Sophie & Edward Wessex could take over from Meghan & Harry – they're no spring chickens but at least people like them
MEGHAN Markle and Prince Harry ditched royal duties five years ago - but could be replaced by Sophie and Edward Wessex, according to experts.
Speaking on The Sun's Royal Exclusive show, the topic of whether the "House of Edinburgh" could replace the "House of Sussex" was discussed.
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ITV's Royal Editor Chris Ship claimed: 'I don't think replace like for like.
'I think they could be an additional resource for Buckingham Palace.
'Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh now, recently celebrated his 60th birthday, so they're not spring chickens either.
'But I take your point that they are that sort of generation in between William and Kate and the King and Queen.'
Last week, Prince William, 42, and his aunt Sophie, 60, teamed up in a rare royal engagement together.
They toasted each other with gin at the Royal Cornwall Show — and she proved to be a tonic by helping out with the heir to the throne's duties.
Sources said the day was a huge success, with Sophie previously being touted as the Royal Family's 'secret weapon' thanks to her unwavering support for the monarchy and dedication to charities.
Sophie, who is mum to Lady Louise, 21, and James, Earl of Wessex, 17, was ranked the fourth hardest working royal of last year, having carried out 257 engagements.
The Sun's Royal Editor Matt Wilkinson pointed out: 'We currently have the King and the Queen and we have the Waleses.
'The Yorks are excommunicated, the Sussexes have disappeared.
Sun lipreader Kayleigh Harris said Princess Kate turns to Sophie Wessex and says she will be supported in this
'We don't actually have many working rules. We need Sophie and Edward.'
News.com.au's Royal Correspondent Bronte Coy agreed, and praised Sophie for her ability to 'connect with people.'
She shared: 'I always feel when we see these pictures of Sophie out on engagements or in this case the one with William which was so much fun.
'The two of them were joking about having a drink together and they just had this easy banter. You can tell they get along.
'When you see her out and about engaging with people, it's always just a really easy thing to watch her do it.
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'She does it with such ease. She connects with people so well and you wonder why we don't see more from her. because exactly as you say, there's a space for it.
'I think that hopefully there will be more of that in the future, especially as the Waleses move up through the ranks, down the line, whenever that is.
'I think the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh have a really good way of, not to sound ageist at all, but to bridge the gap, to broaden the demographic of appeal for the Royals.
'You've got William and Catherine that are in their 40s and then you've got the others who are in their 70s.
'Sophie and Edward are in the middle there and people really like them and they work very hard.'
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TOUGH ROYAL TIMES
Sophie's welcome contribution comes at a difficult time for the Royal Family.
They were rocked last year when the King and the Princess of Wales were diagnosed with cancer.
Charles continues to receive treatment, while Kate announced earlier this year that she was in remission.
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Princess Kate is said to have found a 'tower of strength' in the Duchess of Edinburgh as she supported her throughout her cancer diagnosis.
Royal biographer Claudia Joseph has claimed the pair have an 'unbreakable bond.'
She told Fabulous: "I'm sure that Sophie has been a tower of strength through Kate's cancer diagnosis and will be there for her at the end of the phone whenever she wants a chat.
'They are incredibly close and live only 11 miles from each other – Kate in Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Home Park and Sophie at Bagshot Park.'
Sophie and Prince Edward's royal romance
When Sophie met Edward in 1987 she was a PR for Capital Radio, but it was six years before they started dating.
They then began a romance in earnest, but went to great lengths to avoid photographers, especially when Sophie began staying overnight at Edward's three-room apartment in Buckingham Palace. When calling Sophie at her office, the Prince would use the name Richard — not that he fooled her colleagues for long.
Six years after they started going out, Edward proposed, with a £105,000 ring from Crown jewellers Garrard.
Starting a family was not straightforward. In 2001 Sophie suffered an ectopic pregnancy.
In 2003, the birth of daughter Louise was similarly dramatic. The baby was a month premature and Sophie lost nine pints of blood, had a caesarean and was in hospital for 15 days. In 2007 she had another caesarean giving birth to son James.
Last summer, during the break before the second lockdown, Edward, Sophie and their children, now 17 and 13, were among the first to stay with the Queen and Philip at Balmoral, and the last to leave.
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Daily Mail
25 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Rachel Zegler belts out the best bit of Evita to West End passersby for free every night... and the paying audience don't like it
A ticket for Jamie Lloyd's hot new West End production of Evita could set you back as much as £250. But some paying audience members have been left feeling disappointed after they realised one of the musicals biggest showstoppers does not take place on stage. Instead Rachel Zegler, who plays protagonist Eva Perón, belts out Don't Cry for Me Argentina on a balcony outside - with passersby able to enjoy the performance for free. Meanwhile those who have paid for tickets inside the London Palladium must make do with a live video link transposed onto a massive screen. Crowds are now expected to assemble at the spot on Argyll Street at about 9pm every night until the show concludes in September. On Saturday evening, around 600 people gathered for 24-year-old Zegler's performance of the song made famous by the likes of Elaine Paige and Madonna. However, furious fans have taken to social media to express their frustration that they will not see Don't Cry for Argentina on stage, despite paying for tickets. One person wrote: 'Sorry, are you saying I've paid £350 for 2 tickets and she's singing the biggest number outside at people who haven't paid?' Another explained that they 'go to the theatre to share the same space with a performer'. Others, however, said the move would help encourage more people to go to the theatre. Abi, a 21-year-old student from London, said: 'I think it's making theatre more accessible. 'It's actually adding to the ambience of the show. 'The speech she does at the end of the song does hit completely different seeing it outside. It adds so much more to her performance to see her do it to the people.' Another person added: 'I think you might potentially be a bit gutted [if you were inside the theatre]. I know they had it on the projectors, but you might be a bit gutted to have missed the most important song. 'But you've still got the rest of it to go and it's given a good night to a lot of people who wouldn't normally be able to get that experience.' Photos taken of Zegler performing the song on the balcony, show her wearing a blonde wig, which was styled in a neat waved up-do. She also donned a strapless white gown and wore a huge dazzling necklace for her first West End performance. The actress, 23, is set to take to the stage in Jamie Lloyd's new West End production Rachel Zegler was seen for the first time as Eva Perón in Evita last Tuesday as she performed Don't Cry For Me Argentina on the London Palladium balcony Zegler, who has been engulfed in controversy since the release of Disney's 'woke' Snow White is hoping her fortunes could see a career turn with Evita. She is playing former First Lady of Argentina Eva Peron in the show, which debuted in 1978 and was written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Following the announcement earlier this year, Rachel gushed: 'Evita has been such an important musical to me since I was a little girl, when my dad and I would sing Don't Cry for Me Argentina together on my back patio. 'The opportunity to bring Jamie Lloyd's singular, visionary ideas to life onstage is an honour unlike any other. The stage has always felt like home to me, and I can't wait to make my West End debut in such great company.' Meanwhile Jamie said: 'I am so excited to be collaborating with the brilliant Rachel Zegler on Evita. She is a phenomenal talent, and I am delighted she will be making her West End debut as the iconic Eva Perón'. An official announcement for the show read: 'Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's legendary Evita returns to the West End, reimagined by the visionary award-winning director Jamie Lloyd'. 'Featuring an iconic score including Don't Cry For Me Argentina, Oh What A Circus, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, and the Oscar-winning You Must Love Me'. 'Fuelled by ambition and passion, Eva Perón rose from poverty to become the most powerful woman in Latin America. A symbol of hope to many Argentines, her star shone brightly as she captured the nation's heart and divided its soul'. Rachel is no stranger to musical theatre and starred in Stephen Spielberg's Oscar winning adaption of West Side Story in 2021. Other famous faces to take on the iconic role Evita include Patti Lupone, Elaine Paige as well as mega Madonna in the 1996 movie version.
Times
27 minutes ago
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Genevieve Chenneour: ‘He threatened to stab me. I was terrified'
It was a Saturday morning in February when Genevieve Chenneour stepped into Joe & the Juice on Kensington High Street in London after having a facial nearby. The Bridgerton actress, 27, was with her boyfriend at the time, Carlo Kureishi, 30, the son of the writer Hanif Kureishi, and her black maltipoo, Ralph. She ordered an oat flat white and took a seat to wait for it. While waiting for her coffee she noticed two men 'pacing back and forth in my peripheral vision'. Just before one of the men — dressed in a black tracksuit and baseball cap — swiped her phone from the table beside her, Chenneour felt 'a black cloud, a dark feeling, coming over me' and sensed that something bad was about to happen. Realising her phone was gone, Chenneour lunged at him instantly. 'It was complete instinct,' she says. 'I wouldn't advocate for anyone doing something that would put them at risk.' The thief, 18-year-old Zacariah Boulares, was a prolific offender with 12 prior convictions, including for threatening to behead the Welsh singer Aled Jones with a 20in machete in July 2023. He had served just 14 months of a 24-month sentence for that crime. CCTV footage of the incident went viral when it was released last week after the case went to court not only because it captured Chenneour hurling herself at her assailant in a fearless — and triumphant — attempt to retrieve her phone, but because she was an actress from Netflix's glossy Regency drama. Giving her first newspaper interview since making headlines, she describes the past week as 'surreal'. Her social media follower count has ratcheted up. 'Every time I go on Instagram I have a hundred more followers. Overnight another thousand.' Women have been particularly supportive. 'I think it's been gratifying for them to watch the footage,' she says. 'Maybe because I got to live out a fantasy. We've all walked down the street in London thinking, what would I do if someone stole my phone?' • This woman fought off her muggers. Could (and should) you? Early reports referred to an unidentified male companion at the scene, but it was Kureishi who charged at the thief as Chenneour sprang into action. 'The footage everyone has seen was actually the tamest part,' she says. 'I got on his back while [Kureishi] was on the floor holding him down. Then he threatened to stab me, and I thought I was going to be killed. I was terrified.' She was struck on the head and briefly lost consciousness. 'My doctor later confirmed I had a concussion. I had dizzy spells for weeks afterwards and I was terrified of going out alone. I still am.' Kureishi, fortunately, was uninjured. Onlookers in the café were stunned. Staff called the police immediately and locked the doors, preventing Boulares from escaping — until someone mistakenly signalled that officers had arrived when they hadn't. Chenneour and Kureishi let him go. He fled but was later arrested. He has since pleaded guilty to theft and assault and is due to be sentenced next month. 'He needs to go to prison and he needs psychological care,' she says. 'If criminals are not rehabilitated properly they'll likely commit more — maybe worse — crimes.' Two weeks after the incident she was due to attend the Screen Actors Guild awards in Los Angeles, where Bridgerton had been nominated for best ensemble. Chenneour plays the sharp-tongued society gossip Clara Livingston. 'I thought I wouldn't be able to go, which would have been devastating. I'm so glad I was able to make it, but I was still very shaken when I was out there.' She remains unsettled. 'Like most women I was already hypervigilant of men in public spaces,' she says. 'Now it's even worse. Festivals this summer are off the table. I don't want to be around a load of men, in minimal clothing.' She's speaking to me via Zoom from her mother's home in Portsmouth. She's recently left west London — her base for seven years — after the end of her three-year relationship with Kureishi. 'After the phone incident and the break-up I just hit rock bottom,' she says. She left with a few personal belongings and custody of Ralph. 'Maybe this all has to happen so I can start afresh,' she adds. 'It's been a major shock for me — and terrifying — but now I can prioritise my career, myself and my friends.' Her reaction that day may not have surprised those who know her. Before acting, Chenneour was one of Britain's most promising young athletes: a teenage soloist on Team GB's synchronised swimming team and later a trained boxer. Years of discipline had embedded in her the instinct to fight. Chenneour was born in North Yorkshire to the British Army officer Tim Randall and the teacher Alice Chenneour, though she was raised mainly in Oxfordshire, where her father worked as a programme officer at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham. She has a twin sister, Fleur — a former Team GB rhythmic gymnast turned model — and three brothers, all engineers. She and Fleur featured in ITV's 2015 documentary The Secret Life of Twins. 'We are very similar, obviously, and have had very similar experiences, but we are also completely different,' she says. 'I'm more bohemian. Our lives are taking different paths now. We're not that close.' • Bridgerton actress fights off phone thief 'who threatened to stab her' Her childhood was a whirl of training: ballet from three, gymnastics at eight, singing and synchronised swimming by ten. Was it a happy time? 'There are two answers to that,' she says. 'The one I'd give my therapist, and one I'd share publicly. Let's just say I've always enjoyed being busy, and I'm naturally very driven. I was also very isolated. It was hard to keep friends because I moved around so much. There was trauma I've had to work through.' Training for synchronised swimming meant waking up every morning at 5am to practise before school and then again in the evening. At 15, Chenneour was selected to join the Great Britain artistic swimming team. She left school to focus on it full-time: training up to ten hours a day, six days a week. She studied for her GCSEs via remote learning and 'basically being autodidactic'. She was soon competing on the world stage as a soloist, member of the duet team and group. At the Europeans in 2014 she was the youngest competitor. 'I was really proud of everything I achieved,' she says, 'but it was also full-on. I didn't get to have a normal teenage life, which was hard at times.' At 17 she was awarded an Olympic scholarship for Rio 2016. But just a few months before the Games she tore the cartilage in her left hip. Surgery was unavoidable. Her Olympic dream was over. 'When they told me I couldn't go I burst into tears,' she says. 'I was broken. I was exhausted. I had given my life to this sport.' She describes 'killing a part of myself' with Team GB. 'I remember being shamed by coaching staff for my body shape, walk, posture and size,' she says. She is 5ft 9in. At her lightest — 7st — she was extremely underweight. She lost her period and was told by her female sports doctor to induce bleeding with a contraceptive pill. She complied. After her injury she says she received no communication from British Swimming. 'I never heard a word after that. Nothing. I sent them an email saying, 'I'm really trying to get better.' They may have replied — but no condolences, no support. I felt totally discarded.' She has since submitted written evidence to a British Swimming review of historical safeguarding cases and is separately pursuing a civil case against them. She is unable to discuss details while proceedings are under way. Recovery was slow. She was in a wheelchair for a few weeks, then on crutches for a month, and took her A-levels at home while on pain medication. 'I did terribly, even though I'd been predicted A*s,' she says. 'Usually in those circumstances they give you your predicted grade. I didn't get that option.' Rebuilding her identity after elite sport was hard. 'I don't think any amount of success is ever going to make me feel like I belong as much as I did then,' she says. 'So many athletes who retire struggle with that. The industry needs to be much better at supporting them.'What should that support look like? 'Government-backed schemes for funded athletes where they put money aside for their life after sport. They should provide life coaching too.' Chenneour was fortunate to discover new passions. First, pistol shooting — she went on to make the England Pistol Talent squad — then boxing. During pistol training she met someone who coached actors in firearm use and soon began working as a stunt performer. She played an armed soldier in The Old Guard starring Charlize Theron, and later doubled for Ella Purnell in the horror comedy The Scurry, motorcycling down a rocky mountain. Alongside her stunt work, Chenneour studied. She enrolled in a sports science course at Oxford Brookes, for which she spent over 150 hours assisting on an NHS stroke ward. 'That was very humbling,' she says. 'Everyone should have to do something like that. It makes you understand how precious life is.' After that, she studied physiotherapy at London South Bank, but soon struggled with the lack of creative outlet. A lecturer — whose sons attended Rada — encouraged her to consider acting. 'I'd never thought about becoming an actor,' she says. 'I wasn't financially supported and I didn't know people in the industry. I thought acting was for children who had rich parents.' She withdrew from her degree and returned home. In 2021 she changed her surname, Randall, to her mother's — a way to formalise her shift from athlete to actress. 'I've always felt especially close to my mum anyway, so this was a nice way to honour that,' she says. Months later she landed a role in Britannia, Jez Butterworth's fantasy drama. She played an acolyte opposite Sophie Okonedo and David Morrissey. It involved extensive nudity. 'I took the role because I thought it would be an incredible opportunity to learn how to navigate those sorts of scenes,' she says. Okonedo, she adds, was a great role model. 'In one scene I had to be topless. Sophie made sure I was covered up again when the cameras stopped rolling.' There was also an intimacy co-ordinator on set. 'To not have one nowadays is not really on.' Chenneour is unfazed by performing nude, largely because of her sporting background. 'I don't care what people think of my body because it is capable of amazing things as an athlete,' she says. Her mother's motto resonates: 'If you've got it, flaunt it — so long as you're safe.' Last year she joined series three of Bridgerton after attending a workshop and getting herself in front of the casting director. 'All my success and everything I've ever achieved is down to me,' she says. 'Not who my parents are, which is so often the case in this industry.' Beyond acting she has starred in music videos for the Brit-nominated Calum Scott and the British rapper Fredo, and modelled for Adidas, M&S and Lululemon. She's currently the face of campaigns for Trip drinks and Oral B. But fashion, she says, can be ruthless. • How accurate is the sex in Bridgerton? From al fresco romps to body hair She recalls being filmed without her consent while changing, and a luxury fashion house calling her 'fat' before leaving her forgotten — naked — in a fitting room. 'At the time I couldn't do anything about it,' she says. 'In modelling, unless you're a name, you're completely replaceable. I remember struggling a lot with body image after that.' These days, she focuses on health over aesthetics: eating intuitively, avoiding refined sugar and only drinking alcohol on special occasions. She notes that social media influence increasingly trumps experience in modelling and acting. 'Even with a small role — if there's an actor who's trained, and then someone with two million followers, who's going to bring in more money?' Chenneour is only just getting started. She was passed over for a role in the latest Mission: Impossible film but she's not deterred. She'd love to play a 'powerful, complex' Bond girl. She has plans beyond acting too: she publishes candid essays on her Substack, The Naked Pages, about navigating life as a young woman, and wants one day to write a book. 'Because of how I look and sound, people might assume I come from a rich family –– that everything's been handed to me,' she says. 'But it couldn't be further from the truth. 'If I'd had an easy life, maybe I wouldn't have the trauma I do, but I also wouldn't have grit. Everything I've achieved — even fighting the man who stole my phone — has come from that grit. And I wouldn't change that for anything in the world.' Hair and make-up Amanda Clarke from Joy Goodman Agency Stylist Victoria Binns
Daily Mail
33 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
I poured my heart and soul into a Daily Mail article about a rift with my dad... within hours, AI stole my work and turned it into a YouTube video voiced by a robot
A few weeks ago, in this paper's pages I published a deeply personal account about my 25-year estrangement from my father, Robin. I shared the emotionally fraught story that began over a petty dispute in 1998 and the cold shadow of estrangement that crept in until, tragically, he died last December without us being reconciled. The piece was incredibly important to me and I was determined to stop it being copied, so I placed my copyright – ©RobMcGibbon – at the foot of the article in the hope of deterring thieves. As an interviewer of celebrities for nearly 40 years, I am familiar with my work being 'aggregated' by others without permission, so I wanted to retain some control. But within hours of my 'estrangement hell' being published in print and online on Mail+, it had been stolen. Was it by an individual – a journalist, perhaps – helping themselves to my work? No. It was Artificial Intelligence, or AI, and a very 21st-century version of copyright theft. On the very morning my feature appeared online, a YouTube channel called The World News published a 14-minute-long retelling of my piece, narrated by a female robot. It seemed Artificial Intelligence had got hold of my article from behind the Mail's online paywall, swallowed it and then spat it out again. It was sickening. For today's purposes, I'm naming the robot narrator Laverna, after the mythological Roman goddess of thievery, deception and gain. Laverna's delivery of my heartfelt story sounded like the directions you get from a sat-nav – but with less emotion. It was an upsetting experience to listen to a devastating part of my life being dictated with dead-pan disdain by an automaton that has scraped it from the internet. To add insult to injury, two precious childhood photographs of me with my dad – again copyrighted for single use in the Mail – were used as a rolling, zoom-in-zoom-out montage. There I was, as a three-year-old playing football with him, while a robot mechanically told our grim story. But then things got even worse. While Laverna had followed the structure of my piece, all 1,800 words of it, she had re-written my text and created factual errors. My then-girlfriend was suddenly my 'fiancée' and my father-in-law was, bizarrely, 'identical' to my estranged father, as opposed to an 'identikit' grandfather to my son. More worryingly, it referred to our feud as 'violent', when I had written 'vicious'. Most insulting of all, however, was that in the AI version of my work, Laverna had pointedly decided not to mention my name or the copyright notice itself. The mystery still remains: how did this video come into existence? Was it the 'work' of an AI-powered scraper, programmed to extract data from across websites, then robotically retell it? Would AI be intelligent enough to avoid broadcasting a copyright tag line in its stolen work? Surely some human hand is at play somewhere along the grubby line from theft to publication. Either way, the entire video was interjected with multiple video adverts for a bowel medication. So, presumably, money was being made for someone, somewhere. The World News channel had 23,400 subscribers and posted 16,000 videos during the past 13 years, with a total of 13million views. Imagine how the advertising revenue adds up. All of which brings me to YouTube – owned by mega-rich Google – and my fight after it broadcast the piece for my copyright to be recognised. A fight that turned out to be an object lesson in the struggle that awaits anyone who wants to stop their work being pillaged by AI. Essentially, it falls to you to make all the running, and it's a dispiriting circular race. My initial complaint to the YouTube/Google press office yielded a cop-out in the form of a standard statement: 'YouTube does not mediate copyright claims – it is between the parties involved,' it declared. How convenient. The World News channel had no website or contact details, so that was a non-starter. I took my challenge to the next level. YouTube/Google told me to file a 'copyright takedown claim'. This fiddly form requires you to submit personal data to Google. My desire went cold when it insisted on having my mobile number in order to activate the complaint. Why do they need that, I wonder? A week or so later, I suddenly got an email from Google saying that The World News had been 'terminated'. By some coincidence, it had been banned for 'violation of Spam policies', which meant my copyright complaint had been deftly side-stepped. I wanted to know how many views it had received off the back of my story, and if any income had come from that quack selling its miracle cure for tummy problems. Some hope. While this might be just one article, it sums up the entire hell-scape that awaits if Big Tech gets its evil way with copyright. The Mail has been at the heart of the battle to halt the Labour Government's plan to allow Big Tech companies to help themselves to creative works unless copyright holders register an opt-out, a huge burden for freelancers like myself. Part of this campaign involved amending the Government's Data Bill to force AI developers to be transparent about the content they exploit. Unfathomably, last week the Bill passed through Parliament with the transparency clause vetoed by the Labour majority in the Commons. It will soon receive Royal Assent, essentially giving the voracious Goliaths of Silicon Valley free rein to train their AI tools on creative works – think The Beatles' catalogue – without the need to pay or even ask. If my experience shows the thankless outcome from challenging one AI video made from one article, what on earth will it be like complaining to Google, Meta or OpenAI after they have bastardised your life's work into thousands of pieces across millions of unaccountable websites? This brings me to the final glaring, absurd obfuscation amidst all this, which I believe should become central in the current fight to protect copyright: the giant digital platforms are complicit in this conspiracy. YouTube takes a cut in advertising revenue generated by all content 'creators', so they benefit from the financial exploitation of copyrighted material even when it has been taken without permission. In effect, YouTube is handling stolen goods – in plain sight. It is as bang to rights as any dodgy trader in a street market selling cheap stuff with 'no questions asked', wink wink. For YouTube to absolve itself of all responsibility in the way that it does is ludicrous and should not be tolerated any longer. Imagine if John Lewis took a cut from a few thousand new independent sellers on its website that openly sold stolen or counterfeit goods, but explained it all away by saying: 'Well, we aren't selling anything – it's the independents,' despite the fact that their website and sales system is giving them a platform. In the real world, there's such a thing as Trading Standards. If you run a physical shop that brazenly sells stolen goods you will be fined or shut down. It's time similar rules are enforced by Governments on the rogue traders of the virtual space. AI is going to become the Master Villain in the stealing of copyright. Look what it did with my one article, from behind a paywall. Imagine what it will do to the works of The Beatles or Elton John (who, by the way, last week described the Government as 'absolute losers' over its AI plans). It must not win. ©RobMcGibbon!
