Kelsey Parker's mum posts heartbreaking message after tragic death of grandson
Tom Parker's widow, Kelsey, revealed the devastating news this week that her son named Phoenix Parker-Lindsay, died just one week before his due date.
4
4
Kelsey - who announced in January she was expecting her first baby with boyfriend Will Lindsay, shared the news via a poem on Instagram.
Now her mum, Diane Whitlock, took to her own Instagram to share her thoughts about the tragic news.
"Good morning everyone. So I woke up this morning and it was a new day and I get out of bed and then I remembered Phoenix being born and his soul had already taken flight and I thought to myself people will say that life is so cruel," Diane said in a video.
"But what if we have to walk the path we walk to learn what we need to learn because I believe that everything happens for a reason and I have to believe that."
Diane added in the caption: "A special thought to beautiful Phoenix as his soul finds peace.
"Life is cruel, but we have to keep going and keep following our path."
Kelsey lost her childhood sweetheart husband Tom in 2022 aged 33 following a brain tumour diagnosis.
She shares two children, five-year-old Aurelia and Bodhi, four, with The Wanted star.
Kelsey went public with her new relationship in September last year, saying she knew her late husband would 'send the right man for her.'
The 34-year-old excitedly revealed her pregnancy in January before being pictured ring shopping with her tree surgeon boyfriend, 27, earlier this month.
Devastated Kelsey Parker announces tragic death of baby who was 'born sleeping' just a week before due date
But she delivered the worst news this week when telling her fans Phoenix had been "born sleeping."
Kelsey shared the devastating news by posting a poem to fans, "For Phoenix. Born sleeping, forever loved."
The phoenix bird symbolises immortality, resurrection and life after death.
Kelsey also wrote on Instagram: "Before I receive an influx of lovely messages and heartfelt well wishes, I want to just say that I truly appreciate everything you are all going to say and share.
"But with the news being so raw, I would really like to ensure that we as a family are given space and time to process this devastating and earth-shattering news.
"I love you all and thank you for your understanding and space."
If you or someone you know needs support following the loss of a child, please reach out to charity Sands' helpline on 0808 164 3332.
4
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
21 minutes ago
- The Sun
Only those with a top IQ can name these 10 Premier League teams in this emoji quiz – how many can you figure out?
ONLY people with a top IQ can figure out these 10 Premier League clubs based on emojis. The puzzles have been put together using emojis as each of the syllables of the club's name. The head-scratching codes have been created by the ticket comparison site, SeatPeak. The ten teams range from recent Premier League champions to newly promoted clubs. SeatPick ceo Gilad Ziberman said: "To celebrate World Emoji Day, we've created this super fun game you can share with your friends. "With the 2025/26 Premier League season fast approaching, see if you can spot which teams are hiding behind the clues." The brain teasers can help enhance people's short-term and long-term memory. This is done as it requires people to remember and manipulate information with their brains. Still struggling? Scroll down for the answers - but no cheating! The tip is to keep it simple and just say what you see. Brain teasers can also help improve cognitive stimulation, mental agility, stress reduction and boosting concentration. They're great for the health side of the brain as well as they help to delay the onset of cognitive decline which is associated with ageing. Chelsea hunting Morgan Rogers as Garnacho and £100m Jackson wanted by Villa | Transfers Exposed
BreakingNews.ie
21 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Snoop Dogg officially becomes co-owner of Swansea
American rapper Snoop Dogg has officially become co-owner of Championship club Swansea. The 53-year-old star, who hinted at investing in the club by helping promote the club's shirt launch earlier this week, has joined Croatian midfielder Luka Modric in linking up with the Swans. Advertisement He said: 'My love of football is well known, but it feels special to me that I make my move into club ownership with Swansea City. He found the shirt that fits. @snoopdogg 🦢 — Swansea City AFC (@SwansOfficial) July 17, 2025 'The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me. This is a proud, working class city and club. An underdog that bites back, just like me. 'I'm proud to be part of Swansea City. I am going to do all I can to help the club.' On Sunday Snoop Dogg unveiled Swansea's new kit with the south Wales club taking a playful dig at Wrexham's Hollywood owner Ryan Reynolds. Advertisement Deadpool actor Reynolds had responded to Wrexham's own kit launch by posting a picture of himself on Instagram wearing the latest shirt while holding a dog. Dogg included @SnoopDogg Nuthin' But A Wales Thang, the Jacks are ready. We're the Pride of Wales. @VancityReynolds @Wrexham_AFC #JackArmy 🐶⚔️🦢 — Swansea City AFC (@SwansOfficial) July 12, 2025 Swansea reacted by turning to another famous 'canine' face for their kit unveiling ahead of the 2025-26 season, posting on X: 'Dogg included @SnoopDogg. 'Nuthin' But A Wales Thang, the Jacks are ready. We're the Pride of Wales.' Now the Swans have confirmed another high-profile owner has arrived in both Welsh football and, along with former American football star Tom Brady at Birmingham, in next season's Championship. Advertisement Luka Modric has also invested in the club (Bradley Collyer/PA) The Swans said in a statement: 'Swansea City is delighted to announce global rap superstar and multi-platinum selling artist Snoop Dogg has become the club's latest high-profile co-owner and investor. 'The 53-year-old, who caused a social media sensation when he helped launch our 2025-26 home shirt on Saturday, comes on board a few months after Croatian football great Luka Modrić became part of Swansea City. 'Snoop is renowned as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time, and has sold 35 million albums worldwide across a performing and recording career spanning more than 30 years. 'The Death Row Records owner has won countless awards and received 17 Grammy nominations. Advertisement 'He has also always had a deep love of sport, and football in particular. At one point he was a brand ambassador for the FIFA video game series, and has been pictured wearing a variety of team jerseys over the years. 'Swansea's home kit may be the latest in that sequence, but Snoop's ties to the club will run deeper than the donning of the famous white shirt as he formally becomes a member of club ownership. 'And it is hoped his global profile and love of football can play an important part in helping us spread the Swansea City name as far and wide as possible in order to boost our commercial performance to further support our aspirations as a club.' The club say they have unveiled a mural of Snoop Dogg on the stadium's West Stand. Advertisement Chief executive Tom Gorringe said: 'It is very exciting for us as a football club to formally welcome Snoop Dogg as a co-owner and investor into Swansea City. 'His enjoyment and love of football is well documented and he has often spoken of a desire to get more involved in the sport. We are delighted he believes that being part of Swansea City is the right way to realise that ambition. 'Dogg is passionate about this project and helping us continue to raise the profile of the club to as wide an audience as possible.'
The Sun
21 minutes ago
- The Sun
How Britain went Big Brother bonkers 25 years ago as ten ordinary people changed face of TV – so what happened to them?
A SKATEBOARDING nun, a pantomime villain who became Britain's most hated man and a cheeky, muscleman builder. All thrown into a dystopian world of surveillance, with the most instantly recognisable theme tune of modern times. 13 13 13 Exactly 25 years ago (yes, really) Big Brother, a televisual experiment that would transform broadcasting for ever, was launched on a once-bold Channel 4. Imported from Holland, this novel formula would pit an initial ten housemates against one another in a constantly monitored compound. And, within days, our nation and many parts of its media were hooked on this fresh Orwellian TV triumph. The internet had started to take a chokehold on our lives, Princess Diana was dead and the Nineties hangover kicked in, with newspapers and the public searching for something new to fill our lives. This never-before-seen social experiment would play a starring role in killing off the Cool Britannia movement that had swept through the nation and its media during the previous decade. And on the evening of July 18, 2000, this group of strangers — chosen from 40,000 applicants — exploded on to our plasma screens from a heavily fortified East London house. As they lived alongside cameras scrutinising their every move, the country, in increasing numbers, could not resist a nose and a poke at these everymen and women competing for the £70,000 prize money. Big Brother certainly dominated my life as the Millennium Bug failed to materialise and the 21st century's first summer dawned. Hi-tech awakening As the then Showbiz Editor of The Sun, I was immediately drawn to this addictive, creative innovation and spotted its potential to spark media debate. And I felt we should try to take ownership of this visual phenomenon and give it unrivalled coverage. Celebrity Big Brother's Sexiest Moments! When we called ourselves ' The official paper of Big Brother ', it prompted a series of irate calls from Channel 4 HQ. As coverage ballooned, so did the newspaper's sales and website traffic, with the average TV audience rating also rising to 4.5million. Britain was growing obsessed with a buff Scouse builder called Craig, a posh bloke called Nick, later Nasty Nick (Copyright: The Sun), Anna the nun and lentil-munching, yogic hippie Sada, among others. All packaged together with the soothing Geordie lilt of narrator Marcus Bentley, histrionic host Davina McCall and a banging theme tune conjured up by the wizard fingers of superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold. Online forums were ignited by forensic analysis of the show, while this paper splashed with the disparate household's twists and turns, relegating coverage of the stuttering Britpop bands and pushing them down the news agenda. The era-defining Big Brother inmates may not have possessed the creative talents of our celebrated, most recent working-class artistic wave. But they came from the same towns and cities, and in their own way, certainly in the first series, embodied a generation of normal people with a curiosity and drive for success and fortune. Big Brother is such a well-trodden formula now but we must remind ourselves of its originality, its technological innovation and deviousness, aped by Love Island and triggering a celebrity spin-off which never measured up to the OG. 13 13 To be able to interact and determine outcomes of a show online and through voting gave the public a feeling of power and control at their fingertips, as if millions of us were collectively directing a show. That hadn't happened before. It was a visual and hi-tech awakening and we felt like we were glimpsing a dystopian future. It was perhaps an uncanny insight into the modern world which we inhabit today, where we ourselves are continually monitored and scrutinised by CCTV and tracked online. In later series, contestants knew the drill and came in as rehearsed and unlikeable wannabes with agendas and agents, focused on carving out media careers and boosting numbers on their social platforms. But in series one, there was a boundless innocence and unknown; a ragtag bunch of unsuspecting people thrown together randomly. That's what made it electric. The first-wave Big Brother collective was a diverse celebration of all that was great about modern Britain, despite sneering cynics claiming the opposite. And Britons have always loved twitching their net curtains, peering over fences and gossiping. Big Brother gave us the ability to do that 24/7 via a revolutionary live feed, forums and episodes which were edited and screened within 24 hours. It felt so live, in and of the moment. And the drama of witnessing unscripted manipulation and argument was breathtaking and unprecedented. Edges of the seat were fully occupied. We all assumed that the box office moment would be if some of the contestants had live sex on television. The original Dutch show had sparked national debate and spiked media scrutiny when a couple slipped under the covers. There was one moment when grainy monochrome images of ultimate victor Craig Phillips and Claire Strutton in bed together emerged, but it wasn't definitive, although it did prompt the memorable headline 'Duvet do it or not?'. However, in the build-up to the show's premiere, there had been a key event — when its producer Ruth Wrigley noticed that, despite the diversity of the selected contestants, something was amiss. She recalled: 'As we got close to signing off on the cast, we realised that the one thing we were missing was a white, heterosexual, posh male. 'Nick was our last choice and we weren't really that sure. He ticked a box. Which goes to show how little control you really have!' Hysterical frenzy Enter former City broker Nick Bateman, who was televisual TNT and whose presence transformed the programme. As his scheming, Machiavellian strategy was revealed — attempting to influence housemates' votes by showing them names on pieces of paper — he became the most hated man in Britain, for a sunny week or two, at least. In a hysterical frenzy of speculation, there were also unsubstantiated claims that Nick had smuggled a Motorola flip-phone into the house in his undercrackers and was receiving outside intelligence. Myself and colleague Derek Brown suffered logistical headaches and high expense while masterminding the hiring of a miniature helicopter to drop leaflets into the compound, encouraging housemates to evict Nick. It was all rather silly and, these days, would be so much cheaper and simpler with a drone. Nick was challenged by his fellow housemates about cheating and he was removed from the house by producers after 34 days, with Craig dubbing his strategy 'a very dirty plot'. In retrospect, it wasn't exactly the crime of the century but that moment of confrontation was the most intoxicating TV of our lives. Alas, the show was never quite as captivating after the pantomime villain's exit. Nick's soundbite utterances of 'I made a mistake' and 'If you live by the sword, you die by the sword' became engrained in popular culture and mimicked in pubs and offices across the land. Scouse builder Craig, then 28, gave away his prize money to his friend with Down's syndrome who needed a heart and lung transplant. But he would not take part again, admitting in a recent interview: 'Over the years, people would stop me in the street and say, 'I've applied for Big Brother, what advice would you give me?'. "And I would look at them and go, 'Don't do it!'. 'We'd gone in not really expecting much, but we all got a lot from it. There was no social media then. 'But today, you need to be strong enough to accept you could come out very badly from it. It's a dangerous position to be in. Fame and fortune do not go hand in hand.' Not long ago, I interviewed Nick from his new home in Australia, and he reflected: 'Late-night Channel 4 was kind of what you watched when you got back from the pub, drunk. 'It was an experiment and I didn't think anything would come of it because I didn't think anyone would find it interesting watching ten ordinary British people, who didn't know each other, sitting around in a house. 'There was never an urge to be famous. No one had any idea and that was what made the first series unique. 'Nobody had aspirations to be a magazine writer or an Instagram model. That's where our show had that sweet puerility. 'Emotional terrorism' 'I'd realised this was a gameshow with prize money. How I played the game, in retrospect, was very innocent but caused a furore. 'I was just using emotional terrorism to further my stay in the house and to win the money.' Following his eviction, there was a media feeding frenzy for the now infamous Nick's exclusive story. 13 I secured an exorbitant deal after fierce negotiations with his new-found agent and we were soon holed up together in a hotel in Bagshot, Surrey. In a haze of late-night cigarettes and alcohol, we talked about Nick's boarding school education, his family and his new status as Britain's Mr Nasty. His revelations were splashed across the front pages over the following days and sales went up by north of 100,000 a day as Britons devoured the words of the nation's most detested - and most famous — man at that moment. It's neither hyperbole nor exaggeration to suggest the country had gone Big Brother bonkers. The media circus was absolutely unprecedented and would have made George Orwell lunge for the gin. But it showed the powerful impact of the format. Coincidentally, around that time, I had been invited to the glittering Leicester Square premiere of Guy Ritchie's riotous gangster film Snatch and reckoned it might be a wheeze to bring Nick out of hiding to accompany me. We arrived in style in a chauffeur-driven SUV, he clad in a Sun baseball cap, which was the least he could do after the money we had made him. As we lingered in the foyer, Brad Pitt, Guy — about to marry Madonna at the time — and footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones came over to meet Nick. And The Sun's expert photographer Dave Hogan captured a moment in time, when A-list celebrity collided with reality TV's new-found superstar. This was a symbolic image, encapsulating a snatched, fleeting clash of popular culture. Hollywood's elite knew the identity of a dazed former City boy, who had been unknown and jettisoned into a televisual laboratory only weeks before. The image graced Page One the following day under the headline: ' Who's With Nasty Nick? ' It cemented Big Brother's status as the pre-eminent, cutting-edge entertainment innovation of the age, which thrust reality television on to the front pages of Britain's media alongside Hollywood royalty. 13
