The Coachella 2027 lineup is out, and its top line carries a milestone: Dua Lipa will be the first solo British woman to headline the California festival. She is joined at the top of the bill by Tame Impala and SZA, with passes going on sale on 13 November at 12pm Pacific time.

Who headlines which night

According to Deadline, the festival’s two weekends, 9-11 April and 16-18 April at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, will follow the same pattern. Dua Lipa takes Fridays, Tame Impala has Saturdays and SZA closes out Sundays. Deadline also reports that Daddy Yankee gets a bonus headlining slot in the “In The Desert” area, as does Justice, who will debut “Blinded by the Lights” in the Bunker.

The three main headliners all know the site. Tame Impala, the project of Kevin Parker, topped the bill in 2019 as the festival’s first Australian headliner. SZA appeared as a surprise guest during Justin Bieber’s headline set this year. Dua Lipa made a guest cameo during Martin Garrix’s 2017 set. Lipa and SZA also share a recent history, having both headlined Glastonbury in 2024, where Lipa brought Parker on stage during her Pyramid stage show, according to the BBC.

Madonna, Daddy Yankee and a wide-ranging bill

Below the headliners, the Coachella 2027 lineup leans on nostalgia, global pop and dance music. Madonna returns roughly two decades after her first Coachella appearance. The Guardian describes her as headlining the dance tent, and she also surprised the crowd alongside Sabrina Carpenter this year. Her album Confessions II, a sequel to her 2005 dance record, reached number one in the US and UK, the Guardian reports. The BBC adds that she had been rumoured to be heading to Glastonbury 2027 before organisers ruled it out.

Daddy Yankee makes his Coachella debut. The Independent notes he is due to become the first Latin urbano artist named artist of the year at the Latin Grammys, and that he released the concept album La Postal last month. Also on the bill are Phoebe Bridgers, Weezer, Zara Larsson, Robyn, Kehlani, Don Toliver, Steve Lacy, Måneskin, Four Tet, Underworld and Giorgio Moroder. Diljit Dosanjh returns after his 2023 appearance, when the BBC says he became the first Punjabi-language singer to play the festival.

The international mix is broad, taking in K-pop and K-pop-adjacent names such as Jisoo, NCT and Babymonster, and Becky G and Adéla. British acts include Jorja Smith, EsDeeKid, Shygirl, Lambrini Girls and Chase & Status. The Guardian also points to newer names such as Underscores, Nettspend, After and Tiffany Day.

What the milestone means

The BBC links Lipa’s headline slot to last year’s debate around Charli XCX, who played the main stage before Green Day’s set in 2025 and was photographed in a “Miss Should Be Headliner” sash. Lipa’s booking answers that conversation, though the sources do not suggest the two are directly connected.

The BBC says more than 100,000 fans are expected each day. For those who can’t make it, YouTube returns as livestream partner for both weekends, the 15th year of the arrangement, according to the Guardian. With Lipa, SZA and Parker all reported to have connections to one another, the Coachella 2027 lineup looks like a deliberately familiar lineup, but one that still manages to include a first.

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File photo: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2006 Coachella festival 2006 Coachella 2006 100 2682 (140038081) by Tammy Lo from New York, NY, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Jonathan Ross statement issued on Tuesday night has put one of Britain’s best-known presenters at the centre of a fast-moving row over power and abuse in television. Ross says he is “as horrified by the revelations about David Walliams and the crimes of Russell Brand as the rest of the nation”, and insists that when he was on friendly terms with both men he was “genuinely unaware of their conduct”.

What the Jonathan Ross statement says about the 2004 joke

The statement was prompted by the resurfacing of footage from the 2004 British Comedy Awards. Ross told the audience the awards were 15 years old, “drunk, unpredictable” and “probably going home with David Walliams”. He now describes it as a “deeply shocking” joke to revisit, and a “tasteless” one he “would not dream of making today”.

Ross says the line was supplied by the awards’ scriptwriting team, and that he took the punchline as a reference to Walliams having publicly dated younger women, exaggerated for comic effect. “Had I had any reason to suspect that it might be referring to actual events,” he said, he would have refused to use it and would not have stayed close to Walliams. He added that he would like to think he would have acted on such knowledge. He closed by saying his thoughts were with “the many, many women who have bravely come forward”.

The allegations behind the reaction

Ross’s words came after the Guardian and ITV News published a three-year joint investigation. It reports that several women accuse Walliams, 55, of using his fame and position to pursue young women and teenagers, with some alleging he groomed them when they were as young as 15. The reporting also covers claims of inappropriate behaviour at a publisher and on the set of Britain’s Got Talent. The investigation could be published only after a court rejected Walliams’ attempt to block it through an injunction.

Walliams denies all wrongdoing. In a letter to the journalists, he said he is “not a sexual predator” and has not broken the law. The Metropolitan Police has said it contacted the Guardian and ITV News to make sure any potential victims know how to report criminal allegations, but it has not said it is conducting a criminal investigation.

The timing intensified the story. A day earlier, Russell Brand was jailed for 10-and-a-half years for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. Ross has long been linked to Brand through the 2008 “Sachsgate” scandal, in which the pair left lewd voicemails for the actor Andrew Sachs on a BBC Radio 2 show. An ITV documentary on Walliams also shows Ross in a photograph at an event attended by one of the women who later made allegations. Nothing in the sources suggests Ross is accused of any wrongdoing himself.

Fallout for Walliams and pressure on the industry

The consequences for Walliams’ career have been swift. His literary agency, Independent Talent Group, has dropped him. Sky is exiting its licence for the film Fing!, and the BBC is removing programmes including Little Britain while it reviews all material featuring or written by him. Fremantle UK, the company behind Britain’s Got Talent, said it was “disturbed and concerned”. His Labour membership has been suspended.

Government reaction has gone beyond one individual. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called the claims the “latest in a long line of reported abuses of power” and has summoned senior media figures to “draw a line in the sand”. Media minister Ian Murray told MPs the sector has a “cultural problem” that must change. The prime minister’s spokesperson said every organisation should ask whether it is doing enough to keep people safe and whether staff can raise concerns knowing they will be taken seriously.

The Jonathan Ross statement is unlikely to be the last such response. Allegations against Walliams remain unproven, and he disputes them. But the questions about who knew what, and what they did about it, are now being put to the wider entertainment industry, not just to the men at the centre of the stories.

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File photo: Jonathan Ross by Gage Skidmore 2.jpg by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Duchess of Sussex made her first public appearance on Tuesday since her father was charged with possessing child sexual abuse material. She chose to appear in silence. Meghan accompanied Prince Harry to the European Parliament in Brussels for the opening of the Lost Screen Memorial, but she withdrew from the joint address the couple had been scheduled to give.

A speech planned for two, delivered by one

The couple were originally due to share a rare dual keynote of 15 to 20 minutes on children’s digital safety. Late changes left Harry to deliver the roughly 20-minute address alone. A spokesperson for the duchess said she was travelling with the duke and would accompany him “but will not speak”. A source quoted by the Telegraph said she was “just not strong enough, emotionally, to be doing any public speaking right now.”

Meghan arrived holding her husband’s hand tightly and did not respond to reporters’ questions. Inside, she was seen comforting a bereaved mother who addressed the audience. Harry reportedly asked the woman whether she was all right.

What Harry told the parliament

Harry did not refer directly to his father-in-law’s case. He focused on prevention, saying children should feel safe “at any time, no matter where they are”. He appeared emotional as he urged social media companies to refuse children content they would not show their own.

His sharpest criticism was aimed at tech firms’ privacy policies, which can lock grieving parents out of a dead child’s phone or accounts. “For many parents, even though their child killed themselves, they’ve had to wait years – in some instances, eight years – to get access to their child’s phone,” he said. “That cannot be right.” He added that he was not asking for a world without technology, only that companies answer plainly when asked whether they can keep a child safe.

The memorial and the backdrop

The Lost Screen Memorial is an installation of oversized smartphone-shaped light-boxes. Each shows a lock-screen photograph of a young person whose death is believed to be linked to harm experienced online. It is backed by the couple’s Archewell charity. Harry was also due to join a panel on building a digital future that works for children. Questions were open to the audience but not to the media.

The event came days after Thomas Markle Sr, 82, appeared in a Florida court. He is charged with one count of possession of child pornography and, according to reports, is on home detention with electronic monitoring after being released on bail. Federal agents say they seized material from two Los Angeles storage units he had rented for almost two decades. The inquiry began after his son, Thomas Markle Jr, reported alleged images to police in the Philippines and to the FBI. Markle Sr has previously denied the allegations, calling them “sick lies”. As with any defendant, he is presumed innocent unless a court rules otherwise.

Meghan, who has been estranged from her father since the run-up to her 2018 wedding, has said she is “deeply distressed” by the allegations. She has said she would “absolutely cooperate” with authorities investigating him and would “very much like to”.

Why this appearance matters

Choosing a child-protection event for this first public appearance is striking given the circumstances. The couple’s presence kept the focus on bereaved families and on Harry’s argument about tech accountability, and nothing in the reports suggests the case was addressed from the podium. Meghan’s decision to attend but stay silent shows how she is handling the moment. She is showing up for a cause she has publicly backed while stepping back from the scrutiny of speaking.

File photo: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.jpg by Office of the Governor-General, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize, and in doing so has broken two records at once. At 81, he is the oldest author to take the award, and The End of Everything is the first novel to win it from what the prize’s own chief executive calls “the bona fide SF world”.

Harrison collected the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Monday. The judges’ decision was unanimous, following a full day of debate that chair Mary Beard summed up with a dry understatement: there was “a lot of discussion, disagreement and debate. But nobody stomped off.”

A record-breaking Booker Prize result

The age record is the easier one to measure. Harrison edges past Margaret Atwood, who was 79 when she shared the prize in 2019. The genre milestone is more nuanced. Booker Prize Foundation chief executive Gaby Wood acknowledged that plenty of earlier winners had dabbled in science fiction, but said Harrison is the first to come out of the genre’s own world. She called the result “a historic win”.

For Harrison it is the capstone of a career that began in the mid-1960s. He has published 13 novels, five short story collections and an “anti-memoir”, and spent much of the 1970s running the books pages of the influential magazine New Worlds. That magazine was central to Britain’s “New Wave” of experimental science fiction. This was his first Booker nomination, though he sat on the judging panel in 2022.

What The End of Everything is about

The slim, 198-page novel was the shortest book on the shortlist. It is set on the south-east English coast a few decades from now, years after a catastrophe nobody can properly explain. Its central figures are Tennent, a beachcomber who scrapes a living from strange objects washed up on the shore, and his gun-toting aunt Marnie. Around them loom the iGhetti, vast shape-shifting beings whose origins and intentions are never made clear. Some people flee, violence flares, and others carry on filling the seafront cafés as if little has changed.

That refusal to explain is the point. Harrison has described the book as “a disaster story in which the disaster is the failure to comprehend”, and said he wanted to satirise the modern barrage of information that people lack the tools to analyse. He has also linked it to the collapse of rationality that comes with Trumpism and the internet, and said the aliens parallel the gentrification of places like the south-east coast. Wood noted that the “i” in iGhetti hints at something digital, and described the novel’s landscape as “Large Language Model-dotted”.

Praised, puzzling, and not for everyone

Critics have been far from uniform. The Literary Review called it “a work of uncanny beauty, tender and terrifying in equal parts”, and the Telegraph said reading it felt like dreaming. The New York Times offered a more sceptical note, saying the more we learn about the book’s broken world, “the harder it is to grasp”. Even the Guardian’s admiring reviewer warned that “it won’t be for everyone”.

The judges embraced that difficulty rather than apologising for it. “It’s a challenging read, but some of the best fiction is challenging,” Beard said, adding that it leaves readers with “a twinge of optimism” despite its subject. Wood offered a useful corrective for would-be readers: for all its unsettling mood, it is “a realist book about a strange world, populated by desperate, unmoored characters.”

A shortlist full of heavyweights

Harrison beat five other finalists. They included two former winners, Marlon James, reportedly the bookmakers’ favourite, for The Disappearers, and Douglas Stuart for John of John. The list was completed by Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, Luke Kennard’s Black Bag, and Rebecca Perry’s debut, May We Feed the King. Each shortlisted writer receives £2,500. The judging panel also included Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, Patricia Lockwood, Raymond Antrobus and Rebecca Liu, and agreeing on the shortlist had earlier been described as “to put it mildly, hard work”.

For Harrison, the symbolism may matter as much as the cheque. He has said he spent “40 to 50 years” trying to shift the balance, as both novelist and critic, asking why a well-written work of SF shouldn’t be considered literary fiction. Beard framed the verdict as recognition of “the blindingly obvious, that you find great books in every genre”. Whether the Booker Prize now opens its doors wider to genre writers remains to be seen. But a baffling, beautiful book about the failure to understand has been named the year’s best novel.

File photo: Mohammed Achaari and Rajaa Alem, joint winners of the 2011 Arabic Booker Prize by Peripatetic, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The David Walliams allegations, published on 10 November after a three-year joint investigation by the Guardian and ITV News, have prompted a swift response from broadcasters, his agent and the government. The comedian and author denies any wrongdoing and says he is “not a sexual predator”. He has not been charged with or convicted of any offence.

What the David Walliams allegations say

The investigation reports claims from several women who say Walliams used his fame to pursue them when they were teenagers or young adults. Two say they first met him at 15. One of them describes what she alleges happened at his home as a sexual assault, which he denies. The other says contact began with phone calls and emails about her ambitions as a comedy writer. She says it became sexual when she was 17, and she describes it as grooming.

Other accounts involve women who were 18 or 19 at the time. They describe unwanted advances, including attempts to kiss them and repeated invitations to share his bed. The reports also allege inappropriate behaviour at Britain’s Got Talent, where he was a judge from 2012 to 2022, and at his former publisher HarperCollins. A former HarperCollins staff member said working practices were changed around him and that young women were not sent to his home alone. The reports allege he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee and pursued another.

Walliams’s lawyers have rejected the grooming claims. In some cases he disputes specific events. In one he accepts what he called “a clumsy pass” but says he did not intend to make the woman uncomfortable. He also denies buying the silence of a junior Britain’s Got Talent employee who claimed to have received £300 from him.

His response and the failed injunction

In a letter sent to the journalists months ago, Walliams said he had “behaved thoughtlessly” towards people he had casual sexual relationships with and regretted not taking their feelings into account. He added that abusing a power imbalance was “something that I never did”, and that he was “devastated” that some women had expressed hurt or anger.

He had tried to stop publication through the High Court. Reports say the bid cited the risk to his own life, after two previous suicide attempts. Mr Justice Nicklin refused it, saying an injunction would be an “exceptionally serious interference” with freedom of expression. The Guardian published the day after the deadline to appeal passed, and ITV put its documentary Power and Silence on YouTube ahead of its broadcast on ITV1.

Fallout across TV, publishing and politics

The professional consequences came within hours. Independent Talent Group, his long-time literary agent, confirmed it had dropped him. The BBC called the allegations “serious” and removed Little Britain, the sketch show that made him famous, from iPlayer. Sky said it was dropping an adaptation of his fantasy book Fing! and had already removed content featuring him from its platforms.

HarperCollins had already ended its relationship with him. Reports date that decision to December 2025, and the publisher said it takes “the safety of our people incredibly seriously”. Fremantle, which makes Britain’s Got Talent, said it was “disturbed and concerned” but that no complaint about his behaviour had ever been made to it. Walliams has had his Labour Party membership suspended, and Downing Street called the claims “deeply troubling”.

The Metropolitan Police said it had contacted the Guardian and ITV News to make sure any potential victims know how to report criminal allegations. That is a step towards possible reporting, not an announcement of an investigation.

The significance of the David Walliams allegations goes beyond one entertainer. Walliams has sold more than 60 million books worldwide, and his work spans children’s publishing, television and film. The reaction so far has been commercial and institutional rather than legal. Whether any claim reaches the police or a court remains to be seen, and Walliams’s denials stand until then.

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File photo: David Walliams (6745348487).jpg by Sean Reynolds from Liverpool, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Tommy Walsh, the east London builder who became one of Britain’s best-loved DIY presenters through Ground Force and Homes Under the Hammer, has died at the age of 69 after a long illness. His agent, Debbie Schiesser, said he “died peacefully after a long illness surrounded by his family” and asked that the family’s privacy be respected.

From Hackney building sites to prime-time television

Walsh was born and raised in Hackney and went to Parmiter’s grammar school in Bethnal Green. He built a career as a professional builder and ran his own property business before television ever came calling. His route onto the screen was unusual. He restored the home of a BBC producer who was developing ideas for a garden makeover programme, and she asked him to look at a couple of pilots.

One of them, Over the Garden Wall, was the forerunner of what became Ground Force. His verdict, given to the BBC in 2004, was blunt: “It was like watching paint dry. It was terrible.” He turned down a role on the show three times. What finally changed his mind was his eight-year-old daughter, who told him she had made a £10 bet with a boy at school that her dad would be on TV.

Ground Force and the Mandela garden

Alongside Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock, Walsh formed the trio at the centre of Ground Force from 1997 to 2005. The format sent the team into the gardens of members of the public to transform them, often as a surprise. At its peak the programme drew 12 million viewers. In one memorable episode the presenters flew to South Africa to work in secret on Nelson Mandela’s garden, building a pergola and a water feature.

The show’s success rested heavily on the chemistry between its three hosts. Walsh was the practical builder in the line-up, and his down-to-earth manner suited the mix of home improvement and light entertainment.

A long career after Ground Force

Walsh stayed busy once the series ended. He fronted Clean It, Fix It and Cowboys and Angels, and his other credits included Tommy Walsh’s Eco House, Tommy’s DIY Survival, Trading Places, Space Invaders and Fix Your House For Free. He also appeared on Celebrity Fit Club and published a number of DIY books. In 2021 he joined the daytime staple Homes Under the Hammer, following renovation projects and visiting property auctions.

He also spoke openly about his health. The BBC reported that he had surgery for throat cancer in 2022 and for lung cancer in 2023, while the Evening Standard noted that he had also been treated for breast cancer. In June 2024 he said the cancer had returned near his lung. He described a targeted radiotherapy treatment called SABR, which he said shrank the tumour and “worked really well” for him.

Tributes and family

Among the first tributes was one from Old Parmiterians, the non-league club where Walsh played in goal for many years. “A Parmiters boy he played for the club for many years in goal but made a great career as a TV personality in shows such as Ground Force,” the club wrote on X. “He will be sorely missed.”

Walsh is survived by his wife, Marie, and their three children, Charlotte, Natalie and Jonjo.

For many viewers, Tommy Walsh will be remembered as the tradesman who made home improvement look achievable, and who reached the screen almost by accident after a bet his daughter made in a school playground.

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The Swift and Kloss friendship is back in the spotlight. Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss were photographed side by side at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on Sunday, in what outlets describe as their first public image together since 2018. They were there to watch Swift’s husband, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs beat the New York Jets.

The moment carried extra weight because the game was reportedly Kelce’s 200th in the NFL. Swift wore red, as she often does on game days. According to British Vogue, she sat in a private box with Kloss and her own parents, Andrea and Scott Swift.

From a Vogue Cookie Wish to a Shared Cover

The Swift and Kloss friendship began with a casual remark. In a 2012 Vogue profile, Swift spotted a framed photo of Kloss in designer Prabal Gurung’s studio and said she wanted to bake cookies with the model. Kloss, who had launched a cookie line that year, replied on Twitter the day the piece ran, asking whether it would be Swift’s kitchen or hers, according to Business Insider.

They met in person backstage at the 2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Swift performed and Kloss walked the runway, pointing at the singer and lip-syncing along as she passed. Swift later said she kept a Polaroid from that night in her New York apartment, labeled “BEST FRIENDS FOREVER VS2013.”

The bond played out publicly from there. In 2014 the two took a spontaneous road trip to Big Sur, and Kloss posted photos of the adventure. In 2015 they shared a Vogue cover, and Kloss appeared in Swift’s “Bad Blood” video alongside a cast of famous friends. Business Insider reports Kloss even had her own bedroom in Swift’s New York apartment.

Years of Rumors and Unanswered Questions

The distance became a talking point around 2018. Kloss told The New York Times that year that the two spoke often and urged readers, “Don’t believe everything you read.” Even so, Swift did not attend Kloss’s October 2018 wedding to Joshua Kushner. Business Insider notes that Kloss’s guests included Katy Perry and Scooter Braun, both of whom Swift has feuded with.

Braun’s role added fuel. The Standard notes that Kloss was photographed with him in 2019, after his company acquired Swift’s former record label and the master recordings of her first six albums. Swift has spoken publicly about that dispute. The last known photo of the two together before Sunday came when Kloss went backstage at the Nashville stop of Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018.

Neither woman has publicly confirmed a falling out. British Vogue says explicitly that no such rift was ever acknowledged by either party, and Business Insider says Kloss has continued to call Swift a “close friend.”

A Wedding Guest, Then a Front-Row Seat

The signs of a thaw came earlier this year. Kloss attended Swift and Kelce’s July wedding at Madison Square Garden. Afterward she told Vogue she tries to protect the privacy of her friends’ personal lives but called them “an amazing couple” and said she was “so happy for them.”

The sources differ slightly on how long the gap lasted. The Independent and The Standard describe it as nearly a decade, though the dates they cite, 2018 to 2026, add up to about eight years. They also treat Sunday as the first photographed meeting since 2018, even though Kloss was a wedding guest in July. That is likely because no wedding images of the two together were reported.

The sources do not say what the two have discussed privately, so any theory about what changed remains speculation. What the record does show is a friendship that began with a magazine quote and became one of pop culture’s most closely watched pairings. The latest chapter is a pair of friends in a stadium box.

File photo: Taylor Swift at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards (3).png by iHeartRadioCA, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Harvard conversation between Stephen Colbert and cellist Yo-Yo Ma ended abruptly on Thursday night, after a dispute over a Colbert picket line outside the venue and a fire alarm that forced an evacuation. The cause of the alarm has not been established.

The event was part of the university’s Office of the Arts “Learning from Performers” series and was held at Sanders Theatre. It was scheduled to run 90 minutes, but according to Harvard Magazine’s reporting, as relayed by The Hollywood Reporter, it stopped about 40 minutes in when the alarm sounded. Colbert, the former late night host, was evacuated from the building.

Why strikers targeted the Colbert picket line

The Harvard Graduate Students Union has been on strike since Oct. 27, seeking higher wages and stronger workplace protections. Before the event, the union posted on Instagram asking the two performers not to cross its line, and urged them to relocate, postpone or cancel the appearance in solidarity with workers. “Please don’t cross our picket line tomorrow night!” the post read.

Colbert and Ma went ahead as scheduled. Dozens of Harvard workers then demonstrated outside the theatre. Fox News framed its coverage around the union’s claim that the pair had crossed the line, while The Hollywood Reporter described the entertainers as having been “accused” of doing so. Neither Colbert nor Ma had publicly responded in the coverage available, and The Hollywood Reporter said it had asked Colbert and Harvard for comment.

The fire alarm and who is responsible

The timing invites speculation, but the available reporting offers none of the answers. The union said in a statement that the alarm “was unrelated to HGSU’s picketing activity” and that it had no knowledge of its cause. It added that members at the picket were relieved to learn no one inside was at risk. No other party has been named as responsible, and the cause remains unclear.

Fiona Coffey, director of the Office of the Arts, apologized in a statement to Harvard Magazine. She thanked the students and staff who spent “an enormous amount of time and energy” preparing the evening and said she was “profoundly sorry that it ended in such a disappointing way.”

Why the Colbert picket line charge stung

The union’s appeal leaned on Colbert’s own history. During the 2023 Hollywood strikes he stood with protesters. He also co-founded the limited-series comedy podcast Strike Force Five with fellow late night hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver, which was meant to help financially support out-of-work production staff and writers. That record made the request to honor a labor action on campus a pointed one.

For now, the story has two unresolved threads: whether the performers will address the criticism, and what set off the alarm. The strike, meanwhile, continues, with the union still seeking the pay and protections it says its members need.

File photo: Stephen Colbert June 2023.jpg by Montclair Film, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Maya Jama is no longer the Love Island UK host, announcing on Sunday that she is stepping down from the ITV dating series after nine series fronting the show. She shared the news on Instagram with a goodbye message and a reel of her best moments.

What Maya Jama said about leaving

Jama’s statement was warm and free of any hint of conflict. “As all good things must come to an end, it’s my time to step down as the host of my beloved Love Island,” she wrote, calling her tenure “an incredible era.” She thanked the viewers, whom she said the show “really does belong to,” and the production crew, who she said work tirelessly for months each year to make it happen.

She framed the exit as a career choice rather than a fallout. “To truly grow, you have to take a leap every now and then,” she said, adding that she now wants to “throw myself into something new.” She also noted that she started the job at 28 and signed off by promising to cheer the team on “from the sidelines forever.”

A reversal of her earlier comments

The announcement lands after months of speculation. Following the most recent summer series, rumors circulated that she was eyeing the exit. In an interview with Deadline, Jama dismissed them, saying the UK press “always do this” and that similar stories had appeared each of the previous three years. She explained that she never decides on the next series until one has finished, and called the talk of her departure “fake news” at the time. Her Instagram post suggests that she made her decision once the dust settled.

From Whitmore’s successor to a bigger profile

Jama took over from Laura Whitmore in 2023. Her duties went beyond the flagship summer show. According to Deadline, she also hosted the companion series Love Island Aftersun and the spinoffs Love Island Games and Love Island All Stars, which made her the face of the franchise across several formats.

Her profile outside the villa has grown considerably in that time. Variety notes that she competed on the second season of BBC One’s The Celebrity Traitors, where she was the only original Traitor to reach the final episode. Deadline adds that she was banished at the last roundtable. This year she also made her acting debut in the second season of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. Before all that, she built her reputation as one of the youngest DJs ever on BBC Radio 1.

What happens next for the show

The sources do not say who will replace her, and neither includes a statement from ITV about its plans for the next series. That leaves a significant question for a show whose presenter is closely tied to its identity. The last handover, from Whitmore to Jama, shows the format can survive a change at the top. For now, the only certainty is that the next Love Island UK host will inherit the slow-mo walks and fire pits Jama is leaving behind.

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The latest Strictly Come Dancing elimination came down to a single vote. Bethany Antonia and her professional partner Nancy Xu left the 2026 series on Sunday night after head judge Shirley Ballas broke a deadlock in favour of their dance-off rivals.

A split panel and a deciding vote

Antonia, 28, known for playing Lady Baela Targaryen in House of the Dragon, and Xu landed in the bottom two against former Love Island contestant Cach Mercer and his partner Maddie Ingoldsby. Both couples performed their routines again. Antonia and Xu repeated their foxtrot to Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love”, while Mercer and Ingoldsby reprised their waltz to “That Ain’t You” by Mulaa Joans.

The judges split evenly. Anton Du Beke backed Mercer and Ingoldsby, while Motsi Mabuse and Craig Revel Horwood wanted to keep Antonia and Xu. That left Ballas to settle it, and she sided with Mercer and Ingoldsby.

Why this exit stands out

On paper, the result looks like an upset. Antonia and Xu’s foxtrot had earned 30 from the judges on Saturday, which put them joint fourth on the leaderboard before the public vote was counted. One source says they were level with Lacey Turner and Vito Coppola, whose rumba to Coldplay’s “Yellow” also scored 30. Turner and Coppola had topped the table the previous week.

Mercer and Ingoldsby scored 26 for their waltz, which left them joint bottom on judges’ marks. The dance-off exists to fix this kind of gap, because the public vote can pull a couple down the table. In this case the viewers’ verdict, combined with the panel’s split, outweighed a healthy judges’ score. The sources do not say how close the public vote was, so it is not clear how narrowly Antonia and Xu missed out.

Dyer’s first 10 tops the table

At the top, former Love Island winner Dani Dyer and her partner Nikita Kuzmin scored 36 for an American smooth to Harry Connick Jr.’s “It Had to Be You”. The routine earned them their first 10 of the series.

Remembrance Sunday tribute

The results show also marked Remembrance Sunday. The professional dancers performed a group routine to Peter Gabriel’s arrangement of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, choreographed by Lizzie Gough. It opened with British soldiers leaving for war. The piece took its inspiration from the Monument to the Women of World War II and focused on women’s lives during the conflict.

The programme also featured music from Gregory Porter, with a routine from professionals Alexis Warr and Aljaž Škorjanec.

What happens next

The remaining couples return on Saturday 14 November, with the results show on Sunday 15 November. The sources give slightly different start times of around 6.25pm to 6.30pm for the live show and 7.10pm to 7.15pm for the results, so check BBC listings. There is also hope that actress Jaime Winstone will be back after missing Saturday’s live show through injury. Her return would matter to the leaderboard as the field narrows.

For Mercer and Ingoldsby, the dance-off win is a reprieve after a bottom-two finish on judges’ marks. After a tight Strictly Come Dancing elimination that turned on a deciding vote, they will have to improve quickly to avoid being back in the bottom two next weekend. Episodes of the 2026 series are available on BBC iPlayer.

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