EastEnders fan favourite declared ‘dead' in dark scenes
The newcomer made quite the impression on both viewers and characters when he arrived in Albert Square at the beginning of the week.
Oscar was looking for somewhere to live, having just been released from a three-month stretch in a young offenders institute for joyriding.
Sister Lauren Branning (Jacqueline Jossa) begrudgingly took him in, less than enthused by the fact that Oscar's associates tried to petrol bomb their mum Tanya's (Jo Joyner) house upon realising he'd tipped off the police about their actions.
It was far from an ideal situation, given that social workers were still involved with Lauren in the wake of her drug addiction while pregnant with son Louie.
After settling into his new abode, Oscar received a menacing text message from Mike, who was adamant to track him down. He grabbed a knife from the kitchen and closed the curtains, clearly terrified.
In the aftermath, Oscar has caused mayhem on the streets of Walford, trying to scam Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) in the chippy, flirting with Lauren's fiancé Peter Beale (Thomas Law), and spending most of the day on the sofa gaming.
Lauren and Peter became insistent that he earn his keep, and told him to work a few hours each day on the Bridge Street fruit and veg stall.
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Less than enthused by the idea, Oscar headed to the pub and got drunk with cousin Penny (Kitty Castledine) instead. While there, she made a bargain – if he was sloshed before she was, he'd have to get to work.
And, of course, he lost the bet.
In tonight's episode, he turned up for his first shift, blasting trance music and putting off the punters.
Peter was furious, but Penny and Priya Nandra-Hart (Sophie Khan Levy) were more than happy to encourage him.
Later, Lauren found her brother skiving at home, despite only being on a 10-minute break. He'd bought her kids some presents – Louie a lighter, and Jimmy a pair of sunglasses.
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She initially thought he was making a twisted joke about Jimmy's visual impairment, but then realised that Oscar had no idea. More Trending
He seemed genuinely moved when she explained his diagnosis, and returned to the market to step up to the task. Then, at the end of the day, he bought a sensory toy for the youngster using his wages.
As a heart-warmed Lauren and Peter believed they made a breakthrough, Oscar retired to his bedroom and spotted a number of menacing text messages from Mike.
'Gonna find you. You are dead. You can't hide.'
Will Oscar be ok?
If you've got a soap or TV story, video or pictures get in touch by emailing us soaps@metro.co.uk – we'd love to hear from you.
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MORE: Who is Oscar Branning in EastEnders and who plays him?
MORE: EastEnders confirms Martin Fowler replacement on fruit and veg stall – and it's unexpected
MORE: EastEnders confirms major return after 4 years as first look is revealed
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Daily Mirror
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
EastEnders fans 'work out Alfie is being scammed' - and it's by someone he knows
EastEnders' latest episode saw Alfie Moon begging his wife's cousin Stacey Slater for thousands of pounds in cash, but BBC soap fans are convinced there's more to this There was drama on EastEnders on Monday night, as a double bill saw Stacey Slater torn over some money. With her late ex Martin Fowler's life insurance money coming through, she revealed to the family she had £50,000. Fans had seen her offer this to her cousin Kat Moon, to help her bid on The Queen Vic which was up for sale. But as celebrations were underway, Stacey was stopped in her tracks by a sinister call from Kat's husband Alfie Moon. Alfie told her that she had a lead on missing Zoe Slater, Kat's daughter, and he needed money urgently. Stacey was horrified to learn that after weeks of being away looking for Zoe, Alfie still had not found his stepdaughter. Kat still has no idea Alfie and Stacey have seen Zoe recently or that her daughter is in trouble. As the pair continued to keep this from her, Alfie told Stacey that if he did not get the money to some dangerous men then they could lose Zoe forever. Stacey demanded answers, wanting to know what he actually knew about Zoe's whereabouts. There was mention of Alfie needing 50,000 euros, with Zoe owing people money according to the people Alfie found. He claimed they had information on where Zoe was, and he feared the men may have her. Alfie put the pressure on Stacey by telling her that if Kat learned what was going on and that Stacey didn't help, she'd likely not forgive her. Alfie began shouting down the phone in a panic, telling Stacey that serious trouble could be on the cards if she did not help him and give him the money. Stacey fretted over the situation, and soon she was telling her devastated cousin Kat that she could no longer give her the money for the pub deposit. Kat fumed, as Stacey claimed it was because the money was meant for Martin's children. While this was true, Stacey and Kat had already agreed that it was a great investment that could benefit the children. Stacey's mother Jean Slater had known about the call with Alfie and immediately realised the pair were hiding something. Jean believed whatever had been said in the phone call between Stacey and Alfie had swayed the change of heart, with Kat not allowed to know anything. Stacey then begged her mum to stop digging for information, and told her that the money was to help someone important to the family. She didn't give away who, but instead allowed Jean to think Stacey's cousin Hayley Slater was the one in need of the cash. Stacey went along with this, but ultimately decided not to give Alfie the cash. Viewers watching the episodes were relieved, as they believed Alfie was actually the victim of a scam. After all, Zoe had tried to con them out of some money not too long ago, so could she be behind this latest demand? Some fans even wondered if Zoe had scammed Jean recently after she was tricked into transferring her savings. Fans think Alfie is being conned now, and that the £50k would have been stolen by someone with the Zoe claims being a cover. One viewer posted: "I think Alfie may have got scammed/set up for getting conned by Zoe or messed with the wrong people himself. Remember Zoe also lied/stole from Stacey and ran up a massive credit card debt. Jean may have just saved Stacey and Alfie from making a bad decision." Another agreed: "Alfie brainless as ever thinking that giving some random thugs £50k in euros to find a missing Zoe." Get the latest drama from the Dales by joining our Emmerdale WhatsApp group As drama continues to unfold in the Yorkshire Dales, the Mirror has launched its very own Emmerdale WhatsApp community where you'll get all the latest breaking news, secrets, and spoilers delivered straight to your phone. Users must download or already have WhatsApp on their phones to join in. All you have to do to join is click on this link, select 'Join Chat' and you're in! We may also send you stories from other titles across the Reach group. We will also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose Exit group. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
Telegraph
11 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Why luvvies are obsessed with Palestine
Vanessa Redgrave's Oscar acceptance speech remains a startling watch. It was 1978 and the star had just scooped the best supporting actress award for playing an anti-Nazi hero in Julia, opposite Jane Fonda. After taking the stage in her billowing black velvet dress, she was presented with her golden statuette by John Travolta. The run-up to the ceremony was marred by controversy and threats against Redgrave because she had narrated and produced The Palestinian, a documentary that was seen by some as supporting Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation, the previous year. An effigy of Redgrave, then 41, was burned by Jewish activists outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles; counterprotestors waved the Palestinian flag. So fraught was the atmosphere that police sharpshooters were placed on the roof of the theatre to guard against a potential assassin. 'You should be very proud that in the last few weeks you have stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world,' she told Hollywood's elite. Some booed. The actress would later claim that she was specifically referring to activists from the Jewish Defense League, but many interpreted her speech as being hostile to Israel generally. It certainly damaged her career. Redgrave's outburst was novel at the time but now, almost two years since the Hamas attacks of October 7 2023 that sparked the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza, such overt pro-Palestinian activism is par for the course in the performing arts. In the last few weeks alone we have seen the controversial Glastonbury sets by punk rappers Bob Vylan – one of whose members led chants of 'Death, death to the IDF' and ranted about 'Zionist' recording industry bosses – and Kneecap, a group whose career has been supercharged after making controversial statements about Israel and Palestine. Both groups have had their performances investigated by the police; the investigation into Kneecap's Glastonbury appearance was subsequently dropped. Even the Royal Opera House, the august Covent Garden institution, has proven susceptible to the creep of this on-stage activism. The end of Verdi's Il trovatore was disrupted by a freelance performer, Daniel Perry, unfurling the Palestinian flag and wrestling it away from a backstage figure who tried to remove it. A spokeswoman for the venue said: 'The display of the flag was a spontaneous and unauthorised action by the artist. It was not approved by the Royal Ballet and Opera and is not in line with our commitment to political impartiality.' The plight of Palestinians has, for the past few decades, been an obsession among the largely Left-wing figures who make up the leading figures in the performing arts. While Redgrave in the late 1970s was a relatively fringe figure for her outspoken support for Palestine – the Cold War and apartheid South Africa were the primary sources of geopolitical angst for most of the late 20th century – since the fall of the Berlin Wall and election of Nelson Mandela much more attention has been paid to the Middle East. Think of Seven Jewish Children, the 2009 Caryl Churchill play that covered decades of Israeli history in 10 minutes that was subtitled A Play for Gaza. It was written hastily in response to Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military's incursion into the Palestinian territory after Hamas came to power; as many as 1,400 Gazans died, as did 13 Israelis, during the three-week conflict. Publicising Seven Jewish Children at the time, Churchill said: 'Israel has done lots of terrible things in the past, but what happened in Gaza seemed particularly extreme.' The play was widely condemned as being anti-Semitic, a claim she has always denied, and the BBC declined to adapt it for radio because of its need to be impartial. Churchill, now 86, remains just as committed to the Palestinian cause. Earlier this year, she abandoned plans to mount a new play at the Donmar Warehouse because the central London theatre is sponsored by Barclays bank, which has been accused of having links to Israel. More than 300 arts figures, including performers Juliet Stevenson, Samuel West and Harriet Walter, signed an open letter supporting Churchill's decision. Disruption and boycotts are nothing new, of course. Sustained audience disturbances derailed a 2011 performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms so much that its broadcast on Radio 3 was interrupted twice; the following year, Mark Rylance was one of 37 people to sign a letter to The Guardian that called for a performance by the Israeli theatre company Habima at Shakespeare's Globe to be cancelled. 'By inviting Habima, the Globe is associating itself with policies of exclusion practised by the Israeli state and endorsed by its national theatre company,' the letter read. 'We ask the Globe to withdraw the invitation so that the festival is not complicit with human rights violations and the illegal colonisation of occupied land.' Globe bosses defended the programming decision, but the performance of a Hebrew-language Merchant of Venice was disrupted. About 15 people were carried or led out of the theatre for unfurling banners and flags, while one man was arrested. To supporters of the Palestinian cause, the reason for being vocal is self-evident. I ask Juliet Stevenson why events in Gaza have so animated her and her fellow performers. 'A simple answer to the question is that, with 100,000 people killed, and about 18,000 children among them, that's the reason people are feeling strongly about the issue,' she says. 'The killing of vast numbers of innocent people in horrific ways – burning, being shot, starving, exploding with bombs – that's probably why so many people feel strongly about it. Wouldn't you think?' For Perry at the Royal Opera House, unfurling the flag appears to have been worth the risk of committing what the Slippedisc journalist Norman Lebrecht describes as 'stage suicide'. He tells me it is unlikely that he will be booked again because 'somebody who disrupts the illusion of theatre' cannot be trusted 'to appear on stage without importing some issue of their own'. It is notable that, for all the noise about Palestine, there is no such protest on stages across the country about what is happening in Ukraine or Sudan, two other long-running conflicts where civilians are regularly being killed. 'Those people who speak out on Palestine, you never hear them speaking out on Russia, you never hear them speaking out on Sudan or any of the other atrocities happening in the world. They tend to be single-issue protesters, and they've been corralled almost into a sense of social obligation, that this is the right thing to do if you want to succeed in the acting profession,' Lebrecht adds. 'It's trendy. If all your friends are doing it and you want to keep them as your friends then you go along with it.' Maureen Lipman, the Jewish actress, tells me that she thinks that 'the Jews, the Israelis, have turned into the white South Africans' under apartheid: bogeymen that must be opposed. 'These people believe with all their hearts that the Palestinian cause is bigger than anything in the world; bigger than Sudan or Yemen, bigger than Burma, bigger than China,' Lipman says of the pro-Palestine activists. 'There's one cause, like there was one cause in South Africa, and it really appeals to these people.' It can feel like the issue of Palestine is everywhere you look in the arts. The entire Edinburgh Fringe last year was dominated by Gaza after ugly scenes at a set by the American comedian Reginald D Hunter, when he was heckled by an Israeli couple who took issue with one of his jokes and they were barracked by other audience members. Separately, Hunter appeared in court this month after being accused of making anti-Semitic social media posts. Meanwhile, musicians such as Brian Eno and Massive Attack have joined forces with Kneecap to create a syndicate for artists 'threatened into silence or career cancellation' by speaking out about Palestine. Gary Lineker left his lucrative job presenting on the BBC because of his own social media posts about the conflict. Paul W Fleming, general secretary of the performers' union Equity, says that the pro-Palestinian activism only gets noticed because of the ambiguous position of the British government on the question of what is going on in the Middle East, in contrast to its unequivocal stance on, for instance, Ukraine. In addition, many arts bosses appear worried about programming work that directly addresses the Israel-Palestine conflict, such as when Manchester's Royal Exchange cancelled a staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream last September over apparent references to the war, as well as transgender rights. 'The arts are supposed to be a space where these injustices are challenged and we understand the world a bit better,' he tells me. 'The reason why it feels so febrile, I guess, is because of a prevailing culture of implicit and explicit censorship of pro-Palestinian voices and a general anxiety in civil society about talking about it… The reason it is made in increasingly desperate tones and increasingly erratic and spontaneous expressions is because it's harder to express solidarity with Palestine than it is over other issues.' Fleming adds: 'Equally, the government isn't listening to artists or ordinary citizens that wish to say 'Genocide is wrong, British complicity in that genocide is wrong, the complicity of major international corporations in the systems of genocide and apartheid is wrong,' and nothing seems to change. And when people don't get their voices heard… it moves beyond the accepted mechanisms of change and debate and discourse into more direct action.' After Redgrave left the Oscars stage in 1978, the Jewish writer Paddy Chayefsky presented the screenplay awards but, before he did so, chose to address the actress's earlier remarks. 'I would like to say – personal opinion, of course – that I'm sick and tired of people exploiting the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda,' he said. 'I would like to suggest to Ms. Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple 'thank you' would have sufficed.' He received a standing ovation.
Metro
41 minutes ago
- Metro
Cain and Tracy's world turned upside down by fresh Nate news in Emmerdale
Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) and Tracy Shankley's (Amy Walsh) attempt at trying to work out who killed Nate Robinson (Jurell Carter) was brought to a sudden halt in tonight's episode of Emmerdale, as DS Walsh arrived with some news. Last week, Cain and Tracy made progress when they both admitted they now believe neither of them killed Nate. They hugged, and then concluded they might be able to find the real culprit if they work together. At Tracy's, Cain was sitting at a table with a notepad beside him. The two characters were discussing residents who had clashed with Nate before his death. After ruling out Caleb Miligan (William Ash), Tracy then suggested it might be one of Nate's pals or work colleagues. This prompted Cain to circle a handful of names from Butlers Farm – including John Sugden (Oliver Farnworth). The opportunity to get even the tiniest bit closer to the truth was then interrupted thanks to DS Walsh knocking at the door. As she entered, she revealed the police had made a major development regarding Nate. Prior to her arrival, DS Walsh was at Owen's (Simon Haines) house. She had been called by Liam Cavanagh (Jonny McPherson), who discovered Owen and believed he had ended his life. Last Friday, John paid him a visit as part of his job at the surgery, but found him unconscious. Aware that Tracy and Cain were desperate for news on Nate's investigation, John let Owen die, and then wrote a confession on his laptop, saying that he killed Nate following a roadside altercation. Back at Tracy's, Walsh had updated her and Cain on Owen and they were stunned. They struggled to believe that a random guy they had never met was responsible for killing Nate – and for really no reason at all. But with the confession detailing Owen planting Nate's phone, and revealing where his car had been hidden, it was a massive sign for Walsh that she'd soon be able to declare case closed. More Trending As Tracy and Cain attempt to process this twist, attention will turn to Robert Sugden (Ryan Hawley) as the week continues. Suspicious of his sibling once more, Robert will make contact with Owen's brother, who confirms he has a solid alibi for the day Nate was killed. View More » How close is Robert going to get to the truth? MORE: Another Emmerdale Dingle death 'confirmed' as fans spot huge clue MORE: Emmerdale's John riddled with guilt over what he does next to Cain MORE: Emmerdale icon pays tribute to co-star after final exit: 'Can't believe this is the end'
