The Wanted have announced their comeback – with bandmate Tom Parker telling Sky News he is feeling “pretty good” following treatment for a brain tumour and excited about performing with the group once again.
The chart-topping boyband will play together for the first time in seven years later in September, at a charity gig organised by Parker, 33, to raise funds for research into brain cancers.
Along with his bandmates – Max George, Siva Kaneswaran, Nathan Sykes and Jay McGuiness – he said he also wanted to raise awareness, with the group’s announcement feeling particularly poignant following the death of Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding, who was also diagnosed with cancer in 2020.
Parker, who appeared on reality TV show The Jump alongside Harding in 2016, said: “We are doing all we can to try and beat this disease but there’s no guarantees with it… so [I’m] just doing what I can, raising awareness.”
The Wanted formed in 2009 and first topped the charts with their debut single All Time Low the following year. They went on to release three albums before they announced an indefinite break at the beginning of 2014.
Now, they are returning with a greatest hits album, two new songs and previously unreleased live recordings.
A lot has changed since they last worked together, not least Parker’s diagnosis.
The singer, who has two children with wife Kelsey, revealed in October 2020 that he was receiving treatment for a grade four glioblastoma – an aggressive cancer that can occur in the brain or spinal cord – and said he had been told it was inoperable.
“Tom has had stability or reduction of the tumour every single time and his trajectory is looking really, really good,” McGuinness confirmed to Sky News at the reunion announcement.
However, Parker said that even two months ago, he might not have felt well enough to say yes to reuniting with his bandmates. Now, he is in a much better place and feeling “pretty good, surprisingly”.
He continued: “I think a lot of people are quite surprised by it. I think with this disease, you get quite a natural decline, but if anything it seems to be on the incline. I feel a lot better than I did a couple of months ago.
“When we had the initial conversation [about reuniting], I was like I’m not sure I will be able to do it, just for my health. But with my health getting better, here I am sitting today.”
He also said his bandmates had helped him get through the past year, saying: “The boys have been a fantastic supporting system.”
A comeback had initially been planned for 2020, but plans were put on hold due to the pandemic.
During that time, they worked on other projects, and McGuiness performed on stage in Sleepless In Seattle alongside Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh.
Like Parker, McGuinness paid tribute to Harding – who went public with her breast cancer diagnosis just two months before The Wanted star – saying he had been in contact with Walsh following her death earlier in September.
He said he believed the Girls Aloud star would see the humour in the boys’ reunion, adding: “Sarah is laughing at us right now for trying to do this again.”
Most Wanted – Greatest Hits will be released on 12 November. Inside My Head – The Concert, in aid of Stand Up To Cancer and The National Brain Appeal, takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 20 September
Kate Nash says selling photos of her bottom on the X-rated site OnlyFans has allowed her to add an extra crew member to her tour staff.
The 37-year-old singer says the fact she is having to subsidise her shows in this way shows that the music industry is “completely broken”.
She announced she was launching her OnlyFans account last week as she began the UK leg of her tour, and has previously said on Instagram that, “touring makes losses not profits”.
Speaking about her new venture to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she said it was “very funny” and “fun to do,” adding, “My industry is completely broken, I don’t think it’s sustainable, and I think it’s a complete failure, I think it will collapse as well”.
Going on to talk about “people finding solutions to fund their art,” she said: “I think it’s quite empowering, and I’m also creating jobs with my bum now.
“For example, I couldn’t bring a crew member that’s on tour with me in the UK to Europe, but now I can, because of my OnlyFans website.”
She has previously described the career move as a “punk protest,” containing “lots of comedy”.
Speaking to LBC last week, she said: “The cost of touring has gone up. Just like the cost of living crisis, there’s a cost-of-touring crisis – where the cost of travel, accommodation, crew wages, bus rental, all the things that you need to pay for when you go on tour, everything’s gone up.
“But a lot of bands’ and artists’ fees for gigs have not gone up, whereas ticket prices have gone up.”
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Nash also said music was an “exploitative industry,” adding, “I have had lots of experience of being exploited”.
She said it could “learn a lot from the sex industry”.
Beginning her career in 2005, Nash has had one UK top 10 single – 2007’s Foundations – and two UK top 10 albums.
She has just finished a three-week US tour and is now touring the UK before moving on to Europe. Her London gig later this week is sold out.
And Nash isn’t the only one branching out to bring in cash. Lily Allen said earlier this year that she had joined OnlyFans to sell photographs of her feet.
The 39-year-old Smile singer, who moved to the US in 2020, says she has “very strict guidelines” and is charging subscribers $10 (£8) a month to view images of her feet on the platform.
Davina McCall has said her short-term memory is “a bit remiss” as she recovers from brain tumour surgery.
Speaking from her bed, the visibly emotional TV presenterposted a short video updating her Instagram followers on her condition, saying it had been a “mad” time.
She expressed an “enormous heartfelt thank you” to people who had messaged her after she revealed this month she had a benign brain tumour, a colloid cyst, which she described as “very rare”.
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Looking bright, but with a visibly bruised left eye, McCall said: “My short-term memory is a bit remiss.
“But that is something I can work on, so I’m really happy about that. I’m writing everything down, to keep myself feeling safe.”
She added: “It’s been mad, and it’s just really nice to be back home, I’m on the other side.”
In a message posted with the video, she reiterated her thanks for all the support she has received, adding: “Had a great night’s sleep in my own bed. Have a couple of sleeps during the day which keeps my brain clear… Slowly, slowly…”
When she first shared her diagnosis, she said chances of having it were “three in a million” and that she had discovered it several months previously after a company offered her a health scan in return for giving a menopause talk.
The 57-year-old star said support from her fans had “meant the world”.
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She said she was being “brilliantly looked after” by her partner, hairdresser Michael Douglas, and her stepmother, Gabby, who she calls mum.
Becoming tearful, the presenter said: “I’d quickly like to say big up the stepmums. I don’t really say thank you to Gabby enough. She’s been an amazing rock my whole life.”
McCall was estranged from her birth mother, Florence McCall, who died in 2008.
With a catch in her voice, McCall went on: “I’ve got a massive dose of vitamin G – I’m just really grateful. I’ve always been really lucky in my life, but I feel unbelievably grateful right now. So, thanks for everything, all of you.
“I’m on the mend, I’m resting and sleeping loads and I feel really good. I’m just very lucky.”
Stars including presenter Alison Hammond, singer Craig David and radio host Zoe Ball quickly shared their delight at the positive update.
McCall rose to fame presenting on MTV in the mid-1990s, and later on Channel 4’s Streetmate, before becoming a household name as the host of Big Brother from 2000 to 2010.
She’s gone on to present programmes across the networks, the most recent being ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad.
Last year, McCall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.
Married twice, McCall has three children, two daughters and a son, with her second husband, presenter Matthew Robertson.
She has lived with Douglas since 2022, and they present a weekly lifestyle podcast together, Making The Cut.
Barbara Taylor Bradford, the bestselling novelist who wrote A Woman Of Substance, has died at the age of 91.
The Leeds-born author, who sold more than 90 million books, died peacefully at her home on Sunday after a short illness and was “surrounded by loved ones to the very end”, a spokeswoman said.
Taylor Bradford, who was often labelled “the grand dame of blockbusters”, hit the big time when A Woman Of Substance was published in 1979, making her an overnight success.
The story sold millions of copies and traced the journey of Emma Harte from life as a servant in rural Yorkshire to heading a business empire.
The rags to riches story was followed by many other successful books with the author’s works being published in more than 40 languages across 90 countries.
Charlie Redmayne, chief executive of publisher HarperCollins, said the author was a “natural storyteller”, adding: “Barbara Taylor Bradford was a truly exceptional writer whose first book, the international bestseller A Woman Of Substance, changed the lives of so many who read it – and still does to this day.”
Taylor Bradford, who was made an OBE in 2007 for services to literature, wrote a total of 40 novels during her career – her most recent was The Wonder Of It All, published last year.
Born in May 1933 as the only child of Winston and Freda Taylor, she worked as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post before becoming a reporter and then the paper’s first woman’s editor.
At the age of 20, she moved to London and worked in Fleet Street for Woman’s Own and the London Evening News.
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She met her husband, American film producer Robert Bradford, in 1961 and they married in London on Christmas Eve in 1963 before moving to New York the following year.