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MAFS bride revealed as 50 Cent's stunning backing dancer – and she's already WON rival reality show

MAFS bride revealed as 50 Cent's stunning backing dancer – and she's already WON rival reality show

The Sun5 days ago
A NEW bride for Married At First Sight's 2025 series has been revealed as a back up dancer for 50 Cent.
The Sun can exclusively reveal that bosses have signed up dancer Julia-Ruth Smith and viewers may recognise her as this isn't her foray into television.
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She appeared on the ninth series of global matchmaking competition Are You the One? in 2023 on Paramount+.
The show sees 22 heartbroken singles from the around the world go through an extensive matchmaking process in order to try and find the one.
Julia was a perfect match for Brendan but the pair parted ways shortly after filming wrapped.
A source exclusively told The Sun: 'Julia-Ruth is really fun and great TV so bosses are really pleased she's signed up for the show.
'She's joining an already brilliant cast of brides and grooms - it's going to be an unmissable series.'
The New-Zealand born star who now lives in London has worked with huge stars as a back up dancer.
She shared a behind the scenes glimpse into life on stage with 50 Cent, with a series of pictures and videos on her feed.
In the first snap, she can be seen smiling from ear to ear with the man himself as well as videos of her performing on stage with him.
In another picture, she and the rest of the back up dancers can be seen in a huddle with 50, before they head out on the stage.
She captioned it: 'Can't make this s**t up,' along with a crying tears emoji.
MAFS feud explodes as fuming groom Nathan reveals petty way bitter ex Lacey got revenge on him and new Love Island girlfriend
Julia has also worked with Bebe Rexha and on the West End, which she has proudly added onto her Instagram bio.
The Sun previously revealed the first bride that is set to feature on the upcoming series as dental nurse Leisha Lightbody.
Leisha juggles her role as dental practice manager with marketing and social media roles, often showcasing her lavish getaways and glam lifestyle on Instagram and TikTok.
A source was first to tell us: "Leisha is one of the most stunning brides MAFS UK has ever had, and she's sure to catch the eye of all the grooms on the new series - not just her own.
Married at First Sight's best moments
Married at First sight has brought eight explosive series of drama to the small screen. These are some of the best moments
When series 8 couple Rozz Darlington and Thomas Kriaras brought secretly brought a sex toy to the couple's dinner party. Unbeknownst to their fellow cast members who they were having dinner with, Rozz wore a vibrating egg gadget whilst husband Thomas had the controls.
Also in series 8, Ella Morgan cheating on Nathanial Valentino with fellow groom JJ Slater.
Nikita's exit in series 6. Nikita was removed from the show early on due to her behaviour, which led to her husband Ant re-entering the experiment with Alexis.
A slightly more heart warming highlight from series 6 was watching Dan and Matt's relationship unfold. Dan and Matt were the first same-sex couple on the show, and their relationship was both ground-breaking and adorable.
Emma and James' wedding in series 1. They were the first couple to ever get married on the UK version of the show. Emma and James, had a beautiful ceremony that set the tone for the series.
The dinner party showdowns are always a MAFs highlight with explosive arguments and unexpected alliances forming.
"Leisha is obviously sworn to secrecy about being on the show, which filmed earlier this year, so there are no signs of it on her social media yet.
"The cast are set to be announced next month, with the show airing later in the autumn."
The Sun contacted a rep for C4 for comment and a spokesperson said: "We do not comment on speculation.
"The MAFS UK cast will be announced in the coming weeks."
An air date for the new series of Married At First Sight is yet to be announced but if we're going by previous series, it should air on E4 by the middle of September.
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Gregg Wallace's replacement for final MasterChef episodes revealed
Gregg Wallace's replacement for final MasterChef episodes revealed

The Independent

time29 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Gregg Wallace's replacement for final MasterChef episodes revealed

Gregg Wallace is set to be replaced by Irish chef Anna Haugh towards the end of the new MasterChef 2025 series. This decision follows an independent report substantiating 45 allegations against Wallace, including inappropriate sexual language and unwelcome physical contact. Co-host John Torode also had an allegation of racist language upheld against him, which he denies recalling. The BBC controversially decided to broadcast the 2025 series, stating it was to recognise the efforts of the amateur cooks involved. Anna Haugh will take over from Wallace after the semi-finals, while Grace Dent has already replaced him on the next series of Celebrity MasterChef.

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
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

Daily Mail​

time30 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.

I swore at the Queen. She was very kind
I swore at the Queen. She was very kind

Times

time30 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

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