NICOLA King is set to make a chilling discovery about her nephew-in-law Tom King after seeing the way he interacts with her stepson Carl Holliday. 

Emmerdale villain Tom (James Chase) has been hiding his abusive ways and manipulation of his estranged wife Belle Dingle (Eden Taylor-Draper) from the King family – but is the truth finally about to come out?

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In scenes airing next week, Nicola (Nicola Wheeler) will pick up on some tension between Carl (Charlie Joyce) and Tom. 

Spoilers for Thursday’s episode (October 24) confirm that Nicola will become unsettled when she observes how Carl seems to be afraid of Tom, sensing something isn’t right.

But will this actually lead to the truth coming out?

As Emmerdale viewers know, Carl is terrified of Tom after he witnessed him smashing up his iPad and then bribed him not to tell anyone about it. 

After being arrested for attacking Tom with an axe in self defence, Belle realised she needed to find evidence of his ongoing abuse. 

Realising that there would likely be proof on the iPad, Belle tried to get her hands on it, but Tom got there first and stopped the police from finding it. 

Tom found it in the hands of his young cousin Carl and took it back before smashing it to pieces to hide incriminating evidence about himself from Belle and the police. 

But unbeknownst to Tom, Carl saw the whole thing and was left terrified. 

When Tom noticed Carl was acting weird in the latest episode and believed he’d scared him after having a go at him recently.

Carl admitted this was the case, but didn’t reveal that he saw him break the iPad. 

Later, Tom returned from the shops with a gift for his cousin in the form of a remote controlled toy car. Carl was amazed, but Tom had one condition before handing over the toy.

He asked Carl to promise that the issues with the iPad were over, making him repeat the words: “iPad? What iPad?”

Carl did what he was told and agreed to stay quiet, meaning the only witness to the smashing up of the iPad and where it could be now is not going to spill the beans… for now.

But if Nicola asks Carl about her suspicions, will he tell her the truth about what happened, or will he continue to protect Tom with his silence?

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It all begins with a moan. In the opening seconds of Rivals, the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s bestselling bonkbuster, breathy cries of ecstasy flutter across a peppy orchestral score, as we’re introduced to a naked bottom belonging to lothario Rupert Campbell-Black. He’s a Tory MP, and he’s humping a journalist in a Concorde loo. When he’s done, he proudly returns to his seat – gold-framed aviator shades and all – as the women in the cabin practically faint at his feet.

I should probably make this clear: the rutting happens on every surface possible in Rivals. It occurs within TV studio storage cupboards, atop office desks and on four-poster beds in stately homes. Would it be a spoiler to tell you there’s naked tennis? It’s a sensory overload – but then again, it is set in the glorious Cooper-verse: the 1980s world of the Tory elite living in the Cotswolds, who deal exclusively in excess. It’s a setting that’s enchanted (and titillated) Cooper fans for more than three decades through the 12 books in her Rutshire Chronicles, including the mischievously named Riders, Tackle!, Mount! and Score!

At the centre of this horny parade is jockey-turned-Conservative sports minister Rupert, played by chiselled actor Alex Hassell. The hunky horserider is described in Cooper’s books as “Britain’s sexiest man”, so no pressure, then. In order to encourage the actor to fully embrace his heartthrob status, Rivals showrunner Dominic Treadwell-Collins had a plan. He told the crew that whenever Hassell entered a room, they must gawp at him as if he were a megastar like Harry Styles.

“That’s not my day-to-day life,” laughs Hassell as we speak in a Soho hotel. “There was definitely a wish fulfilment aspect to it. It was a great way to live.” He says it’s disappointing now that this charade is over. “My wife swoons when I walk in a room but that’s about it,” he says, with mock self-pity. That’s when his co-star, David Tennant – who plays Lord Tony Baddingham, the conniving head honcho of a TV studio called Corinium – steps in to reassure him. “Stop it, we all swoon over you!”

There’s been a lot of sweet talking to bring all this swooning to life on the small screen. Treadwell-Collins, like Rishi Sunak, has been hooked on Cooper since he was a teen. He spent the past 10 years sending dozens of love letters to Cooper, telling her how much he adored Rivals – and that he wanted the rights. After years of communication via her agent, Cooper finally said yes. “I was told, ‘Jilly wants to give you the rights and said because your letter was so well-written, you should write the script too,”’ a chirpy Treadwell-Collins tells me. He was working on EastEnders and other projects at the time. “I was going through the adoption process with my husband and so much was going on. But I kept on coming back to the script.”

But when Treadwell-Collins began to contact prospective TV studios, he found that execs – both men and women, but mainly men – were dismissive of the idea due to preconceived ideas they had about Cooper’s work, despite having never read it. “Everyone said ‘Jilly Cooper, oh, it’s a bit silly,’” recalls the director. “But it’s not silly! She’s an amazing storyteller. There’s a really complicated love story at the heart of it. She pulls apart Britishness and class and the way we all behave towards each other.” He remembers seeing Rivals on his mother’s bookcase as a child and knowing it was naughty (the suggestive covers of all of Cooper’s books were a huge giveaway). “I think it was a group of people who saw Jilly’s work as naff but another group who saw it as dangerous and sexy,” he says. “I knew I wanted to turn it into telly.”

Did the actors have the same relationship with Cooper’s work? Tennant admits to making judgements about the books, which eventually didn’t carry when he read them himself. “I suppose as a teenager in Paisley in the Eighties, I didn’t feel like I was the target audience,” the Scottish actor says. “I had made assumptions that were slightly unfair to just how nuanced and clever the books are.” The very fact that there’s an adaptation more than 30 years later proves the intelligence of Cooper’s writing, he says. “It’s not the initial thing people recognise about it, but these books have tenacity.”

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The next thing Tennant knew, he had been dunked in fake tan, his hair perfectly coiffed and a cigar permanently fixed to his lips as showbiz tyrant Tony. When he first saw his hair, he reckoned he looked like the suave French actor Louis Jourdan. “Hmmm, I was quite pleased with that,” he ponders. “And then a couple of days later, I saw a picture of myself and I thought, no, it’s more Terry Wogan. They are both good touchstones for me.” He read the biography of former TV super-boss Michael Grade to help him embody his character, too. “Visually, he became quite a source material with the braces and the large cigars.”

As we’ve established, the characters in Rivals are insanely posh. When they’re not doing the deed, they spend their days strolling around country grounds, buying horses and/or football clubs and intermittently receiving calls from Margaret Thatcher. I note that it’s an ironic detail, given how Thatcher’s attitudes towards sex and promiscuity contradict the indulgent world we see in the series. “Are you suggesting there was some hypocrisy in the world of the government?” teases Tennant. “It’s not the Eighties I remember. But I remember it being the kind of era of excess… the money on an almost gross level of conspicuous consumption.”

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Hassell agrees, pointing out that there are still different rules for the elite and extremely wealthy – the sort of standards that make his character untouchable. “Rupert gets away with absolutely terrible things because he has money and privilege. There’s a different rule for the super-rich… it’s a great time for the show to be coming out.”

One character who finds himself in a bitter rivalry with Rupert is chat show host Declan O’Hara, played by Poldark actor Aidan Turner, who discovers that both his wife, Maud (Victoria Smurfit), and daughter, Taggie (Bella Maclean) – like every other woman in the series – have a crush on the sports minister. Turner thinks the elite world in the show is entirely transactional. “They’re either denying their class, imposing their class or escaping their class. I think sex is used in that way too. Almost for all of the characters, sex is a tool in some way, even if it’s a tool for enjoyment,” he says. His character Declan, who is Irish, never fully seems pulled in by the class system that those around him are obsessed with. “Declan would never trust the British class system,” he says. “He thinks the class system is weird – he’s dubious about British politics generally speaking, as I think a lot of Irish people will be.”

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Getting to grips with that class system was an education for Nafessa Williams, who is the only American in the cast. She plays TV industry ballbuster Cameron Cooke, a colleague of Tony’s, who has flown into Corinium from New York. The sheer Britishness of Cooper’s books left Williams with lots of questions for her co-stars. “Someone mentioned going to the loo – I had no clue what that was… like, do I need to come with you? Do I stay? What is that?” she says in her Philly accent. It was helpful, then, that the cast had a WhatsApp group where she could vent. “I remember texting the group… What the hell is Boots? I only eat fish, where can I get it from?” she laughs. “Didn’t I hear you say, who the f*** are the Tories one day?” Turner asks her. She nods. “Yeah, like who the f*** is that?”

Speaking of Tories: it was during filming when our former PM admitted that Cooper’s racy 1985 book Riders was one of his favourites. That moment sent the internet into a frenzy. Everyone imagined Sunak hunkering down with a hot mug of cocoa as he devoured the Rupert and Taggie sex scenes. It similarly caused a buzz among the cast and crew. “Jilly has fans everywhere,” laughs Treadwell-Collins, recalling that day. “And whatever your political views are, someone saying they like Jilly’s books is making everyone think you’re a populist person. I think that’s what we took from it.”

There were many days on set where the cast were in fits of laughter, the actors all say. They got on so well that Cooper invited them to a party at her home – Rutshire style. When I try to get the goss on what goes down at a Cooper house party, Hassell doesn’t give too much away. “I couldn’t possibly say what happened,” he jokes. “We saw the cabin under a tree in her garden where she wrote Rivals. It looks out over this valley, where she imagined Declan’s house would have been.” All sounds very wholesome. Surely he’s being coy?

He gives in. “There were vol-au-vents and lots of champagne…” Well, it’s Jilly Cooper, darling. One would not expect anything less.

‘Rivals’ premieres 18 October exclusively on Disney+

THE real reason Wayne Rooney is ‘worried’ about Coleen’s I’m A Celeb appearance has been revealed.

Wayne’s wife Coleen has signed up for this year’s show — securing the biggest deal in the show’s history.

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The 38-year-old Wag’s fee is understood to be way beyond Nigel Farage’s £1.5million last year.

ITV bosses hope Coleen will spill the beans on life with hubby Wayne and her epic fallout with Rebekah Vardy.

But Wayne is reportedly ‘worried’ about Coleen’s ‘open and honest’ nature.

As a source told OK!: “Wayne is a little worried about what she will say about their marriage, and whether all his past misbehaviour gets brought up.

“Coleen is very open and honest – if she bonds with someone in there, she will talk about everything she’s been through, including stuff with Wayne and Becky.”

Coleen is to get the ultimate revenge on her Wagatha Christie rival Rebekah Vardy — by heading Down Under for I’m A Celebrity.

The wife of ex-England striker Wayne has landed a record deal to enter the ­jungle, where Rebekah was booted out early in 2017.

Sources say ITV bosses hope she will reveal juicy details round the campfire of her life with Wayne, as well as gossip from her public fall-out with Rebekah.

Coleen and her four boys are huge fans of the show.

She will fly out next month to compete in the Bushtucker Trials.

A telly source told The Sun on Sunday: “I’m A Celeb bosses have pulled off a huge coup ­getting Coleen for the jungle this year and the team are thrilled to have her on board.

“She’s always been a massive fan of the show and loves watching it with her boys. ITV are over the moon that the stars have aligned this year and she can fit it in. The series is set to be one of the best yet.

“Coleen has a huge fanbase and she won massive plaudits for her classy handling of the Wagatha Christie case. She’s excited to show fans a different side to her and prove she can survive without her creature comforts.”

Rebekah, 42, was the third campmate to be eliminated in 2017.

Less than two years later, she was at the centre of a huge storm when Coleen accused the Wag of leaking stories about her.

Coleen has also had her share of ups and down with ex-Man United star Wayne, 38, who is now back in the UK after spells playing and coaching in the US.

The source went on: “The campfire chats are set to be bombshells as there is so much she could lift the lid on, from all the drama of the Wagatha trial to her turbulent marriage to Wayne and his football career.

“She is expected to be very popular with viewers and she could triumph over Becky again if she goes further in the competition than her.”

Coleen will be cheered on by proud sons Kai, 14, Klay, 11, Kit, eight, and Cass, six.

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Viewers have been left furious at the BBC’s decision to scrap one of its flagship current affair programmes, HARDtalk.

The politics show, known for its challenging interviews with world leaders, is presented by veteran broadcaster Stephen Sackur and has spent nearly three decades on air.

On Tuesday (15 October) the BBC announced the decision to end the programme in March 2025, along with the loss of 100 news roles at the corporation.

The company has been facing increasing financial pressure and has projected its total deficit will increase to £492 million for the 2024/25 financial year.

Sackur, 60, hit out at the decision to axe HARDtalk, calling it “depressing news for the BBC and all those who believe in the importance of independent, rigorous deeply researched journalism.”

He continued, “At a time when disinformation and media manipulation are poisoning public discourse, HARDtalk is unique – a long-form interview show with only one mission, to hold to account those who all too often avoid accountability in their own countries.”

During his career, the presenter has interviewed Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez, Sergei Lavrov, Meles Zenawi, Lula, Nancy Pelosi, Recep Tayep Erdogan, Emmanuel Macron, Imran Khan, Olusegan Abasanjo, and many others.

Fellow broadcaster, Piers Morgan, commented on the decision saying: “What a shame. Always enjoyed HARDtalk and your masterful interrogations, even when it [was] once me on the receiving end! Very surprised the BBC is ending it.”

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Viewers were left unimpressed.

“Closing HARDtalk is a grave mistake,” wrote one person. “It’s the BBC’s top show holding global leaders accountable with tough, necessary questions. In an era of misinformation, we need more HARDtalk, not less. The BBC must reconsider.”

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Another hit out at the long list of era-defining shows which have been cancelled in recent times.

“Victoria Derbyshire Show: gone. Newsnight is now ‘Newsnight’ in name only. Dateline London: gone. HARDtalk, a globally respected and highly influential show: gone,” listed one person.

“You could be forgiven for thinking that the BBC appears to be withdrawing from journalism.”

“This is utterly ridiculous.” wrote another on X/Twitter. “HARDtalk was the type of journalism that only the BBC was equipped to produce. Always fascinating, no matter the guest. Terrible decision. Sorry Stephen.”

Another added, “Sad news that HARDtalk is coming to an end as a result of BBC cuts. One of the most varied and insightful interview programmes around. Stephen was always a particularly reassuring presence on hotel rooms TV screens.”

“Stephen Sackur created the gold standard in how to conduct an accountability interview – speaking truth to power,” said one person praising the host’s interviewing skills. “Thanks to you and the HARDtalk team for the incredible public service over so many years.”

According to PA, BBC Deborah Turness sent an email to staff, part of which read: “I’m sorry to say that post closures are unavoidable. We propose to close 185 roles and open 55 new ones – a net reduction of 130 posts. As a result of the changes in news, media operations is also proposing to close the equivalent of 25 posts.”

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Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O’Carroll “implied” the N-word during rehearsals for the show’s Christmas special, according to reports.

Filming for the show’s Christmas special was halted as the BBC carried out a probe into the incident, but no details of the highly offensive slur were given at the time.

It has now emerged that the comic told a joke alluding to the N-word in front of shocked colleagues.

During a reading of the script while in character as Agnes Brown, the Daily Mail reported that O’Carroll said: “I don’t call a sp*** a sp***, I call a sp*** a…”

He then reportedly began to utter the N-word before he was stopped by his on-screen daughter, who was also in character.

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Witnesses of the incident were reportedly shocked by the slur and “flagged [it] with the BBC afterwards”.

A representative for O’Carroll told the paper: “We would also like to clarify that the “n” word was absolutely not spoken, it was implied. Agnes (Mrs Brown) began the word but was stopped from finishing it by her daughter Cathy, as she (Mrs Brown) knew she would be.”

In addition to the obvious offence of the implied ‘N’ word, the use of the term “sp***”, a derogatory slur used against black people, is also deeply insulting.

The revelation has raised questions about the BBC’s handling of the incident. In initial statements, the broadcaster did not acknowledge how severe the slur implied was.

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The BBC investigated the incident and temporarily stopped rehearsals, which have since resumed at the corporation’s Pacific Quay studios in Glasgow. It is understood that the specials are still scheduled to air on BBC One this festive season in their usual Christmas Day and New Year’s Day slots.

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Mrs Brown’s Boys, with its distinctive humour, has been a divisive presence on the Christmas schedules for many years, with O’Carroll playing matriarch Agnes Brown, and various members of his family making up the ensemble cast. A fifth full series of has been commissioned and is set to start filming next spring.

The Irish actor and writer, 69, apologised on Tuesday, before the nature of the slur used came to light.

“At a read-through of the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas specials, there was a clumsy attempt at a joke, in the character of Agnes, where a racial term was implied,” he said. “It backfired and caused offence which I deeply regret and for which I have apologised.”

A BBC spokesperson said on Tuesday: “While we don’t comment on individuals, the BBC is against all forms of racism, and we have robust processes in place should issues ever arise.”

The Independent has contacted representatives for Mr O’Carroll for comment.

AMANDA Holden was the queen of green yesterday as she stole the show at the launch auditions for Britain’s Got Talent.

The 53-year-old TV judge wore an olive satin mini skirt and off-the-shoulder top as she walked the red carpet in front of fans at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool.

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She was joined by fellow judges on the ITV show Alesha Dixon, and Simon Cowell as well as hosts Ant and Dec.

YouTuber and boxer KSI made his debut on the panel — temporarily filling in for ex-Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli, who is filming in the US.

The new series of BGT kicks off early next year.

Last week, Amanda successfully completed her whopping 250 mile charity bike ride, and shouted “my bum is killing me” as she passed the finish line and had an emotional reunion with her husband Chris.

The star has been cycling from her mum’s house in Bude, Cornwall, to Heart HQ in London‘s Leicester Square to raise funds for Make Some Noise, which raises money for small charities across the UK.

And she looked both delighted and exhausted as she cycled up to her colleagues, fans and family members in Leicester Square this morning, as confetti flew through the air and cheers were heard from the crowds.

The challenge kicked off on Monday and has continued throughout the week as she travelled through Somerset, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Surrey, with her destination set for today – just in time for Global’s Make Some Noise Day.

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