Actress's model mother died after overheating in Sports Direct sauna
A TV comedy actress's model mother died after overheating in a Sports Direct-owned sauna.
Milanka Brooks, 41, a star of Benidorm, is suing the Everlast gym chain owned by Sports Direct for up to £100,000 after her 75-year-old mother Mileva Brooks collapsed and later died.
The former model died from heatstroke three days after suffering breathing difficulties and collapsing in the Cheltenham-based gym's sauna on Aug 26, 2022, a coroner's inquest in September 2023 found.
Now Brooks, who has also starred in TV sitcoms The Windsors and My Family as well as satire Black Mirror, is suing the owner of the Everlast gym chain, SportsDirect.Com Fitness Ltd, at London's High Court.
Mileva Brooks, who was her daughter's 'best friend in the world', had joined the gym six months earlier.
Roland Wooderson, assistant coroner for Gloucestershire, recorded a narrative verdict after an inquest in 2023, saying that the former model had 'died from the effects of heatstroke' after being 'found unresponsive in the sauna of the gym'.
He earlier heard medical evidence that Mileva's body temperature was 39.2C when it was measured by paramedics who attended the scene.
According to legal documents filed at London's High Court, Brooks is now suing the gym's owners, claiming 'damages in excess of £50,000, but limited to £100,000' in her role as administrator of her mum's estate for 'personal injury and consequential losses' under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976.
In online posts, the actress has spoken repeatedly of her and her mother's close relationship calling her 'the light and inspiration of my life', 'partner in crime' and 'best friend in the world'.
In 2020, Frasers Group, the Sports Direct parent company, bought a number of DW Sports Fitness locations out of administration and started the Everlast Gyms chain.
By late 2023, it had nearly 60 branches located across the UK.
The defence of SportsDirect.Com Fitness Ltd was not available from the court at the time of writing.
The Telegraph has contacted Frasers Group for comment.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Acclaimed French Duo Joins Forces with Chart-Topping Pop Star for ‘Fab Combo'
Acclaimed French Duo Joins Forces with Chart-Topping Pop Star for 'Fab Combo' originally appeared on Parade. British singer is known for her high-profile collaborations with artists ranging from Iggy Azalea and to , and . Over the weekend, she added another act to the list. The Brat singer joined forces with French duo Air on June 7 at the We Love Green Festival in Paris. Charli joined Air on a performance of the song 'Cherry Blossom Girl' for their 2004 album Talkie Walkie. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Air shared video of the epic collaboration on YouTube and fans left their approval in the comments. 'charli and air is not something i expected to work but it does and it does quite well,' one noted. 'Downtempo, trip hop, return to dark-wave Charli XCX era incoming PLEASE,' added another. 'Never in my life could I have imagined this moment, WOW!!!' another fan weighed in. 'Cherry Blossom Brat 💚,' another fan added, referring to the name of the song and Charli's 2024 album. Air has also had a history of some high-profile collaborations. Last year, the duo joined fellow countrymen Phoenix at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony to perform the song 'Playground Love,' which was featured on the soundtrack to 's 2000 film The Virgin Suicides. Air is taking their 2025 Moon Safari tour to North America beginning on Sept. 16 in Mexico City before hitting the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Sept. 21. The tour wraps up with a trio of dates at the Brooklyn Paramount Oct. French Duo Joins Forces with Chart-Topping Pop Star for 'Fab Combo' first appeared on Parade on Jun 9, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 9, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Frederick Forsyth, Author of ‘The Day of the Jackal,' Dies at 86
Frederick Forsyth, the internationally acclaimed British author whose talent for page-turning thrillers provided the fodder for such films as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War and The Fourth Protocol, died Monday. He was 86. Forsyth died at his home in Buckinghamshire, England, his literary agency Curtis Brown announced. More from The Hollywood Reporter Billy Bob Thornton Says He Didn't Expect 'Landman' to Be "This Successful" and Teases Season 2 Pippa Scott, Actress in 'The Searchers' and 'Auntie Mame,' Dies at 90 Arthur Hamilton, "Cry Me a River" Songwriter, Dies at 98 The journalist turned novelist, who saw his share of derring-do as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, was one of the most influential authors of his genre. He excited his fans for four decades, weaving topical subject matter and political machinations with edge-of-your-seat action. To do so, he used only a typewriter. No computers for him. 'I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again,' he told the BBC in 2008. 'And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure.' Forsyth hit it big right out of the gate in 1971 with The Day of the Jackal, a chilling political drama about a relentless English assassin, known only as The Jackal, hired by the OAS to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in 1963. In need of quick money, Forsyth drew inspiration from his first assignment as a journalist for Reuters. 'Jackal was all prepared in my head, as I had lived through being a foreign correspondent in Paris in 1962-63,' Forsyth told Publishers Weekly in 2018. 'The OAS was on the threshold of assassinating the president of France. Even at the time, I didn't think they would succeed unless they hired a real pro with a sniper rifle. Seven years later, I went back to that thought. I didn't do any preparation and wrote off the top of my head, producing 10 pages per day over 35 days, which became a novel. The only thing I researched was how to forge a British passport.' An immediate success, The Day of the Jackal spent seven weeks at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller List throughout October and November in 1971. The following year, he received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 1973, a Universal Pictures' adaptation, directed by Fred Zinnemann from a screenplay by Kenneth Ross, hit the big screen, with Edward Fox as the enigmatic title character. It grossed more than $16 million at the domestic box office as one of the top-grossing films of the year. (Remakes in 1997 and last year featured Bruce Willis and Eddie Redmayne as the assassin, respectively.) Forsyth's follow-up, 1972's The Odessa File, topped the Times list in 1973 for five weeks. Also set in 1963, it follows German reporter Peter Miller as he hunts for concentration camp commander Eduard Roschmann (a real SS commander Forsyth fictionalized in the book). In the process, Miller uncovers and infiltrates a secret organization — code-named Odessa — made up of former SS members. 'People had Jewish friends, good friends; Jewish employers, good employers; Jewish employees, hard workers. They obeyed the laws, they didn't hurt anyone. And here was Hitler saying they were to blame for everything,' reads one passage from the book. 'So when the vans came and took them away, people didn't do anything. They stayed out of the way, they kept quiet. They even got to believing the voice that shouted the loudest. Because that's the way people are, particularly the Germans. We're a very obedient people. It's our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British are on strike, and it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave.' Deftly blending elements of intrigue and suspense with an acute attention to historical detail, The Odessa File shed light on Nazi war criminals who had eluded justice. Several years after the book's release, Roschmann, whose Holocaust atrocities had earned him the nickname 'The Butcher of Riga,' was apprehended in Argentina, where he had been in exile for decades. The Odessa File was adapted at Columbia Pictures in 1974, with Jon Voight as Miller and Maximilian Schell as Roschmann. His 1974 novel The Dogs of War, about a band of mercenaries tasked with killing the president of an African country, became a 1980 film directed by John Irvin and starring Christopher Walken. The Fourth Protocol, first published in 1984 and another Times top seller, was turned into a 1987 movie starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan; it's about a Cold War plot by Soviet Union outliers to plant a nuclear bomb near an American airbase. In 2016, Forsyth announced he was retiring from the world of fiction, saying his wife would no longer allow him to travel to adventurous places, but he returned to the world of intrigue with the cyber spy novel The Fox in 2018. All along, he kept his hand in the newspaper world, writing a column for the U.K.'s Daily Express well into his 80s. 'I consider myself a journalistic writer, keeping to the facts and making sure they are accurate,' Forsyth said in a 2015 interview with Crimespree Magazine. 'I do not write much emotional stuff or fancy language. My books were all contemporary current affairs based on what I had seen. Hell, I made mistakes and have done so many things, I chose to write about them, or maybe not.' Frederick McCarthy Forsyth was born on Aug. 25, 1938, in Ashford, Kent, England. His parents, Frederick and Phyllis, were shopkeepers. As he explained in 2010, Forsyth initially had little interest in his chosen craft. 'When I was a kid, I had only one overweening ambition,' he said. 'And it derived from the fact that when I was a 2-year-old, I remember staring up at what seemed like silver fish whirling and twirling in the sky, leaving contrails of white vapor. I was watching the Battle of Britain, and in my tiny little baby way, I wanted to be a pilot.' After attending the Tonbridge School in Kent and the University of Granada in Spain, Forsyth got his wish. At 19, he joined the Royal Air Force, where he piloted the de Havilland Vampire fighter jet. With aviator checked off his to-do list, Forsyth set out to see the world. As a foreign correspondent for Reuters and then the BBC, he traveled to such locales as France, East Germany and Nigeria. His time in Nigeria led to his first book. Published in 1969, The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend was an account of the 1967-70 Nigerian Civil War. His other books included 1979's The Devil's Alternative, 1989's The Negotiator, 1994's The Fist of God, 1996's Icon, 2003's Avenger and 2010's The Cobra. (Icon and Avenger became TV movies starring Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott, respectively.) Forsyth also dabbled in television, most notably as the writer and presenter of the 1989 London Weekend Television series Frederick Forsyth Presents. In 2010, he dipped his toe into theater, contributing to the book for Love Never Dies, a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera featuring music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was loosely based on his 1999 novel, The Phantom of Manhattan. In 1997, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire to commemorate his contribution to literature. His memoir, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, was published in 2015. Survivors include his sons, Stuart and Shane, from his 1973-88 marriage to model Carol Cunningham. His second wife, Sandy, whom he wed in 1994, died in October. 'A journalist should never join the establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it,' Forsyth said during his Crimespree interview. 'In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached, like a bird on a rail, watching, noting, probing, commenting, but never joining. In short, an outsider.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
British Rock Singer, 38, Abruptly Stops Concert & Walks Off Stage After Emergency in Crowd
British Rock Singer, 38, Abruptly Stops Concert & Walks Off Stage After Emergency in Crowd originally appeared on Parade. Concert goers were left confused and a bit shocked at a Mumford & Sons performance in Bend, Oregon on June 5 when lead singer, Marcus Mumford, abruptly stopped singing mid-show, said what sounds like "Sorry, f--k them," and then walked off the stage. As you'll see in a TikTok video of the incident, he appears to be focused on something happening in the crowd, based on how he's pointing to the audience. Take a look... he definitely seems incredibly frustrated. Based on the comments on the video, it sounds like there were people in the crowd who were either passing out from dehydration or getting hurt. Concern for their well-being is seemingly what led to him stopping the show and walking away. One person explained, "People kept getting hurt! He tried to play this song 3x and ended up walking off stage so they could give medical. Never finished the song." Someone else said, "About 3 people passed out in a row. In the same song. So he stopped so they could get help."And another noted, "People were way too sloppy. There was a lot of pointing at people who were 'hurt' only to be fine and then like three other occurrences of people falling (probably from being overly intoxicated). Lots of underage drinking as well." Yet another person made an unfortunate observation, saying, "That venue is cursed, I swear. A combo of them over-serving alcohol and people lining up for the show the night before and not eating/drinking all day so they won't lose their spot in line. BoyGenius 2023 was a rough one." Whatever was going on, it sure sounds like concern for the people attending his show is what prompted Mumford to bring things to a halt, which definitely speaks volumes about his character. It can't be easy to try and perform when things are falling apart with fans right before your very eyes. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 British Rock Singer, 38, Abruptly Stops Concert & Walks Off Stage After Emergency in Crowd first appeared on Parade on Jun 9, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 9, 2025, where it first appeared.
