Latest news with #Luton-born
The Irish Sun
3 days ago
- Sport
- The Irish Sun
Seani Maguire tips Cork City teen Cathal O'Sullivan to be Ireland's next big star
SEANI MAGUIRE has hailed Premier League-linked Cathal O'Sullivan as 'the best teenager in the country'. 2 Sean Maguire has hailed young Cork City teammate Cathal O'Sullivan as the next big thing 2 Nottingham Forest coach Andy Reid has been on a scouting trip to Turner's Cross in recent weeks to monitor Cathal O'Sullivan of Cork City O'Sullivan, 18, has since linked up with the Ireland U21 camp after receiving his first call-up for friendlies against Croatia and Qatar. And Maguire confidently predicted that senior caps will follow, adding that any transfer fee City receive this summer 'should be worth 10 times more'. The 11-cap Ireland striker insisted: 'Young Cathal will make his own decision. He can be whatever he wants. 'He's one of the best young fellas I've played with, and that includes in England. Not just because of his talent, it's just his attitude towards everything. read more on football 'That's what teams in England will look for first, because you can just see it clear as day how good he is on the ball. He's a joy to play with. "When he eventually goes to England, I'll be gutted not to play with him again, because of how good he is. 'But I'll be keeping tabs on his career, because he'll definitely play for Ireland. He's that good. And he'll definitely go and play at the highest level in football in England. 'I genuinely think he's special, and he's the best in the country. Most read in Football 'Whatever the club gets from him, he probably should be worth 10 times more. I can't speak more highly of him as a lad, because I see what he's like off the pitch.' O'Sullivan is a diminutive and technically gifted winger, but Maguire also highlighted his physicality. Shamrock Rovers snap up Northern Ireland Under-21s goal-getter as Stephen Bradley gives exciting verdict The Luton-born player said: 'He's so strong. Even in training, there could be two or three lads hanging off him, and he just stands up. You see him in games there, he's getting kicked, he's getting lashes in the back, and he just keeps going and going and going. 'He's a fit lad, he looks after himself, and he'll go on to have an unbelievable career, I've no doubts about that. 'His first touch is unbelievable, and it's not just his taking players on 1v1. He does the basics of football really well. He plays like a fella that's probably 10 years older than his age. 'I'd be interested to see where he goes next, but I think the world is his oyster because he's really that good.' Maguire jetted off to Portugal with his family after scoring his third goal of the season in City's 1-1 draw with Shelbourne on Friday evening. And Maguire hopes to get back to full fitness during the break, after admitting to being only 70% fit at the moment. He explained: 'You can look at the mid-season break two different ways. 'You can go and just have a break totally away from football, but the message was clear from the manager that we'll be back in the Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and throughout the week leading up to the Bohs' game. 'You can't go away and not do anything at all. I think the lads need to be still at it. 'It's only 14 days away from the next game. Maguire also praised new manager Ger Nash for the impact he was having on the relegation-threatened camp. He added: 'He's just brought positivity. That's what we need in the group, a lot of confidence, because that's what we've been lacking the last couple of months. 'We're probably one of the youngest squads in the whole league. 'It's clear to see the improvements in the last 10 days or so.'
The Independent
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Stacey Dooley to be joined by Kevin Clifton for 2:22 A Ghost Story tour
TV presenter Stacey Dooley will be joined by her partner Kevin Clifton for a tour of 2:22 A Ghost Story. The Luton-born presenter, who has one child with professional dancer Clifton after they announced their relationship in 2019, made her acting stage debut last year. Clifton told BBC One programme BBC Breakfast, this will be the 'first project' that will see them work together since they won Strictly Come Dancing in 2018. Dooley, 38, has said she thinks rehearsals are going to feel 'quite bizarre' as it is 'unknown territory' to be working together as a couple. 'We know each other like, properly as people now, like, this is different to when we did Strictly,' he said. Dooley made her stage debut in a West End production of the supernatural thriller last year. She said she 'really loved it' and 'it was a delight, like the whole experience. I just thoroughly enjoyed it'. 'I was probably slightly apprehensive, because it wasn't my world at all. Actually, I just couldn't get enough of it,' she added. 'And then, when the opportunity presented itself again, we wondered if there was a world where we could sort of do it together. 'And yeah, here we are. We're taking it all over the country.' Clifton said it is an opportunity for them to be on tour 'together as a family' as they will bring their two-year-old daughter Minnie on tour with them, who will be looked after by a family member while they are on stage. Dooley and Clifton will play married couple Jenny and Sam, who argue about whether their home is haunted by a ghost or not over the course of an evening with friends. The production premiered in 2020 at the Noel Coward Theatre, and has seen singers Cheryl, and Lily Allen, former Love Island presenter Laura Whitmore and Babs actress Jaime Winstone in the play. Clifton was on Strictly from 2013 to 2019, and has gone on to be in musicals Everybody's Talking About Jamie, Dirty Dancing The Musical, and Singin In The Rain. Dooley recently presented the BBC programme Rape On Trial, which covers the delays to court cases and waiting times for victims of rape and sexual assault, and has also fronted documentaries Stacey Dooley: Locked Up With The Lifers, and Stacey Dooley: Stalkers. The tour of 2:22 A Ghost Story begins at Manchester Opera House In August and will travel to venues including Bristol's Hippodrome, Glasgow's King's Theatre, and the Sunderland Empire.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The drill scene was dead. They'd locked everyone up': RIP Germain on his shocking coffin installation
'A generation has been completely wiped out,' says Luton-born artist RIP Germain. He's talking about the UK drill scene, a subject he explores in his latest exhibition. In an image used to publicise the show, we see the faces of 42 rappers, all of them in prison. 'In autumn last year, there was literally no one,' he says. 'The scene was actually dead, everyone was locked up.' RIP Germain's brutal, uncomfortable, confrontational installation explores UK drill music's lyrical violence – and society's voracious appetite for it. It asks how an entire musical movement could end up being lost to the UK prison system. The first work is a storm drain cut into the gallery floor, its grates the same size as the peepholes in UK prison doors. Peer down into the dark basement and a police van is flashing its lights. Downstairs, the room has been cleaned with forensics-grade bleach, the air cooled to the temperature of a morgue. That police van is actually a coffin for you to climb into to watch 101 hours of UK drill music videos, documentaries and social media posts. It's suffocatingly claustrophobic and relentless in its glorification of guns and death. But the real shock is in realising how normalised, how mainstream, how celebrated this level of violence is. 'People nowadays are starved of culture, so anything that seems like the real deal they gravitate towards,' says the artist, who keeps his real name secret. 'Any form of subculture that people belong to in a genuine way, people want the keys to access that.' In the case of UK drill, its authenticity is integral to its success, and crime and violence – in the form of murder, assault and drug running – is key to that authenticity. 'That's a quick route to stardom,' RIP Germain says. 'Take someone like [Camden rapper] Suspect, the way he blew up is that when he was releasing tracks and getting hundreds of thousands of views he was already on the run for murder and living in Kenya. The reputation is what attracts people to the music, and that's what determines success.' Fans consume UK drill's everyday gang violence in the same way that people consume true crime podcasts: they're paying to satisfy a thirst for real death, as opposed to the fantasy of violence and gore provided by something like the horror genre. But that reality is also its downfall. The police monitor and delete UK drill videos from YouTube and social media, and at the same time the videos and lyrics can be used as evidence against the artists in court, all while the artists are expected to be authentic and to brag about these acts of violence. 'It's a trap,' RIP Germain says. 'That's where the audience comes into play. The vast majority of fans are not like the people making the music, and they are using them as avatars and living vicariously through them. For any medium to thrive, it's going to be white suburban kids that are the biggest pool of buyers. That's always the plight of Black entertainers.' Given that these rappers are objectively doing well – making money, signing to major labels – why is the lure of crime still so appealing to them? 'If you've grown up a certain way it's very hard to jump out of your own brain and reformat yourself,' says the artist. 'Society is placing an outrageous level of expectation on these people, and there has been no space and complexity given to their lifestyles. This is an industry where a lot of people come from group homes, child services, alternative schooling, young offenders. It's not a scene where the average person comes from a straightforward middle-class background.' Drill isn't unique in its glorification of violent lifestyles: its antecedents in gangster rap and grime did plenty of that. As RIP Germain says: 'There was extreme violence way before drill, and there will be after drill.' What's notable about drill, however, is the way its commitment to violence has led to its own annihilation. The work isn't an attack on UK drill culture, far from it. RIP Germain is deeply passionate and hugely knowledgable about the scene. Part-historian, part-archivist, he obsessively collects and saves videos that he knows are likely to be deleted by the police. Hip-hop culture has played an important part in much of RIP Germain's work. The artist's last major installation, Jesus Died for Us, We Will Die for Dudus! at the ICA in 2023, centred on a genuine, blinged-out, Hatton Garden-made thick gold necklace of a white Tupac wearing a crown of thorns, encrusted with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Hip-hop, and more specifically gangster rap, functions for him as a way of attacking dominant power structures and questioning the way society consumes Black culture. He says he's using UK drill to make a wider point: 'Western culture is in love with violence. It's a societal violence, it's across the board. UK drill is the topic I'm using to explore how society functions, and how some people find that the only avenue they have to make it in life is to sell death, to sell their own imprisonment. That's the currency exchange: 'I'm exchanging the culture that you want for monetary gain. There's consequences, but for now I'm going to look the other way to make it out of this neighbourhood.' These people become products.' The show acts as a plea for clemency, for nuance, for forgiveness and understanding. 'It's not to absolve anyone of responsibility, it's to look at the picture and see a group of kids that have been let down, and they've let themselves down, in a big way. And the work I've done over the past six years is flying a red flag saying we need to get ahead of this.' The brilliance of RIP Germain's installation is in first making you an outside observer, peering through the prison door peephole from an objective distance, and then forcing you into that coffin, making you get properly face-to-face with the death that's being sold and celebrated. He's showing you that this isn't just entertainment, these are lives being lost. What's truly horrifying isn't the violence itself, it's the pleasure we take from consuming it. RIP Germain: Anti-Blackness Is Bad, Even the Parts That We Like is at Cabinet, London, until 10 May
Telegraph
11-03-2025
- Telegraph
Stacey Dooley: I wouldn't go to the police if I was raped
Stacey Dooley has said that she would not go the police if she was raped after losing confidence in the authorities. The television presenter, 38, made the claim after following stories of women's experiences with the courts and investigators for a new BBC documentary filmed over three years. In an interview with Radio Times, Dooley said: 'If somebody raped me, I don't think I would go to the police, which is so bleak and such a disappointing realisation. But in terms of what I've witnessed, I wouldn't feel confident.' Her comments come in the lead-up to the release of Rape on Trial, which explores the challenges of reporting rape and covers the delays to court cases and waiting times for victims of alleged rape and sexual assault. She said: 'With the women I spoke to, the concern was always: 'If I go to the police, will they believe me?' 'It's one of the few crimes where your credibility is immediately brought into question. The bravery it takes is unbelievable.' Dooley inspired by Pelicot case Dooley also addressed the extraordinary case of Gisèle Pelicot, who last year became a global icon in the campaign against sexual violence for her bravery in turning the tables on her tormentors after waiving her right to anonymity. 'Obviously, I think she's a f---ing powerhouse,' Dooley said, adding: 'But I wonder if even she really understands the magnitude of what she's done for other women.' In December, Pelicot's former husband, Dominique, 72, was found guilty of drugging and raping his former wife, also 72, and for more than a decade soliciting men to assault her. The grandmother of seven has since become a feminist icon for refusing to remain in the shadows during his trial, choosing instead to confront those who abused and raped her. Dooley said that when filming Rape on Trial, during which she would hear the experiences of women reporting rape to the police, it would make her think: 'What would I do?' The programme comes as it was revealed that rape charges are increasingly being dropped before reaching trial. The Crown Prosecution Service discontinued 496 rape charges in the 12 months to July this year – more than three times the 157 dropped in the same period in 2019. Rape prosecutions descrease Data released in December show that the proportion of rape prosecutions being dropped rose from 9.3 per cent in 2022 to 12.8 per cent this year. Dooley also spoke about another of her upcoming documentary shows, Meet the Shoplifters, in which she meets people who steal, as well as staff members dealing with the issue. She admitted that she took items from shops when she was young, saying she 'perhaps tried to justify it in some way' when she was a teenager, but now does not understand how she could have behaved that way. Last year, the Luton-born presenter made her acting stage debut in 2:22 A Ghost Story, and won Strictly Come Dancing in 2018 with her partner, Kevin Clifton, with whom she has a child.
Telegraph
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Myles Smith: Is this Brit Rising Star winner the next Ed Sheeran?
In just over two years, 26-year-old Myles Smith has gone from relative unknown to TikTok sensation to Brit Award winner. Even though his two gigs at the 2,000-capacity Shepherd's Bush Empire are some of his biggest to date, it may well be the last chance to catch him in a venue of this size. On Saturday, he will play at the O2 Arena, alongside Sabrina Carpenter and Sam Fender, at the Brits ceremony. He will also be picking up his Rising Star Award (following in the footsteps of Adele and Sam Smith) and is up for a further three awards – Best New Artist, Best Pop Act, and Song of the Year for Stargazing. This summer, he will be supporting Ed Sheeran on his stadium summer tour in Europe. The Luton-born folk-pop singer hasn't even released a full album yet. You can see why he's doing as well as he is. His tracks are largely inoffensive earworms punctuated with as many 'ohh-ohh-ohhs' as humanly possible. Think Sheeran mixed with Mumford and Sons. Smith has a nice-guy energy that works well on stage. Well, maybe not always that nice. At one point on Wednesday night, the singer shouted the Arsenal football chant 'what do we think of Tottenham?' at the crowd, who responded with the required sweary callback. (Confetti cannons exploded immediately after.) But otherwise, he was full of smiles and messages of positive reinforcement. He seemed genuinely humble and excited to be there, remarking how he had played a pub round the corner during his early performing days. His fans, mostly young women, seemed enthralled. When Smith asked the audience to be quiet for one song, an overly talkative dad was met with a barrage of shushes. And a surprise appearance from fellow Brit folk artist James Bay for their song Waste drew screeches. Smith did slow it down occasionally. The song 3am about his strained relationship with his father brought a poignancy to the evening. He pointed out his mother in the crowd, and movingly shared how she was the emotional centrepoint of his music. When I turned to look at her, she seemed to be dancing and singing along word to word to every lyric. As the show drew to a close, Smith finally launched into Stargazing, his 2024 hit that has so far amassed over half a billion streams on Spotify. Unsurprisingly, it was greeted with a mass sing-along and fans whipped out their phones to capture the moment. After finishing, the young star told them to put their phones down and live in the moment, before playing the song a second time. A gimmick, but one that would have made Bob Dylan proud. Smith could struggle to stay afloat amid the midst of Sheeran clones, but he knows his audience to a tee. They want to hear upbeat, sentimental messaging packaged in singalong hits with foot-tapping melodies. His treacly sincerity could be a criticism, but Smith seems to truly believe in what he preaches. At one point, he told the crowd to turn on their phone light if they had experienced depression, anxiety, heartbreak or grief. Then he asked fans to turn their light to the person next to them, his unifying message that everyone feels this way. Maybe overly earnest but genuine nonetheless. I may even have been converted.
