Nigella Lawson has shut down the rumours of tension on the set of Great British Bake Off.

The TV cook, who will replace Prue Leith as a judge on the upcoming season of the Channel 4 baking show, joined Paul Hollywood, Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding at an exclusive screening of her episode earlier this week.

At the event, she denied there was a rift between her and Paul, insisting: “It’s such a lovely atmosphere, and the four of us get on very well.”

Paul also squashed any rumours, saying: “By the time the main series started, it just felt quite natural. It does feel like we’d all been working together for years and Nigella just fitted in beautifully.”

Alison told the audience at the event that Nigella had taken quickly to her role as a judge and “didn’t need any advice” at all.

“She literally went in front of those amazing bakers [and] the only way I can describe it is she’s magical, isn’t she?” Alison enthused. “When she’s put the camera, she’s just magical. She’s Nigella. She’s iconic. She’s our queen.”

Back in July, the Daily Mail reported that Paul and Nigella were “not really getting on too well” behind the scenes of Bake Off’s new season.

The article claimed that Nigella found Paul’s somewhat ostentatious behaviour – including him supposedly arriving to set in a helicopter – “rather cringe”.

At last month’s Edinburgh TV Festival, Channel 4 exec Kiran Nataraja also denied the rumours of any feud.

“We’re really excited to have her on the show. Contrary to ‘the Sidebar of Shame’, [she] and Paul are not arguing about helicopters the whole time.”

Meanwhile, Nigella recently told The Times that it was a “treat” to work in a team on Bake Off, in comparison to her BBC specials where she appears alone on screen.

“I’ve spent a lot of my professional life alone in a room, writing or pacing around thinking,” she shared, adding, “It’s actually really lovely to be with lots of people. For me, it’s a sort of treat.”

Nigella concluded: “I love solitude, I need solitude, but it’s really good to have a working life that feels companionable.”

She added: “What will people say of us on the programme? I feel that half will go, ‘Oh, there’s clearly something going on with them,’ and the other half will say, ‘Oh, clearly they don’t like each other at all.’ And I feel like that’s fine.”

Earlier this week, Great British Bake Off revealed the ecclectic 12 bakers who will be competing for a Hollywood handshake this time around, which includes a Bhangra-dancing paediatric doctor, an aspiring competitive sprinter and a drag king.

The new series of Great British Bake Off airs on Tuesday nights from 22 September on Channel 4.

ITV has addressed recent reports surrounding a new drama set to air on the broadcaster and actor Michelle Keegan.

Over the weekend, The Sun shared an article alleging that the former Coronation Street star had “pulled out of a major new ITV drama just months before filming was due to start”.

The tabloid claimed that Michelle was due to take the lead in an upcoming drama about a barrister from a working-class background, suggesting she’d “committed to the drama a few months ago”.

It was also claimed that she chose not to pursue the role to focus on family life, after welcoming a daughter, Palma, with her husband Mark Wright last year.

However, in a statement to Digital Spy, an ITV representative claimed: “Early conversations occurred, but Michelle was never contracted so it’s incorrect to say she pulled out.”

The Sun also claimed that former Doctor Who and Toxic Town actor Jodie Whittaker will play the lead in the new drama instead.

Michelle first rose to fame for her work as Tina McIntyre in Coronation Street, a role she played for six years between 2008 and 2014, when the character was killed off.

Shortly after leaving the cobbles, she was cast as a lead in the BBC ensemble drama Ordinary Lies, before winning acclaim for her work in Our Girl, Tina & Bobby and the comedy Brassic.

More recently, Michelle has been introduced to a more international audience thanks to her work in the Netflix thriller Fool Me Once.

She is also set to appear in another Harlan Coben adaptation for the streaming giant, which is due to hit our screens early next year.

The new series, titled The Woods, will see Michelle acting alongside Tom Bateman, as well as The Inbetweeners’ James Buckley, Mandeep Dhillon, comedian Tom Allen and former soap star Tracy-Ann Oberman.

Every year, the National Television Awards ceremony gathers some of the biggest names from the small screen under one roof – and that means one especially star-studded red carpet.

True to form, this year’s event was another starry affair, with big names from the world of comedy, drama, soap, reality TV and beyond, from both sides of the Atlantic, rubbing shoulders at London’s iconic O2 Arena.

Of course, after a big event like the NTAs there are two things you want to know – who were the big winners, and who turned it out on the red carpet?

Well, we’ve already got you covered on the first front, and as for the second, just keep scrolling for all the must-see looks from the 2026 NTAs…

Check out our round-up of more moments you might have missed from the 2026 National Television Awards here.

Katie Price went all out when she attended this year’s National Television Awards, just 24 hours after undergoing cosmetic surgery.

On Tuesday night, the former glamour model and reality star was pictured arriving at the event sporting a bold look consisting of heavy makeup, slicked-back black hair, embroidered shorts, a white shirt and some towering heels.

Speaking to her Instagram followers ahead of the NTAs, she admitted: “It’s the National TV Awards today – but what did Price do yesterday?

“I went to Brussels, because one of my boobs was still slightly bigger than the other, so they put a new implant in, and while they were there, I said, ‘oh go on, just put a bit more in both of them’.”

“So, this is me,” she continued, revealing that she was still healing from the op. “And at the same time, where my face was hollow here, as you get older and lose weight, he put filler in for me, obviously while [I was] asleep. He does it under the muscle right into the bone.

“I think the swelling has dropped, so I look like a hamster, and it’s sore.”

Katie also teased that she was “honoured” to have someone different doing her makeup, which was later revealed to be the MUA Made By Mitchell.

The former Celebrity Big Brother winner enthused: “I’m so lucky. The person is absolutely iconic and at the same time, so excited to do my makeup. We’re going to see how good this person is, because he’s got to cover all this up.

“Originally, I did have a glam squad, but they’ve passed on doing my glam for the NTAs because I wouldn’t want to wear the outfits that they wanted me to. They wanted me to do something different.

“But the outfit I’ve chosen myself is still different, because I don’t like to follow what everyone else follows. But for the look that I want, I think the outfit is perfect.”

She also walked the red carpet with her eldest daughter, Princess Andre, who also pulled out all the stops in a layered, light blue dress with plenty of tulle.

Katie explained that she’d picked Princess’ dress for her, after her daughter admitted she wanted to “look different” and get out of her usual “comfort zone”.

“I said, Princess, ‘go completely different’,” Katie recalled. “Everyone will be in sexy dresses, the usual sequinned ones, cut-out ones.

“We all know you can dress sexy, so trust me, at the end of the day, it’s a red carpet, so go out of your comfort zone and be different. The dress that Princess is wearing, I said, ‘look, if you get slagged off for it, you get slagged off for it, but you’ll look different, you’ll look like a princess, you are a princess, and the fact that you’re out of your comfort zone… blame it on me’.”

“I don’t care what anyone says about my outfit because I love it,” she added.

This marks Katie’s first public appearance since it was reported she’d split from her husband of around eight months, Lee Andrews.

Katie is yet to address the split publicly, claiming on her YouTube channel: “I know a lot of you are listening for the Lee updates, and when I am ready I will of course share with you guys first.”

Something rather strange has happened to childhood.

It is 2026, and we have never been more conscious of keeping children safe. We strap toddlers into increasingly sophisticated car seats, watch babies sleeping through cameras and have transformed safeguarding in our schools.

And yet a few years later, we put a smartphone into those same small hands.

We carefully control the physical world children encounter, while giving them access to a digital one of almost unimaginable scale – often long before they have the maturity to make sense of everything they will find there.

Except even that doesn’t quite describe what has changed. Our children aren’t simply accessing the online world. The online world is accessing them.

Algorithms seek their attention; strangers can enter their bedrooms without opening a door; and other people’s opinions, lifestyles and judgements follow them home from school.

After more than 30 years in education, I don’t believe the fundamental needs of children have changed. But the world in which they are growing up has – and we should not assume that will leave children unchanged.

We are seeing significant concern about anxiety and other mental health difficulties among young people. It would be too simplistic to blame smartphones alone, but equally foolish to ignore growing evidence associating aspects of online life with anxiety, disrupted sleep, social comparison and poorer wellbeing.

Four years ago, I was sitting around our dinner table with my daughter, now 26, and her friends when they told me they thought theirs might be the last generation for whom “likes” had never really mattered.

One had a 16-year-old sister whose adolescence, they felt, was fundamentally different. Social media wasn’t something she used alongside her life; increasingly, it was where part of that life was lived.

That conversation has stayed with me.

Growing up has always involved working out who you are. But today’s young people are doing that in a culture where everyone can broadcast an opinion – and algorithms determine which opinions they will hear most loudly.

We also need to talk about addiction. Not every child who loves their phone is addicted, but compulsive patterns of use are real. I am not sure parents always realise quite what their children are being asked to resist. We ask developing brains to exercise self-control against sophisticated systems designed to capture their attention and learn how to retain it.

And every hour captured displaces something else: sleep, reading, conversation, physical activity, family life, even boredom.

We see this particularly clearly on school trips. My school, Pipers Corner, has always been phone-free during the school day, and more recently we have extended this to trips. Without phones competing for attention, pupils engage more, notice where they are and, perhaps most strikingly, seem to enjoy themselves more. They talk to people they might not otherwise have spoken to.

Previous generations had plenty of “screen time”. Families sat around a television together. Children saw things they didn’t understand, but an adult might explain, challenge or simply say, “That’s nonsense.” The screen became a conversation.

Yet a smartphone in a bedroom is different: private, portable and personalised. Children can encounter things they don’t understand privately and repeatedly, with nobody else even knowing that a conversation needs to happen.

So, I welcome new restrictions such as overnight social media curfews and turning off addictive features that keep children scrolling into the night – but perhaps not for the obvious reason.

I don’t believe regulation alone will solve this. Some of the world’s most powerful technology companies have built hugely successful businesses around capturing and monetising human attention, including children’s.

What I welcome is the message regulation sends to parents: we have learned something about risk.

When I was a child, I was allowed to sit on my mother’s lap in the passenger seat of my father’s car. My parents weren’t reckless. It was simply normal. Then our understanding of the risk changed, regulation followed and eventually parental behaviour changed too.

I wonder whether we are approaching a similar moment with smartphones.

Restrictions give parents permission to pause and to say “not yet”. But ultimately restriction isn’t enough, because children must eventually navigate the digital world independently.

I tell parents of 11-year-olds that their daughters will drive one day. They will learn the rules, develop judgement and eventually drive perfectly safely.

Nobody suggests we should therefore hand them the car keys at 11.

We protect children, then teach them, then gradually allow greater freedom as their judgement develops. Why should the digital world be different?

Our job is not to tell young people what to think about technology, but to teach them how to think about it.

Government can help create safer roads. Technology companies should be required to build safer vehicles. But parents and schools still have to teach children to drive.

And perhaps we need to be brave enough not to hand over the keys quite so soon.

Helen Ness-Gifford is Headmistress at Pipers Corner School in High Wycombe.

A senior Reform UK figure has quit as the party’s simmering civil war re-ignited.

Tim Montgomerie, who defected from the Tories last year, said Nigel Farage needs to “get a grip” as he singled out Zia Yusuf for criticism.

He said the party leader needs to bring his home affairs spokesman “under control” if he is to re-assert his authority.

Montgomerie was suspended by Reform last month in the wake of comments he made about Yusuf on a podcast.

He said “Nigel has fallen out of love with Zia” and called for Yusuf to be more of a “team player”.

Montgomerie had initially planned to appeal his suspension, insisting that he had only been making “constructive criticism” of Reform in an attempt to make the party more electable.

But after talks with Reform chief whip Lee Anderson on Tuesday, he decided to quit.

He told the BBC: “I think they wanted me back in the party but meekly, and I wasn’t prepared to do that.”

Montgomerie added: “Nigel needs to get a grip, he needs to lead the party.

“The one thing he’s been brilliant at is policing the right and stopping [far-right activist] Tommy Robinson joining.

“But for the sake of his legacy and the sake of decency he needs to sort it out, and bring people like Zia [Yusuf] under control.”

He said Reform was now “at a junction” and must decide what type of party it wants to be.

“They haven’t replaced the Conservatives which was plan A,” he said.

“I fear a battle of attrition between the two parties which will helps no one. The real danger now on the fight for political turf is that they go after sectional interests.

“Does Reform want to be a party of government or does it want to stand at the edge and just change the debate?”

A Reform UK spokesman said: “We wish Tim the best for the future and thank him for his support.”

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.