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The controversy surrounding MrBeast’s new game show Beast Games is contiuing, with staff who worked on the show calling for the YouTuber’s team to be “blacklisted”.

MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson is the biggest YouTuber in the world but is facing increased scrutiny for the upcoming series, reportedly the largest reality show in history, which has been produced for Amazon Prime.

Earlier this month, a class action lawsuit was filed against him by contestants on the show claiming they were subjected to “chronic mistreatment” and sexual harassment.

Now a lengthy report from Las Vegas 3 News, says that staff who worked on the show have called it “beyond embarrassing” and that it was the most “unprofessional” production they had ever worked on.

One production worker Rick, who worked as a contestant wrangler for the show said that communication on set was “terrible” which caused a number of problems, including with the medics who struggled to monitor what medication was required for various contestants.

The report claims that contestants were not allowed to bring any belongings, including medication, with them into Allegiant Stadium, where 2000 contestants were based for a preliminary qualifying ‘episode’ for the show intended for YouTube.

The majority of contestants were staying at the Rio and Luxor casinos where the production medics were also based but they had “no idea that [some contestants] were at other casinos”. Those contestants had their items collected by production staff that promised to deliver them to the “appropriate department”.

A medic named Mona claims “their stuff was supposed to be turned into us and never was” and that “everything was on the fly. We didn’t have a real understanding of what they expected, or even if they knew what they were expecting. I don’t think that it was planned out because all the information was not given.”

Another contestant wrangler, Kara, who worked at Allegiant Stadium between 18-21 July, said there was also a huge sanitary issue with the portable toilets used on set.

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She claims that she only saw the portable toilets emptied once during the four days on set which resulted in overflowing. Kara added on the third day: “We had a guy come up to us with his sleeping bag, and his sleeping bag was covered in excrement.”

Kara also said that an unnamed contestant wrangler was threatened with “termination” after they refused to clean up the mess, despite not being given the proper equipment to deal with human waste.

“That’s a major OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] violation. You don’t ask people to clean porta potties like that”, she added.

A third contestant wrangler, Hannah, who was in charge of guiding and coordinating contestants said that she felt “unprofessional” after she was left without any call sheets and that she “should have had more protocols to help me [do my job]”.

She also claims that one contestant had a seizure and “they just left him there” with the incident only being brought to their attention an hour later with the community ambulance medical team then treating the patient.

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In August, The New York Times reported that competitors now say they have not received adequate food or medical care.

“We signed up for the show, but we didn’t sign up for not being fed or watered or treated like human beings,” one contestant told The Times on the condition of anonymity, as they had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

One meal, described to The Times by several different contestants, consisted of a small portion of cold oatmeal, a few pieces of raw vegetables and a single hard-boiled egg.

MrBeast has been contacted for comment.

TEEN Mom UK is returning to screens next month for a dramatic tenth series.

The hit MTV series follows former teen mums Sassi Simmonds, Amber Butler, Chloe Patton, and Mia Boardman, who are all now navigating parenthood in their twenties.

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News of the latest series was announced on the Teen Mom UK Instagram account, along with the official trailer for the upcoming series of the reality show.

“Teen Mom UK is back! With fresh challenges, big changes and exciting ventures,” the announcement read.

It also confirmed the new series is just days away, adding: “Don’t miss Teen Mom UK, returning 8pm Wednesday 16th October only on MTV UK.”

Meanwhile, the trailer teased a bit more about what viewers can expect to see in series 10.

“Their children are growing up fast … but the mums have had to grow up faster,” the voiceover begins before it cuts to a clip of Chloe, who finds herself asking: “where has eight years gone?”

Chloe, from Nottingham, joined Teen Mom UK at age 17 when she was pregnant with son Marley after a course of antibiotics caused her contraceptive pill to fail.

The trailer also teases that “brand new challenges lie ahead” for the mums.

This includes the fact that Sassi’s baby daddy Darren Quirk is having a child with another woman. 

Sassi shares daughter Zena’ya Saint with ex Darren.

The pair were childhood sweethearts, but split after their daughter was born.

They tried to patch things up while on the show, but it looks as though they are co-parenting together now.

This may become a difficult task as Darren becomes a parent again with his new partner. 

Alongside Chloe and Sassi, the reality series will showcase highs and lows of motherhood for Mia, who is mum to daughter Marliya, and reality star and influencer Amber who shares two children with on-off partner Steven ‘Ste’ Rankine.

The series will see the women try to balance motherhood with burgeoning career aspirations and societal pressures.

Of course they’ll be plenty of drama, “but wherever life takes them, their children are always by their side.

UK Teen Mum Statistics

Teen pregnancies in the UK have been decreasing considerably since 2007…

The under-18 conception rate has decreased considerably since 2007, reports Nuffield Trust.

Between 2007 and 2021, the under-18 conception rate in England and Wales decreased by 68%, from 42 per 1,000 women to 13 per 1,000 women.

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This resulted in 13,131 under-18 conceptions in England and Wales in 2021.

“Rocking motherhood one step at a time.

“Older, wiser and ready for anything,” the trailer concludes.

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Series 10 of Teen Mom UK premieres Wednesday 16th October at 8pm on MTV UK.

In what feels like the blink of an eye, Phillip Schofield is heading back to our primetime screens.

He never was a casualty of cancel culture – this was a spectacular career collapse sparked by a serious HR violation, an abuse of power and a betrayal of his inner circle, not to mention millions of viewers who saw one man and realised he was another. “I have brought myself down. I am done. I have to talk about television in the past tense, which breaks my heart,” he said then. But that was then.

Now, 16 months later, here he is, a contemporary Lazarus, gearing up for a comeback as if nothing had ever happened. In the fame business, it seems that even the most spectacular falls from grace have a reset button.

After last year’s debacle involving a tawdry affair with a much younger colleague on ITV’s This Morning, Phillip Schofield, the TV veteran, is somehow clawing his way back into the limelight.

This time he’s washed up – both figuratively and literally – on a desert island in a three-part Channel 5 special, Phillip Schofield: Cast Away. Note the narrative: here he is as an embattled survivor.

It is a very modern form of public therapy in which a disgraced star seeks redemption through the absurd theatre of manufactured reality. But in this chaotic ecosystem – of TV, of public opinion, of social media – the gambit might just pay off.

Let me tell you, from what I know of PR and strategic communications, what’s going on here.

The first trick is the apparently confessional format of the show. The solitude allows Schofield to tell his side of the story that dethroned him without dissenting voices interrupting. Then there is the setting that unsubtly symbolises both humility and victimhood – all clearly designed to propel Schofield into a redemption arc.

He went quiet for a time after the scandal hit. That, too, was strategic. These days, the public’s attention span is about as long as a TikTok clip, and the news cycle is just as fleeting. A full 80% of online news stories hit their peak within 20 hours, meaning that we collectively forget them faster than we scroll past useless ads. Borkowski research confirms that even a major scandal only holds our fragile interest for two weeks, tops.

This collective short-term memory loss is the perfect breeding ground for long-term amnesia. In that negative space, fractured reputations are painstakingly rebuilt and disgraced characters miraculously rebrand themselves – as if we wouldn’t remember the trainwreck they caused last Tuesday.

Can it go wrong? Of course it can. Consider the version of this strategy being conducted in parallel in the US with fellow cancellee Ellen DeGeneres, who lost her primetime show amid internal bullying allegations at odds with her much-loved catchphrase to viewers (“Be kind”). Her comeback vehicle, a widely derided standup Netflix special For Your Approval, should act as a cautionary tale for Schofield. She, too, picked a format she could control and in which she was the only voice – a platform on which she could give her side of the story unchallenged, and one on which she could paint herself as the “real” victim in her cancellation.

But she’s been panned. “No apologies and not particularly funny: Ellen DeGeneres’s shameless return to standup,” was the Guardian verdict. DeGeneres’s comeback vehicle appears to have lacked the necessary subtlety and balance to rehabilitate her public image. She compares her experience of being cancelled with the ostracism she experienced when coming out as gay in 1997. Gun, foot, bang.

Schofield must avoid these pitfalls. But however well pitched his comeback strategy, Cast Away is almost certainly going to be a success for Channel 5, whose decision to platform Schofield has thrust it into a spotlight that generally eludes the minnow of UK terrestrial television. Also worth noting: its achievement in preventing the show’s existence from being scooped by a tabloid until just days before broadcast, when the publicity suits it.

We are a harsh, judgmental culture, and yet we enjoy a redemption story. The headlines generated by the mere prospect of Schofield’s onscreen return demonstrate that we are on some level still fascinated by the character even while recognising his wrongdoing and his trajectory. He’s got our attention instantly; his challenge now is to maintain it without sustaining further damage to his already battered reputation.

If Cast Away is to launch him out of showbusiness purgatory, Schofield must put in the performance of a lifetime. The programme will need to feel raw and authentic.

Facing a morbidly curious but largely unsympathetic public, Schofield must walk a tightrope of humility, contrition, grace, thick skin and self-awareness, while also reminding us of the prodigious camera presence that made him a star in the first place.

No tantrums, no indignation at his downfall, no navel-gazing. He must be sincere or at least construct a sincerity – and then keep his fingers crossed.