Some individuals fancy they may present emergency medical care, just by dint of watching Casualty for a few years. Others – fans of The Bear, maybe – consider they may run a Michelin-starred kitchen. However there’s no career which has impressed fairly as a lot armchair punditry as police work. And Blue Lights, the BBC’s Belfast-set saga, knew that, taking viewers proper again to the start and throwing them within the deep finish with a bunch of know-nothing new recruits.

A yr or so on from the occasions of Blue Lights’s first collection, our three protagonists are not fairly so recent to the scene. Grace (Siân Brooke) and Annie (Katherine Devlin) live collectively and each coping with difficult office situationships. Tommy (Nathan Braniff) in the meantime, is coping with his personal intramural flirtation, assembly Aisling (Dearbháile McKinney) for normal fry-up dates at a rest-stop between Belfast and Derry. Which makes the present sound all very romantic, aside from the truth that drug offences are on the rise within the capital, together with a resurgence of violence between loyalist teams. With the police pressure already stretched to breaking level, will the delicate peace in Belfast begin to fray?

A turf conflict is initiated by Lee (Seamus O’Hara) the beleaguered proprietor of a bar, The Loyal Pub, which sends the sirens screeching and the native underworld right into a cycle of assault and revenge. The intricacies of what proceeds from there are, at occasions, laborious to comply with – one thug seems very very similar to one other – however time after time, armed police are known as to take care of the escalating menace. “Don’t begin one thing we are able to’t end,” a senior officer tells the assembled troops; “don’t maintain again although,” one other provides. “Nicely, that’s crystal clear,” Stevie (Martin McCann) observes.

The place Line of Obligation was set in some consciously nameless metropolis – a type of nightmare imaginative and prescient of life in Midlands suburbia – Blue Lights is deeply invested in a way of place. Belfast, and Northern Eire, loom as characters in Declan Garden and Adam Patterson’s imaginative and prescient. It’s a metropolis nonetheless wrenched by division, the place marching bands come out in funeral processions, and the place the ghost of the late-Twentieth century nonetheless lurks. The generational spectre of violence hangs over the world: the aged keep in mind losses of the previous, adults wrestle to take care of the current second, and kids get their first style of future violence. A bleak imaginative and prescient, definitely, however altogether extra distinctive than Jed Mecurio’s sprawling Incognitoville.

All the identical, it’s laborious to not really feel a bit drained by the sheer predominance of organised crime narratives on British tv, not least when British streets really feel so dominated by a conspicuously disorganised crime. Blue Lights options its protagonists breaking apart safety rackets, foiling assassinations, and investigating gangland reprisals, slightly than – you understand – making an attempt to get a bunch of youngsters to cease harassing the poor bloke who guards the vapes in Tesco. “There’s gonna be conflict now,” Mags (Seána Kerslake), co-owner of the pub on the centre of the tensions, growls. The stakes are excessive, you see, not least as a result of that’s what the conventions of the fashionable cop drama demand.

At occasions, it seems like all these exhibits – The Responder, Bloodlands, The Fall, The Tower – exist in a multiverse. There are variations on type and setting however they cohabit a world, harnessing the ethical binary of cops and robbers. Certain, typically the police do issues which might be a bit felony, however the line is at all times drawn. Cop on one aspect, robber on the opposite. It’s, maybe, why the primary collection of Blue Lights virtually fully eschewed the – removed from black and white – subject of sectarian violence. “That’s the factor about this place,” Joyful (Paddy Jenkins) tells newly certified solicitor Jen (Hannah McClean). “Even in spite of everything these years, individuals suppose the reality is harmful.” It’s laborious to not really feel, then, like Blue Lights could be a extra distinctive and impressive, present if it have been barely much less preoccupied with regurgitating pre-existing tropes.

However as generic fare goes, Blue Lights is of the very best order. The performing and writing is first fee, and Brooke, significantly, is a terrific main woman. If the present lacks the narrative thrust to draw new viewers, it can undoubtedly fulfill those that have been already invested in Grace, Annie, and Tommy’s development via the ranks of the constabulary. However in a style begging for recent concepts, it’s a must to attempt somewhat more durable to face out.

Is it a stretch to name Blue Lights, which is again for season two, the UK’s reply to The Wire? Properly, sure. In all honesty that may be a bit a lot – it’s extra like a cross between The Wire and Holby Metropolis. However the police drama was one of many breakout hits of 2023 as a result of, beneath the soapy floor of its interactions between rookie cops, it has a clear-eyed, humane view of policing as an not possible job. No matter we would consider the pressure usually, a mixture of societal breakdown on the streets and corruption/mismanagement within the corridors of energy makes any try to hold a badge and keep order a futile gesture, like standing on a seaside attempting to mop away the tide. Because it was in Baltimore, so it’s in Belfast.

Blue Lights comes at this recipe for bracingly pessimistic drama from a selected angle, sitting itself because it does in trendy Northern Eire. We’re post-Troubles, which is to say that the schisms and resentments that brought on the Troubles are nonetheless there, being fastidiously – or maybe not so fastidiously – managed to forestall embers once more changing into flames. Season one revolved across the police’s battle with a neighborhood Republican crime household, the McIntyres, who it turned out have been being propped up by the British safety providers, that means any effort to do the easy work of arresting these criminals for committing crimes was met with the present’s insidious catchphrase, “double-oh bee”. Messing with MI5’s mysterious and doubtless misguided work was, for the standard bobby on the beat, out of bounds.

A 12 months on from the McIntyres’ fall, the area they left on the prime of Belfast’s drug-dealing hierarchy has been crammed by … we’re unsure. However by the top of the primary episode we all know that it’s not simply Catholics who’ve a difficulty with former troopers changing into crime bosses. But whereas Blue Lights as soon as handled medication as a mere side-effect of previous rivalries rumbling on, now they’re a stark image of society fragmenting. The primary two call-outs for our police constable pals are a tough sleeper mendacity in a park, lifeless from a heroin overdose, and a pharmacist being threatened by a younger man whose methadone prescription hasn’t come by means of. “These final six months,” says the pharmacist, cowering behind toughened glass, “it’s simply determined individuals screaming at me.”

The brand new realities of a troubled metropolis are summed up in a scene that follows the basic Blue Lights method. Two “peelers” in a squad automotive obtain information on their radios of a violent home disturbance. They nee-nah it over to the home in query. We maintain our breath as they enter, not realizing what peril lies in wait. Quickly, although, as a result of Blue Lights takes a rosy view of how resourceful and sympathetic particular person law enforcement officials are – nearly everybody on this fictional pressure is an idealistic champion of susceptible individuals – the cops have talked down and befriended a person who’s smashing up his residence as a result of he’s deep in private disaster. He’s not dangerous or harmful in any respect: the issue is that he has been ready months for a psychological well being evaluation. “Fuck’s sake,” says Constable Annie Conlon (Katherine Devlin). “Is all the pieces simply fucked?”

Its reward for plain talking is one factor that makes Blue Lights such rewarding drama, however the tough political truths are softened by a weak spot for that staple of escapist emergency-services soaps, the office romance. Annie is on patrol with new recruit Shane Bradley (Frank Blake) – she’s already loved by chance seeing him shirtless again on the station, and now he’s expertly defused a harmful scenario with sensitivity and crafty.

We will add Annie’s lust for Shane to a listing that, in season one, included a bootleg affair fuelled by disgrace, a profound love ended tragically by demise, and the fragile will-they-won’t-they of the 2 characters who nearly stand out as our favourites from a wonderful ensemble: Grace (Sian Brooke), a former social employee who insists on bringing her previous job’s mild methods into the more durable world of policing, and the extra skilled, extra cynical Stevie (Martin McCann). For a very long time, Grace has mocked Stevie’s behavior of consuming scrumptious selfmade canapes out of plastic containers within the automotive they journey in collectively – a scene within the new episode, the place she snaps open her personal Tupperware and gives him a deal with she’s inexpertly baked for him, is an unstated “I really like you” of the sort Blue Lights does so fantastically.

By the point the credit roll, although, any Grace/Stevie shippers have been smacked across the head by a correctly noticed actuality test about what the pair’s relationship is de facto primarily based on. In exhausting instances, Blue Lights continues to skip deftly between mild and darkish.

Censorship in America at the moment comes from each the left and the suitable, Salman Rushdie instructed 60 Minutes in his first main tv interview since he was attacked at a literary pageant in 2022. The author spoke out forward of the publication this week of his new e book, “Knife,” a deeply private exploration of his near-death expertise.

“There appears to be a form of rising orthodoxy, notably amongst younger individuals, that censorship … is an effective factor,” Rushdie instructed correspondent Anderson Cooper. 

The acclaimed creator mentioned the assault on free expression at the moment comes from completely different instructions. Beforehand, he defined, conservative voices had been those calling for books to be banned, together with people who focus on the position race has performed in historical past. However now, based on Rushdie, individuals on the left are simply as more likely to name for limits on free speech. 

“The factor that is completely different now’s that it is also coming from progressive voices,” he mentioned. “There are progressive voices saying that sure sorts of speech ought to be not permitted as a result of it offends towards this or that weak group.”

Rushdie mentioned that when speech is suppressed, the people who find themselves first impacted are sometimes minority teams.

“To help censorship in concept on behalf of weak teams is a really slippery slope,” Rushdie mentioned. “It could possibly result in the alternative of what you need.”

Censorship is a topic the acclaimed novelist is aware of properly. In 1989, Iran’s chief Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, a spiritual decree, towards Rushdie that ordered all Muslims to kill him. The controversy stemmed from his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which depicted a illustration of a personality likened to the Prophet Muhammed that the Ayatollah deemed “blasphemous.”

In 1990, 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace traveled to a secret location in London to talk with Rushdie, who was dwelling in hiding. On the time, Rushdie was optimistic he might reconcile together with his critics. 

“On this nation I do not imagine that there are very many individuals, truly, who’re significantly eager about doing me any hurt,” Rushdie mentioned on the time. “I do not imagine that is so in the US, both.” 

Regardless of his optimism, he would stay in hiding for nearly 9 extra years after that interview. 

In 1998, the Iranian regime mentioned they now not supported the fatwa to kill Rushdie, however threats towards the creator continued.

On an August day nearly two years in the past, Rushdie was on stage at a literary pageant in Chautauqua, New York, making ready to talk about the significance of defending writers whose lives are underneath menace. A person with a knife rushed the stage and stabbed him a number of instances in his face, neck, chest, and torso.

The attacker was a 24-year-old Muslim man from New Jersey who mentioned he’d solely learn a pair pages of “The Satanic Verses” and noticed a number of clips of the creator on YouTube. However that was sufficient for him to really feel that Rushdie had “attacked Islam.”

In his interview with 60 Minutes, the creator mentioned there may be worth in listening to from voices that offend as a result of they problem individuals.

“There’s now a form of offense trade,” Rushdie defined. “Offense has grow to be a facet of id politics. And my view is it’s extremely simple for a e book to cease offending you. You simply shut it.” 

At his core, Rushdie is a author. He says he is disheartened by individuals who solely know him from the threats to his life—not his lifetime of telling tales.

“My want to be a author was fully to do with the love of the facility of the creativeness, of imagining worlds, creating worlds for readers to inhabit and for his or her imaginations to interact with,” he mentioned. “And I want that they weren’t obscured by the shadow of this sort of occasion.”

Had the assault on his life been profitable, Rushdie mentioned being a author is how he would wish to be remembered. 

“I’ve the shelf of books,” he mentioned. “That is what I need individuals to take a look at. And hopefully a number of of them would possibly final.”

The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann. 

Former British and Commonwealth boxing champion Willie Limond died aged 45, his son Jake confirmed on Monday.

Limond held the light-weight Commonwealth title between 2006-07, the super-lightweight title from 2013-14 and the British super-lightweight belt in 2014.

Nonetheless boxing in his forties, he was as a consequence of face Joe Legal guidelines on Could 3. He final boxed in September 2023, when he misplaced by eighth-round stoppage to fellow Scot Ricky Burns.

Limond’s Glasgow-based gymnasium, St Andrew’s Sporting Membership, additionally confirmed the information on social media, saying: “Everybody at St Andrew’s Sporting Membership are shocked and deeply saddened on the lack of our pal, Willie Limond.

“Willie was not solely a legend of the game, however an infectious character who will likely be significantly missed by us all.

“Our ideas and prayers are with Jake, Drew, Macy and the remainder of the Limond household at the moment.”

The British Boxing Board of Management additionally paid tribute to Limond.

“The British Boxing Board of Management are very saddened to study of the tragic passing of former British and Commonwealth Champion Willie Limond,” a statement said.

“Our honest sympathies and ideas are with Willie’s household and pals at this troublesome time.”

Limond turned skilled in 1999 and received 42 of his 48 fights. He was concerned in excessive profile bouts towards Amir Khan, Erik Morales and Anthony Crolla.

Limond was stopped within the sixth spherical by Mexican nice Morales in Mexico Metropolis in 2010 and the Glasgow-based boxer gave Khan a fright of their 2007 encounter when he dropped the long run world champion within the sixth spherical. However Khan fought again and compelled him to retire in Spherical 8.

Data from ESPN’s Nick Parkinson contributed to this report.

Former world champion Josh Taylor says boxing “can be a duller place” with out Willie Limond, who has died aged 45.

Ex-British and Commonwealth light-welterweight champion Limond gained 42 of his 48 skilled fights from 1999 to 2023 – and 13 by knockout – though solely three bouts occurred after 2016.

4 of his losses have been to fighters who gained world titles – Amir Khan, Anthony Crolla, Erik Morales and Ricky Burns.

“It is a horrible day for Scottish sport,” Taylor advised BBC Scotland.

“The person on the whole was a larger-than-life character. He was all the time humorous. He was one in every of life’s good guys.

“It is such a tragic, tragic loss. Scotland’s misplaced one in every of its favorite sons, particularly in boxing. It is an enormous loss.”

Limond was initially a footballer, taking part in 5 occasions for Albion Rovers within the late Nineteen Nineties.

In his distinguished boxing profession he held the British super-featherweight, light-welterweight and light-weight titles in addition to the Commonwealth light-welterweight, WBU light-weight and IBO Inter-Continental light-weight crowns.

In a submit on social media, his son Jake mentioned his “dad handed away within the early hours of the morning”.

“He fought on for close to sufficient 10 days. Warrior,” he added on Instagram.

Limond fought countryman Burns in September, with the referee stopping the battle on the finish of the eighth spherical due to extreme blood from his nostril.

He introduced his retirement from the game afterwards however was set to face Joe Legal guidelines at Emirates Enviornment in Glasgow on 3 Might.

Legal guidelines posted on Instagram: “I am completely devastated. Willie simply wished to make a greater life for his household.

“Willie my outdated son, anticipate me on the pearly gates – we will get it on. Legends by no means die.”

Limond was present in an unresponsive state in a automotive in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, on 6 April and was taken to Monklands Hospital, the place he died. Police Scotland say there are not any suspicious circumstances.

Creator Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after Iran’s chief Ayatollah Khomeini referred to as for his assassination in 1989, declaring Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” blasphemous and an insult to Islam. After 10 years Rushdie got here out of hiding and moved to the US, the place he felt secure. Then, on Aug. 12, 2022, at a literary pageant in Chautauqua, New York, he was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. Rushdie was stabbed 15 instances and practically died. He misplaced his proper eye within the assault. He has come to phrases with the try on his life the one method he is aware of: by writing about it in his new e-book. “Knife” comes out this week.

Rushdie learn a number of excerpts from “Knife” for 60 Minutes.

“I might reply violence with artwork,” says creator Salman Rushdie. He initially did not wish to write his new e-book “Knife” in regards to the assault, however he felt he wanted to personal what occurred, refusing to be a sufferer. 

“It doesn’t matter what I’ve already written or might now write, I am going to at all times be the man who received knifed. The knife defines me. I am going to battle a battle towards that, however I think I’ll lose,” he writes. 

a”There was nothing supernatural about it. No ‘tunnel of sunshine.’ No feeling of rising out of my physique,” writes Rushdie, describing his near-death expertise in 2022 in his new e-book. “In reality, I’ve hardly ever felt so strongly related to my physique. My physique was dying, and it was taking me with it.”

“I don’t wish to use his identify on this account,” the creator writes of his 24-year-old assailant. In “Knife” Rushdie refers back to the attacker as “the A.” After the assault, he discovered the assailant had solely learn a few pages from his e-book, “The Satanic Verses,” in keeping with the New York Publish. 

“So it is you. Right here you might be.” These had been Rushdie’s first ideas as a person with a knife rushed in direction of him earlier than stabbing him. 

“It’s stated that Henry James’s final phrases had been ‘So it has come ultimately, the distinguished factor.’ Dying was coming at me, too, nevertheless it did not strike me as distinguished. It struck me as anachronistic,” says Rushdie.

Whereas speaking with 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper, Rushdie defined: “It felt like one thing popping out of the distant previous. And making an attempt to pull me again in time.” 

“There was the knife within the eye. That was the cruellest blow, and it was a deep wound. The blade went in all the way in which to the optic nerve, which meant there could be no risk of saving the imaginative and prescient. It was gone,” writes Rushdie.

After being stabbed 15 instances, Salman Rushdie’s face was slashed open. In his new e-book “Knife,” he writes his face appeared like “a sci-fi film particular impact.” He describes his eye as bulging out of its socket and hanging down on his face like a big soft-boiled egg. He writes: “the swelling was so unhealthy that the docs did not even know, in these first days, if I nonetheless had an eyelid. (I did.)”

Within the days after the assault, he did not acknowledge his personal reflection. “The lips of the person within the mirror don’t transfer. There’s a slash throughout the highest of his brow,” Rushdie writes. “Now he’s the person past the mirror and the mirror is behind him and darkish. He’s the stranger who has to play his half.”

If Salman Rushdie testifies towards his assailant in court docket, that is what he plans to say: “I discover I’ve little or no to say to you. Our lives touched one another for an prompt after which separated. Mine has improved since that day, whereas yours has deteriorated. You made a nasty gamble and misplaced.”

“The very last thing my proper eye would ever see: I noticed the person in black operating towards me down the right-hand facet of the seating space. Black garments, black face masks. He was coming in onerous and low,” writes Rushdie in his new e-book, “Knife.” “I did not attempt to run. I used to be transfixed.”

A couple of nights earlier than he was virtually killed by a stranger with a knife, Salman Rushdie dreamed about being attacked by a Roman gladiator with a spear. He’d had related desires ever since Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa following publication of The Satanic Verses, again in 1989, imagining “my murderer rising up in some public discussion board or different and coming for me”. When on the morning of 12 August 2022, in Chautauqua in upstate New York, on stage to speak about (of all issues) the significance of protecting writers secure from hurt, he noticed a determine in black speeding in the direction of him, his first thought was “So it’s you. Right here you might be”, and his second, extra bemused, was “Actually? It’s been so lengthy. Why now, in spite of everything these years?”

In his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton, Rushdie expressed his post-fatwa disorientation by writing of his experiences within the third individual, as if the trauma have been occurring to another person. Right here, as he says, it’s an I-story (and in addition, since he misplaced his proper one, an eye-story): “When someone wounds you 15 instances that undoubtedly feels very first individual.” Joseph Anton (the Christian names of his literary heroes Conrad and Chekhov) was the codename he adopted in hiding to keep away from utilizing his personal title. Right here it’s his attacker’s title he avoids utilizing – he refers to Hadi Matar as “the A”, brief for Assailant or would-be Murderer. Or, for Ass: just like the Islamist terrorists who’ve attacked and even murdered folks related to Rushdie, Matar’s information of The Satanic Verses was negligible – he stated that he’d learn simply a few pages. After being charged with tried homicide and assault, Matar pled not responsible. Bail was denied, and trial will likely be held in the end.

When he charged on stage together with his knife, some within the auditorium thought it should be a stunt about author security, not an actual assault. However over the subsequent 27 seconds, earlier than being overpowered by brave members of the viewers (amongst them the host Henry Reese), he stabbed Rushdie 15 instances, in his eye, neck, hand and chest. As he lay on the ground, watching blood pool round him, Rushdie thought he was dying. Amongst those that saved him (and the ebook is devoted to the women and men who did) was a retired firefighter, who pressed a thumb towards his neck to cease the circulation of blood.

Rushdie doesn’t bear in mind feeling indignant with “the A”. However the happiness he’d felt the evening earlier than, standing in the summertime moonlight, with a brand new novel completed and proofread, had been destroyed. Worse, he’d been dragged into the previous by a person “searching for to hold out a demise order from three a long time in the past” – as if his 16 books since The Satanic Verses counted for nothing; as if that “plain outdated novel” had reverted to being a theological scorching potato. He wonders why he froze when the A lunged at him. He might need run away or fought again. However how does a 75-year-old, in shock, combat a 24-year-old with a knife?

To establish his wounds a crowd of helpers, together with two docs, reduce his garments aside (“Oh. I assumed, my good Ralph Lauren swimsuit”). He was hauled on to a stretcher then airlifted by helicopter to an extreme-trauma ward within the neighbouring state, Pennsylvania. Even earlier than the eight hours of surgical procedure his imaginative and prescient was blurry. And afterwards, on heavy painkillers, he had visions of buildings made from alphabets. When he got here spherical, he was on a ventilator (“like having an armadillo’s tail pushed down your throat”) and elements of his physique have been stapled collectively; mercifully, he couldn’t see the “bulging boiled-egg eye” hanging from his face.

Supportive statements got here from presidents Biden and Macron, “grudging platitudes” from Boris Johnson, and nothing in any respect from India. Most heartening have been the messages of affection from buddies: reside, reside he urged himself. His sister and sons flew over from London. Above all, there was his spouse “Eliza”, the poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whom he’d met in a goofy, blood-strewn second 5 years earlier than when, dazed by her magnificence and following her out on to a balcony, he smashed his face right into a sliding glass door (“She actually knocked me out”). They’d been collectively ever since, married for the earlier 11 months and dwelling extra privately than he was used to, till this.

The docs weren’t hopeful. Eliza had been warned he wasn’t going to make it. However by his bedside, she took cost, staying with him 24/7 and recording his restoration on a telephone and digital camera. Inside 10 days – his hand in a splint, his broken liver regenerating, fluid drained from his lung – he was strolling with a strolling body. Docs have been amazed. It was a sort of magic realism, a miraculous return from hades.

Transferred to a rehab centre in Manhattan, he hoped for a gentle restoration. However there have been setbacks: dizziness, low blood stress, a urinary tract an infection, horrible nightmares. The cops outdoors his door laughed raucously via the evening and there was bandage-changing at 5am. Then got here the shock of seeing himself in a mirror for the primary time – “this wild-haired one-eyed demi stranger”. He felt bed-enslaved and stir-crazy – till a sure galley of his novel Victory Metropolis arrived and lifted his spirits with its closing sentence: “Phrases are the one victors.”

There have been extra challenges to return: seven months working with a hand therapist; the unstitching of his proper eyelid; a prosthesis fitted in his mouth to make consuming much less uncomfortable. He doesn’t declare to be courageous and provides brief shrift to the concept what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Nonetheless, it was courageous of him to return, a 12 months on, to the amphitheatre the place he was attacked, and to really feel “lightness. A circle had been closed.” Thanks to like, luck and surgical talent, he’d been given a second probability.

That is “a ebook I’d a lot somewhat not have wanted to write down,” he says, composed with “one eye and one and a half arms”. However he makes use of it to “personal” what occurred, and as a love music to Eliza. In addition to documenting his ordeal, it ranges extensively, from ideas about different writers who have been victims of knife crime (Samuel Beckett, Naguib Mahfouz: “What was this, a membership?”), to reminiscences of childhood and his abusive, alcoholic father, to reflections on violence and on the deaths and sicknesses of buddies.

There’s additionally a chapter during which he conducts 4 imaginary interviews together with his attacker, who has described Rushdie as “disingenuous”. Does each disingenuous individual should die, Rushdie asks him. The replies are surly: “You don’t know me, you’ll by no means know me,” the A says. However we study his nocturnal gaming, his indignant “Incel” loneliness, and a life-changing journey to Lebanon.

“We’re different,” runs the epigraph from Beckett, “now not what we have been earlier than the calamity of yesterday.” However Rushdie’s triumph is to not be different: regardless of his horrible accidents and the menace he nonetheless lives underneath, he stays incorrigibly himself, as passionate as ever about artwork and free speech as “the essence of our humanity”. At one level he quotes Martin Amis: “Once you publish a ebook, you both get away with it, otherwise you don’t.” He has greater than acquired away with this one. It’s scary however heartwarming, a narrative of hatred defeated by love. There’s even room for a couple of jokes. Earlier than the stabbing he was horribly chubby; after hospital and rehab, he finds he has misplaced 55 kilos, although it’s “not a weight loss plan plan to be really useful”.

Mark Goodier is heading again to BBC Radio 2 as host of Decide of the Pops following the passing of Steve Wright.

Mark has most lately been on Best Hits Radio however was changed by Ken Bruce on the mid-morning present when Ken moved from Radio 2 simply over a yr in the past.

Decide of the Pops, which is produced by 7digital, will proceed to rely down two charts from two totally different weeks from the previous seven many years every Saturday lunchtime from 1pm.

Mark, who’s acquired the very best music, says: “It’s an honour to host the long-lasting Decide of the Pops, though I want it had been in happier circumstances as I used to be buddies with Steve for nearly 40 years. I can’t wait to reminisce with Radio 2 listeners as we revisit two years of their lives, enjoying a few of the greatest information ever made.”

Helen Thomas, Head of Radio 2 says: “Mark is a superb broadcaster with a selected ardour for chart countdowns, so I’m delighted he’s making a welcome return to Radio 2 within the prestigious Decide of the Pops slot, to finish our new weekend presenting line-up following the lack of our good friend and colleague, Steve.

“I might additionally wish to thank Gary Davies for presenting Decide of the Pops throughout these previous weeks, along with internet hosting the weekly, must-listen version of his Sounds of the 80s present every Saturday night time.”

Earlier this month, it was introduced that from June, Michael Ball – who at the moment presents on Sundays (11am-1pm) – will current Love Songs with Michael Ball (9-11am) and Paddy McGuinness will host a brand new Sunday present (11am-1pm) as Michael strikes to the sooner time.

The largest star in MMA historical past will struggle in the primary occasion of UFC 303.

Conor McGregor’s long-awaited, highly-anticipated return to the octagon is official for UFC 303 towards Michael Chandler, UFC CEO Dana White formally introduced the matchup following Saturday’s UFC 300 occasion.

The matchup will happen at welterweight, not middleweight as “The Infamous” beforehand claimed, and function the headlining act of the UFC 303 card, which fits down at T-Cell Enviornment in Las Vegas and airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN.

Chandler (23-8 MMA, 2-3 UFC) has lengthy been focused because the return opponent for McGregor (22-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC) after the 2 fighters coached opposing groups on “The Final Fighter” in 2023.

McGregor has not been in motion since breaking his leg in July 2021 in a trilogy bout towards Dustin Poirier at UFC 264. It is going to be almost three years since he is seen motion.

The Irishman just lately expressed frustration on the UFC about his return, stating his “persistence is carrying skinny” after he re-entered the drug testing pool.

McGregor, 35, subsequently introduced he can be returning to struggle Chandler throughout Worldwide Battle Week on June 29, and that it will be contested within the middleweight division. That finally proved false, however now McGregor will get to return to the octagon a number of months before anticipated.

Trying to derail what McGregor’s workforce has dubbed because the “biggest return in sports activities historical past” will likely be former three-time Bellator champion Chandler, who sees his lengthy watch for this matchup lastly repay. Chandler, 37, hasn’t competed since November 2022, the place he suffered a Battle of the Yr contender loss to Poirier at UFC 281.

The most recent UFC 303 lineup now contains:

• Michael Chandler vs. Conor McGregor
• Andre Fili vs. Cub Swanson
• Carlos Hernandez vs. Rei Tsuruya

Two adjustments have been made to the Chelsea aspect by head coach Mauricio Pochettino for tonight’s Premier League conflict towards Everton at Stamford Bridge.

The Blues need to get again to profitable methods within the prime flight after our irritating 2-2 draw towards Sheffield United final day out – and shut the hole to the perimeters within the European locations.

Djordje Petrovic retains his place within the Chelsea aim and there’s a return at right-back for Malo Gusto. He replaces Axel Disasi, who isn’t included within the matchday squad on account of damage.

The remainder of the again 4 consists of Trevoh Chalobah, Thiago Silva and Marc Cucurella. Ben Chilwell is among the many substitutes having overcome the sickness that saved him out towards the Blades.

There isn’t any Enzo Fernandez within the squad this night. Moises Caicedo and Conor Gallagher will patrol the midfield.

Forward of that duo is an attacking quartet of Mykhailo Mudryk, Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke and Nicolas Jackson.

There are two new names on the bench, with Academy duo Kiano Dyer and Tyrique George included within the senior matchday squad for the primary time.

Chelsea: Petrovic; Gusto, Chalobah, Silva, Cucurella; Caicedo, Gallagher; Mudryk, Palmer, Madueke; Jackson

Chelsea substitutes: Bettinelli, Badiashile, Gilchrist, Chilwell, Dyer, Casadei, Chukwuemeka, George, Deivid Washington