Last month, soap veteran Helen Worth announced she was stepping down from the long-running ITV show after 50 years of playing Gail.
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Since then, speculation has been rife about the nature of her exit, with Corrie boss Iain MacLeod insisting the character will be given a “happy ending”.
“It didn’t feel like killing her off would be right,” he told the Daily Star. “Gail’s exit is a brilliant story. I thought, ‘What do the viewers want to see?’.
“Gail has had a hard life. She had a difficult childhood [and] disastrous marriages. So, we thought what viewers really want is a happy ending for her, so that’s what we’re doing.”
The Sun previously claimed that Gail’s departure would involve the return of her ex-husband, Martin Platt, the father of her youngest son David.
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And on Wednesday morning, ITV confirmed that actor Sean Wilson would be reprising his role as Martin as part of Gail’s exit storyline.
Sean Wilson is back on the cobbles as Martin Platt
Sean said: “We’ll have a few months to catch up with Martin and Gail again, following the ebbs and flows of the unfolding storyline.
“Playing Martin has been a joy since day one and in a way, I’ll be slipping back to where I left off, which no doubt will throw a spanner into the heart of the Platt family. It’s just like slipping on an old and comfortable jumper from the back of the wardrobe – I’m looking forward to reuniting with my TV family.”
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Helen Worth previously said of her decision to leave Coronation Street: “This year felt like the perfect time to leave the show after celebrating 50 years in the most wonderful job on the most wonderful street in the world,” she said.
“I made the decision at the start of the year and spoke to the producers who were very kind and understanding. I have been truly blessed to have been given the most incredible scripts week in week out, and to have worked with fantastic actors, directors and a brilliant crew.”
Helen in the early years of her time on Coronation Street
Over the course of the last five decades, Corrie viewers have seen Gail at the centre of numerous huge plotlines, most notably her daughter Sarah-Louise’s teenage pregnancy, an attempted murder attempt by her ex-husband Richard Hillman and her Tudor-esque six marriages.
In 2014, Helen was honoured with an Outstanding Contribution prize at the National Television Awards, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of her time on Corrie.
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She was also recognised with an MBE last year for her services to drama.
This article has been amended to correct the name of Gail’s third husband.
Recounting her first reactions to his character, the Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion star recalled:. “The Chandler character, when I read it, I went, ‘Oh, they have a gay character, that’s good’.
“And so, at the table read, I just did a double take at him, ‘Oh my God’. I never even in a million years could have envisioned anyone playing the character like that – and with his own rhythm and everything. It’s his own.”
Conan agreed that Matthew had “impeccable timing”.
The late night talk show host, who dated Lisa from 1988 to 1993, also remembered feeling a tad “jealous” over hearing Lisa gushing at just how funny Matthew was, before he eventually found out for himself.
During the conversation, Lisa explained how she previously struggle to watch herself in Friends when it was on TV, but was able to start watching again after her co-star’s death “because it wasn’t about me”.
“It had to do with him for some reason. And so, I have started watching Friends,” she said. “There are marathons on, and I have spent, at times, since he died, all day long watching the show.”
Elsewhere in their conversation, Lisa doubled down on one of her biggest bug-bears from her time during filming for the show, confessing that she was “irritated” by audience laughter during filming.
While promoting the single, Jade has said her song is intended to represent the highs and lows she’s experienced during her 13 years in the public eye.
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One lyric in particular, “sold my soul to a psycho”, has been interpreted by many as a jab at Simon Cowell, whose now-defunct record label, Syco, she and her bandmates were signed to for almost a decade after winning The X Factor in 2011.
Responding to the lyric, a representative for Simon Cowell’s entertainment company told the Daily Mail: “The entire team who worked incredibly hard behind the scenes with Little Mix to help make the group a success would, I’m sure, always continue to wish them solo success.”
Little Mix performing in front of Simon Cowell on The X Factor in 2017
Summers/Thames/Syco/Shutterstock
Jade previously said: “[Angel Of My Dreams] is about how obsessed I am with the industry – so there are lyrics like ‘love when you call me a star’ – but also there’s the dark side that comes with that. It’s not as glam as it seems.”
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The track opens with a sample of Sandie Shaw’s Eurovision-winning Puppet On A String, of which Jade said: “In the beginning of our career you do think you are this puppet, but at the same time it isn’t true – we wrote a lot of our songs, and we were behind a lot of what we put out there. I resented that as a statement.
“So, it felt natural to take that and show that it can be true and untrue at the same time.”
Jade Thirlwall launched her solo career last week with her debut single Angel Of My Dreams
The Official Charts Company announced on Sunday that Angel Of My Dreams is currently on track to chart at number two in this weeks UK singles chart.
One of the writers behind Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String has given the thumbs up to former Little Mix star Jade Thirlwall’s use of the song on her debut solo single.
Phil Coulter co-wrote the hit with Bill Martin, eventually scoring the UK its first of five wins at the Eurovision Song Contest back in 1967.
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Last week, Jade debuted her new song Angel Of My Dreams, which opens with a distorted version of Puppet On A String, which is then sampled throughout the song.
Reacting to the news, Phil told BBC News NI he was “thrilled” at his song’s inclusion on Jade’s single.
Sandie Shaw performing Puppet On A String in 1967
ullstein bild Dtl. via ullstein bild via Getty Images
“I would love to tell you that I’m on speed dial with Little Mix and all of those hot producers, but in fact I was completely unaware until one of my kids and grandkids told me,” he joked, revealing his family assured him Jade’s song was getting “[good] reviews left, right and centre” and is “going to be the song of the summer”.
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Phil continued: “I made a point of listening to the song. I am delighted and very flattered and flabbergasted and surprised that I am part of this whole operation.”
“It’s very unusual. I have six kids – it didn’t happen too often that they would bask in the glory of their dad having music in the charts, in fact they would have been embarrassed, they would have preferred if I was an accountant,” he admitted.
“At this stage, if this does become the big hit of the summer, I am in grave danger of becoming cool. Secretly they might have been pleased but they didn’t express that too often, so I suppose now at this advanced stage for me to be seen to be trendy and cool, is something that I embrace.”
Puppet On A String was previously sampled by Lily Allen on her hit Alfie.
Puppet On A String co-writers Bill Martin and Phil Coulter
Bob Baker/Redferns
Jade revealed to Audacy last week: “Originally, the chorus [of Angel Of My Dreams] was me singing [Puppet On A String]. And then we re-wrote a chorus to go on top of it.
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“It probably did sound quite different initially, but the kind of chaos of it was always there. We knew that’s what we wanted to do… I wanted it to feel like there was a lot going on.”
She previously claimed she’d been trying to sample Puppet On A String on a track “for years”, and revealed: “In the beginning of our career you do think you are this puppet, but at the same time it isn’t true – we wrote a lot of our songs, and we were behind a lot of what we put out there I resented that as a statement.
“So it felt natural to take that and show that it can be true and untrue at the same time.”
The Official Charts Company revealed on Sunday that Angel Of My Dreams is currently on track to chart at number two in this weeks UK singles chart.
Check out the song for yourself in the video below:
Following a detective as they retrace steps, interview suspects and wander into gruesome crime scenes without even a hint of hand sanitiser. All of that while having a cheeky late night cup of tea? Can’t beat it.
That being said, how accurate are these shows in depicting what actually happens during an investigation? We know that it’s not quite as glossy as it is on screen, but are the important details factual?
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Well, not so much.
Digital Spy spoke with Sophie Harris, a forensic assistant apprentice who revealed that not only is most of it not factual, but for shows like Luther, even the premise is off.
Idris Elba as Luther
BBC Studios
In a lot of crime and detective shows, there is one person fronting the investigation who not only does the paperwork, but gets their hands dirty in the nitty gritty of the crime scenes and is responsible for speaking to witnesses and suspects.
Harris explained that this isn’t quite so straightforward in the real world, saying: “On a lot of crime dramas, they show everything being done by one or two people, but that’s not true. You have a first officer attending the scene who alerts other people about what’s going on.
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“After that, when forensics get involved, you’ll have a forensics scene investigator come, you’ll have crime scene coordinators, you’ll have all sorts of different people attending the scene.”
Another very satisfying plot point in many crime scenes is somebody being identified from a single fingerprint.
Usually, you’ll see one tech whizz sits in front of a screen, who scans the fingerprint and boom — we have our criminal.
Harris said: “On NCIS, I remember, they found a fingerprint and just popped it onto the system and then they got a suspect straight from that.
“But, you’ve got to be able to find a certain amount of characteristics on a fingerprint to be able to compare it to a mark, so it’s not that straightforward.”
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Reality is, as ever, a little more admin-heavy than fiction.
If you saw Longlegs over the weekend, the chances are you may have left the cinema with a few questions. “What did I just watch?” being one of them, and “Am I going to be able to sleep tonight?” potentially being another.
And then, of course, there’s the titular character’s name. Despite everything we do end up learning about Nicolas Cage’s Satan-worshipping serial killer, it’s never actually made clear where he got the name Longlegs from.
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Well, director Osgood Perkins – the brain behind Longlegs – has cleared things up. Sort of.
Asked by Variety where Longlegs’ name came from, Oz said: “We writers just like words. We like how certain words sound and look and shape and feel.”
“Yeah, it has daddy longlegs and a creepy-crawly aspect to it,” he continued. “But it also feels ’70s to me — almost like a Led Zeppelin song or someone would have on the side of their van, something groovy like that. It feels like a vintage word that people wouldn’t toss around much today.
“It positioned the movie in a weird place. You don’t get to fully understand it. It doesn’t fully fit, which is more alluring to me and creates a curiosity that I think is important.”
Osgood Perkins
via Associated Press
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Oz also revealed that the character of Longlegs is one that he’s had in the back of his mind for some time.
“[He] was a character that had tried to make himself fit into other projects that I had worked on,” the filmmaker said. “When you’re writing all the time and generating specs and no one’s paying you or you don’t have any source material, you’re making shit up all the time. You end up with a universe of things that are swirling around, and you try to pull them out and stick them in.
“Longlegs was an entity, this shabby – is he a birthday clown? Is he a puppet master? Does he deal with stuffed animals? Is it little pianos? You start to wonder about this person who comes to your kid on their birthday and you’re in another room and you don’t know they’re interacting and that’s weird.
“He doesn’t abduct the kids because we’ve seen that 1,000 times before. He kind of talks to them. You start to be curious about that.”
Nicolas Cage at the premiere of Longlegs last week
via Associated Press
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Oz added: “When I decided that I was going to try for a serial killer procedural that was going to be something else, I needed a bad guy. Longlegs was like, ‘I’ll do it’.
“In your drawer of ideas, one of them says, ‘Put me in, coach’. And in goes Longlegs.”
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Shannen’s publicist confirmed to People magazine on Sunday morning: “It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty. On Saturday, 13 July, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease.
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“The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace.”
Shannen began her career as a child actor in the early 1980s, before landing her breakout role as Brenda Walsh in Beverly Hills, 90210.
Beverly Hills 90210 stars Tori Spelling, Jennie Garth, Gabrielle Carteris and Shannen Doherty in 1990
Aaron Rapoport via Getty Images
In 1998, she landed her other most memorable part, as Prue Halliwell in the supernatural drama Charmed. After three years, she exited the show in 2001.
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Shannen’s other most notable on-screen credits included the cult teen movie Heathers, the 80s comedy Girls Just Want To Have Fun and the thrillers Fortress and Darkness Of Man, the latter of which was released earlier this year.
She also reprised her role as Brenda Walsh in the spin-offs 90210 and BH90210.
Shannen Doherty (centre) with Charmed co-stars Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs
Frank Ockenfels/Spelling/Kobal/Shutterstock
Shannen was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, and announced two years later that she was in remission.
However, in 2020, she shared that the disease had returned, and her condition was said to be stage four
She said of her illness earlier this year: “Listen, I can die today, I can die in 20 years, I don’t know. I can die walking outside of my house … Or I can die of cancer.
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“But all I can do is leave each day in as much as a positive manner with hope as I can and embrace it and feel like, ‘Wow, I get to wake up again today, what can I do?’”
Kesha has a badass message for the body shamers who slammed her appearance.
The Grammy-nominated singer, reacted to the rude comments social media users made about her physique in a spicy Instagram post last week.
“I didn’t think in 2024 people still body shamed but i am so proud of my body. She’s been through a lot,” Kesha wrote in the 7, post alongside pics of her posing in a black string bikini on the beach.
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“She’s torn her acl on stage and finished the show. She’s held my fucking broken heart together.”
The Die Young star added to the haters that their unkind words actually make her feel “very powerful”.
“To those who think you’re shaming me, you’re actually making me feel very powerful,” she added. “So, to you, i hope you one day feel whole enough to not tear other women down. In the mean time, hate me harder bitch.”
Kesha’s three million-plus followers jumped into the comments section to shower her with support amid the negativity from internet trolls.
“Be proud. You’re beautiful. The people hating are the ones hiding an anonymous photo and living in a basement while you’re out here thriving,” one person wrote.
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Another said: “Anybody who hates on your body needs glasses.”
“You are beautiful!!! Beautiful person, beautiful body and beautiful soul. Haters gonna hate because they are jealous. You are a light in this world,” someone else commented. “Keep shining bright!!”
Kesha previously shared in an essay in Teen Vogue that she’d been bullied by body shamers as a kid and wrote candidly about recovering from an eating disorder.
“When I think about the kind of bullying I dealt with as a child and teen, it seems almost quaint compared with what goes on today,” she wrote in the 2017 piece. “The amount of body-shaming and baseless slut-shaming online makes me sick.”
“I know from personal experience how comments can mess up somebody’s self-confidence and sense of self-worth,” Kesha added. “I have felt so unlovable after reading cruel words written by strangers who don’t know a thing about me.”
It’s been 20 years since Shaun Of The Dead arrived on screens and kick-started Edgar Wright’s iconic Cornetto Trilogy (later completed by Hot Fuzz and The World’s End).
The endlessly quotable, quintessentially British and laugh-out-loud zom-rom-com is an undisputed classic that still holds up two decades later.
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It’s also the movie in which the world got to know the loveable comedic duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who star in the zombie apocalypse comedy as a directionless salesman and his lazy roommate, who must ward off an invasion by any means necessary.
If you’re already planning your latest re-watch, here are the behind-the-scenes secrets you probably didn’t know…
It was inspired by an episode of Edgar Wright’s sitcom with Simon Pegg
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The whole concept of the Shaun Of The Dead was inspired by an episode of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s sitcom Spaced. In the episode titled Art, Simon’s character stays up all night playing the video game Resident Evil, when he starts to hallucinate a zombie invasion.
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“I wrote an episode of Spaced where my character fights zombies in his flat. We had such a fun time shooting it, we thought we ought to make a zombie movie – like it was that easy,” Simon Pegg told The Guardian in 2020. “We really were so naive. We thought we could do anything.”
The cast and crew did not have high hopes for the film’s success
Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright in 2004
Richard Young/Shutterstock
It’s hard to imagine now when we look back at the cult success of the film, but Shaun Of The Dead was not at all guaranteed to be a critical or commercial success.
“I didn’t know if anyone was going to see this film apart from my mum,” Simon Pegg told GQ in a recent retrospective.
Edgar Wright agreed: “I don’t think we had any thought of what it would be beyond the UK. And even that was like, please let it go down well in the UK… everything that came afterwards, travelling around the world with it, was a life-changing bonus.”
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The team were keen not to water down the Britishness of Shaun Of The Dead
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Shaun Of The Dead
Big Talk/Kobal/Shutterstock
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Simon Pegg said the success of the film was a “vindication of our intentions” to make the film “very, very British”.
“We didn’t make any concessions to sort of transatlantic-ism,” he added.
Movie execs wanted more A-listers in the cast
We of course now know Nick Frost and Simon Pegg as an inseparable comedic duo, but apparently industry folk were confused as to why director Edgar wasn’t vying for bigger names.
“There were some times people… didn’t understand necessarily why Simon and Nick together was so important,” Edgar told GQ. “There were a couple of times [where they said], ‘Ed is like the funniest part of the film. Why wouldn’t you go with somebody bigger?’.”
He added: “It was literally that thing of, like, ‘Could you get an American in this part? Could Jack Black play this part?’. And we were like, ‘No, it has to be Nick’.”
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And some pretty big names were actually thrown into the mix
Speaking during a recent oral history with IndieWire, Edgar recalled how they were asked to look at “casting up” to get some more high calibre names involved for the roles of Shaun’s girlfriend Liz and mother Barbara, which were written specifically for Kate Ashfield and Penelope Wilton.
“We met Kate Winslet about playing Liz and she liked it, but ultimately didn’t do it,” Edgar recalled.
Kate Winslet pictured in 2003
via Associated Press
Another British acting legend was very nearly involved
Two-time Oscar nominee and (at the time) future winner Helen Mirren was also considered for the role of Barbara.
In an excerpt from the book You’ve Got Red On You – about the making of Shaun Of The Dead – published in Rolling Stone, Edgar recalled the acting icon’s “brilliant” response.
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“She read the script and said, ‘I’m passing on the role of Barbara. I would only do the movie if I got to play Ed.’ Her reason was, ‘Well, Ed’s the funniest part.’”
As we know, it was Nick who went on to portray Ed, but we can’t help but admire The Queen actor’s resolve.
Helen Mirren in 2004
Jim Smeal/BEI/Shutterstock
Shaun Of The Dead ended up being really popular with some Hollywood heavy-hitters
Speaking to GQ, Edgar reeled off the names of people in the industry who supported the film with press quotes: Quentin Tarantino, Stephen King, Sam Raimi, Guillermo Del Toro, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Darabont being among them.
To say thank you, they even made each of them personalised versions of Shaun’s badge with their own names on it.
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A legend of the zombie genre was particularly impressed by the film
The cast of Shaun Of The Dead
Oliver Upton/Big Talk/Kobal/Shutterstock
Shaun Of The Dead was clearly an homage to the zombie genre, so much so that it impressed Night Of The Living Dead director George A. Romero.
In a 2008 interview with CinemaBlend, the director recalled: “So I get this message from these guys, and I didn’t know who they were. Some cat named Edgar Wright: ‘I made this movie, I hope you like it.’
“So next thing I know, some cat from Universal shows up like a guy with a bomb suitcase, the fucking print is chained to him. He starts saying, ‘We want to show you this movie at the local theatre. We arranged it.’ I see this movie a little too dark, but it was hilarious, man! And I flipped for it.”
That record-tossing scene actually required artist’s permission
One of the most memorable scenes from the film sees Shaun and Ed toss (very carefully chosen) vinyl records at two approaching zombies. It turns out they couldn’t just launch any old album, they actually had to get permission from the artists.
Edgar recalled Smooth Operator singer Sade Adu being particularly generous with her sign off for Diamond Life being one of the chosen albums. “It’s a tough thing to get someone on board [by] saying, ‘We want to trash your album!’” Edgar said in a quote from You’ve Got Red On You.
“Sade, who I’ve never met, signed her release and was down for it. To me, she’s the coolest person ever. It’s like, you don’t know us from Adam, we actually break your record in the shot, and you let us clear your likeness. That’s amazing.”
But it was a hard “no” from one British music legend
The scene also depicts the pair deciding which Prince albums they should use as weapons, but it was nearly David Bowie at the centre of those deliberations.
David Bowie on stage in 2004
via Associated Press
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“The only other bit that we wrote, as far as I recall, is at one point we did David Bowie albums,” Edgar told GQ. “I think it was like: “Hunky Dory, no. Ziggy Stardust, no. The Labyrinth soundtrack…”
“I think we reached out to David Bowie’s publicist, and I heard something secondhand that he was touchy about Labyrinth, so that was a no.”
But they had more luck when it came to another musical sequence
Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen isn’t the most obvious choice to soundtrack a violent zombie assault, but director Edgar was a huge fan of the iconic band. Thankfully, they were able to get the sign-off for this one.
“We choreographed the entire fight to that song, which was a real worry because it hadn’t been cleared for use and could have ended up being way too expensive,” Simon told The Guardian. “So we wrote a begging letter to Queen guitarist Brian May and he was lovely about it.”
They let bored local kids be in the film
Edgar recalled to IndieWire how there was a “group of disgruntled teenagers who were throwing stones at the camera because we were on their turf”.
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He went on: “In an attempt to make peace with the teenagers, we promised that they could be in the film. A couple of days later, they went through makeup, dressed up as zombies and they’re in the film — you can see them when Shaun is next to the garden fence!”
And just in case you were wondering about the significance of the Cornetto…
Nick Frost enjoying a Cornetto on the set of Shaun Of The Dead
Oliver Upton/Big Talk/Kobal/Shutterstock
When Nick’s character needs a Cornetto to help him nurse a hangover, this was actually borrowed from director Edgar’s real life.
“The appearance of the Cornetto ice cream in Shaun Of The Dead is because it was a hangover cure for me in college and because it seemed like a funny thing for Nick Frost’s character to want on a Sunday morning,” Edgar shared in a piece with Focus Features.
“It’s popped up again because we had gotten free Cornettos at the Shaun Of The Dead premiere, so we thought if we wrote Cornetto into Hot Fuzz, then we would get them at that premiere as well. For some reason we did not, and I felt let down by the lack of free ice cream but by that point it was too late.”
The Wall Street star joined a growing chorus of Democrats on Wednesday when, during an appearance on The View, he said the mounting question about whether Biden should drop out of the race is “a tough one” — before admitting to feeling “deeply, deeply concerned”.
“I adore the guy,” Douglas, who held a fundraiser in his home for Biden in April, told the panel. “Fifty years of public service, a wonderful guy, and this just happens to be one of these elections that is just so crucial, and it’s really hard.
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“I don’t worry necessarily today or tomorrow, but a year down the line, I worry. I am concerned.”
Douglas said he had been “looking at some politicians who spoke about Biden dropping out last week and all of a sudden, this week, now they’re hedging their bets”.
He added that “we need some courage” in the matter from “both parties.”
Biden’s disastrous performance against Trump in the presidential debate last month has spurred five Democratic members of Congress, as well as longtime strategists like James Carville, to urge Biden to bow out — and invigorate voters with a new presidential nominee.
Douglas agreed with his fellow Oscar winner on Wednesday — and said the Gravity star had made “a valid point”.
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President Biden, seen here delivering remarks at the 2024 NATO Summit on Wednesday.
Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images
“I’m deeply, deeply concerned,” he continued on the show. “I mean, especially it’s difficult because the Democrats have a big bench, they’ve got a lot of heavy hitters, a lot of talent. And I do worry because with the debate … I mean, it was relatively simple.”
“First of all, they should have just told the president to stand up, put a little makeup on for the debate … and then where to look, and call the other guy [a convicted felon],” he continued. “And just don’t deal with all of your facts — just deal with [Trump’s] lies.”
A post-debate CNN poll showed 67% percent of viewers felt Trump performed better than Biden, who recently attempted to reassure voters he’s up for the job with an interview on ABC News. The president maintained on Monday that he is “not going anywhere”.
