Meghan Markle posts loved-up snap alongside Prince Harry as she gushes over their kids on Fourth of July
The 43-year-old appeared to have a very active day on social media during Independence Day, posting across both her personal and As Ever Instagram accounts.
The Duchess of Sussex began by flaunting her sold-out raspberry spread in a promotional video that has since been branded by viewers as 'embarrassing.'
But she has now shared a more personal touch in her latest family-orientated upload.
The carousel of images showcased a platter of handmade cupcakes, a close-up of one of the tasty treats and a third image of Meghan cozying up to Harry.
The mom-of-two, in reference to their kids Archie Harrison and Lilibet Diana, wrote in the caption: 'Our second date was the 4th of July 2016 and H brought me cupcakes to celebrate.
'Now, all these years later, our two children are in on the tradition.'
She added: 'Happy Independence Day! May your day be as sweet as these cupcakes.'
Earlier in the day, also in honor of the July 4 holiday, Meghan posted a clip to her As Ever Instagram page showcasing a charcuterie board she had put together - but it has not gone down well with viewers.
In the video, Meghan introduced her board as 'easy entertaining,' and decorated a wooden platter with various fruits, cheeses, and crackers, as well as her sold-out, $14 As Ever raspberry spread.
She looked summer-chic in an oversized, blue-and-white striped button down as she filmed from what appeared to be her own kitchen in Montecito, California.
While she assembled the board, the Duchess, 43, carefully started off by arranging fruits like raspberries and cherries, then added some star-shaped cheese and blueberries, along with some crackers and slices of sourdough bread.
To finish things off, she took a brand-new container of her raspberry spread, which went on sale as part of the first As Ever drop in April, and scooped it into a small dish.
However, the spread sold out within a half hour of it going on sale, leaving many fans dying to get their hands on it.
As she put the spread onto the board, she accidentally dropped a raspberry into it, laughing as she popped it into her mouth.
'Happy 4th of July!' the caption of the video read.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle recently took their two kids to Disneyland
Earlier in the day, also in honor of the July 4 holiday, Meghan posted a clip to her As Ever Instagram page showcasing a charcuterie board she had put together - but it has not gone down well with viewers
Meghan also posted a similar clip to her personal Instagram page just minutes later, @meghan, where she showed followers an aerial view of her assembling the festive platter.
On Reddit, some royal fans slammed the video as 'basic,' as one person even compared her creation to an outdated post on Pinterest.
'I love a board, especially a themed one, but bless her heart for thinking this is new and/or unique. Also, the faux calligraphy and the unnecessary flowers are eyeroll inducing,' one person wrote.
Another agreed, 'Cough! Let's go copy something from Pinterest, and hey make sure you get the jewelry into the shot... oh! yeah, got to show off the stupid handwriting.'
'I think it looks good if my regular friend/neighbor did it. They're not trying to sell an elevated lifestyle brand.... it's embarrassing,' someone else typed.
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
What your favourite celebrities' TATTOOS say about them, according to science - from Ed Sheeran to Post Malone...and even The Rock
From David Beckham to Justin Bieber, many celebrities are known for their vast collections of tattoos. But it's not just these inked-up stars who are fond of tattoos. Other A-listers who have secretly hit the studio include Keke Palmer, Tom Holland, and even Kendall Jenner, who has the word 'meow' tattooed onto her inner lip. So, do these inkings change your perception of these stars? In a recent study, researchers from Michigan State University revealed how people make judgements based on someone's tattoos. According to their analysis, people like Ed Sheeran with cheerful, colourful tattoos are seen as more agreeable. In contrast, people like Zayn Malik, who opt for tattoos featuring death imagery, are more likely to be rated as unpleasant. 'While people often believe tattoos reveal deep truths about someone's personality, those impressions usually do not hold up,' said William J Chopik, lead author of the study. Cheerful and colourful tattoos In the study, the team showed 375 tattoos to 30 people, who were asked to rate the personalities of the people behind them. The results revealed that people with cheerful and colourful tattoos were more likely to be seen as agreeable. 'If tattoos had more life (vs. death) imagery or were comforting (vs. disturbing), the participant was rated as more agreeable,' the team said. Stars with colourful tattoos include singer Ed Sheeran, and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson. Sheeran, 34, - whose 60 strong collection of tattoos includes cartoon penguin Pingu, a Heinz Ketchup label and a gingerbread man - has spent more than 40 hours getting inked by Derby-based tattooist Kevin Paul. But fans 'forgot' how many colourful tattoos Ed had across his chest and back, as he showed them off in a recent TikTok video. Meanwhile, Jonsson took to Instagram in 2022 to reveal a colourful flower tattoo on her arm, coloured in a bright pink. British model, Cara Delevingne has more than 20 tattoos to her name, including an abstract face on the back of her left arm Expressionist tattoos Expressionist tattoos tend to convey 'strong human emotions, passions, anxieties and general alienation around a loss of spirituality', according to Tattoo Filter. But if you have one, you might be seen as unconscientious, according to the study. British model, Cara Delevingne has more than 20 tattoos to her name, including an abstract face on the back of her left arm. Actor Chris Hemsworth, meanwhile, surprised fans in 2022 when he unveiled a geometric design on the inside of his right forearm. Large, traditional-looking tattoos When you think of tattoos, large, traditional-looking designs might be the first to spring to mind. And according to the reseachers, people with these kinds of tattoos are seen as more outgoing. 'If a tattoo was larger or was more traditional (vs. modern), the participant was rated as more extraverted,' the team explained. Stars with large, traditional-looking tattoos include Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, who has a tribal-inspired tattoo spanning the width of his left shoulder to his forearm and chest, in homage to his Samoan roots. Jason Momoa is also fond or a traditional tattoo, with a tribal shark-tooth pattern down his foream, inspired by his family's 'aumakua - a god in Hawaiin mythology. Low quality tattoos Many celebrities are guilty of getting low quality tattoos. Back in 2011, actor Zac Efron showed off a tattoo on the side of his hand, reading 'YOLO' - an acronym for 'you only live once'. However, it seems the actor came to his senses, with the tattoo having subsequently been removed. Meanwhile, rapper Gucci Mane is known for his ice cream face tattoo, which he has admitted he probably wouldn't get again. Unfortunately for these stars, people with low quality tattoos tend to be seen as neurotic, according to the study. 'Someone with a low-quality tattoo may be perceived as less conscientious as others may assume they are less concerned with identifying an excellent artist or satisficing with the quality of their tattoo,' the researchers said. Tattoos with death imagery From skulls and skeletons to Grim Reapers, many popular tattoos feature death imagery. But if you have a tattoo with one of these symbols, you might be seen as less agreeable. 'If tattoos had more life (vs. death) imagery or were comforting (vs. disturbing), the participant was rated as more agreeable,' the researchers explained in the study. In 2020, singer Post Malone debuted a collection of death-related tattoos on the left side of his shaved head, including a spider, a skull, and succubus. Meanwhile, singer Zayn Malik has a skull in the middle of his chest, set amongst dozens of other tattoos. 'Given that death- and disgust-related imagery tends to increase morbid thoughts, it also stands to reason that raters might think people with tattoos of death might be more likely to be higher in neuroticism or lower in agreeableness (compared to those with more life imagery),' the researchers added. WHAT ARE PEOPLE'S BIGGEST BODY ART REGRETS? Dr Stephen Crabbe, a linguistics expert from the University of Portsmouth, commissioned a survey of 1,000 UK residents who had already confessed to regretting their tattoos. Around 18 per cent of the UK population aged 18 years and older admits to having body art, according to the study. They found out what tattoos they had, why they got them in the first place, and why they changed their mind about them. Almost one third (31.34 per cent) of men and 24.33 per cent of women regretted daubing someone's name permanently on their body. Specific designs stood out for condemnation. For men, a tribal theme (12.81 per cent) and Asian characters (12.53 per cent) were the other most popular designs they held regrets about getting. Women felt star constellations (15.95 per cent) and Asian characters (12.64 per cent) were most likely designs to regret. One aspect found by the survey was that 15.64 per cent of women felt judged by their tattoo, compared to just 9.54 per cent of men. Around one third (29.50 per cent) said they had considered getting a tattoo removed but hadn't yet gone through with it and around one quarter (24.50 per cent) already had removed a tattoo. Around one third (28.30 per cent) answered that they would rather cover the tattoo up than have it removed and just 17.70 per cent admitted that they would leave the tattoo as it was and not cover it up.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Broadway composer John Kander on Cabaret and why De Niro made him change New York, New York
Over the past decade, a generation of Broadway maestros have taken their final bow. The deaths, in relatively short order, of Jerry Herman (La Cage aux Folles; Hello, Dolly!), Stephen Sondheim (Company; Into the Woods) and, in May, Annie's Charles Strouse, mark out what feels like the end of an era. Mercifully, though, John Kander is still standing, at 98. 'Let's put it this way, I have reached an age where I don't have very many contemporaries,' observes the man who – with the lyricist Fred Ebb, his longtime collaborator – gave us two undisputed masterpieces, Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975). The 1996 revival of the latter has become the longest-running American musical in Broadway history, while Rebecca Frecknall's louchely-immersive staging of Cabaret is currently playing both in New York and London (where it has reached a landmark 1,500 performances). In themselves, the two shows attest to the darkness and daring with which Kander and Ebb advanced the form. Cabaret dealt with the rise of the Nazis during the demi-monde of the Weimar Republic; Chicago, with brazen femmes fatales and the amoral showbizification of the justice system during the Jazz Age. Both married irresistible tunes with complex subject matter and full-on theatricality, while inviting audience complicity to sharpen their point. Decades later, they both remain pertinent. 'I can't remember an interview where somebody didn't say, 'Doesn't Cabaret seem particularly relevant?'' Kander tells me, speaking over the phone from the rural residence in upstate New York he shares with his longtime partner (since 2010, his husband), Albert Stephenson, a choreographer. 'It's terrible, but it's as if it continues to issue the same warnings. Chicago, too – it always seems to be exposing something in our society. Things that are terrifying and corrupt about the world that we live in never seem to go away, no matter how much we expose them.' Kander and Ebb hit it off from the moment they met in 1962. 'He was very much a New Yorker, I was very much a Kansas City person,' says Kander, 'but the difference created a third sort of personality that wrote all the songs'. He continues: 'We were lucky. Projects that attracted us turned out to be groundbreaking without our intending it. Our first musical Flora the Red Menace' – which premiered in 1965 – 'was about the Depression and was political. If you look at our work as a whole, you see lots of instances of injustice and oppression but it wasn't as if we got together and said, 'Boy, what social statement can we make today?' It was about the stories we felt like telling.' After Ebb's death from a heart attack in 2004, aged 76 – 'a shocking moment in my life and a life-changing one' – Kander resolved to complete their outstanding works-in-progress. Among these, were the murder-mystery musical comedy Curtains (2006) and The Scottsboro Boys (2011), which used the device of a minstrel show to retell the notorious case of nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931. A couple of years ago, their partnership was honoured on Broadway again with New York, New York, based on the 1977 Martin Scorsese film for which they had provided the anthemic title number, and incorporating new songs co-written by Kander with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the meantime, Kander had also worked with lyricist Greg Pierce on two further, well-received musicals: The Landing in 2013 and Kid Victory two years later. And it's not over yet: Kander is still composing, he tells me, but he won't elaborate on the project afoot. This year will also see the release of the film adaptation of Kiss of the Spider Woman, the Kander and Ebb musical based on the 1976 Manuel Puig novel about two Argentinian cell-mates, a gay man and a socialist revolutionary, who bond through the former's cinematic reveries. Starring Jennifer Lopez, it's directed by Bill Condon, who wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film of Chicago (2002) and is, in Kander's view, 'a wonderful film-maker'. Born in March 1927, the son of a Kansas City poultry trader, Kander was raised in the shadow of the Depression. 'I remember it very well,' he says, 'and I felt lucky that, even though we were not wealthy people, I got a feeling of security in my family.' Perhaps above all, it was music that got them through the worst of times. 'Nobody was a professional musician, but there was music in the house a lot. Very often after dinner, we would go into the living room and just play music. My mother was tone deaf but every once in a while my dad would say, 'Play a march for your mother!' So I would.' In his acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement prize at the 2023 Tony awards, Kander confessed himself 'grateful to music which has invaded me early on, from the time I was a baby.' After he caught TB as an infant, he was kept on a porch outside the house to ensure isolation. Looking back now, he suspects that he first made sense of the world through listening. 'It's a theory that I have but also a memory,' he says. 'I could hear the footsteps of my family coming to the door, to give me some attention. I think probably at a very early age, I began to interpret sound in a very strong way.' He flew to the piano. 'When I was four, I remember my aunt putting her hand on top of my hand, and we made a chord. It is still one of the great moments of my life, the fact that my hand could do that.' Composing began early too. 'I was in second grade. We were doing arithmetic. I remember sitting in the back of the class. Our teacher asked me a question, which, of course, I could not answer, and she asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was writing a Christmas carol. And she made me stay after school, and she played it.' Because his family was Jewish, the teacher called his parents to check his writing a carol was kosher. They supported him all the way. There was no epiphany about becoming a composer, he says, it was just somehow always in him. 'Music is going on in me all the time. As time went on, I just assumed that that's what I would do. There was no awakening, and my parents were very encouraging without setting goals.' There's a mildness about Kander that perhaps explains why his profile remains relatively low-key despite his enormous success. But it's a gentleness to which he may owe his career. He retells the incredible domino effect which began in Philadelphia in 1957 where West Side Story had just begun its pre-Broadway try-out run. 'There was a party afterwards in a big hotel. And there was a six-deep queue at the bar trying to get drinks. I'm not a very aggressive fellow, and I kept raising my arm. The guy in front of me saw my distress and said: 'What do you want?' He turned out to be the pianist with West Side Story in the orchestra, and we struck up a conversation and stayed in touch. Some time after the show transferred to New York, the pianist asked Kander if he would cover for him while he was on holiday. 'And I said yes. And so there I was playing in the pit on West Side Story for three weeks, and during that period, they were rehearsing the company, and putting in a lot of replacements. Again, the stage manager asked me to be there to play for those rehearsals and those auditions. And then they needed a pianist to play all the auditions for this big new show called Gypsy. I said yes. And that led to me having my first Broadway show, called A Family Affair. It all goes back to that one night.' It might sound like a charmed life, yet to grow up gay before the 1960s, as Kander did, was to experience a less accepting world. 'In the first half of my life all that had to be sublimated and couldn't be discussed,' he says. 'Now it's a natural part of the world that I live in. And I think how lucky I actually am that I lived my life that way. I think that in spite of my terrific family, I grew up understanding what secret suffering feels like. 'I never thought I would reach this point, but I am grateful for that suffering, because I think it helped me to understand other people, perhaps in a way that I would not have otherwise. I think the importance of compassion becomes clear when you experience suffering on your own. Looking back on the things that have interested me in terms of writing, I think they are influenced by the fact that, years ago, I learned what those feelings are like.' When I ask if he has any regrets, he pauses. 'I know that regrets about the past are useless. But I wish I had been braver when I was younger.' To be himself? 'Yes… but there's nothing I can do about that.' Although society has progressed in many ways since, in other respects he shudders at how removed things are from the post-war spirit he remembers. 'Back then, though life was very complicated, as it always is, and there were lots of problems, there was optimism about the future. I'm horrified by what's happening in our country. I don't know how long it will take to get our country back'. He expresses real upset at the fact that Trump and his team employed New York, New York at a pre-election rally in Madison Square Garden last year. 'I felt terrible about that. I don't think there's any way to stop that. I know other people whose music was used as well, and they went to greater lengths than I tried to, to stop the use of it, but I don't think you really can.' Robert De Niro was the accidental catalyst for a song now inseparable from New York's sense of itself, and a seemingly eternal hymn to the can-do spirit. As the story goes, the original version that Kander and Ebb had written initially met with the approval of Martin Scorsese and Liza Minnelli, but De Niro dissented and, after a hushed confab with him, Scorsese requested the pair have another go at it. Kander believes that it was their irritation at being told to go back to the drawing-board that spurred them to new heights. 'We went back to [Fred's] place and then sat down and wrote it in 45 minutes. I think, without our quite realising it, there was an energy of annoyance in it. And of course, it's a much better song.' Laughing, he admits that the original version 'was terrible. If I still had a copy, I would burn it.' What's his view on the current state of Broadway, where shows can cost millions to stage, and the earth to watch? 'It's much harder to get things on today, because they're so ungodly expensive,' says Kander. 'When we did Flora or Cabaret, those shows which were considered expensive were nothing compared to what it costs to put on a Broadway musical today. But I think the theatre is probably the last place to give up the fight. The theatre has always, in some way, represented the resistance.' Is its Golden Age over? His voice sounds a note of amusement. 'I think that the 'Golden Age' is every age just before the one that we're living in.' The London production of Cabaret celebrates its 1,500th performance on July 7 and is currently booking until March: The Broadway run celebrates 500 performances the following day
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
I lived with a serial killer for 6 months before I learned what he'd done - he mentored me and even taught me to shave
A man has spoken of how he lived with a serial killer as a roommate before he found out what he had done. Jesse Crosson shared the experience when he was staying at Nottoway Correctional Centre in the US state of Virginia. He explained he had gotten a job in the wood shop, and when he was moved into a new prison cell, he realised he was already occupied by an 'old little man'. He explained in a TikTok video: ' I remember the pop the door to the cell for me to go in and there was this old little man sitting in front of the TV drinking his coffee and I was like "This is a roommate I can deal with, he's not young and crazy, he's not going to be loud." 'It worked out great. Sometimes he worked night shift, and I worked day shift, so I got the cell to myself. He was quiet, we had good conversations, we watched Jeopardy. I really liked the guy. He even taught me how to shave because when I first got locked up, I couldn't grow a beard, so I never learned.' In the video, he goes on to explain, the roommate never received any mail from family or spoke to anyone on the phone, and as he knew he had previously been a decorated officer in Vietnam, he asked his stepmother if he could write him a letter. He said: 'And then my stepmum comes for a visit and she's like 'You know Jesse, your roommate is a serial killer.' 'I said 'okay...' 'So she tells me this whole story and I got back to have this conversation like "Greg, remember how I said I was going to try to get my stepmum to write to you? Well, she doesn't really feel comfortable" and he says 'yeah, you did your homework' and he laughed and it scared the s**** out of me.' In the video, he went on to say that the roommate was 'connected to dozens of murders across the country ,but I didn't know that at first' He added: 'Finding out one day that I was living with a serial killer was uncomfortable and it didn't really mesh with the things I knew about him. 'He had been a decorated officer in Vietnam. He had served three tours and used to recite the names of every soldier he had lost. 'The man was helping me work on my vocabulary... He was really where I started to understand that one is just one thing.' In 2002, Crosson was originally sentenced to serve 32 years in jail just as he turned 18 after committing two separate and unrelated crimes: being caught in a robbery and a shooting. After spending 19 years behind bars, the 38-year-old shares his jail tales to his 1.2 million TikTok followers, revealing the fascinating facts of what life is really like in prison - and what it was like to readjust to life outside when he was released. In a recent clip, the former inmate shared the moment he was released from prison 'felt like a dream.' He recalled walking outside for the first time and getting into a car felt 'awkward and weird' - and he even had a 'breakdown' in Costco after shopping with his newfound freedom. 'I started to feel two things,' he recalled. 'One was a sense of grief for everything that I lost and beginning to realize all those years had passed, and the other was a sense of joy.' Crosson, who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, recalled shifting his mindset from his life as a free man 'being a dream,' to it being 'waking up' from a bad one. 'It was back to reality for the first time,' the ex-convict explained. 'And it was where I belonged.' The motivational speaker, who has started the Second Chancer Foundation in 2022 to provide direct services for prisoners, admitted he suffered from a breakdown and PTSD, as well as struggling in different environments and relationships. Crosson has also recalled the moment he found out he was being released from prison - saying it had been a 'surprise' - and he woke up that day thinking he still had 10 years left on his prison sentence. However, he was called into the counselor's office who told him the good news - he was a free man. After being given 'ridiculous' release clothes - oversized khaki pants and a large khaki-colored shirt - he left the prison and was picked up by his mom, who he could finally embrace after spending 15 minutes filling out the final paperwork. In one video, Crosson has also recalled the moment he found out he was being released from prison - saying it had been a 'surprise' 'I picked her up and I started swinging her around,' he reminisced. In a TikTok posted in June, Crosson explained he was arrested after he and his co-defendants had run out of money, and were trying to get a fix - making the decision to rob the home of a restaurant owner someone had worked for. Although they justified the crime by convincing themselves the restaurant owners weren't good people. However, someone ended up being home and it turned into a home invasion, which left Crosson paranoid and afraid they were after him. Wanting to defend himself, Crosson purchased a handgun from a friend - which turned out to be stolen - and was involved in a fight that ended in a car chase and him firing his gun. He was caught and sentenced to 32 years - double the recommended sentence. 'When I got arrested I looked absolutely insane,' the ex-criminal recalled, saying he was dressed like a gangster inspired by his friend's uncle, who legitimately was one. 'I had these hiking boots on but I had dress socks, I didn't have any boxers on cause we're so strung out, we can never get organized to do laundry but I was wearing dress clothes, [I] wanted to be just like him,' he said. 'I also had this long overcoat that my stepfather had given me and besides thinking it made me look like a gangster we had a strap on the AK, so I can put it over my shoulder with a regular clip in there, you couldn't even tell it was under the jacket,' he added. The free man said he was arrested in that outfit and had to wear it again when he was transferred from jail to the receiving center before starting his sentence. While he was being processed, he was given the options of sending the garments home or leaving them there. He instead opted to throw the clothes away. 'With limited money on the books, there was no way in the world I was gonna pay for the postage [when] I could buy food and hygiene instead,' he explained. 'Maybe that's why I was so hesitant to start wearing dress clothes again, because for about a year-and-a-half or almost two years all I wore was T-shirts and jeans. I was like no, I don't need that fancy stuff,' he added thoughtfully. In other videos, Crosson revealed more information from his time in prison - including his unusual mentor, who turned out to be a serial killer. 'I was surprised because I said you know I really like this guy,' he recalled in a clip posted to TikTok. 'I get along with him, he teaches me something every day, he helped me a lot in kind of seeing the world in a different way.' Although Crosson appears to be remorseful about his actions, he isn't remorseful about being arrested. 'I needed to be arrested,' he said in a video explaining why he was put behind bars. 'I was an active threat to other people.' 'In many ways being arrested, being pulled me out of the crazy lifestyle, the tail spins that I was in is what saved my life,' he added sincerely. Crosson also said with 'great love and support,' he was able to put his life back together in prison. 'I mentored other men, earned a Bachelor's degree, became a journeyman electrician, wrote articles for publication and found a way forward,' he said.
