Man sentenced after first date ended with ‘catastrophic’ police chase

A personal trainer who caused a “catastrophic collision” when he failed to stop for police while on a first date has been sentenced to 14 months’ detention.

Mazyar Azarbonyad, 20, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving over the crash on the A1 west of Newcastle upon Tyne in the early hours of 9 April, which wrecked five police cars and left seven officers needing hospital treatment.

Sentencing him at Newcastle Crown Court on Monday, Judge Tim Gittins said: “It is nothing short of a miracle that no one was more seriously injured or that there were not multiple fatalities.”

One officer suffered soft tissue damage to her knee and nerve damage to her back, requiring her to remain in hospital for three days, and another needed stitches for a cut to his forehead, the court heard.

“It led to regional traffic chaos, misery for many travellers, not to mention the substantial loss of work and study hours for those that were caught up in the aftermath of what you caused,” Judge Gittins said.

The court heard that Azarbonyad, who arrived in the UK after fleeing his home country, Iran, when he was 14, was driving passenger Courtney Redfern home in a BMW X5 when he was seen by a police officer driving over the speed limit and with defective rear lights.

The court heard he had bought the vehicle on finance despite having a provisional driving licence, no insurance, and later admitting to officers he had paid for only three driving lessons previously.

The judge said: “You should have been nowhere near the driving seat of any vehicle that night, let alone one such as a BMW X5, a large and powerful SUV.”

The defendant, who had been stopped for driving without a licence and with no insurance in 2023, initially pulled over for police, but when an officer approached his car on foot, he said “Nah” and made off at speed, according to his passenger.

Penny Hall, defending, said Azarbonyad claimed Ms Redfern told him she had drugs on her and he “panicked”.

Judge Gittins said: “Whether or not you were made aware of the small amount of cannabis in her possession, I am satisfied you made a deliberate decision to make off substantially because of your unlawful driving position.”

Azarbonyad was spotted by police in the area again about 30 minutes later and failed to stop for a second time, nearly losing control on a bend and hitting a kerb as he accelerated onto the A1, where the judge said his speed reached a “hair-raising level” of over 120 mph.

Jolyon Perks, prosecuting, said his passenger told him several times to stop.

He said: “In her opinion, she thought he could have killed someone.”

When police vehicles moved in to contain the BMW, Azarbonyad braked harshly in the middle of the four-lane carriageway, going from 119mph to zero in an emergency stop and causing a multiple-vehicle pile-up, the court heard.

Mr Perks said: “A number of these officers were trapped in vehicles. There were liquids involved, thankfully not petrol. A number of officers were rendered unconscious. It was clearly a very traumatic incident.”

When Azarbonyad was interviewed he described his driving as “shit”, but did not accept he braked harshly and said the police chasing him were travelling too fast, Mr Perks told the court.

In the days that followed his release on bail, he continued to drive to the gym where he worked, before he was arrested at a petrol station.

Ms Hall told the court he had lost his job after police turned up there, but had been offered a job in a hairdresser’s and hoped to return to the fitness industry.

She said the defendant, of Sylvia Terrace, Stanley, County Durham, travelled to the UK from Iran with his uncle, but lost him during the journey and had never seen him again.

After time in immigration centres and foster placements, he was granted leave to remain and refugee status, the court heard.

Ms Hall told the court: “Quite frankly, he is terrified at the prospect of going to prison.”

Judge Gittins said the defendant would be disqualified from driving for three years and seven months.

No separate penalty was given for two offences of failing to stop for police and charges of driving without a licence or insurance on multiple dates in April, which Azarbonyad also pleaded guilty to.

Superintendent Billy Mulligan, of Northumbria Police, said four of the seven officers who were injured in the crash remained off work.

He said: “It is sheer luck that Mazyar Azarbonyad did not kill anyone that day with his reckless actions.”

House prices are dropping across London – but people are still having to leave to buy

Property prices in the UK are on the rise once more – but that’s not the case in all areas of London, with some boroughs showing an annual decrease.

Despite this, many Londoners are still struggling to get on the property ladder in the capital, forcing them to leave the city to buy elsewhere, or remain part of the forever-renters community.

Nationwide data on people who had moved house in the last five years also showed a marginally higher rate of people leaving cities for small towns or rural areas, compared to those coming into cities.

Toby Leek, NAEA Propertymark president, told The Independent: “London remains a highly attractive and aspirational place for many people to move to, and though house price growth is slowing, many aspiring homeowners are struggling to step onto the region’s housing market due to a myriad of factors.

“These include the growing disparity in house prices and wage growth, with the average home across the Greater London area costing around £680,000 and the average wage sitting at around £48,000, meaning buying a home costs over 14 times the average income.

“Also contributing to this struggle that many buyers are facing is the increased stamp duty thresholds from April this year, a shortage of supply triggered by slow rates of development, and higher interest rates than those traditionally used to, making mortgaging a property more difficult.”

Land registry data showing London borough house prices over the last 12 months reveals that while the city-wide trend might remain on the up, there’s a clear divide between central areas and boroughs on the outskirts.

While house prices in areas like Lewisham, Redbridge and Havering are up between 8 and 9 per cent over the past year, more central boroughs such as Greenwich, Camden and Wandsworth are down between 2.4 and 4.5 per cent.

For Islington it’s more than 8 per cent lower, Kensington and Chelsea is 15 per cent down, and Westminster is a full 20.1 per cent below last year.

Sellers are having to accept average discounts of nearly 10 per cent to the asking price, while Coutts bank said 82 per cent of properties in prime London sold for below the asking price between January and March this year, per the Telegraph.

And that isn’t always limited to those traditionally higher-end locations.

“It’s not just wealthy buyers that are reconsidering their options. Mortgage rates may be easing but with stamp duty costs now higher, wage growth starting to slow and living costs still on the climb, affordability remains a challenge for Londoners whose finances are already constrained by sky-high rents,” Alice Haine, personal finance analyst at Bestinvest, told The Independent.

“Homeowners in the capital typically see a larger proportion of their income swallowed up by mortgage payments than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Plus, with most personal tax thresholds on hold, which results in people paying higher rates of tax as their income increases, it can make sense for people to relocate to cheaper parts of the UK to make life more affordable.

“The pandemic has radically shifted workers’ perception of what a healthy work-life balance is. Rather than commuting across a city every day, people can now head into the office once a week or even once a month. It therefore makes more sense for some to live in a larger property in a quieter, cheaper part of the country than trying to squeeze a family into a one- or two-bedroom flat.

“It seems having a higher disposable income to cover everyday bills with enough spare money to go on holiday once a year and save for the future may now be more important than proximity to the office.”

Regardless of location, Bank of England data showed that the number of mortgages approved by UK lenders for home purchases dropped again in April – a third consecutive drop of net residential mortgage approvals.

With interest rates now not expected to drop below 4 per cent until the end of this year, if at all, buyers and those looking to remortgage alike may be considering taking the plunge, having been holding off until now due to declining rates in 2025.

Killer who buried wife under shed for 23 years asked son to dig her up

A “callous” father who murdered his wife and hid her body under a patio for 23 years asked their son to dig her up and send a hair to police in an audacious plot to clear his own name.

Andrew Griggs, who is already serving a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years for killing devoted mother-of-three Debbie Griggs, has been jailed for three more years after he tried to manipulate one of their sons into exhuming her body from prison.

The former fisherman, 62, was convicted of Ms Griggs’ murder in 2019 following a cold case investigation into her disappearance in 1999, after she vanished while she was three months pregnant with their fourth child. Her body had never been found.

Despite maintaining his innocence, he later revealed to his son in a prison visit that her remains were sealed in a water butt buried under the concrete base of a shed at his home in Dorset.

He instructed him to dig it up, remove a strand of her hair, take it abroad and post it back to the UK with a letter pretending to be from Ms Griggs to prove she was still alive.

Specialist officers and staff excavated the back garden of his home in St Leonards, Dorset, in October 2022.

Her body was found in a barrel-shaped container wrapped in blue tarpaulin under the base of what had previously been a lean-to shed. Also inside were clothes along with a pillowcase, duvet and a boot liner matching one missing from the mother’s Peugeot 306.

It is believed Griggs wrapped the clothing he was wearing when he killed the former nurse in the boot liner before placing them on top of her inside the container.

When Griggs was interviewed about the discovery, he declined to answer any questions but delivered a pre-prepared statement in which he still maintained he was not responsible for Ms Grigg’s death.

He claimed he found a body inside a container in someone else’s garden around two years after he had reported her missing.

He said he panicked and encased the container in fibreglass before someone else buried it, and although he suspected it was beneath his garden shed he did not know for sure.

Griggs was charged with perverting the course of justice, which he later admitted, and obstructing a coroner in the execution of their duty.

In a hearing at Canterbury Crown Court on Monday he was ordered to serve an additional three years in prison.

Detective Chief Inspector Neil Kimber said Griggs’ lies and attempt to recruit a family member to clear his own name are an “insult” to the mother’s memory.

“Debbie Griggs was a devoted mother whose love for her three children was never in doubt, and it is inconceivable that she would have ever walked out on them,” he said.

“Her husband Andrew has known this ever since he first reported her missing, by which point he had already brutally murdered Debbie and hidden her body. He then continued to lie and manipulate others even after her remains were eventually discovered, making up further ridiculous stories that are an insult to Debbie’s memory and to everyone who continues to mourn her loss.

“The fact he asked a family member to dig up her remains shows what a callous and selfish person he is, sparing little to no thought as to the deeply devastating effect such an act would likely have on that person.

“Andrew Griggs is already serving a life sentence for Debbie’s murder but our investigation into these further offences was about more than achieving another positive court outcome.

“It was about securing justice for Debbie and her family and friends, and ensuring the general public know exactly the lengths Griggs was willing to go to in order to escape the consequences of his disgusting actions.”

Katie Samways from the Crown Prosecution Service said the case was “one of the worst examples imaginable” of perverting the course of justice.

“Andrew Griggs spent decades lying to everyone around him, claiming that Debbie’s disappearance was nothing to do with him,” she added.

“Once convicted of her murder, in a desperate attempt to prove his innocence, he tried to manipulate his son into helping him in the most appalling way possible.

“Griggs deliberately failed to reveal the location of Debbie’s body, adding immeasurably to the distress of her family and friends.”

She added: “None of us can imagine the impact that Griggs’ actions have had on everyone around him.

“Now, more than 25 years after Debbie first disappeared, we hope that her family and friends can now finally put this chapter of their lives behind them, knowing Andrew Griggs has been fully held to account not just for Debbie’s murder, but also for the lies he continually told in the intervening period.”

Flower once nearly extinct found in wild for first time in a century

Conservationists are celebrating the resurgence of the lady’s-slipper orchid, one of Britain’s rarest wildflowers, with the discovery of the first new plant in the wild in almost a century.

The striking flower, which once teetered on the brink of extinction in the English countryside, may one day be restored across its former range, experts have said.

Driven to near-extinction by Victorian plant hunters and habitat loss, the lady’s-slipper orchid was believed to have disappeared from the UK by the early 20th century.

However, the chance discovery of a single plant in the Yorkshire Dales in 1930 led to round-the-clock protection by volunteers.

This discovery spurred efforts to propagate and reintroduce the orchids to their former habitats.

Two years ago, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust secured a grant from Natural England’s species recovery programme to ramp up the work protecting the habitat, rearing many new orchids and reintroducing plants into a suitable habitat.

In 2024, monitoring uncovered the first “new” lady’s-slipper orchid in nearly 100 years at one of the reintroduction sites, which meant planted-out orchids had managed to produce seeds that had germinated into new plants.

Jono Leadley, managing the project on behalf of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said the discovery of the new plant in the wild was a “truly thrilling moment”.

“To see a healthy population of lady’s-slipper orchids back in their native area that are now reproducing themselves gives us real hope for the future,” he said.

“This first sign of success is a result of decades of dedication and commitment shown by many volunteers and the staff of the various organisations involved,” he added.

Efforts to boost the population of lady’s-slipper orchids, whose last-known wild location remained a closely-guarded secret, began in the 1990s, with a plea for help that resulted in a small number of privately-owned, wild-sourced orchids being offered as part of a captive breeding programme.

Plants were reintroduced to locations in the north of England – which were also kept secret to avoid the ongoing threat of theft.

The project since 2023 has been led by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and supported by partners Natural England, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the National Trust, Plantlife and the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI).

Orchids were propagated by Kew, which has worked for many years on saving the species, using techniques that meant many more seedlings sprouted than in the wild, with young plants then nurtured by a network of volunteer orchid specialists managed by the National Trust.

Suitable wild sites were identified by Plantlife and Yorkshire Wildlife Trusts, with young orchids planted out with expert help from BSBI, who also closely monitored and assessed each site.

Reintroductions were carried out at three new sites in Yorkshire and several hundred new orchids were produced to be planted out in future years.

In June 2024, an orchid which had grown naturally at one of the reintroduction sites was discovered, marking a major success of the programme, conservationists said.

Kevin Walker, of BSBI, said: “The discovery of this naturally regenerating seedling represents a significant turning point for one of our rarest and most threatened plants, and is testament to the dedication of hundreds of volunteers and enthusiasts who have carefully nurtured it back into the wild.

“It provides evidence that this beautiful plant can, with a bit of help from us, re-establish itself across its former range.”

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust said people who wanted to see a lady’s-slipper orchid could do so by visiting Kilnsey Park near Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales in late May and early June.

Cash for tricks: How teens are being seduced by online sexfluencers

Last week, I found myself deep in conversation with some students in year 9 and year 10. These teens are completely typical of their age group. They have dreams, aspirations, worries, families, friends, and smartphones. None of them are more online or more connected than any of their classmates.

They are mid-teenagers, and they are all aware of OnlyFans – ostensibly a social media platform, but one on which sexually explicit pictures and videos are sold to subscribers. It’s increasingly associated with famous influencers, or “creators”, and the students I spoke with all have their “number” – the amount of money it would take for them to consider becoming a creator themselves. They’ve thought about it a lot, and talked about it with their friends, discussing in detail how many followers they’d have to accumulate in order to create sexual content and post it online for cash, popularity, and fame.

Of course, many say that nothing would entice them to sign up to OnlyFans (or its many imitators) when they turn 18 – but many don’t. They have their number.

For Ebony*, 14, that number is “$4m [around £3m] and probably 1 million followers”, she tells me, going on to explain: “Maybe because then you could have sex, like once, maybe, and then get a Boohoo deal or a Sephora deal and be set for life.”

OnlyFans is a subscription-based platform where “creators” post mostly sexual content for paying subscribers. It was founded in 2016, and has seen a stratospheric rise over the last decade. Like TikTok, OnlyFans gained major prominence during the pandemic, when people were scared, bored, and looking for ways to supplement their reduced (or vanished) income.

And like the other big social media platforms, OnlyFans acts as something of a fame equaliser, allowing unknown individuals to rise to prominence and build a large fanbase. Subscription costs vary depending on the popularity of the creator and, perhaps more importantly, how explicit their content is. Unsurprisingly, subscribers tend to pay higher prices for the most popular creators, who are often either already famous or willing to provide extreme or niche content.

It is, of course, far easier for a celebrity, who already has some degree of fame, to get noticed and monetise their following. Lily Allen, for example, is reported to have around 1,000 subscribers, who each pay £10 a month – earning her an estimated £10,000 monthly for publishing pictures of her feet.

Musician Kate Nash sells coy photos of her bum, and told Woman’s Hour that the proceeds paid for her latest tour. Kerry Katona, the former Atomic Kitten singer, told a tabloid that OnlyFans “made her a millionaire again” after her bankruptcy. Kate Moss’s half-sister, Lottie Moss, claims to be making £30,000 a month on the site.

But it is becoming a “civilian” content creator on OnlyFans that is seen as the holy grail – someone with no fame or connections making thousands a month from just a few hundred subscribers. That sounds far more appealing to many than a minimum-wage job. And those who make serious money, gain attention, and achieve fame are usually the ones who post the most extreme content, or pull off the most outrageous stunts.

Creators like Bonnie Blue, Lily Phillips, and Annie Knight have become globally known for performing sexual stunts that, until recently, would only have been conceived of in the farthest extremes of pornography.

Blue’s recent attempt to sleep with hundreds of “barely legal” young men attracted global media attention, barely disguised by a thin veneer of disapproval. Her recent visit to Nottingham Trent University was covered widely, with reports of students, lecturers, and even parents “queueing around the block” to participate in the event.

Then there’s Phillips, who has particularly unsettled the mainstream because she looks and sounds like the girl next door – or, more disturbingly, your daughter or your daughter’s friend. Phillips’s parents run a successful cleaning company. She studied nutrition at the University of Sheffield before realising she could earn much more money by finding fame on social media.

When her content became too explicit for Instagram – where she had built a significant following – she moved to OnlyFans, quickly becoming a celebrity. This culminated in her December 2024 documentary I Slept with 100 Men In One Day, filmed by her friend, YouTuber Josh Pieters.

If the global press, and adults at dinner parties, are talking about this, guess what? So are the kids at school – including tweens and young teens. What’s frightening – and wasn’t the case with traditional pornography – is the total normalisation of this commodification of a person’s body, sexuality, and privacy.

Emma*, 15, says her number would be “£2m and 2 million followers – that’s how much I’d want [in order] to go on OnlyFans and sell myself. That way, you’d be set for life and have no more worries. It would sort of be ‘F-off’ money, you know? People can call you a sl**, but it’d be like, ‘I’m rich and famous, and you have to work a job and live with your parents – I win!’”

And boys, too, are in on this. Gabriel*, 14, says: “I follow Fabien Sassier on YouTube and TikTok, and he’s rich off OnlyFans. How much would you [have to] pay me to go on OnlyFans when I’m older? About £10,000 – if the girls are hot. I think my mum would be annoyed, but she’d be OK once I bought her a new kitchen. She hates her kitchen.”

The language around OnlyFans mirrors the way people talk about other social media platforms – users aren’t “performers” but “creators” (just like Instagrammers and TikTokers). Many teens insist that OnlyFans is different from porn, that it is ultimately less seedy – precisely because they keep hearing how many celebrities are on it, and how “easy” it is to make a fortune with just a few sexy stunts.

Maya*, 15, says: “I don’t think about OnlyFans like porn at all. I know it [involves] some sex, but it’s just completely different. OnlyFans people are more like normal people – especially girls. It’s just making extra money as a side hustle.”

The way in which OnlyFans became associated with the Gen Z and Gen Alpha obsession with entrepreneurialism is troubling. At a time when faith in the traditional job market is historically low, get-rich-quick schemes – crypto, social media hustling, and platforms like OnlyFans – look increasingly appealing.

“You don’t really think about the future or the consequences of your actions when you’re a teenager,” says one of the students. “So these stories of [people taking] extreme risks for maximum reward, like Lily Phillips or Annie Knight, are like siren songs for kids who are terrified of the future.”

They are well aware that Phillips experienced extreme pain. Knight ended up in hospital with excessive bleeding after she slept with 583 men. But – kerching! – they’re allegedly set for life. Phillips is reportedly worth £2m, and Knight, £2.4m. Wounds and sore bits heal, but bills and insecurity linger. What’s a bit of discomfort if it means you’ll never worry about money again?

And this is where we all have some culpability. Like the manosphere, the equally toxic “femosphere” now emerging didn’t appear out of nowhere. We failed to notice that many boys, stewing in loneliness and sadness, were turning to dodgy influencers offering easy answers. Likewise, a generation of girls didn’t stumble accidentally on the idea that their value lies in their sex appeal, and in showing off their bodies to the highest bidder.

As Laura Bates points out in her book The New Age of Sexism, this commodification of sex is harming all of us – from widespread online abuse to schoolgirls being driven out of classrooms by deepfake pornography made for free at the click of a button.

The last two decades have been saturated with sex and celebrity – an era in which a woman with a famous bum and a sex tape became one of the most famous people on the planet. And while Kim Kardashian hit payday, millions of women working in hospitals, schools, labs, and offices were cast as life’s real losers. We haven’t just elevated sex and celebrity: in some cases, we’ve made them the ultimate goals, eclipsing any seemingly “ordinary” aspirations young people used to possess. We can’t clutch our pearls if today’s teens are not shocked by OnlyFans – not in the culture we’ve created, which offers limited opportunities for the young.

Ultimately, the manosphere and the femosphere are two sides of the same dark coin, feeding off each other’s worst ideas and impulses. The “madonna versus wh***” trope is writ large in manosphere lore, where there are “bad” girls (the OnlyFans type) who exist to be used, and “good” girls, more suited to marriage and motherhood.

The femosphere isn’t much different, with its female sex influencers existing online alongside the phenomenon of hyper-conservative “tradwives” – women who style themselves like Norman Rockwell paintings, complete with dresses, doting husbands, and photogenic broods.

Neelam*, 15, reflects: “I love the tradwife thing. Being looked after by a man, and just having the space to be a good mum, sounds brilliant. Boys have gotten so disgusting, but so have girls – those OnlyFans girls are gross, but so are the men that sleep with them.”

Neelam’s point is worth pondering. The rationale offered by some prominent OnlyFans creators is that men are sex-obsessed hounds, and they’re simply cashing in on that. The long queues of balaclava-clad men lining up to sleep with Bonnie Blue or Lily Phillips suggest that the platform’s appeal is similar to that of dogging.

But just as the myth of OnlyFans as a digital goldmine is flawed, so too is the fantasy that a return to some imagined 1950s ideal will save us. An apron and a gaggle of kids won’t conjure a picket fence or a Mad Men-style husband who drinks too much but brings home a paycheck.

If we want to help prise impressionable teen minds away from the toxic stew of the femosphere and the manosphere, we need to offer balance and hope. Universities must make good on the promises tied to expensive degrees. Companies have to make the process of applying for jobs less alienating. School-to-work pipelines must be reinvested in. Affordable housing must be prioritised so that young people aren’t priced out of a stable future, and don’t feel pressured into finding alternative ways to afford the aspirational lives they are being sold.

If we fail to do these things, younger generations will continue to drift towards ever-darker get-rich-quick schemes. And more and more of them will have their number.

They deserve better than that.

*Names have been changed

Win a luxury ticket package for two to this year’s Wilderness Festival

Music fans can win a luxury package for two to this year’s Wilderness Festival, all courtesy of Audi.

Wilderness returns this year to the picturesque nature reserve at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, and will be headlined by rock band Supergrass, Nineties rave duo Orbital, and Brit Award-winning, Grammy-nominated indie-rock duo Wet Leg.

Completing the headliner lineup are Basement Jaxx, who are making their return to live shows for the first time in over a decade, as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of their groundbreaking album, Remedy.

The winner will receive a pair of complimentary festival tickets and boutique accommodation in a luxury cabin for two. They will also be treated to an Audi Kitchen experience and, for the ultimate luxury, your own private chauffeur to take you and your guest to the festival and return journey.

Enter the prize draw here.

Wilderness Festival is known for its eclectic music lineup, which this year includes performances from pop singer Lapsley, singer-songwriter Bess Atwell, Scottish musician Jacob Alon and DJ Craig Charles.

At The Sanctuary and Spa, guests will discover an oasis of calm, whether that means taking part in disco yoga or a workshop to explore your sensuality. Highlights include boating, massage treatments, sauna rituals, hot tubs, a wild sauna, Wim Hof method ice baths and wild swimming.

Gourmet food offerings can be found at Ben Quinn’s long table banquet in the woods, a once-in-a-lifetime experience set in the woods and lit by chandeliers. There, Quinn and his team will serve up a feast of flavour cooked right in front of you five courses of carefully curated, responsibly sourced, local and seasonal ingredients.

Elsewhere, attendees can join a number of talks, comedy sets and conversations, from Food Stories with Jay Rayner to a live recording of Jamie Laing’s podcast, Great Company.

Comedian, writer and NHS doctor Matthew Hutchinson will share a sharp and moving look at life on the frontline of British healthcare, while cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith will uncover a bold and fascinating alternative history of female friendship.

The prize draw will open for entries at 3pm (BST) on 7 May 2025 and close at 3pm BST on 17 June 2025. Only one entry per person is permitted for the Prize Draw. Terms and conditions apply.

Rod Stewart cancels Las Vegas gig last minute due to health issues

Legendary pop rocker Rod Stewart has been forced to cancel his Las Vegas concert at the last minute due to ill health.

Hours before the 80-year-old British singer-songwriter was scheduled to perform Monday night at The Colosseum Theater at Caesars Palace, he announced he would no longer be taking the stage.

“I am so sorry to inform you that I’m not feeling well and my show tonight at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace is being rescheduled to June 10,” Stewart wrote on his Instagram Story.

He noted that fan tickets “will be valid for the new date.”

The “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” hitmaker didn’t share any additional details about his health issues.

The Independent has contacted Stewart’s representative for further comment.

Last month, Stewart, who’s currently traveling on the North American leg of his mammoth One Last Time tour, revealed he was placed on vocal rest following his performance at Milan’s Unipol Forum on May 10.

After the concert, he was seen walking around Italy, wearing a sign that read: “Sorry. Cannot talk. Having vocal rest.”

The recent cancellation comes months after he canceled three shows in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, and Lincoln, California, in January, when he was diagnosed with strep throat and tested positive for Covid over the span of a couple of days.

Later this month, the “Maggie May” singer will make his long-awaited Glastonbury return, performing the teatime Legends slot on Sunday, June 29, the final day of the five-day festival.

Stewart eagerly announced his forthcoming appearance in Somerset last November on Instagram, writing: “After all these years, I’m proud and ready and more than able to take the stage again to pleasure and titillate my friends at Glastonbury in June. I’ll see you there!”

Earlier that month, he emphasized that while he had no immediate plans to retire, he would be scaling back his world tours.

“This will be the end of large scale world tours for me, but I have no desire to retire. I love what I do, and I do what I love,” he said in a statement at the time.

“I’m fit, have a full head of hair, and can run 100 metres in 18 seconds at the jolly age of 79,” Stewart added. “I’d like to move onto a Great American Songbook, Swing Fever tour the year after next — smaller venues and more intimacy. But then again, I may not…”

Will Nigel Farage’s ‘Doge’ project achieve anything useful?

Having impressively seized control of 10 county councils in the recent elections, Reform UK are delivering on their promise to undertake Elon Musk/Doge-style reviews of the operations of the various local authorities under their command. The first to get the treatment is Kent County Council. Some doubt whether such a comic-opera version of the American exercise is really serious, or if it’s just a stunt…

Well, it was an election pledge, and ostensibly it could save some money that would otherwise be wasted, and make some services more efficient. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s fair to say that some are quite successful businesspeople, and some, apparently, are IT experts; but, unlike the US Doge brigade, the British team actually includes the new leader and deputy leader of the council, Linden Kemkaran and Brian Collins.

It is also fair to say that none of the Reform UK Doge team are able to rival the expertise, let alone vast wealth, of Elon Musk (or, perhaps, the skills of the small group that the world’s richest man brought to DC).

Nor does the slightly pretentious letter signed by Kemkaran, Nigel Farage and Reform chair Zia Yusuf possess the gravitas of an executive order signed by the president of the United States of America. It contains a good deal of Trumpian menace, but the fact is that Kemkaran is in no stronger a position than anyone would be in a comparable role in local government. So a lot of the Reform/Doge activity, including the “We mean business” pics, is “performative”, as they say.

The full list is:

We shall see how high-powered they are, and also how easily bored.

Yes, to the extent that any council leader can task their officers with finding efficiency savings, and/or hire consultants to do the same. Plus councils are regularly and independently audited in any case, by law. It’s pretty unnecessary, and American Doge was, arguably, an embarrassing flop.

It’s difficult to believe there won’t be any at all, but then again it all depends on what’s meant by “waste”. Was almost the entire USAID budget consumed by waste, fraud and abuse, or did the vast majority of it save lives and serve US foreign policy? In the smaller context of a local authority area, will a flower bed enlivening the town hall, however economical its maintenance, count as essential or a frippery? What about a mother-and-toddler group? Or the green waste collections? Or, in somewhere like Lincolnshire, flood defences?

These are, in reality, just routine political choices, and the whole panoply of a British Doge is unnecessary for them to be made.

It’s also not too cheesy to suggest that waste, fraud and abuse are simple facts of human life; that they exist, sadly, in private enterprise; and that even Musk and Trump have blown a few dollars here and there rather unwisely.

Most former refuse collectors, ex-leisure-centre staff and retired planners didn’t earn enough for anyone to be that envious of their pension, but in any case, they are protected and their payments are contractual. The Doge team could certainly chop future pension entitlements not yet earned by staff, but that wouldn’t yield much in the way of immediate savings.

They could also freeze or reduce council salaries, and change future pension rules, but with the risk of industrial action and/or not being able to recruit people. The six-figure salaries of senior professionals could also be reduced, but that carries the danger of not being able to find capable replacements, and amateurs are legally only allowed to do so much.

Lots. As anyone with any exposure to local government knows, most of its expenditure is mandated under law – on housing, adult and child social care, and special educational needs. So this is where the major savings could be made.

One way would be for contracts with, say, a care home provider to be renegotiated, with no loss of amenity for the residents in terms of their supervision, timely referrals for medical attention, cleanliness, recreation or standard of meals. Or, more crudely, a Doge-style functionary could just chop the value of the contract in half, without much interest in the horrific consequences for those in the homes, or for the children needing special help with their development.

Like the Militant-run Liverpool City Council in the 1980s, political posturing and playing with people’s jobs and lives could cause real suffering for purely political mischief. In extremis, a local council run by Reform UK that breaches its statutory obligations under the Local Government Act 1972 and other legislation could find itself subject to legal action brought by the secretary of state, Angela Rayner (which they’d no doubt welcome for theatrical purposes).

Misery and mayhem, most likely. Yes, they will surely find some minor extravagance, misrepresent valuable programmes, and hype up whatever money they save, playing down any diminution in the services provided. Very much like the real Musk Doge show, in fact.

If they do save more substantial sums – enough, say, to cut residents’ council tax – then it will probably be at the expense of some highly vulnerable people, and their obligations under the law. The same goes for any attempts to ignore the strictures of the Equality Act 2010, or unlawful action against asylum-seekers, or interference in operational matters in the police force. It could get very messy.