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Virgin Media reveals FREE movies you can stream on your TV today including top family hits for kids over the holidays

Virgin Media reveals FREE movies you can stream on your TV today including top family hits for kids over the holidays

The Sun2 days ago
VIRGIN Media have revealed a slew of free movies which you can stream straight to your TV today.
The incredible deal by Virgin includes some of the best films in recent years, including some beloved classics for the kids.
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Virgin Media is known for its amazing deals, which let you stream prestige TV shows and the best Hollywood blockbusters from the comfort of your own home.
Often, the company gives free rewards and offers to its customers so that they can get more out of their subscriptions.
This summer, the brand has announced that a slew of movies will be available to watch for free.
With the school year at an end, the deal is a great way to keep your kids entertained over the holiday.
A host of family favourites are available to watch, including Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and Lyle, Lyle Crocodile.
However, there are also films for parents to watch too on the service.
The service has some of the best thrillers in cinema history, including the nail-biting James Bond flick Skyfall and the eerie blockbuster Gone Girl - starring both Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.
It also has some of the biggest indie movies of the 2020s, including Everything Everywhere All at Once which won a staggering seven Oscar awards.
The news comes after Virgin Media slashed the price of a popular sports channel for its members.
Now, sports fans can get TNT Sports for just £5 extra a year.
Iconic TV channel axe all UK music production after almost three decades as it becomes latest casualty of streaming
Normally, it costs £25 per month for football lovers to access TNT sports.
However, Virgin Media have cut the cost to a fifth of its original price so that fans can enjoy the Premier League 2025/2026.
TNT Sports is home to many exclusive Premier League matches, especially fixtures which kick off at 12:30pm on Saturdays.
Also included in the deal are the UEFA Champions League football, the FA Cup, MotoGP, UFC, boxing and international cricket.
Eurosport UK content is also wrapped up in the deal.
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Biddy Baxter obituary: the brains behind Blue Peter
Biddy Baxter obituary: the brains behind Blue Peter

Times

time6 minutes ago

  • Times

Biddy Baxter obituary: the brains behind Blue Peter

For the best part of 26 years Biddy Baxter was the guiding force behind the children's television programme, Blue Peter, stamping her formidable authority on a series that drew audiences of 12 million with its pet animals, charity appeals and ability to come up with ingenious new uses for discarded toilet rolls. Baxter's Blue Peter was high-minded. She was a firm admirer of the BBC's first director-general, John Reith, and thought broadcasting should have a strong element of education and moral purpose. The show taught children about the Great Fire of London, Florence Nightingale and Scott of the Antarctic, while encouraging them to think of others less fortunate. The Blue Peter appeals became legendary. In one of the early ones, children were asked to send in silver paper to buy a guide dog for the blind. Seven and a half tons arrived. Another featured milk bottle tops. Baxter insisted that the children donated rubbish, not money. A bring and buy sale for refugee children in Cambodia raised £7.7 million and inspired the BBC to start the annual Children in Need appeal. Baxter was a disciplinarian and could be frightening. One of the presenters said she 'came to dread the click of high heels on the metal staircase' as Baxter descended from the gallery to the studio floor. Baxter's retort was that running a live programme twice a week, with items changing almost up to transmission, meant that she had to be tough. This extended to her superiors, against whom she fiercely defended her patch, using what she called a form of Chinese water torture to get her way. However, her reputation for sacking presenters for unacceptable behaviour owed more to tabloid embroidery than fact. Michael Sundin was reported to have lost his job because he was gay. Baxter said it was because he was unpopular. When the unmarried Janet Ellis was revealed to be having a baby she was condemned by the Mothers' Union and the press whipped up a storm. But Baxter supported Ellis and the decision to leave the programme was Ellis's own. The programme had some notable scoops. Baxter was particularly proud of an interview with Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank, in which for the first time in public he showed some of the original pages from his daughter's diary. Simon Groom was one of the first British reporters to get into Cambodia after the fall of Pol Pot and Princess Anne took part in a safari in Kenya with the Blue Peter stalwart, Valerie Singleton. There was fun as well, some of it unscripted. The best remembered episode in the show's entire history, and frequently repeated, concerned a young elephant called Lulu. She had a minder called Smithy, 'a tiny, rotund gentleman. He came with this absolutely horrendous stick with a sharp metal spike like a spear. I said I'm, sorry Mr Smithy but you just can't have that'. Without Smithy to keep her in check, however, Lulu stepped on presenter John Noakes' foot, urinated, and emptied her bowels over the studio. Unusually, for what was usually a live show, the item was recorded. Baxter decided to keep the cameras rolling: 'The defecation', she said, 'was too compelling.' In time Blue Peter was criticised for being too middle-class and comfortable but Baxter would have none of it. She retorted that nobody was compelled to watch and middle-class children alone would never have accounted for the large viewing figures. Moreover, young children, at which the programme was aimed, needed something secure in their lives. Ironically for someone who made a successful career in children's broadcasting, and seemed instinctively to understand what children wanted, Baxter had no children of her own. She insisted it was not a handicap, recalling that some of her best teachers at school had been spinsters. An only child, she was born Joan Maureen Baxter in Leicester in 1933. Her father ran a sportswear company and played rugby for Leicester, while her mother was a talented amateur pianist whose life was blighted by premature deafness. Joan found war exciting, rather than frightening, and showed early sings of tenacity when she organised a raffle for a doll she owned. She attended Wyggeston Girls' Grammar School in the town, where she was hopeless in maths but shone in English, and she also joined the Little Theatre, a venue for amateur dramatic productions. Such was her height that in one production she was cast as Britannia, complete with trident, helmet, breastplate and union flag shirt. She was not however allowed to wear her spectacles, and narrowly avoided falling off stage. Baxter went on to the all-women St Mary's College at Durham University, where she studied social sciences. Graduating in 1955 she decided to reject both of the main careers then open to educated women, secretary or teacher. She spotted an advertisement for a BBC radio studio manager but was told by the university appointments officer that nobody from Durham had ever gone to the BBC. In what she called 'a fit of pique' she applied for the job and got it, joining the corporation as a 22-year-old in October 1955. Being a studio manager turned out to be less glamorous than it sounded, consisting of chores such as balancing microphones and creating sound effects. She was determined to be a producer and got her chance three years later, working on programmes such as Listen With Mother and Junior Schools English. In 1961 she moved into television for the first time, after successfully applying for an attachment to the children's department, where she worked with the naturalist Johnny Morris and the ventriloquist Ray Allan. When the attachment ended she was about to go back to radio when she was offered the job of producing Blue Peter. Contrary to a wide popular perception, Baxter did not create Blue Peter, which had been running for four years when she took it over. It originally went out for 15 minutes once a week, with an emphasis on model trains for boys and dolls for girls. By 1962 John Hunter Blair, who had run the programme from the start, was too ill to continue and Baxter, still in her twenties, got her chance over more senior candidates. She soon made Blue Peter her own. She decided it must have a logo and commissioned the galleon design from a young artist, Tony Hart. In 1963 the Blue Peter badge was born, awarded to children who sent in letters, poems and stories. Baxter was determined to involve the viewers and make it their programme. The first special Christmas stamps, issued in 1966, were based on designs by two six-year-old winners of a Blue Peter competition. Another way of encouraging children to do things for themselves was showing how discarded toilet rolls, squeezy bottles and yoghurt pots could, with a bit of imagination and liberal use of sticky-backed plastic, be turned into something useful, such as a pen holder or desk tidy. The phrase, 'here's one I made earlier', entered the language. Realising that many children, particularly those living in tower blocks, were unable to have pets Baxter decided that Blue Peter should feature animals. One of the early ones was a puppy called Petra. The dog died a few days after one brief appearance and was replaced by a lookalike. Nobody seemed to notice and the substitution was only revealed years later. As Blue Peter expanded to 25 minutes and was broadcast twice a week, the original two presenters became three, with John Noakes joining Singleton and Christopher Trace. The eternally cheery Noakes became a star in his own right, celebrated for potentially dangerous stunts such as climbing Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square or becoming the first civilian to do a five-mile high freefall parachute jump with the RAF. Probably Blue Peter's best presenter, Noakes left amid some acrimony in 1978 after a 12-year stint. He was allowed to keep one of the show's pets, a border collie called Shep with whom he had bonded, and intended to use him in television commercials. Baxter was dead-set against the idea. 'I think it would have been immoral' she said. 'How can you have a Blue Peter presenter on commercial television advertising dog food so children think 'I must buy this'?' The show received some 7,000 letters a week, a postbag which required the BBC take on extra help, and each got an individual reply. When Baxter was a child she wrote to Enid Blyton and was delighted to get an answer. She wrote again and was dismayed to receive the same answer. To ensure this would not happen on Blue Peter she had every letter logged. Baxter left Blue Peter in 1988. There were reports of a falling-out with the new head of children's television, though she said her departure was because her husband John Hosier had been offered a job in Hong Kong. She was presented with a gold version of the famous badge. She returned to the BBC as a freelance consultant, serving two Directors-General, Michael Checkland and John Birt. She left the corporation in 2000. Shortly before his death from cancer that year, her husband asked her to set up a charity to support aspiring musicians. In 2003 she set up the John Hosier Music Trust, a cause which she described as 'terribly rewarding. It will be much better when I die. The trust will benefit from my will.' In 2018 she said, somewhat baselessly: 'I have two great failings in life — laziness and procrastination. I'm longing to do absolutely nothing.' Joan Maureen 'Biddy' Baxter MBE, television producer, was born on May 25, 1933. She died on August 10, 2025, aged 92

Crystal Palace chairman makes Marc Guehi admission amid Liverpool speculation
Crystal Palace chairman makes Marc Guehi admission amid Liverpool speculation

The Independent

time8 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Crystal Palace chairman makes Marc Guehi admission amid Liverpool speculation

Marc Guehi could be sold this summer, Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has conceded, with just one year remaining on the Eagles captain's contract. Palace defeated Liverpool on Sunday in the Community Shield and knocked back offers from Newcastle for the England centre-back in January, with the highest bid thought to be worth in the region of £65m. But with Guehi yet to sign a new deal and links with Liverpool, who have experienced defensive problems in pre-season, Palace could salvage some value in the player to avoid losing him on a free transfer next summer. "We'd have to do that, of course," Parish said. "For players of that calibre to leave on a free, it's a problem for us, unfortunately. "Joachim [Andersen] went [to Fulham last summer] and we couldn't afford to lose both. "We then had another bid [for Guehi] in January but that was a different situation. "We'll just have to see what happens. But, you know, it needs a new contract or a conclusion of some kind." The Independent understands that Liverpool have held an interest in the player over the last year and would consider a move before the end of the window, though the Reds have already splashed out £270m this summer. Guehi helped the Eagles beat Liverpool at Wembley on Sunday, securing the second piece of silverware under manager Oliver Glasner. But despite the arrivals of Argentina goalkeeper Walter Benitez from PSV Eindhoven and Croatia defender Borna Sosa from Ajax, Palace have been left frustrated with a lack of signings ahead of a campaign in Europe, either in the Europa League or Conference League, depending on the club's appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport following their demotion over multi-club ownership rules. "It's difficult. We have an outstanding 15 or 16 players, trying to get that level of quality in is hard. The prices - at the end of the day we're Crystal Palace," Parish added. "The money at every football club is finite at some point. We will do what we can, try and help where we can. We all want to be better at football and we will try and do what we can."

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