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The Sun
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Naga Munchetty seen arriving at BBC studios after allegations she BULLIED a junior staffer & ‘made an off-air sex jibe'
PRESENTER Naga Munchetty has been seen arriving at the BBC studios this morning following allegations she bullied a junior staffer. The star, 50, was reprimanded by bosses over two incidents in a three-year period - including for allegations she made an off-air sex jibe. 5 5 5 Today, Naga was seen opting for the backdoor as she arrived at the BBC Breakfast studio in Salford, Manchester, this morning for her regular slot. The star, who has been a staple on the broadcaster's flagship breakfast show since 2010, has found her self at the centre of a toxicity row. On top of the alleged tensions between presenters, the show's editor Richard Frediani has now taken leave amid separate bullying claims. Just this week, Naga was revealed to have been spoken to by bosses over two separate incidents in three years. The star is said to have used a crude slang term for a sex act during an off-air break on a BBC Radio 5 Live show — before asking a colleague if they had done it. The alleged remark stunned the studio and led to Naga being hauled before bosses. She was reprimanded by a senior producer but no formal action was taken. The comment became widely known at 5 Live, with one source describing the 2022 incident as: 'Crass, inappropriate and wildly unprofessional. The person felt embarrassed.' The Sun also revealed today that on BBC Breakfast last year, Naga was rapped for the alleged bullying of a woman, who was the most junior staffer on the show. As part of the bullying behaviour, the star is said to have falsely accused her of stealing, which led to a closed-door showdown. The source said: 'It was humiliating. There was no evidence, no apology. The woman left not long after, completely demoralised.' Another insider added: 'That wasn't an isolated incident. It really is the tip of the iceberg.' Naga is the first female presenter to be caught up in the series of scandals which have gripped the Beeb. Strictly's Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima had to leave over bullying claims, and Wynne Evans quit the live tour over the word 'spitroast', which can be a sexual reference. But the BBC is now facing questions of double standards. A Breakfast insider said: 'If a male presenter made a sexual comment like that or falsely accused someone of theft, he'd be out the door. But with Naga, it gets brushed off.' 5 5 A BBC spokesperson said: 'While we do not comment on individual cases, we take all complaints about conduct at work extremely seriously.' Breakfast is already in turmoil amid claims of a 'deeply divided workplace' and off-air tensions between Naga and co-host Charlie Stayt. The flagship show's editor Richard Frediani is at the centre of a formal bullying investigation, as we revealed on Monday. Yesterday, it was confirmed the BBC was conducting an internal review into his behaviour and general allegations of toxicity on the show. An internal email was sent to the BBC Breakfast team thanking them for their 'professionalism' as they continue their work amid the row.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Two signings could complete Manchester United's new starting XI
Having responded to a season that ended on a minus goal difference with four defensive signings last year, Manchester United are redressing the balance this summer after their goal difference became ten times worse. Advertisement Matheus Cunha lived up to his number '10' with Wolves last season, tallying 15 Premier League goals. Bryan Mbeumo got five more for Brentford and United are in the market for a new No.9. Well-placed figures at United spoke about three or four signings before the end of last season. Three of those would go straight into the first team. READ MORE: Manchester United have been given the green light to sign £85m Bryan Mbeumo alternative READ MORE: Bryan Mbeumo has done something no Manchester United player has done for 12 years A new frontman, Cunha, Mbeumo, Amad and Bruno Fernandes in the same starting XI is an imposing attack. Ruben Amorim will have Mason Mount, Kobbie Mainoo and probably Joshua Zirkzee to call upon as well. Advertisement Beyond the three intended attacking additions, the starting XI may otherwise be untouched. United absolutely need an athletic midfielder but they have to get Manuel Ugarte, a considerable investment at £50.75million, up to speed after a patchy first season. A new signing's maiden campaign can always be couched as one of adaptation. Ugarte was not Erik ten Hag's pick to shore up a porous midfield and United's style under the Dutchman was no different before his eventual defenestration in October. Ugarte was entrusted by Ruud van Nistelrooy, a fellow fluent Spanish speaker, during his caretaker stint and he started in 28 of his former Sporting coach Amorim's 42 matches in the dugout. Yet Ugarte ended the season behind Casemiro, regarded as a busted flush, in the pecking order and was benched for the Europa League final. Casemiro's fine form was reserved solely for Europe and he could be redundant in a season comprising only domestic football. Provisionally, Amorim has to reinstall Ugarte with Fernandes as his probable partner in midfield. Advertisement Ugarte and Fernandes have started in a midfield two 11 times and United were beaten on only four occasions. Two of those defeats came three days after Europa League knockout ties, a period when United were half-hearted in their weekend fixtures. Whether United are able to shift Casemiro or not, they require a major reinforcement in the middle third. Mainoo's positioning is largely irrelevant as the alternative is Toby Collyer, whose three starts for the club have come against teams from Scotland, Romania and League One. Mainoo has gone from pivotal to peripheral United are about to release two over-the-hill centre backs but they do not need another one. United recruited Leny Yoro, Matthijs de Ligt and Ayden Heaven within seven months, Harry Maguire has had his contract extended while Noussair Mazraoui and Luke Shaw could be permanently relocated to centre half. Advertisement "I've enjoyed it," Heaven said of his first four months at United. "It's been tough, the team has really helped me to play my best and I just want to keep going next season. "I always try my hardest when I play to impress people and I think I've been doing that. I just want to continue." Heaven scored in Hong Kong -Credit:Yu Chun Christopher Wong/Manchester United via Getty Images. Lisandro Martinez, recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament injury, should return well before the end of the calendar year. The 20-year-old Tyler Fredricson made a decent transition to the first team, albeit in relatively sedate circumstances (and two defeats). Talking about a lighter workload in relation to Shaw suggests a punchline is imminent. In all seriousness, with a reduced schedule Shaw could possibly hack it as a left winger if he improves his conditioning. United took a relative punt on Patrick Dorgu and it seems inevitable that the left wing will be a position to strengthen next year when Shaw has a year left on his contract (unless a club has taken him off United's hands by then). Advertisement Shaw, 30 next month, started five games last season and all of them were at centre back. United lost four and, privately, Amorim must rue picking him in the Europa League final when his form and fitness did not merit that privilege. Shaw has been at United for 11 years United cannot rely on Shaw, who has played in 27 out of 112 matches in the past two seasons. Harry Amass is a sprightlier left winger though there is significant risk in having a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old vying for such a demanding role with Mbeumo pencilled in on the other flank. Dorgu's first four months were mixed and one assist was a derisory return. It would not have helped that whenever he had the ball and looked up he saw either Rasmus Hojlund or Zirkzee. Dorgu will not be cut any more slack this time next year. Advertisement Staff at United speak positively about the Dane's athleticism and his Serie A pedigree. "It's been tough, challenging," Dorgu admitted. "But I'm happy I played a lot. United's possible first XI United's possible second XI "I think the manager trusts me and I try to help the team, so just happy to be on the pitch and I try to do my best over here. "It's a bit different from my old team but I was playing attacking there as well. I just need to adapt to the players and how everyone moves on the pitch. "It's obviously different because the fanbase is so massive. A lot of people talk! Everyone is talking about United. It is difficult for young players but I think if you have the right mentality I think everyone can cope with it and it's about performing on the pitch." Do that and United may be back in the pluses.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
The anti-woke brigade won't like it, but this ‘inclusive' museum is actually rather good
Past mountainous warehouses, down a listless canal, and into the quiet academic quarter with its beige halls soaring into skies that never seem to cease to rain, stands Manchester Museum. With the institution freshly glistening with ' European Museum of the Year 2025 ' status, I ventured in to see if this superlative accolade is justified, immersing myself in ancient earrings, psychedelic rickshaws and the tooth of an 80-million-year-old shark, the mellow rain of Manchester pattering on the roof. The museum's purpose is written in the atrium: 'To build understanding between cultures and a more sustainable world.' This isn't really a museum about Manchester, more of artefacts, animals and artworks that have ended up in the museum's collection, and a mosaic of perspectives from ethnic minority communities living in, studying at, or in some way associated with Manchester. It strives to be 'the most inclusive, imaginative and caring museum you'll ever visit'. Essentially, the museum is about belonging. It is this bold curatorial line that gives it a distinctive flavour, with each of the four main galleries contributing to the central theme in interesting and surprising ways. I first entered Ancient History, Contemporary Belonging, a gallery of ancient and medieval artefacts from Anatolian earrings to marvellously-preserved Roman playing pieces, ancient Egyptian cat idols to hoards of delicate medieval silver coins. The rooms are a little over-stuffed, and some of the information plaques positioned so low that all the stooping became exhausting. I had to be economical in what I examined, but this made me worry that I was overlooking some gems, sometimes quite literally. Despite these gripes – entrance is free, anyhow, so you can always come back – a strong flavour of displacement emerged, a synergy between the migration of ancient historical objects and of people. More topical than ever at a time when George Osborne is reportedly negotiating a 'reciprocal, long-term loan' which would send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece, it was hard to peruse the collection without wondering how on earth so many of these rare finds ended up in Manchester and the answers, one suspects, are not always savoury. You're encouraged to consider the human stories of migration, the sometimes traumatic tales of persecution, forced upheaval and dreams of a better life that help to explain how a Mesopotamian hair-pin fetched up in front of you. Many museums now engage in this kind of soul-searching, but here it is taken a step further. Manchester University students of migrant heritage have been invited to respond. The juxtaposition of an 'official' plaque next to a personal response presents a person's lived experience as an echo of the narrative. On paper, this is fraught with risk, threatening to debase the whole thing into mawkish amateurishness. But many of the responses are in fact profoundly moving, making the galleries feel less lofty and academic than their equivalents in, say, the Ashmolean or the British Museum. The next gallery focuses on animals that belong – or should belong, if we weren't doing so much to make the earth uninhabitable. Cinematically lit, with a veritable menagerie of taxidermy and lifelike models, this is an emporium of wonder, at times a cacophony of delighted children's wails. It was exhilarating to stare into the eyes of an African hunting dog, a North American woodchuck, or Maude the tigon – a cross between a male tiger and a lioness, once a beloved feature of Manchester's Belle Vue Zoo – finally on display after 70 long years existing as a rolled-up skin in a storage vault. Stuck on one glass panel, in stark red letters, is the word 'Decolonise!' – signalling its inclusion in the museum's Decolonise! Trail. Of course, this will make some people groan. But the manner in which it is done, at least, is original. It feels like a Just Stop Oil-style organisation has placed it here; a performative act of self-sabotage. It's just one act of curatorial dandyism. Elsewhere, an empty glass box commemorates species that became extinct. In another display, the stuffed heads of tigers and lions loom like phantoms of guilt over black-and-white photographs of hunters. It's only when the curatorial voice slips from posing questions to telling you the answers that the device galls. I felt this peering into a surrealist reconstruction of a curator's office, eerily frozen in time since the 1920s, all mahogany desks and exotic bric-a-brac. It is, we are told, 'like a glimpse of our colonial unconscious' – yet all I could think about was how cosy and charming it looked compared with soulless modern offices. The South Asia Gallery – bright, airy, perfectly spaced – casts a spotlight on the experiences of British Asian communities. Scenes of oppression, violence and starvation under the East India Company and the Raj are included, as one might expect, appearing as incongruously beautiful panels in the atrium. Objects that were 'violently plundered', were are told, have not been included. One of the most poignant parts of this gallery are the displays that bring to life 'hidden' voices within British-Asian communities. The prejudice historically felt by mixed-race Asians is rendered palpable and real. The exhibition on LGBT people of British Asian heritage is particularly moving: their feelings of loneliness, confusion and self-loathing, as well as hope, are all conjured from cuttings from 1990s magazines, help forum notices and leaflets. A final gallery attempts the same thing (slightly less successfully) from an East Asian perspective. I was fascinated to learn that Manchester has a higher proportion of Chinese émigrés than any other city in Europe. It's one of the few revelations we get about Manchester itself. I hankered for more on how this great industrial behemoth came to be, and its later metamorphosis into a modern city of culture. Many, no doubt, would find the emphasis upon displacement, multicultural identity and preserving the environment preachy and over-rehearsed. Some might even declare the whole thing a Trojan's Horse of woke tosh (when I'd read that the museum has 'safe spaces' for anyone who finds the exhibitions traumatising, I did cringe). But Manchester Museum nails its colours to the mast. And it's only fair to judge something by what it is trying to achieve. Does it succeed on its own terms? Overwhelmingly, yes.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Buy here now: Oasis to open series of merch stores before reunion gigs
Will the truce between the Gallagher brothers hold out? Will the most-hyped reunion in British rock history actually come off? And will fans be able to bag themselves an official Oasis tea towel? The answer to that final question, at least, has arrived. The first Oasis merchandise store will open in Manchester on Friday, two weeks before the band perform their first gig in 16 years at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. Selling everything from £40 bucket hats to baby grows, cutlery sets, shot glasses, jigsaw puzzles and tote bags, the shop in Spinningfields will be one of six across the UK and Ireland this summer, with the others in Cardiff, London, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Dublin. Fans will be able to recreate the front covers of the band's debut album, Definitely Maybe, and bestselling follow-up, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, on green screens in the store. Those hoping to buy a signature Liam Gallagher parka will be left empty-handed, however. The official merch stores will add to the considerable payday for Oasis before the most highly anticipated – and profitable – series of shows in British music history. The shops, which will sell limited-edition vinyl records, also represent the changing nature of music fandom, said Dr Matt Grimes, of Birmingham City University. 'It's almost like the experience of the event itself is just not enough. So how do you create other experiences for people?' he said. Estimates of how much Liam and Noel will earn from their sold-out reunion have ranged from £40m to £400m. Despite initial controversy over the pricing of tickets – with some sold by Ticketmaster for as much as £337.50 – fans are expected to splash out £1bn on everything from beer to merch to hotel bookings in the UK and Ireland. Birmingham City University estimated last year that the brothers could earn £50m each from the initial 14 UK shows – but that was before the tour expanded to 41 globe-hopping dates. 'The question at the bottom of all this is: do you really need that much money?' said Grimes, the university's course director for music business. He said artists could typically expect a 50% cut from the sale of each official T-shirt, hoodie or parka, although the details of Oasis's reported £20m merchandise deal are top secret. Adidas is also cashing in on the clamour, selling Oasis-branded football shirts (£85), bucket hats (£40), jackets (£100) and tops with a new version of its slogan: 'The band with the 3 stripes'. The Gallaghers aren't the only ones making a few quid. Sales of Oasis-inspired products from independent brands have jumped 150% in the UK and 230% globally since the tour was announced last August, according to the wholesale platform Faire. Bucket hats are up 275%, parkas are back in style, and searches for Liam Gallagher-themed goods have soared fivefold, it said. Google searches for 'Oasis fashion UK' have surged 180% in the last 30 days. By the time the Gallaghers finally step on stage in Cardiff on 4 July, it will be 16 years since they last performed together, after an acrimonious bust-up before a gig at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris in August 2009. Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion Grimes described the comeback as one of the great global music events of recent decades, alongside world tours by Michael Jackson, Madonna and Taylor Swift. 'Will it have any cultural significance? I don't know,' he said. 'But it will certainly be up there in the pantheon of entertainment greats. 'Whether you like the Gallagher brothers or not, you can't take away from the fact that this has generated a huge amount of media for them, it's generated a huge amount of money for them, and it has put them in the realms of [other] global megastars.' In typical Liam style, the frontman this month dismissed claims that some fans were doubtful the gigs would happen. 'There [sic] not fans there just little dickheads me n Rkid are on it,' he posted on X. The 41-date world tour will span Britain, Ireland, Canada, the US, Mexico, Japan, Australia and Argentina before ending in Brazil on 23 November – if the truce holds.
New York Times
2 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Why Bernardo Silva is the ideal captain for Pep Guardiola's new-look Manchester City
Changes are afoot at Manchester City this summer but the news that Bernardo Silva has become club captain shows us certain fundamentals will stay the same. With four pre-Club World Cup signings completed in recent weeks and significant ins and outs among the backroom staff, there already feels like a new energy around the club after the disappointment of a season where they did not win a major trophy domestically or in Europe. Advertisement And in fact, even the method of choosing City's captains hints at a fresh approach. For years, manager Pep Guardiola has left the matter of who wears the skipper's armband up to a vote among his players and, at times, other personnel within the first-team structure. But he has introduced another new approach this summer. 'I didn't like what happened last season and I decided this season who will represent the team,' Guardiola said on Tuesday at his pre-match media session in Philadelphia, ahead of City's 2-0 win against Wydad of Morocco at the Club World Cup. Guardiola also decided weeks ago to add striker Erling Haaland to the leadership group, which seems to be at least partly motivated by developing the 24-year-old Norwegian's off-pitch contributions, and he will be helped by more obvious leaders among the group, such as Ruben Dias and Rodri. The main captain, though, will be Bernardo Silva, fulfilling a 2019 prophecy from Vincent Kompany, at the end of the Belgian defender's time as City skipper. 'I say to Bernardo often, 'You are 50 per cent clown, 50 per cent leader',' he said at the time. 'When he becomes 25 per cent clown, 75 per cent leader he will become the captain of this team.' Six years on, that day has now arrived, with the boyish Portuguese midfielder, traditionally the butt of the dressing-room jokes, graduating to senior figure a couple of months before he turns 31. The decision has also confirmed that, despite links with a return to boyhood club Benfica or a move to Saudi Arabia's Pro League, Bernardo will be staying at least for this season, which is the final year remaining on his current contract. With Kyle Walker and Kevin De Bruyne leaving the club this summer, and some potential for Ederson and Ilkay Gundogan to do the same, Bernardo is one of City's longest-serving players and somebody who knows what has made the club so formidable off the pitch over the past decade and, more importantly, on it. Advertisement There had been some City supporters, though, who had been expecting, even hoping, that he would move on this summer. To a small but vocal section of the fanbase, Bernardo and Gundogan are seen as expendable as their team head towards what is intended to be a new, vibrant era. And so the reaction to the news that Bernardo is not just staying, but being made captain, shows there is still a discrepancy between what some City fans want and how Guardiola intends to move things forward. 'Bernardo has been an incredible figure; nine years here, no injuries, always in bad moments he made a step up, an example on the pitch, and when he has to say something to me as a manager, or the players, he says it, because it's the best for the club,' the manager also explained on Tuesday. Despite some unrest, Guardiola's decision is regarded by many others as a very sensible one. Like the vast majority of the squad, Bernardo struggled badly in the middle of the 2024-25 season — Guardiola described him as physically and emotionally 'empty' recently — but as City found some stability in the Premier League campaign's final weeks, it was the 102-time Portugal international who was usually at the core of it, put in positions by the manager where he could get on the ball and dictate the tempo — which was generally slow, steady and stable. It was rarely pretty but it was necessary at the time, given City's frailty over five months. And there was very obviously, considering the moves already made since, always a recognition that things would change once the domestic season was put to bed. The new signings, particularly Rayan Cherki but also Rayan Ait-Nouri and Tijjani Reijnders, and the rather exciting additions to the backroom team — chiefly Jurgen Klopp's former assistant at Liverpool, Pep Lijnders, and popular ex-City player Kolo Toure — suggest that things could look a lot more dynamic next season. Advertisement Between the fresh legs in midfield and Lijnders' love of pressing and counter-pressing, City should be sufficiently more stable off the ball to allow them to take more risks with it, to make more runs in behind, for their most creative passers to try to pick out those runs. So, just three weeks after the end of the domestic/European season, things already feel fresh and exciting. 'The most important thing is how we create again our connection and vibes between all of us to go another game, know we are a good team, and compete everywhere,' Guardiola said on the final day of the Premier League season. Whether it is footage of Lijnders on the training ground injecting some energy into sessions — something that was perceived to be missing previously — or Cherki rapping in French during his initiation, that good feeling does seem to be back. And buoyed by the attack-minded nature of the three outfield signings and Lijnders' role in Liverpool's 'rock and roll' football, City fans are looking forward to something completely different, especially those who felt that what Guardiola was serving up had become too prosaic. One of the most repeated theories about their 2024-25 season so far was that City's struggles came as a result of Guardiola's positional play being found out by more physical, dynamic opposing teams — rather than, say, a lengthy injury list that would have crippled any squad's style, positional or otherwise. And during their short summer break before this trip to the United States, the idea that Guardiola ruins creative players has seemingly been accepted as a universal truth — with Jack Grealish being left out of City's 27-man Club World Cup squad, the general perception is that the Spaniard has ruined him. Never mind the fact that nobody attempts more dribbles in Europe's top five leagues than Grealish's team-mate, Jeremy Doku, or that Savinho's first season in Manchester has been characterised by his dribbling, many people seem to have decided that Grealish's biggest problem in a City shirt has been a lack of freedom. Advertisement The notion has spread so far and wide that Reijnders was asked about the potential for his instincts to be curbed by his new manager when interviewed by a media outlet from his homeland before the Dutchman's move from Milan was made official. Cherki, the maverick signing from Lyon in France which has excited supporters more than anything else, also spoke this week about football these days becoming 'less beautiful, fewer mistakes, but also fewer risks taken,' which prompted plenty of 'Um, do you know who your new manager is, mate?' remarks from the online community who have presumably forgotten how De Bruyne became one of the Premier League's most breathtaking players under that manager. In the same interview, the 21-year-old disclosed that Guardiola has told him, 'When you have the ball (in my team), you are free', which again suggests that overly safety-first approach from the final weeks of the domestic season was simply a belated answer to City's unprecedented fragility, not a long-term solution. Surely, though, the new era is not going to be fully gung-ho, involving the kind of ruthless, direct attacking play that characterised the 2017-18 team — many City fans' favourite of the modern era. Opponents these days simply do not allow City the kind of space necessary to play that way on a regular basis but, clearly, somewhere between those early free-flowing days of the Guardiola era and the cautious, safety-first stodge of 2024-25 there is a sweet spot, a way to carve open defences with more creativity without losing stability. In short, the way City had been doing it for years before this season left such a sour taste. And that is where Bernardo comes in. Those not in favour of his promotion to the captaincy lament that his presence will result in slow football and fewer minutes for the more exciting new players, as if Guardiola's 'pausa' and possession have been sacrificed at the altar so that Ljinders and Cherki can spearhead a glorious new dawn. Advertisement City's years of dominance — including that 100-point season, two dramatic final-day title victories, De Bruyne's feats, and two of the finest ever Premier League teams, one with Haaland, one with no striker at all — have been built on Guardiola's principles and the players who know how to carry them out on the pitch. There is probably nobody in the squad at the moment who understands what Guardiola wants better than Bernardo, and having already put his winter struggles behind him to help City emerge from their slump, he is surely well placed to continue growing as a new team with a new energy takes shape. They may never again blow opponents away with the same energy displayed by that 2017-18 side, and Guardiola will probably never win over those who blame him for the approaches of teams he is not the manager of, but if City are to get back to their former glories, it will be down to this reinvention — and Bernardo will be at the heart of it.
