1983 smash hit Chuckie Egg is being remade for mobile phones, and we’ve spoken to the bedroom programming teen protégé that originally made it.
It’s always sobering to realise that what counts as retro gaming is constantly changing. Although there’s no official definition, it was recently suggested that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are now definitely retro, being over 20 years old and two generations ago. Some might insist they still don’t count but there’s no arguing about the 8-bit era of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, which is now well over 40 years ago.
Although there are some games from that period that are still active today (Donkey Kong launched a year before the Spectrum itself) most are not, especially anything that was developed in the UK – as a majority of Spectrum games were. 1983 was the start of the video game crash in the US but that didn’t affect Japan or Europe. At that point though the NES was still three years from release in Europe, so at that time the video games industry consisted almost solely of coin-op games and 8-bit home computers.
That year, the best-selling games on the Spectrum included text adventure The Hobbit, Jetpac from Ultimate Play the Game (later to be renamed Rare), seminal platformer Manic Miner and… Chuckie Egg by Nigel Alderton. Back in the days when a game being made by a single person was the norm, he developed the game as a teenager, in his bedroom, and saw it hog the number one spot for much of the year.
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Nowadays you have to be of a certain age to even remember the name Chuckie Egg, especially as it only had one sequel – that was not made by Alderton and was a very different style of game, more similar to Manic Miner sequel Jet Set Willy. The original, though, unlike so many games from the period, is still very playable today.
It’s a single screen platformer where you have to collect eggs before a timer runs out. You’re pursued by chickens, with all of you attempting to pick up piles of seeds along the way – which if you get to them first will slow the timer. After the first eight levels the giant bird in the top left of the screen escapes and also pursues you, as the levels get harder and harder.
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It sounds simple, and it is, but what made it such a hit is the smoothness of the controls, which were much more akin to a coin-op than most computer games. Initially released on the Spectrum, BBC Micro, and Dragon 32/64, it was later ported to the Commodore 64, Acorn Electron, MSX, Amstrad CPC, and a variety of other now forgotten computer formats. It subsequently appeared on the 16-bit Amiga and Atari ST, as well as MS-DOS, but never on any console.
Like so many games of the era that means it’s largely been lost to time, increasingly forgotten by British fans and completely unknown to most American and Japanese gamers. However, Chuckie Egg has now been recreated for mobile and is available to pre-order now on iPhone and iPad, and Apple TV, for a one-time, ad-free fee of £2.99. It includes both a version of the original and a modernised edition that twists the camera angle to give it a 2.5D look.
The launch this week also gave us a chance to interview Nigel Alderton, as we discussed his memories of the 8-bit days, how he came to make the game, and what he thinks of the video games industry today.
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GC: Even though Chuckie Egg ended up on so many different formats, I still think of it as a Spectrum game. I think probably because it was a few years before I got a computer, a Commodore 64, and the port still looked a lot like a Spectrum game.
NA: I think that was Mike Webb, the Commodore one. Mike Webb wrote about 11 different versions of it, because I wrote the original one and then other people did the conversions. But Mike ended up writing some ridiculous number, I think it might have been 11.
The Commodore had hardware sprites, and you could move a lot around the screen, taking up very little CPU, but if you wanted to scroll the whole screen on the Spectrum that was quite an exotic thing to do. So, people stayed away from those if you’re designing a game for the Spectrum; quite hard to do.
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GC: As I understand it you were influenced by Donkey Kong and Space Panic, and I think Space Panic in particular can be regarded as the first ever platformer. So you’re talking the very early days of gaming and yet there was already an established scene with influential titles.
NA: I walked to school every day and there was a newsagent on the way, that had an arcade game. And so the first first one that I remember was Space Panic. And then at some point they had Scramble. They might have had Donkey Kong, but the very, very early arcade platform games. So if you look at Space Panic and Chucky Egg, side by side, the colours are embarrassingly similar. [laughs] I basically pinched them, but they work really well on the Spectrum, the high contrast purple and the green. But yeah, it was very early days, wasn’t it?
GC: So were you a keen gamer at that time? What were your first experiences of computing?
NA: We were lucky enough to have two or three computers at school. There was a teacher called Mr Bishop, who was very forward-looking, ’cause computers were just barely a thing at that time. And he managed to get the funds to get some Tandy TRS-80s. He commandeered a sort of broom cupboard and put these computers in there and I’d seen people wandering in out of the place with these glowing screens and wondered what the heck it was.
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So I used to just hang around and try and get onto them to try and type BASIC. And then I peed my parents for a ZX81. But I was always more interested in the writing. I never really played computer games very much at all. Played loads of arcade games. I used to put all my pocket money into the arcades, there’s an arcade in Stockport, which unfortunately was directly on my bus route home from my Saturday job.
So I’d earn my £7 working on the Saturday, get off and change buses at Stockport with the arcade right there. And many times all my money that I earned that day went into those damn machines. [laughs] But I never really played Commodore games or Spectrum games; I never played those sorts of games very much. Just arcade games.
Nigel Alderton back in his school days
GC: I’ve been playing the game and it’s… I wouldn’t call it easy but it’s not as vindictively unfair as a lot of games from that period and it doesn’t involve rote learning. From what you’ve just said I can totally see the arcade influence, where it’s not easy but it is a lot more fluid and accessible than a lot of computer games of the times, things like Manic Miner – which I know you’re not a fan of.
NA: Yeah, I’m not a fan of puzzle games. I much more enjoy games where it’s more about the dexterity rather than figuring out a puzzle. So, I was just writing a game that I would like to play. I can’t remember if that was a conscious thing or a subconscious thing. And also, I didn’t like games that I played where if one pixel of your character touches one pixel of a deadly thing, an enemy character, then you die. So I didn’t like the feel of that. I thought it was too unforgiving. So that was a deliberate choice.
But I think I could have made it easier, is that when you come to a ladder, you’re running on platforms, when you first start playing, it takes people a while to figure out that you have to hold the ‘up’ button as you get to the ladder to be able to run up. Watching people struggling with, they go to the left of the ladder and then press ‘up’ and then to the right and press ‘up’. It’s frustrating, but once you’ve got that knack I think it was quite easy to get into.
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GC: There’s a lot of games from that period where climbing that ladder would be a lot fiddlier than even that, but Chuckie Egg seems pretty smooth to me. Were you thinking of things like difficulty and accessibility when you were making it?
NA: Very much. I wanted to try and get progression, so that you would learn skills gradually. And so try and have a screen early on… the first screen, you don’t have to learn all the skills in one lump, and then you develop them over time. So on the first screen, you don’t really have to be able to jump off of a ladder and grab another ladder, for example. Or jump on the lift, you know? So I wanted to introduce things slowly.
And also, I wanted to be able to have as many new levels, where it was not the same as any previous level, without having to come up with new platform layouts every time. So hence, you do the first eight screens and that’s got the eight platform layouts, but then you go and do them again, and you get the bird coming out instead of the tall birds, and then you do ’em again, and you get the next eight and you do them again, and you get both, and so on.
So I was trying to have a progression, so it got got harder. There were other ideas that I never got to do because they were sort of breathing down my neck to say, ‘Come on! Get it finished, get it finished!’ [laughs] Because I would’ve gone on and just kept adding things to it, I think, if they hadn’t been getting me to do that. There were other things that could have been added to make it go on even further. But I think there’s something like, maybe 48 levels where it’s different each level and then after that it just repeats.
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The original version has aged surprisingly well (Elite Systems)
GC: I don’t think a lot of developers in those days, were thinking along those lines, which would certainly explain why it was so popular.
NA: Yeah. I also wanted it to be four players [consecutively, not at the same time – GC]. That probably comes from the arcade, when you’re hanging around with a bunch of people or watching one player play. You get the group dynamic of taking the mickey or saying ‘Well done!’ or whatever. The more the merrier.
GC: So what would you have done to the game if you’d had more time?
NA: I think the next thing might have been two birds coming out at the same time, but with with different movements. So one would move with a different algorithm. And then I think another one was getting bits of the platform to disappear. So you get the same platform layout, but just with the odd brick taken out… ’cause that wouldn’t take up much memory to do that or having to design a complete new level.
GC: I guess maybe there was a story in the cassette inlay or something, but did you have any kind of plot explanation in mind while you were working on it? Because it’s pretty abstract but it’s not completely surreal or random like some other games from the time.
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NA: I dunno. Because it’s all out scale, isn’t it? You know, the tall birds… I called them tall birds, but that was kind of an ostrich type thing. But then the bird that comes out of the cage is ridiculous size, isn’t it? Compared to that. There’s a sort of narrative, but it’s a bit messed up. But it is more to do with what I would… because I’m hopeless at graphics. I can do the programming, but I can’t make a pretty picture.
So it was just what was easy to draw. And the square hat came from the fact that I didn’t want pixel collision, I wanted it to be based on a softer collision detection, the collision had to be a roughly a square shape. So the hat kind of makes him visually more square.
GC: So it becomes the hit box?
NA: Yeah, so it’s a trade off between the limits of my coding ability and the limits of my graphics ability. [laughs] And then they [publisher A&F Software] called him Hen-House Harry. They came up with the name Chuckie Egg and tried to create a bit of a narrative, I think, but they were almost random characters that I was drawing.
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Nigel tasted success early
GC: Who was the publisher? They were all northern companies back in that day, weren’t they? There were very few that were down south.
NA: Yeah, there was a lot up North and a few in Birmingham, and then there was a couple in Liverpool and then a few in London. But all the magazine publishers were down in London, but all the developers and the game creators were sort of spread all over the country.
GC: So you lived in Stockport but where was A&F based?
NA: A&F were in Denton, I think it was. But I got a Saturday job with them, through a friend of mine. And so I was just making cups of tea on a Saturday and serving in the shop and that kind of thing. And I showed them a game and they weren’t interested, but they said, ‘Oh, take it up to this guy up the road. That was in Hyde, so I went and I got given a cheque for something like £700, for this game that I’d written just before I wrote Chuckie Egg.
GC: That would’ve been a lot at the time, I imagine.
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NA: It was a ridiculous amount! I went home with this cheque, thinking, ‘Well, this can’t be real. I won’t believe until I see it in my bank account. I showed it to my dad and that was the first time I’d actually heard him swear, like really swear. And he just couldn’t believe it. I was shocked somebody would pay me to do this thing that I just did for fun, you know? I wrote it because I enjoyed it. And then I wrote Chuck.
So anyway, I turned up to my Saturday job one day, and Chuckie Egg was only half finished, and I showed it to them and this crowd of people all started crowding around going, ‘Wow, look at this!’ So I was really chuffed that I had impressed them.
It was pixel movement and that wasn’t really a thing at that point, on the Spectrum. Nobody had really worked out how to do it. It was all character movement and there wasn’t really any pixel movement games published at that point.
GC: Can you briefly describe what the difference is?
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NA: So, if your character, you are controlling, moves left and right, then character movement is it has to move in jumps of eight pixels on the Spectrum, left or right, or up or down. But pixel movement, you can just move one pixel at a time. Chuckie Egg moves two pixels at a time.
Nigel as he is today (Elite Systems)
GC: So were you doing all this just by yourself?
NA: I did the whole thing. I did the whole Spectrum thing, yeah.
GC: How did you learn to program? Was that at school?
NA: I managed to get a little bit of time on these Tandy TRS-80s, occasionally. ‘Cause there’s loads of kids, all sort of fighting to get on them. And there was only three of them, I think. And then there was a sort of pecking order, but I did manage to occasionally, if I stayed late enough after school or got in early enough, to get a go. And then I got to play with that on BASIC.
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Then the main thing, where I learned the most and really started to learn how to code, was that I got a ZX81. I pestered my parents or… I think I used part my pocket money and then they chipped in a bit and I got the ZX81 and learned BASIC on that.
But then, also, I started to learn machine code on that, just the real beginnings of it. But actually got machine code to work on the ZX81. And the difference in the speed just blew my mind. When I first got a block to move left and right, on the screen, using keyboard controls… when I got the code running in machine code, I thought it’s not working because it just goes fully from the left of the screen all the way to the right of the screen, in one jump. But it wasn’t, it was just because it was so quick!
So it just blew my mind, the speed of it. And I thought, right, this is the answer. And then the Spectrum was announced and I was just drooling over magazines every week, looking at these beautiful colour pictures of the upcoming Spectrum, which was massively delayed and delayed and delayed. But yeah, I sent my cheque off and that was partly my pocket money and partly my parents. And it covered Christmas and birthday rolled into one, so I think it was over £100, which was a lot of money in those days.
So I sent my cheque off, or postal order or whatever, and then just waited and waited and waited. And I think it took three months to come, ’cause they were just so massively swamped by orders. And the day it came through I couldn’t believe it, like this magical thing. It was awesome!
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GC: [laughs] What age were you when this was happening?
NA: I got the Spectrum when it first came out… would that have been ’82? So I was born in ’66. So what’s that? Maybe 15 or 16? I was 16 when I first started writing Chuckie Egg, I think, and then it came out when I was 17. So I was writing Chucky when I should have been studying for my mock A-levels.
GC: Well, the world benefitted from your choice. Well, I say the world, but I doubt anyone outside of Europe even knows the game. Did it ever get ported to anything that wasn’t a home computer?
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NA: No, I don’t think so. It is being now, but back in the day. But it did go to Europe. It’s known in Portugal, apparently, and Spain. Which I’ve only just found out recently, because I got an email from a sort of retro computer enthusiast in Portugal.
GC: [laughs] Playing it again now it really should have been turned into an arcade game, but as big as the British development scene was at the time that sort of thing never happened.
NA: There was plenty of games for the Spectrum or the Commodore that could have gone the other way and gone to arcades. I think you’re right. But they all came the opposite way, didn’t they? You’d have conversions from the arcade games, but the arcade industry could have done the same thing and licensed home computer games and just pick the most popular and successful ones.
GC: So Chuckie Egg is a big success and you’ve got another massive cheque from the publisher. What happened after that? Did you work on Chuckie Egg 2?
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NA: No, I didn’t. And I wasn’t a fan, actually. I didn’t like their design for it.
GC: I thought as much, because if you don’t like Manic Miner you’re not going to like Chuckie Egg 2.
NA: [laughs] Yeah, I don’t like that Manic Miner style of game, with the collision detection and it being puzzle-orientated. It’s just not my thing. I’ve nothing against, hat’s his name that wrote it?
GC: Matthew Smith, I think.
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NA: That rings a bell, yeah. So then I finished school and I didn’t want to go to university, The parents were quite keen for me to do that but I didn’t really like school, so I didn’t really want to go to university. And I felt that I had a skill and somebody told me that, well, you’ve written Chuckie Egg. You could walk into any company, any games publisher, and just say, ‘Gimme a job!’ And they’d hire me. So I did. So I went and I applied to Ocean and they said, ‘Yeah, come and work for us. So I went to work for them for about 18 months, I think. A year and a half.
Nigel even made it into the papers
GC: What did you do there?
NA: I worked on Street Hawk with Mike Webb and Joffers [probably Jonathan M. Smith], what did we do? We did this game… you had like a car and it was a rollercoaster thing on the screen, and I can’t remember what the actual game was [Kong Strikes Back – GC]. I can’t remember what you were trying to do, but I think those were the only two. I don’t remember working on any others.
GC: So what happened after that 18 months? Did you go to another company or had you had enough of games by then?
NA: Well, I thought I’d go and be a freelance programmer. So I started touting around for freelance work. I think, mainly, so I had more freedom and you get more money as well. That’s how I met Steve Wilcox [who currently runs Elite Systems, publishers of this new version of Chuckie Egg – GC].
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I can’t remember how I got in contact with him – maybe I phoned up or wrote or something, or did I reply to an advert? So he was looking for programmers to do Commando on the Spectrum and the Commodore, and one other. So I said I’ve written Chuck Egg and Street Hawk, so he hired me and a guy called Keith Burkhill to do Commando on the Spectrum. And that was on a very, very tight schedule, ’cause it had to be out for Christmas.
So I went and worked for them. And then I sort of got burnt out as a programmer and then went and worked for Steve full-time as an employee, just managing all the other programmers. Just coordinating them and making note of how far along they were, ’cause he was running so many projects at the same time and Steve was sort of overwhelmed. So I helped him to just basically schedule things. So I did that for a while, maybe a year or two, and then moved to Audiogenic down in London. And I was software development manager there and I was sort of slightly involved in that football game [Emlyn Hughes International Soccer – GC].
So I think I spent a couple of years there and then after that… I’d always viewed the games industry as a bit of a not proper job, if you know what I mean. And I thought PCs were grown-up computers and the Spectrum and the Commodore were games computers, there were sort of toys really. It’s a bit of snobbery there maybe.
So I thought, right, I’ll try and get a proper job now. And so I went to work for a company in the city. So I was back to programming again, but I was programming on a PC. So that was my entry into the PC world, which is where I spent the rest of my career, if you can call it that, my life. [laughs]
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GC: What were you doing there? Nothing to do with games, by the sound of it?
NA: No. So, I started off doing PC support and computer installation and maintenance. So I moved to a company in south London and so they sold computers and installed ’em for people and installed ethernet networks, early ethernet networks. So, I was installing the computers, installing the networks, and we also did tech support as well. So we’d go around and fix computer problems. That was for all sorts of different companies and then I went to work for Engelhard in Surrey and spent seven years there. And they’re a precious metal manufacturer, and I was looking after all the PC equipment in that company.
GC: Steve said you were in property now?
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NA: [laughs] I’m semi-retired but I moved house and it was a bit of a doer-upper, but then I decided that I didn’t like the location in the end. So I moved again, very quickly, and bought another doer-upper, so now I’m doing this one. So that keeps me busy.
GC: So while all this was going on the games industry was expanding and evolving in the background. Did you retain an interest in it, have you kept abreast of how things have changed?
NA: Not really, no. Because I’ve kind of grown out of going to arcades.
GC: Well, you don’t get a chance nowadays…
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NA: [laughs] I don’t think any of my friends were particularly still into playing computer games and I was never really into playing computer games. It was a bit of a bubble really, wasn’t it? ‘Cause all these home computers came out, the VIC-20 and the Dragon and god knows what, and there was gazillions of them at one point, and then it seemed a bit of a bubble that burst maybe, I don’t know if that’s true, but it was mainly a console thing.
GC: Yeah, the whole home computer market faded away in the 16-bit era and much of the British games industry with it. It’s a shame because if Chuckie Egg had been Japanese or American you’d be on your 20th sequel by now!
NA: [laughs] I mean, the hardware moved on, didn’t it? And then you get these first person shoot ’em ups and also the idea of being able to write a game completely yourself… I mean, maybe not the graphics, but all the design, all the programming, and do it in a reasonable amount of time… one person could write a game. There’s no chance one person can do that now, or very rarely, isn’t it? Games are massive beasts now that you might need hundreds of people. Yeah, it’s very different.
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GC: Well, that’s true for the bigger games but I don’t know how aware you are of the indie scene, where it’s not unheard of to have just a single person – or certainly a very small team – making a game on their own. Is that something you’d ever be interested in doing, as a hobby or something?
NA: So they do exist, do they? There’s the phone games I suppose, as well, isn’t there? I dunno whether Flappy Bird was just one guy?
GC: It was and he got so upset that people were addicted to the game that he stopped it, he withdrew it from sale.
NA: [laughs] I didn’t realise that!
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GC: He was so overtaken with guilt that he was wasting people’s lives.
NA: Is that what it was?
GC: Well, that’s what he said. I think fans brought it back or something, but the original creator is not involved I don’t think.
NA: Wow. So it had a shelf life and now it’s gone.
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GC: There’s dozens of indie games released every week but a good percentage are by very small or one-man teams.
NA: On what hardware?
GC: Some are only PC, but many of them make it to consoles if they’re successful. And some to mobile as well.
NA: Right. Yeah, it’s not a world I know anything about.
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GC: And yet you created a classic video game all those years ago, which is still perfectly playable today. More so than most home computer games from that era.
NA: Thanks very much.
GC: It’s not a complicated game but it is very playable and there’s more variety than you’d expect.
NA: That was a conscious thing, that I wanted to get a complexity of play without a complexity of structures or things… concepts. So to try and get a lot of variety by doing combinations of the different ideas in there.
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The 3D effect is a neat way to update the visuals (Elite Systems)
GC: I’ve always felt learning a new skill was very important, to action games at least. But it’s something that mainstream publishers have been fighting for years; they worry that it puts people off.
NA: There was a ton of kids coming up with ideas in the early days. There was so much variety as well. It was all different, the types of games and many, many genres of games.
GC: I think you’d be interested if you looked into the indie scene. Slay The Spire 2 is one of the biggest games on Steam at the moment and the first one… I think they got more people to help with the sequel but the first one was basically just two guys.
NA: I believe you get these 3D engines, and physics engines, and things now, so you’re not having to code every line. You’ve at least got some something to start with.
GC: You can get things like Unity, which are very cheap, so you can plug all that in, yeah.
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NA: I mean, that’s the sort of thing that might get me to have a fiddle around with something and play around with something.
GC: [laughs] Give it a go, make a true Chuckie Egg 2.
NA: [laughs] Chuckie Egg 2026 or something. Chuckie Egg 2100.
GC: I suppose we should put in a quick plug for the new mobile versions. So there’s a recreation of the original and then a version with sort of isometric graphics?
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NA: Sort of pseudo 3D, yeah. But the gameplay is very close, if not identical, to the Speccy version, the original version.
GC: Did you oversee this new version?
NA: It’s taken a while to come to fruition and I have had a play every now and again, but I’m not supervising it. It’s not me writing the code but I’ve put my twopenn’orth in occasionally.
GC: Purely by coincidence we’ve had a lot of retro stories recently, and there’s been a lot of interest.
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NA: I had a plumber come round, a while ago.
GC: Mario, was it?
NA: [laughs] Some friends, for my birthday, had a T-shirt made with Chuckie Egg on the front of it and it was so well done that it’s framed, and so it happens to be leaning up against the wall and this guy came in and he said, ‘Oh, Chuckie Egg!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I wrote it.’ And he couldn’t believe it. It’s amazing how many people of the right age group remember it and have a fond memory for it.
GC: You should be absolutely proud of what you made. For a Brit of the right age that was their Mario or Halo. You made something that will long outlive you.
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NA: Yes, It’s amazing though, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah. Nice little feather in my cap.
GC: Alright, well thanks very much for your time.
NA: Cheers, cheers.
Maybe one day there’ll be a true Chuckie Egg 2 (Elite Systems)
Matt Fitzpatrick ended day two of the RBC Heritage with a one-shot lead after carding an eight-under-par 63.
The Englishman made eight birdies, including sinking a 36-foot putt on hole 15, in a bogey-free second round at Hilton Head.
“Yeah, it was lucky, there’s no two ways about it,” Fitzpatrick said. “Sometimes you need that in a week, so it’s nice to get, and then even nicer to take advantage of it.”
Fitzpatrick – the 2022 US Open champion – began Friday in a six-way tie for third following an opening round of 65.
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Matt Fitzpatrick has the lead at Hilton Head (Getty)
“I wouldn’t say I striped it today, but at least I kind of kept the ball in front of me, and that’s what you’re trying to do on this golf course,” Hovland said.
The 31-year-old tops the leaderboard on 14 under par at the halfway stage, with Norway’s Viktor Hovland one stroke behind after retaining second spot with a second-round score of 65.
Overnight leader Ludvig Aberg dropped to joint fourth position following three bogeys on the back nine.
Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre ended the day six shots behind Fitzpatrick after posting a 68, while world number one Scottie Scheffler carded a 67 and is seven shots off the pace.
Siobhian Brown, SNP candidate for Ayr, said: “As per our manifesto commitment, we recognise women face abuse in their everyday lives and need increased protection against this – that’s why we will bring forward a Misogyny Bill to legislate to ensure harassment and abuse based on misogyny is outlawed in Scotland.”
Passengers claim they thought pilot was “joking” when he stepped out of the cockpit to make the announcement.
09:55, 18 Apr 2026Updated 10:00, 18 Apr 2026
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A group of passengers were kicked off an easyJet plane because it was “too heavy” to take-off. Holidaymakers heading to Malaga were stunned when the pilot stepped out of the cockpit and told them the aircraft was over weight limits for the runway.
Passengers claimed they were told if people didn’t disembark, all the luggage would need to be left behind at Southend Airport. Kelly Wayand, who was travelling with her mum, disabled dad and partner, said she “couldn’t believe what was happening” and thought it was a joke at first.
Independent travel agent Kelly, 45, added: “It was bizarre, I had never heard anything like it before. The pilot came out of his cockpit and told everyone we couldn’t set off unless six of us got off the plane.
“He said it was either that or we leave all of the luggage behind. I was travelling with my dad, who is disabled, my mum, and my partner, so it would have been hard work for us to get off.”
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Although Kelly and her family weren’t able to get off, another group made the sacrifice to allow the flight to go ahead. Kelly said: “Five people got off fairly quickly in around 10 minutes.”
As reported by The Mirror, the five kind flyers who decided to take the hit received a round of applause from their fellow passengers. Carly Mowbray was also on the April 11 flight.
She said: “The people who got off departed to a round of applause from those of us that stayed. The flight crew said they had not experienced it before. There were already 10 empty seats before the extra passengers got off.”
Flight records reveal the aircraft – an Airbus A319 – was scheduled to depart at 8.40am but actually took off at 8.59am. According to Airbus, an A319 has a maximum take-off weight of 75.50 tonnes.
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EasyJet released a statement saying: “Five passengers on flight EJU7008 from Southend to Malaga volunteered to travel on alternative flights as a result of the aircraft being over the weight limits for the weather conditions and the short length of the runway. Weight restrictions are in place for all airlines for safety reasons.”
The budget airline added: “The customers were provided with transport and a later flight to Malaga on the same day, free of charge, from London Gatwick and we have been in touch with them to provide the compensation they are entitled to, in line with regulations. The safety and welfare of our passengers and crew is always easyJet’s highest priority.”
Under UK261 regulations, passengers who are denied boarding for a medium-haul flight such as between Southend and Malaga are entitled to £175 or £350 compensation, depending on the duration of the delay.
There is often a perception that geographical distance reduces vulnerability – an idea that can be particularly appealing in neutral countries with long-standing stable and strong economies.
Switzerland is a clear example: its long-standing neutrality, formally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and still recognised as a central part of its foreign policy, combined with its economic strength, has helped keep it outside major conflicts historically and reinforced the perception that distance, stability and wealth provide protection.
But in a world where energy, food, finance and even the atmosphere are tightly interconnected, distance (and neutrality) doesn’t shield Switzerland, or any other nation.
Take the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas passes through it. When it’s disrupted, the effects don’t stay local; they ripple outward through longer shipping routes, strained supply chains and shifting economic decisions in ways that reach far beyond the countries directly involved and could cause long-term environmental damage.
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More often than not, this appears as subtle environmental and economic changes rather than sudden shocks.
Switzerland offers a particularly instructive example. It is neither an energy exporter nor a strategic actor in the conflict. Yet it sits at the intersection of multiple global systems: shipping and transport routes, European agriculture, high-value manufacturing and international finance.
Shipping routes and ice melt
When maritime routes are disrupted, as is currently happening, shipping does not stop. It adapts. Tankers take longer routes and fuel efficiency declines. The result is an increase in particulate emissions, including black carbon. These particles can travel vast distances. In high-altitude environments, their impact is amplified. When deposited on snow and ice, black carbon reduces reflectivity, increasing heat absorption and accelerating melt. In the Swiss Alps, where glaciers are already under pressure, even small increases can have measurable effects. Therefore, what begins as a logistical adjustment in global shipping can end up altering the physical state of distant mountain systems.
Switzerland’s industrial base offers another useful illustration. When firms face restricted or more expensive products, they often shift to alternative production methods. For instance, in the pharmaceutical industry, disruptions to chemical supply chains can force firms to switch suppliers or change elements used in production. While this may make economic sense, such changes are often not environmentally neutral. Different processes generate different byproducts, introducing new compounds into waste streams. The result may not be an immediate environmental crisis, but could create a gradual shift in the composition of pollutants.
Another example is the global fertiliser trade. In 2024, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain together accounted for 23% of global ammonia trade, 34% of global urea trade, and 18% of global ammoniated phosphate trade, key inputs for fertiliser production. Disruptions do not simply raise prices; they constrain availability, forcing adjustments across farming systems worldwide.
In parts of Europe, including Switzerland, there could be some positive and negative affects on the environment. Reduced fertiliser use may lower nutrient runoff into waterways, easing pressure on rivers such as the Rhine River and improving conditions in some lakes. Ecosystems long stressed by excess nitrogen may experience a degree of relief. Yet this comes with trade-offs. Swiss agriculture depends on high levels of this type of fertiliser and so may see declining yields and shifts in crops if this is reduced. Alpine pastures, in particular, depend on carefully managed nutrient balances influenced by nitrogen availability. Change can disrupt that equilibrium, exposing how deeply even local ecosystems depend on global supply chains.
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Shipping routes are getting longer because of constraints on travelling through the Strait of Hormuz.
Environmental change can also be shaped by investment decisions. In periods of geopolitical tension, capital tends to become more cautious. Liquidity, resilience and short-term risk management take priority over long-term projects.
Finance and migration
For financial centres such as Switzerland – home to huge reinsurance firms such as Swiss Re – this shift matters. Roughly 25% of total global cross-border assets (financial investments outside your home country) are managed in Switzerland. When uncertainty rises, risk models are recalibrated and capital is redirected.
The unintended consequence is that long-term environmental investments – such as ecosystem restoration – can be delayed or scaled back. Environmental resilience depends on steady, long-term commitment; interruptions, even temporary ones, could be detrimental.
Large-scale conflicts also tend to reshape migration patterns, sometimes indirectly. Even countries that are not primary destinations can experience increased migration or adjust policies in response to broader European dynamics. In small countries such as Switzerland, even modest population increases translate into land-use pressures.
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Housing demand pushes outward, infrastructure expands, and previously marginal areas come into use. Reports suggest that agricultural land in Switzerland is reducing. Approximately one square metre is lost every second, with about 80% converted into settlement areas and the remaining 20% transitioning into forests. The environmental impact is gradual: increased resource consumption, greater strain on water and waste systems. None of these changes is dramatic on its own, but together they form a pattern of slow encroachment.
The effects of distant conflicts on neutral or far away countries are rarely direct. They are mediated through systems that operate quietly, often below the threshold of public attention.
Switzerland is not unique in this respect. It is simply a clear example: a country where environmental conditions are closely tracked, where economic systems are deeply integrated, and where small shifts can be observed with unusual precision. Neutrality may shape foreign policy, but it does not deliver environmental or economic immunity. In an interconnected world, exposure is universal.
LORD Robertson’s recent Strategic Defence Review recommendations must be acted upon with regards to defence spending and the development of our defence capability.
The obvious ways to fund defence is by reducing current welfare spending where we spend 10.3 per cent of GDP in comparison to 2.3per cent of GDP on defence.
The Government also needs to increase taxation to fund defence spending.
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We also need to look at how we can resource recruitment in our reservist and cadet forces which may include conscription. We cannot afford to not deliver quickly on these recommendations.
It’s viewed that Russia will be as powerful as NATO militarily by the end of the decade.
The time to act and deliver is now. The country has been failed for the past 20 years in our defence spending.
Let’s hope this Government changes that – it’s had plenty of warnings what we need to do to improve our nation’s protection.
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Failure to do so will lead to potential catastrophic consequences.
We can’t say we haven’t been warned.
John Jones,
Birch Close,
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York
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York’s got talent!
THE talented and well synchronised Northern Lights A Cappella group of Durham University appeared on BBC1 Breakfast TV on Monday morning, April 13 and in the evening on Look North.
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They recently won the UK championship in this distinctive style of music with movement, earning them a spot in the world finals (International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella) in New York later this month.
One of the students’ strong points, a speciality of theirs, is choreography. ‘Syncopation’ could be their middle name!
Last year they came third in the world championships against stiff competition from American universities. Fingers crossed (in unison) for this year!
Two of the 16-strong ensemble are Durham students from York; Alex – ‘beatboxer’ and Will – bass.
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Google the group and find out more. It’s fun; it’s clever; it’s catchy!
Derek Reed,
Middlethorpe Drive,
York
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Amman United Youth overcame Pontypool United 30-13 in the WRU U-18s Cup final at the Principality Stadium to spark wonderful celebrations
Wales legend Shane Williams is celebrating one of his greatest Principality Stadium triumphs after guiding Amman United Youth to WRU U18s Cup glory on Friday night.
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The former winger is one of the coaches at the side where it all began for him, with his son Carter starting on the wing against Pontypool United. Amman, who only re-started their youth team two years ago, beat Pontypool United 30-13 at the iconic venue.
It was a second heartbreaking final defeat in a row for Pontypool United, who were beaten in the last moments by Llandeilo last year.
Amman United were deserved winners, scoring three tries to one in a ferocious encounter that was a credit to both sides. There were wonderful scenes after the final whistle as the young Amman players celebrated the greatest win of their lives at the Principality in front of family and friends.
Williams had said: “We’ve come through some tough games this season and this Amman team has grown up together. I first met most of these lads when they were eight and I’ve come through with them, and my son Carter, since then.”
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Captain Ceian Lewis led from the front, setting the tone with a bruising early hit, while Lewis Appleby and Charlie Gregory impressed in defence for Pontypool United.
A tight first half saw Amman’s Toby Slater and United’s Tom Howard exchange penalties before Wales U18 back rower Cole Lacey crossed for the first try after sustained pressure just before the break. It meant Williams’ side lead 10-6 at half-time with still all to play for.
The second-half could not have started any better for the Amman as James Bentley intercepted a pass on on his own 22 and sprinted 70 metres to score at the other end. This time it was coach Williams’ son, Carter, who added the conversion to put daylight between the teams
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Pontypool United refused to go away, though, as co-captain Reuben Malsom barged over from a five metre penalty to cut the deficit to just four points once more.
But Amman found another gear, with Aled Davies racing over following a clinical move from a scrum. Williams converted and put the final nail in the coffin with two penalties.
Scorers:
Pontypool United: Try: Reuben Malson; Con: Tom Howard; Pens: Tom Howard 2.
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Amman United: Tries: Cole Lacey, James Bentley, Aled Davies; Cons: Carter Williams 2, Toby Slater 2; Pens: Carter Williams 2,
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Pontypool United: Jack McDonagh; Luca Grocott-Mason, Lewis Appleby, Charlie Gregory, Alfie Prosser; Thomas Howard, Daniel Parker; Logan Leonard, Cae Jones (co-captain), Scott Crewe, Ralph Evans, Reuben Malson (co-captain), Rudi Creel, Bailey Stride, Jake Sheppard
Reps: Ieuan Hockaday, George Jones, Max Jacob, Dewi Bainton, Coel Adams, Lewis Jenkins, Charlie Burrows, Danny Hutchinson
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Amman United: Cian Evans; Carter Williams, James Bentley, Kennedy Richards (co-captain), Aled Davies; Toby Slater, Iwan Bull; Ceian Lewis (co-captain), Griff Rees, David Thomas, Tom James, Dyfan Llewelyn, Cole Lacey, Jac Cloke, Hefin Davies
Its main focus is to exposure liars and anyone vulnerable to blackmail.
The vetting system is intentionally intrusive. It is believed to cost at least £80,000 per person, and involves cross-checking every detail of the subject’s personal lives.
Those who have been through it know that the key is candour when faced with the searching questions in interviews about the use of porn, your sex life, drug and drinking experiences and habits, affairs, kinks, family contacts, travel history.
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Agents for the United Kingdom Security Vetting service will use every possible resource, overt and covert, to scrutinise candidates.
Peter Mandelson walks outside his residence in London on Friday (Reuters)
Open source information on friendships abroad, foreign contacts, financial relationships, associations with known convicted criminals would emerge. So would gaps in financial reporting, unexplained loans and gifts would be highlighted.
“These are all the necessary parts of making sure that whatever is in someone’s background that makes them vulnerable – we know about it – so that they are less likely to be pressed into betraying their country for financial gain or through blackmail,” said a UK-based former civil servant who has gone through the vetting process.
“You can admit to some quite dodgy stuff and still pass, but lying is a red flag fail.”
Mandelson, who was known anyway to have been friends with Jeffrey Epstein prior to the latter’s convictions for sex crimes, was announced as the British ambassador to Washington on 20 December 2025.
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He was in post by 25 February the following year, which meant that his clearance was pushed up the queue ahead of others in less exalted positions.
Typically, security sources have explained to The Independent, that involves the urgent interviewing of close friends and associates of Mandelson by officials from the vetting agency.
Handout document issued by the US Department of Justice which shows Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Lord Peter Mandelson with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein (US Department of Justice)
They ask probing and, for ordinary civilians, often highly intrusive questions about candidates. These answers are then used to check the honesty of what the candidate says in their own interviews.
Mandelson would, it should be assumed, have been asked to explain the receipt of several payments from Jeffrey Epstein, as well as payments from the alleged people trafficker to his now husband – after Epstein’s conviction.
Mandelson has said publicly that he cannot recall these payments. It is not clear that such an answer would have satisfied UKSV.
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He has further denied an impropriety amid allegations, revealed in the Epstein files published in the US, that allegedly suggest he lobbied the UK government on banking and other financial issues that Epstein had an interest in, and that he forwarded market sensitive government material to Epstein while he was business secretary in 2009.
Mandelsom’s flights at Epstein’s expense, his stays on Epstein’s property, would have, or should have, been known about and explained in DV interviews with the UKSV as they were recorded in flight logs.
Emails between the two men, and these other details, led to Mandelson being fired as ambassador to Washington.
Sir Olly Robbins, who was the civil service head of the foreign office when Mandelson took over, has resigned over his department’s decision to overrule the UKSV and give Mandelson access to the most secret of secrets and most secret relationships that any British official could encounter.
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Donald Trump shakes hands with British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson after making a trade announcement in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 8, 2025 (AFP/Getty)
Mandelson’s day to day job involved being privy to bilateral intelligence of the kind even hidden from the Five Eyes shared system of the Anglosphere involving the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
He would have been present for, or hosted, informal chats with top American intelligence officials and the heads of British intelligence agencies.
Tories have, inevitably, called for the head of the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer. Tom Tugendhat, Conservative MP for Tonbridge is a former security minister and as an officer in military intelligence and as military assistant to the then Chief of the General Staff, general David Richards, he went through the DV process.
“Our government, rightly, spends millions on vetting. It’s not perfect but it’s the only rational response to the very real threat of espionage, corruption and blackmail,” he said on X.
“It’s intrusive and not pleasant, and it takes months; but it’s necessary. Holding a clearance is limiting but losing one is career-ending, as it should be.
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“I’ve been vetted and responsible for vetting as a soldier and minister. I’ve never heard of anyone who failed vetting getting a senior position, or any position of sensitivity.
Peter Mandelson, speaks during a welcome reception for British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, at the ambassador’s residence on February 26, 2025 (AFP/Getty)
“Given the essential oversight of the intelligence sharing and commercial relationship between the US and UK, it’s hard to think of a more sensitive position.”
He went on to explain that the kind of waiver that was given Lord Mandelson would, usually, have involved a ministerial sign off.
They are necessarily issued when there is an urgent need to include an unvetted agent into a secret process or include someone in the secret realm when his clearance was in the pipeline.
“It is extraordinary to suggest that our ambassador to the US not only held no ministerial waiver for the temporary absence of his vetting clearance but, worse, had actually been vetted and found to be personally a risk to the security of the UK and appointed anyway,” Tughendat said.
Complex repair works have since been taking place, with railway lines due to close for 12 hours from 11pm tonight (Saturday) to complete them. Passengers are being warned to expect continuing disruption at the station this weekend.
Although most services are running as normal today, several have been cancelled, with further cancellations expected. Avanti West Coast is running only one train per hour between Manchester and London, while Northern is running a revised timetable.
Click here to get the biggest stories straight to your inbox in our Daily Newsletter
Network Rail has apologised for the disruption caused by damage to the overhead line, which carries 25,000 volts of electricity to power trains and is a critical part of the infrastructure. Passengers are being urged to check the latest situation for their service before travelling.
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Below is a list of services which have been cancelled at Piccadilly so far today, with details currently available up to 10.30am. The list will be updated throughout the day.
Cancelled departures at Manchester Piccadilly on Saturday, April 18:
Nearly two decades after drug addiction sent him to rehab as a teenager, 36-year-old Michael Nalewaja had settled into a quiet life in Alaska where he worked as an electrician.
That all came crashing down days before Thanksgiving 2025, when he and a mutual friend unknowingly took a lethal cocktail of fentanyl and carfentanil they may have mistaken for cocaine.
“I heard the word ‘autopsy’ and I literally just collapsed to the floor,” his mother, Kelley Nalewaja said, recalling the call she received from his wife. “Even if somebody had been there prepared with Narcan — even if somebody had called 911 in time — he was not going to survive.”
Carfentanil, a weapons-grade chemical that authorities say is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times stronger than fentanyl, has seen a drastic resurgence across the U.S., killing hundreds of unsuspecting drug users.
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The rise coincides with a recent crackdown by the Chinese government on the sale of precursors used to make fentanyl. Those regulations are likely prompting traffickers in Mexico to use carfentanil to boost the potency of a weakened version of fentanyl, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence bulletins reviewed by The Associated Press.
The surge of a drug so deadly that less than a poppy seed-sized amount can kill a person comes as fentanyl seizures and overall drug overdose deaths continue a multiyear decline.
“You’re talking about not even a grain of salt that could be potentially lethal,” said Frank Tarentino, the DEA’s chief of operations for its northeast region, which stretches from Maine to Virginia. “This presents an extremely frightening proposition for substance abuse dependent people who seek opioids on the street today.”
Carfentanil surge
A decade ago, carfentanil exploded into the North American drug supply, causing hundreds of unsuspecting drug users to overdose, only to see a major dip after China banned it, closing a key regulatory loophole in the U.S.
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But the situation has shifted dramatically in recent years.
In 2025, DEA labs identified carfentanil 1,400 times in U.S. drug seizures, compared with 145 in 2023 and only 54 in 2022, according to DEA records viewed by AP.
Traffickers in Mexico may be experimenting with producing carfentanil themselves, authorities say, while others could be procuring it from China-based vendors skirting the country’s regulations by spamming online forums in other countries with ads for the drug.
Complicating matters for the cartels are the extreme dangers associated with manufacturing carfentanil, Tarentino said.
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“You can’t just dabble in this,” he said. “This is not some mad scientist on Reddit you’re going to get to go out to a rudimentary laboratory in Mexico to make carfentanil.”
Dip in overdose deaths and fentanyl seizures
U.S. overdose deaths have fallen for more than two years — the longest drop in decades. Experts point to several possible explanations, including the overdose-reversing drug naloxone being more widely available and the expansion of addiction treatment. Some have also tied it to the regulatory changes the U.S. has pressed for in China.
Experts say that even multiple high doses of naloxone might not be enough to reverse an overdose when carfentanil is involved.
Fentanyl seizures, along with several other illicit drugs, have also dipped. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that fentanyl seizures plunged to about 12,000 pounds (5,443 kilograms) in 2025 — less than half the amount seized in 2023.
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But even as fentanyl numbers fall, it remains a major focus of the DEA. Just recently, the agency’s proposed budget included a $362 million increase centered on cartel-driven fentanyl trafficking.
“Anyone who takes a pill that is not prescribed to them by their doctor is playing a game of Russian roulette with their life,” said Sara Carter, President Donald Trump’s drug czar. “But if those terrorists think they can continue this chemical warfare without consequences, they are wrong.”
Researched as a chemical weapon
While the prevalence of carfentanil still pales in comparison to fentanyl, experts are nevertheless alarmed by the increase of a substance researched for years as a chemical weapon and deployed by Russian forces on Chechen separatists in 2002.
The DEA’s annual quota for lawfully manufactured carfentanil — veterinarians use it to tranquilize elephants and other large animals — is just 20 grams, an amount that can fit in the palm of your hand.
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“It’s like a biological weapon,” said Michael King Jr., founder of the Opioid Awareness Foundation. “If the world thinks we had a problem with fentanyl, that’s minute compared to what we’re going to be dealing with with carfentanil.”
In 2024, overdose deaths involving carfentanil nearly tripled compared to the previous year, with 413 deaths across 42 states and Washington, D.C., according to the most recent data available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Carfentanil definitely has that potential of spreading throughout the United States unless law enforcement really focuses in on carfentanil and they develop intelligence as to how these drug addicts are getting it,” said Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the DEA.
In recent months, the DEA has documented several large seizures of carfentanil. In October, the DEA Los Angeles Field Division found 628,000 pills containing carfentanil, while in September, officials seized more than 50,000 counterfeit M30 pills from a person at a gas station in Washington state that turned out to be a mixture of carfentanil and acetaminophen.
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‘All about money’
In some cases, frequent drug users have become tolerant to fentanyl and are seeking out carfentanil, despite the danger, because of the sudden euphoria it promises, explained Rob Tanguay, senior medical lead for addiction services with Recovery Alberta, a health agency in Canada. It appeals to the drug market, he said, because so little of it goes such a long way toward supply.
“The toughest part about all of this,” he said, “is that this is all about money.”
After Michael Nalewaja’s death, his mother decided against a large funeral.
Instead, she organized a town hall in her hometown of El Dorado Hills, California, bringing together local officials along with mothers who had gone through something similar.
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As she grieves her son, an adept salesman full of charisma who had recently gotten a national award by the electrical union, she’s pushing for major legislative and judicial changes so others don’t go through what she did because of a drug she said was never meant for humans.
“It’s not an OD; it’s not an overdose,” she said. “It’s a murder weapon.”
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Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed.
Previously, the RFU did not have a maternity policy specifically designed for players, with former England prop Vickii Cornborough – the second Red Rose to announce a pregnancy after the update – describing the old policy as “not fit for purpose”.
Cornborough, a Rugby Players’ Association (RPA) representative, helped create the policy through input from the RPA and players themselves.
Following the birth of twins, 74-cap Cornborough announced her retirement from international rugby at the age of 34, saying she did not feel mentally ready to return.
With their babies due this summer, Atkin-Davies and Ward are both aiming to be back playing by the start of next season.
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Ward, who played in two World Cup finals with Cornborough, warned her pregnant team-mates that returning will not be straightforward.
“It is amazing to know women have a choice and an option – great if I have played any part in that,” she added.
“There is also pressure, as I hope I have not catfished them into thinking it is easy. Everyone will find out it is not easy.”
Hooker Atkin-Davies has won 74 caps and been a regular since her England debut in 2015.
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Having played in the past two World Cup finals, the 31-year-old wants to play at the next World Cup in Australia and have a similar moment to Ward’s 2025 Allianz Stadium celebrations.
“Becoming a mum and having a baby will make me a better person and player,” Atkin-Davies added.
“I know it is going to be really hard, and I am aware of that. I do not just want to come back – I want to come back and be better.
“That is what really drives you as well. It might take time, as your body and mind go through so many changes, but the fire and desire are in me to be at that World Cup in 2029 with a three-year-old.
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“Those big moments of running out with my baby at Ashton Gate or Allianz Stadium would be absolutely amazing, but it will be hard.”
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