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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
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The Spice Girls with Harry and Prince Charles

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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.

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to ‘dear friend’ Val Kilmer

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Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to 'dear friend' Val Kilmer

Tom Cruise has paid tribute to Val Kilmer, wishing his Top Gun co-star “well on the next journey”.

Cruise, speaking at the CinemaCon film event in Las Vegas on Thursday, asked for a moment’s silence to reflect on the “wonderful” times shared with the star, whom he called a “dear friend”.

Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on Tuesday aged 65, rocketed to fame starring alongside Cruise in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, playing Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, a rival fighter pilot to Cruise’s character Maverick.

Tom Cruise, star of the upcoming film "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning," leads a moment of silence for late actor Val Kilmer during the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Tom Cruise said ‘I wish you well on the next journey’. Pic: AP

Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP
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Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP

His last part was a cameo role in the 2022 blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

Cruise, on stage at Caesars Palace on Thursday, said: “I’d like to honour a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer. I can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how grateful and honoured I was when he joined Top Gun and came back later for Top Gun: Maverick.

“I think it would be really nice if we could have a moment together because he loved movies and he gave a lot to all of us. Just kind of think about all the wonderful times that we had with him.

“I wish you well on the next journey.”

The moment of silence followed a string of tributes from Hollywood figures including Cher, Francis Ford Coppola, Antonio Banderas and Michelle Monaghan.

Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes told the New York Times on Wednesday that the actor had died from pneumonia.

Tom Cruise takes part in the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Tom Cruise at Caesars Palace on Thursday. Pic: AP

Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, Kilmer discussed his illness and recovery in his 2020 memoir Your Huckleberry and Amazon Prime documentary Val.

He underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments for the disease and also had a tracheostomy which damaged his vocal cords and permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice.

Kilmer played Batman in the 1995 film Batman Forever and received critical acclaim for his portrayal of rock singer Jim Morrison in the 1991 movie The Doors.

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He also starred in True Romance and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as playing criminal Chris Shiherlis in Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat and Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone.

In 1988 he married British actress Joanne Whalley, whom he met while working on fantasy adventure Willow.

The couple had two children before divorcing in 1996.

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Bruce Springsteen: The Boss to release seven ‘lost’ albums

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Bruce Springsteen: The Boss to release seven 'lost' albums

Bruce Springsteen is to release seven albums of mostly unheard material this summer.

The US singer said the songs, written and re-recorded between 1983 and 2018, were being made public after he began completing “everything I had in my vault” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a short video posted on Instagram, Springsteen said the albums were “records that were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released”.

The 83-song collection is being released in a box set called Tracks II: The Lost Albums and goes on sale on 27 June.

Some 74 of the tracks have never been heard before.

Springsteen first teased the release on Wednesday morning with a short social media video accompanied by text which said: “What was lost has been found”.

Tracks II is the follow-up to the star’s first Tracks volume, a four-CD collection of 66 unreleased songs, released in 1998.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 26, 2025: Bruce Springsteen took the stage at Carnegie Hall for People Have the Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith, an electrifying tribute to the legendary artist. The event, presented by Michael Dorf, honored Smiths profound impact on music, poetry, and activism, bringing together an all-star lineup to perform her most iconic songs. (Photo: Giada Papini Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire). Photo by: Giada Papini Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
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Bruce Springsteen at New York’s Carnegie Hall at a tribute to Patti Smith last month. Pic: PA

The New Jersey-born rocker, nicknamed The Boss, last released a studio album in 2022.

Only the Strong Survive was a collection of covers, including songs by Motown and soul artists, such as the Four Tops, The Temptations, The Supremes, Frankie Wilson and Jimmy Ruffin.

The late soul legend Sam Moore, who died in January and was a frequent Springsteen collaborator, sang on two of the tracks.

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Springsteen is coming to the UK in May to launch a two-month tour of Europe with his E Street Band.

The shows will include performances at the Co-op Live in Manchester and Liverpool’s Anfield stadium.

The singer-songwriter has sold more than 140 million records since his debut on the music scene in 1973, according to his website.

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

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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
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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
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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
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Shaw pictured at court in February. Pic: PA

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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.

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