I was extremely rich and extremely poor. I was a child prodigy and child actor who knew the Spice Girls. They were all lies. This is why I did it... and what it's really like being a serial liar: ALICE SNAPE
Because all of us lie, in small ways, all the time. But the thing about lying is that it has a way of running away from you.
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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Malcolm Dean obituary
Malcolm Dean's desk at the Guardian's offices in Farringdon Road, central London, was probably the greatest fire risk in the building. In a pre-internet age, when reports and press releases arrived in paper form, he kept mountainous stacks of material within easy reach, and somehow knew how to access what he wanted without causing an avalanche. Malcolm, who has died aged 86, was the Guardian's social policy leader writer from 1972 until he retired in 2006. He needed all that information at his fingertips to maintain his understanding of policy and practice across a wide range of ministerial portfolios. On any day he might be required to write about health, education, social security, race relations, criminal justice, equal opportunities and much more besides. I knew about his method because for many years my desk was next to his. He did not work in an ivory tower. He attended press conferences and read the reports, but he also used his colleagues as additional eyes and ears, interviewing us to build a rounded picture. The subject matter that he mastered might sometimes be dry, but he was invariably cheerful. His honesty, integrity and optimism worked as an inspiring antidote in a sometimes cynical world. The knowledge and contacts that he developed writing leaders formed the basis for a more publicly visible role from 1979 when he became editor of Society, a newly established section of the paper that appeared on Wednesdays. He ran it for 21 years, writing himself and commissioning articles across the social policy field from practitioners as well as journalists. It became required reading for everyone in leadership roles in the public sector and he took pride in the number of new campaigning organisations that the section helped to spawn. The section was a magnet for classified advertising of job vacancies from across the sector and it became a huge commercial success. Routinely it exceeded 100 pages and eventually at its peak it occasionally topped 200, dwarfing the paper itself. Unusually for a journalist, Malcolm also had a foot in the boardroom. For seven years from 1994 he sat on the Scott Trust, the body that owned the Guardian and appointed its editor. Given Malcolm's ability to express himself with force and often at high volume, it is unlikely that other members remained unaware of his opinions. On the paper his views were heard but not always heeded. Malcolm was a words man. He frequently bemoaned editors' decisions to give more space to pictures. For his taste there was too much reporting of showbiz and too little policy. His only half-joking slogan became: 'Dare to be dull!' Unsurprisingly, editors chose a different course. Malcolm was born in Wilmslow, Cheshire. His father, Noel, was the village baker in nearby Alderley Edge. His mother Sarah (nee Black), known as Biddy, came from a farming family in Northern Ireland, but was brought up in Cheshire after the death of both parents. After passing the 11-plus exam, Malcolm went to King's school, Macclesfield. At a careers conference there he met Edward Taylor Scott, the editor of what was then the Manchester Guardian, who lived in Wilmslow in an avenue where Malcolm delivered bread. He followed the great man's advice to join a local paper in the Kemsley Group, because it ran a good training scheme. After four years on the County Express, the Wilmslow weekly, he heard that the Kemsley chain had been taken over by Roy Thomson, Canada's biggest newspaper proprietor. He wrote to Thomson suggesting exchanges between his Canadian and British papers. Within a month Malcolm was on a steamship bound for Canada, where he was sent to report in a remote gold mining town in the frozen north. His multiple adventures in the US and Caribbean included time playing for the Trinidad and Tobago international rugby team. He returned to the UK after a spell working his way around Australia and south-east Asia. After two years studying politics and economics at Ruskin College, Oxford, he went to the US on a Harkness fellowship, and his time there included working as a speechwriter in Congress. He never took a degree because he thought he did not need one, and started at the Guardian in 1969. In professional terms it became the love of his life. He worked as a general reporter for three years before finding his niche among the leader writers. Although the Guardian was the central feature of his career, he branched out several times into politics. In 1978-79, during the final year of the Callaghan government, he was special adviser to David Ennals, Labour's social services secretary. Later, even more actively, he stood for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in parliamentary elections in 1983 and 1987. He nursed the Bath constituency and in the latter election came close to unseating Chris Patten, its Conservative MP, achieving one of the 10 biggest swings to the Alliance in a year when its leaders, David Owen and David Steel, were struggling to connect. Malcolm's election agents during this period recalled his great political skill in uniting his constituency party, where Liberals were initially disgruntled about having an SDP candidate imposed. He was not the most brilliant public speaker, but he effectively undermined Patten's position as a moderate Conservative by hammering away at his Commons voting record in support of Thatcherite policies. Members of the local party, who started by fearing they had a policy egghead imposed on them, found him a clever and determined campaigner – buoyant, energetic and popular with the volunteers. After losing in 1987 he decided not to run again. His family say he believed that he could have won the next time, but that he would have more influence as a Guardian leader writer than as a backbench MP. He loved the Bath constituency but did not enjoy bickering in the party at national level. After retiring from the Guardian, he took up a two-year fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford (2006-08), where he wrote a book, Democracy Under Attack: How the Media Distort Policy and Politics (2011). He continued as a Guardian contributor and served on several national social policy working parties. He chaired a Joseph Rowntree Foundation commission on older people and was a founding trustee of the Young Foundation thinktank. Retirement also gave him more time for his passion for walking. Among many expeditions, he did the Wainwright Walk three times, hiking from coast to coast across northern England. People usually start in the west, at St Bees in Cumbria, and head eastwards to Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire. For the second and third traverse Malcolm insisted on doing it from east to west. He said that way he would get to meet and talk to more people as they came towards him in the opposite direction. After a short marriage to Lesley Pirie, a Russia expert, he married Clare Roskill, a social work specialist, in 1978. Clare went on to work for the government on social policy. In 2019, Malcolm was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and five years later, after the disease became overpowering, he moved into a care home. He is survived by Clare, their sons, Tim and Ben, and Sophie, the daughter of his first marriage. James Malcolm Dean, journalist, born 11 June 1939; died 17 July 2025
The Sun
3 days ago
- The Sun
Psychologist who worked with the Radfords reveals early trauma led to brood of 22… & how it became their secret weapon
WITH 22 kids the biggest question many people want to ask the Radfords is, 'why?' The huge brood is an eye-watering thought for most, but Sue and Noel, who were childhood sweethearts, were determined to have as big a family as possible. 10 10 10 And, in a rare twist, both were adopted as babies, leading many to wonder if that was the reasoning behind their decision to create Britain's biggest brood. The couple have always denied that their own adoptions had anything to do with their wish to have two football teams of children. But psychologist Jo Hemmings, who worked with the family on their show 22 Kids and Counting, says that there could be deep-rooted reasons linked to their adoption journeys that may have had a subconscious influence. She says people who have been adopted often feel a great sense of comfort when they have a child of their own, to finally have a connection with a blood relative. 'That is quite important,' she explains. 'Because they are both adopted I think that sense of having their own children together would have had much more significance, but not necessarily 22 of them. 'There isn't any science to back it up and say that either one or both parents that come from adoptive families are more likely each to have more birth children of their own. 'What there is some evidence of is that adopted children tend to be brought up in better socio-economic circumstances by their adoptive parents, so they are given a really stable upbringing, perhaps better education. "A lot is put into their upbringing partly because their parents have chosen them rather than given birth to them. 'So there is something in that. If they both grew up in good, stable adoptive families, they feel they have got as much to give back as they had in their own childhoods.' Despite this, Noel, 54, dismissed links between their adoptions and their huge brood in the couple's book, The Radfords: Making Life Count. Mum-of-22 Sue Radford says she'll NEVER meet her birth mum & it's caused 'disagreements' with Noel, who's also adopted He wrote in one chapter: "A lot of amateur psychologists may think the reason me and Sue have had lots of kids must be linked to the fact we were both adopted, but I don't think there is any connection. "Unless someone comes along and sticks some electrodes on our heads, and says after doing some tests, 'Oh, this is why you've got so many kids,' we're just not going to believe any of those theories.' And wife Sue, 50, agreed, saying: 'No, there is nothing in that - because I don't even think about my birth parents. I don't give the fact that I was adopted any thought at all, and never have.' While Sue has always said she has no desire to find her birth parents, Noel met his birth mother earlier this year, with their reunion televised in the latest series of their TV show. Sense of connection 10 10 Noel and Sue are childhood sweethearts, having met when she was just seven and he was 11. Sue fell pregnant with first child Christopher when she was 13 years old. The couple married three years later and then the children kept on coming. Jo says the couple share a deep bond and work together as a team. 'When you speak to them, they say no it is nothing to do with the psychology of us being adopted, it absolutely is because we felt we have a lot to give, we adore children - Sue especially adores babies," she says. "I don't think their intention was to have so many children, but it worked out for them. 'When I have talked to them one thing that comes across is how incredibly gentle and calm they are. You don't see that in many parents who have three, four or five kids, never mind 22 of them. 'There is just that feeling that they had so much to give, they love bringing up children. "They don't claim benefits. They have made money over the years with Noel's successful bakery business and because their TV series have become so successful they have become influencers, in a way. 'I just think they are a remarkable family who have this presence about them. I'm sure there is chaos at times, but when you see them with their children, you don't see it. "They are good, solid, stable, parents, which is amazing. 'They are very straight-talking, they are very resilient. So when there have been problems, you feel that they are a very strong couple together. "Also they are talkers. They sit down and say, 'What are we going to do about this?' They are very open and candid with their children and will talk everything over with them. "They always bounce back and they have this lovely soft energy about them which makes them work brilliantly together as parents.' Driving force Jo believes the Radfords' incredible parenting skills stem from their own upbringings in their loving, adoptive families. She says: 'Sue was very young when she had her first child. I think their driving force is that they badly wanted to be parents. "I know they are at pains to deny that it is anything to do with the adoptions, and I don't want to go against what they say, but knowing that you can give a large number of children a very stable, productive and healthy upbringing would probably have come from the upbringings they had. 'Often adoptive parents put the extra mile in, they over-compensate for the sadness that they didn't grow up with their birth families. "I think a lot of it comes from the happiness and security that they had when they were growing up.' For years, both Noel and Sue had been adamant that they didn't want to trace their birth families, saying they regarded their adoptive parents as their mums and dads and had idyllic upbringings. But Jo says their background of both being adopted will have made them kindred spirits. 'I don't know how rare it is for two adopted people to get married, but it would have been one of the early conversations they had when they first met,' she explains. 'It would have been one of those bonding things, those shared values, that make relationships solid. "I think having that in common would have been a really important thing for them as they both knew implicitly how the other one might have felt growing up. "I think they were very similar in their views. I think they had all agreed at the time that they had both had such wonderful childhoods, there was no need or drive to seek where they were from.' Meet the Radford children Christopher, 36 The oldest Radford child, Chris works as a glazier and is married to Nicole Spencer. They have three children: Maise-Paige, eight, Jacob, five, and Oakland, three. Sophie Rose, 31 Sophie has her own cleaning company, Time for Sparkle, and shares three children with husband Joseph Bradley: Daisy, 12, Ayprill, 10, and Leo, nine. Chloe Anne, 29 Chloe's a make-up artist and is mum to daughter Milla, two, and son Bodhi, three months, with her boyfriend, Jake Wallace. Jack Richard, 28 Publicity-shy Jack prefers to stay out of the limelight, and hasn't publicly shared his relationship status or career. Daniel Leon, 26 After training to be in the RAF, Daniel had a near-fatal car crash in Bristol, which played out on his parents' TV show. He overcame his subsequent fear of driving in order to emigrate to Australia. Luke James, 24 Luke came out to his parents as bisexual in 2021 - warming viewers' hearts after Sue and Noel attended a Pride festival with him that summer. He works for the family's pie business. Millie Jo, 23 Millie is married to Harley Passmore and is mum to three children: Ophelia, four (from a previous relationship), and Chester, three, and Elodie, one (whom she shares with Harley). Katie Louise, 22 Katie works at a nursery and shares one nine-month-old son, Ronnie, with her boyfriend Connor Carter. James Edward, 21 James is busy working in the family's pie shop and hopes to run it someday. Ellie May, 20 Ellie's training to be a hairdresser, and has also worked part-time in a hotel housekeeping job. Aimee Elizabeth, 19 Aimee's also qualified to be a hairstylist and has famously practised her skills on family members in video clips. Josh Benjamin, 18 According to his parents, Josh was a 'nightmare' at school and he didn't commit to his studies - but that all changed when he found his passion as a sports coach. Max Joseph, 16 Max was diagnosed with autism in 2021, and has since struggled with socialising. Working in the pie shop has apparently helped him. Tillie May, 15 One of Tillie's legs stopped growing when she was just 18 months old, due to an infection. In 2019, she was fitted with a frame to help strengthen the limb, but - last year - it was revealed she'd need further treatment and potential surgery. Oscar Will, 13 Oscar has been described as having 'incredible initiative' at school. Casper Theo, 12 Casper always dreamt of being a footballer, but was gutted on his family's show when he didn't make it into a Premier League club's youth team. Alfie Thomas Alfie would have been the Radfords' 17th child, but he was tragically stillborn at three months. The Radfords refer to him as their 'missing heartbeat'. Hallie Alphia Beau, 10 Hallie's middle name was given in tribute to her late brother, who died just a year before her birth. Phoebe Willow, eight Phoebe has been awarded prizes at school for her achievements, much to her parents' pride. Archie Rowan, seven As the 20th Radford baby, Archie was expected to be the last - marking 'a nice, even number' in Sue's words. Bonnie Raye, six Again, Bonnie was expected to 'finish' the brood, but plans changed. Heidie Rose, five The youngest Radford child, mum Sue has since insisted: 'No, that's it now!' Tragic discovery Things changed for Noel in 2023 when the couple's teenage daughter Ellie was found to have the hereditary liver disorder Gilbert's Syndrome. The couple were tested and Noel was found to be a carrier. He said at the time: 'It's got me thinking, we're both adopted and we know absolutely nothing about our medical history at all. 'I'd quite like to find out more about my family, where I'm from, just anything about myself. 'It might tell me a bit more about who I am, where I'm from, possibly my birth parents. Now, as I'm getting older, I do think about it a bit more often.' Fighting back tears he added: 'I don't even know why I don't like talking about it. I just don't like it. "I have a lot of respect for my mum and dad.' In the opening episode of the latest series of 22 Kids and Counting, Noel reveals he met his birth mother for the first time - and she was shocked by the news of his huge family. He told The Sun: 'It was emotional meeting her and I was nervous beforehand. "You don't know what she is going to look or sound like, and how she will react. "A lot was going through my head, but she was so lovely and so glad to see me. We were with each other for a couple of hours.' His mum, who chose to stay anonymous in the show, told him she was forced to give him up at 17 after she split from his birth father. He added: 'As I have got older, I have been curious to find her,' Noel explains. 'I'm only ever going to have one chance and I've got no regrets that I have.' 10 10 10
The Sun
4 days ago
- The Sun
Pilots of doomed South Korean plane ‘switched off wrong engine' after flying into birds before crashing and killing 179
Annabel Bate, Foreign News Reporter Published: Invalid Date, THE pilots of the doomed South Korean plane appeared to switch off the wrong engine after flying into birds before crashing. The crash at Muan International Airport on December 29 killed 179 people after the plane did an emergency landing, hit a concrete slab at the end of the runway, and exploded into a fireball. 5 5 Officials took back copies of the interim findings from reporters after grieving relatives of victims killed in the crash disrupted a news conference of Saturday. They accused them of prematurely blaming the pilots for the devastating crash. Prior to the media event, investigators told relatives and their representatives that they had concluded that there was no engine defect on the plane. They added that various errors by the pilots had led them to land the aircraft too quickly, without the wheels being down. Preliminary findings confirmed the conclusions that aviation experts had reached from the plane's final path, as well as horror video footage captured from the fatal crash. In the final four minutes of the doomed flight, power to the aircraft's flight recorders was cut off - initially obstructing the investigation. After going into the flock of birds, one of the engines failed - while the other continued to produce a bit of power. Investigators revealed: "A pilot may have mistakenly turned off the engine. While an official told South Korea's MBN TV news: "The pilot should have turned off the right engine, which was severely damaged by the bird strike, but he turned off the left engine, which was spinning, and the black box and power went out." The pilots then ignored standard procedure for continuing of landing after a bird strike on approach. Terrifying moment Boeing passenger plane catches FIRE after take off with flames erupting from the engine They are said to have climbed back up before performing unorthodox manoeuvres and turning to make a rushed landing in the opposite direction - on the same runway. As the heartbroken families of victims entered the media briefing, officials were quick to take copies of the report back from reporters, explaining how it hadn't been officially issued. A man was heard shouting: "They've just blamed it all on the pilots." Head of the relatives' group Kim Yu-jin slammed the report as being unsatisfactory. She said: "When investigators take a position, it should be accompanied by documents that support their position and convince the bereaved family that their conclusions are inevitable. "We were only given their conclusions. "We have repeatedly asked them to be careful about these disclosures because the way that the results of the investigation are communicated can have an impact on the compensation that families receive." The packed jet - Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 - was carrying 181 people from Bangkok, Thailand. Firefighters said two of the six crew members, one man and one woman, survived after being pulled from the tail of the plane. The 33-year-old man suffered multiple fractures and is receiving special care following the disaster. He reportedly told doctors that he had already been rescued when he woke up, Yonhap said. Timeline of the Muan plane disaster By James Halpin, foreign news reporter SOUTH Korea has suffered its deadliest air disaster in two decades as a jet carrying 181 went down with only two survivors. 4.29am - Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 leaves Bangkok carrying tourists coming home from package holidays in Thailand. 8.57am - Pilot receives bird strike warning on approach to Muan International Airport. 8.58am - Pilot issues a mayday call - and witnesses report hearing an "explosion" overheard as video shows an apparent bird strike. 9.00am - Plane aborts first landing attempt on Runway 01. 9.03am - The jet then attempts a second landing on Runway 19 on its belly - and crashes in a fireball. 5
