Hallé/Wong review — masterful Mahler in a stunning prom
August 03 2025, 3.00pm
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
VERY fishy behaviour! Parts of Sir David Attenborough's latest series Parenthood are filmed in a TANK, BBC admit
Parts of David Attenborough 's latest series were filmed in a fish tank rather than in the wild, the BBC has admitted. The beloved British broadcaster used tanks during key scenes that featured boxer crabs, skeleton shrimps and Banggai cardinalfish across the five episodes of Parenthood. Airing its first episode on Sunday, August 1, the series promised viewers 'astonishing, never-before-seen animal behaviours in stunning ultra high definition, from the remote jungles of Bhutan to the grasslands of Botswana'. The near hour-long programme by Sir David, aged 99, focuses on animal parents that are 'having to adapt to a world that is changing rapidly', with the creatures facing 'a unique set of challenges' that they must overcome. It is the first BBC natural history series to focus on parenting, with the team using new technology to capture the weird and wonderful in the wild. However, the BBC have now revealed parts of the unique show were not filmed 'in situ', as viewers may have initially expected, but instead were shot in manufactured environments such as tanks and incubators. The decision was taken, the public broadcaster insists, due to the 'tiny scale of the animals, fragility of the environment and sensitive nature between parents and their young', The Times reported. In an article published by producers Jeff Wilson and Olly Scholey it was revealed that during the five-minute opening of an episode that showcased turtle hatchlings, filming occurred in a specialist 'incubation project' in Brazil, rather than actually underwater. The pair said that the use of the incubation project ensured that the eggs would not be disturbed while also allowing viewers to witness an 'unbelievable spectacle' that ultimately 'was crucial to the story'. In the incredible scene, described as 'a seminal moment for the film', hundreds of young turtles are shown following their mothers calls to the safety of the river, acting as a visualisation of the unpredictability of parenting in the animal kingdom. On Monday, the BBC told The Times that distributing the eggs in situ 'would've overstepped the mark'. Insisting that filming underwater 'would mean risking the survival of the young', Mr Wilson and Mr Scholey also said that the decision to use tanks was taken to 'ensure that we got the balance absolutely right'. Due to the 'incredibly fragile' animals, the filming crews sought to 'tread carefully' in order to avoid infringing on the natural wildlife. As a result, a specialist tank set in Indonesia was also used during a five-minute scene of boxer crabs shown in the opening of the show's first episode. Both Mr Wilson and Mr Scholey also acknowledged that several parts of the programme were indeed captured on location, with filming said to have taken place across locations spanning Botswana, Arizona, Tanzania, Namibia, southern Spain and Indonesia. They added that unlike on land, filming underwater presents a host of unique challenges, with water visibility changing hourly, and divers forced to wade through water in search of the story. A fascinating clip captured from the show's first instalment showed Attenborough's team as they attempt to build up a relationship with the unique silverback gorillas and their infants. Described by Max Kobl, cinematographer for the show, as 'probably the most powerful of all primates', Sir David, narrating, warns that 'it isn't going to come easy' for the film crew as they attempt to get close to the sneaky gorillas. Initially, the team face great difficulty even finding the animals, seen wading through thick swamps in order to locate them and using indicators such as the types of twigs on the ground. Commentating, one member of the crew says: 'The swamps don't pose challenges for the gorillas, the swamps pose one of many challenges for us.' In the insightful footage of their challenging trek, one member of the team is seen nearly toppling over due to the thick, knee-deep water. When asked 'you okay?', he simply responds: 'Nope'. Sir David, narrating, adds: 'The team try as best they can to keep up and just as they reach dry land, the gorilla family has other ideas'. In response, viewers took to social media to praise the 'stunning' new show, with one commenter on X gushing: 'All the contributors to Parenthood are amazing', while another added: 'Parenthood is another great programme. Congratulations once again Sir David Attenborough and the BBC'. Meanwhile, a bone chilling moment during the programme captured the moment a colony of newborn African spiders turn to hunt their own mothers. In the never before seen behaviour, a pack of African social spiders are shown hunting in packs and responding to the vibrations of their prey as they struggle in the webs. The spiders move in unison, starting and stopping at the same time, freezing together in a sinister game of musical statues. Even more disturbing, after displaying their hunting skills on their usual prey of insects, the 1,000 strong colony then turns on their own mothers and eat them alive. Parenthood also features striking footage of the lives of orangutans, elephants and cheetahs, among many others. Unique technology used across the five-part series includes military-grade infrared cameras mounted on gimbals on off-road vehicles and show hippos being chased by lions at night. The BBC was approached for comment.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Eight years on, the undiagnosed condition that may explain why no one believed Chloe Ayling after she was snatched by a madman, injected with ketamine and held captive
She became one of the most famous – or infamous – kidnapping victims of our time. When British glamour model Chloe Ayling was abducted on a bogus photoshoot in Milan in 2017, her plight made global headlines and last year led to a gripping TV drama. Little wonder, because it was the real-life stuff of nightmares. Chloe, then only 20, was grabbed from behind and bundled into a suitcase. Injected with ketamine and chained to furniture, she was forced to sleep on the floor of a remote farmhouse. Pictures of her lying unconscious in skimpy clothing were sent to her manager in London, along with a demand for €300,000 (£260,000). If the ransom wasn't paid within a week, she would be auctioned off as a sex slave. She was also told she risked being fed to tigers when her 'buyers' tired of her. Although she was eventually released, it has been another ordeal for Chloe to rebuild her life. The reason? Many simply didn't believe her graphic and appalling story. So outlandish was the sequence of events she described – and crucially how odd her unemotional retelling of the story was – that to this day, eight years on, questions still abound about whether she was complicit in the kidnap and it was all an elaborate publicity stunt. Could the BBC documentary airing tonight finally silence the online commentators and conspiracy theorists? Including interviews with British and Italian police officers who were involved (and some of whom admit they too doubted Chloe's story at first), the three-part series offers an interesting new theory. It suggests Chloe's lack of emotion, both during the kidnap and in media interviews afterwards, was the result of immaturity and nervousness at finding herself in the public eye – but also of undiagnosed autism. Towards the end of the documentary, she actually receives a formal diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which she says explains so much – not just about her reactions during her kidnap ordeal, but about her life before and since. 'I had a lot of difficulties with communication,' she explains in the documentary, while poring over childhood pictures. 'I'd react in the wrong way. If I was being told off I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things. 'My mum would come with me on school trips because I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted or express how I was feeling. For ages I just said I'm not an emotional person, but now I realise that no matter now hard I try, I just can't [express emotion].' In hindsight this was never more apparent than Chloe's attempt to communicate what had happened to her when she returned home to the UK. What a catastrophe that was. She admits: 'The aftermath affected me more than the kidnap.' The defining moment for many was when Chloe emerged from her mother's house to face the world's press to deliver a statement that began: 'I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.' The mountain house where Chloe was held for six days near Turin in Italy The smile on her face, her almost cheerily robotic delivery, and the way she was dressed – in a revealing vest top and tiny pair of shorts – seemed completely at odds with the seriousness of the situation. Public bafflement was quickly followed by judgment. These days we might call it victim blaming, although there looked to be inconsistencies in Chloe's story which contributed to the sheer disbelief that the situation happened the way she said it did. Why had she gone shopping with her kidnapper to buy shoes, for instance? Why hadn't she tried to run? Chloe, now 28, has spent the years since trying to convince others about what happened – even though in the eyes of the law there is no doubt whatsoever. Polish national Lukasz Herba was sentenced to 16 years and nine months (although this was later reduced to just over 11 years on appeal) after being convicted of her kidnapping. A career that went on to include a stint in the Big Brother house the following year – seen by many as evidence of Chloe's desire to be famous at all costs – hardly helped. 'What is it about me and my story that makes this so unbelievable?' she asks at the start of this documentary. By the end, you get the impression she has as much of an answer as she is ever going to get: because she didn't behave in the way most victims would, her story was scrutinised and found lacking. And because no one asked whether her robotic telling of her story could have another explanation, she was dismissed as a money-grabber who wanted only to be famous. By rights she should be livid, although she doesn't appear to be. 'I can't really be mad at people for not understanding, when I didn't really understand it myself,' she concludes. Chloe's diagnosis is a development that makes complete sense to her former manager Phil Green, who appears in the documentary reliving the horror of having to deal with hostage demands. Phil, who had been a lawyer before setting up a modelling agency, met Chloe when she was 19 and told me this week while the attractive teenager was clearly ambitious ('her goal was to have 100,000 followers on Instagram'), she wasn't a typical model-about-town. 'She didn't seem to have many friends, and didn't hang about with the other models. She lived at home with her mum,' he says. Unusually, for someone starting off in modelling, she also had a baby son 'who would only have been about one at the time,' remembers Phil. The child lived with his father, Chloe's ex partner Conor Keyes. Phil had not been aware of any suggestion of autism until the documentary, but now wonders if Chloe's condition actually helped her maintain a facade of calmness during the ordeal. 'Her reaction to everything that happened was so unemotional, even at the time, but maybe that was a good thing because if she'd behaved in the way some other girls would have who knows what would have happened? Chloe smiles in a skimpy top and shorts as she spoke to the press outside her mother's house after leaving Italy 'Afterwards though it led to people just not believing her.' His inclusion in the documentary defending her is also interesting given the background. Although Phil was the one who always seemed most steadfastly in her corner, Chloe appears to have blamed him for not doing enough to help secure her freedom and perhaps for putting her in jeopardy in the first place by sending her to Milan for the assignment. She dumped him as her manager as soon as she returned from Italy and they haven't spoken since. 'It was brutal,' he says of his sacking. 'I think she blamed me for what happened and we've never been able to sit down and talk properly about it. 'She thought I'd abandoned her [to the kidnappers], but the reality is that my office, which was in my house, had been taken over by the police. 'They were replying to the kidnapper's emails on my behalf. I was out of my depth trying to deal with it all, and I still feel terrible about what happened. I think she has remained bitter. But I always knew she was telling the truth.' He feels Chloe was the victim of more than the kidnapping, angrily lashing out today at the Italian prosecutors who put her story in the public domain against Chloe's own wishes. They also forced her to stay in Italy for weeks after her release, effectively holding her captive all over again. 'If that had happened to an Italian girl in Britain, she would have been allowed to go home immediately to be with her family.' On top of that, the Italian authorities took Chloe back to the property where she had been held – ostensibly to help with their investigation. 'My feeling then was that they didn't believe her and wanted to see her reaction,' he says. The feeling that Chloe was badly let down is echoed by the detective superintendent who headed the British side of the operation, who admits on camera (on condition of anonymity) that the lowest point in his 30-year career was when he realised he had not been able to find or save Chloe. 'It was my job to get her back and I didn't,' he says. The astonishing thing about this case is that it was not the authorities in either Britain or Italy who did save her. She was found only because the man holding her – a man she knew as 'MD', but who was later identified as Polish national Lukasz Herba – walked her into the British Consulate in Milan. In court Herba was described as a 'narcissistic fantasist' who had become obsessed with Chloe. A computer programmer who was living in the West Midlands, Herba had been a Facebook friend of Chloe's (a fact she discovered only after the kidnapping). In order to kidnap her he concocted an elaborate plan, posing as a photographer called Andre Lazio to book her via her agent for a modelling job in Milan. With the help of his brother Michal, who was also jailed for his part, he then abducted Chloe when she arrived in Italy, drugging her and bundling her into a holdall, before taking her to a remote hideout where he kept her captive for six days. He convinced Chloe that he was a trained assassin working for a Mafia organisation called Black Death. Although he never sexually assaulted her, she does speak in this documentary about how he did make sexual advances – but backed off when she convinced him that they would be able to embark on a proper relationship once she was free. She refers to an incident where he tried to kiss her but she declined, saying that she wasn't in the right 'headspace' but implied she could be once she was free. 'He lit up then and everything changed,' she says. 'He could easily have just raped me,' says Chloe, 'but he had this idea of having me in his future. He didn't want to upset me. I repeated that I was not in the right headspace. I wanted to be released before anything sexual happens. I got up and went to have a shower and he was all sorted after my shower. We didn't speak about it again.' Sharing his bed and shopping with him? While these were all details that caused people to doubt her, she says it was all part of her desperate attempt to gain his trust, hoping that he would break ranks, defy his dangerous bosses and help her escape. She was not to know that there was no Black Death organisation. 'He was the good guy in my eyes,' she says. After Herba deposited her at the British Consulate, initially Chloe attempted to stick to the script Herba had drilled into her – that he had simply found her and was her rescuer – but she soon caved under questioning. The fact that some details, such as the shopping trip for shoes, emerged later was highly damning to Chloe, but the Italian police accepted her story that she was simply embarrassed at how far she had gone to appear to be her captor's girlfriend. But public opinion was never as accepting and Chloe is understandably hurt that she was never given credit for her own role in her escape. What has happened to her since? After that perhaps ill-advised appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, she has rebuilt her life as a model, posting regularly on OnlyFans and Instagram (where she describes herself as an 'entrepreneur' and a 'multiple property owner'). She was never in a career that was compatible with anonymity, but she reveals in the documentary that a few years ago she bought a property in North Wales, falling in love with the area and attracted by the fact that no one knows who she is there. There is no mention of her son in the documentary. She declined to involve him for privacy reasons. Nor is her mum Beata a part of it. Chloe, originally from Coulsdon in south London, explains that her mother was so traumatised by the kidnap ordeal that she still cannot talk about it even eight years on. And while the autism diagnosis has helped Chloe herself understand the backlash against her, she is keen to stress that it does not excuse how she was doubted. There is rarely such a thing as a 'perfect victim' she says. 'Autism plays a big part in the way that I reacted, and that was confusing to neurotypical people. 'However, there are other reasons why people could react in the way that I did, or in an 'unusual' way that doesn't fit the normal box. 'People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma. So, it can't all be put down to a diagnosis, and that shouldn't affect the way people treated me.'
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
'I thought it was a hat!' Video of man with bob throwing shapes in Ibiza sparks hilarious memes
A young partygoer with a stylish bob has been spotted cutting shapes in Ibiza. Footage of the man - Jack Kay - went viral at the start of this week as he was filmed donning a gold chain and pair of sunglasses with a baby pink cup gripped in his hand. But it was the dancer's haircut that caught the attention of thousands of social media users - with many saying they thought the 'top bloke' had been wearing a hat. The lone reveller's bright white teeth contrast perfectly with his black vest as he purses his lips and throws out his best moves to the groove of the music. Several thousand people have commented under the footage on TikTok after it was uploaded with a plea to locate the 'absolute legend'. Somebody claimed the mystery dancer was in fact 'Lloyd Christmas ' - a character from the film Dumb and Dumber who is also known to sport an iconic bob. One person said: 'When you've got Ibiza at 3 but the battle of hastings at 4.' Another added: 'That's a hat right? It is... it must be? Tell me it is...'. Since the footage spread online Mr Kay - now known as "Ibiza final boss" has uploaded a brand new video to TikTok - but this time with friends. He can be seen wearing the same iconic sunglasses and gold chain pulling out more dance moves from under his belt as a mate puts his arm around Mr Kay's neck. A montage of photos also shows the partygoer enjoying himself with "the lads". Somebody commented under the video: 'Short back and Battle of Hastings, cheers mate.' Another person said: 'Short back and magna carter please mate.' And a third concluded: 'Are the mandem from Sherwood Forest as well?' Mr Kay has already developed a fanbase with some admirers even using him as their artistic muse. Someone who had painted a portrait of the reveller caption their social media post: 'Excellent use of free will if I do say so myself.' Somebody concluded: 'When you've got Ibiza at 3 but the battle of hastings at 4.' The tweet was liked nearly 5000 times A number of people have even taken selfies with the Ibiza final boss as they bump into him on the island. Tony Truman, co-owner of Ocean Beach Ibiza, posed for a picture with the young champ while another fan mistook him for the DJ and presenter Charlie Sloth on their first encounter.
