Month: March 2025

In March 2020, 29-year-old Ashleigh Ellerton was diagnosed with breast cancer after discovering a small lump in her right breast. Initially dismissed by her GP, Ashleigh persisted and was eventually sent for further testing at a breast clinic.

She was then diagnosed with the disease, which impacts one in seven women during their lifetime, and underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a mastectomy.

Recalling the moment she was diagnosed with cancer, Ashleigh said: “The words came out of his mouth, but it was sort of like they didn’t. The only thing I could think of was that we had just booked a family holiday.

“It was almost like it wasn’t happening to me. It was happening to someone else and I was just watching it.”

Ashleigh would receive an all-clear in December 2020 and married Simon a year later.

Despite the initial positive results, Ashleigh remained convinced that her cancer would return and in 2022, doctors discovered it had spread to her liver.

“I was convinced that the cancer was not finished with me,” she said.

“I told my nurses who had come to my wedding that my cancer was going to come back in my liver.”

In September 2024 Ashleigh would receive another round of devastating news after she began to suffer with bad headaches and mood swings, which led to her being diagnosed with leptomeningeal disease.

According to Cancer Research UK, leptomeningeal disease is when cancer cells spread to thin layers of tissue which cover the brain and spinal cord. Prognosis differs from patient to patient and is dependent on factors such as how quickly the cancer is growing, as well as how it responds to treatment.

For Ashleigh, this meant that she was out of treatment options and now had just months left to live.

Now focused on making lasting memories with her children – who are aged 11, 10, nine and five – the former carer said: “They are the reason I fought so hard and for so long, there is nothing in the world I do that isn’t for them. I do believe they are the reason I am still here.

“I am making memory boxes, writing cards so they have birthday cards with my writing.

“It is about making sure I have prepared the kids for life without me.”

Her mother has also set up a GoFundMe for the family, with the goal raising funds for the children to make lasting memories with their mother. The family have since received over £11,700 from kind strangers, which has allowed Ashleigh and her children to visit places such as Harry Potter World, Disneyland, London and on the Polar Express, places she’d planned on taking them when they were a little older.

“I didn’t have the privilege of waiting until then to enjoy it with them,” she added.

Unfortunately, for those people that worship their cars, an accident is always potentially around the corner, as one Manchester lad found out when his beloved BMW was written off after a crash, despite him being in another country at the time.

No matter how safely you drive, there’s always a risk of damage, particularly if you have one of these three colours of car – as that also seemingly increases the chances of an accident, according to the RAC.

But one lad on Reddit was shocked to discover that his parked car had suffered a particularly large dent, and the reasoning behind it was one of the strangest you will ever see.

Posting on the social network, one user caught the attention of thousands on the site after sharing a picture of his car, but it was the note that he was left which prompted the discussion.

It read: “I am very sorry about your hood. My cat fell off my 14th floor balcony and landed on your hood.

“Please call at [blurred contact information]. Again, I am so sorry.”

It restores your faith in humanity slightly when someone takes the time to write a note after something so devastating, and fortunately the two were able to sort things out, which isn’t often the case when car owners are left with damage this substantial.

Naturally, when the user confirmed that he had spoken with the cat’s owner, there was more concern for the feline than the four-wheeler, but he later shared a tragic update in the replies.

He said: “No it did not [survive]. I was on my way to work when I saw the note and hood.

“I called the owners who were understandably going through it. The cat smashed the hood, bounced and landed about 15 or so feet from the truck.

“Apparently the cat had been given medication that could cause dizziness. The owners didn’t think about how every night the cat would walk the ledge of the balcony.

“It lost balance and that was that.”

Sadly, the cat didn’t land on its feet on this occasion. Given the sadness surrounding the situation, the car owner was very sympathetic. He suggested that the pet owner had suffered the ‘real loss’ and confirmed that his insurance would cover the car’s damages.

Dr Rena Malik is a urologist and pelvic surgeon who regularly shares educational videos about urologic and sexual health.

Over on her YouTube channel, Dr Malik shared a video about how to use yours and your partner’s erogenous zones to increase satisfaction in the bedroom – and it’s proven to work.

Citing the research, Dr Malik explained that in a study from 2018, a number of couples were asked to practice touching one another at different speeds and in different areas of the body.

While one was asked to be the ‘giver’, the other was assigned the role of ‘receiver’.

“They recruited 19 romantic couples and one partner was assigned to be the giver and the other was the receiver,” Dr Malik explained.

“Givers were instructed to give two types of touch, either slow stroking at around 3cm per second or fast stroking at around 18cm per second to the neck which is considered an erogenous zone and the forehead which is a non-erogenous zone.”

Dr Malik explained that the study’s results were pretty clear – stroking on the erogenous zone and at a specific speed led to greater pleasure in the bedroom.

“They found that slow stroking touch on the erogenous was significantly more pleasurable than the faster touch or touching the non-erogenous zone,” she explained.

Explaining why the findings were so important in terms of sexual pleasure, Dr Malik added: “The human body has specialised nerve fibres they are called C-tactile afferents and they help the brain differentiate a more gentle dynamic touch and they respond best to a gentle stroking touch applied at a specific velocity of 1-10cm per second.

“This is like the typical speed people use when they’re caressing or stroking a person that they want to be intimate with.

“And in particular this CT optimal touch activates the brain regions that are involved in processing emotions and feelings.

“So you’re creating this neural pathway that perceives certain types of touch as pleasant and even erotic, and this might be an important mechanism by which humans can differentiate between emotional and erotic touch.”

Dr Malik explained that taking the time to explore your own and your partner’s erogenous zones could lead to a better sex life.

“Take time to find out your and your partner’s erogenous zones and use them to enhance sex,” she added.

With stranded NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams currently on their way back to Earth, one Russian cosmonaut spent significantly longer in space and managed to leave his landing capsule without assistance.

Valeri Polyakov is one of the biggest names to ever be a part of the Soviet space program and its successor, the Russian Federal Space Agency.

A cosmonaut for the Russians from the early 1970s until the mid 1990s, he made history after journeying to the Mir space station in 1994 where he spent 437 consecutive days floating around the planet.

It’s a world record to this day, with Polyakov circling the planet more than 7,000 times during this experiment that began in January 1994 and ended in March 1995.

Heading to the Mir space station on board the Soyuz TM-18, the entire purpose of Polyakov’s journey in to the cosmos was all to do with health and future experiments off planet that could be on the horizon for space agencies around the world.

While up there, Polyakov exercised for two hours a day to compensate for there being zero gravity and therefore, zero pressure on his muscular and skeletal systems to maintain their integrity and density.

He would then do more than two dozen experiments on his own body, looking at his diet in space; how his blood and nervous system reacted to zero gravity; and how his immune system held up.

Bizarrely, Polyakov also grew 2.5 inches while in space after his spine straightened out without gravitational force on the skeletal system.

But when journeying back to Earth, he had a rather uncomfortable trip given that his chair and re-entry gear had been a bespoke fit for him when he was 6ft 2.5in and not the 6ft 5in he was upon return.

After landing in the steppe of modern day Kazakhstan, Polyakov was tracked and located by Russian space officials.

With the door to his landing capsule opened, he made the decision to walk out of the spacecraft on his own accord despite being offered help as he got used to the force of gravity on his body once again.

He walked out and sat himself down at a nearby chair in which he lit a cigarette and enjoyed an alcoholic beverage. A glass of brandy, to be precise.

The reason for this? To show he was physically fine after such a long period in space – providing hope for future long trips in to space, such as an eventual journey to Mars if Elon Musk and SpaceX get their way.

Polyakov said: “That was pretty much the goal of the flight. I had to show that it is possible to preserve your ability to function after being in space for such a long time.”

Polyakov retired as a cosmonaut three months after landing on Earth, calling it a day in June 1995.

In total, he spent 678 days in space on his two trips off of the planet, spending his later years working as the Deputy Director of the Ministry of Public Health in Moscow.

In this role, he was in charge of the medical aspects of long-duration space missions; something he was well experienced in.

Polyakov died at the age of 80 in September 2022, with Russian space agency Roscosmos announcing his passing on its website.

Thanks to true crime documentaries and drama series such as Netflix’s Mindhunter, many of us are far too familiar with the crimes committed by some of history’s worst offenders.

Mindhunter in particular has proven popular, with the show’s inspiration John Douglas opening up recently on the chilling way psychopaths are often able to pass polygraph tests and lie detectors.

One of the worst serial killers he studied in the show is Edmund Kemper, known as the ‘Co-ed killer’ after he brutally murdered eight women including his mother in the space of 11 months, having already killed his grandparents at the age of 15.

The American man was convicted in late 1973, having spent much of the last year picking up hitchhiking young women from high schools and colleges before murdering them and performing sexual acts on their corpses. It is believed that the young women were simply surrogates for his mother, who was his second-to-last victim before he turned himself into police.

A recent photo of the 76-year-old also left fans of the show very creeped out, as at six-foot-nine, he is still a threat to anyone who comes close to him, even though he is now reportedly confined to a wheelchair.

Despite some sources describing Kemper as an almost-model citizen during his time behind bars, he has been repeatedly denied parole over his last 42 years living in the California Medical Facility, and considering what he said to FBI agent Robert Ressler back in the 1980s, it’s easy to see why he will never see freedom again.

According to American researcher and psychiatric clinical nurse specialist Ann Burgess, Kemper told Ressler at the end of one of their interviews: “The guard isn’t coming back. They’re on change of shift. He’s not going to be here for 30 minutes. In that time, I could snap your head and leave it on the table. I’d own the prison then. I killed an FBI agent.”

Given the serial killer’s apparent affixation with the human head, as he savagely decapitated most of his victims, that was an extremely serious threat, and you wouldn’t have blamed Ressler for bolting out of the room as soon as he heard the terrifying statement.

After the guard came back, Kemper said he was joking, but the FBI certainly didn’t see the funny side, and from then on, all agents were required to conduct interviews in pairs and could no longer do them on their own.

Despite originally requesting the death penalty at his trial in 1973, Kemper is still alive today, and will be up for parole again in 2031.

Think crude, offensive, and just plain wrong, then multiply it by 10.

That’s the level we’re talking here, but it also shouldn’t be forgotten that the show is excellent at tackling current affairs and issues in the world in its episodes in its own unique, comedic way.

The show was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and has been a mainstay on Comedy Central since its pilot in 1997.

Each episode is usually written and animated in the week leading to its release, allowing it to be just about the most current comedy series on TV for almost 30 years.

However, touching on controversial topics such as Andrew Tate (see above), poking fun at religion, fielding racism jokes and more over the years, can cause those involved in the show to look back and cringe a bit.

I mean, there’s a Wikipedia page titled ‘South Park controversies’ for Pete’s sake.

Writer Pam Brady was part of the show for three seasons before moving on to pursue bigger film projects, and despite looking back fondly on her time on the show, she revealed the joke she regretted most.

The foul-mouthed foursome of Eric, Kyle, Kenny and Stan are known for their brutal one-liners from time to time, but Brady’s joke comes from another iconic character.

Speaking at 2025’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival, she spoke to Fox News Digital about the ‘worst’ joke she had ever written for the series.

The American writer and producer explained: “It was based on an old frat joke… one character said ‘I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die’.

“I remember it was just like the most misogynistic frat boy joke that I’d heard of at that point… but we’re reclaiming it,” she insisted.

It’s fair to say that the comment hasn’t exactly aged well.

The character she’s referring to is none other than the boys’ fourth grade school teacher, Mr. Garrison, who you might know from Cartman’s infamous scene with the megaphone.

If you don’t, just Google it.

Despite not being the biggest fan of it today, the joke was part of the 1999 film titled South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, which would receive an Oscar nomination in 2000.

Many fans consider the joke to be one of the show’s funniest, but Brady has reclaimed it following International Women’s Day, earlier this month.

Speaking about the treatment of women in Hollywood, she added: “I think there’s always improvement to be made. I mean, women are 51 percent of the population, so it should always be 50 percent [female in writers’ rooms].

“But I’ve been really lucky, you know, South Park’s writers’ room has always been 50-50, male-female,” she admitting, adding that the industry nowadays is no longer ‘the old boys network’.

While many think the art of comedy is dead nowadays due to cancel culture, Brady pointed out: “I do think you have to be more careful now, what you say.

“South Park had an episode where they represented… I’m not going to say what it was, but it was just someone you wouldn’t want to represent on a show… and you could do it 20 years ago, but you can’t do it now,” she admitted.

The writer highlighted: “I think times change and I think sometimes it’s good that you go, ‘oh, you shouldn’t do something that’s like, a racist phrase that your grandparents would use.’ And that’s sort of just evolving.”

The discussion around intimacy co-ordinators has become a hot topic in Hollywood in recent years, with the introduction of the role post #MeToo becoming the new industry standard.

This year’s Best Actress winner at the Oscars, Mikey Madison, sparked controversy when she declined using an intimacy co-ordinator for her leading role as a sex worker in Anora.

While other actors have been full of praise for the new on-set position, Paltrow revealed that she and Chalamet asked theirs to ‘step back’ when shooting their upcoming film.

The pair are starring together in a new A24 film called Marty Supreme and went viral after pictures showed the pair locking lips on the set of the film.

The film, directed Josh Safdie and releasing December of this year in the US, features the pair in an age gap relationship, with Paltrow, 52, joking that she said to the 29-year-old Chalamet: “I was like, ‘OK, great. I’m 109 years old. You’re 14.”

Paltrow said in an interview with Vanity Fair: “We have a lot of sex in this movie. There’s a lot.

“There’s now something called an intimacy coordinator, which I did not know existed. I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on’.”

She stated that she said to the intimacy co-ordinator on the film: “I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back.”

Paltrow went on to add: “I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but if someone is like, ‘Okay, and then he’s going to put his hand here,’ I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that.”

The 52-year-old was full of praise for Chalamet, saying of the two-time Academy Award nominee: “He’s such a thinking man’s sex symbol.

“He’s just a very polite, properly raised, I was going to say kid, he’s a man who takes his work really seriously and is a fun partner.”

Exact plot details for Marty Supreme have largely been kept under wraps so far, with Variety saying that Chalamet is set to star as a ‘ping pong protégé competing overseas’.

Paltrow revealed in the Vanity Fair profile, however, that she plays the wife of a rival within the sport who begins an affair with Chalamet’s character.

She said in the interview: “This woman who is married to someone who is in the Ping-Pong mafia, as it were.

“They meet and she’s had a pretty tough life, and I think he breathes life back into her, but it’s kind of transactional for them both.”

Director Safdie said of Paltrow: “She’s a movie star. I say that in the cosmic sense.

“She’s got a gravitational pull that only a camera can depict. I think her absence from acting has lent a vulnerability to her abilities.”

Marty Supreme is set to release January 1, 2026, in the UK.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub were assigned on the Expedition 70 spacewalk to check up on an external radiator on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

Upon inspection, Kononenko spotted a number of small holes on the radiator’s surface, all randomly distributed.

“The holes have very even edges, like they’ve been drilled through,” the flight engineer said.

“There are lots of them. They are spread in a chaotic manner.”

But as the pair worked to isolate the issue, they discovered a droplet of coolant which started to form between the radiator panels.

They soon realised it wasn’t just the holes he had to worry about.

It seems Kononenko had a much bigger problem on his hands, the fact that he had encountered a growing ‘blob’, or ‘droplet’, while trying to soak up any escaping liquid from the generator.

He had intended to mop up the leak with a cloth towel, but it was a lot more liquid than he had first expected.

It turns out that this ‘blob’ was residual coolant, which had been disturbed while Kononenko and Chub were carrying out their work close to the valves – and it attached itself to Kononenko’s safety tether, which keeps him connected to the ISS.

His superiors instructed him to leave the area immediately and return to the ISS after the breach, although the Russian insisted none of the liquid had reached his suit.

Thankfully, the astronauts were well prepared for this kind of incident and had taken tissues and cloths to wipe down their gear and tools so that they wouldn’t bring any contaminated kit back inside of the ISS.

Kononenko instead had to ‘bag’ his tether which had touched the bizarre blob and then left it outside after the spacewalk – which lasted seven hours and 41 minutes – came to an end.

Roscosmos later announced in a Telegram post that the lab’s primary coolant loop was not affected and ‘the crew and the station are not in any danger,’ according to CBS News.

The Expedition 70 crew then safely returned to Earth on 5 April, 2024, after the 191 day mission was complete.

Personally, Kononenko has spent 1,111 days in space, which makes him the astronaut who has spent the most time in orbit.

The pair were forced to stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for nine months, after technical issues to their spacecraft meant that their eight-day mission was extended indefinitely.

Williams and Wilmore were joined in the SpaceX Crew Dragon space capsule by NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as they splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, USA, after a 17-hour journey.

After nine long months, Suni Williams was full of waves and had a huge grin across her face, while Wilmore looked relived to be back home.

They were made to wait almost an hour before being allowed out of the capsule though, as extensive safety checks were carried out on the capsule as it remained in the ocean following its successful splashdown.

The capsule experienced a smooth and successful re-entry, parachute deployment, and splashdown.

It was the first time that the two astronauts would experience a breath of fresh air in over nine months.

Several health and safety measures were taken to ensure that those onboard aren’t shocked by conditions on our planet, as a protective screen was inserted after the capsule’s hatch was opened.

Personalised foot rests were also placed in front of the astronauts to ease them back into the gravity experience, with all four astronauts smiling and waving at the camera when filmed for the first time.

Thousands watched on as NASA streamed the Space-9 Crew’s re-entry to Earth, and the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s subsequent splash down took place off the eastern coast of the US, at 21:58 GMT.

After docking at the ISS in June 2024, the capsule was sent back was sent back to Earth unmanned, there was no set date for the astronauts’ return.

After several delays, a date of 12 March was set for their return mission to launch, in a joint venture between NASA and SpaceX.

The pair have remained adamant throughout their stay on the ISS that they weren’t ‘stranded’, there is a reason behind their delayed return.

NASA’s Associate Administrator Ken Bowersox explained in a teleconference last Friday: “The SpaceX folks helped us with a lot of options for how we would bring Butch and Suni home on Dragon in a contingency.”

He further revealed there were ‘always options’ when it came to adding missions or bringing a capsule back earlier then planned.

Bowersox added: “But we ruled them out pretty quickly just based on how much money we’ve got in our budget, and the importance of keeping crews on the International Space Station,”

What do you watch after a show that good?

The Stephen Graham-fronted Netflix series has debuted to a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has left fans raving.

With an 8.4 on IMDb at the time of writing, Adolescence has topped Netflix’s charts both in the UK and globally.

To follow up a show this beloved, you have to find something similarly acclaimed, and that is what some fans of Adolescence and Netflix themselves have been recommending.

The series – which some say is the perfect next watch after Adolescence – also stars Graham and can be watched on Netflix, and similarly deals with serious socio-political issues in a gripping way.

The show is called The Walk-In and stars Graham as a real-life journalist and activist who infiltrated a far right hate group National Action.

National Action had previously posted online showing support for the murderer of Jo Cox and Matthew Collins, an activist, infiltrated the group.

Collins, himself a former reformed neo-Nazi, joined the group and attempted to derail them from within.

The series is based on real events which, without spoiling the show, rocked the UK with Collins’ revelations.

As well as being one of the recommended series underneath Adolescence on Netflix, Dexerto wrote an article titled ‘If you loved Adolescence, Netflix has another shocking Stephen Graham show you can binge now’ recommending The Walk-In.

Produced for ITV originally, and available to watch on ITV X, the series was hit with rave reviews on release.

The show has a whopping 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, in addition to a score of 7.3 on IMDb.

With a review of The Walk-In that you wouldn’t be shocked to find out was about Adolescence, Vicky Jessop of the London Evening Standard said: “It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t need to be.

“It’s gripping drama, and, I’d argue, necessary viewing. Show it to your friends and family — if only to make them understand how serious this all still is.”

Nick Hilton of The Independent said: “The Walk-In can be hard to watch, thanks to its unflinching portrait of British neo-Nazism, but there’s something deeply compelling about seeing an ordinary man getting sucked into, and pushed away from, these destructive ideologies.”

It is not just a fan with lofty critics however, as the average viewer also seem to be coming away from The Walk-In with nothing but positive things to say.

One 9/10 review of the show on IMDb said: “It goes without saying that if Stephen Graham’s name is listed on a new drama series, then you know it is an excellent bet to watch.

“The Walk-In is just that. A hard-hitting and tough drama to watch. This is yet another top-notch drama series to hit our screens and yet another which more than delivers.”