Mel B and Pixie Lott announced as headliners for Flackstock 2025 as event honouring the late presenter moves to new location
Mel B and Pixie Lott will take to the stage this summer in honour of the late presenter Caroline Flack.
They will be raising money for several mental health charities at Flackstock, which is being held for the fourth time on August 8 at Crystal Palace Bowl.
The Spice Girl, 50, is set to close the event with a DJ set while singer Pixie, 34, will perform once again at the event.
They are part of a star-studded lineup that includes Love Island alumni Wes Nelson, who will be performing with drag queen Carrie-Oke in the Neptune 's Choir.
Boyzone legends Brian McFadden and Keith Duffy will also be on stage, performing for the first time as part of Boyzlife.
From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop.
Alife Boe is also set to headline the event, which is described as being a family-friendly day out with more acts still to be announced.
Caroline tragically died by suicide in February 2020 after reaching new heights as a presenter in the proceeding years as the face of Love Island.
Flackfest was established in a bid to raise awareness of mental health issues by the late star's friends and family.
It aids four causes said to be close to Caroline's heart - Choose Love, Mind, Samaritans and Charlie Waller Trust.
News of this year's lineup comes after Olly Murs got emotional after playing at the memorial festival last year.
Following his set, Olly took to his Instagram stories to talk about the event following an emotional day remembering his close friend.
Choking back tears, Olly said: 'Wow, what a night tonight, I just wanted to come on here and say thank you to everyone that came to Flackstock.'
'It was an emotional one tonight, the weirdest feeling this gig tonight, I've never had a feeling like it in all the years I've been performing.
Olly and Caroline had close friendship and previously presented the X Factor spin-off show, the Xtra Factor, together for two series between 2011 and 2013
'This is Caroline's festival it's in her name it's for her and her family and all the incredible charities.'
Olly added: 'I was very emotional going into it but I just think that you guys pulled through for me - the fans were incredible tonight, thank you for the love, the support- you guys singing.'
Olly and Caroline had close friendship and previously presented the X Factor spin-off show, the Xtra Factor, together for two series between 2011 and 2013.
Ahead of the performance, Olly shared throwback videos of himself working with Caroline over the years.
Alongside the videos, he wrote: 'Been reminiscing a lot these last few weeks knowing Flackstock is today! Caz loved singing, we did it so much, didn't always capture those moments on camera but I did capture them as memories which I'll never forget.
'So I thought I'd put some of these clips on here that I found of her beautiful voice! She sang more than me when I was around her.'
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Daily Mail
8 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Beach Boys' Brian Wilson's torture at the hands of his rotten father and the deep turmoil before his death
His sun-kissed songs and breezy Beach Boy bandmates formed the joyful soundtrack of a generation—a California dream that continues to resonate today. But behind Brian Wilson's musical genius lay a life shaped by trauma, mental illness, and deep personal turmoil—pain that began in childhood and surfaced even as his fame grew. Wilson endured a violent upbringing at the hands of his father, experimented heavily with drugs, and became the victim of a manipulative therapist. His brother Dennis fell into the orbit of cult leader Charles Manson. Yet despite it all, Wilson kept making music—until a dementia diagnosis finally silenced his creativity. On Wednesday, Wilson's heartbroken family announced his death at the age of 82. 'It was hard to feel happy and light when there were sad things in my head,' Wilson wrote in his 2016 autobiography I Am Brian Wilson. 'It was hard to feel free when I was tied down. 'But the only choice was to try.' And try he did – through childhood abuse, personal tragedies and battles with rampant drug use – with such success that Wilson helped create one of the most successful musical groups of all time. He battled through lawsuits, fractured relationships with family and bandmates, and a public struggle with mental illness. But he never stopped. 'Whenever I've been told to stop – by someone who thought they had power over me, by something that happened around me, by the voices in my own head – I kept going,' he wrote. Wilson was still working on music in his final years, even as his health declined and he was diagnosed with dementia. Following the death of his wife Melinda last year, he was placed under conservatorship at their home in Beverly Hills. And Wilson, himself, had spent his entire adult life sharing his music – and his pain, often openly and publicly – with the world. 'Music has always been the light in dark times,' he wrote in the final chapter of his book. The oldest of three brothers, Wilson was born in 1942 in California to Audree and Murry Wilson, an amateur songwriter who instilled his boys with a love of music but was also 'cruel' and 'violent.' 'My dad was violent. He was cruel,' Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir. 'He drank too much and became a monster - and he didn't know how to deal with his son's fears. Whenever I got afraid, he would yell at me or slap me or call me a p****' Describing himself and brothers Dennis and Carl as 'kids who get hit,' Wilson wrote how he'd 'think of the things [their father] said always with exclamation points. 'Even if he wasn't yelling, his tone was like that.' Murry Wilson was thrilled but demanding when Wilson exhibited a particular musical aptitude and started a band with his brothers, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. But Murry 'wanted us to work all the time, and nothing we did was ever really good enough. 'He would set up our amps and scream at us to do more.' Murry Wilson started out managing the Beach Boys, though they fired him in 1964 as their star rose – and as problems began to plague Brian. He wrote in his autobiography how live performances and TV slots scared him. 'Many of my worst memories are from being nervous up there, and many others are from the things I did to keep myself from being nervous up there,' he wrote. 'Some of the drinking was because of that. Some of the drugs were because of that. 'Some of the voices in my head I heard just before I went onstage, and they didn't have anything good to say about me.' In 1964, aged 22 and newly married to a 16-year-old, Wilson had a breakdown on a flight to Houston. 'My thoughts swarmed and I blacked out,' he wrote. 'To me I blacked out. To everyone else it looked like I was screaming and holding my head in the aisle.' Wilson took a temporary break from touring. But he'd also started using drugs the same year, everything from marijuana to acid to cocaine. 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I was pretty angry … I threw a punch and he threw one back and that was the end of it – that time, at least.' After a few years, however, Landy was called back in to again address Wilson's mental and physical health – and, as time went on, Landy began exerting more and more influence in his patient's life. That including Wilson's career, with Landy forming business partnerships with the singer and even getting producing credits – all while charging what would be millions in today's money, at times up to $35,000 a month. 'Dr Landy was a tyrant who controlled one person, and that person was me,' Wilson wrote in his book. 'He controlled where I went and what I did and who I saw and what I ate. He controlled me by spying on me. 'He controlled it by having other people spy on me. He controlled it by screaming at me. He controlled it by stuffing me full of drugs that confused me.' Landy eventually lost his license in 1989 and by the early 1990s had almost entirely left Wilson's life. 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Daily Mail
20 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The man who invented the Sound of Summer: He was the genius behind The Beach Boys, but his abusive father drove him to years of ruinous drug addiction - until he was saved by the love of his second wife, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
Pop music has never been sweeter and the rock 'n' roll life has never been darker. Brian Wilson, the genius of The Beach Boys whose soaring falsetto gave the world Good Vibrations, endured a life of horrific mental torment. From his brutal childhood – beaten so badly by his monstrous father that he was deaf in one ear – to his decades of paranoid, drug-addled seclusion, he fought a constant battle against the world. Yet few songwriters have created a greater catalogue of timeless music. Paul McCartney, who with The Beatles were the only group that could ever match The Beach Boys for melodic perfection, regarded him as an inspiration. It was Wilson's creative high point, the album Pet Sounds, that galvanised Macca into writing much of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Unlike McCartney, Wilson – who died yesterday aged 82 – was unable to keep hold of his talent and his sanity in the maelstrom of 1960s pop excess. 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Though not a hit in the UK, it made the Billboard Top 20 in the US and the album that followed was also a hit. A self-taught musician, Brian played most of the instruments and began writing songs for other artists, such as Jan & Dean. Surfin' USA proved another smash, but Brian thought the fad for surfing wouldn't last another summer. He cast around for other subjects, such as hot-rod racing cars, before realising that what everyone really wanted was songs full of joy about girls and boys. And Brian obliged again and again, with Barbara-Ann, Fun, Fun Fun, California Girls and Good Vibrations. But the joy in the songs was not reflected in his life. Raised in Hawthorne, LA, Brian and Dennis suffered a truly miserable childhood – though Carl, the youngest of the three brothers, escaped the worst of their father's rages. Murry was a failed songwriter who bitterly resented his oldest son's talent. After losing an eye at the tyre factory where he worked, he would get drunk and pull the glass eyeball out of its socket, forcing the children to look into the raw hole. 'See what your old man is really made of,' he taunted them. He beat Brian viciously, once slapping his head so hard that the boy's right eardrum burst. On other occasions, he battered him with a plank of wood, or with a leather belt, yelling, 'I'm the boss!' His wife, the boys' mother Audree, could only stand and watch. 'I would be screaming and crying,' Brian recalled, 'and then Dennis would get it even worse than me. But by the time it came to Carl, he would just get a tap on the legs as a result, Dennis and I grew up all screwed up mentally, while Carl became a nice, well-adjusted guy. 'Yet I loved my father. I think it was the rivalry between him and me that inspired me. I often wonder if I would have succeeded if it hadn't been for my dad. Every day I would remember my father and try to do my best. But it sure as hell affected my head.' So did the drugs that, as The Beach Boys became international stars, Brian consumed in staggering quantities – marijuana, then cocaine, then LSD. As paranoia took hold, he became convinced his conversations were being bugged and insisted on holding business meetings in his pool, to ensure that no one was concealing a tape recorder. He refused to perform live, partly to avoid contact with his father, who still tried to act as the band's manager. Murry would turn up at the studio and attempt to take control of the sessions. He controlled the rights to all the Beach Boys' hits, and eventually sold them for $700,000, which was a fraction of their true value. After Pet Sounds, with its sublime single God Only Knows, recorded when he was just 23, Brian suffered an abject mental breakdown during sessions for the follow-up. Its working title was Smile, and to write the songs Brian placed his piano in a sandpit that filled his living room. Though he enlisted top session musicians, the recording was done in fragments, creating a mosaic of short, complicated sounds that Brian imagined could somehow be compiled into songs: tools being hammered against wood, horses' hooves clip-clopping, train whistles and even the sound of vegetables being chewed. Paul and Linda McCartney visited him one night, and stared aghast as Brian crammed a goldfish bowl over his head, then smashed it by butting a wall. Sobbing, Brian fled to his bedroom and locked himself in. By now, he was married to his teenage sweetheart, Marilyn, and a father himself to two girls, Carnie and Wendy. But the ordeals of his childhood made him terrified of parenthood, and he stayed away from home for days on end to avoid being with the girls. Once, trying to give Carnie a drunken hug, he burned her bare arm with his cigarette. Stricken with self-loathing, he shaved his head as a mark of shame. When Marilyn left him in the mid-70s, taking the children, his weight ballooned. He sometimes ate a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread at a sitting, washed down with vodka. For days on end he refused to get out of bed or wash. The band sacked him and his family, in an effort to get him sober, put him in the hands of maverick psychotherapist Dr Eugene Landy. Landy effectively held him hostage, taking control of his finances and milking him for millions. He controlled Brian with drugs, giving him sedatives to keep him docile, and uppers when he needed to give an interview or record a song. By now, the music had drained out of him. The low point came in 1982, when he agreed to record with Dennis for cocaine and hamburgers. Dennis, also an alcoholic, was in bad shape too, and drowned a year later, aged 39. Straight out of rehab, he boarded his yacht, the Emerald, and announced his intention of finding lost treasure before jumping into the harbour. Brian was too drugged to take it in. Brother Carl, a heavy smoker, died 15 years later from lung cancer at 51. But his life was beginning to turn around. In 1986, Landy allowed Brian to go on a date with a woman named Melinda Ledbitter after she answered an advert to buy his car. Seeing how much Brian was Landy's prisoner, she began trying to prise him free. Five years later, after Landy was served with a restraining order, she married him. 'Brian didn't need psychologists and psychiatrists,' she said. 'I knew from the moment I met him that he wasn't crazy. I have never met anyone so honest or willing to share their feelings. He just needed someone to love and be loved by.' In Melinda's care, Brian Wilson made the most unexpected of recoveries, even completing his lost masterpiece, Smile. For the first time, he was living the words of his own music: 'I don't know where but she sends me there, Oh, my my, what a sensation, Oh, my my, what elation... Gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations!'
Daily Mail
31 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Kristina Keneally doesn't look like this anymore! Former NSW Premier dazzles at Gold Dinner
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