Latest news with #HamptonCourtPalace
Irish Independent
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Tom Jones postpones show at last minute due to health issues
The Welsh singer (85) told fans he was 'very sorry' to have to postpone the gig in Bremen, north Germany, as part of his ongoing tour. However, the Grammy-winning She's a Lady star revealed he has contracted an upper respiratory infection that requires treatment and rest. As a result, the show – which was due to take place last night – will now be pushed back to next Monday. 'Hello to all the fans in Bremen. Unfortunately, I must postpone my show this evening, as I've contracted an upper respiratory infection that needs treatment and rest. 'I know this is really disappointing and will cause inconvenience to you all, and I'm very sorry about that. But the show will now go ahead on Monday, July 28, so I look forward to seeing you then. All tickets will remain valid for the rescheduled date. 'Until then, thank you for your understanding. Love, Tom.' His post to social media was met with hundreds of messages from fans and friends wishing him a speedy recovery. 'Get better soon TJ,' Jones's former The Voice UK co-star Olly Murs wrote in the comments section, while pop singer Anne-Marie, who also served as a coach on the reality TV show, wrote: 'You're the best.' Jones kicked off his UK and European summer tour at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey back in June. He will conclude the shows with two performances in Cardiff, Wales, at the end of next month. Speaking last year, the Sex Bomb crooner said he was feeling better than ever, and was frequently astonished that his famous voice was still going strong. 'I can't believe it, but it is true,' he said. 'When I am singing I am like, 'How the hell is this coming out of me?' 'Honestly. If the voice was not there I am sure I would be going, 'Urgh, I don't want to do so many shows' but I love it as the voice is still working!' In 2021 he told The Independent: '[With] most 80-year-olds the vibrato slows down, the flexibility of the voice, you can't bend notes like you used to when you were younger. 'Well, that hasn't happened to me, it's still there. The only big difference, sound-wise, is I used to be a tenor when I was young, now I'm a baritone, my voice is lower. But when you listen to a song like Delilah, that's in a tenor's range. Pavarotti told me that. So what I've lost on the top end, I've gained a lot in the lower region.' As well as releasing music and continuing to tour, Jones is a coach on The Voice UK alongside McFly stars Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones, and former Destiny's Child singer and solo artist Kelly Rowland, who is joining the BBC series later this year.
Qatar Tribune
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Qatar Tribune
Tom Jones cancels German show at last minute after infection
DPA London Welsh singer Tom Jones has cancelled a show hours before he was due to perform after contracting an infection. The 85-year old, best known for hits like 'It's Not Unusual' and 'Delilah,' was due to perform in the German city of Bremen on Tuesday evening. However, he had to postpone the concert after contracting an upper respiratory infection. Posting the news on his Instagram account, Jones said: 'Hello to all the fans in Bremen. Unfortunately, I must postpone my show this evening, as I've contracted an upper respiratory infection that needs treatment and rest. 'I know this is really disappointing and will cause inconvenience to you all, and I'm very sorry about that. 'But the show will now go ahead on Monday 28th July, so I look forward to seeing you then. 'All tickets will remain valid for the re-scheduled date. Until then, thank you for your understanding. Love, Tom.' The comment section was full of messages from fans, wishing the singer a speedy recovery. Jones is midway through is UK and Europe summer tour which began on June 13 at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey with concerts scheduled in Dundee, Marbella and Colchester. The tour is due to end in Wales with two performances scheduled at Cardiff Castle at the end of August. The Grammy-award winning artist was knighted by queen Elizabeth II in 2006 and is also the recipient of the 2003 Outstanding Contribution to Music Brit Award and the Silver Clef Lifetime achievement Award in 2014. Jones is also a voice coach on the singing competition series The Voice UK alongside McFly's joint judges Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones and former Destiny's Child singer Kelly Rowland who is set to join the coaching line-up for the 2025 series.
BBC News
01-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
Hampton Court Palace unveils climate-resilient garden plans
Plans for a climate-resilient garden at Hampton Court Palace have been unveiled by the charity that cares for the Tudor building. Historic Royal Palaces is hoping the new planting scheme in the Great Fountain Garden will feature almost 300 species across 32 planted beds and borders, each selected for their climate resilience, biodiversity value and long seasons of aim is that once established, the planting will require little irrigation, the charity said. It will be led by award-winning garden designer Ann-Marie Powell. She said: "Our design is about reimagining beauty through the lens of sustainability, resilience, and biodiversity." "We're not just planting for visual impact—we're planting for pollinators, for changing weather, for longevity. Every plant has a purpose and a place," Ms Powell Great Fountain Garden was first laid out between 1689 and 1696 by King William III and Queen Mary II and featured lime tree avenues and sculpted yew was simplified under Queen Anne and was transformed again under Queen Victoria, whose gardeners introduced annual bedding and herbaceous borders in keeping with 19th-century fashion. Historic Royal Palaces also plans to establish a National Collection of purple coneflower, or Echinacea Purpurea, across the palace grounds, featuring more than 60 Wigley, head of parks and gardens at Historic Royal Palaces said: "This garden honours centuries of Royal horticulture while setting a bold new benchmark for sustainability. "With low-water requiring species and smarter layouts, it's designed not just to endure, but to thrive—supporting biodiversity, inspiring visitors, and helping us reach our goal of being nature-positive and carbon net zero by 2050."From Tuesday, a range of planting will be on display at the palace for the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden in the Great Fountain Garden is expected to begin in the autumn.
Daily Mail
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Steve Coogan reprises Alan Partridge alter-ego while opening his own SOUND BATH as he joins Charlotte Hawkins and Anthea Turner at Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
Steve Coogan reprised his iconic Alan Partridge alter-ego as he celebrated the opening of his very own sound bath at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival on Monday. A far cry from the straight-laced tone of the inept broadcaster, Alan was on hand to present the opening of his own space, struggling to keep cool in the hot weather. The garden reflected the inept presenter's 'meticulous approach to design, aesthetics, and materials' and is described as being 'a tribute to structure, to durability, and to personal resonance.' The RHS invited visitors 'to experience a space that is both purposeful and forward-looking.' It's no surprise that the garden comes with a unique comedic twist, and the character's observations about his creation are channelled through sound waves. Designers Joe and Laura said: 'We have had a test-run of the garden during the pre-build stage, and the moment we heard Alan's voice come through the sculptural speakers - everything made sense, in a very funny, very Alan sort of way.' Alan appeared to be up to his usual antics as he was photographed speaking into a seemingly non-existent mic and fanning himself with headphones on. The designers admitted: 'We developed the idea that Alan would want to showcase his broadcasting mastery... ' Also in attendance at the garden festival on Monday were presenters Anthea Turner, 65, and Charlotte Hawkins, 50. They were a vision in bright floral colours as they took in some of the many displays at the show, which is running from July 1 to 6. The pair were all smiles as they posed with flowers from the exhibits, with this year's show featuring a new Gardens of Curiosity category - designed to be interactive and thought-provoking for visitors. Anthea stunned in a patterned pink dress, keeping herself cool in the UK's ongoing heatwave with a straw hat. Charlotte similarly wore a bright orange dress, adding a touch of glamour to the look with gold jewellery. Steve's appearance at the Alan Partridge Sound Garden comes after he recently admitted that the character became an albatross around his neck over time. Speaking to Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett for the seventh season of their Dish from Waitrose Podcast, he said: 'There was a time when I felt saddled with it. 'So, when I do Partridge, I do it through choice. Not because I have to.' 'I'm doing some stuff at the moment, and it does make me laugh, so… I make notes in my phone. 'I think, I have a funny idea, I'm on the train and I'm chuckling to myself. I will laugh at myself as a Partridge comes into my head, and put it in my phone, on my own. 'Or I'll look in a shop window and think about, I might say, "oh, what would Alan say about that. I'm still doing it now thirty years later, so it's like a condition now.' Steve's career-defining character earned him no less than six awards - the most recent coming in 2017 at the TV BAFTA's, where Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle secured Best Male Comedy Performance for the actor.
Times
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
10cc review — a royal success from the court jesters of prog
A grand courtyard of red-brick Tudor splendour (the extremely civilised Hampton Court Palace Festival, with a cushion-bellied Henry VIII roaming the gardens) seemed a fitting locale for 10cc, the court jesters of Seventies art rock. Where their peers traded in po-faced prog, cult glam and cocaine experimentation, their speciality was in boogie-based collage rock, amalgamating strains of blue-eyed surf pop, vaudevillian operetta, new wave, calypso, and colourful semi-comic storytelling and metaphor. Life is a minestrone and death a cold lasagne, they famously posited in 1975, like a profoundly existential edition of Nadiya Hussain's Cook Once, Eat Twice. And you know what, if you thought about it for long enough on the frankly smashing drugs knocking around back then, it kind of was. Here, they were clearly a reduced outfit, with only the bassist Graham Gouldman remaining from the original line-up, his decaying vocals bolstered by his co-frontman Iain Hornal and the long-standing guitarist Rick Fenn. But like the jesters of old, their opening few songs spoke truth to power even at 50 years' remove. The hyper-capitalist parody The Wall Street Shuffle is still powerfully prescient and the wiry, industry-skewering Art for Art's Sake, with its rock-as-commodity chorus of 'Art for art's sake, money for God's sake', could be Spotify's theme song. The satire may have been ageless — witness a bloodthirsty boogie-woogie National Guard loading up on Rubber Bullets, then turn on Newsnight — but the music was firmly nostalgia-zone. Bar one 2024 Gouldman solo song — the languid cruise ship ballad Floating in Heaven featuring Brian May, who was (dramatic pause) 'not here tonight' — nothing was dated post-1978. Dreadlock Holiday in particular, their infamous cod reggae tune about being mugged by Jamaican locals, sat in the realm of 'things they got away with in the Seventies' — although the crowd, themselves largely in their seventies, lapped it up. The overriding sense was one of envious amazement that such imaginative, shapeshifting stuff was ever mainstream-adjacent. The Things We Do for Love drenched a classic Beatles-style doe-eyed doo-wop in unutterable anguish, while Clockwork Creep unravelled the dialogue between a bomb and the passenger jet it's about to blow up to the sound of operatic music-hall art pop with Disney whistles on. And though there were undoubtedly sags in the set and a covers-act sheen to the affair, there were also sublime passages, where the airline jingle turned dreampop drama I'm Mandy Fly Me gave way to the gorgeous phantom harmonies of I'm Not in Love, or when the full band gathered centre stage for a stunning barbershop take on their debut single, Donna. In philosophical dining terms: mostly minestrone.★★★★☆ 10cc play the Sign of the Times Festival, Herts, on Jun 20 and the Brit Festival, Cheshire, on Jul 6,
