The UK’s Eurovision entry Look Mum No Computer, real name Sam Battle, has released a gracious statement after coming in last place.

Bulgaria achieved its first ever Eurovision win on Saturday night (16 May) with DARA’s “Bangaranga”, while the UK came in last with Battle’s “Eins, Zwei, Drei”. His performance of the song received the dreaded nul points score in the public vote and picked up just one point from the jury.

Battle celebrated Bulgaria’s historic victory on social media, telling his followers the nation was the “deserved winner” of the contest and that he’d met “a lot of amazing folk” during the competition.

“The most important thing is [that] we all tried our hardest,” he wrote. “Regardless of what is against us. Whatever it may be. Gotta keep trying your hardest regardless of the…outcome.”

The singer, 37, shared the statement alongside him and a crowd chanting “UK” and “ein Punkt”, which means one point in German.

Fans were quick to commend Battle on his performance, despite the disappointing – but not altogether unexpected – result. The singer was the third UK act in a row to be awarded nul points in the public vote after Remember Monday in 2025 and Olly Alexander in 2024.

“You were amazing, first time I have watched the Eurovision for 11 years, normally avoid it like a dose of flu,” one person wrote, while another commenter praised Battle’s “fun and quirky” song.

“I hope you realise just how adored you are by so many Eurovision fans,” another person added. “You brought something different to our UK entry, you absolutely smashed your performances.”

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Battle knew the odds were stacked against him ahead of his performance in the Eurovision final; But the Youtuber, who bookies had down at 80/1 to win, said he was “happy to be an underdog”.

He told the Independent before his final performance: “There’s all different ways of looking at it, but it’s not bothering me, because nobody’s actually seen the full [performance]. There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye – I’m hoping it’s going to surprise people.”

Read the full Eurovision Song Contest results list here.

The UK’s Foreign Office has explained why

With warmer weather finally on the horizon, many Brits are turning their attention to the summer months and making holiday plans.

Spain continues to be the top choice for British tourists, with millions flocking to the European country each year, keen to bask in the sun, relax on its shores and enjoy the cuisine. When travelling overseas, it’s essential to get clued up on any local laws or rules you’ll be expected to follow while you’re there. And if Spain is in your sights this year, there’s one rule you may not know about.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) regularly provides travel advice for Brits visiting more than 220 countries and territories around the world. In its comprehensive guidance for Spain, the FCDO specifically highlights balconies.

While balconies are ideal for providing a vista and giving guests somewhere to relax outdoors, holidaymakers are required to behave responsibly. FCDO guidance for Spain warns: “Hotels and other establishments will evict you if you behave dangerously on balconies. You could also get a fine.”

Those travelling to Spain are also cautioned that they must present ID if asked by a police officer. The FCDO adds: “This includes the Guardia Civil and national, regional and local police forces.

“The police have the right to hold you at a police station until they have confirmed your identity. Ignoring direct requests of a police officer can be considered as ‘disobedience’, which is a criminal offence.”

Pregnant Molly-Mae Hague looked make-up free as she stepped off a private jet with daughter Bambi, who was a bridesmaid at Tommy Fury’s sister Venezuela Fury’s wedding to Noah Price

Molly-Mae Hague appeared relaxed and content as she disembarked from a private jet alongside her daughter Bambi, ahead of Venezuela Fury’s wedding.

The television personality, 26, who is expecting her second child following her reconciliation with partner Tommy Fury, opted for a laid-back look as she headed towards a waiting vehicle.

Her daughter Bambi, three, served as a bridesmaid at Venezuela’s much-anticipated wedding to her fiancé Noah Price. Stepping ahead of her little one, who was spotted looking down while holding what appeared to be an iPad, the former Love Island star went makeup free with her blonde hair swept back in a ponytail.

Clutching her daughter’s pink lunchbox, Molly-Mae’s baby bump was clearly visible beneath a black top and comfortable tracksuit bottoms.

While the entire Fury family attended Venezuela’s wedding, it appears Molly-Mae represented her side of the family alone, as Tommy, who is also a professional boxer, was unable to make it to the lavish ceremony.

The Mirror report that Molly-Mae – who is eight months pregnant – joked with guests outside of the church and went on to the enjoy the celebrations but headed home early, returning home on a private jet just before 6pm

Venezuela’s fiancé Noah is just 18, which is two years her senior. To celebrate her sweet sixteenth birthday, Noah proposed in front of her parents and close friends.

Every element of the wedding has been marked by extravagance, so it came as little surprise that Tyson was going above and beyond when it came to arranging last-minute refreshments.

Dressed in what appeared to be his pyjamas and a pair of crocs, the heavyweight boxer was spotted heading into a supermarket in search of essential supplies, reports the Mirror.

Following reports that Paris Fury’s 16-year-old daughter was set to walk down the aisle, the announcement was greeted with considerable scepticism, with many fans feeling she was far too young to make such a significant commitment.

However, the mother of eight, who herself wed Tyson at the age of 17, revealed in an interview that she was in fact “really pleased” for Venezuela. She explained to The Sun: “I got engaged at 17, so even though I feel she’s young, I did it. I wouldn’t change a thing. So if that’s what she wants to do, then 100 per cent, me and her dad support her.”

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She also told the Metro: “Me and Tyson have been together for 20 years, and we couldn’t be happier. I’m sorry, but I didn’t realise she was going to end the life? I don’t get it.”

She went on to say: “She’s getting married, they have plans to travel the world, do different things together, he’s doing boxing, Venezuela is doing her social media work… We don’t see the problem.”

Paris continued: “If she’s happy, he’s happy, we’re happy, I don’t understand it at all. I don’t get the quotes and the things they say to me, all I can think is these people mustn’t have had very happy relationships.”

Yet it appears there is one boundary her daughter is not permitted to cross just yet, with Paris admitting that starting a family would be “too soon.” In the lead-up to her big day, Venezuela kept her fans informed every step of the way, right down to her wedding dress fittings. She told her followers at the time: “Both dresses are unreal. Having a bit of a struggle on what shoes to wear.” It was at this point that she posed the question: “Do I wear white New Balance trainers or white Crocs?”

“It’s part of the same sort of strategic approach, which is to tamp down on dissent and to shape a clear narrative around the PRC, and to do that in bolder ways, as we’re seeing,” said Lauryn Williams, a deputy director with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has tracked cases of Chinese espionage in the US since 2000.

Drivers have been told to expect heavy delays

A major road near Ely has been closed by police following a fatal crash. The A10 is currently closed between the Grange Lane roundabout in Littleport and the B1411 roundabout.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary confirmed to CambridgeshireLive that the incident was a fatal road traffic collision. One person is understood to have died.

A Facebook post by Policing East Cambridgeshire at around 6am this morning (May 17) said: “Please be aware that there is a road closure on the A10 currently between the Grange Lane roundabout and the B1411 roundabout. Expect heavy delays and road users may wish to look at alternative routes.”

CambridgeshireLive is waiting for further information.

We were all flying without wings back in the heyday of Irish boy band Westlife. The group were formed in Dublin in 1998 and rose to international popularity during the early 2000s. The new release of their anniversary album, 25: The Ultimate Collection, affords an opportunity to reflect on the band’s story. They emerge as bold and brash, but also as airbrushed as an advertisement for a new housing development in Dublin.

Irish music manager Louis Walsh took five young men and handed them to British music mogul Simon Cowell. Some of the band members were from the west of Ireland, from a generation whose older brothers had left for London and Boston in the 1980s with a bag and a prayer.

The songs were almost aggressively un-Irish. Free from political statement or critical reflections on the place they came from. Instead, they put out American soft rock from the 1970s and 80s, which they delivered in close harmony and in matching knitwear, sitting on stools, off which one of them would occasionally rise for the key change.

It was, in the most literal sense, a performance of aspiration. And Ireland in 2001 understood aspiration.

The Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan once described a trad music (Irish traditional music) session as a frenetic spinning and spiralling whirl where kids fuelled on Fanta were thrown around and everyone felt like the spiral might get so strong as to free everyone from the pull of Earth’s gravity. Much of the way we were in Ireland in the 2000s was similar to that whirl.

The country had been experiencing rising economic statistics for long enough that we started believing that we were actually rich. It was dubbed the Celtic Tiger economic boom.

Ireland had emerged from the poor man of Europe moniker to become something shinier and less complicated. Westlife were simply doing the same thing, at volume, on Top of the Pops.

All this growth came under the guidance of that Taoiseach in the anorak, Bertie Ahern. He was a leader so confident in the fiscal strength of the country that he thought any economists who thought any different should do away with themselves – the same man who didn’t feel the need to have a bank account.

As Westlife was topping the music charts in 2001, Ireland was dubbed the “world’s most globalised country” – top of a list of the countries most integrated into the global network of trade, capital, information and people. More than the US, more than Singapore, little Ireland was considered the most open of them all.

Consider all of this growth for a country which five decades earlier was a place where nearly one in every two people made their living off the land, the grip of the Catholic church was strong and faith in local industry was unquestioned. It was an Ireland that considered itself an island on its own.

By the start of 2001, however, Ireland had gone so far down the road of liberalisation that it would be difficult to find its way back. What wealth had been accumulated from the start of the Celtic Tiger was finally starting to be spent. We were building major motorway networks to connect the country and we even went as far as building a light rail system in the capital city.

The nation turned to housing as the “spatial articulation of wealth”. For many, one home was not enough. For a country tied to the fiscal and monetary unions of much larger countries, which were faring much worse in terms of economic metrics, low interest rates and easy access to money acted as the propellant to fuel a bubble that would take a full seven years to burst.

The Flood Tribunal (established in 1997 and later called the Mahon Tribunal) exposed how corrupt the new developments could be. Land zoning, planning applications and suburban sprawl were leaving permanent scars on the countryside. The wealth the country had accumulated became manifest in hotels, shoddy apartments and three-bed semi-detached houses built too far away from where everyone wanted to be.

Amid all this, Westlife were gaining international popularity, which came to its apex in 2001 when the group set off on their first world tour and released their third album, World of Our Own.

There was something almost too neat about the whole arrangement of the band. Boys from the west of Ireland – historically the part of the country most associated with emigration and with the Famine in the mid-1800s – were now being exported not as labour, but as a product. They weren’t going to England to build roads, as boys like them traditionally had; they were going to conquer the charts. The geography was the same. The power dynamic had, apparently, reversed entirely.

Except, of course, it hadn’t really reversed at all. The money, the decisions, the creative control – all of that remained firmly in London, in the hands of Cowell, a man who had identified that pop music could be industrialised like any other product. Find the ingredients, test the recipe, remove anything interesting, repeat.

What Cowell understood, better than anyone, was that the audience didn’t want to be surprised or challenged or moved in any direction they hadn’t already been moved before. They wanted the familiar, delivered with a cheeky smile.

And Westlife, to their credit, delivered the familiar with lovely smiles. They were professionally polished and almost completely without edges. Every rough corner that might have connected them to an actual place or an actual feeling had been sanded back to a smooth, radio-friendly finish.

Ireland, with all its bounty of beautiful complexity – its landscape, its history, its complicated relationship with leaving and returning – was not something that fit in a Cowell product. So it was removed.

What remained were five young men who could hold a note, sing Billy Joel’s songs, and look sincere on cue. International financial capital fuelled by Fanta did the rest, flying as it does, without wings.

That is exactly what me and my husband Ben did earlier this week, booking a table at Saltfish in Darlington for a seafood feast.

Tucked inside Houndgate Townhouse, Saltfish has gone from strength to strength since opening in 2021, with owners Jack Bowles and Ellie Richmond building a name for quality, locally sourced produce in a stunning setting.

It felt like the perfect place to celebrate — even for a decidedly unromantic couple like us.

We booked a Tuesday night table, dressed up, and were welcomed with a glass of prosecco each, a thoughtful touch that set the tone for the evening.

Having scoped out the menu in advance, we both opted for the large seafood platter: crab mornay, king prawns, prawn cocktail, smoked salmon, bread and dips — plus oysters, scallops and mussels. The oysters were the main draw, as neither of us had tried them before.

On a friend’s recommendation, we paired it all with a bottle of Gran Cerdo Blanco Rioja, quickly dubbed “the pig wine” in our house, a smooth, well-balanced white that complemented the food beautifully.

Presentation was spot on from the start, with oysters served on ice and a neatly arranged bread basket. Then came the platter — generous, beautifully presented and more than enough to silence any doubts about portion size.

The oysters? Bracing and unmistakably of the sea, but in a good way. A proper first-time experience.

From there, it was hard to pick favourites, but a few dishes stood out. The prawn cocktail was a classic done well, with tender prawns and a rich, creamy sauce.

The crab mornay was indulgent and cheesy, especially paired with bread and seaweed butter. But the highlight for both of us was the Queenie scallops — soft, buttery and served in a rich sauce that tied everything together.

We added chips we didn’t really need, though they were exactly as they should be, fluffy inside, crisp outside.

Despite being full, dessert was non-negotiable.

I chose the rhubarb fool pavlova, perfectly balancing tart fruit with sweet meringue and cream, while Ben went for the apple and oat crumble, piping hot with a well-judged filling-to-crumble ratio, though he wouldn’t have minded a little more ice cream.

A surprise ‘Happy Anniversary’ plate rounded things off nicely.

With one final clink of glasses, we left having discovered new favourites, from oysters to wine, and enjoyed a genuinely memorable meal.

Our bill came to £198.75, which included a 10% service charge, which our server explained that she was happy to remove, but our experience was exceptional, and we were more than happy to pay it.

It’s not cheap, but for the quality of food, service and overall experience, it felt well worth it for a special occasion.

Ratings
Service: 9
Surroundings: 10
Food Quality: 10
Value for Money: 9

The details

11 Houndgate, Darlington, DL1 5RF

Phone: 01325 486011

Have you had a meal here? Let us know what you thought about it in the comments.

It took three months of hard work to change Amorim’s mind.

On 6 March 2025, he started the first leg of the Europa League last-16 draw with Real Sociedad. He kept his place for the league game against Arsenal and, from that point, has started every major game United have played.

“Football changes. Life changes,” Casemiro said in his recent interview with former United captain Ferdinand.

“For me, [with] the best players in the world, it’s about the mentality. I might not play good – I’m not a robot and I know. But the next [game], I give everything on the pitch. The mentality is next, next, next.”

It is a mentality that has brought Casemiro back into the Brazil squad – he is expected to be Carlo Ancelotti’s captain at this summer’s tournament.

This season, the 34-year-old’s influence has noticeably increased.

Of all the players in Michael Carrick’s squad, it is widely accepted if Casemiro had been injured in February, after the transfer deadline had closed, his absence would have been the hardest to cover in the ultimately successful quest for Champions League qualification.

“He has been an absolute pleasure to work with,” Carrick says in his programme notes for the Forest game.

“He will always have a special connection with Manchester United.”

Carrick has felt the early clarity around Casemiro’s exit – announced on 22 January, days after the manager’s own return as Amorim’s temporary replacement – has been beneficial for player and club.

Aside from the mentality aspect, the player’s influence at Old Trafford should extend far longer than his physical presence.

When Casemiro arrived from Real Madrid in 2022 in a deal worth up to £70m, Kobbie Mainoo, then aged 17, felt he would learn huge amounts from one of the most decorated players in the game.

Amid the Brazilian’s collapse in form, Mainoo ended up battling for a start with Casemiro, which wasn’t a situation he envisaged.

The clear by-product of Amorim’s exit has been the partnership between the pair, who have played alongside each other in 13 of Carrick’s 15 matches in charge – a one-match absence for both players because of minor injuries the only reason it was not 15 out of 15.

“Kobbie is my friend,” Casemiro explained earlier this month in a separate interview with the respected United We Stand fanzine.

“I have an excellent relationship with him. We are always joking – in English because he doesn’t speak Portuguese.

“He is a complete player, the present and the future of Manchester.

“Why? Because he has already taught us that he can play to a high level for his club and country. The one thing he needs to improve is to play more with the ball, to touch the ball more, because he has so much quality.

“Then it’s the decision-making which comes with experience. That improves with age.”

When coming up with a new fragrance what is your starting point? Eleanor, South East

In my head, I have a library with all of these fragrance notes. I see it as a big, spiral staircase and it goes up and up, and around it are all these shelves with bottles or things on.

Each one is a memory; a walk in the park, riding my horse, lying on a cashmere blanket in the middle of the desert. I pick those bottles, smell them and start to add it to the fragrance. Each one is a story, each note is words, music or touch.

Then you put together what’s called accords. They’re often single notes, and I’ll take them and twirl the papers round and round. Do they match? Are they a disrupter? Are they a magnet? Do they want to draw and control everything in that fragrance?

If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be? Ali, South West

That’s impossible. I love creating, I love smelling fragrances and I love accords.

But, if I could only take one bottle, it would be ‘Jo by Jo Loves’. I created that many years ago and it’s the story of my life through the ingredients of grapefruit, pomelos, lime and citrus. It reminds me to remember who I am. It was the second business I built and a part of my life where I was really trying to discover again who Jo was.

Or, it’s always the one I’m currently creating. So at the moment it would be ‘Sunkissed Orange’, the code name of my current working project.

What was the biggest risk you took that defined your career and what did it teach you? Andrew, East of England

I think one of the biggest risks was opening our first shop in Walton Street, 32 years ago. My husband and I had this tiny pool of money for rent and for products and all we could think about was “Can we survive?”. And within five years we’d sold that business, so it paid off.

Then, I left Jo Malone London in 2006 and I had a five year lockout, so I was non-compete. After those five years, an opportunity came to me and I missed fragrance so much that I decided I wanted to take it, but that was a risk.

Just because you’re successful once in your life, it doesn’t give you the right to be successful again. You have to go from the ground, and let me tell you, the first two years of building Jo Loves were torturous. I lost lots of money. I got it all wrong.

But often when you take risks in business and you push through, you build business muscle and find different solutions. Never be frightened of risk. It’s always going to come, but we have to push on.

What is one piece of advice that you would give to a young person today, setting out in the world of work? Andrew, East of England

Well, it’s going to be an adventure. I left school at 15 years old. I have no qualifications. I had a whole heap of dreams, I set to work and I have built and helped build great global brands. When I was 15 to 16 years old, my first job was in a florist. I never wasted any opportunity to learn something. Learning that you don’t like something is often as valuable as knowing you love it, because you can eliminate a lot.

Surround yourself with people that you find creative and inspiring and learn from them. If you don’t know how to do it in the beginning, mimic them. Mimic some of their thought processes and conversations. Listen to every word. Read stories of other entrepreneurs.

The next question will probably be: “Well, I don’t know whether I’m an entrepreneur?” You may not be, but you have an entrepreneurial instinct, because the minute you were born, you were born to learn and be creative.