Joe Marler has confirmed that he’s joining the cast of Gladiators in its upcoming season.

The former rugby pro and Celebrity Traitors finalist is set to become the show’s first ever Celebrity Gladiator, competing against Contenders in a series of gruelling challenges under his new alter-ego Mauler.

Filming on the new run of episodes is already underway in Sheffield, ahead of Gladiators’ return to our screen in 2027.

Joe also celebrated the announcement on Wednesday morning, appearing in a new social media post sporting a bright red mohawk hairstyle for the occasion as he took his place alongside the rest of the Gladiators backstage.

A BBC press release teased: “Known for his uncompromising style of play and larger-than-life sense of humour, Joe has built a reputation as one of the UK’s most entertaining sporting personalities.

“Now, he’s taking on an entirely new challenge as he joins the ranks of the Gladiators, bringing his trademark physicality and competitive spirit to one of television’s toughest arenas.”

It was recently reported that cast members Cyclone and Bionic had been dropped from the Gladiators line-up ahead of season four, with Giant previously claiming he had been “sacked” due to his relationship with OnlyFans performer Taylor Ryan.

He told The Sun earlier this year that he’d been made to “choose between dating Taylor and keeping my job”, claiming he’d been left “shocked and very saddened” by producers’ “choice to sack me”.

A BBC spokesperson previously said: “After three formidable series, Giant is leaving Gladiators. We’d like to thank him for everything he has contributed to the show and wish him well for the future.”

Meanwhile, a third celebrity special is also in the works, which will feature Big Brother host AJ Odudu, social media personality George Clarke and comedian Sara Pascoe among its famous contenders.

Stand-up comic Chris Ramsey was previously announced to be taking part, but following the news that he’d been forced to withdraw due to sustaining an injury, it’s been reported that he’s been replaced on the line-up by Harry Clark, who rose to fame on the second season of The Traitors UK, which he later went on to win.

The first three seasons of Gladiators are now streaming on BBC iPlayer.

About a month ago, it began. When I walked into my kitchen for my morning coffee, I noticed tiny invaders: little black flies crowded around my (empty! bleached!) sink.

Panicked, I started looking around for the usual suspects: old food, an opened packet, a grubby bin.

But I found nothing. Though they’re not overwhelming, the little visitors have survived deep clean after frantic deep clean.

Across the UK, house flies are swarming. So, what does it mean – and does their appearance always signify a dirty home? Professor Adam Hart, a professor and entomologist at the University of Gloucestershire, shared his expertise.

“House flies aren’t a reliable indicator that your home is dirty. They’re attracted by opportunities rather than making judgements about housekeeping,” Prof Hart explained.

The issue might not be in your home, but near it, he added.

“Open doors and windows, warm weather, and nearby breeding sites such as compost heaps, bins, animal waste or even neighbouring properties can all increase the number of flies that find their way indoors.”

That’s not to say they’re not tempted by the smells and items in your house, though: “Once inside, they’re drawn to food smells, sugary drinks, fruit, pet food and other organic material.”

Sometimes, Prof Hart said, a sudden influx of flies can signal an unaddressed issue. “If you’re suddenly seeing large numbers of flies, it’s worth checking for a specific source,” he said.

“An unnoticed food spill, overflowing bin, dead rodent in a wall cavity, or even a forgotten potato or onion at the back of a cupboard can provide an ideal breeding site.”

“They don’t breed indoors but often enter buildings in late summer and autumn to overwinter, sometimes appearing in surprisingly large numbers.”

Cluster flies can enter your home through tiny cracks in your walls or near your windowsills.

The best way to reduce flies, the entomologist said, is to remove what attracts them.

That involves the usual steps. “Keep food covered, empty bins regularly, clean up spills promptly and don’t leave pet food out longer than necessary. Good fly screens and keeping doors closed where possible will also reduce the number entering,” he advised.

But if you’re sure your house is clean, and flies seem to be sticking around regardless, “it may be worth looking outside the home for the source or considering whether there’s a hidden breeding site that needs attention”.

Those spots can include compost heaps and even your neighbour’s home or garden.

“Most flies are more of a nuisance than a health risk in the home, but because they can move between waste and food, they can carry bacteria mechanically on their feet and bodies,” Prof Hart ended.

“That’s another good reason to keep food preparation areas clean and deal with any persistent fly problem promptly.”

This article contains spoilers for the most recent episode of House Of The Dragon.

House Of The Dragon, like Game Of Thrones before it, has become renowned for pushing the boundaries when it comes to its graphic content – but the latest instalment took things to another level.

There’s been something iffy brewing between Ewan Mitchell’s Aemond and Olivia Cooke’s Alicent for some time now, and in the most recent episode, viewers saw the mother and son pair engaged in an incestuous sex scene.

Eventually, it emerged that the sequence was actually all in Aemond’s head, and in reality, he was in bed with his new lover Alys, played by Gayle Rankin, while picturing his mother.

Since the episode aired, Gayle has opened up about filming the complicated sequence, describing the shoot as “very intimate and very odd but very professional”.

“We tried to like make jokes, just to keep it lighthearted because those scenes are not easy and they’re complicated and very technical,” she told Variety.

“So, it was also just like it was another day at the office for being like a very odd, fucked-up scene.”

In a separate interview with Decider, she also admitted she was happy to finally be able to talk about the scene – which proved shocking for many viewers.

She claimed: “It was the thing that we couldn’t talk about in the junket, you know? Because I think people were like, ‘What was the craziest scene you had to shoot?’. I think that was a pretty crazy fucking scene, you know, for all of us.”

“Those scenes can sometimes be really intense, but they’re also like ultimately stunt scenes in some ways,” she noted.

“So I think we all just like try to be really respectful and professional and also like quite keep it pretty lighthearted, you know? Because it was a very absurd scene.”

Gayle added that, in her view, viewers were seeing Aemond and Alys consummating their relationship for the first time.

“We’re seeing it happen in front of our eyes, which is… thank you HBO for, like, allowing us the privilege,” she quipped. “Yeah, but it’s early days of that endeavour, so it’s like vulnerable still, I think for them.”

Earlier in the season, Olivia admitted that shooting a lingering kiss between herself and her on-screen son – who is, in fact, only three years her junior – made for an “odd” experience.

“It’s kind of shocking,” Ewan agreed. “But then also, I just recognised a tremendous challenge and an opportunity to show Aemond in a new light.”

“It’s quite a difficult pill to swallow, isn’t it? Kissing your mum on the lips, especially in that way,” he continued. “I mean, Aemond, growing up, he never felt like he was loved enough by his mum and his family around him, and a kid needs that unconditional love to develop a balanced view of themselves.

“And Aemond, because he never had that, he’s got a very skewed perception and a very strange way of showing love.”

House Of The Dragon continues on Mondays on HBO Max, Sky and Now in the UK.

The Odyssey star Samantha Morton has admitted that it stung to be replaced by Scarlett Johansson for a major role earlier in her career.

Back in the 2010s, Samantha was due to lend her voice to Spike Jonze’s sci-fi romance Her, about a man who develops a romantic relationship with an artificial intelligence operating system.

In fact, Samantha even spent months on set of the Joaquin Phoenix project, and recorded her lines as the central AI service (whose name, confusingly, was also Samantha).

However, in the end, the director opted to have Scarlett take over in the role, which Samantha was asked about during an appearance on the podcast Happy, Sad, Confused.

“My version of Samantha was very […] English,” the British actor recalled. “It was just very, very different. And I think Scarlett Johansson has a beautiful voice. She’s incredibly evocative.”

Recalling how “sad” she was to miss out on appearing in the film – on which she was credited as an associate producer due to her contributions to the production – Samantha continued: “It does hurt when you’re fired from something or before it. I don’t know.

“What I’d have wished for was another chance in a booth to do an American accent.”

“But I think, you know, Scarlett Johansson!” she conceded. “I mean, come on.”

Spike said in a statement back in 2013: “Samantha was with us on set and was amazing. It was only in post production, when we started editing, that we realized that what the character/movie needed was different from what Samantha and I had created together. So we recast and since then Scarlett has taken over that role.

“I love Samantha. I’ve been friends with her forever and I hope we make lots of things together in the future.”

Her was both a critical and commercial success, earning Spike an Oscar in the Best Original Screenplay category, while the film itself was nominated for Best Picture.

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about a study that linked greater levels of “interoception”, or body awareness, to a higher likelihood of orgasm among women.

“Our study empirically demonstrates that women need to get out of their heads and into their bodies in order to have more frequent and satisfying orgasms,” researcher Dr Megan Klabunde said.

And another paper published in Archives of Sexual Behaviour, which collected data from over 52,000 online surveys, found that the moves used during sex seemed to matter, too.

In this study, researchers asked a variety of respondents (men and women, who were a mix of gay, straight, and bisexual) about their experience with the Big O.

During sexually intimate moments, the percentages of people who said they always or usually orgasmed during sexual intimacy were:

• 95% for straight men,
• 65% for straight women,
• 89% for gay men,
• 86% for lesbian women,
• 88% for bisexual men,
• 66% for bisexual women.

No group of women finished more often than any of the groups of men, though among the ladies, lesbians got the best results. Not that straight men seemed fully aware of the extent of the discrepancy, as 45% said their partner always reached orgasm, whereas only 33% of heterosexual women said they did.

Perhaps a stat might provide clues as to why: about 30% of heterosexual men believed penetration was the best way to make women orgasm, whereas in this study, only 35% of women said they usually or often got off to vaginal sex alone.

44% of women said they rarely or never orgasmed from this type of intercourse.

80% of straight women, and 91% of women, however, said they usually or always orgasmed from manual genital stimulation, deep kissing, and/or oral sex.

Speaking to The Guardian, the study’s co-author, Professor Elisabeth Lloyd, said called this combination “the golden trio”.

The paper also found that women who orgasmed more often were likelier to receive oral sex, praise their partner in bed, make dirty calls, wear lingerie, and express love during the act.

They also acted out their fantasies more often and had higher odds of asking for what they wanted in the bedroom.

Seeing orgasm as the “point” of sex can paradoxically make your experience of it worse, thus lowering your chances of finishing, experts say. But if you’re not happy with your current rate and/or are looking to try something new, hey: science says theb “golden trio” might not be a bad place to start.

During Madonna’s Celebration Tour back in 2024, the Queen of Pop gifted pop fans with a moment they’d been waiting four decades for, when she was joined on stage by none other than Kylie Minogue for an impromptu duet.

Fast-forward two years, and the two music icons have finally combined forces on a new collaboration, which is coming later this week.

Last week, Kylie was a surprise guest during Madonna’s Club Confessions event as part of World Pride in Amsterdam, where the two sang along to a remixed version of the Like A Prayer singer’s recent musical offering Love Sensation.

It’s since been revealed that a remixed version of the track with new vocals recorded by the Australian pop superstar is coming on Thursday.

Check out a brief preview for yourself below:

Madonna and Kylie previously teased that a collab could be on the cards during the recent BBC special Madonna & Graham, where the Can’t Get You Out Of My Head singer made a brief cameo.

During the special, host Graham Norton put Kylie on the spot about whether she could be appearing on Madonna’s then-upcoming album Confessions II, with both stars remaining coy at the time.

Back in 2014, Kylie spoke to HuffPost UK about her hopes to team up with Madonna one day.

“That would be incredible!” she enthused. “It’s like maybe the world would stop mid orbit! Yeah, it would be incredible.

“I don’t know if it would ever happen. Maybe it’s something that will live in our imagination.”

Reacting to her Love Sensation remix earlier this week, an emotional Kylie wrote on Instagram: “Tell your 15-year-old self that you’ll be on… a… Madonna,.. record… one… day.”

Love Sensation is taken from Madonna’s latest album Confessions II, which earned rave reviews, topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic last month and is her first release in almost two decades to give the Grammy winner two UK top 40 hits.

Zack Polanski’s popularity has plummeted amid the row over him sharing an Instagram post suggesting Nigel Farage should be beheaded.

The Green Party leader was reported to the police after he accepted a collaboration on a series of photos, one of which showed a man in a t-shirt featuring an outline of a guillotine and the words: “We’re only making plans for Nigel.”

Polanski later deleted the entire post, but refused to apologise when grilled by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire.

He said it was “quite obvious he had not done anything wrong apart from make an inadvertent mistake”.

Although Reform UK accused him of “incitement to violence”, police later said they would be taking no further action.

However, polling by the More in Common think-tank suggests the row has damaged Polanski and the Greens.

His personal approval rating has fallen to minus 28, making him the most unpopular major party leader in the country.

More than half the public (55%) say they do not believe Polanski’s explanation of the row, with the same number saying he should apologise to Farage.

Meanwhile, 56% of voters now say the Greens are an unserious party.

More in Common director Luke Tryl said: “After a meteoric rise, Zack Polanski has increasingly been dogged by questions of his judgement in recent months.

“Our latest polling had the Greens on 8%, virtually reversing the ‘Polanski wave’ of new support they had gained since he became leader. And Polanski’s personal approval rating has continued to decline, making him the most unpopular major party leader on -28.

“Polanski’s resharing of a t-shirt with violent imagery about Farage exemplifies these struggles.

“A majority of voters, including nearly a third of current Green voters, did not believe his explanation for the incident, and strong majorities of the public believe he should apologise.

“While most were sceptical of Reform’s decision to report Polanski to the police, Polanski has clearly misread the mood of the country, which has no tolerance for posts that risk condoning or endorsing political violence.

“Especially after the shocking murder of Ann Widdecombe, Britons want to see public figures behaving responsibly online.

“While the Greens have clearly tapped into a widespread desire for a progressive alternative over the past year, and Polanski has owned the attention economy a combination of a Burnham bounce and leadership missteps risks setting them back.”

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.