Lenny Henry and Rachel Riley among stars diving with sharks in new show
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Emmerdale star Lisa Riley 'in talks' to join I'm A Celebrity 2025 line up
Lisa Riley's name is being dropped into the mix as one of the possible contenders for this year's series of I'm A Celebrity. A soap star traditionally takes part in the show every year Emmerdale favourite Lisa Riley is being lined up to swap the Dales for the Australian jungle later this year, with reports suggesting she is in advanced talks to take part in the next series of I'm A Celebrity. Riley, 49, is best known for playing Mandy Dingle in the ITV soap, which is a role that she first took on in 1995. Over the last three decades she has been at the heart of some of Emmerdale 's most dramatic storylines and won the hearts of viewers. While she left the soap in 2001 to pursue other projects including Fat Friends, Waterloo Road, and Loose Women, she made a triumphant return to Emmerdale in 2019. Now, producers of I'm A Celebrity are said to be eyeing her up as one of the first names for the 2025 series. A TV insider told The Sun: "Lisa is the perfect celebrity for the show because not only is she from a soap watched by millions she's one of its biggest characters and it's an ITV show to boot. "She also has a naughty, mischievous sense of humour which is guaranteed to get a big response from her other celebrity campmates during their time in the jungle. Lisa is by no means the first star from Emmerdale to have gone on I'm a Celebrity and those that do always tend to get a great response from viewers at home." So far, eight Emmerdale stars have entered the jungle since the show launched in 2002, including Lucy Pargeter, Adam Thomas and Gemma Atkinson. Former cast member Danny Miller even went on to win the show in 2021. Riley herself has expressed an interest in taking part in the reality show for a while now. Earlier this year, she said: "I'm A something I would do before I turned 50 as a test for myself." However, she admitted to having some concerns over the more daunting trials, confessing that she could handle eating challenges but adding: "I could never ever do the mice and the rat box." Her potential signing would follow the tradition of soap stars taking part in the ITV jungle hit. Coronation Street actors have been regulars on the series alongside Emmerdale alumni. Antony Cotton competed in 2011, while Helen Flanagan became infamous in 2012 for being voted to face seven consecutive Bushtucker Trials. Most recently, Jennie McAlpine (Fiz Dobbs) entered the jungle in 2017. Speculation is also currently mounting that Corrie star Adam Hussain could join the 2025 line-up after quitting the cobbles earlier this year. The Mirror have contacted ITV for comment. Meanwhile, when it comes to life in the Dales, soap fans are worried that Riley's character Mandy Dingle might be in danger, as the actress recently posted a photo from the set of Emmerdale featuring a body double. One fan expressed their concerns on social media, writing: "Not good if there's a stunt woman, it means Mandy is in trouble."
Metro
2 hours ago
- Metro
ITV viewers dub The Fortune Hotel 'new favourite show' after savage episode
With only five of 11 couples still standing, The Fortune Hotel is heating up as remaining schemers battle it out to get their hands on a briefcase holding a healthy £200,000. Stephen Mangan hosts the show's remaining contestants, all ordinary people who know each other in some capacity: friends Maz and Max; couple Nella and Tope; mum and daughter Martina and Briony; mother and son Sue and Jeremy; and partners Fred and Min. Tonight's episode left viewers on a cliffhanger with their jaws on the floor, as fans took to social media to fret about the drama. 'What a place to leave it! This is quickly becoming my favourite show' said @ThomasR14336083 on X. 'Wow what just happened on #thefortunehotel that was mad!!' raved @ellie289, while @AthollMills asked: 'NAAAAAAHHHHHH WHAT?!?!' 'The Fortune Hotel is proper snakey this series. Love it,' said Jessica Ransom. 'I'm totally engrossed in this & I don't know who deserves the money at this point,' confessed Thomas Robin. For the uninitiated: guests check into the luxurious Fortune Hotel, all armed with a briefcase each. The aim of the game is to find and hang on to the briefcase which secretly holds £200,000. However, with five pairs of contestants left, three briefcases hold nothing, and one is home to the cursed 'early check-out' card, which eliminates contestants who own it at the end of each day. On tonight's episode, Maz and Max desperately tried to hold on to their money-laden briefcase, but were beaten in the morning's challenge by Jeremy and Sue in a game of ice cream roulette. The victorious mum and son were awarded either a glimpse into a briefcase of their choosing, or a swapsies ahead of the evening's night cap meet, where fates are sealed for another day. Incredibly, they swapped briefcases with Maz and Max and swindled them out of the fortune. Things only got worse for Maz and Max, when their allies Nella and Tope turned on them at the night cap, revealing that they had the early checkout card, and were going to give it to the M's. Ouch. 'This is the ultimate betrayal,' Maz and Max said to the camera as the episode wrapped up for another week. Let's just say it's been a twisty episode for ITV's answer to BBC's The Traitors, and viewers were loving it. The next episode – which will be the semi-final – airs on Wednesday August 27 at 9pm, with the grand finale deciding the winner on Thursday August 28. The Fortune Hotel airs on ITV1 and ITVX. Once the episodes have aired they are available on the streamer. 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. View More » MORE: Inside The Fortune Hotel host Stephen Mangan's family life with his actor wife MORE: 'I played ITV's £250,000 gameshow – I didn't know it would be so stressful' MORE: The Fortune Hotel star reveals shocking elimination bombshell after fans admit they're 'hooked'
Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Sir Lenny Henry recalls bold move that changed his life as he receives award
Sir Lenny Henry revealed that skipping school to go for an audition is what led to his showbiz career as he received a major award at the Edinburgh TV festival When Sir Lenny Henry started out as a comedian, there was not a single black face making people laugh on British television. But having cracked up his school pals at an open mic night in Dudley a few times, he knew he was funny. And so Lenny, who this week received the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Edinburgh TV Festival, decided to bunk off school in 1976 and try out at the auditions for New Faces. 'I was very excited to go to ATV Studios in Birmingham because I'd watched Crossroads with my Mum - the Midlands would stop when Crossroads was on,' he remembers now. 'Jim Davidson and Showaddywaddy, they'd all won New Faces and so I bunked off school on the Friday and I was there from 10 am til 6pm. I was the last person on. I think I went into this thing of 'this is it'. This is plan A, there is no plan B or C. 'So I went on stage, I think I did Tommy Cooper, I did Dave Allen, I did all the white people I've been watching on television for years - the only famous person I could do that was black, was Muhammad Ali. And they'd never seen a black guy do impressions of white people before. Back then it was Mike Yarwood and Freddie Starr, so I used to watch them. And then I just basically mimicked everybody I saw on television.' At the end of his 10 minute audition he found himself surrounded by people wanting to be his agent. 'Six months later I was on TV and saying hello to my mum and she was like, gobsmacked. She was literally, 'What are you doing on the television?' And it was fantastic.' Within a year he'd saved up enough to buy his Jamaican-born mother a fridge. 'It was really interesting because my dad worked very, very hard in a factory. And if you were the breadwinner, you got the biggest piece of meat. And when I came home from New Faces, my mum put me at the head of the table and gave me the biggest piece of meat. My dad was like, 'What's going on here?'' He'd honed his early impressions, which included Michael Crawford's character Frank Spencer, at the Queen Mary Ballroom in Dudley where he and his underage peers would drink beer and do their homework at the bar. 'I used to get up on stage and do Elvis and Tommy Cooper and all these impressions. Kids who I went to school with, they'd go, 'Wow, we didn't know you did this.' And I became a hero at school. It was fantastic. I can't tell you, it was literally like being a superhero. It changed my life.' Lenny, 66, says he clearly remembers doing his first gig, in Birmingham, specifically aimed at the black community. 'Most of the audience were always white and I really loved that they'd come to see me. Then I did the first all black audience I've ever worked for - and it was like a dance, they all came and stood by the stage and just looked at me like that (pulls a menacing stare). 'I was scared sh**less,' he laughs. 'I said, 'You're going to have to sit down. Other gigs I do, they don't come and stare at me and try and make me cry'." He credits many people with having helped and inspired him. They include the writer Kim Fuller, who co-created characters like Delbert and Deakus and Theophilus P Wildebeeste. Having gone to check out the comedy scene in America with Kim, Lenny returned knowing what he wanted to aim for. 'I loved Richard Pryor mainly. He did preachers and pimps and hustlers and gamblers and all those kind of things.' 'I knew I could probably do characters from my neighbourhood and from my family.' The inspiration for Deakus came from a man who delivered Jamaican bun to his parents. 'He always made me laugh, I liked his voice. We didn't really know about the Windrush then, but we wrote a character who came here in 1953 and lived in London and was racially abused, like my mum, but overcame it. So his story was not just jokes, it was about being a British citizen and becoming old in Britain and drinking Guinness and wearing a cardigan. I just loved that.' Delbert, it turns out, was based on a wide-boy dancer called Jamie who Lenny had once met in a club. Having seen a furious Paul Boating on TV talking about the Brixton riots, Lenny thought Delbert could help out with a different approach. 'I thought it'd be really good to have a youth on television talking about it without foaming in the mouth. Delbert came out of that. Kim just thought he was hilarious - I had a journey with Jamie where he said, 'You know what I mean?' about 400 times.' 'What was really interesting was I couldn't do that stuff about the police and about the riots as me, but when I did it as Delbert, they gave me a free pass.' Tarrant, the main presenter of ITV kids show Tiswas, gave Lenny a big leg-up. 'New Faces was big launch, but it took me a while to get my act together,' he told interviewer Ben Bailey Smith (MUST), one of the many younger black comedians, presenters and writers who happily acknowledge they owe Lenny a huge debt of gratitude for the doors he forced open. 'Tizwas was where I was allowed to grow on television. Tarrant was a real ally at the time when there wasn't anybody saying to me, 'Oh go on.' He allowed me to run around in a silly hat on Saturday morning TV learning how to be funny on camera, learning not to flinch. 'Tarrant was a proper teacher, he was massive.' It took him eight years of working with the likes of Cannon and Ball and doing summer seasons in Blackpool to hone his craft before he started to get hired regularly on TV. In the 80s, he landed the role on Three of a Kind for the BBC, alongside Tracey Ullman and David Copperfield. 'Tracey said, 'I want to represent real women. I don't just want to be the dolly bird filing her nails at the bar. I don't want to be the girl with the big boobs who's the butt of the joke. I want to be making the jokes.' And I said, 'I want to see people from my neighbourhood and from my family on television and I want to work with people that look like me and talk like me'. And David got up and said, 'I just want to be funny.' But it was all right for him. As the black guy and as the woman, we had to get up and state our claim. We didn't want to go backwards, we wanted to go forwards.' Amid all of this, Lenny famously helped to spearhead Comic Relief, a charity through which he is now credited with having raised £1billion. He says it happened because Richard Curtis needed his contacts. **'**Everybody saw Live Aid and I think somebody like David Bowie said, 'Comedians couldn't do this.' And we went, 'What?' Richard came to me and said, 'I don't know anybody, would you write to everybody…' I was doing The Lenny Henry Show at the time. And so we wrote to everybody in showbiz and said, 'We're doing this thing called Comic Relief.' And we both signed it at the bottom.' They were disheartened to receive many replies from established white comedians who said they didn't want to be involved because it was political. 'I'd never seen anything like the Michael Buerk films, and the people looked like me,' Lenny says, recalling the Ethiopian famine. 'I just thought if there's anything I can possibly do to help alleviate that, I want to be part of something that helps.' Having branched out to play an Irish hobbit in Amazon's The Rings of Power, Lenny is currently appearing in West End play Every Brilliant Thing. He is involved in initiatives which encourage young writers from diverse backgrounds to produce scripts, arguing that people of colour have a multitude of stories to tell. "We deserve the right to see ourselves on television doing all kinds of weird shit,' he laughs. And in terms of personal ambitions he says he has plenty of new challenges ahead of him. 'I love acting. I love being on stage. I love being front of a camera, I want to do more of that,' he says. 'And I want to be in a movie.' See you on the big screen soon!
