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Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
The "disgusting" UK royal wedding scandal that forced Lady Frederick Windsor to speak out after 16 years
Lady Frederick Windsor, previously known as Sophie Winkleman and a British actress best known for her work on Peep Show and Two and a Half Men, is used to being in the spotlight. But in a refreshingly honest interview with The Telegraph , Lady Frederick Windsor has let on that not all royal weddings are like fairy tales—just not when it comes to hair. Winkleman, 44, wed Lord Frederick Windsor in 2009. Lord Frederick Windsor, is the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent . Prince Michael is a first cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II, making Lord Frederick a second cousin to King Charles III and is currently 54th in the line of succession to the British throne But, she recounts the rush of wedding bells and future demands didn't leave much time for pre-wedding beauty preparations. 'It was such a blur because we had to move to Los Angeles the day after [the wedding], and I had to start a brand new job the day after that,' she recalled. 'So we got married on Saturday and moved everything, our whole lives, out to America the day after. And I'd been so concentrating on the work that I hadn't thought about the wedding.' The outcome? A royal hair "don't." 'Which meant that my hair was so disgusting, and Freddie still gets upset about it,' Winkleman admitted with characteristic humor. 'It was just disgusting.' Live Events Regarding her attire, Winkleman disclosed that her in-law, Princess Michael of Kent, took charge. 'She sort of took it all over, and I actually didn't mind at all. I thought, 'Great, do everything,' she said. 'I was concentrating on this acting job and saying goodbye to my darling granny, who wasn't very well, and just doing other stuff. But now I look back on it and think I should have worn a simpler dress, and I should have got my hair blow-dried by someone who'd done it before.' In spite of the hair disaster, Winkleman speaks only praise of her royal in-laws. 'Family isn't always brilliant, but this lot are very sweet. I love all of them,' she shared. Now a mother of two daughters—Maud, age 11, and Isabella, age 8—Winkleman has turned her attention to contemporary parenting issues, such as the dangers of screen time. Working alongside social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and actor Hugh Grant, she's become a vocal critic of over-use of screens in schools, going so far as to make a speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London. Looking back on her own royal wedding day, Winkleman's goofy crackle reminds us that even the most star-studded affairs can have their flawlessly imperfect moments. And sometimes, a bit of "disgusting" hair is just part of the story.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Sophie Winkleman: ‘The Royal family are very sweet. I love them all'
Sophie Windsor had never been the type to post much on the class WhatsApp group. The actress, best known for her role as Big Suze in Peep Show, preferred to keep a low profile. 'I just didn't go anywhere near them,' admits the 44-year-old, who has two daughters, Maud, aged 11, and Isabella, aged 9 with her husband Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. 'But then I had to become that maniac mother who got everyone together before Year 7 and said, 'Can we maybe not do this?'.' What Windsor – or Winkleman, as she is known professionally – wanted was to persuade fellow parents not to automatically give their offspring a smartphone on arrival at secondary school. According to Ofcom, the online safety regulator, nine in 10 children own a mobile phone by the time they leave primary school. But having become increasingly alarmed by research revealing how harmful they are to children's health and education, Winkleman attempted to lead a parents' revolt. 'It was so anti my nature to do that. [To be] the sort of noisy, irritating goose at the school gate,' she admits. 'The screen thing I was quite fanatical about because it was so obvious during lockdown that it was such a terrible way to learn. They are completely un-put-down-able – all these devices.' It started out well, but then slowly 'everyone sort of started folding', she explains. 'Year 7's so hard and so stressful. [Maud] was already self-conscious about me being a mum who was against phones – there's nothing less cool, I mean, what a loser. So my daughter's got one now.' She clarifies that the old iPhone allows her to send 'sweet little texts' but doesn't have any apps enabled. Like any parent of Generation Z and Alpha children, Winkleman had tried to resist the lure of screens from an early age. 'I'm incredibly lazy in every other way, apart from screen use. I'm not a hands on mum; they don't do cello and they don't do Chinese, they can just do what they like.' But everything changed when 'their schools gave them iPads without telling me.' She despairs: 'So they're on screen for a lot of the day. They come home, they open up the damn thing again, and they're on screen for two hours doing homework. And it's such a physically unhealthy way to learn. It's so bad for their eyesight, it's bad for their posture, it's bad for their sleep rhythms. It's even bad for hormones and it's terrible cognitively.' Knowing what she does now, having read extensively on the subject, she admits: 'I wasn't robust enough to immediately take them off them. I regret that. I could have just said, 'No, you're not having them' and had a week of hell. I was a bit pathetic.' But now the mother of two has become a leading voice campaigning for phone-free schools – and the removal of most of the educational technology ('EdTech') from classrooms. Earlier this year, she warned of the 'digital destruction of childhood' during a hard-hitting speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London. She recently joined forces with Jonathan Haidt, the American social psychologist and author of the 2024 book The Anxious Generation – to raise awareness alongside fellow actor and father of five, Hugh Grant. Haidt, who believes smartphones should be banned for under-14s, and under-16s should be prohibited from using social media, argues screens have not just caused an 'epidemic of mental illness' in children, but 'rewired' their brains, resulting in 'attention fragmentation'. The Government has rejected calls for a law banning phones in classrooms, and Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has dismissed the demands as a 'headline-grabbing gimmick'. At a recent event organised by the campaign group Close Screens, Open Minds at Knightsbridge School in London, Grant, 64, urged parents to take on the Government: 'I don't think politicians ever do anything because it's the right thing to do, even if it's the right thing to do to protect children. They'll only do what gets them votes. They only care about their career.' Winkleman agrees. 'I'm beginning to worry that this country just doesn't care about children. I've been banging on about screen damage to children for about three years now – and now there's a spate of very intelligent articles about how screens are ruining adults' cognitive health and suddenly everyone's very interested.' Like Haidt, who argues modern parents have underprotected their children online and overprotected them in the 'real world', Winkleman is also dismayed by the lack of traditional forms of play. 'It's so healthy for a child to get really bored and start making his or her own fun. That doesn't need to involve any money. I mean, it can involve a piece of paper and a pen or, you know, if you're a baby, a wooden spoon. You don't need these jazz hands tools to be entertained.' She also advocates a return to pen and paper and for children to be encouraged to handwrite rather than type, insisting it 'implants information so much more profoundly and long-lastingly into the brain than typing does'. She adds: 'I think children's brains are completely atrophying because they're just passive vessels for all sorts of content. They're not developing their imagination anymore because they've got these machines, they can be constantly entertained and it's such a mistake. Apparently, if kids keep going on the way they are, spending seven hours a day on screens, it will amount to 22 years of their lives. That's more than a quarter of a person's life.' Sophie is the daughter of Barry Winkleman, publisher of The Times Atlas of World History, and the children's author Cindy Black. The television presenter Claudia Winkleman is her half-sister from her father's first marriage to the journalist Eve Pollard. Educated at the City of London School for Girls and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she studied English literature, she developed a passion for acting after joining the Cambridge Footlights. Considering herself 'lucky' to be brought up in leafy north London, she says: 'I was very irritatingly lucky. I have two very wonderful parents who I'm far too close to. It's actually awful how close I am to them. I wish I liked them less. I grew up in Primrose Hill before it had a Space NK, when it was still quite shabby and full of lentil shops.' She met Freddie, who is 54th in line to the throne, after sharing a taxi from a party in Soho on New Year's Eve in 2006, when he recognised her from Peep Show. He works as an executive director at JP Morgan and the couple live in south London. Their 2009 wedding at Hampton Court Palace was attended by around 400 guests, including Princess Eugenie, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, actress Jane Asher, Lady Helen Taylor and the singer Bryan Adams. 'It was such a blur because we had to move to Los Angeles the day after and I had to start a brand new job the day after that. So we got married on Saturday and moved everything, our whole lives out to America the day after. And I'd been so concentrating on the work that I hadn't thought about the wedding. 'Which meant that my hair was so disgusting and Freddy still gets upset about it. It was just disgusting. And my mother-in-law chose my dress, which was very sweet and puffy, but I looked barking.' Princess Pushy, as she was cruelly named by the tabloids, chose her dress? 'She sort of took it all over and I actually didn't mind at all. I thought, 'Great, do everything.' I was concentrating on this acting job and saying goodbye to my darling granny who wasn't very well and just doing other stuff. But now I look back on it and think I should have worn a simpler dress and I should have got my hair blow dried by someone who'd done it before.' The Royal family, she insists, were always welcoming. 'Family isn't always brilliant but this lot are very sweet. I love all of them.' Despite finding having the children 'astoundingly knackering', Winkleman has balanced an acting career with a huge amount of charity work and is patron of a number of organisations including the Children's Surgery Foundation and School-Home Support, which, she says, 'keeps children from very tough homes in school and learning.' One of the reasons she campaigns on screens is because of the adverse impact on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. 'The reason we need government intervention is that I think it's predominantly a middle class thing at the moment. It's middle class parents having the confidence to rally people around and say, 'Let's not do this.' And poorer kids are being destroyed by these things. It's not a patronising thing to say. It's true. They're on them all night long. They're going to school wrecked, not focusing, eating rubbish, being angry. I know this because of the education charity and so many teachers I've spoken to. That's why it needs to be a big, old governmental piece of legislation.' Although she says 'I don't think kids should have internet-enabled devices till they finish their GCSEs,' she realises 'it won't happen'. Instead she wants the UK to follow Sweden's lead and remove most of the EdTech from schools, except in the lessons where it's essential, such as computer science. 'They've been very brave and admitted they made a big mistake – that EdTech is a failed experiment. They got computers out of the classroom and reinvested in books, paper and pen. And the children are doing brilliantly. Surprise. Surprise.' The Safer Phones Bill and Online Safety Bill are currently going through Parliament, but Winkleman believes neither go far enough. 'Parents all over the country can get a better grasp on this. I think we have to go towards the doctors and there's a brilliant group called Health Professionals for Safer Screens and they are paediatricians, psychiatrists, optometrists, speech and language therapists. They're all at the coalface seeing what damage screen use in and out of school is doing to children. I think it needs to be a public health warning. They're saying that even 11 to 17-year-olds shouldn't have more than one to two hours of screen time per day.' Parents can mount a revolution, she argues, but ultimately 'it has to come from all the young people'. She adds: 'There was a recent report which interviewed teenagers and asked them, 'If social media and smartphones were banned for all of you, would you be OK with that?' They all said, 'Yes, please,'.' And with that, Winkleman is off to her next acting job: to record a radio play in which she's portraying a mole. She has just finished filming a BBC One drama called Wild Cherry, 'about a group of horrible, competitive, wealthy mothers and their very screwed up teenage daughters.' She laughs: 'I'm playing a complete maniac, which is really fun.' It will certainly be a departure from her clear-eyed and cool-headed quest to lead the mother of all campaigns to end the digital destruction of childhood. 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.
The Guardian
23-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
It's the Kemi delusion: the more the Tories run towards Reform, the more their voters will run to the Lib Dems
What times these are. As Donald Trump's sellout of Ukraine gains pace, there are reports that Keir Starmer will flatter the president by inviting him to address parliament. Meanwhile, Trump's British admirers continue to offer flimsy excuses and undimmed admiration. Before Trump paid tribute to Nigel Farage – a 'great guy' – in his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering in Washington, the MP for Clacton used his time at the same event to 'hail' Trump's 'progress' with Vladimir Putin, and salute him as 'simply the bravest man that I know'. By way of bathos, the dependably ridiculous Liz Truss had by then told a much smaller crowd that the country she ran for a month and a half is 'failing', and needs its own Trumpian insurgency. At the top of the party Truss so briefly led, Kemi Badenoch cannot resolve a familiar contradiction – between a dazzled liking of Trump's ideology, and the political inconvenience of what it means in practice. Late last week, she parroted the obligatory half-arsed rebuttal of Trump's attack on the Ukrainian president. 'President Zelenskyy is not a dictator,' she said, as if that were a revelation. But any observer of her recent engagements will know where her heart really lies. Badenoch epitomises the absurdity gripping a huge chunk of the British right, as it issues warnings about the collapse of western civilisation while cosying up to people hellbent on pulling the roof in on just about every basic tenet of liberal democracy, along with what remains of the transatlantic basis of international security. She and her allies' understanding of such basic contradictions is about as thorough as her weekly preparation for prime minister's questions, but that hardly diminishes her belief in a cultish, paranoid set of beliefs. So out it all comes, on a weekly basis. Last week, she found time in her diary for a turn at the annual conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an international initiative co-founded by that great modern sage Jordan Peterson. 'Take a look at President Trump,' she told her audience. 'He's shown that sometimes you need that first stint in government to spot the problems. But it's the second time around when you really know how to fix them. And it starts by telling the truth.' Her chosen verities were the same as ever: an insistence that an 'intellectual elite' is in control of everything, along with warnings about 'the poisoning of minds that is happening in higher education', and 'leftwing progressivism, whether it's pronouns or DEI or climate activism'. At the same event, she was asked about Elon Musk and his so-called department of government efficiency. 'I don't even think Doge is radical enough,' she said. Who is this stuff for? If her aim is to stop the Reform UK insurgency, she is speaking in far too abstract and pointy-headed a vocabulary, a problem made worse by the lack of frontline Tory politicians who can compete with Farage's regular-bloke affectations. But there is another consideration missing: the plain fact that being gleefully resident in a hard-right echo-chamber is guaranteed to further alienate millions of voters that the Tories have lost. As I read reports of Badenoch's speech, I found myself thinking of Woking, the quiet corner of the Surrey commuter belt that is the epitome of a sea change that Badenoch – along with most of her party – has chosen to ignore. Last summer, the Liberal Democrats took the constituency from the Conservatives on a 19% swing. Some of that shift was down to the spectacular bankruptcy of the borough council thanks to reckless decisions taken by a Tory administration. But the result was in keeping with a huge pile of Lib Dem gains that rippled through the home counties and beyond, yet received a lot less attention than the five seats won by Reform. They still read like a litany of Tory woe: Guildford, Surrey Heath, Bicester and Woodstock, Horsham, Cotswolds South, Carshalton and Wallington, Tunbridge Wells – scores of Lib Dem gains, which came after a Tory collapse in local government. It was not hard to work out why. In many of them, a majority of voters had backed Remain in the 2016 referendum. The subsequent Tory embrace of hard Brexit left them reeling, and Boris Johnson's amoral style of leadership only furthered their quiet despair. But there is something much deeper afoot in these places. These parts of England are assuredly modern, and often more ethnically diverse than they used to be. They are often not quite as affluent as their reputation suggests, but still full of people who are mindful of the health of the economy. Those voters would be in the market for a centre-right party that emphasised the wonders of property ownership and low taxes, and pledged to back the interests of business. What they find repellent, in my experience, is the Tory turn into fanaticism, and the sense that Farage – and now Trump – are pulling the strings. Needless to say, they do not get on their commuter trains every morning and chat animatedly about such hard-right talking-points as 'cultural Marxism', being trapped in 15-minute cities, and the need to have more kids so as to preserve Judeo-Christian culture. In my experience, almost nobody in Britain does. As Badenoch blithely follows the bright light of hard-right politics, what is her offer to these voters? I know this much with certainty: that they do not look at the chaos and disorder gripping the US and Trump's torching of international norms as something to emulate, but instead feel a mounting anxiety. In the past, part of the genius of British Conservatism lay in the way it responded to times of such turbulence by offering the balm of tradition, and the idea that old institutions and conventions would endure. Now, Badenoch and her ilk seem to want to joyously throw us into the fire. Her choice of engagements is a small part of the same wretched picture. Last week, she did an interview with Peterson in which she talked about the party that has gobbled up so many old Tory heartlands, and is now making a point of constantly attacking Trump. The Lib Dems, she said, have 'silly and foolish' ideas. But other things she blurted out were much more revealing. 'They don't have much of an ideology other than being nice,' she went on, as if niceness was always to be avoided. 'A typical Liberal Democrat will be somebody who is good at fixing their church roof. And, you know, the people in the community like them. They are like, 'Fix the church roof, you should be a member of parliament.'' Didn't those people used to be Conservatives? If they have walked away, Badenoch's accelerating turn into secondhand Trumpism is not going to pull them back. Large parts of what used to be called middle England, in fact, now surely look at the party that once confidently spoke for them and recoil: this is the Tory crisis that yet another leader shows no signs of understanding. John Harris is a Guardian columnist
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Oliver Anthony calls for personal responsibility, revival: 'We don't need our false idols'
Viral country singer Oliver Anthony is calling on Americans to turn back to their roots and give up false idols. "I'm just here to remind you that we don't need our false idols," Anthony, whose real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford, said during a speech Tuesday at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference held in London. "We should no longer rely on politicians who bow down to money to manage our city or our states. We need to find the real leaders everywhere and empower them," Anthony said. Country Sensation Oliver Anthony Leaving Industry One Year After Meteoric Rise To Start Traveling Ministry Anthony, whose 2023 hit song, "Rich Men North of Richmond," reached the No.1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, said that American society has become soft. "Our modern society is [a] convenient, comfortable, fragile, little existence oftentimes carried on the backs of these self-declared nobodies," he said. "And forgive my generalization, but in the modern world, we are so busy idolizing the genuine nothings of society, the self-centered celebrities, spineless politicians, clickbait, social media influencers." Read On The Fox News App Anthony added that "it seems from my perspective that oftentimes these people live comfortable little lives while many of our real heroes are drug through the mud and never once given a genuine thank you for it." Anthony, who announced in an Oct. 29, 2024 YouTube video that he was leaving the music industry to focus on a "traveling ministry," also shared his concern about how social media and the digital age are impacting society. "What is bad is the lack of control and agency we have over these systems, and without realizing it, we are being programmed, and our culture is becoming commodified," Anthony said. "Therefore, the more time we spend on these digital information systems, the more we revert to the means of one of a fixed set of broad internet cohorts. In other words, the more time we spend online, the more commoditized our culture, the more tribal our psychology, and the more vulnerable we become." Oliver Anthony Staying True To Himself As He Grapples With Stunning Rise To Fame, Friend Says A self-described "nobody," the 32-year-old said that America is addicted to screens. "We currently exist in an age of rapid digital immersion," he said. "The current average American teenager will have spent something like 30,000 hours by the time they are 30 on social media. The average American spends six to nine hours a day staring at devices." What does give him hope, the former country singer said, is what he witnessed in western North Carolina in 2024 as the locals responded to the flooding and landslides brought on by Hurricane Helene. "Volunteer veterans with cadaver dogs that I had met with had pulled 15 bodies out of a single pile of debris near the KOA campground in Swannanoa," Anthony said. "The statewide count at that point had to have been well into the hundreds. I believe the number the governor used that day was 28. In fact, there was a reefer truck that sat for two days full of bodies because the morgues were overflowing." He said what he saw helped to give him hope for the future of the country. "Volunteers were working 16 hours a day taking supplies on everything from horses to helicopters. It was humanity there in front of my very eyes," Anthony shared. "And it was in that seven days in North Carolina that changed everything for me. It was people saving people." His new focus, Anthony said, is bringing revival to "rural America," in a mission called The Rural Revival Project, aimed at bringing renewal to forgotten farming towns and communities. "Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong, for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away, Anthony said. "Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. And so I'll see you on April the 5th in Spruce Pine, North Carolina for the first official gathering. It is now my life's mission to revive rural America one town at a time."Original article source: Oliver Anthony calls for personal responsibility, revival: 'We don't need our false idols'
Fox News
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Oliver Anthony calls for personal responsibility, revival: 'We don't need our false idols'
Viral country singer Oliver Anthony is calling on Americans to turn back to their roots and give up false idols. "I'm just here to remind you that we don't need our false idols," Anthony, whose real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford, said during a speech Tuesday at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference held in London. "We should no longer rely on politicians who bow down to money to manage our city or our states. We need to find the real leaders everywhere and empower them," Anthony said. Anthony, whose 2023 hit song, "Rich Men North of Richmond," reached the No.1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, said that American society has become soft. "Our modern society is [a] convenient, comfortable, fragile, little existence oftentimes carried on the backs of these self-declared nobodies," he said. "And forgive my generalization, but in the modern world, we are so busy idolizing the genuine nothings of society, the self-centered celebrities, spineless politicians, clickbait, social media influencers." Anthony added that "it seems from my perspective that oftentimes these people live comfortable little lives while many of our real heroes are drug through the mud and never once given a genuine thank you for it." Anthony, who announced in an Oct. 29, 2024 YouTube video that he was leaving the music industry to focus on a "traveling ministry," also shared his concern about how social media and the digital age are impacting society. "What is bad is the lack of control and agency we have over these systems, and without realizing it, we are being programmed, and our culture is becoming commodified," Anthony said. "Therefore, the more time we spend on these digital information systems, the more we revert to the means of one of a fixed set of broad internet cohorts. In other words, the more time we spend online, the more commoditized our culture, the more tribal our psychology, and the more vulnerable we become." A self-described "nobody," the 32-year-old said that America is addicted to screens. "We currently exist in an age of rapid digital immersion," he said. "The current average American teenager will have spent something like 30,000 hours by the time they are 30 on social media. The average American spends six to nine hours a day staring at devices." What does give him hope, the former country singer said, is what he witnessed in western North Carolina in 2024 as the locals responded to the flooding and landslides brought on by Hurricane Helene. "Volunteer veterans with cadaver dogs that I had met with had pulled 15 bodies out of a single pile of debris near the KOA campground in Swannanoa," Anthony said. "The statewide count at that point had to have been well into the hundreds. I believe the number the governor used that day was 28. In fact, there was a reefer truck that sat for two days full of bodies because the morgues were overflowing." He said what he saw helped to give him hope for the future of the country. "Volunteers were working 16 hours a day taking supplies on everything from horses to helicopters. It was humanity there in front of my very eyes," Anthony shared. "And it was in that seven days in North Carolina that changed everything for me. It was people saving people." His new focus, Anthony said, is bringing revival to "rural America," in a mission called The Rural Revival Project, aimed at bringing renewal to forgotten farming towns and communities. "Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong, for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away, Anthony said. "Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. And so I'll see you on April the 5th in Spruce Pine, North Carolina for the first official gathering. It is now my life's mission to revive rural America one town at a time."
