Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney celebrate Wrexham AFC’s promotion with bus parade

Published

2 years ago

May 3, 2023

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Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney along with Wrexham AFC’s players and staff have celebrated their recent success with an open-top bus parade.

Thousands of fans lined the route in the northeast Wales city to cheer both Wrexham AFC’s men’s and women’s teams gaining promotion in their respective leagues this season.

The men’s team are returning to the English Football League for the first time in 15 years – they will play in League Two in the forthcoming campaign.

Wrexham Women have been promoted from the Adran North League and will next play in the Adran Premier, the highest league for women’s football in Wales.

The three-bus trophy parade started and finished at the Racecourse Ground stadium as it toured the city on a loop, allowing supporters to celebrate the efforts of players and staff.

The celebrations come after co-owners Reynolds and McElhenney, who bought the club in 2021, told Welsh-language broadcaster S4C this week that their aim is to reach the Premier League, even if it takes 20 years.

The stars, whose takeover and reported £10m investment in the Red Dragons has helped transform the club’s fortunes, joined the women’s team on the second bus, with manager Phil Parkinson alongside his staff on the third.

The men’s team soaked up the adulation from the top of the first. Fans chanted “One more year” at ex-Premier League goalkeeper Ben Foster, who came out of retirement to sign a one-year deal in September, and several of his team-mates joined in.

Reynolds and McElhenney had previously tried to convince former Wales captain Gareth Bale to come out of retirement and play for Wrexham.

‘It’s a Cinderella story’

A US couple joined hundreds of fans who set up camp in a pub car park alongside the Racecourse Ground, having taken time out from a holiday in Ireland to experience the celebrations for a club they discovered during lockdown.

“With COVID happening all around the world we heard this story and we watched them on the streaming services,” said Robin Beattie. “We fell in love with it.”

“We happened to be on vacation in Dublin and said, ‘Let’s hop on over’. We’re very happy to see the excitement in the town. It’s a Cinderella story. We love it.”

It will be down to Phil Parkinson to advise the celebrity owners on what realistic reinforcements are likely to be needed for next season.

Asked about the club’s transfer plans for the summer window, McElhenney said: “We defer to Phil. We are actively talking about that right now. I know for a fact he feels as though we have a very strong side.

A sea of red and white as fans celebrate Wrexham and its star owners

Tonight, thousands of fans lined the streets of Wrexham to catch a glimpse of the team and its star owners during an open top bus parade.

The route was turned into sea of red and white by supporters of all ages. Some waved flags, while others held flares aloft, all anxiously waiting for the three buses to come into sight.

When they did move off, slightly later than planned, the convoy was greeted with rapturous cheers – the kind of noise you’d expect on a match day.

On the first bus were the players with the trophy, while on the second, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney came into view, waving as they went along.

The pair have brought investment and international attention to the club, but it’s clear they’ve also reignited a strong sense of local pride too.

“What these two guys have done to team and the town, absolutely brilliant,” one fan told me, while another said, “with the bigger budget we’ll be able to attract better players”.

A woman from Reynold’s native Canada explained she’s been supporting Wrexham since 2000, when she first moved here. But it’s only in the last year that her family realised who the club were because they’d seen them in the Disney documentary series: Welcome to Wrexham.

Outside The Turf, a pub in the shadow of the team’s Racecourse Ground, landlord Wayne Jones was just as proud.

“Wrexham’s not alone as a town that’s struggled in the last decade or so. Austerity has kicked in. You know what this does do, is it brings people into the town, it gets people spending. It gets businesses earning a little bit more which gets us jobs, and everybody knows the knock-on effect of that.”

“No decision that we have made over the last two years hasn’t kept the future in mind, so we never make a short-term decision.

“Any player that we have signed, we have signed to at least a three-year deal, except for one [goalkeeper Ben Foster].

“He is the guy we are going to work on, but other than that, I think we have a very strong side.”

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Deadpool star Reynolds stressed Wrexham’s long-term future would always remain front and centre.

“Ultimately, like any business, you want it to be able to self-perpetuate and continue growing. You don’t want to lose money, but I don’t think either of us are in this to make money either,” he said.

“It’s just about growing the best possible club and finding value in any place that we can find value, whether that is financial or emotional, sometimes it can be indistinguishable.”

North Wales Police had warned fans to support the club safely by spreading themselves out along the 3.5-mile route.

Superintendent Nick Evans encouraged people to “take advantage of the whole parade route to avoid any potential overcrowding”.

“There will be plenty of room for everyone to catch sight of the parade on its hour-long journey through Wrexham,” he added.

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Wrexham AFC chief executive Fleur Robinson said that it was an opportunity to thank the community of Wrexham “for their incredible support”.

“We are looking forward to commemorating a truly memorable and record-breaking season together,” she added.

Wrexham Council’s lead member for the economy and re-generation, Cllr Nigel Williams, said it was “a fantastic momentous occasion for Wrexham”.

Entertainment

Robin Williams’s daughter begs people to stop sending her AI videos of her father

Published

17 hours ago

October 7, 2025

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Robin Williams's daughter begs people to stop sending her AI videos of her father

The daughter of late actor Robin Williams has begged people to stop sending her AI-generated “slop” of her father.

“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” actor and director Zelda Williams wrote on Instagram on Monday.

“To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to ‘this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that’s enough’, just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening.”

She described the videos as “disgusting, over-processed hotdogs” made from the lives of human beings.

“You’re […] shoving them down someone else’s throat hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross,” she wrote.

It’s not the first time Williams has written about the impact of people sending her content about her father on social media.

In 2020, on the anniversary of her father’s death, Williams posted on Instagram saying:

“While I am constantly touched by all of your boundless continued love for him, some days it can feel a bit like being seen as a roadside memorial – a place, not a person – where people drive past and leave their sentiments to then go about their days comforted their love for him was witnessed.”

“But sometimes, that leaves me emotionally buried under a pile of others’ memories instead of my own.”

The death of Robin Williams in 2014, an actor and comedian known for his quick wit and wisdom, triggered a global outpouring of grief and tributes to the star still frequently surface on social media to this day.

In 2023, Zelda appealed for the end of AI-generated content, saying in a widely-reported post on Instagram:

“I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad. This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real.”⁠
⁠
“I’ve already heard AI used to get his ‘voice’ to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings.”

Entertainment

Author Dame Jilly Cooper has died

Published

2 days ago

October 6, 2025

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Author Dame Jilly Cooper has died, her publisher has said.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Dame Jilly Cooper, DBE who died on Sunday morning, after a fall, at the age of 88,” a statement said.

The Queen paid tribute to Dame Jilly, calling her a “legend” who was a “wonderfully witty and compassionate friend”.

The best-selling author was renowned for her raunchy, so-called “bonkbuster” novels, which portrayed the scandals and sex lives of wealthy country social circles, including Rivals, Riders and Polo.

She was praised for her blend of risqué storylines and critique of Britain’s class system, personified by showjumping lothario Rupert Campbell-Black.

Her children Felix and Emily said: “Mum was the shining light in all of our lives. Her love for all of her family and friends knew no bounds.

“Her unexpected death has come as a complete shock.

“We are so proud of everything she achieved in her life and can’t begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all around us.”

Dame Jilly was propelled to commercial success in the 1980s, and sold 11 million copies of her books during her more than fifty-year career.

Last year, Rivals was adapted into a successful TV series, which she worked on as an executive producer.

Tributes to author who created ‘a whole new genre’

Dame Jilly was a long-standing friend of the Queen.

In a statement released by Buckingham Palace, she said: “I was so saddened to learn of Dame Jilly’s death last night.

“Very few writers get to be a legend in their own lifetime but Jilly was one, creating a whole new genre of literature and making it her own through a career that spanned over five decades.

“In person she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many – and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen’s Reading Room Festival where she was, as ever, a star of the show.

“I join my husband the King in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family.

“And may her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs.”

The author’s many fans included former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who said the books offered “escapism”.

‘Dame Jilly defined culture’

Her agent Felicity Blunt said: “The privilege of my career has been working with a woman who has defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over fifty years ago.”

She added: “You wouldn’t expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time, but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things – class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility.”

The executive producers of the Disney+ adaptation, Rivals, said they are “broken-hearted” and “her legacy will endure”.

Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Alex Lamb added: “Jilly was and always will be one of the world’s greatest storytellers, and it has been the most incredible honour to have been able to work with her to adapt her incredible novels for television.”

As tributes rolled in on Monday, TV presenter Kirsty Allsopp wrote on X: “I know 88 is a good age, but this is very sad news.

“A British institution, funny, enthusiastic and self-deprecating, we don’t see enough of it these days.”

Her publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said: “Jilly may have worn her influence lightly, but she was a true trailblazer.

“As a journalist she went where others feared to tread, and as a novelist she did likewise.

“With a winning combination of glorious storytelling, wicked social commentary and deft, lacerating characterisation, she dissected the behaviour, bad mostly, of the English upper middle classes with the sharpest of scalpels.”

The ‘unholy terror’

Born in Essex in 1937, Jilly Cooper came from a Yorkshire family known for newspaper publishing and politics.

Her writing career began in 1956 as a junior reporter on the Middlesex Independent, covering everything from parties to football.

She had said she was known as the “unholy terror” at school, and was sacked from 22 jobs before finding her way into book publishing.

Dame Jilly started writing stories for women’s magazines in 1968, and found her break in 1969 when The Sunday Times published a story on being an ”undomesticated” homemaker. It gave rise to a column that lasted over 13 years.

In 2019 she won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print lifetime achievement award, and in 2024 was made a dame for her services to literature and charity.

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Entertainment

Robbie Williams forced to cancel world tour gig in ‘interests of public safety’

Published

3 days ago

October 5, 2025

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Robbie Williams forced to cancel world tour gig in 'interests of public safety'

Robbie Williams has said he is “deeply sorry” his concert in the Turkish city of Istanbul has had to be cancelled “in the interests of public safety”.

The former Take That singer said it was his “dream” to perform at Atakoy Marina on Tuesday but the decision by city authorities to cancel the show “was beyond our control”.

Williams’ Britpop world tour began in May and has taken him to cities including London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Helsinki and Athens.

The 51-year-old Angels singer said in a post on Instagram to his 3.7m followers: “The last thing I would ever want to do is to jeopardise the safety of my fans – their safety and security come first.

“We were very excited to be playing Istanbul for the first time, and purposely chose the city as the final show of the Britpop tour.

“To end this epic run of dates in front of my Turkish fans was my dream, given the close connections my family have with this wonderful country.

“To everyone in Istanbul who wanted to join the 1.2 million people who have shared this phenomenal tour this year with us, I am deeply sorry. We were so looking forward to this show, but the decision to cancel it was beyond our control.”

Williams is still expected to perform a small ticketed gig on Thursday at Camden’s Dingwalls venue in London.

He will run through his upcoming album Britpop, which is yet to be released, in full, with his first solo LP, Life Thru A Lens.

After leaving Take That in 1995, Williams released his chart-topping debut album in 1997, and has achieved seven UK number one singles and 15 UK number one albums.