tepid and flavourless as the water strained from a pan of spaghetti. The judges might as well be a pair of AI robots. And if MasterChef is to continue, perhaps that would be the Beeb's safest option.
Times
7 minutes ago
- Times
I swore at the Queen. She was very kind
An invitation to meet the monarch might make anyone anxious. There's the dress code and the correct royal address, plus the bowing or curtsying to think about. So when John Davidson was asked to meet Queen Elizabeth in 2019 he could be forgiven his nerves. 'It was already daunting,' Davidson says. 'But for people like me, pressure and stress make you do your absolute worst.'His troubles began as his car entered Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh and police inspected the vehicle's underside with little mirrors on stalks. Donaldson opened the car window and began shouting: 'A bomb! I've got a f***ing bomb!' By the time he was in front of Her Majesty, all royal protocol was out the window, the voice in his head too hard to control. 'F*** the Queen!' he shouted.'Her Majesty was very kind. She was as calm and assured as my granny. She was very good about it,' Davidson says. Welcome to the extraordinary world of Tourette syndrome. The Queen made allowances for Davidson (he'd already shouted 'I'm a paedo!' in the tapestry-lined hallway) because he was there to receive an MBE for his work raising awareness about the condition. • Read expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing According to NHS England, Tourette syndrome affects one in a hundred school-age children, but it's almost certainly not what you think it is. Coprolalia (swearing) affects about 10 per cent of those with the condition; echolalia (repeating others' words) and palilalia (repeating one's own words) are more common. Up to 85 per cent also have conditions including OCD, ADHD, anxiety and autism. Physical 'ticcing', which might involve exaggerated blinking or twitching, is common too, although in Davidson's case it includes grander gestures such as shoving loved ones towards traffic or putting hands over a driver's eyes when they are at the wheel of a car. 'The tic urge often comes when I'm anxious, stressed or tired,' he explains, 'and then it's an exhausting mental battle telling myself, 'John, that's the absolute worst thing you could do in this moment,' and then trying not to do it.' Davidson was a happy-go-lucky kid who grew up in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. He loved playing football and riding his BMX. Aged ten he had his tonsils and appendix out in quick succession. 'I'll never know the trigger, but after that last operation I began to feel different,' he recalls. 'There is one theory that a streptococcus infection can trigger Tourette's, but who knows?' He first noticed his exaggerated blinking on a family holiday on the Costa Brava in Spain. But it was when his mother accidentally stepped on a lizard and screamed that Davidson crossed a boundary. 'I called my mum a stupid cow,' he recalls. 'I didn't want to say it, and I didn't even mean it, but Tourette's is like someone else controlling my mind.' This is the exquisite torture of the coprolalia component of Tourette syndrome: sufferers aren't mouthing off or delivering a few home truths. More often than not they want to do the right thing but realise with horror that rogue brain circuits will make them do the opposite. It's a spectrum condition. Some people barely notice their tics; Davidson's quickly got him into trouble. He alienated school friends by skipping down the high street and licking the lampposts. When he began spitting food into the faces of his parents and siblings (he has a brother and two sisters) at the dinner table he was forced to eat with the family dog, Honey. 'My dad is a joiner, a very quiet, self-contained man,' Davidson says. 'There was no information about Tourette's, so I was just this alien child. He just couldn't cope.' His father eventually left, and his mother struggled on alone. Meanwhile, by the time Davidson was 12 the local GP believed he was having a complete nervous breakdown and suggested psychiatric care. He was now barking at dogs and certainly in a bad place mentally. 'You'd be better off killing me,' he told his mother. 'And I did genuinely feel that,' Davidson says. 'People with Tourette's are four times as likely to commit suicide as the general population. I felt like someone else had control of me and, as a kid, that's just terrifying.' It was while Davidson was in a psychiatric hospital, medicated with the powerful antipsychotic drug Haloperidol, that a neurologist finally identified the problem: full-blown 'Tourette's plus', the condition in its most severe form. Davidson presents copalalia, echolalia, OCD and ADHD. Luckily his diagnosis seemed to coincide with the dawn of a wider understanding. In 1989 the BBC made a documentary about him called John's Not Mad. Bizarrely the moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse insisted the BBC show it after 11pm because it contained so much swearing. The corporation resisted and it attracted a huge audience at 9pm. One of the documentary's contributors was the acclaimed writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who offered invaluable advice. 'Oliver Sacks told me, 'Accept the condition or it will dominate you,' and that has stayed with me,' Davidson says. 'It's there, I have to work with it.' That's harder than it sounds. Keeping his mind busy helps. Planning for stressful situations such as a visit to the cinema works too. But a new memoir about his life, I Swear, contains really heartbreaking stories, such as when Davidson is sent to stay with his strict God-fearing grandparents and asked to avoid the c-word. He calls his grandmother 'Granny c***'. We feel the visceral stress of him meeting Tommy Trotter, who gave him a job helping at a community centre. Trotter happens to have red hair, and Davidson's opening gambit is: 'F*** off, you fat ginger c***!' Incredibly they become lifelong friends. After the BBC documentary people became nicer to him, though a few oddballs came out of the woodwork. One day Davidson was home alone, caring for his pet rabbit Snowy, when there was a knock at the door. An exorcist who'd seen the programme had tracked him down. Standing on the front step in a hooded robe and holding a crucifix, he announced: 'You're possessed by demons and we need to dispel them!' Usually Davidson swears because he can't help it, but for once his response — 'Look, I need to deal with my rabbit so will you just f*** off?' — was just regular anger. Things really began to improve the day his school friend Murray invited him to play football and then to have tea at his house. Davidson initially declined because he'd heard that Murray's mother, Dottie, had liver cancer and only six months to live. Obviously horrible for Dottie, but a huge challenge for Davidson too. And yet he went, and despite his greeting ('Ha ha! You're gannae f***ing die!'), they became firm friends. In fact, Davidson moved in with Murray, Dottie and her husband, Chris. Equally extraordinarily, her liver cancer turned out to be a misdiagnosis (hemangioma, a benign liver tumour) and he now calls her his stepmother. 'That made my real mum feel guilty for a long time because she felt she had let me down,' Davidson says. 'But it's hard to explain just how hard it was for her dealing with me alone. Over the years I hope I've convinced her she did her best and she really needed a break.' Davidson's new family gave him a new lease of life. He got that job at a local community centre, became a youth worker and was eventually recognised as the leading national campaigner for awareness of Tourette syndrome. 'The MBE was the proudest moment of my life,' he says. 'I never thought I'd even have a life, let alone be able to help people and get recognised for it.' As well as the memoir, a film, also called I Swear, will be released in October, with an extraordinary turn by Robert Aramayo as Davidson. But we live in a post-Salt Path world, and questions about the authenticity of Raynor Winn's bestseller have made people sceptical of extreme life stories. Oddly, that means that when I meet Davidson I'm a bit disappointed about how gentle and articulate he is. Is this really the guy who, when he met Kirk Jones, the film's director, made him a cup of tea then told him, 'I used spunk for milk'? I ask around. Yes, that happened. But it still comes as almost a relief when halfway through our interview, apropos of nothing, Davidson barks, 'F*** off!' We live in censorious times. Do some people envy his freedom to say extreme things? 'Oh yeah, I meet people who say: 'John, you get to speak your mind, I'd love some of that.' Believe me, though, you do not want Tourette's. I've been attacked in the street for saying things I didn't even want to say.' Davidson may one day soon become an interesting medical footnote. Technology promises to make Tourette syndrome a thing of the past. The University of Nottingham has developed a wristband device called a Neupulse that acts on the median nerve at the wrist. Electrical pulses suppress the urge to tic, and trials show a 25 per cent reduction in symptoms. Davidson has tried it and the results were very encouraging. 'My tics were massively reduced,' he says, 'and my anxiety about ticcing was way down too.' However, when the device becomes commercially available Davidson says he will use it sparingly. 'As a kid I would have given literally anything to get rid of Tourette's. Now I just want to be me. Tourette's has given me massive insight into and empathy for humanity. I honestly think it's integral to who I am.' • Tourette's and the teenage girl — why are so many developing tics? One well-known figure with Tourette syndrome is the Brit award-winning Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, who two years ago abandoned his world tour to deal with his symptoms. Davidson would like to meet him and offer some advice; he speculates that Capaldi might have tried the drug Haloperidol. 'I was on it for 30 years, and it basically makes you tired and hungry all the time. It doesn't cure Tourette's, it's just a way of doctors shutting you up, and to me that's not the right approach. We've come such a long way since the 1980s. I would like anyone reading the book or seeing the film to laugh with, not at. And everyone struggling with it to know there is hope.'I Swear by John Davidson (Transworld £18.99). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Metro
2 hours ago
- Metro
'Most harrowing film ever made' still available to stream as Netflix pulls it
A brutal psychological thriller described as one of the most harrowing films ever made – and which sparked walkouts with its brutal content – has been removed from Netflix. However, it still has a streaming home for viewers in the UK. The award-winning 2018 film The Nightingale was part of the group of titles Netflix removed from its vast UK back catalogue during the fist few days of August, which also included movies from the Final Destination franchise and Shrek trilogy, alongside White House Down. But for those wanting to seek out the film described as 'the most shocking of the year' and hard to watch, it is available on Amazon Prime Video for subscribers free of charge. A disturbing period-set drama, The Nightingale takes place in 1825 and follows young Irish convict Clare (Aisling Franciosi) as she hunts a British officer, played by Sam Claflin, to extract revenge for the unspeakable acts of violence he committed against her and her family. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. On the way, she enlists the services of Aboriginal tracker Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The intense thriller is directed by Jennifer Kent, who made a name for herself as the writer and director of psychological horror film The Babadook, frequently cited as one of the best horror films in recent years. After premiering at Venice Film Festival, where it clinched the Special Jury Prize, The Nightingale screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival months later, where some cinemagoers revealed they had walked out over its intense and upsetting scenes. *Warning – descriptions of graphic scenes below* Alongside sequences depicting murder, assault and infanticide, there are also three visceral and horrifying rape scenes within the first 20 minutes, which according to local reports prompted protests and shouted criticisms at director Kent – who was sitting in the audience. Kent later defended the scenes, the breathtaking violence of which continues further into the film, as an 'honest and necessary depiction' of a particularly brutal moment in history in Tasmania, where the massacre of Aboriginals by British colonists intensified during the Black War. Critics and viewers also praised Kent for her unflinching take on things, with writer Michael Ouzas describing The Nightingale as 'essential viewing and an Australian classic' and @jesuevalle admitting on X that while he walked out 'to take myself away from that brutal space', he still recognised The Nightingale as 'an important film' and walked back in to finish watching it. We Live Entertainment's critic Scott Menzel called it a 'haunting and unforgettable masterpiece', while awarding The Nightingale 9.5 stars out of 10 and acknowledging its very dark nature. 'I don't think that any review can mentally, physically, or emotionally prepare you for what Kent has brought to life with this film,' he added. Meanwhile Alex Flood for NME branded it 'the most shocking film of the year' and advised that the film was 'not for the faint-hearted', while Little White Lies' Hannah Strong described it as a 'devastating, uncomfortable watch' while suggesting it needed to be 'exactly the film it is, bubbling with completely justified anger and pain'. The Nightingale holds an impressive 87% score from critics on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, while boasting a decent 73% from the smaller pool of audience members sharing their reactions. 'Genuinely one of the most harrowing pieces of cinema I have ever experienced,' shared Dan L, who said that there 'aren't words for how incredible this film is'. More Trending 'I watched this a few months ago and I still think about it all the time. It's one of those movies that really sticks with you,' wrote Laura M, adding: 'This movie made me WEEP.' Meanwhile, Amanda H said she was 'hooked from start to finish', which Hua M agreed with, chiming in: 'Had me completely riveted/shook from start to finish. Incredible performances all around (but particularly by Aisling), and a nightmarish, visceral experience that I will not soon forget.' 'Although some scenes were hard to watch, I couldn't tear my eyes off the screen,' wrote Maria D. The Nightingale is streaming now on Prime Video in the UK. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: This Wednesday season 2 filming location has a devastating haunted past MORE: Wednesday fans baffled by Lady Gaga's season 2 role as they beg for answers MORE: Another major Neighbours star exits months before show finale
