On this day: Chuckle Brothers feature on Bradford Burns Unit track
On this day ten years ago, the Telegraph and Argus reported that a cover version of the anthem 'You'll Never Walk Alone' had been recorded to raise money for the Bradford Burns Unit.
The track, featuring stars such as the Chuckle Brothers, Billy Pearce, and Black Lace's Dene Michael, was set to be released on download sites on May 11, the anniversary of the fire disaster.
It was also set to be played to the crowd at Bradford City's League One clash with Barnsley on April 25, 2015 (the day after reporting).
Nigel Hunter, a driving force behind the recording, said at the time: "All the money from sales is going straight to the burns unit.
"And we would love it to get to the top of the charts."
He added: "I am extremely proud of it.
"It sounds really good.
"The artists have gone way over what we expected and gave their time for free as well.
"I am ecstatic.
"It's been a bit of a hard slog, but definitely worth it.
"I want to say thank you to everybody involved.
"Tim Walker for producing it, and all the artists – Dene Michael, Clive Jackson, Owen Paul, Billy Shears, Billy Pearce, the Chuckle Brothers, Flint Bedrock, Rick Wild, Danny Tetley, The Aim, Tom and Dom from Bantams Banter, and all the local musicians on it."
The idea for the charity track came from lifelong Bradford City fan Lloyd Spencer.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
He was right all along: the lessons we learnt from Dad
Father's Day is upon us and whether you celebrate it with abandon or believe it is nothing more than another American import designed solely to line the pockets of wily marketeers, it does perhaps serve the purpose of making us consider the men who helped bring us into being. Father-and-child relationships can be fraught – certainly the teenage years can test even the most placid of tempers – and who does not remember those years, scowling in indignation, resolutely promising to never, ever become like the man who had just given you a dressing down for some transgression. But that was then and this is now and, just in time for Father's Day, a recent survey has been published that finds that, as we get older, the vast majority (91 per cent) of us agree that, now we're older we realise our fathers were right about most things. That is certainly the consensus in The Telegraph offices... Melissa Twigg The moment I told my father I was moving to Hong Kong, he responded with the level of enthusiasm he once reserved for cleaning the hamster's cage. This was confusing: his own mother and stepfather had lived there for decades and used to wax lyrical about it, as if it was some kind of tropical utopia. My father, though? Not a fan. He found it too hot, too crowded and too frantic. At the time I was 29 and a magazine writer in Cape Town – a city that, while outrageously beautiful and full of people who look frighteningly good in swimwear – was starting to feel too sleepy. I was also recently heartbroken and suffering from the kind of emotional upheaval that could only be soothed by moving continents. My father was baffled. 'Why not just go back to London?' he kept asking. 'You're a journalist and you grew up in one of the great media hubs of the world – surely you should at least try working there?' Of course, I ignored him. Fast-forward a year and I was miserable in a cramped flat in Sai Ying Pun. I had a job that was superficially glamorous, working for a glossy society magazine, but it turns out that spending your days interviewing heiresses isn't all that fulfilling. Also, I discovered, I am not a natural party girl and would rather be reading a book than downing shots with junior bankers. After three years, I booked a one-way flight to Heathrow and exhaled audibly as the plane landed in familiar greyness. Back in London, I got a job on a broadsheet, a husband and, eventually, a baby – all those things I had wanted so fervently at 29, but which had felt so out of reach as I had wandered alone along the baking, crowded streets of a foreign city. And my dad? He never once said, 'I told you so'. Mick Brown It was the length of my hair and Mick Jagger. Those were the two main abrasions I recall in my relationship with my father. He had fixed opinions on both things. Girls had long hair, not his son. And whenever the Rolling Stones appeared on television there would be a sigh of disgust, almost equal to the volcanic eruption that would occur whenever George Brown, the bibulous Labour minister whom Dad felt disgraced the family name, hoved into view. Dad's father had walked out on my grandmother shortly after he was born, leaving her to bring up her only son on her own. Her family were Salvationist, and he was a dutiful son, who became a dutiful father. He had been brought up on the principles of self-improvement and working all the hours God sends – a very Dad phrase. He had left school at 15, and worked for a building company. Money was tight and on Sundays he tended the garden of a big house nearby, while I explored the shadowed corners of the huge lawns and counted planes flying overhead. On Remembrance Sunday, at 11am, Dad looked at his watch, put down his rake and we both stood silently in the garden, observing the minute's silence. A disciplined man then, but an extrovert who brought joy to everyone who knew him. The church was packed for his funeral. He died when I was 22, and there's not a day when I don't wish I'd have known him for longer, and could have told him he was right about the values of hard-work and self-reliance. He was wrong about Mick Jagger – or should I say Sir Mick Jagger – whom even Dad would have had to acknowledge became a pillar of the establishment. But he was right about his habitual instruction to 'get your hair cut', as much as I argued and protested at the time. Sadly, the passing years, and the receding hairline, have taken care of that. I think he'd finally approve. Celia Walden Now there's a piece of advice that could have been delivered in the Middle Ages. Over the past few years, I've had people burst out laughing when I've offered them cash. I've seen people back away, hands in the air, from the diseased little note I was offering up. But of all the great pieces of advice my dad [former Tory MP George Walden] has given me, this remains one of my favourites. It's about safety, he used to explain. About always having the ability to get home and never finding yourself relying on another human being at the end of a night out. It was also, I suspect, about a very healthy mistrust of technology, which has been proved right time and time again. The ATM isn't working, it's miles away or it's run out of cash, so again, you're at someone or something's mercy. As a teenager, I remember thinking it was a weird thing for Dad to be so stuck on. Now that I have a 13-year-old girl (to whom I have given the same advice) I can see that what he was really stuck on – and wanted for me above all else – was independence. William Sitwell When it came to our father's advice, my brother and I agreed on a simple strategy: always do the exact opposite of what he suggested. This, of course, was meant with great affection. My younger sister, elder brother and I all had wonderful relationships with him. And I say relationships, plural, because he had a wonderful ability to take a different approach to each of us, according to our character and needs. But when it came to strategising, from work to relationships, we enjoyed the conversations, we just didn't take the directions. My father, Francis, was born in 1935. He made, the obituary writer of this paper, noted: 'a very good fist of a difficult birthright', living in the shadow of towering ancestors. Neither a sportsman nor an academic star, he stayed under the radar at school and, eschewing the family bent of writing, he worked in the City, not as a financier but in public relations. He made very little money and we never looked to him for business advice. Or if he offered it, we'd politely ask if any of his friends might help us. And therein lies a clue to his great worth. He died in 2004, a death at 67 brought on by what I call long lunchitis. He was the arch practitioner of lunching. He was one of the best-connected men in the City. He was one of the most loved. At his memorial service a senior British politician told me: 'You know, your father had no enemies.' So where my Daddy's advice might have been lacking, he made up for this by his example. He was loved because he was companionable, affable, funny, generous, charming, self-deprecating, very huggable and always warm. He told great stories and he was always giggling. He was too modest to have ever said this himself, but if I imagine what his advice to me would be now, it would be to try to be a bit more like him. Rosa Silverman As a child, I felt certain I had a raw deal. My dad (in close collaboration with my mum) adhered to a style of parenting that my siblings and I called 'brown bread,' consisting of bans on various activities that constituted fun in the Eighties and Nineties. Watching Neighbours was out (not educational), likewise eating crisps (unhealthy), riding my bike without an ugly polystyrene helmet (unsafe) and playing with Barbies (too gendered, I think was the reason for that one, though confusingly I was allowed dolls). I have great lacunae in my cultural knowledge from that time, particularly where ITV was concerned. No, my dad wasn't religious. He was (and remains) an adventurous, fun-loving, idealistic hippie who envisaged a healthy, wholesome childhood at least for his first three offspring. (He and my mum gave up by the time of their fourth, who had an XBox, watched Friends as a toddler and essentially parented himself.) I was outraged at being deprived of these basic rights enjoyed by all my peers and tried not to look bemused when they discussed soap-opera plotlines, or over-excited when offered a Penguin bar. Then I became a parent myself and, oh boy, have I inflicted that intergenerational trauma on my own children. My dad was right, I discovered. Crisps actually aren't that good for you. Going anywhere at all without a helmet could be disastrous. It's kind of weird to give a plastic woman with lovely pert breasts to a young child to play with. I haven't managed to impose quite so wholesome a childhood on my kids as my dad managed, but the intention is there. They feel tortured by my insistence on vegetables and screen-time limitations. No one but them suffers such injustices, they believe. One day, perhaps, they'll realise: they have my father to blame. George Chesterton My father was not someone you could rely on to give sound advice, unless it was another lesson in how not to do something, but I still feel gratitude for how his determination to take notice of others' genius made my life so much richer. Listening is a tree that bears fruit many years later. My father's simple habit was always to highlight something he thought was wonderful for its own sake, something he thought I needed to take notice of. Like most children, I either paid the most perfunctory attention or just passed it by entirely. But this acknowledgement of the brilliance of others must have worked its way into my mind. For him, it was something like the effortless skill of Peter Sellers switching from one voice to another in The Goon Show, or Orson Welles grilling Paul Schofield in A Man For All Seasons. He would insist I listen or watch or read – probably a thankless task at the time. For me, it is especially powerful in music: in the call and response of A Boy Like That from West Side Story, Cole Porter's lyrics to You're The Top, Chaka Khan screaming perfectly in tune, or something really obvious like the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. That feeling can be summarised by Ian Dury (no stranger to brilliance himself) when he sang There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards. This is a lot more than just admiring something remarkable – it is being aware of the magic another human being can conjure and allowing it to give you comfort when you need it most. Brilliance is the word that always comes to mind, since what these moments provide are sources of light, little explosions that split the creation from the creator, who – let's be honest – are often not the best adverts for humanity themselves (Wagner, anyone?). Recognising the brilliance of others is also a healthy thing to do. It's an ego-less moment of reflection beyond your own petty concerns and something my dad and I would both have benefitted from having more of over the years. But we should give thanks where it's due, whether that's to those who inspire us or our fathers. Sometimes both. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Cosmopolitan
12-06-2025
- Cosmopolitan
The Sabrina Carpenter Album Cover Controversy, Explained
It has come to my attention that Sabrina Carpenter has once again done something provocative that has, in turn, once again resulted in public shock and scandal, despite the fact that doing a satirical sex thing is pretty much the most Sabrina Carpenter thing Sabrina Carpenter could possibly do. Naturally, the initial outrage from the pearl-clutching set has subsequently generated a rousing round of internet discourse re: female sexuality under patriarchy—on which, as your resident Sabrina Carpenter Sex Things reporter, I feel it is my duty to weigh in. So let's discuss, shall we? On the heels of her latest single/immediate contender for song of the summer, 'Manchild,' (which, banger), Sabrina took to Instagram yesterday to announce her new album, Man's Best Friend, which is coming out August 29. The post featured an image (widely assumed to be the album's cover art) of Sabrina on her hands and knees while a man pulls her by her hair. In other words, it's a sexually submissive pose, one that invokes Dom/sub dynamics including ownership kinks and Master/pet play. (A second slide features an image of a dog collar with the album's title written on the tag, likely a nod to the sub collars often worn by submissive partners in these kinds of kink scenes.) Cue: immediate hand-wringing from the public claiming the (presumed) album art is 'regressive' and 'degrading' to women, with many critics arguing this supposed endorsement of subservience to men is particularly troubling amid a political climate that continues to threaten women's liberation. Instagram comments of note include one user who called the art 'insensitive' in light of the precarious state of women's bodily autonomy under the current administration, while another claimed it 'just set us back about five decades.' Meanwhile, a headline in the Telegraph proclaimed that Sabrina's 'over-sexed, degrading new album cover has gone too far,' while an Instagram post from Glasgow Women's Aid, a Scottish-based organization for women experiencing domestic violence, claimed the art evoked 'tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.' Woof. (Pun intended.) In response, others defended the imagery as satirical, interpreting the art as a tongue in cheek nod to the exact kind of criticism it did, in fact, generate and to which Sabrina is regularly subjected, which insists on missing the irony and painting her cheeky aesthetic as problematically male-gaze appeasing. While I can't say I'm the world's foremost Sabrina scholar, I think that—based on Sabrina's music, which frequently calls out and subverts the gendered power imbalances women face at the hands of men in heterosexual relationships—this reading of the art as an ironic response to the exact slut-shaming it received is a pretty solid bet! That said, irony or no irony, I think it's worth noting that being submissive in bed—including engaging in forms of consensual kink play involving degradation, ownership, humiliation, subservience, etc.—is not inherently 'degrading' for women (or for anyone of any gender, to be clear). What we do and like in bed—especially in kink—is not necessarily reflective of who really are as people. In fact, sometimes our sexual proclivities represent a subversion of and/or escape from who we are in our day to day lives. Which is to say, women can be sexually submissive without being (or wanting to be) subservient to men in real life. (Yes, we exist!) Moreover, even within a kink scene itself, being submissive isn't about having no autonomy, but rather willingly relinquishing control to a Dominant partner. As certified sex and relationship psychotherapist Gigi Engle, resident intimacy expert at dating app, 3Fun, previously told Cosmo, 'In kink, the sub is not actually powerless. The Dom and sub are both in control because the scene has been negotiated and boundaries have been established. Therefore, you can let go and be a submissive, but ultimately you know you are not, in fact, powerless.' In other words, submission is part of a dynamic exchange of power, not the lack of it. Meanwhile, as others have argued re: the recent discourse, claims that Sabrina's open displays of sexuality are 'regressive' are, in fact, rather regressive themselves. As one Twitter user put it, 'I fear we may have 'stop doing things for the male gaze'd ourselves back into expecting women to be modest and shaming them otherwise.' Quick Feminism 101 refresher: One of the core tenets of patriarchy is the policing and control of female sexuality. Patriarchy does this by shaming and censuring women for engaging with their sexuality outside the societally sanctioned bounds of heterosexual, monogamous relationships, therefore ensuring it remains under male control. When we are shaming Sabrina's sex-forward aesthetic—even on the supposedly 'progressive' grounds that it panders to the male gaze—what are we really doing other than reinforcing male systems of power that encourage women to be modest, chaste, and—dare I say—submissive to men? All of which is to say, whatever it is Sabrina was trying to do with her new album announcement, I think we can all simply agree that she looks fabulous doing it and get on with our day.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Yahoo
Billionaire Blavatnik courted to take Daily Telegraph stake
The billionaire who has bankrolled DAZN, the sports-streaming service, is being courted to take a stake in The Daily Telegraph alongside the newspaper's new American majority-owners. Sky News has learnt that Sir Len Blavatnik, whose holding company Access Entertainment owns assets in Britain, including the Theatre Royal Haymarket, has been approached by RedBird Capital Partners about becoming a minority investor in the Telegraph titles. Two sources close to the situation said on Thursday that Sir Len was being sounded out about a deal, although they cautioned that no agreement had been struck and it remained unclear whether one would be. Sir Len, who was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth II for services to philanthropy in 2017, is a prolific investor in the arts, media and entertainment industries. Access Entertainment is run by Danny Cohen, the former BBC director of television. Announcing its agreement to acquire Telegraph Media Group last month for an enterprise valuation of £500m, RedBird Capital said it was "in discussions with select UK-based minority investors with print media expertise and strong commitment to upholding the editorial values of the Telegraph". This was principally a reference to Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail proprietor, who remains in talks to pay more than £30m for a stake in the Mail's rival right-leaning newspaper group. Goldman Sachs is advising DMGT on the investment, with a deal the subject of ongoing discussions, according to insiders. Read more: The Abu Dhabi state-backed vehicle IMI is still expected to acquire the maximum 15% stake in the Telegraph permitted under proposed new media ownership rules. The government's decision to set the ownership threshold at 15% follows an intensive lobbying campaign by newspaper industry executives concerned that a permanent outright ban could cut off a vital source of funding to an already-embattled industry. However, the deal faces continued opposition from parliamentarians, with The Guardian reporting on Thursday that a cross-party group had written to Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, warning of "potential Chinese state influence" because of links between RedBird Capital chair John Thornton and China's sovereign wealth fund. This suggestion has been dismissed by RedBird Capital insiders. Ukraine-born Sir Len's portfolio of investments includes DAZN, which is now also backed by a Saudi sports group, mobile games studio Tripledot and Scenario Two, a theatre production company. Dovid Efune, the owner of The New York Sun, is meanwhile continuing to assemble a rival bid for the Telegraph, having secured backing from Jeremy Hosking, the prominent City investor. His prospects, however, look to have diminished after the former chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, was reported to have withdrawn from his so-called 'British bid'. The Telegraph titles' parent company was forced into insolvency proceedings two years ago by Lloyds Banking Group, which ran out of patience with the Barclay family, their long-standing owner. RedBird IMI, a joint venture between the two firms, paid £600m several months later to acquire a call option that was intended to convert into ownership of the Telegraph newspapers and The Spectator magazine. That objective was thwarted by a change in media ownership laws, which banned any form of foreign state ownership. Some parliamentarians are continuing to argue that a 15% threshold would be too high, and that the proposed rules are ambiguous because they potentially allow for more than one state investor to aggregate their holdings in British newspapers. The Spectator was sold last year for £100m to Sir Paul Marshall, the hedge fund billionaire, who has installed Lord Gove, the former cabinet minister, as its editor. RedBird Capital has been contacted for comment, while a call to Access Industries' London office went unanswered on Thursday lunchtime.
