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Rumours Madonna, Dua Lipa and Coldplay will headline Glastonbury next year are “untrue”, according to the festival’s organiser.

On Saturday evening, the Mail on Sunday reported the three acts were set to top the bill on the Pyramid Stage in June.

But Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis said the story was not correct.

She wrote on Instagram on Sunday morning: “As always, there is much speculation and excitement about who is playing at Glastonbury.

“We are working on the line-up day and night at the moment, but it’s still changing every day.

“The story about our confirmed headliners is untrue.

“As always, we love your enthusiasm and guesswork – but accurate news on headliners will be with you sometime in the new year!”

Read more:
How to get a Glastonbury ticket in 2024

Dua Lipa. Pic: AP
Image:
Dua Lipa. Pic: AP

The report said Dua Lipa would headline on Friday while Coldplay – who have headlined four times previously – would take the Saturday slot.

Madonna would close out the festival on Sunday, the newspaper said.

If true, it would have been the first time two female artists have featured in the premier spot.

The festival was criticised for having all-male headliners last year with Arctic Monkeys, Guns N’ Roses and Sir Elton John.

Next year’s festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset will take place from 26 to 30 June.

Last month Ms Eavis told Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw’s Sidetracked podcast the legend slot on Sunday afternoon would be a female artist.

Addressing last year’s lack of female headliners, Ms Eavis added: “I’ve always been really passionate about gender split [on festival line-ups] and I think, actually, our problem was that I’d been so outspoken about it that having a year when there wasn’t a female sent people a bit mad – or some people.

“And we did have a female – she pulled out and we replaced them with Guns N’ Roses. But everyone knows that it’s top of my list.

“It is difficult with female artists because there aren’t enough headliners. But we’re also creating them.

“We’re putting the bands and female artists on smaller stages and bringing them through all the time. And who knows? Next year we might get two. And certainly, I can say that the legend is female.”

Coldplay in concert at the Manchester Ethiad Stadium as part of their Music Of The Spheres World Tour. Picture date: Wednesday May 31, 2023

A sale for the first of the event’s roughly 135,000 tickets was supposed to begin on Thursday but was pushed back “out of fairness” due to some confusion over the registration process.

“Unfortunately, it has come to light that some individuals hoping to buy tickets for 2024 have discovered after Monday’s registration deadline that they are no longer registered, despite believing they were,” the organisers said.

“Out of fairness to those individuals, we will be re-opening the window for registration at 12 noon on Monday 6 November. It will remain open until 5pm on Monday 13 November.”

Standard tickets for the festival cost £355 (plus a £5 booking fee) – £20 more than this year’s event. An additional fee will be added for the coach transfer.

The festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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GB News fined £100,000 by Ofcom over Rishi Sunak programme

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GB News fined £100,000 by Ofcom over Rishi Sunak programme

GB News has been fined £100,000 for breaking impartiality rules over a programme featuring Rishi Sunak, Ofcom has said.

It comes after the media watchdog announced in May that the show called People’s Forum: The Prime Minister had breached broadcasting guidelines.

The programme featured then prime minister Mr Sunak answering questions from a studio audience and a presenter.

GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos said the fine was a “direct attack on free speech and journalism in the United Kingdom”.

“We believe these sanctions are unnecessary, unfair and unlawful,” he added.

The hour-long show, which aired on 12 February, prompted 547 complaints to Ofcom.

The regulator found earlier this year that while featuring Mr Sunak was fine in principle, “due weight” should have been given to an “appropriately wide range of significant views” other than the Conservatives.

Rishi Sunak in Chequers in October 2023. Pic: PA
Image:
Pic: PA

Ofcom said Mr Sunak “had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election,” which it recorded as a breach of impartiality rules.

The watchdog said “given the seriousness and repeated nature of this breach,” it had imposed a £100,000 financial penalty.

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GB News was also directed to “broadcast a statement of our findings against it, on a date and in a form determined by us”.

The TV channel is challenging the breach decision by judicial review and Ofcom will not enforce the sanction decision until those proceedings are concluded.

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Mr Frangopoulos insisted the show featuring Mr Sunak “was an important piece of public interest programming”, and that “appropriate steps” were taken to ensure due impartiality.

He added: “It was designed to allow members of the public to put their own questions directly to leading politicians.

“GB News chooses to be regulated and we understand our obligations under the Code.

“But, equally, Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of expression and apply its rules fairly and lawfully.”

Ofcom previously found GB News violated due impartiality rules in March over five programmes that featured Tory MPs as presenters.

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Comedian Marcus Brigstocke reveals he was addicted to pornography

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Comedian Marcus Brigstocke reveals he was addicted to pornography

Comedian Marcus Brigstocke has revealed he became addicted to pornography and received help to overcome the issue.

The TV star discussed the issue on The Hidden 20% podcast, saying he became addicted after he had an affair which led to the end of his first marriage.

Brigstocke, who has regularly been a panellist on Have I Got News For You and featured in the film Love Actually, said the “shame” from his affair “led to a lot of very dysfunctional behaviour”.

He told the podcast: “I’d stayed sober from drugs, alcohol, and my compulsive eating disorder, but I had become addicted to porn.

“I really had no idea that I was addicted to it. I sort of thought I looked at a normal amount of porn. Well, the normal amount of porn today is not like a normal amount of porn… before the internet.”

Brigstocke, 51, told host Ben Branson that most porn addicts “were addicted from about the age of 11”, saying it “profoundly alters your brain chemistry”.

“There are so many people with different depths of addiction to porn and to online social media,” he added. “But porn is the most toxic.”

The comedian said he would watch porn “all night, for the entire night”, before he received help to end his addiction.

Read more from Sky News:
GB News fined £100,000 by Ofcom over Sunak show
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Brigstocke is now married to comedian Rachel Parris and the couple host a podcast called How Was It For You?

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Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell talks nerves, fame, and The Diplomat

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Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell talks nerves, fame, and The Diplomat

Rufus Sewell may seem to perfectly personify calm and confident characters in the acting world, but he admits he still struggles with public speaking.

“There’s nothing more terrifying,” he tells Sky News. “I remember having to do a reading at a church when I was very young and I was so nervous. I was at drama school, so people knew I wanted to be an actor, and as I was walking up towards the lectern I heard someone say, ‘this will be good’, and I completely froze.”

After portraying Prince Andrew in Scoop, which told the story of the royal’s infamous Newsnight interview in 2019, the British actor can now be seen on screen playing political superstar Hal Wyler in the second series of The Diplomat.

 Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew in the new Nextflix drama Scoop.
Pic: Netflix/PA
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Sewell also recently played Prince Andrew in Scoop. Pic: Netflix/PA

Despite his ability to inhabit his characters, both real and fictional, the “idea of speaking as myself” he says has always been “a horror”.

Even playing confident characters is nerve-wracking, he says, as it creates an internal battle between himself and the role. “I naturally, if left to my own devices, become very, very self-conscious, so I have to find ways to trick myself out of it.”

In The Diplomat, Sewell’s character is the estranged ex-husband of Kate Wyler, the US ambassador to the UK, played by Keri Russell.

Pic: Netflix
Image:
Pic: Netflix

She spends the first season navigating political minefields trying to prevent a war before it happens, after a British aircraft carrier is blown up off the coast of Iran.

The series ended on a cliffhanger that saw Hal and other political figures involved in a car explosion in London, and season two picks up following the threads of evidence left in the aftermath.

Russell credits the show’s creator, Deborah Cahn, with making the series such a thriller.

“That is the gold of our show, 100%,” she says. “She has this uncanny ability to portray political intrigue and the world of diplomacy, but also has this innate understanding of what makes people human and all the idiosyncratic weird things that make people normal.

“Even though they’re in this really seemingly powerful position, they still have bad days and are cranky, or get mad when their food is the wrong thing, or when they have to wear something they don’t like, and they still deal with all the embarrassments of daily life.”

Season two of The Diplomat out now on Netflix

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