Connect with us

Published

on

Topping the bestseller lists and creating headlines around the world, Prince Harry’s memoir Spare is the book everyone is talking about.

From claims his brother Prince William physically attacked him to losing his virginity to an older woman in a field behind a pub, the revelations have not stopped coming.

For those celeb-spotters out there, there’s another reason to get stuck into the 410-page book – it’s packed with stars. Here are some of Prince Harry‘s biggest name drops, and what he got up to with them.

The Spice Girls

Prince Harry remembers being “thrilled and baffled” by the news he would be hanging out with Nelson Mandela and the Spice Girls while accompanying his father on a trip to South Africa in 1997.

The Spice Girls had a big concert in Johannesburg and were calling in on President Mandela to pay their respects.

Harry says his father – who he calls Pa – had engineered the meeting for some good PR.

“The truth was, Pa’s staff hoped a photo of him standing alongside the world’s most revered political leader and the world’s most popular female musical act would earn him some positive headlines, which he sorely needed. Since Mummy’s disappearance he’s been savaged.”

Calling it “a work trip”, Harry goes on: “The Spice Girls concert represented my first public appearance since the funeral and I knew, through intuition, through bits of overheard conversations, that the public’s curiosity about my welfare was running high.

“I remember stepping on to the red carpet, screwing a smile on my face, suddenly wishing I was in my bed at St James’ Palace. Beside me was Baby Spice, wearing white plastic shoes with chunky twelve-inch platform heels.

“I fixated on those heels while she fixated on my cheeks. She kept pinching them. So chubby! So cute! Then Posh Spice surged forward and clutched my hand.

“Further down the line I spied Ginger Spice, the only Spice with whom I felt a real connection – a fellow ginger.”

Britain's Prince Charles (2nd R) and Prince Harry meet Spice Girls (L-R) Geri, Mel B, Emma, Victoria (holding the Prince's hand) and Mel C backstage during the "Two Nations" Concert in Johannesburg November 1. Prince Charles is on the second day of his South African visit. SAFRICA PRINCE HARRY
Image:
The Spice Girls with Harry and Prince Charles

Read more:
Who is Prince Harry’s ghostwriter?
Duke accuses Royal Family of ‘getting in bed with devil’
The biggest revelations from Harry’s memoir
Afghans call for Prince Harry to be ‘put on trial’

Courteney Cox

We may not have much in common with Prince Harry’s day-to-day life, but there’s one thing we can relate to – he’s a big Friends fan.

He says he spent so much time at home watching the US sitcom while eating takeaway, “it’s possible that in 2013 I watched all the Friends episodes”.

Unlike Harry, however, not many of us have hung out at Monica’s house.

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

Recalling a visit to the US with a pal in January 2016, Harry ends up at a party at Courteney Cox’s mansion.

“She was a friend of Thomas’ girlfriend, and had more room,” he says. “Also, she was travelling, on a job and didn’t mind if we crashed at her place.

“No complaints from me. As a Friends fanatic, the idea of crashing at Monica’s was highly appealing. And amusing. But then… Courtney turned up.

“I was very confused. Was her job cancelled? I didn’t think it was my place to ask. More: Does this mean we have to leave?

“She smiled. Of course not, Harry. Plenty of room.”

Courteney Cox attends Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women's Filmmaker Program Luncheon in New York in 2018. Pic: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Image:
Courteney Cox: ‘She was Monica. And I was a Chandler,’ Harry writes

Harry goes on to admit he had quite the crush on Cox: “She was Monica. And I was a Chandler. I wondered if I’d ever work up the courage to tell her. Was there enough tequila in California to get me that brave?”

The party hots up, Harry meets “Batman from the LEGO movie” – Will Arnett we presume – and with his help Harry moves on from tequila to something a little more trippy.

“He led my mate and me to the fridge, from which he extracted a soft drink. While the door was open, we spotted a huge box of black diamond magic mushroom chocolates.

“Someone behind said they were for everybody. Help yourself boys. My mate and I grabbed several, gobbled them, washed them down with tequila.

“We waited for Batman to indulge as well. But he didn’t. Not his thing or something. Howdya like that, we said. This bloke’s just sent us by ourselves into the f***ing Batcave.”

Singer Rihanna attends a premiere for the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in Los Angeles, California, U.S., October 26, 2022. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Image:
Harry says he was worried about Meghan when he met Rihanna

Rihanna

One of the best-selling female music artists of all time, Rihanna agreed to hook up with Harry in Barbados to encourage people to get tested for HIV.

Pretty exciting right? Well, turns out Harry was a bit distracted by his girlfriend at the time, Meghan Markle.

Here’s what he had to say: “The occasion was the upcoming World AIDS day and I’d asked Rihanna, at the last minute, to join me, help raise awareness across the Caribbean. To my shock, she’d said yes.

“November 2016. Important day, vital cause, but my head wasn’t in the game. I was worried about Meg. She couldn’t go home because her house was surrounded by paps…

“I turned to Rihanna and we chatted while I awaited the result. Negative. Now I just wanted to run, find somewhere with Wi-Fi, check on Meg.”

Hopefully he stuck around for long enough to thank Rihanna for coming along…

Caroline Flack attending the Virgin TV British Academy Television Awards 2018 held at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday May 13, 2018. See PA story SHOWBIZ Bafta. Photo credit should read: Ian West/PA Wire
Image:
Caroline Flack was ‘funny, sweet and cool’, Harry says

Caroline Flack

Prince Harry had a short-lived romance with presenter Caroline Flack in 2009. In his book he opens up about meeting her in a restaurant with friends, dodging paparazzi together and eventually going their separate ways due to press harassment.

Calling her “funny, sweet and cool”, he says he met her a few months after splitting up with the socialite Chelsy Davy.

Despite Flack being a pretty famous presenter at the time, Harry says he didn’t know who she was as “I don’t watch much TV” and struggled a bit to remember her name.

Luckily, she didn’t take offence and they met a few days later for dinner and poker. Further dates ensued, but after being photographed together Harry says: “Those photos set off a frenzy.

“Within hours a mob was camped outside Flack’s parents’ house, and all her friends’ houses, and her grandmother’s house.

“She was described in one paper as ‘my bit of rough’ – because she’d once worked in a factory or something. Jesus, I thought, are we really such a country of insufferable snobs?”

He says they continued to see each other “on and off, but we didn’t feel free any more”. He goes on: “The relationship was tainted, irredeemably, and in time we agreed that it just wasn’t worth the grief and harassment. Especially for her family.”

Flack also mentioned the relationship in her 2014 autobiography, Storm In A C Cup.

The Love Island presenter took her own life aged 40 in February 2020. Later in the book, Harry mentions her death, writing: “Caroline Flack, a very good friend of mine, had taken her own life. By the looks of things, she couldn’t bear it anymore.

“The years of constant harassment by the press had killed her. I felt awful for her family. I can’t forget how much she suffered for her fatal sin of going out with me.”

Harry’s mention of his former flame has not gone down well in all quarters. Flack’s former agent has hit out at him for repeating “long forgotten slurs” and called for him to be stripped of his titles.

People just couldn't get enough of Schiffer's briefs
Image:
Claudia Schiffer is one of the supermodels Harry has met

Supermodels

Lots of teenage boys spend time looking at models. But not many get to meet them in the flesh.

While you might expect it to be the moment of many boys’ dreams, Harry says it was actually “very confusing”.

Thanks to the help of a therapist, who helped him recall previously forgotten memories, he says he remembered meeting the biggest supermodels of the 90s with his brother when he was a teenager.

He writes: “I remembered Willy and me joining her for a chat with Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford.

“Very confusing. Especially for two shy boys, at or about the age of puberty.”

Among the most photographed models of the time, Turlington, Schiffer and Crawford frequently featured on magazine covers, runways and in fashion campaigns throughout Harry’s teenage years.

Prince Harry greets Elton John after the Royal Variety Performance at the Albert Hall in London, November 13, 2015. REUTERS/Paul Hackett - RTS6WBP
Image:
Harry with Sir Elton John in 2015

Sir Elton John

They first met when Sir Elton John rewrote Candle In The Wind for his mother’s funeral, but Harry has since become firm friends with the Rocketman hitmaker.

But they’ve had their disagreements too.

In his memoir, Harry says he was less than happy when he discovered Sir Elton would be publishing his own no-holds barred memoir in instalments in the Daily Mail.

Harry says he questioned why he had chosen the newspaper he claimed had made Sir Elton’s life “miserable”.

He says Sir Elton said he “wanted people to read it”, adding: “Where better than the very newspaper that has been so poisonous to me my whole life?”

Saying he was sweating as they chatted, Harry goes on: “I reminded him of the specific lies the Mail had famously printed about him. Hell – he’d sued them, just over a decade earlier, after they claimed he forbade people at a charity event from speaking to him.

“They’d ultimately written him a cheque for a hundred thousand pounds. I reminded him that he’d stirringly said in one interview: They can say that I’m a fat old c***. They can say that I’m an untalented b******. They can call me a p***. But they mustn’t lie about me.”

Harry says he did not want to “push” the matter, adding: “I loved him. I’ll always love him. And I also didn’t want to spoil the holiday.”

Click to subscribe to Backstage wherever you get your podcasts

Later, Harry says it was Sir Elton and his husband David Furnish who inspired him to sue press outlets directly if he believed they had used illegal means to access information about him, rather than trying to persuade the palace to fight on his behalf.

He says they told him about “an acquaintance of theirs who was a lawyer, a charming chap who knew the wiretapping scandal better than anyone”.

Both Harry and Sir Elton are among a group of celebrities suing the Daily Mail publisher over alleged bugging, impersonation and accessing bank accounts. Associated Newspapers denies the claims.

Image:
Cameron Diaz and Harry were rumoured to have had a relationship in the press

And two celebs Harry hasn’t met

Despite tabloid stories saying otherwise, Harry insists he’s never had a thing with Cameron Diaz.

Recalling press interest in his failure to marry by his late 20s, he writes: “They dredged up every relationship I’d ever had, every girl I’d ever been seen with, put it all into a blender, hired ‘experts’, aka quacks, to try to make sense of it.

“Books about me dived into my love life, homed in on each romantic failure and near miss.

“I seem to recall one detailing my flirtation with Cameron Diaz. ‘Harry just couldn’t see himself with her, the author reported’.

“Indeed, I couldn’t, since we’d never met. I was never within 50 metres of Ms Diaz, further proof that if you like reading pure b******s then royal biographies are just your thing.”

He also says he never met Christina Aguilera, despite briefly thinking he did.

Image:
Harry was smoking weed when he thought he met Christina Aguilera

At another house party, with “more tequila… and more mushrooms”, Harry says: “We all started playing some kind of game, some kind of charades – I think?

“Someone handed me a joint. Lovely. I took a hit, looked at the rinsed creamy blue of the California sky. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, said they wanted me to meet Christina Aguilera. Oh, hello, Christina.

“She looked rather mannish. No, apparently, I’d misheard, it wasn’t Christina, it was the guy who co-wrote one of her songs. Genie in a Bottle. Did I know the lyrics? Did he tell me the lyrics?

“Anyway, he’d made a boatload from those lyrics, and now lived in high style. Good for you, mate.”

Harry then heads back to Courteney Cox’s beachfront house, just another chapter in his royal life.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Stalker who believed Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas was his aunt avoids jail

Published

on

By

Stalker who believed Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas was his aunt avoids jail

A man who stalked Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas for six years has avoided jail.

Kyle Shaw, 37, got a 20-month suspended sentence and a lifetime restraining order on contacting Ballas, her mother, niece, and former partner.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that he thought Ballas was his aunt and “began a persistent campaign of contact”.

“He believed, and it’s evident from what he was told by his mother, that her late brother was his father,” said prosecutor Nicola Daley.

The court heard there was no evidence he was wrong, and “limited evidence” he was correct.

Ms Daley said Shaw’s messages had accused Ballas of being to blame for the death of her brother, who took his own life in 2003 aged 44.

He also set up social media accounts in his name.

Shaw had pleaded guilty to stalking the former dancer between August 2017 and November 2023 at a hearing in February.

Incidents included following Ballas’s 86-year-old mother, Audrey Rich, while she was shopping and telling her she was his grandmother.

The court heard in messages to Mrs Rich, Shaw had asked: “Where’s my dad?”

Ballas was so worried for her mother’s safety that she moved her from Merseyside to London.

Shaw outside court on the day of his sentencing. Pic: PA
Image:
Kyle Shaw outside court on the day of his sentencing. Pic: PA

In October 2020, Ballas called police after Shaw messaged her and said: “Do you want me to kill myself, Shirley?”

Posts on X included one alongside an image of her home address that warned: “You ruined my life, I’ll ruin yours and everyone’s around you.”

Another referenced a book signing and said: “I can’t wait to meet you for the first time Aunty Shirley. Hopefully I can get an autograph.”

The court was told Ballas’s niece Mary Assall, former partner Daniel Taylor and colleagues from Strictly Come Dancing and ITV’s Loose Women were also sent messages.

‘I know where you live’

On one occasion in late 2023, Shaw called Mr Taylor and told him he knew where the couple lived and described Ballas’s movements.

The court heard the 64-year-old TV star become wary of socialising and stopped using public transport.

Prosecutor Ms Daley said: “She described having sleepless nights worrying about herself and her family’s safety and being particularly distressed when suggestions were made to her that she and her mother were responsible for her brother taking his own life.”

Man accused of stalking Shirley Ballas
Image:
Ballas has been head judge on Strictly Come Dancing since 2017. Pic: PA

Shaw cried and wiped away tears as he was sentenced on Tuesday.

The judge said the stalking stemmed from his mother telling him Ballas’s brother, David Rich, was his biological father.

“I’m satisfied that your motive for this offending was a desire to seek contact with people you genuinely believed were your family,” he said.

“Whether in fact there’s any truth in that belief is difficult, if not impossible, to determine.”

Kyle Shaw leaves Liverpool Crown Court, where he is charged with stalking Strictly judge Shirley Ballas.
Pic: PA
Image:
Shaw pictured at court in February. Pic: PA

Read more from Sky News:
Cast of Beatles films revealed

Tractor crashes into houses in Cheshire

Defence lawyer John Weate said Shaw had been told the story by his mother “in his mid to late teens” and had suffered “complex mental health issues” since he was a child.

He added: “He now accepts that Miss Ballas and her family don’t wish to have any contact with him and, importantly, he volunteered the information that he has no intention of contacting them again.”

Shaw, of Whetstone Lane in Birkenhead, also admitted possessing cannabis and was ordered to undertake a rehab programme.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Gary Glitter made bankrupt after failing to pay £500k compensation to victim

Published

on

By

Gary Glitter made bankrupt after failing to pay £500k compensation to victim

Gary Glitter has been made bankrupt after failing to pay more than £500,000 in damages to a woman he abused when she was 12 years old.

She sued the disgraced singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, after he was found guilty of attacking her and two other schoolgirls between 1975 and 1980.

Glitter, 80, was jailed for 16 years in 2015 and released in 2023 but was recalled to prison less than six weeks later after breaching his parole conditions.

A judge awarded the woman £508,800, including £381,000 in lost earnings and £7,800 for future therapy and treatment, saying she was subjected to abuse “of the most serious kind”.

The court heard she had not worked for decades due to the trauma of being repeatedly raped and “humiliated” by the singer.

Gary Glitter has lost a parole board bid to be freed from jail.
Pic:Met Police/PA
Image:
Glitter was jailed for 16 years in 2015. Pic: Met Police/PA

Glitter was made bankrupt last month at the County Court at Torquay and Newton Abbot, in Devon – the county where he is reportedly serving his sentence in Channings Wood prison, in Newton Abbot.

Richard Scorer, head of abuse law at Slater and Gordon, the law firm representing the woman, said: “We confirm that Gadd has been made bankrupt following our client’s application.

More on Crime

“As he has done throughout, Gadd has refused to cooperate with the process and continues to treat his victims with contempt.

“We hope and trust that the parole board will take his behaviour into account in any future parole applications, as it clearly demonstrates that he has never changed, shows no remorse and remains a serious risk to the public.”

Glitter was first jailed for four months in 1999 after he admitted possessing around 4,000 indecent images of children.

He was expelled from Cambodia in 2002, and in March 2006 was convicted of sexually abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam where he spent two-and-a-half years in prison.

Read more from Sky News:
UK set to be hotter than Greece or Spain
Mother killed by drunk-driver still on road over test delays

His sentence for the 2016 convictions expires in February 2031.

Glitter was automatically released from HMP The Verne, a low-security prison in Portland, Dorset, in February 2023 after serving half of his fixed-term determinate sentence.

But he was back behind bars weeks later after reportedly trying to access the dark web and images of children.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan revealed in line-up for Sam Mendes’ four Beatles films

Published

on

By

Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan revealed in line-up for Sam Mendes' four Beatles films

Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan will play Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in the upcoming Beatles films – with a Stranger Things star also portraying one of the Fab Four.

The two Irish actors will be joined by London-born performers Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.

The cast for the Sam Mendes project was revealed at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, with all four appearing on stage and taking a bow together in Beatles style.

Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn, Barry Keoghan and Harris Dickinson stand onstage to promote the upcoming "The Beatles" movies during a Sony Pictures presentation.
Pic: Reuters
Image:
(L-R) Mescal, Quinn, Keoghan and Dickinson appeared together at the announcement. Pic: Reuters

Mendes is making four interconnected films – one from the perspective of each of the band members – and they are all set to be released “in proximity” to each other in April 2028.

It marks the first time The Beatles and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film.

Playing McCartney is another big role for 29-year-old Mescal, who recently starred in the Gladiator sequel and was nominated for an Oscar in 2023 for Aftersun.

Barry Keoghan – who also got an Oscar nod for The Banshees of Inisherin – will portray the other surviving Beatles member, Ringo Starr.

More on The Beatles

The Beatles
Image:
Pic: PA

Meanwhile, Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn, who appeared with long hair as Eddie Munson in the fourth series, takes up the role of George Harrison.

Harris Dickinson has the challenge of stepping into the shoes of perhaps the most famous Beatle, John Lennon.

The 28-year-old recently starred in erotic thriller Babygirl with Nicole Kidman and also appeared in satire Triangle of Sadness.

Mendes told the industry audience at CinemaCon there is “still plenty to explore” despite the Beatles’ rise having being well chronicled.

Read more from Sky News:
Prince Andrew accuser has ‘days to live’
NASA astronaut takes some blame for getting stranded

The Oscar-winning British director is known for films including American Beauty, First World War movie 1917, and Bond outings Skyfall and Spectre.

Sony Pictures boss Tom Rothman said the close release of all four films in three years’ time will be “the first bingeable theatrical experience”.

“We are going to dominate the culture that month,” he added.

Continue Reading

Trending