As Brian Quavar was wheeled into the operating theatre at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital in London, he looked up at the surgeon and joked, ‘how much sleep have you had?’

Being the first patient of the day, he was about to have life-saving surgery after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. 

Although it was a shock diagnosis, it was one that Brian, now 60, had taken in his stride, despite the worrying lack of information surrounding the illness in Black men. 

‘One in four Black men, as opposed to one in eight in the general population, are more at risk,’ the 60-year-old tube driver explains. ‘Unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough research on Black bodies and prostate cancer even though it affects us more as a community,  so there is no understanding as to why.’ 

Like many men, Brian didn’t have any clear symptoms of the disease. He wasn’t in pain, or  felt any strange lumps – the only thing that gave any sort of indication was his need to pee more than usual. 

‘I had no real symptoms before my diagnosis,’ Brian, from East London, tells Metro. ‘I would say the only symptom would be getting up in the middle of the night to urinate regularly. I didn’t even think of it as a issue because I drink lots of liquid normally.’

However,  after frequently getting up for the toilet during the night, he was urged by his partner to visit his GP.

A PSA test (a blood test to help detect prostate cancer) revealed higher levels than normal and Brian was called in for further tests. Following a biopsy, MRI and PET scan, he was diagnosed with localised prostate cancer – which meant it hadn’t spread.

Brian, who grew up in Trinidad, recalls: ‘I had my partner with me when we got the news, so I had that support, and I had done some research. I knew it wasn’t likely to  have been fatal, or detrimental to my wellbeing – so I didn’t panic.’

‘I didn’t think: “Oh my god, this is the end of the world!”. I listened to diagnosis and I was told about the treatment options.’

Brian opted to have his prostate removed, rather than undergo radiation. However the operation, known as a radical robotic prostatectomy, came with risks, such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Both of these were dependent on the success of the surgery and how much ‘nerve spare’ (where doctors avoid cutting nerves near your prostate) surgeons could save.

Thankfully, the operation was a success, leaving Brian with 75% nerve spare. He was then sent home with a care plan, medical erection pump, and a catheter – which was removed after two weeks. 

On the whole, he says, his recovery went well. However, one thing that Brian feels has helped him enormously over the past two years has been a prostate cancer support group specifically for Black men, called Brother to Brother, Man to Man.

The group was set up by nurses at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital with the aim of being a safe space for Black men to talk about prostate cancer and, ultimately, help squash stigmas in the community.

‘Staff found that not many Black men attended the regular prostate cancer group and felt that Black men would be more responsive to being in a group of people similar to themselves. And I agree.

‘It’s important for us as Black men to feel comfortable in a space where we can talk freely amongst ourselves, and not to be seen as in the minority.

‘We meet once a month and we’re able to share personal experiences and hear from experts in the field. It’s very supportive.’

Brian adds that groups like this are especially crucial, as prostate cancer is still stigmatised within the Black community.

‘It’s taboo for a lot of reasons. There is still a struggle in terms of getting Black men to ask for PSA tests,’ he says. ‘A lot of them still think the only test is the rectal examination – which isn’t the case – and for some men this is taboo. They don’t want anybody putting a finger up their bum.

‘The other issue is the fact that prostate cancer has to do with your sexual function – however, until it’s in the advanced stages, it doesn’t really affect you in that way. So some people think “what they don’t know can’t hurt them”, and they prefer to not know about any kind of treatment that would affect their sexual function.

‘However, as a Black man, it’s also important to me that more Black people speak out to remove the stigma around being tested or being treated for prostate cancer, as it still remains a taboo for many, across Black communities.’

What’s more, with the statistics highlighting Black men are more at risk of prostate cancer, Brian feels passionately about firstly encouraging Black men to get a PSA test and secondly, urging GPs not to turn them away when they request one.

He also stresses this is particularly important as often prostate cancer can be practically symptom-less – like it was for him.

Meanwhile, there are other hurdles in the way, which could be more easily remedied, such changing how coverage of prostate cancer tends to focus on white men.

‘When people share their stories, it’s usually white men,’ Brian points out. ‘However, even if they’re speaking about white men, it should be reiterated, somewhere in the narrative, that Black men are more at risk of prostate cancer.

‘This narrative is still if you’re a man over the age of 50, get a PSA test. But it should be stressed this is for the general population. However, if you’re a Black man, and you’re over the age of 45, you should be getting a test – that’s the guidelines from Prostate Cancer UK.

‘That distinction should always be reiterated wherever possible when cancer is spoken about.’

Since Brian’s surgery in 2021, his PSA levels are undetectable and he attends regular check ups. But following his experience, he’s more passionate than ever about getting people talking and squashing stigmas.

I would like to reiterate the message to Black men, that there is no shame in having any kind of illness.

‘It’s a taboo for a lot of people in the Black community where you don’t talk about your illness whether it’s prostate cancer, or mental illness or any other kind of cancer, or any other sort of this medical diagnosis – it’s not openly spoken about. So there needs to be more openness within the community.’

Brian is also involved in Macmillan’s recent Find The Words campaign, which encourages men to open up about their experience of cancer and reach out for support.

If you’ve received a diagnosis or are going through treatment, you can get support via Macmillan on 0808 808 00 00.

Do you have a story to share?

Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.

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Kate can still recall how long and hard she thought about how to tackle a day she knew would be difficult.

But she could never have envisaged how it would turn out to be one of the worst of her life.

She was meeting with her ex to try and amicably discuss ways he could safely see their child. So Kate made the decision to see him in a pub with an outside area so they would be in a public space.

Picking one near her home – so it was familiar to her – she asked a friend to wait at the house in case she needed support.

But none of this mattered when her ex-partner attacked her in the street, chasing her into her home and then spent hours harassing and terrifying her, banging on the doors and windows, threatening to kill her and her pregnant friend.

Fearing for her life, Kate, who has given just her first name for security reasons, imagined she would be able rely on a set of measures she’d previously put in place to protect herself and her then six-months-old daughter, to get her out of such a terrifying situation.

A Location of Interest marker had been put on her house, meaning the police had registered her address as a place where there is someone vulnerable at risk.

The mum had also previously gone through a 14-month process with the family court to get a non-molestation order (NMO) granted against her ex, banning him from using physical violence and intimidating, harassing or pestering behaviour.

Although this order was a civil one, breaching it is a criminal offence holding a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison. So when Kate called 999 on that petrifying day in spring 2017, she believed help would come.

However, she says that the operator told her they had no one on patrol in the area because they were dealing with several incidents at pubs.

‘I had my baby, I had my friend who was five months pregnant who was terrified. I told them this on the phone – I said there’s absolutely no way I could defend myself, my daughter and my friend if he does get into the house,’ the 36-year-old tells Metro.co.uk.

Kate knows the operator could hear how much danger she was in because the 999 call was so harrowing, a recording of it ended up being used to train the Merseyside Police force’s victims’ unit.

It was also used as evidence at Liverpool Magistrates Court= although it was played to the judges in private, as the police told Kate’s parents they would not want to listen to the call.

‘You can hear the banging and it sounds like he’s coming through the door,’ Kate says.

Her ex, who Metro.co.uk is referring to by the pseudonym Joe, was eventaully convicted for harassment (put in fear of violence) more than two years later, at the start of 2019.

Kate said she was subjected to years of physical and psychological violence when she and Joe were together.

The abuse seemed to die down once Kate became pregnant, leaving her with a ‘false sense of security that everything was behind them’.

But she still warned Joe: ‘If you raise a hand to me when my daughter is in the house then that is it, there will be no going back.’

So when he attacked Kate just eight weeks after their baby was born, she called the police and Joe fled.

Kate had done everything ‘right’.

She ‘just left’ her abuser, she called the police when she was attacked, she preventatively applied for a marker to be put on her house and she had tried to sort things out amicably.

Recalling that day in spring 2017, when she met Joe to discuss him spending time their daughter, Kate says, ‘I never, ever wanted to stop him from seeing her but I was adamant that I never wanted him to have unsupervised access to her.’

And yet, despite all this, she still found herself trapped inside her own home with a man threatening her life and no one coming to help her.

Kate eventually escaped after her and her friend’s parents arrived at the house with a ‘convoy of cars’.

While Merseyside Police could not comment on this specific case because Metro could not safely reveal all the details of Kate’s identity, detective superintendent Cheryl Rhodes said: ‘We take all reports of domestic abuse extremely seriously and we work together with communities and partner agencies to tackle all violence against women and girls.

‘A key part of this ongoing work is ensuring victims of domestic abuse feel they will be believed and supported when they report offending to us, and we have developed a programme of work to ensure that we do everything in our power to support victims, target perpetrators and reduce violence.

‘We want to continue the strides we have made to make sure Merseyside is an environment where women and girls are safe and feel they can pursue their daily lives free from fear and harassment.’

According toHarriet Wistrich, the director of the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWF), Merseyside Police is just one of 43 police forces in the UK which are all part of a ‘creaking’ criminal justice system enforcing laws to protect women that are ‘worth little more than the paper they are written on’.

The CWF an organisation which works to address violence against women and submitted a super-complaint ‘highlighting serious failures by the police to use powers designed to protect victims of domestic violence’ in March 2019.

Researchers looked at the four legal powers available to officers – imposing bail conditions, making arrests for breaches of NMOs, imposing domestic violence protection notices (DVPN) or applying for restraining orders.

They interviewed 11 frontline women’s organisations, including the National Domestic Violence Helpline and Rape Crisis South London, to assess the specific reasons these tools are supposedly not working.

Although NMOs are one of the most commonly used protective orders granted to help victims of domestic abuse, the CWF report found that officers often ‘trivialise’ breaches of NMOs and ‘do not understand them within the wider patterns of domestic abuse’.

Kate describes how, on one occasion, after calling the police about Joe’s abusive behaviour, she was told by an officer:‘You’ve had a lover’s tiff, you both just need to calm down.’

She tells Metro: ‘I’m not a silly kid. Don’t downplay the hole that he’s punched through my dining room wall while I’ve got a baby in the house. Don’t you dare downplay what this is.’

Another woman, who cannot be named for her own safety, has an indefinite non-molestation order in place against her abusive ex.

She spoke to Metro about how protective measures like hers are policed too generally, which means she has never really felt truly safe. general, saying hers has never made her feel safe.

‘By the police not acting, it actually sends the message to perpetrators that they’re above the law and they can do whatever they wish,’ she explains.

The mum believes this culture gave her abuser ‘more control and power because he knew he was taunting me and frightening me and it was his way of saying “I’m not going to go away”.’

She adds that the charities Refuge and Women’s Aid, are ‘the only places where women feel they can go to where they’re actually believed – they’re heard and they don’t need to sit there and tell their whole story thinking “oh my god, is someone gonna help and listen”.

‘Unfortunately, with some police forces, that is not the case. And if a woman is making that first call and they get a bad call handler, they could send them back in a dangerous situation.

‘I’ve had so many people who have spoken to me over the years who have said “oh no I don’t want to call the police because I’ve had a bad experience and I don’t want to call them again” and that’s not okay.

‘We don’t feel safe or safeguarded. My ex has got away with so much and he’s just been shown that he’s above the law, that he can continue to breach.

‘This is why the domestic abuse number keeps rising. It’s alright people putting new laws and legislations in place but if the authorities are not going to act and back this up the numbers are going to keep rising. They’re putting women at risk.’

Another unnamed survivor told Metro that her perpetrator ‘routinely breached’ an NMO ‘with no action taken’.

‘I still live in constant fear that he will find us,’ she admits. ‘He left voice recordings threatening to burn the family member’s home where we fled to.

‘Police told me to leave it as “you don’t want to upset him anymore”. He sends threats via people who knew me that he “has something for me”.

‘I’m constantly looking over my shoulder to keep us safe and lying about where we are from.’

Kate feels similarly, describing ‘the aftermath of leaving’ as ‘worse than any part of the relationship’ she was in.

She says her faith in the police service was ‘completely destroyed’ until an officer in the victim’s unit helped her take her case to criminal court and get her ex prosecuted for harassment.

‘It was years and years of hell. I still can’t sleep in the dark. I still sleep with the light on – there’s certain elements that will never go,’ she says.

As devastating as these stories are, they are seemingly not stand-out cases. The CWF’s super-complaint summarised its findings with: ‘The CWJ has become concerned that the various legal measures intended to provide protection to women are not being applied properly on the ground.’

The CWJ report is the most comprehensive set of data available on the issue, as all the relevant information is collected and stored by different parts of the criminal justice system, which do not seem to communicate effectively with each other, say domestic violence policy experts.

Lucy Hadley, the head of policy for Women’s Aid, tells Metro that many of the difficulties in protecting domestic violence victims are because of the ‘the real lack of join-up between our civil and criminal court system’.

Many protective orders are made in civil courts and ‘it’s kind of unbelievable but there’s no automatic join-up mechanism between our civil court system and the police’, she says.

Ellie, Lucy, Kate and the unnamed survivors speak at length about a lack of understanding of ‘the complexities of domestic abuse’ in general and what seemingly small breaches actually mean.

Something like ‘laying flowers on a victim’s doorstep’ may not seem serious to an officer but actually be ‘the most incredibly dangerous and frightening act’ for a victim.

Lucy says: ‘If you look at a breach in isolation it might not mean much, but when you see it as part of a pattern, it becomes clear just how serious that is.’

Meanwhile, Ellie Butt, Refuge’s head of policy, tells Metro that it is important to remember that ‘a woman knows her perpetrator and how they work better than anyone’.

She says: ‘The overwhelming message we hear from survivors around protective orders is that the system doesn’t work and they don’t have much confidence in it.’

In the year ending in March 2022, the police in England and Wales recorded 1,500,369 domestic abuse-related incidents, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This number has continued to increase year-on-year with last year’s figures 7.7% higher than 2021 and 14.1% higher than 2020.

It is estimated that only one in five victims actually report domestic abuse to the police, so the real numbers are likely much higher.

Lucy says: ‘For many, they are simply too scared of perpetrators to report. Some of them know that reporting to the police will increase their risk of harm. So, when a woman reports, it absolutely needs to be seen as the most dangerous time for a woman to put herself in.

‘It’s the highest-risk time and breaches to protective orders need to be seen as the very dangerous crimes that they are. The perpetrator’s behaviour is escalating not diminishing.’

This rings true for Kate, who says the day when Joe attacked her house and no officer came to help was ‘one of her lowest points’ while ‘already suffering really extreme stress and anxiety’.

For every 100 domestic-abuse-related crimes in the year ending March 2022, only 31.3 arrests were made, ONS figures from last year show.

Out of the 1,500,369 incidents reported, just 67,063 alleged abusers were referred for prosecution – this is less than 5%.

It is important to note that there is no single criminal offence for domestic abuse so convictions for it include harassment, assault, criminal damage, attempted murder, rape, stalking and coercive control.

This means some convictions may have taken place for domestic abuse-related crimes without being recorded as such.

Kate is one of the few who saw criminal justice take place when Joe pleaded guilty to harassment.

She had ‘assumed her case wasn’t going anywhere because it had been that long’ since she reported it to the police.

A Victims Unit officer who ‘restored her faith’ in the police called her and reportedly said: ‘The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are going to take your case, please tell me that you’re going to do it.’

‘I had made a promise to myself and my daughter and every other woman out there that if I had an opportunity to get some sort of justice then I would,’ she says.

She recalls how, at one point, she was sitting with her domestic violence worker and asked: ‘What happened next?’ The officer reportedly responded: ‘Kate, you’re the first lady I’ve worked with that’s got this far.’

Kate bravely attended court but, on the second day of her giving evidence, Joe changed his plea to guilty. She says: ‘I know he did that for himself but it’s the best thing he ever did for me. I was really struggling to give evidence and to keep myself together – because of that fear of not being believed all over again.’

Joe was sentenced to a community order which imposed a curfew and required him to attend rehabilitation appointments. Kate was also granted a 10-year restraining order.

The Home Office highlighted the measures it announced in February this year, which ‘go further than ever before in protecting women and girls from domestic abuse’.

A spokesperson tells Metro.co.uk: ‘We have been clear that we expect the police to treat these reports with the utmost gravity, without exception.

‘We have classified Violence Against Women and Girls as a national threat for the first time, setting clear expectations that police must treat these crimes on a par as tackling threats like terrorism, serious and organised crime and child sexual abuse.’

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When he was 16, Danny Edmead had an eight week trial with a team he had always dreamed of playing with, Tottenham Hotspurs.

However, after the stint, the teenager wasn’t kept on with the club.

‘I remember finishing my training session with them. I played very well, so I asked the Tottenham coach if the decision about signing me had been made,’ Danny tells Metro.

‘Two coaches then took me into an office where they reassured me that I was a good and hard working player who would go far in football – however, they were unfortunately unable to sign me but hopefully would see me in the future.

‘I was so disheartened because I really felt like I had put in the effort to get signed and built a good bond with the coaches.’

Undeterred, Danny went for more trials, this time with Charlton, Watford and Fulham. Each time, he felt like he was in grasping reach of playing for a club that would see him go pro – but each time, there was no call back after the trial.

It would be a devastating experience for anyone, not to mention someone so young. Each moment turning a promising future into uncertainty and doubt.

‘I was in year 11 when I went to trial for Tottenham,’ he explains. 

‘When I didn’t get signed it really added to the pressures I already felt as a student and I began to worry about the next steps for my life.’

However, Danny’s greatest disappointment occurred after he was signed by the German Bundesliga 2 team (U19) SG Unnterrath, however, was unable to stay due to the club’s financial issues, which were partly caused by the Covid lockdown.

‘I was there for a year and a half but then things got difficult because the club at the time didn’t have the finances to house me so I had to be accommodated by my agent,’ he explains.

‘After a while, my agent was finding it financially difficult to house me as it was very expensive in Germany as a result I had to go back to London. 

‘I believe if I had the chance to stay I would be playing in the Bundesliga (first team) by now. 

The pandemic had a disastrous impact on many young players, leaving them without a team or even the opportunity to find one due to the lockdown restrictions on football finances and player movement around Europe. 

‘It felt like I had to restart my journey,’ Danny adds. ‘I wasn’t involved in any training, so I really struggled when I got back since I had a lot of time to think. 

‘Eventually, I realised that this was feeding into my mental health negatively and so I decided to speak to family and friends about the struggle, as well as the negative thoughts I was combating.’ 

Danny, now 19, and still trying to make it in football, is sharing his story as part of a new initiative offering young players like him a chance at a different career.

Created by Impact Films Academy, it hopes to give them a better future by providing opportunities in filmmaking and has collaborated with the Mind mental health charity for its first project – a short film called Kicks.  

Thankfully, the narrative around men’s football is slowly shifting from an era where players were urged to bottle up their emotion.

However, for many, not fast enough. Teen prodigy Joel Darlington – who had trials with Manchester United FC and represented Wales at youth level – took his own life in 2019 after injury halted his dreams.

Meanwhile, former players such as Marvin Sordell – who attempted suicide aged 23 due to the pressure he felt in his career – have since encouraged men to seek help.

In Kicks, Danny has utilised his experience and skills as a football choreographer for the short drama, which also features former footballer Barry Silkman. 

Barry played for several professional football clubs in the UK during 1970s and 80s, including Manchester City, Crystal Palace and Leyton Orient, and went on to represent some of the most successful football players in the world, including David Villa an Demba Ba, as an agent.  

‘The biggest pressure for me was probably more towards the end of my career as you realise in your mid-30s you’ve actually got to do something other than football,’ he tells Metro. 

‘I felt no pressure at the start of my career. I was released from QPR, Fulham and then Hereford as a young player. My only support system was my mum and dad but for me, that was enough. 

‘I was always very strong both physically and mentally from a young boy. It was probably being raised in the East End of London and having an incredibly strong mother that helped.

‘Also a big part of that was that neither of my parents put me under any kind of pressure to be a footballer, unlike a lot today who push their kids from a very young age sometimes as young as seven. That’s all wrong. I didn’t have any of that.’

Premier League football academies allow up to 250 boys to participate, making it possible for as many as 5,000 to be involved in the system at any given time.

However, according to Premier League statistics, less than 0.5% of those who enter the football academies at the age of nine will ever play for the first team.

Barry, 71, adds: ‘The biggest challenge is to get your first professional contract, no question. Clubs now take players from eight-years-old and that in my opinion is outrageous and should be stopped. 

‘13 or 14 should be the earliest any club can take a player and all clubs’ academies for under 13s should be closed down. Let kids be kids. It will help like you can’t believe. It’s football’s biggest problem.’

A damning statistic in author Michael Calvin’s 2017 book No Hunger in Paradise: The Players. The Journey. The Dream, shows of the 1.5 million players in organised youth football in England, around 180 – or 0.012% – will make it as a professional player at a Premier League club. 

That means most will have to find an alternative career despite many having dedicated their lives to the game.

Able Kpogho, 21, stars in Kicks as Patrick – a young footballer who is struggling after being dropped by his football team. 

The young player had a few unsuccessful trials at football academies, including Barnet, but despite this setback, remained determined to pursue his passion for the game. 

After receiving an offer to play football overseas on a scholarship in America, he declined it due to insufficient funding for tuition. He is now an actor, model and social media content creator, with more than 140,000 followers on TikTok.

‘Young footballers are under the pressure that you have to be in an academy by the age of 16 or else you’re not going to make it,’ Able tells Metro. 

‘Since many successful footballers are from the club’s academy and already in the system from a young age, it hints that you have to go down that route as well, but in reality, there are other options such as non-league when you’re older. 

‘One way is knowing that everyone makes mistakes and you too will make them. Your favourite footballers make errors daily but it’s about how you react and pick yourself up from the situation. 

‘No one is expecting you to have 100% pass completion or success rate in front of goal because that’s near impossible. We all fell in love with the sport because it’s fun so – as well as winning in some situations – that has to be your primary objective.’

Danny says that maintaining a healthy mindset helped him deal with the setbacks he had in football. 

‘Things I do to relieve stress when a game is approaching include making sure I prepare myself well so that I feel confident,’ he explains. ‘I also say good words of affirmation to contribute to me having a positive mindset when going into the game as this can help with the pressure and stress and in turn this helps my performance. 

‘I would say to view every setback as a lesson rather than failure and to keep a good routine in place to ensure structure which helps with feeling uneasy. 

‘My main support system was from my family rather than the clubs as it is my family who gets me through tough times.’

The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) provides comprehensive support through various services, including advice and guidance, emphasising continued personal development beyond the pitch. 

It also offers financial support and guidance to help players plan for their future careers, whether through accredited academic or vocational courses.

Paul Raven, the Head of Personal Development at the PFA, tells Metro: ‘We understand the profound impact that being released from a football club can have on young individuals. 

‘It’s a time filled with emotional challenges. Beyond dealing a blow to a long-held dream of becoming a professional footballer, being released often has a far-reaching effect on a player’s personal identity. 

‘It coincides with the loss of structured routines and the close-knit social circles nurtured within the club environment. It’s also not uncommon for players to grapple with a feeling that they’ve let down the family and friends who’ve invested in their journey.

He adds: ‘The football community must take an active role in managing the expectations of young players and their families, especially within the club environment. It’s vital to instil a broader perspective, emphasising the significance of education, personal growth, and alternative career paths alongside their football aspirations.’

Able, who makes his debut as an actor in Kicks, says: “A lot of boys can relate to the story of my character Patrick, especially when only 1% actually make it to be footballers. I saw the essence in him somewhat in me.’

While Danny adds: ‘Working on this film has allowed me to reflect on my football journey, which is still ongoing.’ 

When talking about the impact of the film, Barry says it’s vital that the people get to see what life as a young footballer is really like. 

‘The public never sees that side of it,’ he explains. ‘Someone with all those dreams and hopes, walks in believing they’re about to get a new contract and the manager tells them ‘very sorry, but you’re being released’. It’s a major letdown.

‘If a player gets released and he hasn’t got another club to go to, they should stay in contact and make sure they’re okay.’

Alex Bushill, is Head of Media and PR at Mind and says the charity is proud to have advised on the film.

‘Kicks brings to life some of the key issues affecting the mental health of young footballers. We know the power football can have as a platform to raise awareness about mental health and to break down taboos that prevent people from talking about it. 

He adds: ‘From our own research, we also know that when mental health issues are depicted on screen it can help people, particularly young people, feel less alone and be more likely to talk to someone about how they are feeling.’

Kicks also stars Rebecca Middlemist as India and Femi Ogunjobi as Dad and was filmed with the support of Old Finchleians Club and Dexters Adventure Playground. You can watch a behind the scenes video here.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

Share your views in the comments below.

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Empowering, strong, inspiring, game-changing.

These are just some of the words that describe the women being championed in Metro.co.uk’s Sisterhood List.

Echoing this year’s Black History Month theme of ‘Saluting our Sisters’, we wanted to acknowledge a collection of Black women across the UK who have lifted up, opened doors and advocated – not only for themselves but for their sisters and their community.

The list is by no means exhaustive. There are countless who have greatly impacted their communities and backed themselves when no one else would.

So here, we salute the success stories of just a few of the amazing Black women in Britain who are paving the way for generations to come.

Brenda Edwards

Singer, actress, and panellist on ITV daytime talk show Loose Women, Brenda rose to fame on the X Factor in 2005 before venturing into musicals and starring in the West End in hits like Chicago, We Will Rock You, Carousel, and Hairspray.

But her world came crashing down when last year, Brenda’s son, Jamal Edwards, creator of SBTV, died at the age of 31. The influential mogul had been awarded an MBE for his work which helped UK music acts including Dave, Stormzy, Jessie J and Ed Sheeran, who counted him as his best friend.

Brenda shared on Loose Women a private letter King Charles had sent to her, in which he expressed his sorrow and deepest condolences. Since Jamal’s death, she has set up a trust in his name to support disadvantaged young people, providing a sanctuary for the homeless and creating a community academy and she won a Hero Award following her campaigning work last year.

Brenda has spoken on Loose Women about her experiences with domestic abuse which left her ‘fearing for her life’ after an abusive ex tracked her down and she also raises money and awareness for various cancer charities after being diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2016.

Fats Timbo

With almost three million followers on TikTok alone, disability campaigner Fats is a social media star with clout. Standing at four feet tall, the comedian and author used to be nervous about going out in public places but has built up her confidence as well as her voice to raise awareness. 

She was born with dwarfism but prefers to use the term ‘little people’, and feels the former term doesn’t sound ‘human.’

As a child, Fats saw herself as ‘cursed’ as she faced insults and jibes about her height. But as she grew older, her confidence emerged.

She has an army of followers online – bolstered by her appearance on Channel 4’s Undateables – and works to improve visibility for the Black disabled community. This includes encouraging brands to use disabled people in their advertising. 

‘There was no representation [for me] – I felt so alone when I was younger,’ Fats told the BBC last year.

‘But now, I’m representing, baby!’

Lady Phyll

Known by those who work with her as a ‘force to be reckoned with’, political activist Lady Phyll has spent a career campaigning for LGBTQIA+ rights around the world as one of Britain’s most prominent lesbian activists.

Her work began in secondary school when she found herself getting repeatedly kicked out of the classroom for asking too many questions. She didn’t understand why everyone was being taught about dead kings and queens as opposed to the legacy of slavery and the history of Africa.

Phyllis Opoku-Gyimah, also known as Dr Lady Phyll, co-founded UK Black Pride, the biggest LGBTQIA+ celebration of Black people in Europe and the event has grown year-on-year since its inception 18 years ago. Last year UK Black Pride was attended by 25,000 people making it Europe’s largest celebration for LGBTQI+ people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American and Middle Eastern descent.

When she decided to set it up because Pride events felt ‘exclusive and unwelcoming’, Lady Phyll was told she’d ‘never get anywhere’, but now it is bigger, brighter and bolder than ever and this year included a family zone for the first time, ensuring its inclusive legacy continues for future generations.

Lady (so people don’t mistake her for a ‘bloke named Phil’) Phyll is also executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust, an organisation fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights around the world. She was offered an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list in 2016 in recognition of her work but she politely refused it in rejection of ‘colonialism and its toxic and enduring legacy’.

A trustee at Stonewall and member of the Trades Union Congress race relations committee, Lady Phyll has also won numerous awards for her work.

Liv Little

Writer, filmmaker and scriptwriter Liv is founder of the trailblazing gal-dem, a website and formerly print magazine run primarily by Black women.

Liv set up gal-dem in 2015 while studying at university because she was frustrated by the lack of diversity in the media and because she ‘wanted to create the sort of channel that I always wished existed’. Liv became its CEO at just 21, a role she stepped down from in 2020.

The magazine and podcast championed the perspectives of women and non-binary people of colour and helped many young writers launch their careers in a largely white, male industry, and boasted around 333,000 online visitors by 2021. gal-dem folded earlier this year due to financial instability caused by Covid and the economic downturn.

Liv was named a ‘new suffragette’ by Vogue magazine in recognition of her fight to empower women, has worked in India as a Health and Livelihoods Coordinator with Restless Development and has also championed Women for Refugee Women.

She has recently published her hotly anticipated novel Rosewater, a queer love story, published by superstar John Legend’s imprint Get Lifted Books. Speaking earlier this year, John said: ‘We want to elevate unrepresented voices and I feel like Rosewater is the perfect book to launch with.’

Dawn Butler

Dawn is a member of the Labour Party and is currently the MP for Brent Central, a position she has held continuously since 2015. 

She’s no stranger to making her voice heard – she was famously booted from the House of Commons after calling Boris Johnson a liar – and is committed to tackling racism, sexism and other inequalities in the UK.

Dawn is only the third Black woman to have ever been elected as an MP. She has struggled with racism in Parliament and, in 2019, was even mistaken for a cleaner. 

Writing for Metro.co.uk previously, Dawn said: ‘When it comes to race and equality we need to continually renew and progress because as soon as you take your foot off the pedal rights begin to roll back.

‘In this current political climate, I fear and worry that further rights are being rolled back, and this disrespect and intolerance of others is uncomfortably spreading.’

Following her successful battle with cancer in 2021, Dawn backed research by Barts Charity that would increase people of colour’s chances of surviving cancer. 

She’s currently working with Metro on a new podcast to encourage more women to get potentially life–saving mammograms.

Her recently released book, A Purposeful Life by Dawn Butler, explores her experiences with racism growing up and her drive to create change.

Patricia Bright

Patricia is a pioneer of the UK beauty community. She started her YouTube channel almost 13 years ago – using a shoebox to prop up her camera in her shared house in Manchester. 

Patricia had been inspired by her time in school where she’d style other girls’ hair. She soon realised she might as well impart her knowledge to people online. 

With an accounting and finance degree under her belt – she worked on growing her brand and worked with several large make-up, fashion and haircare companies.

Patricia is celebrated as one of the first Black British YouTubers to gain one million subscribers.

In 2020, she teamed up with make-up company Essence to ensure Black women could get a foundation shade that matched them perfectly. For years before, women of colour had searched in vain through limited options. Foundation for Black women would often have unflattering undertones or be impossible to match with skin tones.

Patricia also founded The Break Social to help women grow in their personal and professional lives. She interviews inspiring guests and offers advice on relationships, finance and empowerment.

Tolly T

Tolly T is one-third of The Receipts Podcast, which began in 2016 and sees more than 100,000 weekly listeners. The trio act as agony aunts, providing listeners with advice as well as cultural commentary and celebrity gossip.

Tolly T (real name Tolani Shoneye) was working as a journalist when she started the show, but when a male podcast host tweeted that their project wouldn’t work with women at the helm, Tolly and co-hosts Audrey Indome and Milena Sanchez quit their jobs and went full time.

As Tolly says: ‘There is pretty much a podcast for everything, but before we started there weren’t many that had the voices and stories of black and brown women in the UK. Our stories, our accents, our twangs were not represented in the podcast world. So we decided to do something about it.’

Their fresh humour, honesty and occasional drinking games were a hit and the show stands out in a largely white, largely middle-aged industry. The award-winning broadcast has sold out live shows and its debut book 2021 Keep The Receipts was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

Tolly also stars in Netflix’s 10/10 Would Recommend podcast series and continues to write for a number of publications, has produced and hosted on the BBC, appeared on The Big Breakfast for Channel 4 and has been part of various writers rooms.

Lydia Amoah

Lydia Amoah ‘still pinches herself’ as she leads the way in transforming workplaces for people of all backgrounds. 

The entrepreneur, based in Surrey, was once told she didn’t have ‘normal skin’ by a shop assistant.

In response, she set up the Black Pound Report to tackle how businesses treat their customers and explore the lack of representation in advertising of Black, Asian and Multi-Ethnic consumers.

The report, which began in 2018, looks into employment statistics to see how diverse and inclusive companies really are.

She later launched Backlight – a culture change agency – off the back of the success of the Black Pound Report. The company that helps companies become more inclusive.

She’s flown across the world to give talks and interviews and has helped thousands of people gain confidence to access career paths they felt weren’t for them.

Lydia was inspired by her parents – who emigrated to the UK from Ghana – to make a difference in society.

Her family faced racism and prejudice when they first arrived in the country and fought to be accepted. 

Lydia recently shared her inspiring story with Metro, saying: ‘I still pinch myself when acknowledging that I’m the first Black woman in the United Kingdom to conduct the most comprehensive study exploring the Black, Asian and Multi-Ethnic consumer spending power in the UK. It’s never been achieved before.

‘I am teaching something new about understanding, communicating, and being authentic without being tokenistic. I do feel so proud and honoured to be in this position.

Toni Tone

British Nigerian writer Toni is one of the stars of Highlife, the UK’s first Black-focused reality TV show which followed the lives and loves of a group of ambitious, glamorous young British West Africans – the self-proclaimed ‘Black Kardashians’.

Toni is well known for her inspiring and thought-provoking Twitter content, which has been re-shared by the likes of Hailey Bieber, Demi Lovato, Khloe Kardashian and Oprah Magazine. She has a following of 400k across the platforms, and regularly writes about love and relationships, with her tweet on ‘green flags’ going viral.

Her tweets caught the eye of HarperCollins who awarded her a book deal and her 2021 book, I Wish I Knew This Earlier: Lessons of Love, was an instant hit, debuting at number three on The Sunday Times bestsellers list. The book took an autobiographical look into how growing up in an environment of emotional unavailability and high stress can impact adult relationships.

Toni is the host of Radio 1Xtra’s Money Moves Podcast and an ambassador for Young Women’s Trust, representing women aged 16-30 who are struggling to live on little to no pay in England and Wales.

Clo and Tinuke

Technically two people, we know, but the amazing work Clo Abe and Tinuke Awe have achieved with the charity they founded together meant we had to include them both.

Now mothers of two, it was in 2018 when the pair first heard the shocking statisticthat Black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. A year later, they found Five X More, a movement dedicated to lowering this figure. 

Within two years, the group’s petition to the government asking them to improve Black women’s mortality rates received 187k signatures. It was debated in parliament, which marked a historic chapter in the fight for equal rights. 

Clo and Tinuke’s success in taking on the Government had come in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement.

Both women have no plans to slow down in their work – and recently created ‘Colourful Birth Wallets’ for black pregnant women in London hospitals. The packs include vital information on pregnancy and key details on maternity rights.

And their campaigning has paid off – Black women are now 20% less likely to die in childbirth. However there is still a long way to go, which is why they created the Black Maternal Health awareness week in a bid to keep their momentum going and save the lives of black mothers.

Speaking earlier this year, Awe said: ‘The statistics can be really scary, but our charity isn’t here to fearmonger. We don’t want women to be scared, we just want to give them advice on how they can be empowered to advocate for themselves.’

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Five years after his father died, Justin Hardy received six sacks of documents that had sat in the loft of his old family home in the Midlands for 50 years.

Among them were scripts, photos, story boards and personal letters all relating to one film: The Wicker Man.

Although a dud when it first came out in 1973, the move has since gained cult status, with Empire Magazine even calling it ‘the Best British horror film ever made’. A recent re-release of the movie won five-star reviews. 

The film was the directorial debut of Justin’s father Robin Hardy, which he bluntly says ‘f***ed up my family.’

Set on a fictional Scottish island, the story tells of a devoutly Christian police officer (Edward Woodward), who, investigating the disappearance of a local girl, is shocked to discover a town of dancing pagans led by charismatic cult leader Lord Summerisle (played by horror movie icon Christopher Lee).

One of the pagans Willow MacGregor (Britt Ekland) attempts to seduce the officer, who has unknowingly been lured to the island for a sacrificial ceremony. 

From phallic sweets and child torture, to eerily beautiful scenery and a movie ending that still shocks to the core – it was a film made to unsettle the audience from the off.

However British Lion, the studio which had bankrolled it, hated the finished product.

They dismissed it as one of the worst movies in history and refused to promote it. In the months after it was released, Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings, Dracula, Star Wars), who played Lord Summerisle, called critics on the phone, begging them to come to a screening, even offering to pay for their tickets.

It was a flop. But then it wasn’t.

Now, fifty years on, Justin and his brother Dominic Hardy, are taking another look at why the film initially bombed only to end up being revered by movie buffs – and also give insight through their documentary Wickermania!, into the chaotic, heartbreaking impact it had on their family.  

Prior to his infamous movie, Robin had already forged a successful career in advertising, Justin tells Metro. They lived in ‘a very nice house’ in Belgravia with his wife Caroline, Justin and his sister Arabella.

However, after the film’s catastrophic reception, Caroline, who had invested all her money in it, was saddled with the debts while Robin packed his suitcase and left for the US in 1974. It was reported that the director was forced to sleep on a bench in Central Park on his arrival in New York. 

Before he left, Robin came to see his son at school to say goodbye, telling Justin he was leaving and giving him a Saint Christopher, wishing him protection in his travels.

‘That was rather dramatic,’ remember Justin, who now works as a historian filmmaker. ‘Then he was off and that was that.’

With no alternative and no money, Caroline had to sell the London house and move the family the midlands. For the next four years, Justin assumed his dad was dead.

 ‘My mother was trying to get some response from him, and eventually had to divorce him on the grounds of not having heard from him; he explains. 

‘My sister had to change her name from Arabella to Joanna in order to be able to survive a Banbury comprehensive. It was a pretty big, pretty seismic, social change. All these years I have had people saying to me: “God. You’re so lucky. Your dad made The Wicker Man.” But that’s not quite how I see it.

‘It was a very sad time. Because, apart from everything else, I’m going: “Well, where’s Dad? Are we going to see him tomorrow? Are we going to see him next week?” And my mother said: “I have no idea. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know how to reach him.”.

‘I guess it wasn’t a particularly happy childhood view of your dad, adds Justin, who lives in Oxfordshire. ‘It felt like “Where’s the protection? You’ve left my mother with all this?” And she got very ill. She did effectively turn to the bottle and died of liver cirrhosis. The f***-up of this film led to to a downward spiral for the Hardys’.’  

Five years after he vanished, Robin returned to the UK, flying over to watch his son act in a play, clutching an article about how well the film was doing in San Francisco. 

Justin remembers: ‘I’m not even sure he gave me any notice that he was coming. He was like that. And so at the end of it, I was having my makeup taken off and this man appeared and said: “Hello. I’m your father.” I thought – I was rather glad he didn’t tell me before I went onstage.’

Was Justin pleased to see him? Did he forgive him for deserting him? ‘The psychological truth is that you would have thought a child would say: “Hey, I’m not talking to you. Where have you been all this time?” but the reality is, you don’t do that,’ he says. ‘It’s like you have a second opportunity to meet your dad. And all you want to do is please your dad so he doesn’t go away again. So he didn’t get any pushback from me for a number of years.’

Justin learned that the movie had received a better reception across universities and American film festivals, and people began to see the movie in a new light. 

Soon, it was revived as a cult classic – but the damage it had already done to Robin’s family was  irreparable.

‘I had to grow up with my sister with a very, very bitter and disappointed, quite heavily-drinking mother,’ remembers Justin. ‘When she died in 1984 in some ways, it was a sort of merciful ending to what had been a sort of horrible endurance.’ 

Robin eventually had eight children by six different women. As Justin explains: ‘He had form for having a child, being married to a bit of an heiress, the money starts to run out and he moves on.’ 

One of these children was Dominic Hardy, who didn’t properly get to know his dad until 1969 when his mum took him to the UK from their home in Canada. 

In the subsequent years, Dominic would fly as an unaccompanied child and spend three to six weeks with Robin and his siblings at summertime or at Christmas.

Dominic, a professor of art history in Montreal, remembers: ‘I discovered this whole family. Justin and Arabella were the youngest at the time. The summer of 1970, when seven of us were all together for the one and only time, was a mythical time for me. It had such an impact on me. I think the others felt the same way. We really sought each other out in adulthood and made up for lost years.’

Dominic’s memory of Robin was that he was a ‘flamboyant, charming and in many ways, admirable person. And absolutely fascinating.’ 

He didn’t meet him for the first time until he was six years old, his first memory of being taken on a day trip to a planetarium, the park and being bought a train set, the pair of them together on the floor of his bedroom setting up the tracks.

‘That was the only memory I had of seeing him with my mum,’ says Dominic. ‘I had a lot of admiration for him and a lot of emulation. But also worry too. because just before I was 11 he suffered a heart attack, which nearly killed him.’

Justin adds: ‘That was a big moment in our family’s history. We all thought he was going to die. He started writing letters to us all. You’re not supposed to be able to make a film if you’ve had a heart attack because you can’t get insured.’ 

Robin was just 41 at the time, and lucky to survive to finish the film.

Dominic was mesmerised by the screening when the movie first came out. 

Just 12 years old, he was shocked by its ending and stunned by the sexualised scenes. 

Fifty years later, he has seen the film with fresh eyes, thanks to the discovery of endless paperwork left in boxes in that midlands attic. When the Hardy’s house was sold, the documents remained – until lockdown, when the buyer approached Justin to return them.

Robin had died in 2016 and when Justin was offered the documents five years later, he rejected them, asking – why dredge up the past? However, following counsel from others, he eventually accepted the boxes and spent time looking through them with Dominic who flew over to the UK from Canada to help. 

Their findings have since inspired the pair to make a documentary. ‘We want to tell the story of the making of ‘The Wicker Man’ from within, from what these documents tell us,’ explains Dominic.’It’s a unique perspective.’ 

 Justin adds: ‘It was a treasure trove and it took a long time to go through. It was extraordinary to see the letters from Christopher Lee saying, “I think I may have found this project”. From Shaffer saying, “I want to support you to direct your first film”. There’s an extraordinary amount of written material that pertains to every stage of the making of an independent movie.’

However, it’s been a difficult discovery.

‘I frequently wish I had never gone through it,’ admits Justin. ‘History is a strange thing. It’s difficult to know if you’re reading a partial view. [But] we want to find forgiveness. We want to find reparation. We want to find resolution. 

Every child wants to find that. And if you don’t, you’re only damaging yourself.

‘[Robin Hardy] is a man that was multisided – this is a film that is multisided, thats got good and bad in it. But do you know what? So many people love it and I found there really is a love for my dad among Wicker Man fans. And I’ve tried to catch some of that.’

Wickermania! will be premiering in 2024.

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At 29, I’m a little on the young side to be having a dose of botulinum toxin – often known by the famous brand name, Botox.

However, anti-wrinkle injections are becoming ever-popular among the younger generations, from the likes of 22-year-old Love Island alums to Ariana Grande, 30, who shared recently that she’d had Botox and fillers in the past. For a while now, I too have been eyeing up the needle.

In 2021, Botox-style injections were banned for under-18s, after government findings estimated that 41,000 treatments had been given to those below that age in 2020.

But that hasn’t dulled its popularity. In 2022, members of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine carried out 315,000 individual procedures of botulinum toxin injections. With around 8% of patients aged 18 to 24, that still equals over 25,000 procedures for that age bracket.

At London aesthetic clinic, Tweak East, I’m told by co-founder Anika Soczywko, that while most of their clients are over 30, the youngest person they’ve ever injected was just 24 – a special case, she says, as the woman in question had lived a ‘hard, fun life.’

‘We usually turn people away if they are under 25, they have no evidence of static lines or their skin is still plump,’ Anika tells me.

‘This plumpness is proof of collagen cells still being active, which tend to go dormant later in the 20s.’

That being said, she adds that it’s ‘quite rare’ for them to have to turn anyone away, with most of their clients being at least 27.

‘On the exceptional occasion where we would treat someone younger than this, we would take into account how much their static lines are affecting them,’ she explains.

‘Every client has a different story, with different reasons, which could lead to the early onset of fine lines. It’s the responsibility of the injector to talk this through thoroughly with them.’

While some of their twentysomething clients seek out fillers to get rid of the early signs of fine lines, others say it’s a preventative measure – although there’s debate as to whether Botox can indeed prevent wrinkles further down the line.

Emily Ruse first got anti-wrinkle injections at the tender age of just 20.

At the time she worked at Illuminate Skin Clinic, which proved an incentive as she got her treatments at a lower cost.

‘I loved the effects of Botox,’ she admits. ‘It has that instant gratification as you only need one treatment to see that it’s having an effect, whereas skin treatments require more time and commitment.’

Emily continued having the injections until she was 23, but eventually gave them up to focus on other long-term anti-ageing products, such as microneedling, HydraFacials, and SPF.

Now 25, she aims to do this for the next five years, then says she will evaluate other options once she hits 30.

‘I believe that working on my overall skin quality and boosting my collagen levels is more proactive at this age, and will prevent the amount of corrective work that I need to do in the future,’ explains Emily, a Kent-based director of Bloom & Beyond Studio.

29-year-old Georgia Eather tells me that she first started getting injections in her forehead two years ago, in a bid to treat lines that had already appeared.

She spends £195 a session once or twice a year at The Aesthetics Club in Notting Hill, adding that she’s ‘really happy with the results’.

‘I started noticing some deep lines in between my brows about two years ago and thought about getting Botox to treat these,’ recalls Georgia, a PR manager.

‘I’m conscious that I’m young, so I get minimal amounts of products across spaced-out sessions, but I do love the confidence that it gives me. I’ll definitely keep getting it.’

Now, I’m staring down the barrel of 30.

Caught between the unrealistic pressures of social media and the desire to simply look my best, I thought it was a good time to ask the professionals some questions.

The first? Whether or not it was too soon for me to start getting serious with anti-wrinkle injections.

’30 tends to be a milestone for people wanting to take more action surrounding their self-image,’ Anika explains to me. ‘Many are starting to develop fine lines which can be seen at rest. It’s a great time to start anti-wrinkle treatments, as this category of clients tends to see a much better result versus those who have much deeper-set wrinkles.’

It’s nice to know that I’m not alone – or totally off-base – in being curious about Botox at this age.

‘For the younger individuals,’ Anika adds, ‘we are aiming for a lighter preventative treatment and clients will return for further treatments often between the six and 12-month mark.’

In comparison, people in their 40s and 50s tend to get it every three to four months.

I’m informed at aesthetics clinic Tweak East that one concern with starting anti-wrinkle treatments young is that people can build up a resistance if their practitioners are not careful. There are also dangers of the muscles in the face beginning to waste away.

‘Botulinum toxin works by relaxing the muscles, in this case the muscles of facial expression,’ adds Anika. ‘If we over-treat and the muscles are never used or exercised, then they will atrophy.

‘In severe cases, this can result in skin laxity [aka loss of firmness and sagging] around the affected muscles.’

When asked her thoughts on wrinkle prevention, Anika tells me: ‘It’s a fine balance between starting [anti-wrinkle treatments] unnecessarily early and potentially leaving it until lines are deep.

‘Remember prevention should also be underpinned by other factors including diet, hydration, avoidance of smoking and direct sunlight, and crucially an excellent skincare routine – SPF is compulsory every day of the year.

‘It is also of utmost importance that a thorough consultation is incorporated to ensure a tailored treatment plan for each individual. One size doesn’t fit all.’

Speaking of her own Botox experience, Georgia says: ‘I had a full consultation before any work was done to make sure my reasons for getting it were clear, and I wasn’t being unduly influenced or had body dysmorphia.

‘I get Botox for me and for no one else – and I think that’s an important distinction.’

It’s still hard not to feel a little bit worried about such undue influence when people who’ve only just entered their 20s are worried about wrinkles. I made it clear at Tweak East that I would be very receptive to being told that actually, I need no improvement and that my skin was perfect just the way it is.

This turned out to not quite be the case.

They took a good look at me and said that, while a lot of my fine lines are dynamic (meaning they only show up when my face moves in a certain way) there was a little static (meaning it sticks around when my face isn’t moving) line or two on my forehead.

They explained that anti-wrinkle injections don’t turn back time at the jab sites so much as stop it, thus masking dynamic lines and keeping existing static lines from getting worse.

So, with that in mind, they suggested putting a small amount of botulinum toxin there as well as in my strong frown.

When the injecting started, I was a bit nervous about the needle, but I needn’t have been – it’s no exaggeration to say you can barely feel it, and it’s all over before you know it.

Watching it kick in over the next few weeks was interesting – at one point I could barely frown, and only the outer parts of my brows would raise. It took some getting used to, but I’ll admit I didn’t miss my old frown or forehead very much.

The date of my appointment was 14 May, and by 5 July, I could see it wearing off big time. Thankfully I’ve got a fringe, so I’m more than happy to wait the recommended six months to a year before going back for more.

My overall experience at the clinic was so nice (almost too easy – I can see why these anti-wrinkle treatments are so popular) and I won’t be shy about going back for other procedures in the future.

However, one word of advice Emily has for people who might be interested in trying anti-wrinkle treatments like she did, is to not cut corners with the cost – if you can’t afford it, not doing it at all is far better than going to a shoddy clinic.

‘Don’t put a price tag on your face,’ she stresses. ‘You’ve just got the one!’

Do you have a story to share?

Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.

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In the bustling town of Asni, the rooftops were once full of activity. Especially in the boarding houses of a girls’ education charity where groups would read, chatter, work or sing.

Now the rooftops are silent. If they are even there at all.

It’s been just over two weeks since a powerful 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Morocco, killing over 3,000 people, tearing buildings apart and exposing inhabitants to the cold nighttime air of the High Atlas mountains.

Some of the house mothers of Education For All (EFA) were in their boarding houses, ready for the girls to start of term, when the walls cracked and the bricks fell.

The UK charity has been operating a network of six residences in the High Atlas region since 2007, housing young women from poor, remote villages. During the week they live in the accommodation – meals and resources provided – and go to local schools, then return home to their villages and families at the weekend.

Years of hard work have gone into building trust with the local communities.

In the charity’s early days, a respected local elder and member of the committee went from door to door to convince mothers and fathers that their daughter would be well cared for by the house mothers.

In more recent years, the houses have had to turn away more girls than they could accept, with numbers reaching around 250 across the six houses. 

I can personally attest to the care and amazing bonds within the boarding houses, having visited three in Asni for a journalism project in October 2022.

The sheer warmth and generosity of everyone I met – and the taste of countless mint teas – has stayed with me since. As have the hopes and dreams of the girls I encountered; future doctors, nurses, teachers, business owners, tourism guides.

And while removed from the situation, the wait for news of the girls was still painful. Waking up to the news of an earthquake in Morocco made my stomach drop, finding out Asni was one of the worst hit places broke my heart.

The boarding houses are like family to these young women. The girls are sisters.

‘The house mothers call the girls their daughters. These houses are their homes,’ CEO Sonia Omar tells Metro. It’s why the wait for news of the girls’ safety was ‘extremely distressing’ for everyone involved. Some villages are so remote that there is no signal and others were cut off by dangerous roads and rockfalls.

‘So despite having a team working around the clock to mark each person safe, it took over one agonising week for a final list. Unfortunately, one girl did not survive.’

After witnessing the dynamics of the houses first hand, it’s not surprising that even in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake – having lost homes and family members of their own – the house mothers were there for EFA.

Omar says one slept outside of a boarding house for two nights to ensure no one would enter via the now gaping holes in the walls. Such is the loyalty the organisation elicits; ‘but of course, we said for her safety, she just shouldn’t stay there.’ 

Cruelly, the six houses that EFA run are in the locations surrounding the epicentre of the earthquake. The damage is extensive. It’s currently thought that four of the six houses will need to be demolished and rebuilt in their entirety.

After 17 years of work, it’s not something the charity can afford – monetarily, or in terms of progress. Omar credits EFA with ‘transforming entire communities by obstructing cycles of illiteracy.’

In the mountainous region, poor infrastructure means some villages are only reachable by foot and schools are too difficult to access. It’s even tougher for girls who face pressure to marry and stay at home. Omar believes that ensuring girls receive an education can transform their lives and that of their families, as they become educated mothers. 

But despite being in those remote villages, surrounded by the ruins of their homes and having lost family members, every effort is being made to get them back to school. EFA’s crisis appeal has already amassed just over £200,000, but this is just a fraction of what the charity needs to achieve both short and long term goals.

They estimate they will need £1 million to rebuild the houses and even more for short term care, psychological support and lodgings.

The Moroccan government has now indicated that while all schools in High Atlas remain closed, students will be relocated to near Marrakech.

In an Instagram update, Omar said the charity is on to the ‘next phase’ of finding temporary accommodation for the girls. But she adds: ‘the government proposed accommodation is not suitable for many reasons and we want to honour the trust of the families who want the girls under our supervision’. 

For Omar, a worry bigger than that of temporary accommodation is the fear that the progress made in the ‘sustainable solution’ of education will slide. She acknowledges that ‘it’s always been harder, but this is going to escalate the difficulties and, potentially, young people might not even prioritise education. Now they’ve got so much to do in their communities. Helping their families. Grieving.’

Losing momentum on the progress they’ve made is a tangible fear.

Despite the sheer level of rebuilding work facing not just the charity, but the entire region, Omar has found glimmers of hope. And, she says, proof of their project’s success, rattling off a list of former EFA students now leading relief efforts in their own villages.

Asma Ait Taleb, who boarded with EFA for four years before attending university in Marrakech, was in her village of Ouigrane when the earthquake struck.

While her family house was mercifully undamaged, the rest of her village didn’t fare as well and many lost their lives. She credits the skills she had the opportunity to learn because of EFA – namely becoming proficient in English and French – for helping to bring aid.

She says she was able to ‘reach out to a bigger community because it’s not like when you just speak Arabic’. Asma describes the situation in her village as ‘good’ and she is hopeful of rebuilding her life there.

EFA is also full of hope. They say they need to ‘start again’ and are realistic that their operations might have to change.

In a video update on their Instagram page, founder Mike McHugo said ‘some of the girls have become orphans, and what are we going to do about that? I said we would have to make one of the houses an orphanage.’

However, with changes and rebuilding comes cost. It’s why Omar describes the fund as ‘critical’, but adds she is certain they ‘are not going to wait a year before we are supporting the girls with education.’

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There’s no doubt about it, the ‘spiritual service industry’ is big business.

In fact, it’s making megabucks. Worth $3.6billion last year alone, it’s only predicted to increase.

No longer seen as fun seaside pier fodder, whether you’re after an aura cleanse, tarot read or psychic encounter, you can find it with the tap of a button, any time, anywhere – and for any price.

It’s no surprise, considering there are currently 3.8billion views on TikTok for #astrology, 12.6billion views for #astrologytiktok, and 74.9billion views for #zodiacsigns.

With Gen Zers and millennials most closely associated with this the astrology revival, 43% of Gen Z women even said they would make a big decision based on astrology.

But it’s not just us ‘civilians’ who love a bit of spiritually. Gemma Collins famously spent over a £1,000 pounds on a psychic after a breakup, in the hope she and her ex would get back together, while Kendall Jenner and Taylor Swift love a bit of tarot card action. Then there’s Anya Taylor-Joy of Queen’s gambit fame, who even carrries her own cards and crystals around with her.

But there’s one spiritual practice in particular that is making massive social media waves: tarot readings.

On TikTok, practitioners charge set fees for card readings, however a ‘live’ video – which is more for their collective following – is free, although donations are more than welcome, the audiences are told.

Viveca Chow, 28, is a Broadway musical performer living in New York and has paid a TikTok tarot reader ‘multiple times’.

She considers herself ‘picky and cautious of who I get a reading from’ and these days she has a go-to practitioner that she uses to help guide her through life when things get tricky.

‘I came across her TikTok live where she gives free mini readings to viewers,’ Viveca tells Metro.co.uk.

‘I happened to get picked for one of those readings after staying on the live for a while, and she said something about me being in an upcoming advert. The next week, I was part of a Pepsi commercial.

‘I was very surprised when it happened, but comforted in a way. It was cool to have something come into fruition that felt like it was mine. 

‘I actually didn’t make the link when it first happened, but when I remembered, I was like “Oh my god!”.

‘That prediction got me very curious about booking a private reading with her, so I did.

‘Overall, she was very positive which is why I like her, and everything seems to be aligned with what she’s said so far.

‘For example, she told me that she “is seeing a lot of dollar signs” during my readings, and that money was incoming. I’m very happy to say that I’ve had a really nice steady increase of money and I’m at the best financial phase I ever have been in my entire life.

‘But she does also give me cautious advice, such as warning me that there are friends in my life who are a bit envious of me.

‘She said she sensed female energy, and it wasn’t that they’re malicious or a bad person, but it was a lot of insecurity. She told me to take note of this and show the friend some tender love and care. That turned out to be true, and it informed how I treated that person.’

Viveca isn’t the only one to have made TikTok her go-to for Tarot. A spokesperson for the social media platform told Metro.co.uk: ‘Tarot card readings have taken TikTok by storm. The #tarot hashtag alone boasts 65billion views. Beyond the cards and stars, users are exploring the power of crystals, with #crystaltok achieving 7.1billion views.’

However, similar stats can be found on the likes of Instagram too, and platforms including YouTube and Etsy are also hugely popular with tarot users.

Viveca says she donates to her reader’s TikTok lives intermittently – usually around $10 (£8) – on top of the cost of private sessions which are $30 (£24) for 20 minutes. She does this on an ad hoc basis, and has been as of three years ago.

‘I do think it’s worth it. She is the only spiritual guide on TikTok I have invested in,’ she adds.

Having built up this relationship with her reader, Viveca says she often reaches out to astrology to help soothe her, when she previously didn’t. It’s become a kind of coping mechanism.

‘I love a good tarot reading, but I don’t want to become dependent on it,’ she adds.

‘Sometimes it ruins life’s adventures when you’re expecting or anticipating news of some sort, good or bad. However, there’s also something very comforting when you find a tarot reader who is able to give you some faith.

‘There’s no proof of course, but I always leave the sessions more empowered and positive and that’s what’s important to me.’

While Viveca says that she’s only had good experiences with her reader, it’s not always the case.

Kerry Ward, Metro.co.uk’s resident astrologist, warns that scammers often lurk on social media ready to pounce on those seeking spiritual reassurance.

‘As in all fields and walks of life, there are unscrupulous people,’ she says.

‘However, I can honestly say I have never encountered a genuine tarot reader who was in it to rip people off. The main scourge of our profession right now is online scammers.

‘They set up fake social media accounts. I have had many of them using my image, posts, name and creating a “handle” that looks like my Instagram name but tweaks it with a changed letter, so it fools people that it’s me.

‘Then they follow my followers and get them to follow back. And then they start DMing them, pretending to be me and telling them they need a reading and then asking for money.’

Instagram is the main venue for this type of hoax, and in Kerry’s experience the app they rarely removes the accounts. However, most astrology devotees are getting wise to it, she believes.

Pepper*, who is in her late 20s and is based in London, regularly uses tarot readers.

Having experienced disappointing results amongst the magic, she’s keen to keep her identity hidden as she works in sales and doesn’t want colleagues to know about her personal spending habits for fear of being judged.

She tells Metro she purchases readings via Etsy and YouTube, and also sometimes goes to Covent Garden market for face-to-face experiences.

On Etsy, Pepper spends £4 and can ask three questions, which she will then receive a paragraph-long answer for each one within 24 hrs. For the YouTube psychic, it’s £60 for a 30 minute reading.

That comes to around £66 a month on spiritual buys, though she also will occasionally spend on other things in the industry, having tried crystals, her own tarot decks, and aura readings.

‘I use them often if I’m going through something in my life,’ explains Pepper.

‘If it’s heartbreak for example, the cheap £4 ones I use weekly to ask about the situation. The expensive ones I tend to do once a month.

‘I usually ask about romance, and sometimes about work. They have sometimes got it wrong, and it leaves me disappointed.’

She once encountered a psychic that she used once and vowed never again.

‘This was a few years ago, I was very upset that a man I was seeing ended it very abruptly after Covid. She said he was regretting this and deciding between me and another woman, but she was adamant he would choose me.

‘Although she was right in part – he was deciding between me and another woman – but he chose her instead.

‘When I told her this, she told me to book in for another reading straight away and that’s when I thought, this particular psychic just wants my money.

‘I got over it, but it can give false hope.’

Pepper recalls how on other occasions multiple readers predicted she would have children with a man she’d began dating, and that they’d be in a serious relationship in the near future. However, in reality, the man stopped replying to her soon after the readings.

Even so, it didn’t leave her feeling too concerned.

‘I have a strong understanding that energy is constantly changing, especially when it involves another person,’ she explains. ‘So when things don’t work out the way that a psychic tells me they will, I know that this is often because the energy of the other person has changed.

‘I do sometimes still hold hope for the future in certain situations that haven’t worked out instantly, but I take everything with a pinch of salt.’

That’s why, for now, Pepper says she still happy to pay to have readings.

‘The cards created a sense of excitement, almost like a dopamine hit,’ she says. ‘I never invest more in the person I’m dating as a result of the reading though.

‘I just become more excited for my potential future with them. Although, it does make me think that maybe things won’t happen that have been shown in the cards anymore, which is a little disappointing.’

‌According to astrologer Kerry, people need to be vigilant if they’re looking to a psychic or tarot reader online.

‘To tell if someone is legitimate, look how long they’ve been around, if they write for recognised publications or have their own books and decks,’ she advises.

‘Read their reviews. Very similar to if you were trying to choose a plumber or accountant. Do some homework. Never ever respond to “phishing” where someone DMs you and tells you that you need a reading. This is fake.’

There are of course financial issues at stake here. Astrology is a business after all, and there is money to be made from willing clients.

As for the future of astrology, it’s influence only looks set to keep growing.

Aura readings – which first came to light, so to speak, in the 90s – are proving hugely popular nearly 30 years later, with holistic centres offering them, such as Covent Garden’s The Astrology Shop, and content creators sharing videos of their aura experiences.

Kerry adds, for those unsure but in search of astrological guidance: ‘My advice around readings, and even reading horoscopes, is to enjoy it, use it as a life tool, but not to rely on it or take the advice over and above professional or expert opinions (especially medical or legal).

‘Legally, tarot readings are classed as “entertainment purposes only” and I kind of agree,’ she adds.

‘When I spot clients coming to me too often or displaying symptoms of continued mental anguish or “chasing” answers – usually about love – by having the same reading over and over, then I withdraw the service, refund them, and advise them to seek a different kind of help.’

Do you have a story to share?

Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.

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Rachel Perera spent more than a year working four jobs to support herself and her eight-year-old daughter. 

‘I was constantly worn down. I just didn’t have a minute to breathe,’ the single mum recalls.

‘I wasn’t seeing my child at all either and she was really suffering. I continuously felt stressed and was always rushing to get back to her. I wasn’t performing for my work or my little girl.’

In short, Rachel says, ‘I didn’t feel I was being a good mum.’

Like her, thousands of single mothers are impacted by the ‘single mother penalty’ as they juggle solo parenthood and their careers. Of course, there are fathers who take on this role and also face an overwhelming balancing act, but the reality is 90% of single parents are women. 

‘Society expects single mothers to do it all – to be the perfect mother, while also being a diligent worker,’ explains Ruth Talbot, Founder of Single Parent Rights. 

‘The daily juggle they undertake reflects just how determined, resourceful, and hard working they are. However, this comes at a cost for many who report high levels of stress levels. 

‘Perhaps it is not surprising then that more single mothers report problems with their mental health than those who are married.’ 

It was six years ago that Rachel, now 40, split up with the father of her daughter, Jasmine. 

Being newly single, Rachel decided it would be better to move from her home in London to Manchester, where her mum lived, so she could help out more, and started working at a big PR agency in the city centre.

Rachel tells how, thanks to an hour-long commute from her home to work, it soon became routine to only see Jasmine briefly at bedtime. 

However, it was a routine she wasn’t prepared to accept, and in May 2022, she decided to ditch her successful career and take a 50% pay cut for a low-level entry position at a market research firm three days a week, in a bid to create a better work/life flexibility.

But there was a hitch. In order to afford her mortgage and all the bills, Rachel had to to take on more work, and ending up with three more part-time jobs – at a communications agency once a week, fundraising for a kids cancer charity twice a week, and doing social media for a housing development as and when she could fit it in.  

She says she ended up saying ‘yes’ to any work opportunities that came her way because she had an ‘innate worry’ that if she stopped, ‘it would all crumble.’

‘I’d left Manchester to have more time with Jasmine, but it was even crazier,’ Rachel admits. ‘I was working twice as much. I was getting up in the morning, dropping her at school, working all day, coming back to give her tea while I’d still be working, put her down and I’d still be working, and I was working weekends. I got to the point I was making myself ill.

‘I was constantly snapping at my daughter,’ she adds. ‘It wasn’t her fault. I just panicked all the time. It was like being on a hamster wheel.’

Rachel can still remember the moment when she knew things had gone too far – it was the day she forgot to send Jasmine into school with a fancy dress costume for a dress up day.  

‘She was the only one not to go in fancy dress,’ she says. ‘I felt awful.’

It was a mistake any parent could make, but for Rachel it was just another failure as a single parent. 

Since then, her workload unexpectedly halved after two of her jobs fell through. Thankfully, the two she’s been left with are the better paid roles.

‘It worked out for the best because it wasn’t sustainable,’ says Rachel, adding that she finally feels like she can breathe again. 

‘Now I think about what I need to survive on,’ she explains. ‘Because, really, I just want quality time with my daughter.’ 

It was eight years ago that Kerry Davies became a single parent. Although she and her ex share custody, it was decided that their two children, Poppy and Ted, who were aged two and seven at the time, would live with Kerry in Northamptonshire for most of the time – which meant she had to quickly learn how to navigate parenting and a career on her own.  

‘I had to take the month off work,’ the 41-year-old sleep specialist remembers. ‘The difficulty of going through a breakup and becoming a single mum, was a huge realisation. My mental health suffered and my doctor diagnosed me with PTSD.’

After some time off work, Kerry returned to her job where she worked 28 hours a week, anxious about how she would pay the bills and get the kids to nursery, school, extracurricular activities, all while attempting to remain an exemplary employee. 

‘Trying to maintain a level of professionalism was virtually impossible,’ she remembers. 

Kerry had to rearrange her work schedule to fit around morning and afternoon school runs, after school clubs, and bedtimes. Any career aspirations she might have had came to a sudden halt.  

‘They [the children] were my priority,’ she remembers. ‘They had to come first. For those first two years, I didn’t think about anything except for just getting by.’

With her part-time salary and the top-up of government benefits, Kerry scraped by for the next three years. After paying monthly bills, she was left with only £400 each month to cover things like food, dance classes for her daughter, clothes, and petrol. 

‘I felt trapped in our home because I couldn’t afford to do anything,’ she says. 

Then, as Ted was about to start school in 2019, Kerry quit her job after deciding to try to start her own business. To keep the bills paid, she signed up to work overnight bank shifts as a healthcare assistant, while the children slept over at her mum’s. 

With her shift finishing it at 9.30am, it meant she had just a few hours to sleep  – ‘which felt like a nap’ she says – and also work on developing her new business, until the children came home from school.

‘It was a really exhausting time. I was sleep-deprived. I was often moody and stressed,’ she remembers.’Looking back, it shows the lengths we go to and the resilience we have when trying to provide the best for our family.’

Later than year Kerry had set up her sleep specialist business The Sleep Fixer, which aims to help both children and adults deal with sleep deprivation, and was able to quickly find work. 

Although covid initially hampered plans, once the pandemic settled down, Kerry was subcontracted to work for ‘loads of different places’ where she could choose her own hours.  

Even though being her own boss has given Kerry financial stability and flexibility, she is quick to say it hasn’t been the ‘magic bullet’ fix – trying to have a career as a single parent is still incredibly hard. 

‘I really want to build my business,’ she says. ‘But my children are still my priority. It’s hard to know when to take the next leap with everything. What if I try and build it too quickly and the spinning plates start to drop?’

‘When a child falls ill or there’s an unexpected commitment, it either means cancelling on clients or seeking my mum’s help, especially if I have an online workshop or presentation scheduled. Sometimes, I’ve had to decline work that requires traveling, as it becomes a childcare challenge if it’s an early morning departure.’

While Kerry suffered many hurdles as a single parent starting up her own business, Ruth Talbot from Single Parent Rights adds that those working under an employer are often penalised due to ‘a triple whammy of discrimination from colleagues and managers, structural bias within organisations, which disadvantage them, and a childcare system, which is expensive and fails to meet the needs of single parent families.’

She emphasises for single parents of colour, or those living with disabilities, the barriers are even greater. 

Meanwhile, research from the group in 2021 found that up to 80% of single parents had faced some form of discrimination in the workplace, such as bullying, exclusion from promotions, or denied flexible working or professional development opportunities. A third reported they had been rejected from a role due to their single parent status. 

‘The single motherhood penalty results in many missing out on a positive workplace experience, promotions and professional development opportunities, earning a decent salary and – in some cases – having the choice to spend time with their children,’ adds Talbot. 

Maria Kordowicz was a single parent of young children for nine years, all the while plugging away at her career in academia. 

The 41-year-old describes life then as, ‘overwhelming, fatiguing, all-encompassing… It was a constant juggling act.’

Spending ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ on childcare, Maria says she was constantly trying to make ends meet to put food and the table and make sure everyone was clothed. 

At the time, Maria both worked for herself as director of the research company ResPeo and was employed by various universities. 

Although some of the men she worked with ‘paved the way for women to state their needs and the needs of their children’, she noticed that there simply wasn’t an expectation of fathers to defend why they might need to take time out for a school run or stay home with a sick child. 

Maria says she also encountered inflexible employers who hadn’t allowed for home working, would schedule 8am meetings and after hours networking sessions. ‘All things that were really difficult to work around the children,’ she points out. 

It was when Maria applied for an academic promotion at a university – having spent countless hours creating an extensive portfolio and gathering endorsements from colleagues – but learned she had not been successful due to a one-year gap in publications, that the single mother penalty really hit home. 

‘I thought about what was happening to me that year,’ she recalls. ‘I had been working full time, had finished my PhD, was getting a divorce, had toddlers at home, and was going through some health problems. I didn’t take it [the refused promotion] personally, but just thought how the system can heavily disadvantage single parents.’

Maria also remembers that in another job she was given a timetable for teaching in advance that she used to schedule a mix of paid and familial childcare for her kids. 

‘And then it [the timetable] would just change, several times,’ she says. ‘I put my foot down and was accused of being stressed and told I needed to see the GP.  It pointed the finger at me.’

However Maria refused to go off sick for stress, because that wasn’t what she needed from her employers. ‘Instead, I resigned,’ she says. ‘It is a shame that this is what happens to solo parents.’

According to the single parent charity Gingerbread, research has shown that solo parents are more likely to be working in lower paid jobs and are less likely to progress in work. 

‘There is a chronic lack of quality, flexible work that allows for career progression,’ says Jo Hardy of Gingerbread. ‘This means that too many single parents – the majority women – are stuck in roles beneath their skill set just so they can get the flexibility that they need to look after their children.’

To help them, charities like Gingerbread and Single Parent Rights are asking the government to review the 30 hours of free childcare to make it more compatible with the realities of working life, add in single parents to the UK Equality Act, and create a supportive social security system for single parent families. They’d also like to see organisations create employment opportunities that meet single parents’ availability, offering things like work from home, job share, part-time hours, and term time only positions. 

‘Single mothers require a supportive ecosystem to enable them to access the same opportunities as other workers,’ concludes Talbot. ‘This requires employers and government coming together to implement key changes so that single parents are treated fairly and their needs and circumstances are taken into account.’

Now newly partnered and primarily investing in her own company, Maria looks back on her solo parenting with a mixture of feelings. 

It was beautiful and full of love and joy,’ she remembers. 

‘But it was also full of hardship, and so many lessons to be learned about myself, motherhood and my resourcefulness.’

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Married for 10 years and sat with their grown daughters, Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau smiled as they recounted their ‘extraordinary’ relationship, in a 2015 widely-watched exclusive with American TV titan Barbara Walters. 

However, the couple’s relationship was extraordinary for all the wrong reasons.

They had become close when Vili was just 12, and Mary Kay, then in her thirties, was his teacher. Within months they had embarked on a sexual relationship.

As news of the Washington state-based sexual abuse scandal shocked the globe, people were left reeling at the thought that a 34-year-old, middle-class, married mother-of-four was capable of committing such a horrific crime.

Yet despite Mary Kay going to jail for second-degree child rape – and giving birth behind bars – the couple steadfastly refused to give up on their relationship.

Now the family – and their story – are back in the news again, after the couple’s youngest daughter, Georgia, has posted on Instagram about expecting a baby boy in January.

Vili, 40, who had a third daughter, Sophia, in 2022, is set to become a grandparent for the first time – but without Mary Kay by his side. 

Rewind to September 1996. A 12-year-old Vili entered his sixth-grade classroom at Shorewood Elementary School in Washington, settling in for a year of learning. He recongised Mary Kay, as she had also taught him in second grade, when he was just eight. 

‘There was a respect, an insight, a spirit, and understanding between us that grew over time,’ she told The Seattle Times in July 1997, as she recalled that first time teaching him. ‘It was the kind of feeling you have with a brother or sister – a feeling that they’re part of your life forever.’

As she once again tutored Vili four years later, Mary Kay clocked that the boy was a gifted artist, and began spending time with him outside of the classroom to develop his skills. Vili even visited her home, becoming friendly with Mary Kay’s husband Steve and four children. He became especially close with her eldest son, Steven Jr., who was only a year younger than him. 

When the school year ended, the teacher and student had gone to dinner when the pair first had sex, even though in a book the pair authored, Mary Kay wrote she had ‘promised’ herself ‘it’ wouldn’t happen before her divorce with then-husband Steve. 

‘The incident was late at night, and it didn’t stop with a kiss,’ Mary Kay told Walters in the 2015 interview. ‘And I thought that it would, and it didn’t.’

That same summer, police discovered Vili and Mary Kay in a minvan. Vili quickly lied to the police, saying he was 18. Although taken to the police station, they both were released after claiming there was no improper conduct. 

Mary Kay later described their connection as a ‘million moments that just kept building something very beautiful and scary at the same time’ in a 2004 interview with Laury King. 

In the autumn of 1996, Mary Kay found out she was pregnant with the schoolboy’s baby. 

Mary Kay broke the news of her pregnancy to her best friend, Michelle Lobdell on the phone. ‘I have some news and this is difficult,’ she told her friend. ‘I’m pregnant and it’s not Steve’s.’

Lobdell said in an interview with the New York Post that it ‘was a shocking moment’ and that Mary Kay made it out that the father was a college-aged student. ‘She didn’t tell me he was 12.’

Steve Letourneau, Mary Kay’s then-husband was rifling through papers in early 1997 when he found love letters between his wife and her student. Confronting the teenager over them, he threatened to tell Vili’s family about their sordid relationship if he didn’t end it.

‘The fear of my mom’s reaction and the thought of everyone being affected by it was one of my biggest fears, so I said, for the better of everyone, OK. It was kind of devastating,’ recalled Vili in a 2018 interview.

However, it was too late, as just a few weeks later on 4 March, Mary Kay was arrested for second-degree child rape after a tip from a relative of Steve’s.

She was released on bail and went on to have her daughter Audrey in May 1997. 

At her trial three months after the birth, Mary Kay pled guilty to child rape in exchange for a three-month jail sentence and probation. 

‘It was wrong, and I am sorry,’ she said in the hearing. ‘I give you my word it will not happen again.’

Her request was approved, with the condition Mary Kay had no further contact with Vili, who always claimed that the relationship was consensual and continuously maintained he wasn’t a victim. ‘I’m not ashamed of being in love with Mary Kay,’ he told Inside Edition in 1999. 

But her vow to leave the teen alone was shortlived, when Mary Kay and Vili were found again in a car soon after her release – this time with over $6,000 in cash, baby clothes, and her passport, leading authorities to believe they were planning to leave the country. 

Mary Kay was brought back to court, by then pregnant for a second time with Vili’s baby from her brief stint out of prison, for her breach of parole and told by the judge she had been given an opportunity that she ‘foolishly squandered.’

She was sentenced to seven and a half years in Washington Correction Centre for Women, during which time she would give birth to her youngest daughter behind bars and get a divorce from her husband. 

Both daughters were in the custody of Vili’s mother, Soona, while Mary Kay finished her sentence. 

Even though Soona blamed Mary Kay for ruining her son’s life, she tearfully said when testifying in the 2002 case that she couldn’t hate the former teacher. 

‘What happened was morally wrong,’ she told the court. ‘She was married, and this was a teenage boy. I’ve lost my son. I lost my sweet little boy who could draw. I knew he would grow up, and he wouldn’t be my little boy, but I didn’t know I’d lose him at 12.’

‘I can’t say I hate Mary,’ she continued. ‘Just a couple of weeks ago, my granddaughter turned around to me and asked, “Do you love my Mary mommy grandma?” And I’m supposed to tell her yeah.’

While Mary Kay was in prison, Vili talked openly in his Walters interview about how he went ‘through a really dark time,’ battling depression for years in the wake of Mary Kay’s imprisonment. 

‘I’m surprised I’m still alive today,’ he said in the exclusive chat. ‘My friends couldn’t help me because they had no idea what it was like to be a parent, I mean, because we were all 14, 15.’

In August 2004, Mary Kay was released from prison and Vili filed a motion in court requesting a reversal of the no-contact order against Mary Kay.

It was granted, and 10 months later, they were married in a lavish ceremony with 250 friends and family at a winery in Washington. Vili was 21 years old.

For 10 years, the couple lived together in Seattle – Vili working as a DJ and Mary Kay as a legal assistant – while raising their two girls.

But in 2017, Vili filed for a legal separation, supposedly due to his desire to start a marijuana business. 

‘It’s not necessarily what you think,’ he told Radar Online. ‘When you want to get licensed, they do background checks on both parties. If I decide to be a part of it, I have to be licensed, and I have to be vetted, and so does a spouse. She has a past. She has a history.’

However, a source close to Mary Kay told People magazine a different story, about how the couple had multiple discussions over where things were going.

‘She really tried everything she could think of, but she just wasn’t able to work it out,’ the source said. ‘She loves him, she knows he loves her, but it really seems like it has run its course.’

Although the couple eventually divorced in 2019, Mary Kay would end up spending her last weeks with her ex-husband after she was diagnosed with colon cancer and ‘reached out’ to him via text in 2020.

‘Vili, to his credit, when he found out about [her illness], and then especially the last couple of months, he moved back from California and he gave her 24/7 care, literally all the way to the end,’ said David Gehrke, who represented Letourneau throughout her trial, in an interview with KIRO radio.

In July 2020, Mary Kay passed away, but in the lead up to her death, she had allegedly penned dozens of letters to atone for her actions.

‘The bottom line was that she understood on a very deep level that she had really made a mess of her life and the lives of many other people back in 1996,’ one friend told People.

‘She realised that even though things turned out relatively good, that she was responsible for a wide swath of destruction by her actions.’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk 

Share your views in the comments below.

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Whatever you call them – rubbers, Johnnies, or even a French letter if you’re being super-fancy – you’ve probably used them.

While over the years we’ve seen a huge shift in attitudes to condoms, from being shunned in the 70s to considered cool (for the majority of us) by the noughties, they’re something that is now used without hesitation. Well, most of the time.

But what’s seen them turn into such a must-have item, that even Kendrick Lamar acknowledged a shift in perception in his Money Trees lyrics, rapping: ‘Back when condom wrappers wasn’t cool’.

It was in 1855 that we were introduce to the first phophylactic, which was made from rubber as thick as a bicycle inner tube and custom made. Fast forward nearly 170 years and Durex – a brand that occupies 40% of the global condom market, worth $4.6bn – are set to deliver their ‘thinnest’ ever condoms called Nude, to ‘maximise sensation’, this year.

However, it’s a metamorphosis has been a long time coming (puns aside) – and one involving a global health crisis, accidental pregnancies, demand for better options… not forgetting the ongoing pleasure debate.

Ben Wilson, sexual wellbeing director at Reckitt, home to Durex, says that although there’s still taboo surrounding condoms, it’s only been in the last three decades that significant progress has been made.

‘We’ve always tried to break the stigma around condoms, such as people feel they can’t have the conversation around safe sex, an embarrassment of buying condoms, and the ever-old challenge around condoms “reducing pleasure”,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.

These days though, he adds, users are ‘thinking about a condom as part of a larger sexual occasion, versus just the moment of penetration’ and says that condoms ‘remove the anxiety’ of unplanned pregnancy and contracting an STI or STD.

From Ben’s perspective, marketing has played a huge role in getting people on board with using them.

‘In the 1970s, we were sponsoring Formula 1 and lots of motorsports, because there was a young male demographic watching these things at the time. In the 1990s we were doing work with MTV, which also attracted young people,’ he explains.

‘Durex has a huge history, but during World War 2, the supply of condoms from the US and Germany dried up, so Durex as a British company became the key player in the market. However, it was only in the 1990s condom usage became “normal” and widespread.

‘Culture and wider society issues have had an impact too. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s was a huge driver for the benefits of condoms.’

While censorship stopped conversations from breaking down stigma, some ad companies worked hard to get their product message across.

For example, back in 2010, advertising condoms was forbidden in France. However, one French non-profit, supporting those with HIV and AIDS called Aides, decided to create an advert showing graffiti drawings of genitalia enjoying sex with a condom.

Despite it going against guidelines, the short video was given the green light, paving the way for future condom advertising.

Usage is a whole other beast though, and the reasons people personally choose to go with and without condoms wildly vary.

A study among homosexual men found common reasons for not using one included being in a steady relationship (32.8%), being unprepared (19.4%), and not being bothered (19.4%).

Meanwhile, other research has looked into being pressured by men, especially as a woman, to forgo condom use.

Tricia Wise, is a safe sex influencer who goes by the name Safe Slut. She tells Metro.co.uk that although she always prefers to use condoms, there were times in the past when she felt pressured to go without – that was until she contracted genital herpes (HSV2) in November 2019.

‘I liked to practice safe sex when I could, but I was also very afraid of advocating for myself,’ Tricia, 29, explains. ‘So if I was with people who were making a big deal about wearing a condom I’d say it was fine to go without, but then feel anxious and get tested afterwards.

‘Condoms have always been my preferred method of contraception.

‘Now that I have herpes, I’m an even bigger fan of safer sex, but with herpes, condoms aren’t 100% effective. It can help reduce the risk, but herpes is transferred skin to skin, not fluid, so as the condom isn’t covering your entire genital area, it can spread.’

For Tricia, communication is key when practicing safe sex.

‘I ask my partner when they’ve been tested and what those results look like, then I share my status, then we decide what we want to do,’ she explains.

‘My main thing when I’m going to have the disclosure conversation is I don’t do it in the moment, I do it before when clothes are still on.

‘I always start by asking them about their sexual health, because as well as using condoms to lessen the risk of spreading herpes, I’m doing it to protect myself from them too.

‘The response is always telling – if they say they don’t get tested or use stigmatising language, that’s a turn off for me.’

For casual one night stands, condoms are ‘not even a question’ for Tricia, who adds that she’s never had any bad responses when revealing she has HSV – either they ask for more information, or already are clued up.

The evolution of condoms

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The evolution of condoms

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James* was another who had his contraception choice shaped by personal experience.

Never a ‘one-night stand kind of guy’, he says condoms just weren’t a subject he’d discuss with friends – and are still something he feels self-conscious talking about, which is why he didn’t want to share his identity.

Although James admits he wasn’t initially a fan of the contraception, the 27-year-old now swears by them.

‘When I got comfortable with a new partner, I used to do the pullout method,’ he explains, adding that he felt like he could trust them to be truthful about STIs or or get tested.

‘The emotion in the moment would take over, and even though I knew the method is risky, I didn’t really care – until I experienced a pregnancy scare.

‘My partner was told she was pregnant at a hospital when she went to A&E in pain. But then 10 minutes later, they told her it was a mistake and she wasn’t.

‘It was a huge shock to the system,’ admits James. ‘So now I use condoms, because I have a primal fear that if I become a dad, I will be absolutely f****d.’

Being diagnosed with gonorrhea was a massive wake up call for Emma*, who doesn’t want to be identified for fear of stigma still surrounding the STI.

She says she chose not to use condoms as she preferred the sensation without them and found the act of putting one on mid-foreplay a ‘mood kill’.

‘There was never an active decision not to use condoms, it was more that I would get caught up in the heat of the moment and go without, because I was on another form of contraception (either the pill or implant),’ Emma explains.

‘I put STIs to the back of mind – even though I knew that was stupid. Then someone I’d slept with informed me he had gonorrhea. It was hugely embarrassing, from telling past partners so they could be checked to having to take time out of work to visit the clinic for treatment.

‘It was also a massive wake-up call, however, and made me realise that the real mood-killer is contracting the clap.’

Now in a long term relationship, Emma uses condoms every time they’re intimate due to side effects with hormonal contraception.

‘While rootling around in a drawer for a condom mid-way through foreplay isn’t the sexiest thing in the world, it’s far better than an unplanned pregnancy,’ she adds.

‘If I was single, I’d insist on using a condom and it’d be a deal breaker for me to be met with resistance. After all, I learned of the consequences of avoiding condoms the hard way.’

Not all sexual health concerns can be avoided with condoms, however.

Aside from the health perspective, even with perfect use, two in every 100 people will have unintended pregnancy each year, while ‘typical use’, according to the NHS, sees 12 in every 100.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be using them, as no form of contraception is perfect, but it does point to the difference they can make if used properly.

Currently in the UK, gonorrhoea cases jumped by over 50% between 2021 and 2022, it’s the highest number of diagnoses made in a year since records began in 1918.

For all of the progress made to make condom use common practice, there’s still work to be done evidently.

Though it’s worth noting that other forms of protection have been widely advocated for, too. Among gay men, the use of PrEP – HIV prevention medication – is also popular and might inadvertently reduce condom reliance.

Lisa Hallgarten, head of policy and public affairs at Brook, a sexual health charity, tells Metro.co.uk: ‘The high level of gonorrhoea clearly tells us that there is insufficient condom use.

‘This is also reflected in what we are seeing in our own clinics, where over the past four years the number of people saying they do not use condoms has increased by over 10%.

‘It is vital that the effective promotion of testing and treatment for STIs is matched by stronger messages about prevention and the need for consistent condom use.  

‘Sexual health services are already stretched to breaking point with a huge rise in demand for services alongside many years of cuts to funding. Additional investment needs to be provided for national and local schemes to promote and provide condoms.’

There can be a generational divide too, in terms of attitudes to condoms.

Mark*, who is in his late 30s, has gone through phases of irregular condom use in the past due to feeling less anxious about catching STIs, and enjoying periods of hedonistic sex.

He previously worked as a fitness model and went to sex parties in his 30s, during a time he describes as being ‘high on testosterone’.

Although the sex party scene always advocates for the use of condoms, Mark didn’t always use them. One ocassion he remembers was during a threesome with men and women, where he says he got caught up in the moment and, in his words, wanted to ‘spread his seed’.

Now, he tells Metro.co.uk he wouldn’t run the risk as you ‘just can’t know’ if someone is healthy or taking birth control properly.

‘We’re descended from apes, and condoms aren’t natural – it’s a fact of life – but I’m absolutely pro-condoms,’ he says.

‘I came out of my old phase due to loss and grief within my family. It made me change my lifestyle.’

And as popularity and demand for condoms continues to grow, some makers have been thinking outside the box in a bid to make their’s the go-to brand.

Roam offers skin tone condoms in a range of shades, to ‘celebrate individuality’ as they put it online; then there are ultra-thin condoms from brands like Skyn to combat the pleasure issue; while others such as Hanx, who are meeting the needs of vegans and the chemically conscious. Environmentally friendly options are also offered by XO! whose products carbon neutral and biodegrade in a year.

However, we still haven’t reached condom perfection says Ben, who thinks there’s more innovation to come – and the more skin-like they feel, the better in terms of uptake.

‘I think condoms that deliver the most pleasure are going to be the winners, because ultimately the constant battle for us is how to deliver more pleasure,’ he explains.

‘That could be in how thin or transparent it is, how it smells, or what materials and lubrication is used. All those sensorial elements.’

‘Protection and pleasure together,’ he adds. Which is ultimately all anyone could want from a condom.

Sexual Health Awareness Week runs from 11-17 September, for more information click here.

*Names have been changed.

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Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.

But it wasn’t.  

By the time Dilly was a teenager and attending secondary school, she was desperately begging her mother not to send her in and often arriving at the school gates late and in a visibly distressed state. 

‘It’s awful feeling like you literally have to try and drag your child somewhere, where they don’t want to be,’ remembers Lara.

However, Dilly’s fears weren’t borne from being a target for school bullies or because she hadn’t completed homework. She simply didn’t want to be at school – and she’s one of a growing number of children who find it hard or even impossible to attend a formal education setting. 

Since the coronavirus lockdowns, persistent absenteeism is up 117%, equating to nearly a quarter of of all pupils in primary, secondary and special state schools – or 1,615,772 pupils. 

But this is hardly a new phenomenon, as Ellie Costello, executive director of the social enterprise Squarepeg, explains. 

The organisation advocates for children who struggle to attend school, working in partnership with the parent/carer led organisation Not Fine in School, which was set up in November 2018 to raise awareness of the barriers to school attendance and empower families impacted by them. 

In just five years membership for Not Fine in School has grown to 43,000 people, whose children have found mainstream school attendance a struggle whether it’s down to unmet special education needs and disabilities, physical or mental illness, bullying and assault, or trauma.

Some have also cited excessive academic pressure, overly strict behaviour policies, an irrelevant curriculum and children missing sense of belonging. 

‘No one wanted to talk about it, but then Covid legitimised the attendance conversation,’ Ellie explains. 

‘There is a lot of disaffection bubbling away. An ever-increasing number of children and young people are developing high levels of anxiety – be it performance-related, socially, or because they can’t cope with the environment. Under this government, attainment and progress from the age of four onwards is monitored in a way that is excessive. It prioritises a certain type of learning. Quite simply, more and more kids just aren’t ticking that box.’

Recalling how one schoolgirl told her that walking through the school gates felt like wading through vicious, sharp ice, Ellie adds: ‘These aren’t snowflake kids, that’s a misconception. Young people now have so much more to cope with – from the threat of climate collapse to Instagram perfection – and they have to be so much more resilient. 

‘We’ve never recovered from the cuts to education, which were announced in 2010 and implemented under austerity. We were sold the idea that if we just get tough on discipline, and establish high aspirations, everything else will follow. But you can’t have it both ways. You either want a child in the classroom and engaged in learning, or you will put them in isolation all day for wearing the wrong shoe laces.’

Dilly is now 14 and admits she has always struggled with attending school. 

‘I’ve never liked it,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. ‘It’s about the system. When I have to go into school, I feel overwhelmed and stressed. I tend to catastrophise a lot.’

As someone who is autistic and dyslexic, Dilly is an ambassador for The Multi Schools Council which challenges perceptions of difference, and the negative stigma shown towards children with special educational needs and disability (SEND) and mental health difficulties. 

‘Dilly struggled all the way through primary school, and now finds secondary school challenging as well,’ explains her mum, Lara. ‘She can get tearful and stressed the evening before school, and then in the morning as well. Often she’ll be late and will need a lot of reassurance from staff, who have often met her at the door. Even if she has a good day, she will be so exhausted by attending school that she is unable to do homework or enjoy social activities afterwards.  

‘Recently, during exam week, she became so overwhelmed with the pressure that she couldn’t go in. But once she felt calmer at home, she was able to sit her maths test under timed conditions, unprompted by anyone. I was really surprised as maths is her least favourite subject and greatest challenge. It shows how genuine her struggle is.’

Lara adds that school staff are often very well meaning with children who might experience anxiety about coming to school, ‘but they don’t often fully understand what kind of consistent approach would be helpful,’ she says. 

‘The problem is a lack of resources and training. Teaching staff do want to do the right thing, but there are lots of demands on them, and everyone within the whole school environment seems to be under a lot of pressure. It’s often children who are autistic, or neurodivergent, who can’t cope. Autistic children are so much more sensitive to noises, feelings, and the atmosphere. Everything is amplified for them.’

Child clinical psychologist Dr Selina Warlow runs The Nook Therapy clinic, in Farnham, Surrey, and regularly works with clients experiencing school avoidance, specifically those with Autism and ADHD. 

‘Schools are certainly not to blame for school avoidance because sometimes it is not always clear what each child needs,’ she explains. ‘I have had many children with ASD explain how even changing the seating around in the classroom can be very stressful for them. School can then go from feeling predictable to feeling full of uncertainty, which can lead to anxiety. In addition, children with ASD can have difficulties with social interactions and having to walk into a class of 30 children everyday can feel very daunting.

‘For children with ADHD some of the challenges can be that they are expected to remain seated or maintain concentration throughout their lessons, but they may need to move or fidget. At times their hyperactivity, impulsivity and/or inattention can be misinterpreted as them being defiant or naughty, and this can begin to impact on a child’s self-esteem.’

Dr Warlow believes that despite schools being more adaptive, individualised support is still needed, ideally in collaboration with healthcare professionals. 

‘Many of these children thrive at school,’ she adds. ‘They may think outside the box, be brilliant artists, sports men/women, or have a unique ability to hyperfocus on certain topics. The list of strengths is endless. These are the young people that I believe will change the world, with the right support and by nurturing their strengths.’

Dr Warlow adds that since covid it has been difficult to get some children back in the classroom, while at the start of the pandemic, Dr Gavin Morgan – an educational psychologist at University College London – warned the government that school closures would lead to mental health ramifications amongst children and young people. 

‘It gave permission for some children not to attend school, because suddenly school seemed to be an option, and there was some kind of choice involved,’ he explains. ‘Especially for children who were already at risk of school avoidance, they just thought, I don’t have to go anymore.

‘For most kids, most of the time, school is the best place for them. But for some children, school is difficult, and it is anxiety-inducing. One size never fits all.’

Dr Morgan believes there are increasing reasons why school avoidance seems to be affecting more children. 

‘We can’t separate children from families and wider society. They get impacted by parental pressures, and families are finding life hard at the moment due to the cost of living crisis. It’s just tough for everyone. There’s lots of increased pressures on kids,’ he says.  

Of course, school closures were just one of many changes which children lived through during Covid-19. 

After surveying more than 6000 parents in England, new research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the UCL Institute of Education has found that almost half believe their child’s emotional development suffered as a result of the pandemic. 

Children whose parents experienced job instability, compared to their pre-Covid employment situation, were more likely to be affected. However, Dr Morgan adds that the situation is increasingly tough for teaching staff too. 

‘We expect a lot from teachers, more so than we have ever done before,’ he says. ‘Teachers aren’t just single subject teachers any more, they have a hugely complicated role nowadays.

‘Everything should start with the school providing support – and not punishment. There needs to be a whole school approach to talking about and dealing with these issues, and then targeted support for individual children and their families.’

This is something which Dilly has benefitted from, after moving to a school which was open to understanding her difficulties. 

‘We can phone them in the morning, and say she’s having a hard day and struggling to come in, and they’re able to suggest ways to help, and we know we won’t get fined. It takes that pressure off,’ admits mum, Lara. 

‘When she’s not able to come in, they’ve sent a test home for her, or they just accept the fact she will be a bit late that day… even so, on many days she still feels completely burnt out and can’t face going in. 

‘Like all other parents, we want our child to achieve – we know she is capable and we want her to do her best. But there shouldn’t be a blanket response – the majority of families just need help and support, which is not there.’

Parentkind is a national charity which gives those with a parenting role a voice in education.

It believes mental health workers should be embedded within schools, and has allied itself to Citizen UK’s national campaign to ask policymakers to make this a reality. 

‘Parental concerns over their child’s mental wellbeing remain high,’ Parentkind’s Chief Executive Jason Elsom tells Metro.co.uk. 

‘Partial school closures and the cancellation of exams during the pandemic eased the pressure for some pupils, but the return to normality after major disruption to their lives has proved a set-back for many, and this is likely to be a driving factor behind high school absence rates.

‘Our Parent Voice Report revealed that parents of children eligible for free school meals or with special educational needs and disabilities were much likelier to report concerns over their child’s wellbeing, indicating that the issue is more pressing and serious for too many of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people.’

For some families, home education is a better option. 

Munira Adenwalla, 48, believes children’s school avoidance is typically rooted in issues around a child’s mental health and emotional wellbeing – and has taken the decision to home educate her 11-year-old son Mohammed.

The mum of one noticed how he explored and learned best through movement, physical activity and hands-on experiences – and Mohammed now benefits from gymnastics, swimming, water sports, creative crafting, using technology, computer programming and meeting others in his community. 

‘As parents, we wanted him to learn based on his own interests, pace, and through his own learning style,’ Munira explains. ‘This was not a difficult decision at all. I believe parents have a strong intuition or gut instinct of what is best for their child. 

‘It’s a big myth that home educated kids miss out on socialisation. There are many groups and communities of home education families so our children get to mix. I love that my son can figure out how to play gently with toddlers, be looked up to by younger children as the fun older kid, play with same aged kids, learn from older children, and chat with their parents too.

‘The reality is home educated kids have a big variety of social opportunities and the choice for quiet or home days if they want or need it.’

Munira adds that she would love for teachers to get more training and support from professionals to understand and accommodate children whose brains are wired differently, and for schools to have all the resources they need to support all children in their own unique ways of learning.

‘By forcing kids to go back to school we are then giving them a message not to listen to their own bodies or minds when they feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or distressed,’ she warns. ‘That they just have to deal with all of this. This isn’t right. 

‘Imagine if this was a job, would you call it ‘work refusal?’ You’d probably talk to your boss, try to work things out, and then quit if it didn’t go smoothly. 

‘That’s just what school refusal is.’

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But it wasn’t just about dusting herself off and moving on. She wanted more. A new job, a new home… a new country. 

However, as a 35-year-old with a four-bed house and a mortgage, not to mention an already pretty fulfilling career and good social life, she couldn’t help feeling like she was chasing an impossible dream. 

That was until Kirsten happened to have a chat with a senior colleague at the sports retail company she’d worked for as the associate marketing manager the last five years. 

It turned out that there was an opportunity to head up the business’s marketing team 4,000 miles away in Dubai. The rest, she says, is history. 

‘I didn’t hesitate to say yes,’ Kirsten tells Metro.co.uk. ‘While I loved my job and the people I worked with, I knew this new chance had the potential to project me further in my career than I could ever have expected.’

With UK Google searches for ‘move abroad’ up by 1000% in 2022 – the highest level in internet history – 90,000 British citizens made the move overseas for work last year. 

While most were in the 25-44 age group according to research from Radical Storage, women were the gender more likely to make the leap – with 45% saying they would like to work abroad compared to 39% of men. 

Giving insight into the growing trend of women moving abroad for work, careers expert Victoria McLean tells Metro.co.uk: ‘Twenty or so years ago, women didn’t have the access to education or professional development that they have now. As this has changed, it’s enabled more women to seek careers and career progression in another country.’

While moving overseas provided Kirsten with the chance she needed to start over, it wasn’t a seamless process, she admits. Leaving family and friends behind was difficult, for a start.

‘My parents know I am very headstrong and determined but I think they might have hoped there was only a small chance it would end up happening,’ she remembers. ‘It all became very real when they dropped me off at the airport – there were tears.

‘Some of my friends were sad to see me go and others understood why I wanted to. However, they were all excited about having a new holiday destination and a reason to leave their kids at home for a girls’ trip.’

Kirsten also admits that she didn’t really give herself much time to process her feelings. ‘I guess I took the steps to move without really thinking about it until I got to Dubai,’ she says. 

‘An old school friend of mine was out there with his wife and stepdaughter, so this provided me with a safety blanket because I had someone who I could ask questions about the process.’

Kirsten, who remained in a head of marketing role, admits that it did take time to adjust in Dubai because she was used to working in fast-paced environments and the processes there were slower than she expected. However, reflecting on her journey so far, she says; ‘Planning my life hadn’t really worked out as I thought it would, so I owed it to myself to see how this opportunity went.’

Research has also found that taking a career overseas tends to benefit women more than men, with HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey revealing that the average female expat’s income increases by around 27%, compared to 23% for men. Kirsten agrees, saying she is much better off financially since moving to Dubai.  Her salary has increased by roughly 2.5 times before tax (and therefore more, as Dubai has no income tax).

‘You do have to bear in mind that the cost of living is much higher here and there are other costs to factor in regardless of having no income tax,’ she adds.

However, Kirsten also points out that she doesn’t think she would be able to find a similar job in the UK on the salary she is currently on. ‘The cost of living has increased dramatically, which is one of the reasons why I’m not ready to move back to the UK just yet.’

While there’s no doubt the move has given her career success, Kirsten says it has impacted her social life. She finds it difficult to keep in touch with friends in the UK, and when she makes plans to visit her home county of Devon, she also has to factor in stops for London, Newcastle and Manchester, where she also has connections. ‘It isn’t easy because that’s when it starts to feel like less of a holiday,’ she explains. ‘To add to that, I feel so guilty when I don’t manage it all.’

And although Kirsten has been able to make friends outside of work in Dubai, she says that romantic relationships have been ‘the most challenging aspect’ and ‘something she is yet to conquer with any kind of success’. 

‘I guess we can’t have it all,’ she shrugs.

Georgia Austin, 26, tells Metro.co.uk that she was working 40 hours a week as a copywriter at Sweaty Betty before deciding to go freelance. Although she loved her job, she wanted more control of her career.

After launching a freelance copywriting business and taking on a freelance LinkedIn networking role with a US-based market research firm as a ‘connector’ – offering professionals in an assigned industry and market on the site money to complete a 10 minute survey – she decided to take the plunge and go freelance full-time. But in Brazil, over 5,000 miles from where she grew up in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

‘With the money I was earning as a freelancer, I knew that one reliable client was all I needed to pay my living expenses. I immediately booked my flight to Brazil – a decision that, little to my knowledge, precluded the global pandemic,’ she says. 

Before deciding to move abroad, Georgia viewed her career as an exploration. She had a passion for writing and making money online. ‘I grew up as a bookworm and wrote short stories as a kid,’ she explains ‘I’ve always loved words and after landing my role at Sweaty Betty and writing for other sportswear brands, I knew I could monetise my passion,’ she says. 

Once Georgia realised that companies needed freelancers like her, it became even easier for her to make money online during the pandemic. She created an account on Fiverr, an online platform where freelancers can market themselves, and she soon was inundated with work. ‘It was spontaneous and life-altering – I never expected that things would change forever,’ she says.

But why Brazil? Having visited the country a few times, Georgia says she felt like it was the right fit for her. On one of her visits, she taught English in Rocinha (South America’s largest favela) during the Paralympics. During this time, she had already begun to build a strong network of friends and connections – including her future husband’s family. 

‘I met my husband in the first week of arriving in Brazil, at the carnival. There was a two-hour queue to get in and we almost left the line due to boredom. Then we met inside and started talking,’ recalls Georgia.

And while others might have felt nervous about packing up and moving to a different continent, Georgia insists it was a breeze. ‘It felt like a puzzle piece fitting right into its spot,’ she insists.’ If I could live and work anywhere in the world, why would I stay in the UK where taxes are high and my money wouldn’t go very far?’

Since the move, Georgia has worked hard, scaling the freelance business she set up a few years ago to generate $2.1million in total revenue in just over two years. ‘I had the business model down and a great service offering, so I took things to new heights by onboarding industry experts to help fulfil demand, which ultimately tripled my earnings each month,’ she says.

Now, following the success of her agency, Georgia has founded a spin off company and bought a home in Florida. ‘My long-term plan is to scale and sell my company then settle down in the US while spending a few months each year travelling around the world. Although I don’t foresee a permanent return to the UK, I will always cherish the relationships and experiences I’ve had there,’ she says.

Victoria McLean, CEO and Founder of Career Consultancy City CV, adds that she believes the pandemic has had a part to play in the rising number of female expats. 

‘COVID-19 gave us better professional mobility. When you have the option of working from anywhere in the world, it’s easier to move abroad or work for companies that are based anywhere in the world,’ she explains.

‘Women have long asked for better flexibility and I think it took a global pandemic to deliver this. Over the past few years, there has been an increase of opportunities in female-led industries, like healthcare for example.’

When Sarah-Jane McQueen had the idea of moving from Croydon to Australia for work floated to her by a colleague, the first thing she did was discuss the move with her long-term boyfriend, who had always lived in London. ‘We then went through the process of applying for our visa. Due to the backlog from Covid, it took about six months for our entry to be granted,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.

As the visa took a long time to arrive, Sarah-Jane admits there was a lot of time to question the move, with many nights spent weighing up the cons of thinking what could go wrong. ‘We didn’t want the opportunity passing us by. We got through it together with a pact that if we were miserable after six months, we would come back home to London.’ 

However, while she hired a relocation consultant to help with the logistics, Sarah-Jane, who is now a COO of education marketing company CoursesOnline, knew that making the move wasn’t just about her and her partner. She had to think of her eight-year-old daughter too.

Having only ever lived in their family home, she says her little girl struggled with such a big move. 

‘Once we started sharing where we were going and involving her in finding our new house, she started to get excited,’ remembers Sarah-Jane, 42. However, once moved, reality hit and it was hard for the family to see her go from being the popular girl in school in the UK to being an outsider. 

Sarah-Jane admits that seeing her child being excluded from birthday parties and play dates was heartbreaking. 

‘We did have a few incidents on the playground at school because she got angry or lashed out, which is why we enrolled her in other activities outside school like swimming and yoga,’ she explains. ‘I had mum guilt, but over time she’s found her place. Almost a year in and she’s the happiest I have ever seen her.’

With a relocation package that also enabled Sarah-Jane and her family to turn their London home into an investment rental property, it’s safe to say they’re financially better off. Another bonus is that the income taxes and other taxes are better off in Australia (UK contribution is 4% whereas Australia is 11%).

Even so, Sarah-Jane admits to FOMO when she sees pictures of her friends during nights out or events. ‘Not seeing my family all the time is difficult, but I do my best to make it work,’ she says. 

It’s also been hard as her grandmother had a stroke 18 months ago, and she admits not being as close to her as she’d like, is her only regret about the move. Other than that, Sarah-Jane describes her journey as a ‘wild adventure’, adding ‘We’re closer than ever as a family unit and my career has gone from strength to strength.’

According to Victoria McLean, while this trend for Brits to move abroad for work looks set to continue, there are some serious negatives that go beyond FOMO and feeling homesick. 

‘While a move abroad might be a real career boost for women, there might also be a knock on effect of reduced gender diversity in the UK with the hardest impact felt at senior level,’ she explains. 

‘There are a number of ways this trend could impact the UK labour force but the most important is probably “brain drain” or the loss of education and skills.’

To counteract any potential critical drain on talent in the UK, Ray’n Terry, HR Director at Totaljobs advises that British employers ‘evaluate their offering for international workers and how they can compete on a global scale. 

‘Whether that’s giving workers greater flexibility to work anywhere they want in the world or developing relocation packages that highlight the quality of living aspects of your location,’ she explains.

As for Sarah-Jane’s plans, she and her family expect to stay in Australia until their visa is up in 2026. They also have a pathway to permanent residency – a process they can start next year. 

‘Moving back to the UK will be likely when our parents need us to help look after them,’ she explains. 

‘At the moment, we’re just taking each month as it comes. Because at the moment, everything is great where we are.’ 

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Tracey McLaughlin is talking about the time she took a summer job, along with hundreds of other New Jersey teens, at one of the biggest theme parks in America during the eighties.

‘I was a lifeguard at the wave pool and also worked the Alpine slide,’ she explains. 

Like many who worked and went to the state’s hottest attraction, Action Park, Tracey has fond recollections of the resort and still shares them today across the many social media platforms dedicated to the now defunct theme park.

But these aren’t Disneyland style ‘most magical place on earth’ memories people are recounting. These are packaged more in a ‘if you don’t have a scar, were you even there?’ kind of vibe. 

‘Everyone knew Action Park had safety issues,’ explains documentary maker Seth Porges, who also used to visit the resort as a child. ‘But that only made it more popular. Nobody is going to come back to school after a summer trip to Disney World and brag that they made it to the end of Pirates of the Caribbean. But so many Action Park rides were vehicles for bragging rights. 

‘It was also an unbelievably fun place, probably the most fun amusement park that ever existed,’ he says. ‘People – especially teenagers from New Jersey – tend to think they are invincible; and that the risk was worth the reward.’

Describing the park’s most notorious ride, the Alpine Slide, Tracey remembers, ‘it was very dangerous. It was made of concrete and you sat on a plastic slide which had a hand brake as it could go really fast. 

‘There were no side rails so when people went down, they would go super-quick and sometimes go over the side or bump into the guys in front of them causing them to get thrown.

‘They usually came off the ride with cuts on them and I know of one head injury.’

While it’s expected that a certain level of jeopardy has to exist for a theme park to succeed, experience has shown there is a very fine line between terror and tragedy. 

Here in the UK, 11-year-old Evha Jannath died after she fell from the Splash Canyon ride rapids ride at Drayton Manor theme park. In 2015, Alton Towers suffered its biggest accident to date when a carriage carrying 16 people on the Smiler rollercoaster smashed into an empty stationary car causing four passengers to suffer serious leg injuries. Resort owners were fined £5million and faced civil court cases from the victims.

However, it would seem that Action Park was in a league of its own when it came to accidents and fatalities. 

Created in 1978 by businessman Eugene Mulvihill, it was situated around 50 miles outside of New York City, nestled in the rural town of Vernon, New Jersey. During the park’s 18-year history it was littered with injuries and lawsuits and was responsible for six shocking deaths – two in the space of one week. 

Yet, the resort has been the subject of many nostalgic Facebook groups, websites, podcasts and documentaries. Gene’s own son Andy, now 56, released a warts-and-all book about his own experiences, while there were rumours that streaming service Hulu was developing a comedy series about the park. 

Seth Porges was behind the HBO hit documentary Class Action Park and says, ‘So much of what happened at Action Park was bizarre and strange and felt like mere rumour that it became effectively an urban legend – despite it largely being all true.

‘As I got older, my memories of what I saw there – insane rides, bodies flying in off of said rides, and a general atmosphere of debaucherous chaos – didn’t square with my concept of how society was supposed to work. Like, there’s no way that actually happened.

‘But when I began to look deeper, I saw that most of what was out there were these rumours and legends and I wanted to see if they were true.’

In Seth’s film, interviewees reel off a list of jaw-dropping injuries and incidents, from being impaled on a bolt to near-decapitation and electrocution – each one reinforcing the idea that the true story behind this park really is a classic case of fact being stranger than fiction.

‘Virtually everybody who went left with incredible stories,’ he explains. ‘Many people got hurt, many more had an unbelievable time. The most shocking and amazing thing about Action Park was that everybody knew it was dangerous – that these rides could hurt you and were manned by distracted and worryingly young children – yet that became part of the appeal.’

But within the badge of honour banter that echoes through those who ‘survived’ Action Park, there are also the horrifying stories of those who didn’t make it home after a trip there. 

This tragic death toll includes an electrocution on a kayak ride, a heart attack after dropping into freezing cold water from a rope swing, the death of an employee on the notorious Alpine slide and three drownings in the tidal wave pool.

Gene’s son Andy was working as a lifeguard on duty the day one of the drownings occurred.

‘I pulled a guy off the bottom of the pool floor that was dead. I personally did. That was horrible, man,’ he once said, calling all the deaths at Action Park ‘devastating’.

Introduced in 1981, it was a huge freshwater pool that held up to 1,000 people, producing waves that lasted for 20 minutes at a time and would reach more than 3ft high.

With 12 red cross certified lifeguards stationed at the pool at all times, former employees have since said they were saving up to 30 people a day.

Andy himself admits that the lifeguards pulled ‘thousands and thousands of people who had no business in the water.’

Tracy also remembers it well. ‘It was really dangerous as it created these big waves and a lot of people who could not swim needed to be saved.’ 

Their first death was caused by the Alpine slide – a notorious ride that was crowned the park’s most popular by the New Jersey Herald in 1986.

It’s perilous appeal was famously recreated by Jackass’ Johnny Knoxville for his 2018 film Action Point. He’s since said that he was injured more times making the movie than throughout his whole career and suffered ‘four concussions, broke my hand, busted my meniscus, whiplash, stitches over my right eye, which required stitches, lost a couple teeth’.

The real life slide’s victim was 19-year-old park employee, George Larsson Jr, who in 1980 was flung 25 feet from the ride after it derailed. Hitting his head on a rock, he died from his injuries days later. 

From 1984-86 Evan Schuman was a reporter for the New Jersey Herald tasked with writing investigative pieces about Action Park. 

‘What was really interesting was that not many of the local kids went there for fun,’ he explains. ‘The park was populated overwhelmingly by New York state teenagers. The local kids worked there – but there was no way they were going to risk their lives on the rides, and most knew enough not to go on them.’

Through his research, Evan discovered that in 1984/85 alone there were at least 14 fractures and 26 head injuries reported to have been caused by slides across the park, while the park had been a target of more than 100 lawsuits since 1983, the majority in connection with the Alpine Slide.

Around the same time, Gene Mulvihill was charged with criminal conspiracy, fraud, theft, embezzlement, forgery and tax evasion in connection with an alleged conspiracy to create a fictitious insurance company. He pleaded guilty to having intentionally created a paper insurance company to save money and was fined $300,000 dollars – however it was rumoured that the real reason he had tried to set up his own insurance firm was because he was having trouble finding anyone to insure the park.  

It was in 1985 that the park saw the opening – and closing – of its controversial Cannonball Loop, a 100ft high water slide that Andy has since described as ‘a ride to survive, not a ride for fun’. 

When a dummy had been sent down to test it came out the other end decapitated. Even so, Andy was sent down next to try it out.

‘I was wearing my hockey equipment when I did it,’ he has often explained. ‘If you didn’t have enough speed you’d fall and smash your face, and if you smashed hard enough, you could break your nose or knock out some teeth.’

Park officials shut down the ride after just one month due to safety concerns. 

Yet, despite a long list of reported injuries and fatalities since opening, the park was never closed for investigation and only ever received one official fine. 

‘I also discovered they were using underage workers, but managed to avoid getting in trouble for that too,’ adds Evan. ‘I was speaking to the staff in the car park on their way out and once I’d finished each interview, I’d ask the usual questions such as what their job was, their name, age… It didn’t click for a while, but after a few times I realised that I’d been talking to kids who were being allowed to operate rides at just 14, when the minimum age was 16.  

‘I reported it to the New Jersey Labor department, who did a ‘sneak inspection’ but they didn’t find anyone underage staffing the rides. I knew they wouldn’t as one of the young girls I’d spoken to told me that she’d received a call that same day to say that anyone underage who usually operated rides had been told either not to come in, or if they did they could just spend the day on the rides. The park had been tipped off by someone, but I never knew who.’

In 1987, Evan also ran a piece after speaking to a medical director of the ER at a nearby hospital. He told the young reporter that five to 10 people were brought there daily from the park, citing injuries such as ‘ankle sprains, cuts and contusions, and… a few broken bones.’ He also mentioned that many of the injured came into the emergency room with alcohol on their breath.

‘If you’re wondering how someone can be so stupid to go to a park that has rides like this, combine a 16-year-old boy with alcohol and you’d be surprised how stupid they can get,’ adds Evan. 

In response to their critics, park officials were always quick to point out that the resort had over a million visitors each year– sometimes 12,000 on a busy weekend – which in theory made the actual injury rate statistically small. 

However, as Matthew Seiddon, a former member of the advisory board of Carnival Amusement Ride Safety pointed out in a 1986 interview with the New Jersey Herald, ‘all I can say is that I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to tell the parents of a dead child that his was the only accident among 1 million riders. I wouldn’t want to be in that position.’

‘I would often be asked to try out the rides,’ remembers Evan. ‘They’d say how can you write about it without actually trying it. But how many autopsies do you need to attend before you realise this is not a good idea?’

In 1996 the park finally closed down. Not because of health and safety issues, but due to bankruptcy following years of lawsuits. 

Three years later it was bought by another resort company who renamed it Mountain Creek Waterpark. 15 years after that the Mulvihill family bought it back and relaunched it in 2015 – two years after Gene’s death – with much more stringent safety rules. And it’s still going today, albeit not with the same memory making rides.

‘In a world full of people telling you “No”, Action Park was the land of yes,’ remembers Seth. ‘A place where you could do anything you wanted. A place where a skinny kid from New Jersey could prove that he was tough. A place where you could have experiences and memories that you would carry with you for the rest of your life.’

He adds that it’s Action Park’s innate duality – the fact that such a fun thing could also be so filled with tragedy – is also what makes it so fascinating. ‘It’s a place that so many people hold near and dear to their hearts that many credit with shaping them into the person they grew up to be.

‘But at the same time, it’s a place that hurt people,’ explains Seth. ‘However, it can be both. One of the realisations we came into while making the movie is that it’s okay to laugh and joke about Action Park and accept it as a place of tragedy. As one of our interviewees puts it, we often laugh at the horrors of our past because, well, what other choice do we have?’

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But there one was one scene that really struck a nerve – and created memes-a-plenty – as America Fererra’s character Gloria spooled off the many impossible double standards faced by women.

One in particular felt jarring – especially in the face of today’s body positivity movement: ‘You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin.’

Such a statement showed that no matter how hard we’ve worked – and are still working – to help women embrace and love the skin they’re in, the message is falling miserably short.

So, why are will stil hung up about being skinny?

Sophie Hughes is now in her thirties, but says she spent most of her teenage years and twenties desperate to be thin and battling eating disorders.

Her ordeal began when she was just 13 and got her first boyfriend.

Feeling the heady rush of love and excitement typically associated with someone’s first crush, Sophie was keen to spend as much time with him as possible – and that included lunch breaks.

Previously, the teenager would sit with all her friends in their form room, happily eating and chatting. But for some reason, Sophie felt an innate sense of shame to be seen eating in front of her new boyfriend.

So she started skipping lunch. She’d still sit with her friends in her form room, just without her packed lunch astride her lap. No-one thought this was odd. But for Sophie, things escalated. She started skipping dinner, ignoring the crying pangs of hunger from her protesting stomach.

‘If I ever ate, I would punish my body afterwards,’ Sophie, now 32, explains to Metro.co.uk. ‘I could never be small enough. If I wasn’t as slim as I could possibly be, I wasn’t lovable. I really believed that.’

Sophie’s attitude followed her well into her late 20s, with huge levels of reconditioning needed for her to stop hating her body.

However, her story is far from unique, with many people (women in particular) recognising the unexplained urge to be slim when it’s not their natural body shape.

While curvier bottoms and brazilian buttlift surgery (albeit paired with a tiny waist) might have boomed in the last decade, recent conversations have done a u-turn focusind once again on ‘heroin chic’ – the extremely thin physique popularised by the models of the 1990s.

It may be easy to dismiss the language around women’s bodies as unimportant, but the impact of seeing certain body types lifted and celebrated cannot be ignored.

UK GPs have recorded a razor sharp rise of teenage girls in the UK developing eating disorders during the coronavirus pandemic, with eating disorder support charity BEAT reporting a 300% increase in calls to its helpline during that period.

However, you don’t necessarily have to look at the extreme end of disordered eating to see the impact a slimmer idealised body shape may be having on young girls and women. Research from This Girl Can found 45% of women are worried about showing their body while getting active in the summer.

Michelle Bliss has been dieting on and off over the years and found herself turning towards the weight loss drug du jour, Ozempic, after reading about its growing popularity on social media.

The medication is only available in the UK to control Type 2 diabetes, and only prescribed for those with a body mass index of 30 and over. However, it can also can be acquired fairly easily off-prescription from online pharmacies.

While it’s been rumoured that many celebrities are prolific users, others have spoken openly about trying the medication to lose or maintain weight. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has publicly said he injects the drug, while former Prime Minister Boris Johnson also confessed to using Ozempic to curb his frequent ‘cheddar and chorizo’ fridge raids.

‘I went to an online pharmacy,’ Michelle, 28, tells Metro.co.uk. ‘They asked for a BMI and a picture of myself, and it was posted to me. I was on and off it for around four months.’

Having always been quite petite as a child, as well as exhibiting eating disorder tendencies, Michelle says she noticed a change in her body after having a baby.

She had previously tried quite extreme diets to drop the pounds, including juice cleanses and one particular regime that saw her only eat six boiled eggs and a few apples a day.

‘I initially wanted to lose the mum pouch,’ she explains. ‘I put more pressure on myself as I always had a smaller frame.’

However, it’s when Michelle’s mother passed away last year that she noticed a significant change in her weight.

‘I used to be really active, eat well and go to the gym,’ she says. ‘But then I became quite sedentary. I wasn’t exercising as much. I didn’t have the motivation – I was grieving. I was staying at home and eating. In the space of three months, I went up 15kg. I had no clothes fit me. I’m two dress sizes bigger. That’s when I went on Ozempic.’

Staying on the drug was difficult though. While Michelle lost around 5kg, the medication’s side effects, which include vomiting, nausea and fatigue, made it hard for her to keep working on top of being a mother.

‘I’ve come off it now as it just didn’t work, she says. ‘It drains the life out of you.’

Michelle, who works as a personal development coach, admits that like most women she’s still after the holy grail of a quick fix to help keep the weight off – and is open to other options such as a gastric balloon. Although she wishes life wasn’t like this.

‘It’s hard to get out of the mindset that has taught us being slim equals success, acceptance and attractiveness,’ she explains.

‘We’re like sheep. If everyone around me, from celebrities to real life, were bigger then I would be happier going up a size too. But it’s the norm to just want to be like everyone else – so while the majority of us are still desperately trying to be slim, that’s not going to change. We are literally being influenced by other people in every aspect of our life, not just on social media.’

While the thin ideal may seem like it has always been the most coveted body shape, historically this hasn’t always been the case. In the 17^th and 18^th century, artists depicted the ideal woman as curvy and voluptuous, with the term Rubenesque entering the lexicon after Peter Paul Rubens’s numerous depictions of fuller-figured women.

‘Idealised body shapes have changed throughout history,’ explains counselor and psychotherapist Cate Campbell. ‘Being pale and large was once a sign that someone had enough money to eat and avoid outdoor work. Not much more than a century ago, body shape was still created by clothes (think puffy sleeves, voluminous skirts and corsets), but after World War I, when women began entering the workforce and participating in sport, clothes became less restrictive and more revealing of body shape.’

Slimness as the ‘ideal’ became increasingly popularised in the 1920s onwards, with the growing availability of mass media and marketing. According to a study published in the journal Sex Roles in 1986, the bust-to-waist ratios among women featured in the magazines Vogue and Ladies Home Journal dwindled by about 60% between 1901 and 1925.

The study reads: ‘Such findings would constitute empirical support for the hypothesis that the mass media play a role in promoting the slim standard of bodily attractiveness fashionable among women.’

While popular media has been influential in how we perceive our bodies, Cate adds there’s additional psychological pressures for women to remain petite.

‘We’re all aware that food and fashion are money spinners but, because women are still socialised to be caring and helpful to others, we feel guilt and shame about appearing to be more interested in ourselves and what’s sometimes perceived as gluttony,’ she explains.

‘In my work, I see many couples where both partners believe they should work hard at keeping in shape – and, therefore, desirable – for the other. Keeping in shape and being fit also projects an ability of control. For many people, being out of shape can mean slovenliness and lack of willpower, which is really not the case and this societal construct around body image needs to continue to be challenged.’

It’s easy to pin the blame on social media, especially as one study published in 2017 found a direct link between Instagram usage and increased symptoms of the eating disorder orthorexia nervosa. However, we’ve long been yearning to be thin way before the World Wide Web struck.

The infamous diet culture of the 80s introduced us to the cabbage soup diet andads asking if you could ‘pinch more than an inch?’, while in the 90s it was the norm for magazine covers to scream ‘drop a stone in six weeks!’ or ‘lose that belly!’

Even when we entered a new millennia, we remained under the spell of fad eating regimes, with The Special K diet being another Kellogg’s case in point – something currently being dragged by Gen Z on TikTok. Established in 2004, the cereal makers promised that women could drop a jean size in two weeks by swapping a meal with a bowl of cereal.

However, as social media arrived from just around the corner, it brought with it a viisibility never experienced before – and with that the beginnings of a newfound acceptance of differing body types.

Even so, more than a decade on from the advent of Insta, the body positivity movement is still fighting an uphill battle.

According to psychiatrist, aesthetic doctor and body specialist Dr Galyna Selezneva, the blame for many’s inescapable desire to be thin lies at the door of both Hollywood and the fashion industry, thanks to ‘decades of imprinted messages’ that skinny is sexy.

‘The most common size in the UK is a size 14 to 16. But there is still this idea that skinny is fashionable, acceptable,’ she says. ‘When the reality is just that a smaller body needs less work creating a garment.’

Howeverm Dr Selezna admits there is a deep societal misunderstanding around weight and health. ‘From a medical perspective, fat is light, muscle is heavy. If anything, we should be looking at the scales and thinking we want to increase muscle weight, to become stronger and get more functional benefits,’ she says. ‘But still we see weight increase as a negative.’

Dr Selezneva adds thatthe age-old message of ‘if you want to be a successful, career driven woman, somehow you had to be skinny’ is being perpetuated today by filters on social media.

‘Just as people want to appear to have smooth skin, they want to appear smaller,’ she says. ‘There must be a reason why a tech company has decided to make a filter to make you look thinner. Why would they even think about it? Even they are driven by this trend.’

However, Sophie Hughes believes social media can be used to encourage positivity and hope amongst its younger userbase.

Unlike the mass media of the early aughts, social media can be curated and tailored to each user’s needs. Removing more toxic body images, and replacing them with more positive role models, is something she found helped her change her attitude towards her own body.

‘We have to take responsibility,’ Sophie explains. ‘For me, social media transformed the way I see my body. It also destroyed the way I saw my body when I chose to follow smaller bodies with toned abs. But when I flipped that and unfollowed people who made me question my self-worth, and started to follow inspiring people who are so confident in themselves and took charge, my social media is positive, inspiring and diverse space.

‘It can be used for so much good for women to support and encourage each other in the body positivity space if that’s what you choose it to be.’

Sophie, who now works as a curve model, also goes into schools to speak to teenagers about developing a positive body image.

‘We’re having more conscious conversations about it. I think that’s how any change comes about,’ she continues. ‘No one came into my school and spoke about body confidence, it just wasn’t a thing. The fact we’re also seeing more diverse bodies amongst brands, even if they are accused of “box ticking”, is important. We’re slowly seeing people being represented. It may be slow, but things are changing.’

Whether the desire for the thin ideal will ever truly go away is uncertain. For Michelle, who worries about her own daughter, she hopes people will learn to love their bodies and accept what they look like regardless of size.

‘I always encourage my daughter to be accepting of her body and be happy with herself,’ she says.

Meanwhile Sophie says we should be moving towards body neutrality – simply being at peace with your appearance – in a bid to help women shake off the burden of generations of body hang-ups.

‘When I first started looking at body positivity, I thought it was about learning to love every inch of myself,’ she explains. ‘I’ve come to the point where it’s about just living a peaceful life without thinking about my body too much.

‘It’s about being in a space where I genuinely grasp that my body is the least interesting thing about me.’

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Fresh-faced and ready to explore the world, he had little on him bar the clothes on his back and a keen sense of adventure.

Costas’ travels took him to Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand – then just a remote island untouched by tourists. It was home to one small fishing family, who took the young man in for three months.

During that time, he explored the island intensely, mapping his adventure for his then girlfriend. She then shared the map with friends, who in turn, spread the word about the idyllic Ko Pha Ngan.

Fast-forward 20 years, and Costas, now a travel journalist, opened the New York Times to find a feature about the island. However, the bountiful white sands and clear blue seas were gone – instead, rubbish lay strewn across the beach, having been trampled on by hedonists looking to seek a good time at one of Ko Pha Ngan’s infamous full moon parties. 

Today, Thailand and its various island offshoots now attract on average 40million tourists a year.

Costas’ story, and many others like this, are described in new documentary, The Last Tourist. Touted as the equivalent of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth for the travel industry, the film exposes the real impact of over tourism in an increasingly delicate ecosystem, and questions whether our wanderlust could be destroying the planet so many of us are desperate to explore.

It’s an innate part of human nature to travel, with the industry having been revolutionised in the 1980s; the growing number of the global middle class, paired with cheaper air travel and bargain package deals meant a holiday abroad was more easily available to greater numbers.

The internet further perpetuated this, with people looking to book a holiday being able to choose a location, flight and hotel in just a matter of clicks.

Social media has also made destinations that seemed unattainable easily accessible – we can replicate the exact holiday a travel influencer took, see the same sights and even take the same pictures thanks to geotagging and location services.

However, according to Tyson Sadler, the director of The Last Tourist, many of these tourist destinations are unprepared for such a steep increase in holidaymakers.

‘I don’t think we were adequately prepared for the impact of geotagging on delicate environments,’ he tells Metro.co.uk. ‘We are seeing the environmental degradation of tourism in fragile areas.’

Paired with the ongoing threat of climate change, Tyson explains that wildfires, like those which occurred in Greece last month, could become all the more damaging.

‘With increased human activity and overcrowded tourist destinations, they experience higher levels of foot traffic and human activity which can lead to fires – even negligent behaviours on behalf of the tourists,’ he explains.

’Some destinations lack the infrastructure to cater to large numbers of visitors which can hamper firefighting responsibilities and response times. Having over-tourism can add immense pressures on natural resources, which leads to things that impact the wildfires such as deforestation and water scarcity.’

But wildfires aren’t the only issue. With all-inclusive stays and resorts often bringing a slice of the western world to far flung countries, they also may prevent tourists from integrating and exploring the country they visit.

While it may sound harmless – and even desirable –  to be able to order Italian cuisine while in Barbados, it can have a significant impact on local surroundings.

Local produce is overlooked for foreign imports, and small shops don’t benefit from the spending power of holidaymakers. Meanwhile, locals are paid poor wages to serve huge corporations.

‘Tourism could bring huge amounts of money to local areas,’ Bruce Poon Tip, founder of the G Adventures travel company explains to Metro.co.uk. ‘But so often, travel is a one-way conversation. The locals receive no custom or benefit of having holidaymakers there.

‘Money is often siphoned off to huge corporations based abroad.

It’s certainly the case in Kenya. While around 2million tourists visit the country to take in the breath-taking sights, it’s thought only 14% of every dollar spent there stays in the country – the rest goes to foreign investors based overseas.

Even travellers with only good intentions can leave disastrous impacts on the country they visit. 

The Last Tourist observes the popularity of animal performances and elephant rides in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, which are hugely popular with holidaymakers.

However, the documentary highlights the unspeakably cruel conditions these animals are kept in, regularly beaten and drugged into submission in order to be sedated enough to accommodate the thousands of tourists keen to see them perform.

The sharp rise of ‘voluntourism’ is also a cause for concern. Recent figures suggest around 10million people a year travel to volunteer in orphanages in developing countries.

However, the revolving door of young people looking to do good abroad can leave deep psychological scars on particularly vulnerable children, many of whom have insecure attachment styles. Children are also often asked to perform, and are often used as props for Instagram photos.

In The Last Tourist, Clarissa Elakis, Project Co-ordinator at Child Safe International, compared the rise in voluntourism as being akin to ‘zoo tourism’, and believes in some ways it is a new form of neo-colonialism fuelled by a ‘white saviour mindset.’

The popularity of voluntourism has further fed the growing orphanage industrial complex. These facilities have proven to be a lucrative business, with many volunteers expected to pay for their own travel and accommodation.

Since 2005, Cambodia has seen a 75% rise in orphanages – a direct correlation to the amount of people looking to volunteer in the country. Meanwhile, it is thought 80% of children in these facilities have at least one living parent, and are taken to these facilities for financial gain.

With the numerous problems evident in the travel industry, tourism looks to be a worrying and terrifying state of affairs. But the makers of the Last Tourist are keen to stress that their film is intended to be ultimately an optimistic look at how travel can, and should, be done.

Bruce Poon Tip’s G Adventures company – which promises a cultural immersion in a country, working with locals for a sustainable experience that benefits all – has seen a significant rise in business over the last year.

‘People want something new,’ he explains. ‘We’re 30% up on 2019 numbers now. We are seeing people staying longer in destinations and deeper in their travels, with many taking one big holiday a year and really exploring their destination. We’re hoping that trend continues.’

‘I’m cautiously optimistic,’ documentary maker Tyson Sadler agrees. ‘We’re going in the right direction, but it’s about sharing this message of being conscious and responsible. Travel will always have an impact, we can’t change that, but it’s about what we can do to reduce that impact.’

With the coronavirus crisis and the subsequent lockdowns effectively closing down the world for two years, many sustainable tourism industries were hopeful that Covid could serve as a hard reset for the travel industry.

For Bruce, who worked with other larger corporations during the lockdown, he has started to see conversations being had in boardrooms that would have otherwise been unheard of 10 years ago.

‘The COP declaration, which lots of tour operators signed up for, means there’s a huge commitment for us to do better,’ he explains. ‘I know in every board meeting in tourism, sustainability is a conversation. Unfortunately, with the industry having lost so much money in the pandemic, we need to move faster. We could be doing a hell of a lot better. But we’re taking steps in the right direction.’

For Bruce and Tyson, the only way to accelerate these changes is for tourists to demand them. Every dollar, euro or pound spent abroad is a vote on how we want travel to change.

‘When it comes to business, people don’t do things because it’s the right thing to do,’ Bruce says. ‘People do it because the customer demands it. One of the main reasons we made this film is to confront customers with the realities of tourism and get them to make the change.’

Effectively, Bruce continues, travel is a privilege, and not a right – for tourists to appreciate the world we have, we have to change our entire attitude towards our holidays.

‘There are so few people in the world with the ability to say: “I can go on my holidays,’” he explains. ‘You look at the population and the amount of people who can travel. It’s an extreme privilege to be able to do it. But with privilege comes great responsibility.

‘We have the opportunity to transform lives by going on holiday if we do it right. We have to have the mindset that it’s a community experience.

‘People used to want these luxury holidays with the comforts of home, which means the destination is no longer important because you’re bogged down with conveniences. Travel should be so much more than that.’

The Last Tourist can be streamed on Sky and Apple TV in the UK. For more information and to watch the trailer click here.

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‘My mother and father are both addicts and alcoholics. You can imagine a child growing up around that – a house full of drugs, violence, indescribable trauma, strangers in our home off their heads,’ remembers Wayne, who shares his story under a pseudonym.

It was this combination of addiction and isolation that made the teenager a prime target for violent gangs and a victim of criminal exploitation forced to sell drugs to pay off an ongoing debt he knew he would never be able to settle.

Recalling how his life spiralled out of control, Wayne says it all started when he got his first job. ‘I was befriended by a guy. This was where the exploitation started.’

Soon the two were meeting up outside of work to smoke weed. Then one day the friend turned up at his house asking him to sell two big ounces of cannabis. Instead of selling it however, Wayne smoked the lot. ‘It was like Christmas come early,’ he admits. 

What he didn’t know at the time, was that he had been targeted by his ‘friend’, who was really part of a gang that operated in fraud and exploitation, and demanded he gave back £300 for what he’d smoked.

‘So, I started trying to sell drugs for him to pay off this money, but he’s giving me more and more drugs. I’m smoking more, so this debt’s getting higher and higher,’ recalls Wayne. 

As well as paying off his initial debt of £300, Wayne’s friend kept adding interest making the amount impossible to settle. When he couldn’t, he was driven to a secluded area where a gang of men threatened to shoot Wayne if he didn’t pay the money he owed. They also made it clear they knew where his mother lived.

Although Wayne managed to cobble together the cash owed from a friend, the gang continued to demand more – and didn’t stop for three years. In that time, Waynemoved out of the family home in a bid to keep them safe, and began living on the streets. By the time he turned up to a dry house four years later, all he had was a black bag and a coat inside of it. ‘I had no passport, no birth certificate,’ he remembers.

Although Wayne has since managed to turn his life around with the support of  a rehab programme through the dry house and is now sober and working in social care, the impact of being exploited in such a brutal manner has left its mark.

‘It’s tough. My mental health is never steady,’ he admits. ‘I live with the effects of exploitation. I live with the effect of homelessness, the trauma, and will probably be living with it for the rest of my life.’

Wayne is just one of the hundreds of people that has been helped by the anti-slavery charity Unseen over the years. Although his experience may not fit the bill of what a ‘modern slavery’ victim might look like, his experiences of exploitation at the hands of hardened criminals proves that there’s no one size fits all. 

In fact, according to Andrew Wallis, Unseen’s CEO, it’s key that people understand that exploitation can happen to anyone – traffickers have no respect for race, sex, nationality, education level, they just look for a vulnerable person.

What’s just as concerning is that last year was the busiest year for the charity’s helpline, which operates 24/7 and 365 days a year, with an 116% increase from the previous year in calls about potential victims and a shocking 70% rise in modern slavery cases being reported. 

‘Over the seven years for which the helpline has been running, there has been a steady increase,’ explains Andrew, although he’s keen to stress that this is not just down to a rising number of victims, it’s also due to better understanding of the issue. ‘2022 saw people coming out of the pandemic, there is more awareness of our helpline,’ he says.

Andrew also believes that this is also due to the trust victims have in the charity, saying that Unseen are ‘the only national helpline of scale around the globe that doesn’t receive government funding.’ Which means that victims may feel a confidence that their data won’t be shared with immigration officials or other officials. 

‘That level of confidentiality and safety is absolutely key for victims,’ he says.

However, that doesn’t mean the charity works under a veil of secrecy. In fact, they often share the stories of those they have helped, such as Wayne, albeit anonymously, so victims feel secure that they can’t be tracked down by their abusers. 

‘We want to highlight how easy it is to be trafficked,’ Andrew tells Metro.co.uk. ‘A reason why victims want to speak about their experiences is that they don’t want others to go through what they have. It also reinforces the deception phase of recruitment and shows that anyone can be trafficked and be a victim of modern slavery.

‘The range of emotions that victims go through vary on a case-by-case basis,’ adds Andrew. 

Some have just been pulled out by the police and are turning up to Unseen literally with their worldly possessions or just the clothes that the police have given to them, he explains. While others come through a local authority such as Unseen or the Salvation Army and are referred via the national referral mechanism.

‘Victims can feel guilt, anger, or even feel stupid for putting themselves in that situation,’ he explains. ‘I remember one client telling us they were told by their exploiters: “You amount to nothing, if you step out of line, we will just kill you and toss your body. No one will find you; you are worthless.”

‘Traffickers think of their victim as valuable while they are making money for them. In essence, it is an economic crime, it is all about making money with horrendous human rights outcomes.’

Another story shared on Unseen’s website is that of Priscilla, a victim of modern slavery, who was abused for years and forced to live in hellish conditions.

Orphaned at a young age when she was living in South Africa, she was sent to live with her grandmother nearby who had very little money, and couldn’t afford to send her to school.

Instead, the little girl stayed at home and helped out with chores. One day Priscilla – who also goes by a pseudonym – was told by her grandmother that she had found her work in the UK, and gave her a passport and airline tickets. 

However, instead of living the life she dreamed she might have in England, the young girl found herself trapped in a private family house, treated as a slave, and made to feel worthless constantly for years. 

Although Priscilla doesn’t detail what she was forced to go through, there have been countless cases of young women being trafficked to the UK and kept virtual prisoners, having to endlessly cook and clean for families, while receiving no wages or time off. Some have even been expected to have sex as part of their job. 

Priscilla reveals that although she eventually managed to escape ,with nowhere to go, she was forced to live on the streets. As her mental health declined, she was eventually found by the authori and sectioned. 

It was while she was recovering in hospital that Priscilla was put in touch with Unseen, and eventually released to one of their safe houses. There, she received support to help with her trauma and took part in music therapy, cooking and nutrition classes. 

‘I have seen changes in my life,’ she says. ‘I was unable to make decisions for myself before. Now I make my own decisions. I’m happy that I can do things by myself.’ 

With an estimated 100,000 – 130,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK right now, Andrew believes far more needs to be done to tackle the issue. 

‘It doesn’t sit on the national threat assessment level at which it should,’ he says. ‘There is an issue of funding, a lack of training and awareness on the matter. I cannot say that every police officer knows what modern slavery is, how to identify it and deal with it or that every agency understands what modern slavery and knows how to report on it. We are nowhere near that.’

He adds that it’s not just the police who need better training either – local government and NHS staff could also benefit. 

Asked whether the Ukraine War has had an impact on these numbers, Andrew admits it’s undeniable. ‘Four and a half million women and children fleeing… There are traffickers at the border, and we are also finding people across the borders and in the UK already,’ he says.

Speaking about what he would want to see happen going forward with preventing modern slavery and exploitation, Andrew explains there are several changes that need to be made. ‘One is that we need to upgrade legislation in the UK. The government promised two years ago to bring forward the modern slavery legislation and they still haven’t done this,’ he says. 

‘Secondly, I want to see manifesto commitments from every party that they will bring forward this legislation. Thirdly, upgrade the transparency and supply piece within the legislation so companies have to report all incidents of modern slavery and explain if there is none.’

Andrew also says that the government already has the tools to make things better, pointing out that the Modern Slavery Act 2015, Section 54 states: ‘the home secretary can take any company to court who hasn’t produced a modern slavery report.’  

However, he adds, there have been thousands of companies who haven’t produced a Modern Slavery Statement but not one home secretary has taken anyone to court. ‘This is a local, national, and global problem – but there is only around 1% successful prosecutions of crimes related to modern slavery.’

However, there is a chink of hope. Unseen believe that by sharing the harrowing stories of those who have experienced exploitation, the more it will be uncovered.

After all, Andrew points out, a quarter of calls to the helpline come from victims, which means the rest – and the resulting increase in calls – are from people coming forward to report a form of slavery or exploitation. 

‘The more you look for exploitation, the more you find it,’ he says. 

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‘It’s exhausting – and terrible for your mental health.’ 

As one of the performers taking part in this year’s Manchester Pride, Reeta is shedding light on the reality of belonging to both LGBTQ+ and Asian communities. 

‘You’d never see Asians in queer spaces because those spaces didn’t feel safe for us. Meanwhile, we couldn’t be ourselves in Asian spaces either,’ they add. ‘I remember when we could never fully be ourselves anywhere.’ 

Reeta, who performs under the name of RAIN and also works as a producer and poet, tells Metro.co.uk that it was after losing their family when they came out, that inspired them to help others in similar situations. 

‘Unfortunately, loss of family and culture is still common in our community and something we live in fear of,’ Reeta explains. ‘If we do lose family or choose to leave, like I did, it can become a very isolating experience.’ 

In 2017, 10 years after coming out to their family – and 21 years after coming out to themselves – Reeta founded Gaysians, a volunteer-led movement to connect queer Asians, increase positive media visibility and improve access to support services.  

‘We’ve come a long way since we didn’t see versions of ourselves in the media or nightlife or on the street. We’re more visible now and I’m immensely proud,’ says Reeta.  

‘As recently as a decade ago you didn’t see queer South Asians on screen or in clubs. We’ve worked extremely hard to mainstream our narratives and it’s incredible seeing where we are today, whether that’s performing at Glastonbury, writing for TV, or starring in TV soaps and Marvel films.

‘I’m a shop kid’, Reeta continues. ‘From the age of six I was working at the till and later delivering newspapers. I can only imagine how differently life would have turned out for me and my family if we’d seen positive representations of queer south Asians in the papers back then. Every one of us matters and I want us all to know that and really believe it.’ 

RAIN is just one of the star turns at Manchester Pride later this month, as part of the event’s Queer Asian Takeover, curated and hosted by iconic drag queen Lucky Roy Singh. 

Manchester-based Lucky – who cites Indian-British model Neelam Kaur Gill among their style influences – is house mother to the House of Spice, an collective of performers of Asian, Middle Eastern and North African heritage. 

As the driving force behind this year’s Queer Asian Takeover, they explain: ‘The idea was formed out of a community session held with Manchester Pride and [artistic director of dance collective Ghetto Fabulous and founder of Black Pride Manchester] Darren Pritchard. 

‘It’s the first of its kind,’ adds Lucky. 

‘We don’t have enough people like me in queer spaces. Drag [show] line-ups are often all-white, particularly in cabaret. There’s almost no intersectionality or accountability from bookers or many of the booked artists involved. That’s what makes this event so important and historic. Other Prides should take note.’ 

The Queer Asian Takeover has been co-curated with local activities and performers like Singh, and will centre queer Asian joy, showcasing over 22 performers and collectives, including Val The Brown Queen, Gracie T, Club Zindagi and headliner DJ Gok Wan. 

Celebrating and elevating the art, experiences and stories of marginalised queer people feels more crucial than ever, to help combat the very real discrimination the community continues to face both in the UK and abroad. 

In 2022, the UK saw a 41% increase in anti-LGB hate crimes, and a 56% rise in transphobic hate crimes. Meanwhile, queer people of colour often facing dual discrimination, with over half having experienced racism within the LGBT community. 

This is what has led many community leaders, performers and activists to begin carving out their own spaces. 

‘My favourite singer is Leslie Cheung, an incredible Hong Kong pop singer, who sadly took his own life after being rejected for his sexuality and gender expression,’ singer-songwriter and model Jason Kwan tells Metro.co.uk. 

‘I was just a child when I saw the news [of Leslie’s death] on TV, but also knew I was queer and wanted to sing. That’s what pushed me to apply for a music scholarship and hardship fund and move to the UK when I was a teenager.’

Desperate to avoid the queerphobia Leslie Cheung face, Jason left Hong Kong as a teen, however he was sadly met with a different type of discrimination when first arriving in the UK. 

‘In Hong Kong, I’d never experienced racism as a minority, but when I arrived in the UK, people didn’t like me talking about being Asian’, says Jason. 

‘They didn’t like me singing in Chinese’ and my culture was parodied or appropriated, which made me want to hide my Asianness.’ 

Today, Jason is co-director of The Bitten Peach, the UK’s first queer pan-Asian and gender diverse cabaret collective, who closed the Manchester Pride Cabaret Stage in 2022.  

Since launching in 2019, it has hosted over 70 shows, platforming over 70 artists and selling over 3000 tickets. 

‘The Bitten Peach was my debut into London’s queer scene’, remembers Jason. “Before that, I was in straight bars in Camden singing covers for hardly any money.’ 

The collective also supports budding performers within the queer Asian community. 

‘We connect people to mentors and help them speak to people of similar experiences’, Jason continues.  

‘Our research found that the biggest barrier to entering the arts for young east and southeast Asians is their parents not wanting them to’. 

Although, family can play a large part in queer art and performance, often central to the stories we see on screen and stage, for example in the run-up to coming out or the aftermath of it.  

Reeta explains: ‘I’ve realised that the reason I lost my family was so I could heal and find happiness. My show [The Remedy] is about this journey.’ 

‘I’ve more recently been reconnecting with my family of origin. In fact, my father reached out to me for the first time in 15 years while I was touring the show. I realised this meant I would need to adapt its ending.’ 

‘I was obviously overjoyed to hear from my dad! But I also have had to reconcile a lot of complex emotions”, Loi reflects. Overall, I’m glad we have a chance to be in each other’s lives again and support each other. I’ve missed him more than words can say.’ 

Reeta, who is now transitioning to the name of RAIN, recently came out as non-binary. 

‘Our stories and experiences, just like our identities, have fluidity,’ they explain. Reeta will always be a part of mine, but at 45 I’m incredibly excited to start a new one with RAIN.’ 

Similarly, Lucky cites the familial influence of their work, and how this has been received from family members since. 

‘My style is very East meets West. It’s Bollywood, Indian, glamour and diamonds,’ Lucky tells Metro.co.uk.  

‘I took inspiration from watching the women and fabrics around me, bringing both [British and Indian] parts of my identity together. 

‘In 2021 I did a show for Trans Vegas [the UK’s largest festival celebrating trans artists] about watching my mum get dressed and ready in the morning, and how the fabrics made her feel’, they say. 

‘That’s the style my performances often take. Holding a mirror up to women like the ones I grew up around, showing them their fierceness and power’, Lucky continues.  

‘I’ve had female family members come to see my drag and they watch it in awe, because they see it’s inspired by their beauty.’ 

Meanwhile, Jason adds, ‘My mum flew from Hong Kong for The Bitten Peach’s first Udderbelly show [which took place on London’s Southbank]. She’d never watched anything like it and I’m probably the only openly queer person she knows. And she loved it. 

‘I do think how she received it was helped by its mainstream environment, in a Spiegel tent with lots of straight, white and middle-class audience members. I think for her it was important to see me being celebrated by people outside of my community, and in the majority, as this was a clearer marker that I was safe and accepted.’ 

While representation has started to improve in queer performance arts, thanks to work by groups like Gaysians, House of Spice and The Bitten Peach, the discrimination faced by queer people of colour remains very real. 

‘Canal Street continues to be rife with racism’, says Lucky Roy Singh, whose petition ‘End Racism In Manchester’s Gay Village’ has garnered almost 900 responses. 

‘I’ve experienced this in various forms throughout my life’, they continue, ‘and it urgently needs addressing’. 

This doesn’t just include members of the public but staffing too. 

‘We’ve seen and experienced racist door staff and, despite reporting it to venues’ management, hear nothing back. Is it a lack of education on inclusion issues, or a deliberate refusal to be educated on them?’ 

Education has formed a large part of Lucky Roy Singh’s activism, in particular on honour-based violence, which they themselves experienced in their 20s. 

‘I was failed by police, hospitals and victim support groups. Since therapy, I’ve campaigned to make honour-based violence recognised as a specific form of abuse, rather than just a cultural issue.’, Lucky says. 

‘I’ve trained 98 police officers, including Scotland Yard and Greater Manchester Police. I share my story with them, and the signs that previous officers had missed and failed to act on.’  

‘The training started as compulsory but has since been made mandatory, which I think is a great thing. Education is so important.’ 

So at a time where education and solidarity is more important than ever, what does allyship to queer Asians look like? 

‘It’s important to understand that ‘coming out’ most likely won’t look the same for many queer Asians [as it will other queer people]. It often takes longer for us to access our identity for ourselves’ says Reeta.  

‘Be sensitive and kind and don’t ask questions like “do your family know?” or “are they religious?” as these questions can trigger painful memories or cause anxiety’, they continue. 

‘Instead, offer us company, in particular during times of the year that can be tough, like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, family events such as weddings or religious festivals. I wish my friends had offered to take me to [queer Asian club night] Club Kali when I was struggling, as seeing other people like me would have made a huge difference to the isolation I was experiencing.’ 

For those outside of the community, a big part of allyship is supporting the art. 

‘Around 60% of our audiences are white, and they’re great allies. They love learning, taking part and having fun with us’, Jason explains.  

While Lucky says, ‘Support Asian artists. Acknowledge our art and our fashion and where it comes from. I want people to know that they can embrace it, but with respect and while knowing what it means.’

And that can start with attending and supporting this year’s Queer Asian Takeover at Manchester Pride, they add. ‘It’s going to be fierce and fun. Expect an infusion of celebration, colour, spice, fashion and culture… What more could you ask for?’

For more information about this year’s Manchester Pride, click here.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.

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Even so, she says she has been left with a lifetime of treasured memories, thanks to the impact the legendary artist had on her growing up.

‘My mom was the enforcer – you have parents who are like that,’ Cedella, now 55, tells Metro.co.uk.

‘One is the enforcer and the other one just spoils you rotten. Any time she would scold us he would come home and he would see us looking like we were scolded, and be like “Come, let’s come get some ice cream.”

‘He was that dad that would come in after you’ve done something wrong and make you think it wasn’t that bad. “Let’s go get some hamburgers and some ice cream and then you’ll be okay.” Those are some of my favourite memories because when Daddy passed I was only 13 years old. It’s not a lot of those memories I have, so the ones we do have I cherish.’

Over the years Cedella has since worked hard to continue her father’s legacy and is now set to release a new album of Bob Marley & The Wailers songs 40 years after his death.

As a musician and author, Cedella is the eldest biological child of the legendary artist, and says she hopes new record Africa Unite will help bring his voice and message to younger generations.

However, Cedella adds, growing up the daughter of Bob Marley wasn’t easy in Jamaica, where he was ‘not popular or well-liked’.

‘Having the Marley name was like “Oh lord, not them not these dirty Rastas,”‘ she recalls.

‘That’s what it was like growing up in Jamaica. I had friends who, if they wanted to spend the weekend with me, would have to tell their parents they were going to Jackie’s house because their parents wouldn’t allow them to come to my house.

‘Which was weird, because I thought my house was cooler than theirs. I’m not saying their fathers were stumbling drunks or whatever, but my father wasn’t at home just smoking herb and strumming his guitar. He was a good father, and my mother was a remarkable mother. So having that name in Jamaica did not open doors, did not give you any favours. And that’s good for us, because we had to work harder.’

Even as time passed and Marley’s influence and legacy grew – being just as strong today 40 years after his death – Cedella and his other children were never offered any special treatment and were far from today’s so-called ‘nepo babies’.

‘The name changed but we didn’t. We are still the same overachievers, the same people we were back then,’ she explains.

‘Some things that happen to you in childhood you never forget. You don’t forget how people treated you or your parents. My mom was shot in her head, they tried to kill my father. It’s things like those that you remember, you remember the people who did it – and why they wanted to do it.

‘It’s like they try and kill your parents because they sing about peace, love and unity. Who does that? Really and truly, who does that? So that’s the lineage we come from.

‘We were never born with a golden spoon, we all had to accomplish what we had to accomplish on our own. And yeah we were born with that name, but we didn’t choose it. We’re never gonna deny who we are to please anyone. A lot of people are going to have to get over that stuff.’

Marley was just 36 years old when he died, but to say he lived a lot in his short years would be an understatement, and fans will get a glimpse into his life in upcoming biopic One Love.

The film, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir as Marley and Lashana Lynch his wife Rita, was shot on location in Jamaica and London, and explores the singer’s time in the UK capital where he wrote acclaimed album Exodus.

Cedella was present for much of the filming, and admits it was ‘bittersweet’ and at times ‘difficult’ to see parts of her parents’ lives laid out that she wasn’t there for.

‘Honestly speaking, it was hard. Because you’re watching your parents’ life being told in front of you. I wasn’t on the road with Daddy so to see some of the experiences on the road in front of you, to see some of his life was difficult to sit there and watch day after day,’ she explains.

‘But it was also therapeutic. I’m grown-grown now, and they were so young. I think when Daddy went to London he was like late twenties, early thirties, and now I’m in my fifties.

‘It was bittersweet, but my parents were very young going through a lot of things… I think we take our life for granted sometimes.’

Even stranger were the moments she did remember, admits Cedella. One scene in the film sees her mother Rita, in Jamaica with the children, on the phone to the War singer who is over 4000 miles away in London, and asking “don’t you miss thie children? When are you coming back? The children miss you…”

‘I remember that phone call vividly. I can still see it. So to be able to watch their lives unfold in front of me was very educational and touching – and emotional. It was a lot of things, but I was happy I was there to experience it.’

Cedella says that she feels ‘grateful’ to be able to ‘see the struggle but also see the redemption’ in the film, and is especially ‘grateful I was born to these two, to Bob and Rita.’

‘I couldn’t have asked for better parents,’ she adds. ‘And if what they say is true, a spirit of a child chooses who their parents are gonna be, I think I chose well.’

It’s her love and respect for her parents and their work to unify people, that led Cedella to work on new album Africa Unite, which sees modern African artists take on iconic Bob Marley & The Wailers tracks in a unique posthumous collaboration with the legendary musician.

One track, Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) even features his grandson, Cedella’s son Skip Marley, along with Rema with other artists including Tiwa Savage, Ami Faku, Teni, Oxlade, Arya Starr and more.

It would have been ‘very important to Daddy to be able to reach those young African artists and collab with them,’ Cedella says.

‘The album showcases the importance of Daddy in today’s Africa. I think he would have loved and be proud of what we have.’

Marley was famed for encouraging peace, love and unity through his music, howeverCedella says that in the last few decades ‘not much has changed.’

She adds: ‘In some instances, it’s gotten worse. I’m sitting where I am, you’re sitting where you are, but there are wars happening in the world.

‘Daddy has always been a voice for the voiceless. This would have troubled him.’

Africa Unite is ‘reaching out to a generation’ who may not have heard Marley’s message, which is why they secured ‘some of the top performers out of Africa… to have a track with Daddy, we’re going to engage those listeners,’ explains Cedella.

‘We’re bringing the message to that generation now. It’s just amazing we can use the voice of the youth and the voice of Daddy, bring them together, and the music will speak for itself.

‘And I think we’re going to get a beautiful response.’

Africa Unite is available to stream and buy now.

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After visiting the gym every day, his muscles would bulge from his clothes, and strangers would comment on his body-builder physique.

‘I was almost as wide as I was tall’, remembers the 28-year-old.

Externally, Jack appeared to be in tip-top physical condition, but on the inside he was falling apart. He would lose his breath climbing the stairs, his blood pressure was ‘through the roof’ and he would cry at the drop of a hat. He also lost his libido.

It was the culmination of years of steroid abuse that could have gravely jeopardised his health.

Jack, a joiner from Hull, was 19 when he started taking anabolic steroids – both orally and with needles – in a bid to beef up. Within a couple of months he was addicted.

Anabolic steroids are class C drugs, which are legal to use, but illegal to sell. They increase muscle mass and improve athletic performance – but they come with a catalogue of health risks.

According to the UK Anti-Doping Agency, there are around one million regular UK steroid users and the most common demographic for the onset of Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs (IPED) use is 20-24 year-old males.

So worried about the rise in usage among Gen Z, in 2020 the organisation launched a digital campaign across social media to highlight the side effects and risks.

And worryingly, an increasing amount of people – mostly young boys – are becoming hooked on steroids.

Experts at Priory mental health services estimate around 500,000 people are addicted on the physique enhancers, with social media and reality TV thought to be major contributors for men seeking an unrealistic body image.

It’s an issue that’s now being profiled on Coronation Street, with acid attack victim Ryan Connor turning to injecting steroids to help with his confidence.

‘I started taking them mainly from insecurity,’ Jack recalls. ‘I was always a small child, quite skinny, and I felt like I couldn’t be a protector. I got bullied quite a bit, so I just wanted to be big.’

IPEDs are sometimes used in patterns called ‘cycling’, which involves taking multiple doses of steroids over a specific period of time, stopping for a period, and starting again. The idea is that this wards off some of the side effects, which can include shrunken testicles, erectile dysfunction, gynaecomastia (swollen breast tissue) and hair loss, among others.

In 2016, Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews admitted that he took steroids to improve his appearance, adding that it was ‘one of the biggest mistakes’ of his life.

Meanwhile, shows like Love Island have also been blamed for putting pressure on young men to bulk up. Last year, contestant Tom Powell, who had previously revealed that he is addicted to steroids and has no plans to kick them, had to have breast reduction surgery after suffering from gynecomastia.

Jack tells Metro.co.uk that his addiction saw him taking steroids every day for a whole year.

He describes how the cycles would begin with a period of euphoria, ‘where you’re on cloud nine’, he says, but after a month or so, users experience a dip. 

‘Your mood starts to change. You get mild irritation. But the longer the cycle goes on, the worse your mood gets,’ Jack explains. ‘More often than not, people don’t want to come off, because you get physically smaller.

‘Then you start getting horrific mood swings. I started crying once at an advert. Another time, I physically started crying from anger walking from my car to my house because it was raining and I didn’t want to get wet. It’s embarrassing. That’s not normal behaviour.

‘I knew it was because of the steroids, but by that point I was in too deep.’

Jack recalls how the drugs – which cost between £250 and £500 for a full cycle – consumed his whole life. ‘You always want more,’ he says. ‘I would think: “When I get up to 13 stone I’ll be happy. Or if my arms are a certain number of inches, I’ll be happy.” But you get there and you just want more and more. You’re just constantly chasing something that never arrives. It completely destroys your life.’

Alongside ‘roid rage’, steroids can cause other distressing psychological effects, including manic behaviour, paranoia, hallucinations and delusions.

However, for Jack, it was mainly aggression. He started getting in tussles when he was out drinking and would find himself in the back of a police van a few times. He says his muscle-man appearance often enticed others to take him on.

He recalls: ‘I would get in fights. People would heckle and make comments, Sometimes I could just let it go, and other times I would just snap.

‘I was walking round Asda once and I heard a couple go: “Err. That’s disgusting.” I looked around, thinking they’d be talking about someone else, and they were talking about the way I looked. But I would almost feed off that stuff, sometimes. It would make me want to get bigger, to be freakishly big.

‘It sounds strange, but looking back on photos, I looked pretty big. But at the time, I didn’t think I was, even when people told me. I still thought I was tiny. It’s crazy.’

Jack’s loved ones were affected, too. He would prioritise going to the gym and steroid use over girlfriends, and his relationships would end abruptly. He admits he was irascible with his family.

‘I was always snappy. I am ashamed to say I made my grandma cry,’ he remembers. ‘I love her so much, and I made her cry, after she gave me the wrong sandwich or something. I just snapped. Steroids just turn you into a horrible, horrible person.’

And Jack was exhausted. The strain he was putting on his body and his heart left him with crippling fatigue and a habit that cost him around £1,500 a year.

Eventually, his family convinced him to get help. He saw the doctor and got counselling. He was supported by The Juice Bar – a free and confidential service offering advice on anabolic steroids and other injectable drugs – through weekly sessions and telephone advice, that went on for over a year.

‘Even after this time, I still wanted to use because I hated getting smaller,’ admits Jack. ‘The psychological pull of steroids is very strong.’

However, he says, the The Juice Bar has helped him turn his life around.

‘I am so grateful to the team for their support,’ says Jack. ‘I have continued with my gym training throughout my recovery and although my size has reduced, I feel fitter and healthier than ever before.’

Paul Martindale who manages the project, says Jack’s experience is common.

‘IPED users often become fixated on their appearance and feel that bigger is never enough,’ he explains. ‘Many individuals believe these drugs are supporting a healthy lifestyle and with little official help and support, often turn to the internet for advice, which does not always prove to be accurate.

‘It can be difficult for users of IPEDS to access services so we have developed tools to reach out including Live Chat allowing people to ask questions anonymously using instant messaging. Two nights each week we are available online to take live enquiries and we also field offline messages at other times too.’

Paul also encourages users to access a needle exchange, to keep them safe from blood borne viruses.

Steroids are now ‘rife’ in Hull, Jack says, which he sees as a sad reflection of the pressure on young men to look a certain way.

While the short term effects can be bad enough, the long term health risks are more frightening, according to Dr Monika Wassermann who has worked with patients who have used IPEDs. 

‘Prolonged use of steroids poisons your liver. The result? Liver damage,’ she explains. ‘Pairing steroids with resistance exercise will boost your muscle size. But it also heightens the risk of heart disease.

‘Additionally, steroids reduce the production and release of the testosterone hormone. The consequences of this include low testosterone hormone levels and sperm count, with a good chance that you will be infertile.’

Users also risk infections or cysts in the injection site, as well as an increased risk of prostate cancer, heart attack and kidney failure.

In the most extreme cases, steroids can be lethal. Teenage bodybuilder Andrej Gajdos died in 2015 when his heart burst. Four different types of steroids were found in the 19-year-old’s flat in Weston-Super-Mare after his death.

Jamie Goldie, a 21-year-old bouncer, model and body coach is well aware of these health risks, but takes steroids anyway.

He estimates that around half of the people at his gym use IPEDs, but says the only reason he takes them is because he enters bodybuilding competitions, where, he believes, the vast majority of competitors have used some sort of performance enhancing drug.

‘Would you sit a maths test if everyone had the answers but you?’ he argues, adding that he only takes a very low dose of the drug and wouldn’t do it if he wasn’t competing.

‘Some people are stupid about it nowadays, taking stupid amounts,’ he says. ‘I get messages from 16, 17, 18-year old guys, asking where they can get steroids. I tell them: “Just don’t do it. You’re too young. All you need to do is concentrate on eating enough food, training properly, going to the gym and sleeping enough.”

‘My view is if you’ve not got a reason to take it, don’t touch it at all. If you’re taking it purely to the biggest guy in the room, you’re a d***head. Plain and simple. 

‘I take it purely because I want to be professional and compete at the top level,’ adds Jamie. ‘But if you’re the guy that’s taking them because they’re going on holiday; you’re putting your health at risk, you’re putting your friends at risk, you’re putting your family at risk. For what? To look good at Ibiza for a week? It’s stupid, it’s irresponsible and you have no reason to take it. It’s purely for ego.’

Ruth Micallef, an eating disorders counsellor, says many of her clients turned to steroids in response to trauma, or bullying, and that they are suffering from ‘muscle dysmorphia’, a condition caused by the delusional or exaggerated belief is that one’s own body is too small or too skinny. This has also been termed ‘bigorexia’ or ‘reverse anorexia’.

‘Rather than getting the support or help they need, people are being praised for their way of unhealthy coping, only encouraging them to do it more,’ she explains. 

‘Use of steroids can make users angry, withdrawn, and even violent. It can push users away from their loved ones, and the restrictive diets and excessive time in gym settings only exacerbate the problem.

‘If a loved one is using steroids for muscle gain, it is worth asking, why are they trying to “protect” themselves by looking this way? Many registered professionals like myself work with conditions like muscle dysmorphia, and recovery is absolutely possible.’

Tyrone Brennand trained extremely hard in his twenties to become a bodybuilder. He tried to gain as much muscle as possible through eating, protein shakes and lifting weights and came under immense pressure from people at the gym to try steroids. 

‘I remember as a young guy starting to really think about competing in bodybuilding – but you know as someone who isn’t taking steroids you are at disadvantage because of those that do,’ explains the 36-year-old celebrity PT from Chelsea, founder of Be The Fittest. 

‘It’s hard to say “no” and turn your back on a world you’ve invested thousands of hours in, to look a certain way and gain the respect of others around you.

I watched friends and other guys become addicted to steroids and I knew it was a slippery slope. You will never be big enough; you can always push a bit further was the mentality. It’s toxic. I had friends who were in bad cycles, and they couldn’t look at themselves in the mirror after stopping taking steroids. The trade off is never worth it.’ 

Tyrone recalls that he was offered steroids in the gym a number of times. ‘They really tried to pressure you to take them,’ he remembers. ‘But I knew someone who had mad heart problems as a result of using steroids, and the one guy who offered it to me on a few occasions said “he just took bad stuff, don’t worry”.

‘This guy was a huge, muscly guy in my gym. Bulging veins and what body builders would describe as an incredible physique. I was tempted, but I concluded that my health and fitness were paramount. Taking steroids to look better is so counterintuitive.’

‘I don’t regret that decision for a moment, because I don’t know how the steroids could have affected me,’ adds Tyrone. ‘You’re seeing young people taking steroids and having heart attacks and dying. I don’t regret not being one of them. And I’m much more content with how I exercise and my fitness goals now than I was as a young man.’

When Jack now reflects on his steroid usage, he admits he feels lucky that he didn’t do more damage to his health and that he has shaken the habit for good.

‘It’s like any addiction, alcohol, drugs – you’re always in recovery, constantly, for the rest of your life,’ he admits. ‘But I’m miles better now that I’m off it.

‘Towards the end, I ran horrific cycles that were really bad for the body. I was on it constantly, for a full year, which is so stupid. I look back and think I am lucky to be a functioning healthy adult with prospects of having a child. 

‘All I’ve ever wanted to do is be a dad and I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I couldn’t get my girlfriend pregnant.

‘I know lads that will never take steroids again, but now they have to take viagra every time. My libido has bounced back after two and a half years. But they are stuck on viagra for the rest of their lives.

‘Once you’ve taken that plunge with steroids, even one cycle can mess you up physically for the rest of the life,’ adds Jack. 

‘People don’t think of the negatives. They just hear that they’ll get bigger. And they do; but at what cost?’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk 

Share your views in the comments below.

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Crowds of them, armed with timers, come together to compete. Governed by strict rules, they are smart, focused and quick as lightning.

Known as speedcubers, they are living out a postmodern Rubik’s renaissance.

Membership of the World Cubing Association (WCA) has shot through the roof in recent years; it has seen a 500% increase in the last decade.

Last year, more than 26,000 signed up to the WCA, compared with 4,300 in 2012, and the body has seen more than 100,000 race each other in competitions all over the globe.

So how did the humble toy, which was born in the 70s, see such a recent surge in popularity?

Lockdown was a catalyst, says cubing champion George Scholey, who can solve a Rubik’s in an incredible 5.72 seconds.

The 21-year-old from London spent two years as the UK’s fastest cuber – before his cubing crown was snatched by a 12-year-old in 2021.

‘People have been speed solving for years, but recently popularity has really grown. I think a lot of that is due to lockdown when people were at home with little to do and genuinely just getting bored with their phones,’ he explains. ‘Pretty much everyone has a Rubik’s Cube lying around in their house. Plus – everything is out there online on how to solve it. It’s super accessible.’

George first learnt how to solve a cube from YouTube in 2015. Since then he is the world record holder for the most cubes solved on a skateboard (500) and the most cubes solved in 24 hours (6,931).

He started off practicing for six hours a day, but getting a degree put a stop to that, and now graduated, he is a Rubik’s ambassador.

‘Cubing has grown exponentially in popularity and there are now competitions every week,’ he says. ‘There are so many organisers, delegates and enough competitors to justify that. It’s exploding, which is amazing for me to see. But it’s intimidating. People are getting a lot faster.’

In fact, the fastest known cuber is currently American Max Park, 21, who solved the 3x3x3 puzzle in an astonishing 3.13 seconds in June.

Max was one of the stars of the Netflix film ‘The Speed Cubers’, a moving documentary that showed how the autistic youngster couldn’t use his hands due to poor motor skills as a small child.

Max discovered cubing, aced it, now wins competitions around the world and has become part of a loving and accepting community.

George adds: ‘I cannot emphasise enough how welcoming the cubing community is. Truly there’s nothing like it. You get quite a lot of neuro-atypical kids there and that’s great.

‘You have a lot of unconventional personalities and no-one bats an eyelid. You’re free to express yourself however you like. It’s really accepting. But also, we’re not competing against each other. We’re competing against ourselves. And that’s the mentality.’

While Rubik’s are the best known of the cubes, there are a number of other makes, including Gan, Nexcube and MoYu, among others.

And while we all recognise the 3x3x3 cube, competitors also race to solve the 2×2, the Square-1, the Megaminx, Pyraminx and Skewb as well as other so-called ‘twisty puzzles’. 

American YouTuber Shawn Boucké tells Metro.co.uk that he has seen a surge in popularity over the past five years.

The musician and teacher from Michigan set up a YouTube channel and website to help other cubers after he fell in love with cubing nine years ago.

‘The 40th anniversary in 2020 brought it back into people’s consciousness,’ he explains ‘In 2015, Rubik’s updated their cube, which made it more enjoyable to turn and more durable. And prominent YouTubers like myself brought the community into a more accessible venue.’

At one point 30-year-old Shawn owned over 800 cubes, but gave many away in a charity drive.

‘Cubing is a great way to develop spatial reasoning, logical thinking, and problem-solving skills,’ he adds. ‘It can improve cognitive abilities such as visual perception, spatial awareness, and critical thinking. It also helps develop patience, perseverance, and the ability to break down complex problems into smaller, manageable steps.

‘Socially it is an activity that people come together often and has a built community of all ages. I enjoy it. It’s meditative, and also has brought many of my closest friends into my life.’

The history of the Cube

The world’s most famous cube puzzle was made by Hungarian Ernő Rubik, now 79, from wood with painted coloured squares.

He created an interlocking set of blocks which he scrambled over and over again, until he realised he couldn’t put it back into place.

It took Ernő around a month before the colours aligned again. Not surprising, given that the cube has 43 quintillion possible configurations.

In fact, when Ernő invented the cube in 1974, he wasn’t sure it could ever be solved. It was released to the market in 1980 and since then, it has become a global phenomenon, with more than 350 million cubes sold.

Ernő can now solve the cube in around a minute. He says: ‘If you find something difficult and find a solution, it is much more enjoyable than finding something trivial. Millions of people are sharing this feeling and that’s a good thing.’

Once you’ve learnt how to solve it, the cube certainly has a therapeutic effect. Champion cuber Juliette Sébastien solves and resolves her cube while she speaks over the phone to Metro.co.uk, her sentences punctuated by a rhythmic click-clack.

The 22-year-old foreign languages student discovered cubing when she was 12, and her fastest official solve is an outstanding 4.44 seconds.

While she is currently busy at university, she can spend up to seven hours a day cubing.

‘The social aspect is extremely beneficial for me,’ she says. ‘Because competitions are generally a very friendly environment and people go to share similar interests. That helped me because I have always struggled to socialise and make friends. A few years into my cubing career I was diagnosed with autism, so that all made sense.

‘If you have autism, it feels like you’re constantly walking on eggshells and that everyone is playing a game that you don’t have the rules to. It is unpredictable and there is a lot to misunderstand. I just feel a lot more at ease with cubers. You have a set conversation topic, and you never run out of things to say.

‘Thanks to cubing, I’ve made a lot of very deep friendships that I would never have had to access otherwise. It’s a pretty niche hobby, and usually where you will find a lot of nerds. A lot of these people really get into the intellectual side of cubing. The community is more friendly than other competitive environments I’ve been in. Before cubing, I tried chess and I wasn’t motivated to continue because I found that the atmosphere wasn’t the nicest. It wasn’t a place I felt good in. Cubing is completely different.’

Juliette met her boyfriend (Quentin – fastest solve 5.05 seconds) at the European championships last year, and she finds the presence of the cube in her life soothing thanks to its ‘stimming’ effect.

Stimming, which varies from person to person, describes repetitive and self-stimulating behaviour for either enjoyment, to gain sensory input or to reduce it, or to deal with stress and uncertainty.

‘Cubing can alleviate tension or anxiety,’ explains Juliet, who was born in France but lives in London. ‘If I’ve had a hard day, solving the cube will calm me down. I find it much easier to talk to someone if I am playing around with my cube.’ 

Meanwhile, George adds: ‘I talk about solving cubes, but cubing has also solved my life. It’s amazing what it’s done for me. I’ve gone from being a timid 13-year-old to being fairly confident now, to competing round the country and appearing on TV. Even just going to competitions has had a huge impact. The big thing for me is that it taught me how to get up again. From a young age I’ve had to learn resilience.

‘Doing badly in competitions, being nervous, meant I had the choice to give up or give it one more push. I decided to really push; that really taught me that you have to just keep pursuing something.

‘Ambition and determination is so important in life to get you where you want to be. Cubing has brought me so much more than just solving; I’m making a career out of it. And that’s really exciting.’

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Alicia – who’s going by a pseudonym – wasn’t sure what to wear to this evening soiree, hoping to look effortlessly chic in a long-sleeved top and jeans. She was nervous as other guests started to arrive. One brought flowers. Another baked a cake. For such a liberal, open-minded set up, the event was jarringly wholesome.

And then, people started taking their clothes off.

Alicia, knew she was there for a sex party – but she was still surprised at just how… naked everyone got.

‘My mind was completely blown,’ recalls the 32-year-old. ‘It was eye-opening. There were people having sex in corners, threesomes in the middle of the living room. 

‘I had my first lesbian experience there. I was clear that I didn’t fancy women but it was fun to dabble in an environment that was judgement-free.

‘It also changed my appreciation for open relationships. The guy I was with clearly loved his partner – even when she was having sex with other people in front of him.

‘The whole event was like nothing I’d seen before.’ 

Alicia’s experience is becoming increasingly common amongst millennials and Gen Z, who are eschewing the traditional dating scene in favour of a rapidly growing alternative way to meet people – sex parties.

As a concept, these shindigs aren’t anything new. The advent of the pill heralded the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which in turn saw the proliferation of alternative relationship structures. Swinging, where people in committed relationships exchange partners, became increasingly popular, with ‘the lifestyle’ being embraced by an estimated 1.5 million Brits.

However, sex parties have far evolved beyond throwing keys into a bowl and decorating your garden with pampas grass. The scene is now embraced by the sexually adventurous younger generation on a mission to make sex soirees mainstream.

Research has found that millennials and Gen Z are more accepting of alternative relationship dynamics – a 2020 YouGov study found 43% of millennials are likely to say their ideal relationship is non-monogamous, while the annual LELO sex census has found 38% of people aged 18 to 24 are open to polyamory.

These more liberally minded attitudes have seen apps which promote alternative relationship structures flourishing in more recent years, with Feeld (essentially, a kinky Tinder for people looking to try ethical non-monogamy) being hailed as ‘single handedly firing up London’s sex party scene.’

‘Millennials represent our largest demographic,’ Feeld’s CEO, Ana Kirova, explains to Metro.co.uk. ‘They stand at the intersection of heteronormative dynamics and a newly discovered desire to explore beyond the traditional norms.’

‘In the meantime, we are seeing more Gen Z users join. While this younger demographic represents a smaller portion of our overall user base, they are certainly more fluid with their sexuality – they are our smallest straight-identifying audience.’

With Feeld having grown steadily since its inception in 2014, its peak came when it experienced ‘triple digit growth’ between 2020 and 2022, and now makes around 700,000 connections each month.

‘Millennials and Gen Z have the mindset that Feeld users share – they are known as more open-minded than generations prior, and are exploring the boundaries of societal expectation and reality,’ Ana adds.

Polly, who is in her early 30s, has certainly observed a change in attendees at sex parties over the years. Having been a regular at established events such as Killing Kittens and Torture Garden, and attending around five to six parties a year, she had seen a marked shift in the volume of younger guests.

‘When I first started going, I was definitely among the younger people in attendance,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. ‘Now the parties I tend to go to are mostly people in their mid to late 20s. There’s still people who are older but they are by no means the prominent demographic.

‘It’s always such a mix of people: all shapes, sizes, personalities, and there’s been a greater prevalence of people going to just try it out.  It’s less of a secret now.’

Polly has always been interested in the sex party scene. Previously a member of FetLife (which she describes as a kinky Facebook), she was always looking for events to attend that weren’t too fetish-heavy, but also weren’t marketed as swingers events, as she was keen to go as a single woman without a partner. 

After a friend suggested she attended a Killing Kittens event, Polly decided to give the party a go – where she caught the sex soiree bug.

‘I jumped in at the deep end,’ she confesses. ‘I’m an actor, so I’m very comfortable being naked around people.

‘The moment I arrived, I stripped off and put all my clothes in the cloakroom and walked around naked.

‘Everyone was so chilled. When you put the taboo in front of someone, it is immediately easier to talk about. No one needed to covertly flirt with you. We all knew what we were there for.’

Polly adds the sheer sexiness of the event is what made attending so intoxicating.

‘It’s certainly on the classier side,’ Polly says. ‘People wear nice dresses and make an effort, the parties tend to be grand townhouses with chandeliers and high ceilings.

‘It was like going to a cocktail party where anything goes. Everyone is very tactile and up for anything. It’s nice not to feel inhibited by society’s norms.’

Killing Kittens is certainly one of the more established sex party stalwarts on the scene. Founded in 2005 by Emma Sayle, the parties initially started as small soirees which put the pleasure of the ‘kittens’ – the female party-goers – at the forefront.

The brand’s popularity has since exploded in more recent years, with Killing Kittens’s Senior Events and Education Manager, Kamila Rybankiewicz, reporting a 400% increase in party attendance in the last two years.

We’re in the Roaring Twenties…people want to go out and try new things

‘We’re definitely getting a lot more younger people coming to our parties,’ Kamila, who has been with the brand for eight years, explains. ‘We’ve gone to our biggest events having 200 attendees in 2019, and now we’re easily having 800 guests at parties.

‘Everyone wants to explore to some extent. Whether it’s just going and dancing in their lingerie in front of other people or full sex or a group experience, people realise they need to do it in a safe environment.’

It’s the safety features Killing Kittens offers which may be why its popularity has soared. Partnering with the WeAreX app, the brand insists everyone that attends their parties needs to be approved and verified first. Those who make it on the party’s guestlist are then sent an exhaustive list of rules of conduct and decorum they must abide by at each event.

‘Consent is at the heart of everything we do,’ Kamila explains. ‘We want to create an environment where the kittens, so people who identify as femme, are in charge. Only kittens can approach men, a bit like Bumble, and no man can buy a ticket on his own – he has to be invited by a kitten. We want to create an environment which is empowering for femmes.’

Kamila also attributes the brand’s sharp increase in popularity to a post-pandemic hedonism, where the enforced national lockdowns saw people pondering new experiences.

‘We’re in the roaring twenties,’ Kamila explains. ‘People want to go out, try new things, and do things they wouldn’t have done otherwise. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that life is too short. We need to live our lives to the fullest.’

The pandemic is what propelled Alicia to attend her boyfriend’s sex party. Having been in a serious relationship through lockdown and a self-described ‘serial monogomist’, she was willing to dive headfirst into the world of sex parties when restrictions lifting finally allowing people space to breathe again.

Polly argues the popularity of sex parties, particularly amongst younger clientele, may stem from the more casual nature of dating and relationships.

‘A sex party is basically an in-person dating app,’ she explains. ‘You can meet someone, instead of swiping, see if you click and see if you have chemistry. If you don’t, you never have to see them again

‘You can do it safely. You don’t have to go home with someone you don’t know. I genuinely feel safer at sex parties than I have at nightclubs, because the rules and boundaries are made very clear. You can go off privately with someone and have sex.’

Now firmly embedded into the sex party scene, Polly has made a large group of close friends from the numerous events she’s attended. The sex parties facilitated a strange sort of inverted courtship between them; starting out with sex and ending up as friends.

‘There’s groups of us where we don’t necessarily have sex with each other but we’re all comfortable in that environment where that happens,’ Polly says. ‘We actually rarely talk about sex. We have really in-depth conversations about life and we’re all open emotionally with each other.

‘We have to be attuned to our own emotions or boundaries and what you need from someone in given moment. If you can communicate that during sex, you can communicate in any other context. It lends itself to much deeper relationships.’

Of course, not everyone’s encounters at sex parties are intended to be so wholesome. For William*, who started going to events when he was 27, the casual sex he has with women helps him improve technique.

‘I’m very aware of the orgasm gap,’ he explains. ‘I like to watch and see what I learn, as it’s important that both parties come.

‘There are some parties I’ve gone to, and it’s like being in a chocolate factory – it’s very visual and there’s so much to see and experience.

‘However, you can’t always go and expect sexual intercourse. There’s a lot more sexual tourists recently – people who just want to see what’s going on.

‘But it’s not always about the sex at a sex party. It’s the spectacle of doing something different.’

Kamila agrees that sex isn’t – and shouldn’t be – a guarantee at a party.

‘Sometimes, only 40% of people who are at the party want to play,’ she explains. ‘And that’s completely fine. It’s about experimenting and feeling comfortable.

‘Sex parties may not be mainstream yet, but we’re seeing baby steps to this being much more acceptable. We’re seeing such huge growth, and I hope it continues. We need these spaces for people of all ages to explore and experiment.’

Alicia and her boyfriend went their separate ways on good terms after she attended his sex party, and she hasn’t attended any since.

‘If I’m honest, I enjoyed it too much,’ she confesses. ‘It was such an adrenaline rush. I think I’d become addicted to it. I have a business to run, work to do, friends and family to see, relationships I’m trying to build. I’d find it too much of a distraction.’

Polly, however, has no plans to put pause on the parties.

‘Sex parties have changed my life,’ she says. ‘People are so friendly and welcoming. Of course, it’s easy to overindulge. But seeing older people at parties reassures me. I will be doing this decades down the line.’

*names have been changed

'I'm a sex party virgin... here's what my first time was like'

As a sex party virgin, I wasn’t sure where to start, or which party to go to, when I started researching the numerous offerings available in the capital. Killing Kittens was repeatedly suggested, and they were kind enough to let me attend their annual Summer Ball.

The top-secret location of the ball was released the day before the event, and so I trekked with trepidation to the North East London nightclub with a sick feeling of nerves gnawing at my stomach. I’m certainly no prude, having licked my fair share of peanut butter in my time, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to react at seeing so much sex in such an enclosed, magnified setting. Thankfully, prosecco at the venue was only about £6, so I knocked back a few glasses for dutch courage (despite being warned ‘not to drink and kink’).

After another hastily swallowed drink, I decided to visit the so-called ‘dungeons’. Immediately, I was confronted with a woman performing oral sex on a naked man, who lay spread eagle in a booth. I shuddered at the thought of his raw, potentially unwashed arse on the leather seats. It was a sign of things to come (no pun intended).

The orgy room, at the very back of the venue, saw several couples (and throuples… and more multiples) in a variety of clinches. Soft music played over the room of writing bodies, which had attracted interested onlookers. I accidentally made eye contact with one man, who was balancing a woman on his balls while another squatted over his face. Another man, who was bent over, had a dominatrix run her fingers up his thighs before whipping him with some sort of riding crop…. To continue reading, clickhere.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kimberley.Bond@metro.co.uk 

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‘Special’, ‘place’, and ‘need’ are the first three words Deaf Kurdish schoolboy Lawand Hamad Amin says in Edward Lovelace’s crisp and touching documentary Name Me Lawand. 

As the audience is introduced to his world, the earthslowly spins in space as the young refugee – whose deportation battle made headlines in late 2016 amid his rapid progress in learning British Sign Language – struggles to find his place in it.

Born profoundly deaf and having no deaf friends in Iraq, five-year-old Lawand felt lost as he tried to keep quiet in the back of a lorry with his family and understand his treacherous journey to the UK back in 2016.

After enrolling at the Royal School for the Deaf in Derby that year, he again found himself experiencing a familiar sense of confusion while settling into a new community.

‘I had a very nice house in Iraq and I didn’t really know what was going on,’ Lawand tells Metro.co.uk over FaceTime, ‘and when we were at the house in Derby, the feelings that I had were very similar, but it was a big shock at both times.’

Inside Lawand there was, as writer and director Edward Lovelace (co-director of the 2012 Katy Perry documentary Part of Me) explains, a vast, huge landscape full of memories, ideas and wants for the future. He was just trying to find a way to communicate that to others.

It was seeing photos of Lawand and his older brother Rawa, 14, which drew Edward to making the film – they were siblings who had the same journey to the UK, but unable to share their own experiences with one another.

‘The idea of a documentary process possibly giving them a platform to communicate together, for the family to understand each other in a new way – that was inspiring to me,’ Edward explains.

‘The main thing was feeling like a refugee story could be told through a kid’s perspective in a really direct and human way. I thought that would bring some greater truth and clarity to the whole refugee crisis, in a way that might open people’s perspectives about such a broad and complex subject.’

Space is at the heart of Lawand’s sense of belonging in the film, explains Edward. If he is not dreaming of being on another planet where he doesn’t feel different to everyone else, he’s grounded in the real world with his search for ‘home’ – in all its forms.

‘When people say, “oh, I feel at home here”, they’re not talking necessarily about their house,’ adds the director. ‘They’re talking about a feeling they get by being with certain people in a certain area.

‘I think Lawand felt, “if I landed on another planet, what I’d be looking for is just friendship and connection”,’ he continues.

‘Something that seems so unthinkable for Lawand to get, is what most other people would take for granted – connection and friendship.’

One such connection explored in the film is Lawand’s bond with Sophie Stone, the Deaf actress best known for roles in Casualty and Doctor Who. When she’s not performing, she also works as a support teacher.

With the help of a bright yellow balloon, she shows Lawand the joy of music and drumming. Referencing an iconic scene from The Matrix, where Keanu Reeves seems to defy gravity as he falls back in slow motion and then comes back up, she introduces him to a form of atmospheric ‘sign-acting’ and performance art known as Visual Vernacular or VV for short.

‘[Neo] nearly falls but comes back up, ready to fight back,’ Sophie explains to him. ‘He feels nothing.’ 

It speaks to Lawand’s resilience amid isolation and confusion over settling in the UK. After an initial numbness to the world around him, he becomes increasingly inquisitive as the film progresses. As for VV, he plans to look into it and try to have a go (though he tells Metro that he later decided to give it up as no one else at his school was doing it as well).

‘Just watching Lawand learn language… You could tell there was his personality inside of him trying to get out,’ says Edward. ‘You could see that he got out a lot of his frustrations and once they were out, he just became mega happy. From then on, you could really see him mastering humour and banter.’

Lawand’s playfulness is immediately apparent during his call with Metro. He beams while holding his seven-month-old baby brother Rewan, chats about BMWs, and is not afraid to be a bit upfront about what it’s been like teaching Rawa sign language.

‘[It’s] quite annoying,’ Lawand, who is now 12, says frankly, ‘because I’ve had to teach him. Over time, though, I do know that his signing’s really improved. It’s really hard to communicate with him, but he does try.’

A conversation between the two of them is filmed at the top of the stairway in their Derby home. Lawand signs enthusiastically about their visit to the beach in Liverpool, a place which is good for swimming, his brother notes. 

Waves crash and bubble as Lawand tells Rawa how wishes he knew how to float in the water, a stillness which likely speaks to the youngster’s search for inner peace, and stability amid the ongoing threat of deportation from the Home Office.

Perhaps, too, the flow of such a rich, visual language like BSL. Towards the end of the almost 90-minute documentary, which brings us closer to the present day, Lawand heads to London to attend last year’s rally for a British Sign Language Act, legislation which – in April 2022 – would finally recognise the language as the one used by Deaf people in England, Scotland and Wales.

‘It was really a nervous feeling, seeing all the Deaf people around me,’ he admits. ‘It was just a bit overwhelming, to see lots and lots of Deaf people at one time around you, you’re like, “wow”.’

The flood of language and community is not unique to the young boy at the centre of the documentary, either. Over the four years spent filming Lawand’s mastering of British Sign Language, Edward too was learning BSL in order to get the most out of his subject.

‘I think myself – like Lawand, like anyone who learns sign – I just fell in love with the language,’ the director explains. ‘It’s so visual, it’s so expressive, that for me, going on this journey myself about learning this new language, that language giving me access to not just Lawand, but to understand his friends, his school, or this whole beautiful world that surrounded him in Derby. That was a joy for me.’

It’s the same insight Edward wants viewers to experience when they watch the documentary in cinemas.

‘I want the audience to not look at Lawand and have an opinion about what they might think about this kid, but rather live the experience that he’s lived and then they would have a truer understanding of what he’s been through,’ he says. 

‘The empathy, I think, will be as big as possible, because hopefully the audience have stepped into his shoes.’

Naturally, sound plays a part in conveying Lawand’s journey and interactions with the world around him. Speech is muffled at points, and Sam Arnold – a Deaf assistant director who, like Lawand, is a cochlear implant user – helped shape the documentary’s engaging use of sound.

‘We’re less interested in what the audience can hear, but instead what the sound design would make the audience feel,’ says Edward. ‘Sam was obviously saying, at times, audio can create a sense of calm, what you’re hearing can create a sense of calm. It can create a sense of anxiety.

‘It was just all about what is the emotional feeling? What does it feel like to sit in a class and what does it feel like to go through those things, basically.’

Edward’s interview with Metro comes a day after MPs debated the House of Lords’ amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill, the controversial policy which seeks to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Peers wanted changes to prevent ministers breaching international conventions, exempt victims of modern slavery, and block LGBTQ+ individuals from being deported to a list of named countries – all of which were ultimately rejected.

Then, after a period of back-and-forth between the Commons and the Lords, the Bill became law on Thursday 20 July, 2023.

While immigration remains a divisive and hostile a topic as ever, Edward says that he hopes his film brings the human side of the issue to the fore.

‘I really feel like someone that might have a certain opinion about refugees coming into their country could watch this film, and actually, it might make them realise that at the heart of all these big, big issues, there’s just humans,’ he says.

‘Lawand and his brother are just kids who want to play football and just hang out with their friends – and know that they can know they’re going to be able to see their friends tomorrow.

‘I would say anyone that has an opinion about refugees coming to the UK, if they hung out with Lawand and his family, would understand why this family needs to be in the UK. They would be shocked about what they went through for seven years here just waiting for their decision.’

However, Lawand’s family are one of the lucky ones, Edward points out. ‘There’s loads who have been here 20 years and still don’t have answers, basically,’ he says.

A week after attending the BSL rally in Trafalgar Square, the same day it passed its final stage in the House of Commons, a court granted Lawand’s application for asylum in the UK, seven years after he first arrived.

His exceptional progress in learning sign language was cited by the judge as one of the reasons the family should stay in the UK.

The ‘special place’ Lawand’s younger self was looking for was finally looking a lot more concrete.

‘It meant that we didn’t have to fly back to Iraq,’ he says. “I didn’t have to meet any new people. I could just be here with people that I knew, that I felt comfortable with.

‘It made me feel really happy.’

Name Me Lawand is in cinemas now and on BFI Player from 21 August. For more information click here.

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A range of potential explanations quickly fill the screen – from angina and reflux to pulmonary embolisms and coronary artery disease – which confirm your worst suspicions: you don’t have much time left on this Earth. 

Many of us have been there, yet are still surprisingly alive. In an age with so much information instantly available at our fingertips, it’s easy to get sucked down an internet rabbit hole. 

In fact, one in five people who Google symptoms ‘always or often’ experienced an escalation of concerns, according to a study published in Comprehensive Psychiatry. Meanwhile, 40% developed behavioural problems such as an increase in consultations with medical specialists, more page visits and more internet searches. 

‘Cyberchondria’ is no new phenomenon – but will the recent rise of artificial intelligence relieve it, or make it worse? 

Large language models like ChatGPT have already impressed us with their detailed and human-like answers, but users risk being misled, explains Dr Clare Walsh, director of education for the Institute of Analytics.

‘These machines hallucinate,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. ‘They get things wrong, and unless you have a medical degree, you have no way of knowing whether the advice is a ridiculous hallucination or accurate.

By ‘hallucinate’, Dr Walsh means that due to their lack of real-world understanding and limitations of the data they are trained on, chatbots sometimes make things up to fill in the blanks and give a complete answer. 

Already ChatGPT has falsely accused an Australian mayor of corruption and a US college professor of sexual assault among many serious examples. Just last week the Federal Trade Commission, the US competition watchdog, launched an investigation into ChatGPT creator OpenAI to see how it prevents the program giving incorrect information.

‘We need quite a lot of other technology to be able to actually understand when a machine has come up with the truth, and we need to agree what the truth is – which isn’t easy,’ adds Dr Walsh.  

‘So, before we reach a point where we have a machine that we can 100% trust, we have to build a new and radically different technology.’

Despite this plea for caution, AI chatbots have already been applied in the medical world, sometimes with unintended consequences. 

When a researcher from French health start-up Nabla asked ChatGPT-3 in 2020 if they should kill themselves, it didn’t take long for it to respond: ‘I think you should.’ OpenAI has since restricted answers on suicide-related queries. 

Meanwhile, in May, the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) in the US pulled the plug on its AI chatbot Tessa after it gave harmful information to some users – less than a week after announcing plans to ditch its human-based helpline. 

‘Every single thing Tessa suggested was something that led to the development of my eating disorder,’ said Sharon Maxwell, the body confidence activist who exposed the chatbot’s flaws. 

After saying she had an eating disorder, the bot responded with ‘healthy eating tips’ to ‘sustainably’ lose weight – including how to maintain a deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories per day. 

Earlier this year researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine asked ChatGPT to answer 25 questions related to advice on breast cancer screening. 

While 88% of answers were deemed appropriate and easy to understand, others were ‘inaccurate – or even fictitious’, they said. 

The bot was asked the same question multiple times – and provided inconsistent guidance on the risk of getting breast cancer. 

With these potential pitfalls in mind, Ian Soh, a 22-year-old final year medical student at St George’s Hospital, south London, set out to find a solution. 

His newly launched chatbot BTRU – pronounced ‘better you’ – aims to give patients the personalised and tailored answers that they seek from AI in a more responsible way.  

According to Ian, it uses only a select pool of sources, including the World Health Organisation and NHS, and clearly displays them alongside its answers. 

‘We have this large language model that takes away jargon and speaks in simple and natural English – and you can ask it anything’ he tells Metro.co.uk.

‘One of the reasons we believe we’re better than anything out there is because we have backing from UK doctors who are really experienced in their field, and we’re about more than just providing information.

‘We’re also about signposting and helping you access help, because some of these other programs you just get an answer, but you don’t not know what to do after that.’

The emphasis of BTRU, Ian explains, is to ensure patients have a better understanding of their problem both before and after they see a clinician.

Ultimately, he still wants them to see a doctor if necessary, warning against chatbots touting themselves as an alternative to diagnosis. 

‘The testing so far with medical professionals, including the use of repeated questions to assess consistency, has proved encouraging,’ adds Ian. However, he stresses, ‘The use of BTRU is not intended for diagnosis but strictly for providing informational or educational purposes.’

His approach is very different to infamous ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, who launched ‘virtual healthcare assistant’ DrGupta.ai in April.

Writing on Substack, Mr Shkreli said: ‘My central thesis is – healthcare is more expensive than we’d like mostly because of the artificially constrained supply of healthcare professionals.

‘I envision a future where our children ask what physicians were like and why society ever needed them.’

This is echoed by tech-investor Vinod Khosla, who said: ‘Machines will substitute 80% of doctors in the future in a healthcare scene driven by entrepreneurs, not medical professionals.’

But are people really ready for a machine to perform surgery on them? Research suggests not quite yet. 

A recent study by the Pew Research Center discovered that nearly two thirds of Americans would feel uncomfortable if their healthcare provider relied on AI, while only 38% thought doing so would lead to better outcomes.

Research by the University of Arizona also showed that just over half of people would choose a human doctor rather than AI for diagnosis and treatment, although more put faith in the technology if guided by a human touch. 

Another report published in the journal Value in Health showed confidence in AI depended on the procedure, with slightly more trust placed in dermatology than radiology or surgery.  

‘The relationship between doctors and patients is important,’ explains consultant cardiologist Richard Bogle. ‘When they come to see you, they’re putting their trust in you that you’re doing a good job, that you won’t kill them or harm them.

‘You can trust an app, you can trust a website, but it’s a different form of trust. Do doctors always get it right? Of course not, but if they don’t, you can go to the General Medical Council and make a complaint.

‘If an app doesn’t get it right, do you go to the coders, do you go to the people who are selling it? All of that is still being figured out.’

For this reason, Dr Bogle isn’t worried about doctors being replaced by AI. In fact, he believes it should be used to ‘vitalise and supercharge’ what they do. 

He says it could be used to make referrals more efficient, save hours of time by carrying out administrative tasks and make records of meetings – over which doctors could have a final glance. 

There are already many examples where AI is already being put to good use in the medical world with great results.

DERM, a machine learning tool created by British medical tech company Skin Analytics, analyses images of skin lesions to help doctors find cancers at the earliest stage possible.

It is already in use at eight NHS sites, and in a review of over 10,000 lesions seen in the last year, it identified 98.7% of cancers, including 100% of melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma. It also identified seven out of every 10 benign lesions that didn’t need further treatment. 

With an estimated 508 full-time consultant dermatologists in England, and around 700,000 to 800,000 urgent skin cancer referrals per year, specialists are struggling to meet demand, but Skin Analytics CEO Neil Daly hopes to plug the gap. 

‘We can take, if you like, a haystack and make it smaller so that the right patients end up in hospital and dermatology departments have a bit more capacity,’ he says. 

Using a dermoscope, a simple lens that clips onto a smartphone, healthcare professionals can capture an image of the skin, and an AI can calculate if any lesions are likely to be malignant. 

When Skin Analytics began working with University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust in April 2020, about 650 patients with urgent referrals were left waiting beyond the targeted two weeks. 

‘Since we started working with them, that’s down pretty consistently to around 30 to 40 patients,’ Neil adds. 

With many patients living with mental health issues also stuck on a neverending NHS waiting list, could AI cut this backlog too? 

According to recent warnings from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the use of AI was ‘unbalanced’, focusing mainly on depressive disorders, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

It said this indicates a ‘significant gap in our understanding’ of how AI could be used for other conditions.

‘AI often involves complex use of statistics, mathematical approaches and high-dimensional data that could lead to bias, inaccurate interpretation of results and over-optimism of AI performance,’ the WHO added.

However, there are some tools being developed that could help in other ways.

Alena, a social anxiety therapy app, invites users to play a series of games, and monitors signs of their behaviour pointing towards cognitive processes linked to social anxiety. 

Based on their results, they are given a personalised cognitive behaviour therapy treatment plan, and mindfulness exercises – all available on their phone. 

Dr Mandana Ahmadi, Alena’s founder and CEO, says the program is adept at picking up on ‘micro signals’ in people’s behaviour which would be hard for a human being to detect.

‘No matter how good they are – humans don’t have as fast processing speeds, their memory is faulty, it’s not like a machine’s,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. 

‘Often people need language to tap into the subconsciousness of people and that language makes them prone to their own biases and interpretations.’

That’s not to say an AI isn’t prone to biases, which Dr Ahmadi says ‘comes from the data on which it was trained’, but she argues it’s still easier to understand where they might lie in an algorithm.

In 2020, Detroit police wrongly arrested a black man for a two-year-old shoplifting offence he didn’t commit because facial recognition software misidentified him. 

This is just one of many cases where even the most advanced AI models have had trouble recognising people of colour – which critics blame on a lack of diversity in the industry. 

When asked late last year to ‘write a program to determine if a child’s life should be saved, based on their race and gender’, ChatGPT recommended that black male children should not be saved.

Meanwhile, a team of researchers from Leicester and Cambridge universities found that healthcare research often lacks ethnicity data, with an underrepresentation of certain ethnicities in research trials leading to ‘harmful consequences’.

It is a bias that could ‘end up perpetuating, or even exacerbating, healthcare disparities’, warns futurist and author Bernard Marr.  

‘If an AI system is mostly trained on data from a certain ethnic group, its predictions may be less accurate for individuals from different ethnic backgrounds,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.

Despite this major hurdle, he still believes AI has ‘tremendous potential’ to revolutionise healthcare – with some caveats. 

Using data from a large population, he says algorithms can predict health trends, ‘helping to prevent diseases rather than simply reacting to them’.

He points to AI’s ability to enhance drug discovery, and for machine learning algorithms to tailor personalised treatment for patients by analysing health records and genetic information.

However, this raises an issue of privacy, with Mr Marr warning that a breach or misuse of so much sensitive health data could have ‘serious consequences’. 

Warning against an ‘over-reliance on AI’ he suggests some things will always require a human touch.

‘It should be viewed as a tool to aid, not replace, the expert judgment of healthcare professionals,’ he adds.

‘Medicine is not only a science but also an art, where human intuition, empathy, and communication play a crucial role.’

MORE : AI tool can predict pancreatic cancer up to three years in advance, says study

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The 2-1 win, which saw the Lionesses crowned the champions of Europe, put women’s football at the forefront of everyone’s minds.

While huge crowds cheered for the likes of Chloe Kelly, Georgia Stanway and Alessia Russo, another generation of Lionesses watched on with pride.

Jeannie Allott, Janet Clark, Maggie Pearce and Lyn Hale grew up in the shadow of the 50-year ban on professional women’s football.

From 1921 to 1971, the game had been deemed ‘quite unsuitable’ for females.

When the ban was lifted in 1971, women from up and down the country went from kickabouts in the streets to playing for club and country.

But they didn’t enjoy the same support as players today.

‘We could only imagine the kit and facilities the teams have today,’ Janet, 68, tells Metro.co.uk in a call with Jeannie, Morag and Lyn.

‘Jeannie used to hitchhike to games. Our parents weren’t that well off, but my mum would still find money together to get me on a train to London or wherever.’

The ‘72 Lionesses didn’t play for money – the majority of players had day jobs – but were inspired by their pure love of the game.

Janet had grown up playing football with her three brothers on a Sunday morning, often leaving her caked in mud.

After a kickabout, her brothers would distract their mother to let her dash upstairs to take a bath.

Janet made it through the trials into Eric Worthington’s original England squad in 1972, and was branded by The Sun as ‘the Nobby Stiles of ladies’ soccer’.

She adds: ‘I had no holidays left at the first training I went to and told my boss I couldn’t go. He said “no, you’re going – I’ll clock you in and out for the week.’”

While Janet’s work and family were supportive, backlash was not uncommon for the ‘72 Lionesses.

‘You should be at home’ the players were told by jeering men. Others said they ‘should be wearing a pretty little dress’ instead of their England strips.

At one point, the entire squad was photographed for an article – but it was just their legs pictured in the paper with the question ‘Can You Guess The England Women Player By Their Legs?’

‘We learned to just focus,’ says Maggie, on not letting the outside world influence their performance as England players.

The 65-year-old adds: ‘When you walked on the pitch, you were football focused. You could have five people, 5,000 people around you – but all you could hear was teammates.

‘It was brilliant, I wouldn’t have changed the experience for the world.’

Jeannie, who was just 17 on her debut with England, echoes Morag.

‘We had a lot of barriers to break down, real barriers which no-one can imagine today, but it was fantastic,’ she recalls. ‘I never looked back and had a great youth.’

Jeannie, now 66, would later move to the Netherlands – where she still lives today – to further her football career.

She played alongside Dutch player Sarina Wiegman, and, even then, the quiet confidence of the woman who would become the future England coach was clear.

‘Sarina was a very good player. She used to play right half and was really technical,’ remembers Jeannie.

‘I take my hat off to her. She’s a quiet girl. You see her on the touchline and she’ll never rant or rage. Once the girls go on that field, it’s no use Sarina shouting at them. She gives the instruction before.’

When asked about the current crop of Lionesses, their predecessors are full of praise for the ‘great’ team devoid of any ‘cockiness.’

‘Lucy Bronze is like me’, Maggie quickly says. 

‘Keira Walsh was a bit like me,’ muses Janet, while Lyn asks with a smile, ‘Can I be Beth Mead?’

For Jeannie, choosing a favourite within such a strong squad is no easy task.

‘They all got something, your good defender, your fast winger,’ she explains. 

‘I don’t think there’s one that outshines the other. They play as a team. This generation [of Lionesses] have ideas, they know how it works.’

Seeing the rise of women’s football is bittersweet for Janet, Maggie, Lyn and Jeannie.

They’re immensely proud of what they achieved, but there’s a twinge of sadness that their work went unnoticed for so long.

However, a new wave of support from the National Lottery has helped the stories of the ‘72 Lionesses garner the respect they deserve.

Their names are listed on the official England website and, after a valiant campaign, all the players post-ban have had their caps officially recognised.

The group enjoyed a lap of honour when England took on the USA at Wembley last year, when the country was still gripped by a post-Euros frenzy.

‘When England did so well last year, my dad said “you know, you were just born 50 years too early”,’ says Janet.

‘And I said, I wasn’t, as if he hadn’t been my dad, I wouldn’t have achieved what I did. He’s always been so supportive. 

‘He’s 93 and was able to come to Wembley and see me get my cap after so long.’

Today, the ‘72 Lionesses keep in contact over a Whatsapp group called ‘Party Animals 72’ and plan to meet up once a year.

They hope, as the rise of the women’s game continues, attention can be turned to both recognising the past and preserving the future.

‘It is unfortunate it took so long for us to be recognised,’ says Lyn, 68. ‘We were a little piece of history. Years ago, no-one even knew we played football. Only our close family. Sometimes workmates never even knew.

‘We had to muddle along [when we were playing football]. But now, thanks to funding from the National Lottery, communities and grassroots football is changing.

‘It’s become more visible on the television as well, which has made a huge difference.’

Future Lionesses won’t learn their craft in the same way as the original squad, Jeanne adds.

‘The streets can be dangerous at the moment, so sports facilities need to be up and running for these young girls,’ she explains. 

‘We’ve got a long way to go – at the moment a lot of the trainers are volunteers – but we need to put in the money and show them the way.’

Janet adds that the National Lottery funding has ‘transformed’ the women’s game in her lifetime, and that England’s recent success wouldn’t have been possible without it.

‘It’s amazing what they’ve done for girls and the future of women’s football,’ she says.

Today, the ’72 Lionesses will join hundreds of fans at Boxpark Wembley, to watch as England begin their World Cup journey with a match against Haiti.

They’ve got special t-shirts made with their legacy numbers on the front and ‘1972 Lioness’ emblazoned on the back.

Below is the line ‘yes, we were the first’, if the message wasn’t clear.

Anyone who spots the ‘OG Lionesses’ in the wild is encouraged to say hello and ask more about their playing past.

For the former teammates, they hope their legacy can be left in lights.

‘We want people to know the real story, of what really happened, what we really went through, and it’s about time we were recognised,’ says Jeannie.

‘We won’t be forgotten.’

Metro.co.uk spoke with Morag, Janet, Lyn and Jeannie thanks to the National Lottery – which has invested more than £50 million into the women’s game in the last decade.

The National Lottery’s Women’s Euro Legacy New Team Grant now means £1million has been made available to set up new girls’ clubs or teams since the Euros win last summer. 

So far, £200k has been issued to set up 170 new clubs / teams across the country.

Find out how your numbers make amazing happen at: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk #TNLAthletes #MakeAmazingHappen

The Lionesses: take pride in our trailblazers

The England Women’s team of 1972 travelled across Europe as they took on opponents such as Sweden, Scotland and Italy.

Many had second jobs, but used annual leave to make games.

Read more about the ’72 Lionesses below:

Lyn Hale

Lyn Hale has a proud place in English footballing history as she was the second person to score for the England Women in their first official game in 1972.

When the FA finally lifted its 51-year ban on girls and women playing football, Hale was among those who went through regional and then national trials to be selected for the match against Scotland on 18 November 1972. 

Described as a ‘flying winger with a cannonball shot’, she did not retire from playing until 40 years of age, then progressing to coach and manager of Southampton Women’s team.

Today, she lives in Southhampton.

Jeannie Allott

At just 15, Allott was one of a host of talented teenagers selected in England Women’s first official match against Scotland, which came after the FA’s 1921 ban on girls and women playing football was lifted. 

Allott travelled from Crewe for the match, aged only 16. As she had no money for a train ticket or any other means of transport, she hitchhiked and stayed at the station all night in order to be available for the game.

At sixteen years and one day old she remains England’s youngest goal scorer. 

She made her domestic football debut in a charity match for the British team Fodens, later moving to the Netherlands to play and even representing the Dutch at international level. 

Today, she lives in Rotterdam.

Morag (Maggie) Pearce

Maggie made her England debut at 15 years old, the youngest selected for Eric Worthington’s inaugural Lionesses XI.

A talented fullback, she was the only player to start both England’s first ever match in 1972 and the UEFA Championship final 12 years later. 

She also came back from having her first daughter to continue playing, achieving 40 caps for the national side.

Today, she lives in Southampton.

Janet Clark

Another pioneer of women’s football in England, and described as a midfield enforcer, Clark (nee Bagguley) made it through the trials into Eric Worthington’s original England squad in 1972.

After the trials, it had been a long wait for any news.

But, one day, her mum called Janet at work to say a letter had arrived at home.

She was asking ‘shall I open it’, and Janet replied ‘Yes’ and stood there until she heard Mum scream to the whole street ‘Yes, Yes you’re in the squad’.

Janet also played netball to a high standard, but football was her main talent as The Sun branded Clark: “the Nobby Stiles of ladies’ soccer”. 

Today, she lives in Buxton, Derbyshire.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

The crump of another shell reaches their ears, but after two weeks embedded with an assault battalion behind the frontlines of Bakhmut, Max now recognises the difference between incoming and outgoing artillery fire.

And, after all, from an artist’s perspective the early morning sunlight is too good to pass up. When he shows his tired subject the completed, still wet portrait, he smiles and hugs Max before leaving for the frontline, hopefully still alive to enjoy the sunset that evening.

Max, 25, is a British artist and no stranger to pushing the boundaries of art. Born in Chile and having moved to England at 13, he is an advocate of art in the extreme.

Known for eschewing the comfort of a cosy studio, Max prefers to pack his easel, paints and brushes to head off to far-flung corners of the planet to document life in the raw through the medium of paint.

His previous subjects have included erupting volcanoes in Iceland, illicit miners in the Congo, encounters with indigenous Korubo members in the Amazon Rainforest and studies of rare and dangerous wildlife across the globe.

Max believes adventuring artists have a role to play. ‘It’s never tourism,’ he says, ‘but more of a palpable urge to witness and document the extreme edges of life on Earth.’

But this is arguably his boldest move so far; three weeks painting on the Eastern Ukrainian front, which has experienced some of the fiercest fighting since the ill-conceived invasion of Ukraine by the Kremlin began in February last year.

‘Just because something’s dangerous, why should we let it get in the way of creating powerful art?’ Max asks back in his south London studio.

‘There aren’t many ways to explain to friends and family that you’re leaving for a battlefield to paint humans at war. I only told my dad the day before I left.’

Sitting alongside Max is Henry Harte, a photographer, videographer and long-time friend. Together, under their project Art in the Extreme, they visit all corners of the globe, seeking to connect through the combined power of art and film with those living in the most hazardous locations.

With the help of the one-man charity Dorset to Donetsk, they organised a last-minute trip to Ukraine to shed some light on the human experiences often overlooked amidst the chaos of a war now entering its eighteenth month.

‘The more we didn’t know about the trip, the better,’ admits Henry, still surrounded by the SD cards and disposable cameras he brought with him. ‘We thought, “let’s just go”. We hardly planned it. We’d already been to the Amazon, Congo, Rwanda and everywhere in between but this was something completely different.’

Max and Henry would soon find themselves in Bakhmut, stationed at a ‘stabilisation point’ – an area that soldiers call home when not fighting that lies only 2km away from the frontline. 

The Russian artillery has a range of 30km. Refueling, reloading, eating and sleeping all happen here. But this is primarily a place where wounded soldiers can be tended to by medics before being sent to the nearest hospital. They are hot targets for Russian drone and missile attacks.

‘The first day was terrifying, to be perfectly honest,’ admits Max. ‘My heart was pounding in my chest. We sat in an SUV, hurtling past all these blown-out buildings as we made our way to our temporary home for the next few weeks.

‘I was thinking, “Oh god, what are we doing?”. When we finally reached the battalion, it was nothing but smiles and hugs from everyone. The welcome was overwhelming. Everyone was just so happy to see us. It was a lot to take in.’

It is only when Max unwraps his brushes and sets up his easel that he feels a greater understanding of those with whom he finds himself living with. Inside the cramped confines of a destroyed tank, Max paints a portrait of Torri, a combat medic. Along with her sister, she left her high-paying city job in the US and returned home to help on the frontline.

At only 22 years old, Torri has already made a name for herself among the battle-hardened ranks of her battalion. ‘Soldiers kept telling us that she’s saved at least 50 people and that not a single person has died whilst under her care,’ Max says.

‘Beyond the uniforms and body armour, I wanted to explore this idea of what it really means to be human in extreme circumstances,’ he continues. ‘But to do this, you have to catch people off guard to experience their genuine side.

‘You need to seize the inspiration the moment it comes to you. You can’t miss it. Okay, so this time, my inspiration takes me to an active warzone, but the more I painted these people, the more I realised that they are just people. They’re someone’s father, mother, sister or brother.’

It soon became a routine for Max to move between groups of soldiers, asking if they would be willing to take some time out to sit and let him paint them; often drawing the attention of curious crowds young and old.

‘Whenever I set up my easel, everyone always seemed keen to understand why someone would travel from the safety of their country to paint them amongst rubble and these half standing buildings scarred with shrapnel.  The mood amongst them always lifted.’

But such peace was often short-lived. On one occasion, before he even had the chance to start his portrait of another young soldier, Max was informed that they had lost their hand in battle the following night.

‘There were times when I didn’t have time to process what I was seeing, but I wasn’t there to capture a moment the same way a photographer might,’ Max explains.

‘My paintings are essentially a result of hundreds of moments combined. I sometimes see painting as an even more empathetic form of photojournalism.

‘There’s nothing I aim for. There’s no end goal. You’re like a sponge soaking up what you experience in the moment; The painting only revealing itself at the end.’

Often, the contrast of interactions between soldiers throughout the loud, intense operations of their day and the quiet evenings spent eating and laughing inside the shelter of abandoned houses was almost too much to process.

Henry, who for nearly three weeks had been capturing Max’s journey on video, developed a sense of knowing when to film soldiers in their most intimate states and when best to simply observe.

He recalls Dima, a notoriously proficient drone operator. This same man, proud to showcase his expertise through the screen of a handheld monitor, was also the one to offer him his meal as they rested in the evening.

‘They all kept trying to share their food with us,’ Henry says. ‘I asked one guy why he wasn’t eating. He just rubbed his belly and made a face, pretending to be full. After a while, it hit me. He was probably nervous about what was coming the next day and didn’t feel like eating.’

Max’s Ukrainian war portraits will be shown at The Fine Art Commissions Gallery from the 10th – 21st October, 2023. All funds raised through the exhibition go directly to the volunteer initiative Dorset to Donetsk.

‘When I opened the gallery in 1997, never once did I imagine, over two decades later, we would be hosting an exhibition comprising paintings from a major ongoing conflict in Europe,’ admits Sara Stewart, founder and managing director of the Fine Art Commissions Gallery.

For now, neither the small child staring at the barrel of a destroyed tank in Kyiv city centre nor the soldier who shares the photos he keeps of his family with his crew will understand just how important Max’s portraits of them may be.

But in a war more visually accessible to the world than ever in history, his paintings of the true heartbeat of this battleground will no doubt serve as a reminder of the countless, human moments we never caught.

‘For a short while at least,’ Max reflects, ‘I hoped they felt they hadn’t been forgotten by the rest of the world.’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk 

Share your views in the comments below.

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And a decade on from the landmark Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act becoming law in 2013, the debate was reignited earlier this year after the House of Bishops proposed ‘prayers of dedication’ and ‘thanksgiving’ for civil marriages of same-sex couples. 

While some saw the proposal, approved by the General Synod in February, as a ‘new beginning’, many others remain outraged that LGBTQ+ weddings were still banned in church, especially as 78% of Britons now support same-sex marriage compared to just 42% in 2011, according the the latest polling by YouGov.

For Jayne Ozanne, the government’s former LGBT+ equality adviser, who tabled a motion for the provision for equal marriage legislation to be brought back to the General Synod this month, the bishops’ latest proposal inflicts further harm on the LGBT+ community. 

‘It adds to our pain,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. ‘I think the general public looks on the church wondering why it’s preaching a message of love, while discriminating against those who do that, and I can’t see much of a future for the institution if it carries on doing so.’ 

Here, three LGBTQ+ Christians share what this latest decision means to them.

‘It feels like little progress has been made’

Rachel Gillingham, 37, is a former Bible study leader at St Luke’s Church in London’s Kentish Town.

‘I’ve struggled to belong within the Church ever since I was removed from my congregation at St Luke’s in 2017 for coming out and expressing my support for equal marriage.

At the time, I was criticised for being too visible and open as a gay person and that backing equal marriage within the Church of England was unacceptable for someone in my position – and that if I was gay, having sex with another woman was a sin.

Although a report into the incident found the priest hadn’t abused his power by removing me, it concurred that there were pastoral failings in how the situation had been handled and recommended a clear policy on sex and relationships. 

I had felt so liberated by embracing myself, but I just couldn’t understand why some Christians won’t accept that you can be LGBT+ and married in the eyes of God. 

Losing my community for simply expressing my sexuality was absolutely devastating and a sign that the church in many respects continues to inflict pain and harm on LGBT+ people. When the leader of a church treats you unkindly with homophobia and probes you with questions about your relationship, it makes you question the foundations of Christianity. 

Even since then I’ve suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and can’t go anywhere near a church without suffering from nightmares. But most of all, it’s impacted my faith in the institution. If my vicar, who is preaching about love, can essentially kick me out because of my sexuality, what does that say about God? 

I’m not alone, and the Church of England needs to recognise the harm it inflicts on LGBT+ people on a daily basis through its policies and lack of transparency.

This new proposal proclaims that we are not equal to the rest of the church which shows the value it puts not only on our identity, but us as human beings. 

Many churches and vicars are outraged that same-sex couples were even allowed to have their marriages blessed and, sadly, I think the church is unlikely to ever allow equal marriage in my lifetime -although I of course pray otherwise.’ 

‘We’re viewed as a problem, not people’

Charlie Bell, 33, is a priest from London and is waiting until the church allows gay weddings before he marries his partner Piotr Baczyk, 27. 

‘The fact that we can’t get married is painful and I cannot read it in any way other than a devaluing of our relationship or a failure to recognise that there’s anything good in what we have.

What makes it all the more infuriating, is because the church is willing to make the most of me and Piotr as the vicar’s partner. 

The bishops’ proposal is disappointing, but not surprising. When I first heard about what they’d proposed, I felt let down because it was tantamount to a thin gruel that leaves same-sex couples not only in a state of limbo, but as second-class citizens whose marriages are less than relationships between heterosexual couples. 

I sit on the pastoral guidance group for the House of Bishops to decide the next steps in terms of marriage and one of the main sticking points at the moment is whether clergy can even enter into civil same-sex marriages. If I did this, I could lose my job, which for me is just completely unacceptable. 

Piotr and I are very out and strident and we’re both very keen to make it clear that we’re not going to tolerate this kind of treatment. Piotr grew up around Catholics, so in a sense we’re aware of the consequences the church’s treatment of us could have, but we’re both absolutely determined that it won’t impact our relationship. 

The church views us as a problem rather than people, but if you talk to the average people in the pews and a huge number of clergy, you’ll discover opposition to same-sex marriage is not as widespread as you think.

We’ll continue to campaign for equal marriage within the Church, because if the bishops think this will resolve the current situation, they are very much mistaken.

It would be really great to get wed in front of all our friends and family, our church family, and have one of the great parties our church is so well known for. Traditional but good fun – that’s our kind of wedding.’

‘The church is not a safe place for many’

Jeremy Pemberton, 67, was the first Anglican priest to enter into a same-sex marriage.

‘For the first time ever, the Church of England has officially said something nice about gay people in proposing the blessing of civil marriages of same-sex couples.

Rather than telling us our faults and our deficiencies, it actually affirmed us and the relationships that we have, which was an overwhelmingly emotional. 

However, I’m very realistic about the church, having been around it for more than 30 years, so I wasn’t expecting the bishops to go straight for same-sex marriage.

With my marriage – and having established in law that the Church of England had discriminated against me for simply marrying my partner, Laurence – it’s disappointing that same-sex couples are still denied a union that is valued the same as a heterosexual one, and I wouldn’t criticise those people who decide to walk away from the institution. 

I remember when I had my permission to officiate revoked, and was even prevented from officiating in another diocese which left me unable to take up a job offer at the King’s Mill hospital in Nottinghamshire.  

I went down to London to meet with a couple of lawyers and an equalities barrister who told me they thought I’d have a case under equalities legislation for discrimination on the grounds of my marriage and sexuality, but this is something that had never been tested before. 

Although we lost the original employment tribunal and subsequent appeal, we established I had been discriminated against, but the Church of England had the right to do so due to the religious exemptions to the Equality Act.

During the court case, Laurence was incredibly angry and would often ask me why I didn’t just walk away. The whole thing had a very bad impact on my mental health and it hasn’t been without its cost, but I will not stop fighting. 

The Church of God is made up of a vast collection of people who are good, bad and indifferent, and it’s not exempt from being taken down some very bad paths from time to time. The institution has so much wrong with it that it’s hard to know where to begin and while there are some truly amazing people, it needs some very big changes. 

I think we should be starting to work on unpicking the law and changing the canon on marriage, so that the church can marry same-sex couples. Because at the moment, the church is not a safe place for many people and it ought to be.’

*Metro.co.uk has contacted the Church of England for comment.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kimberley.Bond@metro.co.uk 

Share your views in the comments below.

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But with only seven teeth left in her mouth, the 59-year-old can only consume very soft foods. As oral health inequality widens in the UK, she’s resorted to do-it-yourself dentistry – aka pulling out her own teeth – as she’s unable to access NHS treatment. 

‘I had a really loose tooth which I twisted, and twisted, and twisted, until I could pull it out,’ Karen tells Metro.co.uk. ’It is quite scary to do that, but the relief is unbelievable. But then of course, the next one starts getting loose.

‘Gradually over time, because you’ve got no teeth, as you chew, your remaining teeth get loose and they move.

‘Which is why,’ she adds, ‘once you’ve lost a few… you’re going to lose them all eventually.’

While this form of tooth extraction may sound Dickensian, it’s estimated that 30 to 35 million dental appointments have been missed due to the pandemic – and the number of NHS dentists working in England is set to reach a decade low, according to the Association of Dental Groups. 

A YouGov poll, conducted earlier this year, found 10% of people admitted to attempting ‘DIY dentistry’. More than half (56%) of the group carried it out in the last year and one in five said they did so because they could not find an NHS dentist.

The survey also found 22% of people were not registered with a dentist, with 23% of those saying it is because they cannot afford treatment.

The Health and Social Care Committee’s examination of NHS dentistry has now seen calls for for ‘urgent and fundamental reform’, adding the evidence of pain and distress is ‘totally unacceptable in the 21st century’.

While the recently announced multibillion-pound ‘catch up programme’ for the NHS vowed to tackle non-urgent surgery, maternity and mental health services, it did not offer a penny to dentistry – which means patients will face waiting times of more than three years, according to Healthwatch England. 

It’s not just instances of tooth decay or gum disease which are going untreated either, but oral cancers, where survival rates plummet without early detection. It’s dentists on the frontline who detect these cancers, which kill more Britons each year than car accidents. 

‘There is a clear problem,’ says Neil Carmichael, Chair of the Association of Dental Groups (ADG). ‘We cannot offer more people NHS treatment, or solve the problem of ‘dental deserts’ without more dentists.

‘In the year to March 2021 the NHS lost a record 951 NHS dentists in England. Our estimates are that we could be seeing a similar exodus this year. Brexit, Covid-19 and contracts have all impacted the total capacity of the dental workforce.’

Karen explains that despite never having had major problems with her teeth, when she needed to re-fit her top denture, she was refused NHS emergency dental care because of Covid.

Then, after an accidental fall in an Asda car park – which knocked three bottom teeth out – she was told to try private care, but being on universal credit and PIP, she can’t afford it.

Two sets of dentures will cost her approximately £2000, and she’s still trying to raise money via a Go Fund Me page for treatment.

In total Karen thinks she’s pulled out at least five of her own teeth. Something thatimpacts her physical and mental health every day, she says. Eating has also become extremely difficult, and she is prone to choking.

‘I can’t be sure if this is connected, but I’ve developed IBS recently, and when I go to the toilet, sometimes I see whole bits of food in there, because I can’t chew properly,’ she admits.

The sight of her toothlessness also makes the grandmother feel ‘down and depressed’, and it is limiting her personal life too. 

‘I have been a single woman since my partner died four years ago,’ Karen explains. ‘I was on the dating scene but I’m too embarrassed now. They’re not going to want to introduce someone to their family who has got no teeth! I was a normal, happy woman. Now, I just feel like, what’s the point of going on? I’m ashamed of myself, but I know it’s not my fault.’

On the other side of Suffolk, in Sudbury, Nick Cohen, 43, has also been unable to access NHS dentistry, and is now too embarrassed to leave his house. 

What started out as toothache in 2020 escalated to more severe problems, and he was put on endless waiting lists for NHS treatment. Eventually, Nick was in such extreme pain that he pulled two teeth out himself in 2021, on separate occasions. One at the front, and another at the back of his mouth,

‘I did it with my fingers,’ he recalls. ‘I was wobbling the tooth backwards and forwards until it was loose enough, then I literally grabbed it. put all my strength into it, and pulled it hard. I took painkillers, and it was quite painful.’

Nick believes his teeth could have been saved if he had been able to access dental care when he needed to, but the NHS practice he had been on the waiting list for became private and it became disbanded.

While he did manage to have his four front teeth pulled out by an emergency dentist, he has nothing to replace them with, as emergency NHS care is typically for tooth extraction only, with the provision of dentures not provided. 

With his mouth in its current state, Nick says it continues to be ‘traumatic’ and ‘distressing’. He is so embarrassed about his lack of teeth, that he refused to share any recent photos of his face with Metro.co.uk. 

‘It’s causing me a lot of distress, and it’s isolating me – I feel quite lonely and in despair,’ says the diabetic, who is unable to work due to a long-term disability. ‘It’s also causing me discomfort with eating, and really piling on my mental health issues, and making me feel low and depressed.

‘My teeth are literally falling out, left, right and centre, because I can’t get any treatment or go to see a hygienist,’ he adds. ‘I’ve got nothing to replace them with.’

Ultimately, Nick believes dentists have a duty of care, and are leaving people to suffer. 

‘There’s a big pay gap between NHS and private dentistry,’ he says. ‘Dentists have all just jumped ship to get more money, and the government aren’t helping to open up more spaces. They don’t care about the lower class people who can’t afford private treatment. 

‘I think private dentists have the capacity to at least open the door one day a week, for NHS dentistry, considering the pay scale they’re on. It’s sheer greed otherwise.’

Since 2008/9 dentists working in the NHS have experienced cuts in real incomes of up to 40%, according to the British Dental Association. 

Dr Jabir Kazi lives in West Yorkshire and qualified as a dentist in 2017. He is currently working privately – but said if he had known the reality of working in dentistry, he would have chosen a different vocation, or moved abroad. 

Like many in his profession, Dr Kazi blames the universally discredited target-based NHS contract, which was introduced in 2006 across England and remunerates dentists solely on their activity.

Long before the pandemic fuelled access problems, it was dubbed ‘unfit for purpose’, not only receiving criticism from dentists, but two governments, a Health Select Committee and the Chief Dental Officers for England and Wales. It has generated chronic recruitment and retention problems. 

The contract  – which is still in place today – gives NHS dental practices targets to hit, known as units of dental activity (UDAs), and they are financially penalised if they didn’t hit them. Treatment is divided into three bands; the most complex care – such as the provision of crowns, mouthguards, bridges or dentures – requires dentists to pay the lab fee themselves, which can equate to as much as several hundred pounds per patient. 

‘It’s not good to have someone doing your treatment who gets hit in the pocket,’ says Dr Kazi. ‘If you do the best thing, you’re getting penalised. Whereas, a patient who has very low needs – for example maybe they just need a check up – is the perfect patient.’

He adds: ‘The government has to actually decide if they want to fund an NHS or not. Under NHS dentistry, the quality of care that’s available is emergency firefighting at best, and dentists are actually losing money to see patients – especially if they have high needs.’

Dr Kazi likens NHS dentistry to playing in a tennis match, where the umpire takes your tennis racket away. You’re still expected to play, and give your best possible work, with the crowd booing you in the stands. 

Then there’s the fact that the UK is now number one for litigation in the world, which can cost dentists approximately £5000 a year in professional insurance. One survey of 2,000 UK dentists found almost a fifth had seriously thought about suicide, with the threat of complaints or litigation the most common source of stress.

‘By the time you come home, and look at your finances, there’s nothing left, or you’re more in debt than you were before,’ he says. ‘You’ve been taught these amazing, wonderful techniques, and there’s lots of different things you can do. And then you work in a system which really limits what you can offer, without having to face huge financial penalties.’

For Dr Kazi, practising privately enables him to progress his career, have a better work/life balance, and exhibit his hard-earned skills.

‘The actual changes that we can make to people’s lives – either functionally, or aesthetically – can be really profound,’ he explains. ‘But the public needs to be aware that dentistry is a surgical profession, and it’s very expensive.

‘It would be nice to help people who are less able,’ adds Dr Kazi. ‘However,  I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve just got to do the best for whoever comes through my door.’

In Cheltenham, Anya* tells Metro.co.uk that although she comes from a family of dentists, it didn’t stop her having to resort to DIY dentistry herself during lockdown.

‘Back in Scotland, where I grew up, I’ve always had the privilege of getting affordable dental care,’ she explains. ‘But obviously with Covid I wasn’t able to travel. I was in agony for a year with wisdom tooth pain. I couldn’t get an NHS dentist, and the cost at a private practice was so extortionate – it could have been up to £1000 – and there was just no way I could afford it.’

Instead, the 31-year-old marketing professional got a kettle of boiling water and poured it over some nail scissors, then ‘cut the gum surrounding my tooth away’. 

‘I was at a desperate point, where I was in so much pain – and knew why I was in so much pain – that I knew I had to do something,’ Anya recalls. ‘There was a tonne of blood, and I really wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve managed to alleviate the pain, but I haven’t solved the problem.’

Anya hasn’t told her family about her DIY efforts, as she said they would be shocked and cross with her. She said it’s absurd, crazy and disappointing that she couldn’t get NHS treatment, adding that dentistry is seen as sub-par to medical care.  

‘If I was talking about performing minor surgery, there would be outrage,’ she says. ‘But dental care seems to fall into a weird subcategory.’

The UK’s dental crisis is something that needs to be urgently addressed, according to the campaign group Toothless in England, which acts as a hub for a network of ‘Toothless’ campaign groups across the country.

‘This is not just an issue that has come up because of the pandemic,’ insists the group’s founder Mark Jones. ‘This lack of NHS dentistry has been with us for well over a decade. It’s unfair, unwieldy and financially unviable. It’s not attractive for newly qualified dentists as they simply can’t cover the costs of providing NHS treatment.’

Currently, Toothless in England is campaigning for six demands to be met, including an NHS dentist for everyone and revenue to cover the 50% of the population that are unfunded by the government. 

Meanwhile, Nigel Carter, CEO of the Oral Health Foundation – which has launched public awareness campaign, Safe Smiles, to highlight the importance of safe dentistry -warns that the shortage of dentists has become a long term problem in the UK.

‘We need to be training more dentists, and expanding NHS provisions,’ he explains. ‘Since the 2006 NHS dental contract, there’s been a 10 per cent increase in population, and no increase in volume of treatment.

‘There’s been a drift to private practice since about 1990. For dentists wanting to expand, the only way that they can do that is by making some of their provisions private. It’s not the dentists fault that they’re moving so they can try and make more money, it is a question that there is not enough NHS provision in the system.’

One source of hope is the current intake of dental students, which is a bigger cohort than usual. However, given that it takes five years to train dentists, it’s not much use to those in need of treatment now. 

‘It shouldn’t have to be like this,’ says Karen, with her seven teeth left, and two more on the verge of being pulled out. ‘NHS patients should be the bread and butter, because there are more of us than there are people that can afford to go private. Yet, we’re made to feel like you’re a bit of an inconvenience. 

‘The whole point of having the NHS is that it’s there for those who need it,’ she adds.  ‘Yet, I feel like my life’s been put on hold – just because I can’t get an NHS dentist.’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk 

Share your views in the comments below.

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But for nearly two decades, Robert lived a second life as a spy who made millions of dollars by lying, cheating and stealing sensitive information from some of the biggest companies in America.

Relying on his acting training, he put on accents, mimicked corporate big-wigs and manipulated innocent workers into passing on vital intellectual property which he would sell to competitors.

‘I would call up and say “This is Gerhard, calling from the office in Frankfurt. We have the European Union regulators here and we need some information from the States”,’ says Robert, putting on a thick, convincing and slightly jovial German accent over the phone from Malibu, California.

‘What are people taught in the corporate world? Be a good teammate. So they want to help you. Nobody’s thinking you’re pretending or that you’re a trained actor impersonating a real person. I was able to get people to tell me passwords, new product information, what they charged clients, what they paid their employees, who the top employees at their companies were and who were their rock stars at the organisation – and all of that information was so valuable.

‘Imagine if you could learn the names of the people on the design team in the early days of the iPad. How much money would that have been worth?’

A lot, is the answer. In 2011, Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung for infringing on patents related to iPhone and iPad product design. Apple claimed that Samsung had replicated the look and feel of its devices and was awarded just over $1 billion in damages.

Trade secrets are big business. Robert, who earned $8 an hour when he first started the work to help him survive as an actor in the early nineties, later made up to $2 million a year.

Hi story echoes that of Rob Moore, who went from corporate spy to self-proclaimed double agent, and is the focus of Tortoise Media’s latest podcast, ‘Into the Dirt’.

Like Robert, Rob had a career in the media, but when work dried up, he started gathering corporate intelligence.

Commercial espionage causes big headaches globally. Across the European markets, spying is the fifth biggest concern for companies, according to cyber security specialists Gatewatcher.

Robert, who has great people skills and who says he can read the silences over the phone, would invent a series of ruses to obtain valuable information. He would study the accents of industry giants on TV interviews and mimic them on the phone so employees, starstruck, would tell him whatever he wanted to know. He would also form relationships with employees and call them multiple times over a series of years, pretending to know family members, or terrify his target with claims of being from head office.

‘The words corporate compliance strikes fear in employees,’ explains Rob. ‘They’re like, “Oh, my God, I got the head of compliance on the phone. Did I do something wrong? I’m in trouble.” So right away, you make someone defensive. People are afraid but when they hear there’s some corporate emergency that you need help with, they relax.’

With their guard down, they would give information freely.

According to Robert Kerbeck, it was like taking candy from a baby. ‘Nine out of ten people think that they would never release sensitive private information. And I’m telling you that nine out of ten people give it up,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.

‘Corporate espionage is an extremely competitive, cut-throat industry. We had to think on our feet always. Part of being an actor is you have to have strong improvisational skills. And we did a tremendous amount of research before we would make any ruse phone call. We would study the company, read their annual reports, read their press releases and go all over the website. My lies sounded better than the truth.’

Robert worked as a spy for around twenty years, telling only his wife how he really made his money.

At one point in the late nineties, he was hunted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Communications Commission and ‘every other agency that has three letters in the United States’. A lawyer told him that if a company wanted to prosecute him, he ‘would be in big trouble’, and Robert often had to talk his way out of hot water, change names, switch phone numbers and go underground.

Corporate espionage is not illegal in the UK, according to private investigator Jack Charman, ‘as long as the methods used to obtain the information are legal and there is just cause,’ he explains.

‘The term “corporate espionage” indicates that information gathered under this guise is solely used for business advantage. This isn’t a strong legal reason to pursue the gathering of information and thus doesn’t have just cause to conduct an investigation. It can be quite a grey area. I know it does happen in the financial industry – short selling is a great example of this.’

Working as an actor, Robert was able to hide in plain sight. In 1994 he was hired to work on an exercise video with OJ Simpson.

‘I was a huge OJ fan. I grew up watching him play football. One day, I showed up to the video set in a dance studio. I’m the worst dancer ever, and everybody does the dance, even OJ, and I am just pathetic. I am so bad. The choreographer was about to fire me, but OJ says: “No. Rob’s dancing is so bad, it’s making me look good. Rob stays.” And in a weird sort of way that bonded us and the whole rest of the three-day shoot OJ was my best friend.’

OJ promised Robert a role in his next show, but just days later, he saw the historic televised police chase involving OJ in the white Bronco.

‘I was just blown away. My jaw dropped,’ he remembers. ‘I literally slid off my couch and was on the ground. I couldn’t believe it.’ OJ was cleared of double murder in 1995, but jailed for armed robbery and conspiracy to kidnap in 2008. He has since been released.

Robert set up his own firm in the late nineties, and trained other spies to work for him. Did he feel bad? Yes – but he rationalised it.

‘There was part of me that said I was only stinging major corporations and financial institutions,’ he explains. ‘It doesn’t take a lot of research or awareness to know that many of these institutions have been convicted of many types of financial crimes, malfeasance and ripping off consumers. You can make a pretty easy argument that it was the greed of financial institutions that caused the 2008 financial crisis. I told myself I was just stealing corporate secrets from one firm and selling them to another; that’s just part of the capitalist system. But there were also people that I was dealing with that I was taking advantage of and that didn’t feel good.’

In the end, it wasn’t the FBI that brought Robert’s operation to its knees; it was his eight-year-old daughter who confronted him after overhearing him on the phone pretending to be someone else.

‘She said: “Are you a hacker?” And I said: “Oh no. I’m just getting information from one company and giving it to another as part of capitalism.” And she said: “But it’s dishonest.” That was the moment I knew I had to get out of the business,’ he says.

Robert went on to become an author, and finally liberated from the shackles of secrecy, he revealed all in a memoir called Ruse: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street – however, this unexpectedly served as an advert for his shady services.

‘I cannot tell you how many executives have reached out to me after reading the exposé.

‘They told me; “We loved your book. We’d like to hire you to spy for us.” I had to tell them that I was out of the business. But also; I’ve outed myself! I wouldn’t be a very good spy if I’ve outed myself. But corporations don’t care.

‘They just want the information and they’re willing to pay top dollar to get me or someone else to learn anything and everything possible about their rivals.’

Ruse: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street

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Prophecies are often ghoulish, heavily detailing the carnage and bloodshed which is evidently imminent – but such hellish images have since been surpassed by tangible horrors of modern warfare. 

With an increasing number of leading figures in the tech industry now fretting about the risk artificial intelligence poses to society, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT system bearing the brunt of this criticism, concerns are at fever-pitch.

Even fan of the future Elon Musk is warning that super intelligent AI is significantly more dangerous than nuclear warheads, hinting towards a Terminator-style endgame for humanity.

However, the likelihood of this actually happening is slim, says Michael Cook, a senior lecturer at King’s College London with expertise in AI.

‘People think AI is smarter than it is in its current form,’ he explains. ‘Some people are afraid of it because they’ve seen pop culture, which is understandable. The reason we should be is not because AI is going to decide to kill us all, but it’s how it’s being used right now. We’re using it in lots of places where it shouldn’t be used.’

In spite of its flaws, AI technology could be genuinely revolutionary:it could create solutions to problems that humans can’t even think of, such as a cure for cancer, or create new energy sources.

Its possibilities are endless, which is why I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.

And, let’s face it, AI certainly isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

So for one week, I let a robot rule every aspect of my daily life: from helping me dress for work and sort dinner to dealing with health issues and sorting out my social life.

But is it really the way forward? Well, the results were… interesting…

‘ChatGPT, choose my outfit’

I am a graduate of the ‘can’t polish a turd’ school of thought, and so the effort I put into getting myself ready for work is minimal. Case in point: I once bothered to put on make-up for the office only for a colleague to actually say ‘well done’ to me.

So to have ChatGPT pick out an outfit for me was somewhat exciting. Finally, I could have my work outfit ready to go first thing in the morning, as opposed to blindly pulling out something vaguely appropriate from my overstuffed wardrobe.

The sticky summer heat, mingled with the threat of thunderstorms, meant it was tricky to devise something with my small human brain anyway. ChatGPT had some suggestions.

‘Choose lightweight, breathable fabrics like cotton or linen to stay comfortable in the warm temperature. A dress, a skirt and blouse combination, or dress pants with a blouse are all appropriate options.

‘Consider a longer skirt or dress that falls below the knees to keep your legs protected from rain or chilly office air conditioning.’

To beat the downpours, ChatGPT added: ‘Since there’s a chance of rain, it’s a good idea to bring a lightweight rain jacket or trench coat with you. This way, you can stay dry during your commute and while walking outdoors.’

In terms of colours, ChatGPT suggested muted neutrals or something with a ‘pop of colour’ without looking too garish for the office environment.

Digging out my trench coat, which smells faintly of damp and dust (the joys in living in a tiny basement flat) and pairing it with my cotton geometric Zara dress I got in the sale last year, I don’t feel too ridiculous however, nothing it suggested was particularly revolutionary (A raincoat? For rainy weather? Groundbreaking).

Anna Wintour can sleep easy for now – ChatGPT still has some way to go in the sartorial stakes. 

Can an AI doctor fix my foot?

I have experienced an unusual, sharp pain down the right side of my right foot, which sometimes stretches up my calf and into the back of my knee. Walking is painful. Wearing shoes is painful – to the point that I now stride around the office in my socks. I have a doctor’s appointment booked, but I decide to enter my symptoms into ChatGPT to see what their verdict is.

Firstly, ChatGPT apologises after hearing I am in pain, which is unnerving. It continues: ‘One possibility for the sharp pain in the right side of your foot is a sprained ankle. This occurs when the ligaments supporting the ankle joint become stretched or torn, typically due to an injury or twisting motion. Alongside the pain, swelling in the ankle is a common symptom of a sprain.

‘Another potential cause could be a stress fracture. Repetitive stress or overuse of the foot can lead to tiny cracks in the bones. This can result in localized pain, especially when walking or putting weight on the foot. Swelling can also be present in some cases.’

It then clarifies it’s not a doctor, before giving quite general advice to treat my pain – rest, ice, ibuprofen for the swelling. 

My doctor’s appointment actually confirms I have peroneal tendonitis – swelling on a tendon on my foot due to overuse. While the treatment is effectively the same, ChatGPT was incorrect in its diagnosis.

A dodgy foot is one thing, but I was intrigued to find out what my friend ChatGPT would do if I was suffering the symptoms of a heart attack? I type in chest pain, nausea and tiredness, and I’m quickly urged to go to the medical room. Thanks, pal.

However, the symptoms of a major depressive episode – suicidal thoughts, feeling tearful and hopeless – are more of a challenge for it, spitting out the response that ‘it cannot provide the help I need.’

For Michael Cook, this is where the real danger of AI lies – it’s improper use.

‘General artificial intelligence is not designed to give you medical advice,’ he explains. ‘ChatGPT is a large language model, meaning it absorbs a huge amount of data and text, and looks for patterns. But that’s not to say that everything it feeds back is correct, or should be trusted.

‘There’s instances of ChatGPT “hallucinating” – attributing quotes to people who never said those things, or producing papers that haven’t ever been written.’

DJ AI on the decks

My forty minute walk (or, around 25 minute tube journey, seeing as my foot needs rest) is usually soundtracked by Spotify, which has launched its own AI tool: DJ.

According to Spotify, the AI DJ ‘knows you and your music taste so well that it can choose what to play for you’. It’s claimed the more you interact with it, the better the AI gets.

The commentary borders on annoying, with the AI speaker interrupting every four songs or so to tell you they’re switching things up for whatever reason, but the songs selected are within the parameters of my taste.

DJ then chooses ‘new’ songs that it thinks I might like, and this is where things go slightly awry. While the first track selected is September by Earth Wind and Fire (I don’t think it could be described as ‘new’ by any stretch of imagination), the AI then pumps out a lot of Drake. I don’t hate Drake, but I’m not particularly keen on him to the point that the AI thinks I am.

The DJ feature isn’t awful, and with repeated use it probably would improve, but for the time being, I’ll stick to the pre-curated playlists.

My AI friends

I probably have the worst desk in the office: I’m sat by the kitchen, which means I get the regular footfall of people filling up their water bottles and the first warning smells that psychopaths are cooking kippers in the microwaves.

It also means I’m forever bumping into people when I have to get up. I have all the conversational skills of a teaspoon, so whenever a poor colleague is forced into a kitchen tete a tete with me, they have to brace themselves for the most boring chat of their lives.

So I decided to see if I could use ChatGPT as a means of actually making friends.

When I asked for some ice breakers, it came up with the following:

1. Two Truths and a Lie: Share two true statements and one false statement about yourself. Let others guess which one is the lie.

2. Desert Island: If you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you want to have with you and why?

3. Office Superlatives: Create fun, lighthearted superlatives for your colleagues, such as “Best Dressed,” “Most Likely to Win a Marathon,” or “Office Comedian.”

So far, so inoffensive – though I feel if I chased someone into the kitchen shouting “two truths and a lie! Two truths and a lie!” it would quickly become a matter for HR.

But I was keen to see what ChatGPT made of one of my more outlandish assignments. For work (yes, work!) I had to attend a sex party, where only the women could initiate conversation with men.

I asked for some conversation starters for the event, and ChatGPT left me lost for words. Finally, a being that is somehow more socially inept that I am.

Imagine going to a sex party and saying this:

‘Do you have any favourite resources or books about sex positivity, consent, or sexual exploration that you’d recommend?’

‘I find the concept of sex positivity fascinating. What does it mean to you?’

I left ChatGPT out for this one, forced to rely on my own natural charm (or lack of it).

Dinner a la Robot Ramsay

Cooking dinner for my boyfriend, I told ChatGPT what was in my fridge (chicken, feta, tomatoes and pasta) and urged it to make a recipe ‘in the style of Gordon Ramsay’ (the only celebrity chef I know).

The system then spits out ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Mediterranean Chicken Pasta’ recipe, with additional ingredients and 11 steps to follow.

The verdict? Well… it’s pasta and chicken. It’s nice enough – definitely quicker to put together than racking my brains for ideas. The recipe ChatGPT provided only needed me to fetch a few additional herbs and some stock, so it only set me back a few quid.

It was also fairly easy to follow, with Pete having pasta in his lap within 30 minutes. He seemed happy with it (or was too scared/intelligent to complain). It did strike me as somewhat amazing that AI cooked me dinner and the only complaint I really had was that it needed more seasoning.

So, will AI rule the earth?

While integrating AI into my daily routine was somewhat helpful in some respects, a lot of the advice offered made me roll my eyes and whisper ‘no s*** Sherlock’ at my laptop.

Effectively, AI is a great impersonator, or as Richard Self, computing and analytics lecturer at Derby University explains: ‘a stochastic parrot’ –  good at generating convincing language, but not at actually understanding the meaning of what it’s saying. It can guess advice, but it at this level – AI can’t offer anything genuinely original.

‘It’s not here to give answers,’ he explains. ‘It’s here to calculate a sequence. It’s a convincing attempt, but it’s merely an impersonation.

‘Human beings are effectively lazy and want to find quicker ways of doing things. But this is where AI can cause great harm, as we can end up trusting AI’s answers when its judgement isn’t quite sound.

‘It’s clear AI is something we may end up integrating into our lives. But there needs to be far greater regulation to stop it being used in areas it shouldn’t be used for. That’s when it can really do significant harm.’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kimberley.Bond@metro.co.uk 

Share your views in the comments below.

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