Pope Francis wrote a memoir, but some dark secrets were never revealed

With just a few days to go before leaving office, former President Joe Biden made one of his last acts the awarding of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction to Pope Francis – the first time during his presidency that Biden offered it with distinction. According to the citation: “Pope Francis is unlike any who came before. Above all, he is the People’s Pope.”

That he was unlike any previous pope is undoubtedly true as the Pope’s own memoir, Hope: The Autobiography, published in January, made clear. Even the book itself is a first: no living pope had written a such a book while in office. John XXIII’s Journal of Soul, created out of his diaries and jottings, was published after he died in 1963, while a John Paul II volume, Crossing The Threshold of Hope, was created out of his written answers to a broadcaster’s cancelled interview.

Hope is a book that combines an account of Pope Francis’ life with his musings on faith, love, poverty, migrants, women, gay people, and rows in the Catholic church between liberals and more traditionalist Catholics.

Unlike most memoirs by, say, politicians, film stars and football managers, it could not be subtitled, “I was right all along”. Francis regularly admitted to mistakes and talked about dark times. But he was frustratingly light on details when it came to what had gone wrong in his life. Fortunately, there were some big reveals too, not least about a gobsmacking big box of documents about scandals passed to him by his predecessor Pope Benedict, and how the British security services saved his life in Iraq.

But, first, what made Francis so different from previous popes? It’s the backstory that is so fascinating. As he recounted in Hope, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he was born in 1936 in Argentina, the child of a large migrant Italian family, who grew up with a love of football and a passion for tango (it has “backbone, strength, character, an emotional, visceral dialogue that comes from afar, from ancient roots”).

After studying chemistry, he joined the Jesuit order, and was then ordained a priest, becoming the leader, or provincial of the order at a very young age, and eventually became the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires. By the time Bergoglio was planning to retire, Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world in 2013 and announced he was resigning – the first pope to do so since the 15th century. The then Cardinal Bergoglio set off for Rome to take part in the conclave to elect Benedict’s successor – and the rest is history.

The book does not mention that Bergoglio came second in the conclave that elected Benedict XVI in 2005 but Francis suggested in Hope that he had no idea that he would be chosen by his fellow cardinals to lead the 1.4 billion members of the Roman Catholic Church, and so bought a return airline ticket and left all his belongings behind in Buenos Aires.

Perhaps he thought his time had been and gone. But we then get an account of his election, and the five ballots it took to reach the two thirds majority needed to secure election to what Catholics call the Throne of St Peter.

We read, in the Pope’s own words, how he felt as he realised that he was now pope: calm, quite sure of how he did not want the fripperies surrounding being pope. No, he did not want to wear red shoes, he would stick with his black orthopaedic ones. As to white trousers, they would make him look like an ice-cream seller, he would wear his black ones. Nor did he want the papal apartment in the apostolic palace in the Vatican. He would make do with a room in Santa Marta, the Vatican residence for guests. “I’m happy at Santa Marta because I have people around me”, he wrote.

He recalled visiting Pope Benedict a few days later, and how the pope emeritus handed him a large white box. There was speculation at the time that it might contain information about various scandals but then a source told Vatican reporters that it was full of emails and other material.

But in Hope, Francis recounted that Benedict told him “Everything is in here”. Francis then wrote that it contained “documents relating to the most difficult and painful situations: cases of abuse, corruption, dark dealings, wrongdoings”. But he then left the reader hanging with no more information about what those scandals might have been.

Among them must surely have been documents about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, at one time Archbishop of Washington, who was accused of sexual misconduct involving young seminarians and accusations were made to the Vatican about him on several occasions. Yet Francis said that he was reportedly unaware of his misdemeanours until 2018, with McCarrick then resigning that year and was laicized in 2019. But in Hope, Pope Francis just mentioned him in passing even though it was one of the greatest scandals in the Church of recent times.

There were other more personal stories which are not fully explained either. After being appointed provincial (regional leader) of the Argentinian Jesuits at the age of just 36, Francis later fell out with the Jesuits. Then a rather rigid, conservative man, he was “exiled” by the order’s global leadership to Argentina’s second city of Cordoba, where he could only hear confessions and not celebrate Mass at the local Jesuit church.

But after his two year “banishment” he returned to Buenos Aires a changed man, now a more flexible, understanding, compassionate individual. Quite what happened in Cordoba to effect such a huge transformation was not spelled out.

Nor is what happened to two fellow Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, who were arrested and detained for nearly five months by the Argentinian junta. Pope Francis was accused on several occasions on failing to do enough to help them. Here he says “I tried everything”, but he didn’t spell out what everything consisted of.

But one got the sense of how difficult a place Argentina was in the past, with one of the Pope’s own teachers suffering at the hands of the junta too. He revealed that at one point he hid her collection of Marxist and other radical books in a Jesuit library.

Violence is always a worry for world leaders, of course, and security surrounding the Pope is always heavy – not least because John Paul II was lucky to survive an assassination attempt in 1981.

Francis revealed that in 2021 it was British security services who picked up on a plot to kill him during a visit to Iraq. British intelligence told Iraqi police that a woman wearing explosives was heading towards Mosul and was planning to blow herself up during the papal visit.

“A truck was heading there fast with the same intention,” he wrote, later being told that both had been dealt with.

As well as highlighting the risks Francis had taken – he went to other dangerous places in his lifetime – the incident revealed a significant moment of cooperation between the Vatican and the UK. Rather different to previous times – not mentioned in Hope – when, as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, he had celebrated a 13th anniversary mass to mark the end of the Falklands War.

He urged the congregation to “pray for those who have fallen, sons of the fatherland who went out to defend the fatherland, to claim as theirs what had been usurped [by the British].”

Nor does Hope mention the alarm raised by Bergoglio’s election which led to the British government sending the UK ambassador to the Holy See to visit the Pope’s secretary of state and reiterate that the Falkland Islands – or Malvinas as the Argentinian Pope called them – were British.

The message seemed to get through, although Francis was often not a diplomat. Which is why there were some key messages for Donald Trump’s administration, not least about climate change, the deportation of migrants and compassion for the marginalised and vulnerable.

Catherine Pepinster is a writer on religion and a former editor of The Tablet, the Catholic weekly

Celebrity Big Brother 2025 winner crowned after dramatic final

Coronation Street actor Jack P Shepherd has been crowned as the winner of Celebrity Big Brother 2025 after a dramatic final on Friday (25 April).

The star was named as the winner of the ITV reality show with pop star JoJo Siwa surprisingly finishing third on the evening. Drag queen Danny Beard finished second overall.

Elsewhere, comedian Donna Preston, singer Chesney Hawkes and TV presenter Chris Hughes finished fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.

Walking away victorious, Jack becomes the reigning champion, joining ITV’s cohort of winners including fellow Celebrity Big Brother winner David Potts, and Big Brother winners Jordan Sangha and Ali Bromley.

On Tuesday (22 April) ,three housemates, presenter Angellica Bell, The Only Way Is Essex star Ella Rae Wise, and EastEnders actor Patsy Palmer, were evicted from the competition, leaving just six contestants in with a chance of scooping the crown.

Singer Chesney Hawkes, comedian Donna Preston, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Danny Beard and Coronation Street’s Jack P Shepherd all survived the eviction, alongside former Love Island contestant Chris Hughes and Dance Moms star JoJo Siwa – who have raised eyebrows with their tactile relationship in recent weeks.

Bell, Wise, and Palmer follow in the footsteps of Trisha Goddard, Daley Thompson and politician Michael Fabricant, who was the first of the housemates to be evicted. The Wrestler actor Mickey Rourke was next removed after a chaotic six-day stint in the house.

Rourke, 72, had been at the centre of controversy since his entrance when he “ogled” presenter AJ Odudu. He later faced calls to be ejected from the house after making homophobic comments to Siwa.

He was ultimately thrown off the show by producers for “inappropriate sexual language” aimed at Wise, 24, as well as “threatening and aggressive” behaviour towards Hughes, 32.

Rourke grew irate when Hughes, in character as a pirate for a shopping task, “eyeballed” him. Rourke later apologised to the former Love Island star, and told Big Brother he was “ashamed” of his actions. According to evicted housemate Fabricant, however, the worst of what Rourke said was not even broadcast.

Celebrity Big Brother launched earlier this month with a reach of 4.2 million (average of 2.7 million). The Big Brother brand has now surpassed a colossal 100 million streams on ITV, with the new series generating over 20 million streams so far on ITVX (an increase on the first series).

Applications for the next series of Big Brother are open. Hopefuls looking to embark on the ultimate social experiment can apply to be a part of the next series of Big Brother set to air in 2025.

The 18 most devastating character deaths in TV history

It’s just a show,” is the common response from someone seeing a person crying at the death of a fictional person on screen. But TV acolytes will know that it can be hard to rein in the emotions when your favourite character for the past seven years has just been killed off.

In the battle of TV versus cinema, the former has always packed more of a punch when it comes to impactful deaths – probably because we’ve come to know the character better over a longer period of time.

And when someone who you’ve grown used to seeing day-in and day-out suddenly vanishes from your life forever, there are going to be some emotional ramifications.

Sometimes, in the saddest of circumstances, the demise of a character even marks the demise of the show itself, with creators and writers failing to keep us interested beyond their death blow.

There are many ingredients that go into making a TV death as traumatic as intended: the character’s likeability, the circumstances of death, the impact their absence will have on the remaining characters, and, of course, shock value.

Here’s a selection of the 18 character deaths we’re still not over… (It goes without saying, but there are spoilers ahead – you have been warned!)

Joel Miller, The Last of Us

Anyone who played the video game obviously already knew that Pedro Pascal’s grizzled survivalist was doomed, but for the rest of us it landed like a brisk whack to the head. Season one of the hit HBO series took time and care to painstakingly build a genuinely touching father-daughter relationship between Joel and Ellie – and for what? All that for him to just die at the beginning of season two? In the season’s sensational second episode, Joel is tracked down by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), who tortures and kills him to avenge her father. Going into season two, it would have been hard to imagine how The Last of Us could possibly progress without Joel, so integral was he to the driving action and emotional heart of the first. But the addition of promising new characters like Dina (and, in a conflicted way, Abby) softened the blow. A little.

Logan Roy, Succession

Every Succession fan knew that Brian Cox’s sweary, Lear-like media mogul was beelining for a funeral in season four. Few, however, predicted that his death would arrive so soon, with Logan Roy croaking in the bathroom aboard his private jet as early as episode three – not at its end, mind you, but at its beginning. Logan met his maker off screen, however, and the audience only got a brief glimpse of the man himself as the flight crew carried out their obligatory 30 minutes of CPR. It’s a stunning episode – one of Succession’s best – that sees Kendall, Shiv, and Roman grappling with the news at Connor’s wedding. All the money in the world can’t buy a grief counsellor equipped to deal with the maelstrom of emotion that Logan’s death is about to bring up.

Marissa Cooper, The OC

Fans of the series still tear up thinking about Ryan cradling Marissa’s lifeless body on the side of the road. Jeff Buckley’s haunting cover of “Hallelujah” playing overhead certainly didn’t help. The death of Mischa Barton’s character at the end of season three also marked the end of The OC – as we knew it anyway. The teen show ploughed on with one more season but without Marissa, it was a shadow of its former self.

Ned Stark, Game of Thrones

People across the world let out a collective gasp when Eddard Stark was beheaded at the behest of King Joffrey. The HBO drama shocked audiences when Sean Bean’s main character got the chop in the penultimate episode of the first season. Unaccustomed to seeing such ruthless writing, even after the axe had swung, audiences reeled trying to figure out whether this was all a dream or if some supernatural force would bring sweet Ned back to us. The TV event cemented Game of Thrones as a show that takes no prisoners – even the ones we really, really like. Similar feelings were experienced when Catelyn Stark went out with a guttural scream in the notorious “Red Wedding” episode two seasons later.

Derek Shepherd, Grey’s Anatomy

By Derek’s death in season 11, fans of the medical drama had grown used to seeing their favourite characters brutally killed off. Lexie Gray, Mark Sloan, George O’Malley and Denny Duquette had all met a harsh end at the hands of writer Shonda Rhimes – but we thought surely McDreamy was safe. When Meredith Grey hears the police sirens and a knock at the door though, we all knew where it was heading. Fans got one final look at him when the late doctor appeared to Meredith in a dream sequence in season 17. It’s not the same though, is it?

Jen Lindley, Dawson’s Creek

Played by a superb Michelle Williams, Jen’s character never got the attention – or the send-off – that she deserved. The series finale of the hit teen soap flashed forward five years to reveal that party girl Jen had become a successful gallery manager and a mother, but also would soon die because of an undiagnosed heart condition. Pre-empting her own death, she records a heartbreaking video message for her daughter. Cue the tears – we’re done.

Poussey Washington, Orange is the New Black

Both the show’s fans and fellow cast members were outraged to see Poussey die in season four. From the outset, Samira Wiley’s character had established herself as one of the most entertaining and beloved inmates at Litchfield prison. Her death – at the hands of a guard who wrongfully pinned her to the ground and left her unable to breathe – recalled the real-life 2014 killing of Eric Garner. After the episode aired, Orange is the New Black set up The Poussey Washington Fund to raise money for non-profit advocacy groups with a focus on criminal justice reform.

Adriana La Cerva, The Sopranos

Over the course of HBO’s mob drama, audiences had grown to love Adriana La Cerva, her great outfits and frank attitude. While her death was brutal to watch (who can forget her silently sobbing in the car with Silvio knowing what’s to come?), the lead-up was equally excruciating. Seeing Adriana unravel as she unwillingly becomes an FBI informant and then makes the mistake of admitting her disloyalty to Christopher – who chooses his friends over her – is almost as bad as watching her get shot.

Tara Maclay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Tara’s death came as a massive blow to the Buffy fanbase. Played by Amber Benson, the character was introduced midway through the fourth season and quickly became a fan-favourite character before being written out at the end of season six by way of a stray bullet, kickstarting the Dark Willow storyline. Her relationship with Willow is often cited as the first recurring depiction of a lesbian couple on a primetime network, which made Tara’s sudden departure from our screens all the more heartbreaking.

Ruth Evershed, Spooks

Nicola Walker has had a rough time with seminal TV deaths, but the collective outpouring of grief when one of her characters dies is a testament to the actor’s strengths. At the top of that list was her death as Ruth. Jaws dropped when her character became the last ever character to be killed in Spooks. After being stabbed by a shard of glass, Ruth is held in Harry’s arms as they share one last emotional moment together. Viewers got one last glimpse of hope when Dimitri tried to revive her with an adrenaline shot, but it was too late.

Matthew Crawley, Downton Abbey

Matthew’s death was not the festive gift viewers expected when tuning into the Christmas Day special of Downton Abbey. Fans were devastated when the much-loved Matthew Crawley died after meeting his newborn son at the hospital. The cause of death – a car crash – felt like even more of a kick to the stomach considering Matthew had already survived the First World War and the Spanish flu epidemic. Hadn’t he suffered enough?

Jane Margolis, Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad had its fair share of emotional deaths (special shout out to Hank) but Jane’s hit especially hard. Krysten Ritter’s character – a recovering heroin user and Jesse’s girlfriend – eventually gives into her drug addiction and goes back to smoking crystal meth before she and Jesse begin to use heroin. In season two, Jane, lying in bed next to Jesse, chokes on her own vomit after overdosing on heroin. The real tearjerker, though, is that Walt stands by and lets her die. Bryan Cranston said the scene was the hardest for him to film. The actor recalled being a “weeping mess” after shooting it. Him and us both.

Tiffany Mitchell, EastEnders

Before Martine McCutcheon stole hearts as Nadine in Love Actually, she had already won over the UK in her role as Tiffany Mitchell on EastEnders. The long-running soap shocked viewers on New Year 1998 when her character was mown down by Frank Butcher as she attempted to make a getaway from Walford with her daughter Courtney.

Rita Morgan, Dexter

Fans will remember the scene perfectly: Dexter comes home to find his wife Rita dead in the bathtub, murdered by Arthur (aka The Trinity Killer, played brilliantly by John Lithgow). While there were a few clues interspersed in the minutes leading up to the tragic reveal – the baby crying, lingering shots – Rita’s death was one of the biggest shocks to rock Noughties TV. The show – which is airing its reboot later year – was never the same again.

Ben Sullivan, Scrubs

Scrubs was known for its expert blend of laughs and emotional heft, an accomplishment that’s nowhere more evident than in episode 14 of season three. “My Screw Up” featured Brendan Fraser’s final appearance as Jordan’s brother Ben Sullivan. The episode threw viewers for a loop when it turned out that the birthday party Dr Cox was planning for his son was, in fact, Ben’s funeral. Joshua Radin’s “Winter”, which plays while everyone gathers at the cemetery, will forever be associated with that shockingly sad moment.

Sarah Lynn, BoJack Horseman

It’s not all the time that a cartoon can make you cry but BoJack Horseman is on par with the best dramas. Kristen Schaal played the former child actor and troubled pop star Sarah Lynn, whose death in season three from a heroin overdose had viewers sobbing. On the cusp of celebrating her ninth month of sobriety, she receives a call from BoJack asking her to party with him. She immediately says yes and their subsequent bender results in her death. The cover-up by BoJack only made it worse.

Everyone, Blackadder

Although the comedy returned for a Millennium special, most fans consider the show to have ended with the aptly titled “Goodbyeee”. The sixth and final episode focuses on its main characters in the final hours before leaving their trenches and going over the top in slow motion. The instalment is darker than fans had come to expect of the historical comedy, with the main cast assumed to die in machine-gun fire.

Juliet Burke, Lost

Any other list ranking heartbreaking deaths would undoubtedly include Charlie’s watery end in the season three finale. But Juliet’s final moment deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. It’s a tragic ending for a noble character who spends her time on the show putting other people’s safety before her own. Arriving in the penultimate season finale, there’s an air of inevitability to the moment, which is made all the more gut-wrenching due to the effect it has on reformed bad boy Sawyer. For the death of a character introduced three seasons in to hit so hard is a testament to Elizabeth Mitchell’s razor-sharp performance.

Cuts to food aid put more than 3 million people at risk in Ethiopia

Food aid for Ethiopia is set to be cut in half in 2025 compared to just last year, with more than 3 million currently facing the loss of life-saving food assistance, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

“This is not normal. We have not faced such a drop in our funding in a long time,” WFP Ethiopia spokesperson Claire Nevill told The Independent.

According to Nevill, WFP’s operations in Ethiopia have around thirty key donors, including USAID, who have – unlike in other areas – exempted Ethiopia from its programme of cuts. But aid cuts from other donors mean that Ethiopia is facing a funding gap of $222 million over the next six months.

Unless that new financing is urgently found nutrition support for the 3.6 million people that WFP currently supports in Ethiopia is under threat, said Nevill.

Earlier this week, WFP Ethiopia had announced the suspension of malnutrition treatments for 650,000 malnourished women and children due to funding problems. These treatments are a form of nutritional medicine – in the form of peanut paste or corn-soy porridge – that help bring malnourished people back to health over the course of weeks.

Speaking to The Independent, Nevill said that WFP has managed to source commodities to treat malnutrition, which should be on their way to Ethiopia from Djibouti in the coming days. These should be able to protect WFP’s malnutrition programmes “probably until the summer”, said Nevill.

But those treatments represent only a fraction of WFP’s operations in a country where 10.2 million people are coping with food insecurity. Other programmes include the provision of daily school meals to about 470,000 children, and the delivery of food assistance to populations totalling more than three million people over the first quarter of 2025.

The squeeze in funding means that ration cuts in food assistance are already the norm, with severely food-insecure Ethiopians receiving 80 per cent rations, and refugees receiving 60 per cent rations.

“Those are cuts to food levels already deemed the minimum possible food assistance for people,” said Nevill.

But even those food supplies look set to dry up if new support is not urgently found. “It looks like by June we might not be able to support the influx of refugees coming into the country,” said Nevill. “We are really badly in the red, and it looks like we won’t be able to maintain our current response.”

WFP is not the only organisation in the country feeling the squeeze, with Oxfam country director in Ethiopia, Yodit Zenebe Mekuria, telling The Independent that their programmes are also feeling the squeeze.

“People living through unthinkable circumstances have now been deprived of lifesaving food, water, medical and hygiene support,” said Mekuria. “As programmes are forced to halt and scale back, their suffering will grow exponentially as needs rise.”

Recipients of WFP nutrition support in Ethiopia include 22-year-old Segen and her 14-month-old daughter Kisauet, from Tigray. A subsistence farmer with no formal occupation, Segen described to WFP on a recent fact-finding mission how insufficient food during her pregnancy and subsequent low levels of breast milk had left Kisauet malnourished.

“There was wasn’t enough food while she was inside my womb,” she said. “When she was born, she was 2kg. It was just scary to hold her, she was just tiny.”

The malnutrition treatments that the family has received – which are currently under threat from budget pressures – have been transformative.

“She has changed so much, I didn’t think she would stand up and walk away as a human being at all,” said Segen. “Now I find her running around.”

32-year-old Desta and her 8 month-old daughter Capital also receive food aid rations and malnourishment treatment. They currently reside in a camp for internally-displaced people after losing their homes during the Tigray War, the two-year civil war in the country’s North that ended in 2022.

After the war ended, they were allowed to return home, but found soldiers living in their house, forcing them to remain in the camp, Desta said.

“We are in a very bad situation here. We were good [back in our old home], we had jobs, we had agriculture, but there is no work and no agriculture here,” she said.

“Here we just sit around. If we could get it, we would work,” she continued. “All we have is enough food.”

According to Nevill, the situation facing Ethiopia represents a “perfect storm of overlapping crises”.

Communities are still recovering from a prolonged drought which saw multiple seasonal rain failures across 2020-23, while the story of Desta and Capital attests to how much of the country is continuing to recover from the affects of war.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing into the country from neighbouring countries, including Sudan, while difficult economic conditions, including high inflation stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic aftermath, remain a problem.

Recent months have also seen several earthquakes internally displace tens of thousands of Ethiopians.

At the same time, crises in territories including Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan have pushed food needs up globally, said Nevill, while many donor countries are now making the political decision to focus their spending more on domestic priorities.

The Horn of Africa is also one of the most climate vulnerable regions of the world, and is highly susceptible to challenges including prolonged droughts, devastating floods, and desertification.

The WFP would like to be investing in more climate resilience programmes to help support communities through the climate crisis, for example in pushing climate-resilient agricultural practices, or in developing novel irrigation schemes.

Around 30 per cent of spending in Ethiopia goes to such programmes, with 70 per cent going towards emergency responses.

“Humanitarian food aid should be a last resort, and we want to shift things even further towards helping people to strengthen their resilience in the face of climate shocks and ultimately build long term food security,” said Nevill. “But any reprioritisation of funding this year is currently looking very unlikely.”

This story is part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project

Forget filler, we’re in the era of facelifts 

Your favourite celebrity has just arrived on the red carpet, and there’s something ever so slightly different about their face. Their cheekbones are lifted and their jawline is sleeker than ever. They look youthful, but not uncannily so. It’s not so much a dramatic “before and after” transformation; instead, they still appear like themselves, but a minimally tweaked, glown-up version. Still, their makeover is almost certainly more than just some different blush placement and a fresh hairstyle.

It’s a scene that seems to have played out time and time again over the past year or so. And although the stars in question tend to keep schtum about any rumoured procedures (as is their prerogative), that only spurs on the social media sleuths to speculate over what exactly it is they might have “had done”. In many cases, those sleuths reach the same conclusion: it’s a facelift, right?

That conclusion might seem like a surprising one, because the term facelift once summoned up images of tighter-than-tight skin and permanently alarmed features. The treatment felt old school, beloved by black-and-white film idols. It certainly didn’t seem like something that present-day Hollywood stars, in their forties or even late thirties, would be queuing up for, with other, seemingly more subtle treatments at their disposal.

But techniques – and the results they can achieve – have improved dramatically over the past few decades. Now a patient should end up looking radiant and rejuvenated, rather than overly stretched and perma-shocked. Often the only tell-tale sign is a tiny incision mark around the ear; not for nothing are some treatments being described as quiet or invisible.

Indeed, undetectability is something of a status symbol (it also surely makes the online surgery sleuth’s guessing games both more tenuous and more irresistible). “I think that there’s an increasing trend where people want to just feel and look refreshed, like they’ve had a good night’s sleep,” says London-based consultant plastic surgeon Dr Kshem Yapa. “But they don’t want to necessarily look like they’ve had surgery, certainly, and don’t want everyone to know that they’ve had something done.”

It’s not just celebrities that are seemingly going under the knife. This month, the annual audit from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) revealed that the number of face and neck lifts performed by their members increased by 8 per cent in 2024. Brow lifts, which focus on the eyebrows and forehead, also rose by 20 per cent. If those seem like relatively modest increases, bear in mind that in 2022, BAAPS reported a staggering 97 per cent increase in face and neck lifts.

Anecdotally though, what’s particularly striking is the demand from a younger generation of prospective patients. “Facelift requests from anyone under 40 were unheard of up until the last five years,” says consultant plastic surgeon Gerard Lambe, who’s based at the Reflect Clinic in Manchester. Before then, Lambe says, he and his colleagues “would only get consultation requests from patients aged at least 55, and typically for a facelift, the average age group was 60 to 70”. But in the past 12 months, there’s been a 20 per cent uptake in enquiries from potential clients under 40 at his clinic.

When I speak to other surgeons, they tend to echo his comments: they’re now fielding requests from a more youthful demographic. So why are people who’ve barely reached middle age considering such an in-depth, expensive treatment?

To grapple with that, first we need to consider the ageing process (buzzkill, I know) and how it might impact our faces. As we get older, our skin inevitably starts to lose volume and becomes more lax, so “the whole face tends to get a bit saggy and slide down”, as Yapa puts it. Some people start to notice the first signs in their mid to late thirties, but “most would not immediately turn to a surgical option to try and rectify that, because obviously, surgery’s potentially scary, with lots of downtime, at least in people’s minds”.

And so, if someone is really bothered about these changes, they might turn to non-surgical procedures instead: think of energy-based treatments using radio frequency, laser or ultrasound technology, or injectables such as hyaluronic fillers. But “the problem is, this only works to an extent”, Yapa says. And, he adds, “if you’re trying to mask changes in [facial] laxity by adding volume” – with fillers, for example – “and you carry on going with that, then you can sometimes start to look overfilled and unnatural”.

Over the past decade or so, injectables have become increasingly popular among people in their twenties. It follows, then, that those same patients are likely to reach that “overfilled” point at a relatively young age; plus, filler might even begin to migrate to a different part of the face. “If people start on that journey quite early, ultimately they’ll realise that it’s not quite working, and then what comes next?” Yapa says. “If you get to [the point] where you have sufficient laxity, and that laxity leads to folds around the mouth and jowls, then the way to get the most natural results is to have a surgical lift to try and put those [facial] tissues back to where they were.”

If you rewind back to the Sixties and Seventies, facelifts tended to be “skin only” procedures. Surgeons would remove excess skin and then tighten up what remained; hence that uncanny, stretched-out appearance. The phrase “windblown” was a common way of politely referring to that look, says Dr Anil Joshi, a consultant plastic surgeon who specialises in facial reconstruction. “Those were the days when [surgeons] were just tightening the skin, pulling it backwards, and it appeared so unnatural,” he explains. But now, he says, the treatment has evolved with a better “understanding of the deeper structure of the face, rather than just the skin”.

The deep plane facelift technique is increasingly popular – it’s pricey, but the end result tends to be more subtle, and to stay truer to, say, what you might have looked like five or 10 years before. Fashion designer Marc Jacobs is one of the handful of celebrities who have gone on the record about their deep plane treatment (in 2021, he documented his recovery on Instagram).

Underneath the skin is a layer of tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system, more snappily referred to as SMAS. This becomes weaker and looser as we age, and in order to really make a difference, surgeons need to delve below this. A deep plane facelift involves repositioning the facial ligaments and tissues; this gives “much more natural-looking results” but doesn’t require as much trauma to the skin, Yapa says. The fact that “the techniques are improving and the outcomes are getting better” has helped change the perception of this procedure, he adds.

But for all the online chatter about “invisible” or “quiet” procedures, we can’t escape the fact that this is a major operation. It still takes a few weeks for the swelling and bruising to subside, and you might need to wait a few months to “start seeing the real value of that surgical work”, says Dr Joshi. It’s no coincidence that many of Hollywood’s major players seem to emerge from 2023’s Sag-Aftra strike with newly radiant visages; the walkout freed up their schedules and gave them the off-camera downtime required to fully recover. “Hollywood elite rushes to get plastic surgery before the strike ends,” one Vanity Fair headline from that summer claimed. Images of their glow-ups have flooded social media since, accompanied by whispers about facelifts; that’s certainly helped normalise the procedure.

There are other potential reasons for the surge in popularity too. Right now, it feels impossible to have a conversation about beauty without referencing the looming spectre of weight-loss drugs. Those who take semaglutide (often known by brand names such as Ozempic or Wegovy) tend to drop pounds rapidly – all over their body. This can leave them dealing with prematurely haggard, saggier skin, making a facelift seem more appealing. “Yes, the Ozempic phenomenon has played a part,” Lambe says. Out of the “small number of younger patients” he has operated on, most of them had “significant loose skin”, some have had loose skin from significant weight loss (in other cases, this was the result of “illness, skin disorders or unlucky genetics”).

The way that we think about getting and looking older has also shifted significantly too (blame social media, blame reality TV, blame any number of factors). Once, even the most beauty-conscious among us would let the signs of ageing actually appear before attempting to “fix” them. Now, prevention is the industry’s watchword. There’s an increasing emphasis on preemptive treatments to ward off wrinkles before they’ve even formed. Just think of the twentysomethings opting for preventative “baby” Botox in the hope that they’ll stop any lines from developing. Or the youngsters adopting intricate, multi-step skincare regimes and asking for anti-ageing retinol creams for their birthdays, when their ages are barely into double figures.

A good surgeon certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone who is stressing out about early signs of ageing to immediately undergo surgery. “If you don’t have facial laxity, then you shouldn’t be having this operation, period,” says Yapa. “I think it’s the responsibility of all surgeons to tell people ‘no, this is not the right time,’” he adds (he notes too, that “the right time for some people will be never – you’re ageing appropriately and normally, you’re embracing the changes and that’s completely fine”).

Unfortunately not everyone is so scrupulous. “I’ve had patients who come to me at 30, 32, saying they need a facelift, and I’ve said, ‘absolutely not,’” Yapa says, only for them to opt for surgery abroad, for example.

Dr Joshi had a similar experience only a few days before we speak, with a client in her early thirties. “There were some unnatural scars on her face, and I asked what they were,” he says. It turned out that “at 28, she’d undergone some kind of facelift in another country”, and she’d been left with visible marks in front of her ears. “If she had come to me, I definitely would have said no to her at the time.” His patient, he adds, had been influenced by images of perfection that she’d seen on social media.

It’s also worth diving into the marketing speak that accompanies major procedures like these. You can describe a facelift as “quiet” all you like, but that doesn’t necessarily make the process any less invasive. “When procedures are oversold as simpler, they’re very easy to market,” says Yapa. He cites the example of the so-called “mini lift”, which involves “a very modest dissection” in order to lift up the SMAS layer, and “one or two sutures”. There’s “a lot of marketing out there that says, ‘well, if you’re coming to it really early, then a mini lift or a SMAS lift is the right operation for you’”, he notes.

But “the problem with that sort of approach”, he says, “is you’re entering the realm of the surgical facelift, but you’re not having an operation that will give you long-lasting results.” You might end up with the same scarring as you would have done with a more involved procedure, too. Ultimately, Yapa adds, “if you’re going to consider a facelift, then think about it as a life event. Give it the respect that’s due and do your due diligence.”

Lambe agrees. “It is vital to understand that the younger [someone] has a facelift, the more likely they may need a top-up, repeat surgery later in life, as even a facelift does not last forever,” he says. “The skin grows and people lose and gain weight – it is not a permanent solution.” A facelift, he says, “should be a last resort for anyone regardless of age” – as “all surgery is a serious business, and being in the best possible hands of an experienced, insured and responsible surgeon is essential”.

BlackRock’s billions show it’s not all gloom for UK business

The mood around UK business has ranged from cautious to desperate in the past few months as the economy battles inflation, tax grabs, rising labour costs and the prospects of US tariffs.

Add in constant political pressures giving a bleak outlook and the stock market plummeting in early April on the back of those tariffs, and UK plc could be forgiven for thinking 2025 might become a year to forget.

But perhaps all is not as bad as it was beginning to appear, with some important signs giving relief and optimism to some businesses who got a share price backing boost thanks to the world’s biggest investor, BlackRock, building stakes in multiple companies.

And the most imminent boost will be a cut to interest rates.

The Bank of England meets on 8 May and a 0.25 per cent cut appears all but guaranteed at this stage. And back-to-back rates cuts are entirely possible, bringing the Bank Rate down to 4 per cent by summer.

It would be the first time since March 2023 that the interest rate returns to that level, easing costs for business owners with debt and perhaps allowing more consideration to investment on projects and other spending which could spark opportunities for the growth the economy desperately needs.

Some businesses already look well-positioned to capture that growth, believes Larry Fink, chief executive at BlackRock.

“[The company has] allocated more capital back to the UK tactically now with the belief that in the short run, the new administration is trying to tackle some of the hard issues,” Mr Fink toldThe Times. “I think the prime minister is articulating the needs of what we have to do. I have more confidence in the UK economy today than I did a year ago.”

Pointing to some of the financial institutions that had seen their share price hammered this year as the FTSE 100 dropped along with other major stock markets, Mr Fink explained how BlackRock had taken stakes in different sectors in the belief the selloff was overdone.

“So many of the UK stocks discounts were too deep, especially like in the banking system. Look at the rebound in the valuations of NatWest and Lloyds and how they bounced. We added to our positions across the board with the idea that we believe the market was discounting too much negativity. And we believe the negativity was probably not warranted,” he said.

Having seen a significant drop from 3 April onwards, the FTSE 100 – the biggest firms on the London Stock Exchange – have bounced back somewhat and now remain up more than two per cent since the start of 2025, even if they have collectively not reached March’s high points.

Interest rate drops – while affecting households in terms of mortgages, savings accounts and so on – also impact investing. That is in part due to lower guaranteed returns from cash or like-cash holdings, meaning more risk may be taken on in the form of stock market equities. Rising share prices help improve investor and business confidence, while consumers may then benefit from having more money in their own pockets if rate drops mean they pay less on mortgages and other debt.

There are further positives in other sectors.

Retail sales rose almost half a percent in the UK during March, and that came ahead of April when the rise to minimum wage kicked in meaning more money in some workers’ pockets.

Jacqui Baker, head of retail at RSM UK, said: “Glimpses of warmer weather and improving consumer confidence meant retail sales continued its upward trend in March. Sales volumes rose for the third consecutive month, reaching their highest level since July 2022. The first quarter of 2025 suggests consumer spending is slowly starting to return, which should provide some reason for optimism in the retail sector.”

Then there’s analysis from Barclays, showing both wage growth easing and contraction in employment. Both of these factors will further ease pressure on the Bank of England when it comes to deciding rates cuts.

Small wins they might seem, and with little impact of individuals, but as we so often see in businesses, it’s those small wins adding up continuously which lead to the potential to outperform.

Awful April might just be closing with reason to face May and beyond with a more careful measure of optimism.

The ‘F-word’ that’s tearing Westminster apart

“I suspect there’s going to be a big, seismic shock in British politics,” Nigel Farage said at a party at London’s Ritz hotel to mark his 25 years in politics. That was in 2016 – five months after the initial shock of the Brexit referendum.

Farage has waited a long time for his seismic moment in party politics. It might have come at last year’s general election, when his Reform UK won 14 per cent of the vote. But it landed only five seats, and its breakthrough was eclipsed by Keir Starmer’s landslide.

Farage hopes the political tectonic plates will shift next Thursday, when Reform hopes to seize the safe Labour seat of Runcorn and Helsby in a parliamentary by-election, and make gains in council and metro mayoral elections in England. Farage’s party is ahead in the opinion polls, but now needs to translate that to the ballot box to maintain the momentum it needs like oxygen.

My other memory of the 2016 party is the display of giant photographs of Farage and Donald Trump in the golden lift in Trump Tower in New York. Farage had just visited Trump, one of the first politicians to do so since his first presidential election victory that month.

Today, Farage is less keen to play up his Trump links amid the fallout from his damaging tariffs and his stance on the Ukraine-Russia war. Indeed, rival parties tell me that Farage’s Trump links are playing badly on the doorsteps. “It is hurting him,” one senior Labour figure claimed. Pollsters have picked up the same in focus groups.

Significantly, Farage has distanced himself from the US president, saying the tariffs were “too much, too soon”, that Trump risked turning Vladimir Putin into a winner and the US peace plan for Ukraine is unacceptable.

Yet the Trump connection – and a typically explosive internal row with his exiled MP Rupert Lowe – are unlikely to stop the beaming Farage having the last laugh next Thursday. Both the Conservatives and Labour approach these elections nervously – not because they fear each other, but Farage.

He has become the F-word of British politics, as figures in both parts of the now broken duopoly fret that they “don’t know what the f*** to do” about him.

Tory losses are inevitable because the 1,600 council seats up for grabs were last contested in 2021, when Boris Johnson was enjoying his “vaccine bounce”. The Tories could easily lose half of the almost 1,000 seats they are defending. Although many might fall to the Liberal Democrats, headlines about Tory losses and Reform gains would deepen Kemi Badenoch’s woes.

The job of leader of the opposition is hard enough after a crushing election defeat. Badenoch is in an even more unenviable position: she is not even seen as the real leader of the opposition because Farage is. There is no escaping his shadow.

That was illustrated when Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, fuelled the intense Tory debate about whether the party should do a deal with the devil Farage to “unite the right”. In a leaked recording, which emerged this week, Jenrick told a student dinner last month he would “bring this coalition together” to head off the “nightmare scenario” of Keir Starmer winning a second term because of a split on the right. Although Jenrick’s allies insist he was not talking about a coalition of the two parties but their voters, the damage was done.

The timing of the leak to Sky News was convenient for Labour, coming ahead of prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, when Starmer was bound to be on the defensive over the Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of “woman” relies on biological sex.

This is Badenoch’s signature issue and Tory MPs hailed her performance as her best at PMQs, but Starmer was able to limit the damage by quoting Jenrick’s remarks. (My theory about leaks is that the enemy is usually involved in disseminating them).

Badenoch opposes a deal with Farage. While her team played down Jenrick’s words, they made the Tories look needy and weak, and were a reminder of Badenoch’s insecure position only five months after beating Jenrick to the leadership. The ambitious, energetic Jenrick seems to be still running for it. Colleagues grumble privately that the Tory grassroots favourite is not a team player.

Bad results next Thursday will fuel the Tories’ already intense debate about whether Badenoch should lead the party into the next general election. But it’s hard to see how she can make progress while Farage sets the political agenda.

I think the Tories’ best shot would be to battle it out with Reform for leadership of the right rather than obsess about a deal, which makes it look like they have already lost.

In any case, there’s a limit to what a Con-Reform deal could achieve. Voters are not a bloc which can be directed into another party’s column; they will make up their own minds. Tory and Reform voters are different, according to pollsters More in Common. They might agree on immigration, criminal justice and gender identity, but differ on redistribution and Trump. Reform supporters are right-wing on social issues but lean left on economics.

That is why Farage declares his tanks are on Labour’s lawn, called for the nationalisation of British Steel before the government and discovered a long-standing admiration for his new brothers in arms in the trade unions (which is not reciprocated). His “economically left, socially right” pitch is similar to Johnson’s at the 2019 election, which won over the red wall in the north and Midlands now targeted by Reform.

It is one reason Farage is not interested in a Tory pact – for now, at least. He wants to replace Badenoch’s party. “The red wall feels badly let down by Boris, so why on earth would we do a deal with the Tories?” one Reform insider told me.

Labour hopes Tory losses next Thursday will overshadow its own unpopularity. But Starmer’s party can’t escape Farage’s shadow either. Labour’s weakness will be exposed if Reform’s army captures Runcorn and makes inroads in the north and Midlands. That would be ominous for Starmer, whose strategists believe the red wall will decide the next general election.

Is the EU youth mobility scheme finally going to happen?

Well-sourced reports suggest that the government is willing to introduce a “one in, one out” youth mobility scheme in partnership with the European Union. The idea would be that people aged 18 to 30 could travel to the UK on a work or educational visa, on a time-limited basis, and with reciprocity for their British counterparts.

It’s an idea that’s been discussed and periodically dismissed for some time, but with an EU-UK “Brexit reset” summit approaching next month, it could be that its time has come…

As recently as February, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, insisted in the House of Commons that such a scheme “is not our plan, and we are clear that net migration needs to come down”. What’s different now, perhaps, is that the EU has agreed to impose a quota on the scheme – a rumoured figure of 70,000 people – and a time limit of one year for the visas; and that, therefore, Cooper was prepared to consider the idea more seriously.

It also seems No 10 is exerting pressure to agree the youth mobility scheme in an effort to secure much more important concessions from the EU Commission on trade barriers, and from other European national leaders on defence, security and the “Coalition of the Willing” in Ukraine.

Because it means that the flow (in both directions) wouldn’t inflate or otherwise distort the highly sensitive net migration figures. A relatively short visit also means that the scheme is less likely to be abused – or to be perceived, by its opponents, as being abused.

Well, there is always scope for “gaming” any system, and the Conservatives, Reform UK and their allies in the press can be expected to highlight the risks – such as the visas being used to enter the UK and then “disappear”, or as a way to make an asylum claim (albeit perfectly legitimately in international law). There is also the cost of any use the visitors might make of the NHS or other public services; and the idea that they will provide unwelcome competition for young British people trying to find work. The allegation is that the EU wishes to “export” its youth unemployment.

Sooner or later, someone on the youth scheme visa will commit a serious offence; the headlines and the attacks on Labour will write themselves.

The EU, principally, which places a disproportionate value on something that feels pretty tokenistic. But also many in the Labour Party: 70 Labour MPs and peers have written this week to Nick Thomas-Symonds, minister for Europe, urging the introduction of such a time-limited, capped youth visa scheme.

Only on the crudest of interpretations, and if you subscribe to the belief that the treaties signed by Boris Johnson in 2019 and 2020 were perfect.

The youth mobility scheme wasn’t even hinted at in the Labour election manifesto, but the relevant passage on Europe was just about flexible enough to accommodate such a limited initiative: “With Labour, Britain will stay outside of the EU. But to seize the opportunities ahead, we must make Brexit work. We will reset the relationship and seek to deepen ties with our European friends, neighbours and allies. That does not mean reopening the divisions of the past. There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement.”

“Free movement” is not the same as “capped movement”, so it works. But just wait till the negotiations on fish get going again.

To encounter the cream of Britain’s Byronic youth, embarking on the modern equivalent of the “Grand Tour” of continental antiquities enjoyed by so many aristocrats in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The government, probably. A poll commissioned by Best for Britain a couple of months ago suggested that a majority (54 per cent) were in favour even if it was a four-year scheme, with two-thirds backing a two-year duration. So it would be popular, overall, even if it convinced more hardline Leavers that the Starmer administration was plotting to reverse Brexit (which would also in fact be fairly popular, especially if Donald Trump continues to spurn Britain’s “special relationship” with tariffs and threats to withdraw from Nato).

The more unpopular Brexit grows, the worse it is for the Conservatives and Reform UK.