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George Miller, Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba talk power of story

by www.chron.com Leave a Comment

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CANNES, France (AP) — George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing” spans millennia, but it can often feel longer waiting in between films from the “Mad Max” director.

Seven years after Miller’s “Fury Road” blazed its way across movie screens, the 77-year-old filmmaker is finally back with a movie two decades in the works, and with a lot on its mind about what’s temporary and what’s eternal.

In “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” which opens in theaters Aug. 26, Tilda Swinton plays an academic named Alithea, a “narratologist” specializing in stories about stories, who encounters a wish-granting djinn (Idris Elba) who emerges from an old glass bottle bought in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. When no wish comes to her mind, he tells her 3,000 years worth of stories that hurtle the film through time and that ultimately bring Alithea and the djinn closer. If “Fury Road” beat a ferocious, straightforward narrative line, “Three Thousand Years,” adapted from an A.S. Byatt short story, ruminatively skips through time. It’s an intimate chamber piece sculpted in epic proportions.

“Big cinema,” Swinton called it as she, Elba and Miller assembled earlier this year in a hotel room in Cannes, France, shortly before “The Thousand Years of Longing” made its red-carpet premiere and while Miller’s “Fury Road” follow-up, “Furiosa,” was ramping up production back in Australia.

In the discussion that followed, the trio were clearly enthralled to be together again after shooting the film through the pandemic, and still animated by the movie’s ideas and its widescreen ambitions. “The faith to throw oneself over the highest bar,” Swinton said of Miller’s long-gesticulating endeavor. “Who better to jump that bar?”

Remarks have been edited for length and clarity.

AP: The film opens with wonder and enchantment as something like endangered species in a modern digital world. Is that a feeling you three connect with?

SWINTON: I’m really happy to hear you use the word “enchantment.” It is about enchantment. It’s about faith. It’s about the willingness to take a leap and essentially be open to change. It’s not that it’s necessarily threatened but it can get obscured. Reality is overrated.

ELBA: As an actor, you sometimes live in this weird space of reality. It’s a bit like the djinn. People see me and they go, “Oh my God. Can you give me something?” It’s a picture or a signature or whatever. I find myself wondering what am I, really? Who am I? But I realize my role in my life or in society as a storyteller and someone who makes people believe something is incredibly important. To get to sit in a room with the master, himself (gestures toward Miller), and to be able to tell a story about storytelling is incredible. Enchantment is an incredible word. I don’t think it will ever get lost.

MILLER: What’s really interesting to me, despite all these technological advances, is that we remain definitely hardwired for story. You could argue there are more stories being told today than ever before. I was really struck by the fact that Napoleon had read every single book that existed at his time. Now it’s impossible to read every book, see every TV show, every movie. I don’t think stories are replaced. I think they just continuously evolve. There was a British census where people were asked what their religion was and a very high percentage put in Jedi. It’s replacing one form of mythology for the other. I think the more bewildering the world becomes, the more we tend to fall into story. Sometimes those stories can be toxic.

SWINTON: We’ve now had a very sharp reminder that it’s possible for an entire nation, an entire culture to be told a story and believe it, to the exclusion of any other story. Maybe what we’re talking about is a kind of porousness of stories, so it’s possible to be open to many stories. Maybe that’s the mentally healthy and spiritually healthy thing to propose.

AP: You’re refencing Russia’s war in Ukraine but when you began “Three Thousand Years” were your thoughts on moments that storytelling shaped your own lives?

ELBA: My father started off his stories “I’ll tell you something for nothing.” This is my late dad.

SWINTON: Do you tell those stories to your son?

ELBA: If we’re driving to school and I try to avoid the phone. The only way to keep him looking interested with me is by telling a story. I’ll be like: “Well, today, I’m working in this plane. And you wouldn’t believe it. This plane, they took the wings off.” And I’m in. In that magic moment of him listening, questioning is the rich stuff.

AP: George, as a myth-maker who can conjure worlds, you’re not so unlike the djinn. Why were you drawn toward a movie that digs into the nature of storytelling?

MILLER: One of my favorite quotes about story is the Swahili storyteller who end their story by saying: “The story has been told. If it was bad, it was my fault because I’m the storyteller. If it was good, then it belongs to everybody.” There’s absolutely no question that stories, once told, get traction or not and they mean something to people in one way or the other. So you can’t think about them lightly. I’ve known people who can beguile you with their stories. I know that I struggle with that. I can’t get up and spontaneously tell a story well. But I can do it in the ultra-slow motion of telling a movie where I think about every nuance, every rhythm of it, and it’s finally there. After all, it’s just 100 minutes.

AP: Tilda and Idris, does making a movie like this prompt you to reflect on what compels you as actors to tell stories?

SWINTON: I’ve never made anything quite like this. Even though in a funny way the film is about one of my favorite things — inarticulacy — or rather the effort that we go to communicate with one another. Knowing that it’s almost impossible to understand each other, we still try, and that really touches me. It’s certainly one of the things that keeps me making films. It always feels very difficult to get something out of your head and convey it to someone else. But the fact that one makes the gesture is very moving. This film is about that but it’s very articulately made. To actually shoot with George and to understand how he constructs the architecture of the film even if the film is about something quite amorphous and quite tender, that’s a masterclass. Keeping that center soft was something we talked a lot about.

ELBA: I’m a bit like George. I’d be fascinated with my dad telling stories but I was never good at that. I remember when I went to a boy’s school. I was one of the funny boys. In the drama class, those kids couldn’t do it. They couldn’t make believe. I never forget the teacher’s phrase “make believe” and how it resonated with me. Suddenly, I could tell you the best story in the world because I was making you believe I could. I was really aware of the irony of working with George and Tilda and I’m playing a guy who has to tell stories honestly to get his freedom. I was Idris acting his socks off playing a man who was not allowed to act his socks off but had to tell these honest, engaging stories.

AP: George, you first encountered the short story this is based on in the late 1990s. Why do you think that this film stuck with you for so long?

MILLER: There’s lots of stories that I had. It’s a bit Darwinian. Some of them insist on themselves. I felt it was a very potent story. It’s like a metal detector or a Geiger counter, when something really activates it. You go: “Oh, there’s a rich seam in here somewhere.” You don’t know where it will go. You can sort of vaguely sense where it will go when you read the richness of scene. Time will tell. You hope the story belongs to everybody.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

“The Undeclared War” star Simon Pegg and creator talk predicting the future

by www.newsweek.com Leave a Comment

The Simpsons is not the only show that is able to predict the future to a scarily accurate degree, as The Undeclared War has been able to do exactly that.

Peacock’s new drama is set in 2024 and follows Saara Parvin (Hannah Khalique-Brown), a university student who joins Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) for an apprenticeship as an analyst with Danny Patrick (Simon Pegg).

There, Saara is quickly drawn into an intense conflict between the U.K. and Russia when the latter hacks the other country’s electoral system that GCHQ need to retaliate to, leading to a series of cyber attacks that are at risk of creating a full-scale war.

Pegg and show creator Peter Kosminsky spoke to Newsweek about the way in which the show was able to foresee events, and how “terrifying” it was to dive into the dark realities of cyber warfare.

‘The Undeclared War’ Star Simon Pegg and Creator Talk Predicting the Future

Although set in the near future, the show makes several accurate predictions including Prime Minister Boris Johnson being ousted from the Conservative Party, in fact the show premiered in the U.K. the very week Johnson resigned.

Kosminsky explained to Newsweek that he began working on The Undeclared War five years ago, and he wanted to center the story around a general election prompted by Johnson’s exit from the Conservative Party.

“I wanted to start the show around the time of the next general election in the U.K., because, obviously, the Russians had been fiddling with American elections and there was even some suggestion that they had had some kind of involvement in our Brexit referendum,” the show’s creator said.

“So, I thought it’d be interesting to center the drama around an election campaign leading up to Election Day 2024, and that meant that I needed to think about what the political landscape might be like.

“I knew the Tories would still be in government, unless something catastrophic had happened to them. So the question really was will Boris Johnson still be prime minister?

“And just on balance, given the kind of guy he was, the fact that he’s known to be a little bit economical with the truth, shall we say, I just took a punt and thought, actually, I think it’s likely that he might have been ousted, and actually ousted from the right of his party, just given the way the world’s going and the rise of populism and so forth internationally.

“What I wasn’t expecting was that in the very week we launched the show he would resign, that level of synchronicity took me by surprise.”

Pegg said of the prediction: “Peter’s such a smart creative, and very intelligent in terms of his own political acumen and understanding how society moves and stuff, I think he was creating a kind of ‘what if?’ with this story, but it feels so realistic.

“I mean, it couldn’t have been gone better. Thank you Boris for getting kicked out when you did.”

The Mission Impossible star added: “The big thing that happened after we finished shooting was the invasion of Ukraine , which Peter was able to fold into the story in post-production, which I think he felt was a necessary thing to do, you know, and I think it only served to make the show feel more authentic.

“It’s a story, I think, that really needs to be told, and I definitely feel like when I read it that I learned things about cyber warfare, and about the state of play in terms of cyber warfare, that I thought I should already know, I should be aware of this, everybody should be aware of this. So, yeah, it feels very timely.”

On Russia and Cyber Warfare

The Undeclared War explores Russia’s cyber warfare tactics, including the use of Twitter bots to skew public debates, and Deepfake being used to mimic an important figure to fake support for the Russian government.

Given Russia’s current war on Ukraine , the subject matter of the show feels apt and Kosminsky told Newsweek a lot of his ideas stemmed from what was really happening prior to Russia’s invasion.

“A lot of the research that we did in terms of what Russia’s malware arsenal might look like came from some of the literally thousands of cyber attacks they had been launching on Ukraine over many years, actually almost since the development of cyber as a domain of conflict,” Kosminsky said.

The creator did add, though, that he never would have predicted Russia would invade Ukraine as it has done so.

Pegg felt it was “manifest destiny” for him to appear on The Undeclared War because he grew up in “the shadow” of the real GCHQ, and had two uncles who worked there, one of whom watched the show and found it an accurate depiction of his time at the government organization.

“It was kind of simultaneously fascinating and terrifying to fully understand this new theater of war which exists in everyone’s living room,” Pegg said of being in the show. “The idea of cyber warfare, the idea that every major cyber player on the planet has exploits already planted in each other’s cyber infrastructure.

“The fact that it’s an incredibly difficult and dangerous war to navigate when it happens, because you can’t always be sure who your adversary is because, you know, one adversary will make themselves look like another adversary so that you might retaliate against the wrong adversary [and] that starts another cyber war.

“Escalation is quick and it’s brutal, and it’s all hanging by a thread, and I feel like we’re even more totally, blissfully unaware of it.”

Pegg added: “It was daunting and, at the same time, I felt extremely privileged to be part of it, because I think it reminded me of a show that was on when I was a kid called Threads , which was far less melodramatic and less bleak but I think this has more in it which we can learn from.

“Just modify our behavior slightly, become slightly more aware online, slightly more careful about how we conduct ourselves online, what news sources we listen to, the people we meet online, just have a healthy caution about who they are and if they’re even real.”

Why ‘The Undeclared War’ Is Essential Viewing

Reflecting on the show’s depiction of Deepfake technology being used as a weapon, Kosminsky said: “There’s no doubt that a world where you could have what looks like President Biden and make him say something that’s really quite dangerous, and with the world in a fragile, tinderbox state as it is at the moment, is dangerous.

“But, that’s not really where my main concern lay, most of the focus was on the Russian information campaign because they group cyber attacks under the wider Head of Information Operations.

“[The attacks] appeared to be aimed at destabilizing our institutions by attacking our concept of democracy, undermining people’s sense of trust in their institutions and in their elected politicians.

“And most of all, and we saw this most profoundly during the Trump administration, undermining the concept of truth in itself, what truth is.

“Well, the Russian Cyber Campaign Information Operations seems primarily designed to try to undermine the public’s trust in the whole concept of truth. What is true? What is fake truth? And that worries me hugely.

“If people no longer trust the concept of truth, no longer trust their democracy, no longer trust their politicians and their institutions, what will [be the] price for civilization? So that felt, to me, like a really powerful reason to try to point a spotlight at this particular campaign that’s going on under the radar.”

The Undeclared War is released in full on Peacock on Thursday, August 18.

Update 08/18/22: The article was updated to include official stills from the show, and a behind-the-scenes clip of the making of the series.

Listening to St. John’s Wort

by www.theatlantic.com Leave a Comment

SINCE the American debut of Prozac, in 1988, if we listen to Peter Kramer, the author of the best-selling Listening to Prozac, we have experienced a change in our understanding of what happens when we treat psychiatric illness. One aspect of that change is the notion that psychical benefit need not have much of a downside. Even the reversible side effects (drowsiness, constipation) of older drugs could put off ambulatory depressives seeking relief. But Prozac is a kinder, gentler antidepressant than those that came before it. Furthermore, Prozac works. And its effects go beyond the relief of depression. The Kramerian psychiatrist tells his patients that the drug will relieve their symptoms but adds, “I must warn you, you may feel more contented.” Prozac appears to have had an effect on the zeitgeist, too: “We will come to discover,” Kramer says, “that modern psychopharmacology has become, like Freud in his day, a whole climate of opinion under which we conduct our different lives.” The thinly veiled indictment in his conclusion is that psychopharmacology, the study of drugs that influence mind and mood, is less than science, more like predicting the weather. In post-Prozac 1998 one wonders how the psychopharmacological climate will change with the advent of the latest, rather unlikely antidepressant: Hypericum perforatum, an herb known as St. John’s wort (“wort” is Old English for “plant”).

According to Jonathan Zuess’s (1997), there is nothing particularly new about H. perforatum. Solomon’s Song of Songs refers to it as the Rose of Sharon, and the physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) recorded its use for nervousness, skin wounds, and abdominal pain after listening to “old wives, gipsies, sorcerers … and such outlaws” while wandering Europe and the Middle East in search of unconventional treatments. H. perforatum has a yellow five-petaled flower with numerous stamens which typically blooms on or about June 24, Saint John’s birthday; legend has it that the plan first grew from the blood that fell at Saint John’s beheading. It grows abundantly near the Klamath River, in California, and is thus sometimes called Klamath weed. Like a weed, it is common in sunny areas and dry soils throughout the world. Goats eat it; cattle demur. Zuess reports that “medical researchers have been astonished to discover that even though St. John’s wort works as well as antidepressant drugs like Prozac and Tofranil [an older antidepressant, also known as imipramine], it has only a fraction of the number of side effects that they do.”

flower buds exude a burgundy-colored oil when soaked in alcohol, vaguely reminiscent, one supposes, of Saint John’s blood. This tincture contains high concentrations of its putatively active chemical, hypericin. Dried extracts from harvested buds, blooms, leaves, and stems contain variable percentages of hypericin. The British Medical Journal ( BMJ ) recently published an overview of clinical trials involving 1,757 patients. In those trials daily doses of extract given for “mild or moderately severe” depression have run 350-900 milligrams; total hypericin dose has varied from 0.4 to 2.7 mg a day. There is no specific recommendation as to how best to take it; Zuess suggests that it be taken at least twice a day, and says that it may be preferable to take it with meals, to minimize stomach upset, though that is unlikely to occur. The duration of treatment in trials has generally been at least four weeks, so relief of symptoms is possible but not anticipated in less time.

H preparations are marketed in the United States as dietary supplements. They cannot legally be labeled as effective against any specific disease, despite the 1994 passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which sought to liberalize the dissemination of information about natural products. Federal regulations have been slow to respond to the therapeutic claims made for St. John’s wort. To date, clinical and research experience come largely from Germany, where the herb is approved for the treatment of depression and anxiety. In 1994, according to a BMJ editorial, German physicians prescribed 66 million daily doses of Hypericum preparations for psychological complaints. American physicians have traditionally been less accepting of herbal treatments than German physicians, but the American public appears to have its own opinion: the medicinal use of botanicals is increasing in the United States. The U.S. market in 1995 was approximately one third the size of Europe’s, but some estimate that it is growing by 15 percent a year. DSHEA included an estimate that some 600 dietary-supplement manufacturers in the United States produce some 4,000 products with annual sales of $4 billion.

Animals have experienced skin reactions to light (even fatal sunburns) after ingesting large quantities of St. John’s wort. Side effects in human beings are, reportedly, infrequent (stomach upset in 0.6 percent, allergic reactions in 0.5 percent, fatigue in 0.4 percent), and serious adverse events (such as reactions to sunlight or marked changes in blood pressure) extremely rare, but these data were collected in “open” rather than “blinded” (neither doctor nor patient knowing what treatment is being used) and controlled fashion. Peter de Smet, a Dutch clinical pharmacologist and “herbal pharmaco-epidemiologist,” and a co-author of the BMJ editorial, has warned, however, that one serious adverse reaction in 10,000 users may be considered unacceptable in “official medicine” if there is no clear therapeutic need for the drug in question.

St. John’s wort holds promise of therapeutic merit, but in April of last year the influential newsletter Biological Therapies in Psychiatry recommended against its use in the absence of large clinical trials. Among the twenty-three studies in the BMJ overview, patients with mild or moderately severe depressive disorders fared significantly better with St. John’s wort than with placebos in fifteen studies, with a response rate of 55 percent (as against 22 percent). In eight studies comparing St. John’s wort with standard antidepressants, including imipramine at conservative doses, efficacy was slightly higher (64 percent, as against 58 percent). The dropout rate — a reflection of drug toxicity that may limit treatment — was lower among those using St. John’s wort than among those using standard antidepressants, and lower even than among those who received placebos, suggesting that the paucity of side effects may be H. perforatum’s greatest attraction. (Its overall frequency of any side effects was 20 percent, as compared with 53 percent for standard antidepressants in blinded studies.)

The newsletter Biological Therapies in Psychiatry seems harsh in its judgment on the herb, given the preliminary evidence suggesting its efficacy. “There is a lack of sufficient data on safety (particularly long-term), efficacy, potential interactions, and product purity of products sold as nutritional supplements rather than as drugs, such as St. John’s wort,” the newsletter said. The problem of impurity is especially germane to herbal combinations. A 1981 British report attributed liver damage to a mistletoe preparation that included skullcap ( Scutellaria lateriflora ). By the late 1980s, after additional experience with Scutellaria species had surfaced, the skullcap (famous as an eighteenth-century treatment for canine rabies), rather than the mistletoe, was deemed to have been the likely culprit. Even herbal “monopreparations” are not exactly pure: in H. perforatum extracts some ten chemicals may play a role in the therapeutic effect, though hypericin is thought to be principally responsible. But how St. John’s wort works chemically to mitigate depression is unclear, a point that Michael Jenike, of the Harvard Medical School, makes in a generally favorable preface to a section dedicated to the herb in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology.

No well-informed clinician would disparage medicinal plants in general (a short list of well-established pharmaceuticals that derive from plants would include digitalis, morphine, reserpine, pilocarpine, and curare), but there is skepticism in the United States about the comparatively liberal use of them in Europe. Though the observation smacks of scientific xenophobia, the German experience with St. John’s wort is not the English-speaking experience, and until recently the English-speaking world had no experience. The authors of the BMJ review observed that had they restricted their search for published studies to those in English, not a single clinical trial of St. John’s wort would have been found as of 1994. The journals in which one might find clinical research on herbal remedies (for example, Phytomedicine, which in 1995 published what was probably the first English-language review of St. John’s wort as an antidepressant) are rare in medical-school libraries.

Jonathan Zuess describes St. John’s wort as the “most-used antidepressant in the history of humanity” and “truly a healer of both the body and the mind.” But one ought to proceed with caution. The characterization of it as “the natural Prozac” is not, alas, supported by any published clinical research comparing the two substances, although the National Institute of Mental Health (including the Offices of Alternative Medicine and Dietary Supplements) is currently embarking on a comparison of St. John’s wort and the Prozac-like drug Zoloft.

LIKE Prozac, St. John’s wort promises much, and perhaps also like Prozac, it has effects that go beyond countering depression. Those familiar with the range of Prozac’s influence (on, as Kramer has posited, “affect tolerance, autonomy and coercion, cultural expectations, evolutionary fitness, transcendence”) may be unsurprised to find a similar breadth of powers attributed to St. John’s wort. The hope, of course, is that someday we will find an antidepressant of great power with little or no downside — but then the question will be, What are we treating? “Mild to moderately severe depression” — the proper province of Prozac and, the available data suggest, of St. John’s wort — has come to mean many things. Assuming that I make a decision to take an antidepressant, am I clear about what it is specifically that I am trying to assuage in my life?

Since the vast majority of studies quoted in the recent literature on H. perforatum measure its effects according to changes in symptoms that appear on a standard clinical rating scale for depression, I applied the scale to myself, a busy clinician and researcher. I answered affirmatively to thirteen of its seventeen items, each of which is to be graded in terms of severity. Of those thirteen, two relate to problems with sleep, two to guilt and mood, three to anxiety, four to weight loss and bodily symptoms (especially muscle aches), and one to feelings of fatigue or incapacity in work and hobbies. If I explain that many of my symptoms stem from being an anxious, guilty insomniac with neck pain, I have to rate myself higher on the last remaining item, which questions my insight into my problem. Attributing depressive symptoms to the climate, a virus, or overwork is not the same as, and perhaps more pathological than, admitting that I am depressed, according to this scale. My total score is 16, out of a maximum of 52; the mean rating for patients enrolled in sixteen recent H. perforatum studies was comparable, at 20. But the point is that “depression” as measured by this yardstick is no motivation to seek out my psychopharmacological options. I would feel much the same need, perhaps even more acutely, if I scored a mere 3 owing to one symptom alone: “a decrease in productivity.”

I do not know quite how I will fare with St. John’s wort. With little risk, what harm in experimentation? I can explore what effect the drug has, which is the next best thing to understanding what it is that makes me take it.

Kate Greville lied to Ryan Giggs about having cancerous cells, court hears

by www.telegraph.co.uk Leave a Comment

R yan Giggs’s ex-girlfriend has revealed that she lied to the former footballer about having cancerous cells detected in a smear test so that she “would not have to have sex with him”.

In late October 2020, just days before an alleged headbutt at the centre of the trial, Kate Greville, 36, told a friend she was going to end her contraception in secret.

When Mr Giggs became suspicious that something was afoot, the PR executive told him: “I had a smear test…And I had cancerous cells, I have to go to hospital on Thursday.”

The ex-footballer responded in shock, and asked her what exactly the test had shown, to which she responded “high-grade dyskaryosis”.

Chris Daw QC, for the defence, said that the pair continued to have “regular and enthusiastic sex” aftwerwards, and referring to the contraceptive coil that Ms Greville was getting removed without letting her then boyfriend know, “Your plan was to get pregnant by Mr Giggs, wasn’t it?

“No, absolutely not,” Ms Greville responded.

Mr Daw QC pointed out that Ms Greville would have received a “significant amount of financial support for a very long time if she had fallen pregnant”.

“If that’s what happens,” she answered.

The court also heard how Ms Greville decided to lock down with the Manchester United great “for his large house and garden”, despite claiming he was a serial and violent abuser.

Asked why she decided to move in with Mr Giggs having not lived together before, instead of staying at her flat, Ms Greville said: “We were back in that cycle. He promised a family…I desperately wanted that and I wanted that to be true.”

Mr Daw QC suggested: “It wasn’t that he had a large house with a garden and a more pleasant place to be locked down than a flat?”

“Both my parents had large houses and large gardens, I could’ve gone there,” Ms Greville responded.

To which Mr Daw QC said: “Yes, you could. Instead of having lockdown with someone who you claim is a serial abuser.”

The court was shown a video of the then couple working out together in the garden as well as a video of the pair rapping to 50 Cent’s In Da Club, both wearing sunglasses, and with Mr Giggs’ hood up as he filmed.

The jury heard how during lockdown they would have online quizzes with members of each other’s family, they would do wine tasting on Zoom, Michelin-star chefs would bring them food and they would go on regular bike rides.

It also emerged that Ms Greville staged a photograph of her walking her dog in a lane two weeks after an alleged headbutt on November 1, 2020.

The defence say the alleged headbutt was an accidental clash of faces during a tussle for a phone which resulted in “minor” contact.

In messages between Ms Greville and her friend, they discussed getting £5,000 for the picture to help with her legal costs and redecorating their flat.

She had sent the same friend a message saying she needed a “plan” to leave Mr Giggs and that she wasn’t prepared to “walk away with nothing”.

The defence also argued that Ms Greville “had a tiny, minor contact with Mr Giggs’ face, and you have enhanced that with makeup to make it look worse than it was, haven’t you?”.

The defence accused Ms Greville of exaggerating her story and Mr Daw QC said: “Throughout the evidence from start to finish you’ve twisted the truth very, very carefully to try to implicate him in crimes he did not commit.”

An email from Ms Greville to Mr Giggs in August 2020 was read out to the court, in which she said: “You’re a liar, you’re a cheat, you’re a narcissist, you’re a manipulator, you’re controlling, you’re aggressive, you’re violent, you’re a disappointment, no[sic] f— off out of my life.”

The ex-Wales manager is on trial at Manchester Crown Court accused of assaulting Ms Greville and subjecting her to controlling and coercive behaviour from August 2017 to November 2020.

He denies the allegations. The trial continues.

End of proceedings

T hat concludes day four.

Thank you very much for reading, and we’ll be back tomorrow.

Ms Greville had filler injected into lip in month leading up to ‘headbutt’

I n the month leading up to the alleged headbutt, it emerged in court that Ms Greville had a medical procedure whereby filler was injected into her lips.

The jury were shown messages between Mr Giggs and Ms Greville relating to the treatment.

KG: ‘Lips done baby. Took her nearly two hours.’

RG: ‘You ok?’

KG: ‘Yes, but watching TV. Lips are f—ing killing.’

Mr Daw QC asked if Ms Greville had any other procedures that month, to which she said she could not recall.

He added: “Were your lips on November 1 more sensitive?”

Ms Greville answered: “I’ve not been headbutted in the face before when I’d not had filler, so I don’t know.”

The chain of emails between Mr Giggs and Ms Greville

T he court also heard an email exchange between Mr Giggs and Ms Greville from August 14, after she had been through his phone and discovered his infidelity.

The chain is as follows:

Ryan Giggs (RG): ‘Kate, you didn’t catch me in bed with anyone. I sent a few drunken texts. Chill babe.’

RG: ‘Best night I’ve had in this pub.’

RG: ‘Wish I had cheated now.’

Kate Greville (KG): ‘Eeewww you are vile. Go to hell you absolute skank.’

KG: ‘You’re a liar, you’re a cheat, you’re a narcissist, you’re a manipulator, you’re controlling, you’re aggressive, you’re violent, you’re a disappointment, no[sic] f— off out of my life.’

RG: ‘Now, not no, love. You’re that angry you can’t write. Chills’

KG: ‘You’ve actually just tried to trivialise what you did??’

KG: ‘Been speaking to Nicky have you?’

KG: ‘Or your other cheating friends.’

KG: ‘Arrrrhhh you poor things all agreeing that it’s not that bad what you did.’

KG: ‘You don’t give a fuck about my feelings. That last message proved it once and for all.’

RG: ‘Give the therapist a call kate.’

RG: ‘Nah, I don’t run off crying to my friends like you do.’

RG: ‘You’re right, I don’t give a f— about your feelings but your hatred today is on another level. That bad it’s funny’

Aug 16

RG: ‘I miss you so much’

Ms Greville accused of enhancing injury with makeup

M r Daw QC asked the claimant: “Did you enhance the appearance that injury of that injury or anything else?”

She said no.

He pressed: “You were on video just three days later, you did the video interview. Can we see the injury looking anything like that on video?”

“Bruising changes,” explained Ms Greville.

Mr Daw QC added: “You had a tiny, minor contact with Mr Giggs face, and you have enhanced that with makeup to make it look worse than it was, haven’t you?”

‘Good’ Ms Greville ‘looked like a man’ in photograph as it made it look ‘less staged’

M r Daw QC said: “You did set this article up, didn’t you?”

“I did, yes,” said Ms Greville (KG).

Talking again with friend Courtney (C) about “getting £5,000” for a picture, more messages were read out in court:

C: “Let’s f—ing do it”

KG: “So we can spend it on the flat”

C: “A sofa like Molly Mae’s would be 10k”

KG: “Need to sell some more stories”

The pair then discussed the article, as it appeared online.

Ms Greville told her friend: “I actually do look like a man,’ but added it wasn’t a bad thing because it would ‘look less staged”.

She told her friend: “I think it’s good I look super s— to be honest. No way people think they are staged.”

Ms Greville also talked to her sister Emma about the article.

Emma: “How do you feel about the article?”

KG “I look soooo s— [laughing emoji x3]”

KG: “Probs a good thing though”

KG: “Looks less staged”

Ms Greville ‘staged photograph’ for the Sun Online, she tells court

K ate Greville told the court that she staged a photograph of her walking her dog in a lane two weeks after the alleged incident on Nov 1.

It appeared on the Sun Online.

In messages between Ms Greville (KG) and her friend Courtney (C), they discussed getting £5,000 for a picture to help with her legal costs and redecorating their flat.

C: ‘I’m selling a pic of you and getting some paper’

KG: ‘We can set up a pic and get money for both of us, what do you think?’

C: ‘I think yes’

KG: ‘I reckon we could get 5K’

C: ‘I can’t speak at the moment I’m out with Michaela’

C: ‘But yes’

C: ‘We need to’

KG: ‘Okay’

C: ‘And kit our new apartment out’

KG: ‘I’m thinking more, to cover my legal costs [laughing emoji]’

Mr Daw QC said: “You’re laughing about making money about selling a story to newspapers.”

“Yes, but there’s more to it,” Ms Greville replied.

KG: ‘But you kit out the apartment’

C: ‘We can half it [laughing emoji x2]’

C: ‘Let’s do it’

Mr Daw QC added: “You are talking here about setting up a newspaper article for money about this case.”

“Not a newspaper article, it was a picture,” Ms Greville said.

‘You have completely made up the idea of a forceful headbutt to the face’

T he defence then suggests that in relation to the headbutt, at this stage Mr Giggs had Ms Greville’s phone and his own phone in his pocket.

He had taken possession of his ex-girlfriend’s handset after picking it up from a windowsill, Mr Giggs’ legal team said.

Mr Daw QC then said to Ms Greville: “You made a grab for his pocket where his phones were.”

“I was trying to get my phone off him, yes ,” Ms Greville agreed.

Mr Daw QC said that it’s Mr Giggs’ account that as they were walking around the island, Ms Greville was attempting to get her phone out of her then-boyfriend’s pocket and he was jamming his hands into his trousers to stop her.

He added: “As you got towards the area of the dining table, tussling for the phone into the pocket. and your heads clashed.”

“That’s not correct,” Ms Greville said.

Asked if she believed it to be a “full headbutt”, she answered: “I can’t tell you it was the full force of Ryan or a lighter version, I don’t know.”

Mr Daw QC added: “It wasn’t a headbutt was it, Ms Greville, it was nothing…It was simply the two of you struggling over a phone and your two faces coming together causing a minor impact.”

She disagreed, saying Mr Giggs “looked her in the eye and headbutted her”.

Mr Daw QC added: “My suggestion to you is that you have completely made up the idea of a forceful headbutt to the face.”

Mr Giggs’ version of events of tussle for phone

T he defence has put forward Mr Giggs’ version of events in relation to the incident in which Ms Greville claims her head was banged against the floor.

Mr Daw QC said: “What I suggest, you had hidden the phone, he was not remotely violent or physically violent at all.”

Ms Greville disagreed.

It is the defence’s case that the pair tripped over bags in the hallway and ended up on top of each other, and Ms Greville agreed there were bags.

Mr Daw QC asked if she started kicking out at Mr Giggs, to which she agreed.

The defence barrister added: “You fall to the floor, you are kicking out at him, there’s no assault no banging your head on the floor, is there, any of that stuff?”

“Disagree,” Ms Greville said.

‘He’s hit me loads of times before’, Ms Greville wrongly told police

M r Daw QC, for the defence, has started addressing the allegations of assault.

Bodycam footage from the police shows a tearful Ms Greville in the kitchen being talked to by police officers.

During which, she told police “he’s hit me loads of times, this is not the first time…I’m not going to let him get away with it any more. He’s hit me so many times.”

She admitted to Mr Daw QC that she was wrong when she said this.

“My head was all over the place, I didn’t know what I was saying, that’s not true,” she told the court.

Mr Daw QC said: “You were just making up random things.”

She answered: “I was tying to explain what had happened, I didn’t know what had just happened to me. I was in shock.

“It was an extremely traumatic time.”

He added: “What you said in that footage was you were obviously kicking Mr Giggs in the face…”

Ms Greville agreed she was kicking.

Mr Giggs called police because he wanted to ‘get rid of’ Ms Greville

M s Greville told the court that her then boyfriend was “very drunk” on the night.

Mr Daw QC said: “Do you think you may have exaggerated his level of intoxication in our evidence?”

He added: “At one point, after you’d taken his phone, I’m going to ask one of the neighbours to call the police to get rid of you.”

Ms Greville agreed.

Ms Greville accused of exaggerating account

T he defence say that Ms Greville exaggerated Mr Giggs’ behaviour upon returning home after an argument at the Manchester hotel.

She said in evidence that she had tried to physically stop Mr Giggs taking things from the car and that he was throwing things at the door.

The court was shown video footage from CCTV at Mr Giggs’ home. It showed Mr Giggs carrying items to the home and other items to the front gate.

Mr Daw QC said: “What Mr Giggs was doing was actually carrying some of your bags towards the gate on the basis that he was expecting you to leave in an Uber.”

He added: “There’s no point on any of the footage that Mr Giggs is seen throwing anything out of the door… at absolutely no point that anything is thrown anywhere outside the house.”

Ms Greville said: “There was – my things were soaking wet, if they were all in bags, they wouldn’t have been soaking wet.”

“He wanted you to leave, he was encouraging you to leave, he was helping you to leave,” Mr Daw QC told the court.

Ms Greville said: “He was trying to humiliate me again because he wouldn’t let me go in the car.”

The court heard how the car was leased to Mr Giggs and that Ms Greville was insured to drive it, so that he wasn’t in a position to give her the car.

The night of the alleged headbutt

O n the night of November 1, the court was told that although Ms Greville and Mr Giggs were dining with friends, they were sat in twos owing to Covid regulations at the time.

‘You’ve twisted the truth very, very carefully to try to implicate him in crimes he did not commit’

O n Oct 28, the then couple exchanged messages with innuendo suggesting they had sex twice in a 24-hour period, the defence say.

Mr Daw QC said: “Is it possible that it was, but you don’t recall. That you were having active regular and very enthusiastic sex throughout this time after you had your coil removed.”

Ms Greville disagreed.

Ms Daw QC asked: “Do you agree that it doesn’t really make sense for you to have a baby with somebody who you believe to be a violent and coercive.”

Ms Greville answered: “It doesn’t make sense at all, that’s not what the plan was.”

Mr Daw QC pointed out that Ms Greville would have received a “significant amount of financial support for a very long time if she had fallen pregnant”.

“If that’s what happens,” she answered.

Mr Daw QC added: “You’d effectively been tied together pretty much forever.”

Ms Greville said: “And I’d have never have done that because that’s not what I wanted.”

Mr Daw QC said: “Throughout the evidence from start to finish you’ve twisted the truth very, very carefully to try to implicate him in crimes he did not commit.”

“I’ve told the truth about the interpretation of how it happened to me,” Ms Greville said.

Sex continued after contraceptive taken out, defence say

M r Daw QC continued: “You’re telling Mr Giggs in those messages that you had cancerous cells on your body and you had to go on hospital on Thursday, and you want to deal with it on your own. In truth you were getting the coil taken out.”

Ms Greville responded: “I was trying to get him off my back, which is awful, and I completely regret saying those things to get him off my back.”

Asked if it was for medical reasons or a choice to get the coil taken out, Ms Greville said: “I knew a time was coming up was…I knew by saying by saying Cancerous cells that I wouldn’t have to have sex with him.”

“But you did have sex with him,” Mr Daw QC said.

“Not that I recall,” was the response from the complainant.

Ms Greville lied about having ‘cancerous cells’ to Mr Giggs

I n a police interview, Ms Greville told officers that she had a feeling Mr Giggs knew something was amiss, and told him she’d had a bad smear test to “get him off my back”.

We then heard messages from the time:

Ryan Giggs (RG): ‘You’ve been in a weird mood the last couple of days’

Kate Greville (KG): ‘Shall I tell you, if you really want to know’

KG: ‘I wasn’t going to say anything because I can’t bring myself to say it’

KG: ‘I haven’t told anyone’

KG: ‘Last time you brushed it off’

KG: ‘I had a smear test…And I had cancerous cells, I have to go to hospitals on Thursday’

RG: ‘OMG.’

Mr Daw QC pointed out that she had lied about having cancerous cells, and that she was in fact going on that Thursday to get her contraceptive taken out without Mr Giggs knowing.

The messages continue:

RG: ‘How did you not tell me?’

KG: ‘And now I have to deal with all this shit’

RG: ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me’

RG: ‘What did the tests say exactly?’

KG: ‘[Type of cancerous cell]’

KG: ‘I don’t want to talk about it again’

KG: ‘Until after Thursday’

KG: ‘This is something I want to deal with on my own’

Ms Greville ‘tried to get pregnant after deciding to leave Mr Giggs’

W e come now to Oct 17.

The jury were told of messages sent from Ms Greville to a friend:

  1. I need a plan
  2. I am not walking away with nothing
  3. Get thinking
  4. I’m having my coil out on Thursday

Mr Daw QC, relating to the contraceptive coil that Ms Greville was getting removed without letting Mr Giggs know, “Your plan was to get pregnant by Mr Giggs, wasn’t it?”

“No, absolutely not,” Ms Greville responded.

Ms Greville ‘left Mr Giggs because of infidelity, not coercion’

T he defence has put it to Ms Greville that the reason she wanted to leave him was because of his infidelity.

Mr Daw QC: “My suggestion is that it was because he was a cheat.”

Ms Greville: “That’s incorrect.”

CD: “Mr Giggs, is, was, very flirtatious with women.”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “He got lots of attention out and about from men and women because he’s well known.”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “Agree it would be relentless, taking pictures, talking to him.”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “And he was, as far as women were concerned, got attention from women, that was very common.”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “And he was a flirt.”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “And it is that, not I would suggest, that caused you to want to leave him.”

KG: “I left that night because I had found this out but it was in combination with everything else that was going on at the time. That made me make that decision that I didn’t want to be with him.”

Ms Greville goes through Mr Giggs’ phone

W e’re back after lunch, Ms Greville was reminded of an occasion that Mr Giggs returned home after having “a lot to drink”.

Ms Greville went through Mr Giggs’ phone after he had passed out having been sick in the sink.

She discovered her then boyfriend had been messaging other women.

Messages sent to Mr Giggs on that night, on Aug 7, 2020, were read out to the jury

  1. Can’t help yourself, can you?
  2. You will never see me ever again
  3. You are disgusting
  4. Haven’t spoken to me all day and you’ve been messaging her, calling her on the phone today
  5. I hope you’re happy with yourself
  6. And meeting up with her tonight, you are a piece of actual work, thank you for wasting my time
  7. I actually hate you, I’m going to find someone… better… you can carry on being a narcissist, I feel sorry for all the women you are going to hurt
  8. I’m so grateful I found out now
  9. F— you Ryan f— you

Break for lunch

T hat’s it for the morning session, we’ll be back at 2.05pm.

Mr Giggs did not ‘sour’ relationships with Ms Greville’s friends, defence say

D uring lockdown, Ms Greville launched her own PR business, which the defence say Mr Giggs helped introduce her to valuable clients.

Ms Greville was taken through a series of photographs of her on holiday with friends, in Portugal and Greece among other places.

Mr Daw QC rejected Ms Greville’s version of events that Mr Giggs was responsible for “souring” her relationships with her friends.

She said: “He would make those relationships very difficult for me to have.”

Mr Daw QC added: “Can I suggest to you that the person who made them difficult was you, it wasn’t Mr Giggs.”

Asked to provide an example of how Mr Giggs controlled her relationships with her friends, Ms Greville said: “He would flirt with Michaela [a friend], a lot, to my face. And then he’d ask me, ‘does it make you jealous doing that?’

“That would create an issue.

“He would block my friends, he would block them, there was an incident I went skiing with Michaela, before that he’d finished with me through Michaela, and then he got really angry and started blocking her which caused issues with me because she didn’t want to be in the middle of it.

“That’s the sort of thing.”

The dishwasher arguments

O ne of the things cited in her police interview in relation to coercion and control was that Ryan Giggs would criticise the way she loaded the dishwasher, and would take crockery out and reload it.

Mr Daw QC suggested that Ms Greville and Mr Giggs were living together for the first time and that “the dishwasher was one of his things”.

Ms Greville said: “My current partner would never… he was making me feel stupid and the way that I was doing it was not good enough… The exact way that he wanted me to do it… And that’s one example.”

But, Mr Daw QC said Mr Giggs would do the same thing with his children, telling them they were loading the plates incorrectly and redoing them.

Ms Greville said: “Yes, but he doesn’t need to make me feel stupid and inadequate at the same time.”

When it was put to Ms Greville that this was an example of a normal disagreement between couples, Ms Greville said: “No, that’s not how it made me feel. I know the difference between an argument and being abusive.”

Michelin star food during lockdown and rapping to 50 Cent

M s Greville agreed with Mr Daw QC comments that lockdown was “another period of utter hell for you, with Mr Giggs behaving terribly and controlling the whole time”.

Mr Daw QC told her: “That’s just not true at all.”

Mr Giggs’ daughter lived in the house with them through parts of lockdown and his son would also spend time there.

The court was shown a video of the then couple working out together in the garden as well as a video of the pair rapping to 50 Cent’s In Da Club, both wearing sunglasses, and with Mr Giggs’ hood up as he filmed.

The court heard how they would have online quizzes with members of each other’s family, they would do wine tasting on Zoom, Michelin-star chefs would bring them food and they would go on regular bike rides.

Mr Daw suggested that Ms Greville “just selected in your evidence, of evidence in lockdown when you had arguments… contextualise this – lockdown was hard for everybody. And it’s particularly hard for people who had never lived together in lockdown as you were”.

Ms Greville agreed.

Ms Greville ‘chose to lock down with Mr Giggs for his large house and garden’

K ate Greville decided to lock down with Ryan Giggs “for his large house and garden”, despite claiming he was a serial and violent abuser, a court was told.

Mr Daw QC told the court that March 2020 was “not a period of time that anyone would quickly forget”.

Here’s how the cross-examination went.

CD: “Where did you decide to spend lockdown?”

KG: “With Ryan.”

CD: “Where?”

KG: “At his house.”

CD: “Why?”

KG: “Because he asked me to.”

CD: “Why not your flat? You hadn’t lived together before, had you?”

KG: “We were back in that cycle. He promised a family…I desperately wanted that and I wanted that to be true and the reality of what he promised.”

CD: “It wasn’t that he had a large house with a garden and a more pleasant place to be locked down than a flat?”

KG: “Both my parents had large houses and large gardens, I could’ve gone there.”

CD: “Yes, you could. Instead of having lockdown with someone who you claim is a serial abuser.”

At this point the judge interjected.

CD: “Could you have gone to parents or somewhere else? ”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “You wanted to spend it with Ryan in his rather larger house.”

KG: “I wanted to stay with Ryan not because of his house, but because we’d started a relationship.”

CD: “You wouldn’t have done that if he was a serial and violent abuser, would you?”

KG: “As I said it was a cycle of abuse that he promised the world. He was very convincing, he could be very charming. I went back again stupidly and I am ashamed of that, hugely ashamed of that, but I did.”

Mr Giggs’ version of events from London hotel incident

E ventually, Mr Giggs again left alone and went back to the hotel room alone, the court was told.

We come onto what happened that evening, according to Mr Giggs’ team:

Chris Daw QC (CD): “You were with other people, all work-related to Ryan.”

Kate Greville (KG): “Yes.”

CD: “And then he then went to hotel room, on his own. You went back to the hotel.”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “You took your clothes off and tried to get into bed.”

KG: “Yes.”

CD: “Ryan said he didn’t want to be in bed with you on this particular time because of the argument and what had happened earlier.”

KG: “No.”

CD: “He asked if you would sleep on the sofa.”

KG: “I got into bed. He was silent, he didn’t speak to me.”

CD: “I’m going to suggest to you, he got out of bed, picked up your case. He absolutely didn’t throw it at you.”

KG: “He threw my bag at me with my laptop.”

CD: “You spent some time time sleeping on the sofa, and eventually got back into bed.”

KG: “After he came to get me, yes.”

CD: “The following morning you had sex.”

KG: “No, we had sex that night.”

CD: “When woke up the next morning, you were off to Shrewsbury, ‘You said to him, I was so drunk last night, I don’t remember much about the night’.”

KG: “I said that when we were at breakfast, and I put my head to my hand and…said to him, ‘Did you throw my bag at my head?’. And he said to me, ‘Yes, but you wound me up that much you made me do it’.”

CD: “That’s all a lie, isn’t it. You were just telling him in the context of a hangover.”

Crazy golf, Winter Wonderland and flirting

A fter a short break, Mr Daw QC continued with evidence from the night in London where Ms Greville claims Mr Giggs threw a bag containing a laptop at her head and kicked her out of bed.

Referring to a photograph sent from Ms Greville to Mr Giggs the following day, Mr Daw QC asked: “Is there any evidence of the head injury of a bag containing a laptop being thrown at you?”

Ms Greville said: “Firstly, it’s got a filter on, that image, so it’s not true to what I would look like.”

Mr Daw QC said: “So the answer is no, is it? We see no sign of a head injury?”

“No,” Ms Greville said.

The court heard how the event in London was a Christmas part for Ryan Giggs’ agent, and that it was a work-related event rather than a personal event and that Ms Greville was the only partner invited.

On the day, there was a crazy golf competition, and when it was being arranged, Mr Giggs was paired with a “rather attractive young woman”, the court heard.

This made Ms Greville unhappy, she told the jury.

Mr Giggs arranged to have him and Ms Greville paired together instead, but the Ms Greville claims he flirted with her later that day.

The group then went to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park where a table was booked for beer and food, and Ms Greville confronted Mr Giggs over the alleged flirting which prompted him to leave and head to a club they were scheduled to attend later, the defence said.

Mr Daw QC told the court: “Then you would wind him up by flirting with a man in the club. You held hands with him.”

Ms Greville disagreed.

Trial adjourned

W e’re not in session at the moment as the court clears for a short break.

The morning after the London hotel incident

T he day after the alleged incident in the hotel room, Ms Greville was heading to a wedding in Shrewsbury, whilst Mr Giggs was staying on in London for TV work involving football.

Both were hungover, Ms Greville told the court, which was the context of the messages. And Mr Daw QC noted that there was no mention of any incident the night before in any message.

They read as follows:

RG: ‘Message when you get to the station’

KG: ‘Sorry xx’

KG: ‘On the train. Dying’

RG: ‘You ok?’

RG: ‘Is it busy?’

RG: ‘I’m ropey’

KG: ‘Not that busy, it’s a really old train though’

[KG sends picture of train carriage]

KG: ‘On the train from Crewe now xx’

KG: ‘I’ve felt better’

KG: ‘Round 3, pray for me [photograph of Ms Greville in the mirror from the hotel room]’

KG: ‘Hope you’re feeling better’

[One hour and 20 minutes pass]

RG: ‘Sorry’

RG: ‘How is it?’

KG: ‘It’s good but I’m going to do a backdoor exit’

RG: ‘Drunk?’

RG: ‘Dancing?’

KG: ‘I can’t drink. I’ve had the same glass of red wine for four hours’

RG: ‘Boring’

Mr Giggs left London after 9pm and got back to Manchester after midnight. He then offered to drive to collect Ms Greville from Shrewsbury for a work event the following day, which she thanked him for saying it was “lovely”.

Mr Daw QC said the pair were discussing their hangovers.

“There is nothing else to suggest he’s violently assaulted you the night before,” the defence lawyer said.

Ms Greville responded: “He’s made it feel like it was my fault, what had happened.”

The day of the London hotel incident

M r Daw QC is taking the jury back to Ms Greville’s police interview, during which she said Mr Giggs dragged her out of her bed naked, kicked her in the back and threw a bag containing a laptop at her head.

The defence say her account was to make it “sound as bad as possible”.

On that day, both travelled to London separately.

Here are the messages from that day.

Ryan Giggs (RG): ‘What’s happening x’

Kate Greville (KG): ‘Yo yo yo’

KG: ‘Just got on the train’

KG: ‘Are you in Landan?’

RG: ‘Nice one’

RG: ‘Yes!!’

RG: ‘In a black cab’

KG: ‘Amazeballs’

RG: ‘Yes!!’

KG: ‘You going to wait for me or shall I meet you at the first place?’

RG: ‘I can wait if you like’

KG: ‘I like’

RG: ‘No funny business though’

KG: ‘I’ll get the Undergound. It will only take five minutes from Euston’

KG: ‘No probs, don’t want any anyway’

The jury were told that this was a “good-humoured conversation about sex”.

Ryan Giggs ‘conditioned’ ex into expletive messages if the former footballer didn’t reply to her ‘instantly’, she tells court

W e then come onto messaging between Mr Giggs and Ms Greville, and Mr Daw QC told the court that “you both expected really rapid responses”.

Ms Greville told the court: “He had conditioned me into behaving like that. Because he was like that, I would be like ‘you expect me to reply within seconds, why don’t you reply within seconds’.

“I would do it back to him because I wouldn’t believe he would be having a go at me.”

Mr Daw QC said: “That’s your evidence, that it’s a form of programming that he’d done. The truth of it is, you were both utterly addicted to messaging, all the time, backwards and forwards.”

“We messaged a lot, yes,” she said.

The jury was told about a string of messages sent from Kate Greville whilst Mr Giggs was on the school run with his children.

They included:

  1. Good morning baby
  2. I feel fine I was in home and in bed at 1145
  3. F—ing idiot are you okay
  4. Thanks
  5. Stuart Davies has just phoned me
  6. Gary has messaged me
  7. And my own f—ing boyfriend can’t reply to a message
  8. Call me

Thirty seconds after the expletive-ridden “own boyfriend” message, Mr Giggs messaged Ms Greville saying: “Wtf, I’ve just sorted the kids.”

To which Ms Greville responds: “So that’s stopped you replying to at least say you’re okay for an hour?”

Mr Daw QC told the court: “So he’s conditioned you into those messages?”

Ms Greville said: “Ryan was attached to his phone. For him to not look at his phone for an hour – that was not normal at all.”

“You’re both as bad as each other,” Mr Daw QC told her.

“I felt like it was him making me like that. He was making me react. It wasn’t a natural reaction for me to be like that,” Ms Greville responded.

Mr Giggs sided with Ms Greville over his ‘oldest and best friend’

M r Daw QC told the court that Ms Greville has made numerous accusations that Mr Giggs ruined her relationships with others and that he did not support her.

We are taken to a series of messages relating to Ryan Giggs’ best friend referred to as Cam and his daughter Millie or Amelia, who called Mr Giggs “Uncle Ryan:.

In December 2019:

RG: ‘Did you fall out with Cam?’

RG: ‘Why?’

KG: ‘He called and started shouting at me for asking Amelia to do work when I didn’t once…I told him I didn’t appreciated being spoken to that…’

KG: ‘And then I put the phone down’

RG: ‘Really?!!!’

RG: ‘Wow’

RG: ‘F—ing bang out of order’

RG: ‘He needs to apologise’

Mr Daw QC pointed out that Mr Giggs wasn’t siding with his oldest and best friend, but with Ms Greville, who said: “He would say all these words. He was two different people.”

The messages continue:

KG: ‘Yes he does, he was very rude to me’

RG: ‘I don’t think they realise how much you have done for her’

RG: ‘F—ng spoilt’

Mr Daw QC continued: “He was really strongly siding with you in relation to this argument.”

Ms Greville said: “I was very upset about it,” to which Mr Daw QC responded: “And he was totally behind you, not his oldest and best friend, not his niece in all but relation, but you.”

Then Ms Greville sent screenshots of her messages to Millie, and the messages continue:

RG: ‘Hmm’

KG: ‘What are you thinking’

RG: ‘I’m thinking you’ve done nothing wrong’

KG: ‘I agree’

Mr Daw QC said: “Is this your evidence that this is someone wholly unsupportive of your career, and wholly undermining of you?”

Ms Greville said: “I didn’t say he was wholly unsupportive, I said he was like two different people. I said he was supportive, and other times he wasn’t supportive and he was undermining.

“I can’t think of the word…sorry… he would pepper the niceness with the horribleness and the other way around.”

Ms Greville asked Mr Giggs for business advice

K ate Greville is in the witness stand, behind a screen, continuing to be cross-examined by Chris Daw QC, for the defence.

Mr Daw QC reminded the jury that Ms Greville said in evidence that she felt Mr Giggs was a threat to her career.

In the summer of 2019, Ms Greville was in the process of leaving Mr Giggs’ company and setting up her own business.

The court heard an exchange of messages between the pair in June 2019.

Kate Greville: I need to talk about setting up my business, not now but when we’re together i need your advice and guidance with accounts and Kites (solicitors).

Ryan Giggs: I will sort everything baby xx

Mr Daw QC: “So far as the situation as far as your business is concerned, you are asking him for support in setting up your business, and advice and legal issues.”

Ms Greville: “I was asking him who he would recommend for accounts…Yes, I wanted his help, as in his support.”

Mr Daw QC replied: “But you have suggested that Mr Giggs was undermining your career and career ambitions, you have made that allegation numerous times.”

Ms Greville said: “Yes, at times.”

Today’s Telegraph

Here’s the paper coverage in today’s @Telegraph . https://t.co/4vdeg067uc pic.twitter.com/I92MNq3SmQ

— Gareth Davies (@GD10) August 11, 2022

Ryan Giggs arrives in court

Ryan Giggs has arrived at court. pic.twitter.com/IvHS9Y8Sl7

— Gareth Davies (@GD10) August 11, 2022

The 13 key moments from day three

  1. Kate Greville, 36, told jurors that the former footballer’s tendency to refer to her by her name reminded her of behaviour she had seen in How to Win Friends and Influence People – a psychology book.

  2. T he defence told Manchester Crown Court the suggestion that Mr Giggs lured Ms Greville into a relationship with psychological tricks was “rubbish”.

  3. During her research of coercion, Ms Greville – who said she was “really into psychology” – determined that Mr Giggs had “narcissistic personality disorder”.

  4. The court also heard how Ms Greville had lost two phones after police requested to review them for evidence. One fell out of her pocket when she was trying to save her dog from a river, and the other was stolen by a “young person” as she walked in central Manchester.

  5. Ms Greville deleted some messages before handing her data to the police. It also emerged that Ms Greville refused to give police access to her iCloud account in order to recover messages from the stolen phone because she did not want details of her business revealed and she was worried she might be discredited as a witness.

  6. Mr Daw QC asked the PR executive: “Did Mr Giggs’ public figure and wealth have anything to do with your interest in him?” Ms Greville answered: “No. Not in the slightest. As a person it made him more attractive because he’d done well and was successful. It wasn’t the money side of it or him being a footballer that made him attractive.”

  7. Just a day before the beginning of the trial, Ms Greville wrote in a statement submitted to the court that she had “become a slave to Mr Giggs, to his every need and evey demand”.

  8. The jury were shown messages from Mr Giggs to his then on-off girlfriend, in which he repeatedly told her how proud he was of her and that she was “amazing”.

  9. Mr Daw QC told the court that this was much more typical of their exchanges during their relationship, as opposed to the foul-mouthed messages highlighted by the Crown. Ms Greville agreed, saying Mr Giggs would “lovebomb” her with messages, adding: “I literally thought he was the best thing in the world.”

  10. The contents of the “blackmail” email at the heart of the coercion case was revealed yesterday afternoon. Ms Greville implied it was a sexual video of her and Mr Giggs, the defence said. But it was in fact a video of her and other women dancing in black dresses and Christmas hats to George Michael’s Last Christmas at a work party, the defence stated.

  11. The defence said that instead of Ms Greville getting a bruised wrist from Mr Giggs dragging her out of bed in a Dubai hotel as she claims, it was actually caused by rough sex. Mr Daw QC, for Mr Giggs, read out a message to the court from Ms Greville to the ex-footballer, which read: “Tan coming on nicely” and “my sex bruise is coming out nicely too!!”

  12. The jury heard how Mr Giggs and Ms Greville recorded a catalogue of intimate videos of themselves together.

  13. They were also told that Ms Greville became employed by Mr Giggs and his former teammate Gary Neville’s company GG Hospitality on a six-figure salary.

Tory leadership LIVE: Rishi fuming as Truss goes straight for him ‘Taxes will choke us!’

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Tory leadership: Rishi Sunak in profile

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Liz Truss has hit out at Rishi Sunak’s plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis during ITV’s leadership debate.

The Foreign Secretary added: “We need to do better we need to take on Whitehall.”

She said: “Rishi, you have raised taxes to the highest level in 70 years. That is not going to drive economic growth. You raised national insurance even though people like me opposed it in Cabinet at the time, because we could have afforded to fund the NHS through general taxation.

“The fact is that raising taxes at this moment will choke off economic growth, it will prevent us getting the revenue we need to pay off the debt.”

Trending

Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.

As the candidates head into a debate tonight, it’s anybody’s race. (Image: GETTY/PA)

The right-wing of the party could be banding together to keep Penny Mordaunt out of the final race as she is officially currently second behind Rishi Sunak with the backing of 83 MPs.

However, the poll also showed increased support for Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat, although the latter still trailed the other candidates significantly with only 10 percent of the vote.

If Ms Badenoch can capitalise on this momentum heading into tonight’s ITV debate, she could potentially have a real shot of making it to the final leadership vote.

FOLLOW FOR LIVE UPDATES

Isabella Marsans

GB News: Tory leadership hopefuls blasted as not ‘extremely clever’ like Mrs Thatcher

The remaining Tory leadership hopefuls were picked apart on GB News on Sunday night as former Conservative MP Edwina Currie compared them to formidable PM Margaret Thatcher.

The ex-MP for South Derbyshire appeared on Mark Dolan’s show to share her thoughts on how the current crop compare to the Iron Lady.

There are at time of writing five hopefuls still vying for the top job – Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Penny Mordaunt, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch.

Mr Dolan asked her: “Is Liz Truss cut from the same cloth as Margaret Thatcher?”

Mrs Currie replied: “Oh I don’t think so. Margaret Thatcher had a chemistry degree from Oxford.

“She was an extremely clever woman.

“All the questions that they were asked tonight and at the previous debate, Margaret would have had a stream of statistics in her head, not on a piece of paper.”

Isabella Marsans

POLL: Who won Sunday night’s Tory leadership debate?

The five remaining candidates in the race to take on the job of Conservative leader and Britain’s next Prime Minister went head to head on Sunday night in a blistering debate that saw the leadership hopefuls clash over issues including the cost of living crisis and Brexit. So who do you think won the debate? Vote in our poll.

Chaired by ITV’s Julie Etchingham, the debate saw Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordant, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat distance themselves from outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with none of the candidates willing to promise the embattled leader a role in Cabinet.

The hopefuls all sought to present themselves as the trustworthy candidate, with promises of a fresh start to a political party mired in scandals and public mistrust.

In contrast to the live audience debate on Friday, Sunday night’s head-to-head saw all candidates more eager to go for the jugular, with accusations of “toxic politics” and personal barbs frequent.

Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch clashed on trans rights, while Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak hurled thinly-veiled insults at one another.

Rosie Jempson

Tory outsider Kemi Badenoch TOPS Conservative voters poll for who should be next PM

KEMI BADENOCH has topped a poll of Conservative voters to become the UK’s next Prime Minister.

Ms Badenoch, who has served as Member of Parliament for Saffron Walden since 2017, is in the lead – according to the survey results.

Kemi Badenoch (Image: Getty)

Rosie Jempson

Closing statements

THE FIVE candidates each ended the debate with closing statements.

Rishi Sunak went first, saying:

Rishi Sunak: “We have a choice. Do we confront the challenges we face with honesty and responsibility or not? I’m standing because I believe I’m the only candidate who can take the fight to Labour at the next general election… Our potential is limitless.

“My parents worked hard to give me a better future and that’s what I would do for your children and grandchildren as prime minister.”

Penny Mordaunt said: “If you’re still watching this debate well done. I wish tonight had been a little less about us and a lot more about you. I know you’ve got serious concerns and these are really uncertain times.

“Our model of political leadership is broken. Only one of us has a plan to [change] that and that’s me.”

Tugendhat went next, saying: “This evening hasn’t actually been about us, it’s been about you and who you need as our next Conservative prime minister.

“The Government I’m afraid has led to a lack of trust and collapse in that confidence. We’re all asking the right questions but the real answer is we need a clean start. We can do it, I’m ready to serve, I’m ready to lead”

Truss said she can “hit the ground running”.

”

Liz Truss: “The next election is going to be about the economy. We only have two years to show the British people we can deliver.

“I can hit the ground running at No 10 driving economic growth by cutting taxes and delivering tough reform. I’ve shown what I can do on Brexit, on trade, and on Ukraine. Britain’s best days lie ahead. We need to reject the voices of decline and as Conservatives we need to stop apologising for who we are.”

Finally, Kemi Badenoch said: ”

“I’m doing this not for myself but for the future. I have three children and I want the very best future for them. It is vitally important we create a strong United Kingdom that is confident in itself.

“The United Kingdom is a beacon of shining light in the world. That’s why so many people want to come here and we need to make sure that we keep it so. A future that is strong, bright, secure, with a thriving economy, that’s what I’m about.”

Rosie Jempson

‘I can hit the ground running’ – Liz Truss

Liz Truss: “The next election is going to be about the economy. We only have two years to show the British people we can deliver.

“I can hit the ground running at No 10 driving economic growth by cutting taxes and delivering tough reform. I’ve shown what I can do on Brexit, on trade, and on Ukraine. Britain’s best days lie ahead. We need to reject the voices of decline and as Conservatives we need to stop apologising for who we are.”

Rosie Jempson

‘Our model of leadership is broken’

PENNY Mordaunt: “If you’re still watching this debate well done. I wish tonight had been a little less about us and a lot more about you. I know you’ve got serious concerns and these are really uncertain times.

“Our model of political leadership is broken. Only one of us has a plan to [change] that and that’s me.”

Rosie Jempson

Sunak humiliated as Truss dig spectacularly backfires ‘That’s why I became a Conservative’

RISHI Sunak saw his attempts to take a swipe at fellow Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss backfire as the Foreign Secretary brilliantly rebuked probes on her voting record.

Rosie Jempson

Truss: Britain’s’ best days lie ahead’

Ms Truss closed, saying: “The next election is going to be about the economy. We only have two years to show the British people we can deliver.

“I can hit the ground running at No. 10.

“I have shown that I am trusted to deliver. Britain’s best day lie ahead.

“As Conservatives we need to stop apologising for who we are.”

Rosie Jempson

Tugendhat says Johnson’s cabinet ‘lent credibility to the chaos’

TOM Tugendhat said those who served in Boris Johnson’s government “lent credibility to the chaos” which has made it difficult for the Conservatives to win the next general election.

Outlining why he should run the country rather than any of his fellow candidates who served in Mr Johnson’s government, he said: “Whatever your responsibility was in that government, whatever your place in that government was, Keir Starmer in two years’ time is going to hold that record against us.

“We need to make sure we’re winning Conservative seats across the country, and even really good people lend credibility to the chaos candidate.”

Rosie Jempson

‘Talking is easy!’ Tugendhat humiliated as Kemi Badenoch lets rip at inexperienced MP

TOM TUGENDHAT was humiliated during tonight’s live televised debate as rival candidate Kemi Badenoch lashed out at him over his lack of cabinet experience.

Kmi Badenoch rebuked Tom Tugendhat’s criticism of Boris Johnson’s Government, saying that “talking is easy”. Ms Badenoch claimed that Mr Tugendhat has not been on the frontline in policy decisions. She hit out at her rival candidate, saying: “It’s very easy for him to criticise what we’ve been doing when he has not been in Government.”

Rosie Jempson

Liz Truss would sit down with Putin at G20

Mordaunt: Not under current circumstances.

Tugendhat: No, and I’ve demonstrated I’ll fight for our country in combat and I’ll fight for our country on the world stage.

Badenoch: No, it hasn’t worked for all the people who haven’t tried before. I wouldn’t waste my time.

Truss: I think it is very important we have the voices of the free world facing down Vladimir Putin. I’m prepared to say to Putin directly and call him out in front of those very important swing countries… I would go there and call Putin out.

Sunak: I walked out of a G20 meeting when the Russian finance minister was taking part.

Rosie Jempson

‘I’m trusted on Brexit!’ Furious Truss fights back at Etchingham’s brutal show of hands

LIZ TRUSS shut down attacks on her Brexit record as she insisted she can be “trusted” to deliver on the benefits leaving the EU can bring despite having voted for Remain.

The foreign secretary has seen her candidacy coming under question because of her siding with former Prime Minister David Cameron and campaigning against Brexit in 2016.

Rosie Jempson

Rishi wants to continue economic ties with China

Liz Truss asks Rishi Sunak: Do you still think we should be doing more business with China?

Mr Sunak refers to the Integrated Review, which describes China as “a massive threat to our national security”.

He calls for legislation “which stops hostile investmnet into this country, protects national infrastructure… Also as the head of MI5 recently said in a joint speech with our head of MI6, where our values and interests are protected we should of course… that shouldn’t stop us engaging with countries around the world.”

Rosie Jempson

Truss journey to becoming Tory

“I am somebody who was not born into the Conservative party.

“My fundamental belief in Conservative is because I saw kids in my school being let down in Leeds.

“I saw them having wasted potential. That’s why I’m Conservative- I believe in high education standards.

“That’s why I am proud to have introduced the new Maths GCSE, which my daughter is now sitting.”

Rosie Jempson

Banedoch says ‘It’s time to move on from Brexit’

On Brexit, Kemi Badenoch said: “It’s time to move on from Brexit. It’s time to take advantage of the opportunities.

“We have left the EU. The public are sick and tired of us banging on about Brexit. I think a lot of people cannot move on from it.”

Rosie Jempson

Truss says she ‘gets things done’

After listing a number of her achievements, Ms Truss said: “I’ve put my shoulders to the wheels and delivered,” Truss says on why she is trusted with Brexit.

“We have led the free world, targeting the G7 on Russia.”

“I am somebody who gets things done in government, and that’s what my colleagues see.”

Rosie Jempson

‘It’s socialism!’ Rishi Sunak erupts at Liz Truss in heated tax policy slapdown

RisHI SUNAK did not waste time in landing a blow during tonight’s Conservative Party leadership debate, as he called Liz Truss’ proposed tax cuts “socialism”.

Rishi Sunak, who remains in the lead among support from Conservative MPs, clashed with Liz Truss within minutes of tonight’s leadership debate.

The Foreign Secretary called out the former Chancellor, pointing out that she opposed his national insurance rise. She blamed him personally for raising taxes to a 70-year-high.

Rosie Jempson

Liz Truss ‘completely’ supports Bank of England’s independence

LIZ TRUSS said she “completely” supports the Bank of England’s independence.

During the debate, she said: “I completely support the Bank of England’s independence.

“But I think we need to look at the best practice around the world, the countries who’ve been most successful at controlling inflation, and we need to look at the mandate they have, for example, the Bank of Japan.

“So the last time the mandate was set was in 1997, in completely different times. “We are in unprecedented economic times, and the ‘business as usual’ economic strategy that we have the moment simply isn’t working for the people of Britain.”

Rosie Jempson

Mordaunt says rivals attempting to paint her as ‘out of touch’

Adding to her earlier claims that the candidates are ‘smearing’ her campaign, Mordaunt said her rivals are attempting to paint her “as out of touch”.

Truss said in response: “That’s not the kind of campaign I am fighting.”

Rosie Jempson

Badenoch says candidated should be ‘honest’ with public about economy

KEMI BADENOCH said the candidates needed to be “honest” with the public about the nation’s economic future.

She added: “I think what we’re seeing in the discussion that’s taking place is that there are no easy options. There are no solutions, only trade-offs. When I was working in the Treasury, it was always a choice between difficult option A, terrible option B or mad option C.

“We need to be honest with the public about how difficult things are. The Government can’t solve everything and we need to do better at it in terms of the way that we fix things.”

Responding to Ms Mordaunt’s point, Mr Sunak said he “does take the situation seriously”.

He added: “I heard Penny on the TV this morning saying you were going to scrap one of my rules that the Government shouldn’t borrow for day-to-day spending.

“Now look, it’s one thing to borrow for long-term investment, but it’s a whole other thing to put the day-to-day bills on the country’s credit card and we know how that ends. It’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous. And you know what, even Jeremy Corbyn didn’t suggest that we should go that far.”

Rosie Jempson

Sunak said he’s only candidate with experience to lead country through economic crisis

On leaving his post as chancellor, Rishi Sunak said: “Resigning from government is a very serious thing, and a very personal thing.

“It got to the point where enough is enough.

“What that experience in government has given me, is that I’m the only person with the experience to lead our country through an economic challenge because that is what I have done for the past two years.”

Rosie Jempson

None of the candidates would give Boris a job if they were PM

Tory leadership candidates said they would give Boris Johnson a job in their cabinets if they became prime minister.

The five contenders to replace Mr Johnson – Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat – were asked whether they would let him sit at their cabinet table during the ITV leadership debate.

None of them raised their hands when asked if they would give him a cabinet role.

Rosie Jempson

Liz Truss says UK heading for recession over Sunak’s tax increase

LIZ TRUSS said Britain is predicted to experience a recession due to Mr Sunak’s increase in taxes.

“It is cutting back on growth,” she said.

“It is preventing companies from investing and it’s taking money out of people’s pockets. That is no way to get the economy going during a recession.”

Penny Mordaunt said she disagreed with Mr Sunak, adding: “I think the tax cuts I’ve outlined are not inflationary.

“I think people listening at home will be looking at us, debating these issues. And it seems that we’re removed from the real problems that they are facing, they need some immediate action now, I don’t understand why Rishi doesn’t accept that.

“But I also think there’s things we can do that don’t cost any money, making things work better for people. That’s why I’ve introduced the childcare policy that I have.

“Making tax simpler so that it reduces the costs that businesses are having to pay just to be tax compliant. There’s many things we can do.”

Rosie Jempson

Each candidate set out their reasons why they should be the next PM

The Tory leadership candidates set out why they believed they should become prime minister as the ITV debate began.

Former chancellor Rishi Sunak told viewers: “I’m standing to be your next prime minister because Britain’s potential is limitless and I’m the best person to lead us into the future.”

Liz Truss said: “I want to unleash Britain’s potential. I’ve shown I can deliver as Foreign Secretary, I’m now ready to lead as your prime minister.”

Former minister Kemi Badenoch said: “I’m the candidate who will tell you the truth. I’m running because things need to change and I will make our country better.”

Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat said: “We know that things have been difficult and we need a clean start, we are facing problems abroad and at home. It’s time for a change, I’m ready to serve, I’m ready to lead.”

Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt said: “My life has been about service”.

Rosie Jempson

Ms Mordaunt said she “doesn’t understand” how Rishi doesn’t accept we need tax cuts

Penny Mordaunt said people need some “immediate actions” over tax cuts, saying “I don’t understand why Rishi doesn’t accept that”.

Rosie Jempson

Truss hits out at Sunak’s plan to tackle cost of living crisis

Liz Truss has hit out at Rishi Sunak’s plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis during ITV’s leadership debate.

She said: “Rishi, you have raised taxes to the highest level in 70 years. That is not going to drive economic growth. You raised national insurance even though people like me opposed it in Cabinet at the time, because we could have afforded to fund the NHS through general taxation.

“The fact is that raising taxes at this moment will choke off economic growth, it will prevent us getting the revenue we need to pay off the debt.”

Rosie Jempson

Rishi nightmare as Brexit pledge torn apart in leaked documents just HOURS before debate

RISHI SUNAK pledged that he would scrap hundreds of remaining EU laws and regulations by the next election- but leaked documents show he was told last month this would take longer.

The former Chancellor said if he wins the leadership race to become the UK’s next Prime Minister, he would scrap the laws. However, leaked documents show that just last month this couldn’t be completed until at least 2026, and EU tax law had to be exempt.

Rosie Jempson

What time is Tory debate tonight and how to watch as leadership contest heats up

THE TORY LEADERSHIP race has reached TV debate stage – what time is it on tonight and how can you watch it?

The leadership race is down to its final five candidates, who will go face to face tonight in the second televised debate of the contest. Former chancellor is currently in the lead in the eyes of his peers, followed closely by , with the final three comprising foreign secretary , and .

Rosie Jempson

Penny Mordaunt’s swipe at BBC presenter: ‘Like Edvard Munch Painting’

PENNY MORDAUNT took a savage swipe at the BBC’s Orla Guerin, saying in her unearthed book that she “looks like an Edvard Munch painting”.

P enny Mordaunt won the backing of 83 Conservative MPs on Thursday, just behind the frontrunner in the Tory leadership race, Rishi Sunak , who got 101 votes. Ms Mordaunt is a favourite to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson after he resigned last week.

She has drawn in Tories with her promises of returning the party to its core policies of “low tax, small state, personal responsibility”. As the MP for Portsmouth North sets out her vision for Britain, details of her colourful past have resurfaced.

Matthew Dooley

Penny Mordaunt still favoured by bookies but race is ‘entirely unpredictable’

GB News Political Editor Darren McCaffrey has said that the Tory leadership race was “entirely unpredictable” as polls shift leading up to tonight’s ITV debate.

Although Rishi Sunak seems to have cemented his lead, Penny Mordaunt is still favoured by the betting shops. Liz Truss has taken a “bit of a stumble” in the polls following last weeks debate.

A new poll out today shows the Kemi Badenoch has gained some momentum and could capitalise on that tonight. It is now entirely possible that she could end up in the final runoff.

Allies of the candidates have ramped up attacks on one another with Deputy PM Dominic Raab slamming Liz Truss’s record at the treasury and the right of the party increasingly pulling together against Penny Mordaunt.

As Mr McCaffery says, it would be “foolhardy” to put all of your money on one candidate at this point in the race.

That’s all from me for today, one of my colleagues will be along shortly to bring you the latest Tory leadership race updates leading up to and during tonight’s debate.

\u2018We\u2019ve got an entirely unpredictable race.\u2019 https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/CcSv9tnN0H

\u2014 GB News (@GBNEWS) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Labour MP launches scathing attack on Tugendhat ‘tragic and pathetic’

Labour MP for Chesterfield Toby Perkins has launched a vicious attack on Tory hopeful Tom Tugendhat.

The Shadow minister for Furthering Education and Skills did not hold back and called Mr Tugendhat’s campaign a “tragic and pathetic spectacle”.

Tom Tugendhat pointed out earlier that no matter who won the leadership contest, Conservatives would agree that Keir Starmer would take the country “backwards” as PM.

An intelligent man says stupid things to try to appeal to people with whom he fundamentally disagrees. @TomTugendhat would be much better than the rest of the freak show. https://t.co/cCyplJ6ywt

\u2014 Toby Perkins MP (@tobyperkinsmp) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Badenoch campaign attacks Mordaunt over transgender record in Government

Kemi Badenoch’s campaign has stepped up attacks on Penny Mordaunt over her position and record on transgender rights and self ID.

Earlier today, Lee Rowley, MP for North East Derbyshire and Ms Badenoch’s campaign manager, told Sky News that Ms Mordaunt hadn’t answered the questions surrounding the issue at Channel 4’s debate on Friday “particularly well”.

He said: “I just think it’s a very, very difficult issue with some very, very entrenched views on both sides, and needs to be handled sensitively.

“Penny has a set of questions to answer. I don’t think she really answered those particularly well in the debate on Friday. We’ll see whether she does tonight.

“Because either Penny did agree with self-ID and is now saying that she didn’t. Question: why?

“Or Penny didn’t agree with self-ID. But it looks as though the civil service and the government, the department, decided to do it anyway. Question: how did she let that happen?”

Ms Mordaunt, however, defended herself saying that discussion around the issue amounted to “smears”.

On the Sophie Raworth show this morning she said: “This has been rebutted many times. We all know what is going on. This is the type of toxic politics people want to get away from.

“We did a consultation. We asked healthcare professionals what they thought about the situation. That is the section I looked after. I managed that consultation. We didn’t actually on my shift produce a policy.

“There are a number of smears going on in the papers. My colleagues are very angry and upset that this is how the leadership contest is being dragged down.”

Penny Mordaunt

Penny Mordaunt has been attacked on her transgender rights record and self ID. (Image: GETTY)

Matthew Dooley

Continue levelling up or lose the next election warn Red Wall Tories

Red Wall Tories have warned the next leader to continue pressing ahead with the levelling up scheme or risk losing the next general election.

Jake Berry, who chairs the 50 MP strong Northern Research Group, told the Observer: “These votes were lent, they were lent against a promise of performance and a promise of action.

“If performance and action are lacking, do not be surprised when they don’t appear in two years’ time.

“It depends if we want to win the next election. Of course we can become a party that only concentrates on rebuilding the blue wall in the south of England, but [if we do that] we will lose.”

John Stevenson, MP for Carlisle said: “We must not forget that the part of our last manifesto on which our large majority was based was the levelling up agenda. It is essential that the next leader is committed to that agenda.”

Both MPs are currently backing Tom Tugendhat in the leadership contest.

Matthew Dooley

Dominic Raab slams Liz Truss’s Treasury record

On Sky News this morning, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab slammed Liz Truss and her record while she was chief secretary of the treasury.

Mr Raab is supporting Rishi Sunak to become the next leader of the Conservative party.

He said: “She can answer for her policies and her when she was chief secretary of the Treasury. People can see whether spending and headcount in the civil service went up or down.

“There’s not just Rishi who is going to be accountable for what he’s done in the face of a massive pandemic. I mean, did she cut taxes at that time? Did spending go up or down during her period is CST?

“I think, without without criticising her personally, I think it’s right that everyone on their record is is scrutinised.”

Dominic Raab and Liz Truss

Dominic Raab slammed Liz Truss’s record at the treasury. (Image: GETTY)

Matthew Dooley

Tom Tugendhat claims other candidates ‘agree’ with him on question of PM’s honesty

Tom Tugendhat was the only candidate in the Channel 4 debate who was willing to give a yes or no answer to the question “Is Boris Johnson an honest man?”

While other candidates tried to explain the nuances of their positions, Mr Tugendhat simply said: “No.”

He has now appeared on BBC and said that the other candidates agree with him, even if they wouldn’t say it out loud.

He said: “We wouldn’t have been having that debate on Friday night had the others not agreed with me.

“We know very well that the others agree with me because otherwise they wouldn’t have resigned from his Government or they wouldn’t be standing as leadership candidates.”

What has PM Boris Johnson been dishonest about, #Raworth asks Tory leadership contender Tom Tugendhat #SundayMorning https://t.co/ebQg3A2Lxx pic.twitter.com/FQHAOEKNNe

\u2014 BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Arlene Foster predicts Tory leadership finalists ‘I hope it’s going to be Kemi’

Former Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster has told GB News who she thinks will make it to the final round of the Conservative leadership race.

Ms Foster believes Rishi Sunak will make the final cut but then it becomes more “difficult” to predict as the polling numbers move around.

She claimed she “hopes” Kemi Badenoch makes the final round because it would make for an “interesting battle” between the two.

However, she concedes that it will more likely be Penny Mordaunt or Liz Truss against Rishi Sunak in the final round.

\u2018I hope it\u2019s going to be Kemi [Badenoch], that would be a really interesting battle [with Rishi Sunak].\u2019 pic.twitter.com/BLIEtGzDAu

\u2014 GB News (@GBNEWS) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Tom Tugendhat vows to tackle county lines gangs if elected

Tory hopeful Tom Tugendhat has vowed to tackle gangs by targeting their leaders and by putting 20,000 police officers on the “frontlines”.

Speaking to The Sun, he said: “I have seen first-hand how gangs are wreaking havoc across Britain. Under my leadership, the police will take a proactive approach towards organised crime.

“We will target gang leaders with all the means at our disposal and push for tougher sentences.

“By decapacitating the leadership of these gangs, I will ensure that criminals up and down the country know that they will always be held to account for their activities.”

Boris Johnson, in May, had vowed to focus on “crime, crime, crime” in a bid to tackle rampant levels of gang violence and knife crime.

Tom Tugendhat

Tom Tugendhat has vowed to be tough on crime. (Image: GETTY)

Matthew Dooley

Penny Mordaunt says she will get Brexit ‘re-done’

Penny Mordaunt said she will get Brexit “re-done” allowing Britain to reap the “Brexit dividend”.

Writing for The Sun, she said: “The freedom we now possess can stimulate a new level of economic growth.

“Now that we have left the European Union, we can cut red tape and help our innovators to do what they do best.”

She added that she would reform the tax system putting “more pounds in people’s pockets”.

“I’ll get Brexit re-done and put more pounds in people’s pockets if made Prime Minister.” https://t.co/smlVfI4HtI

\u2014 Penny Mordaunt (@PennyMordaunt) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Rishi Sunak has vowed to slash EU red tape if elected

Rishi Sunak has vowed to scrap EU law and cut red tape by the next general election if he becomes the leader of the Conservatives.

He said the laws were “slowing economic growth” and promised to take advantage of Brexit Britain’s new freedoms.

If I am elected, by the time of the next election, I will have scrapped or reformed all of the EU law, red tape and bureaucracy that is still on our statute book and slowing economic growth. @Telegraph article and sign up https://t.co/3cXn1rFhca https://t.co/VMeMaLxQhw

\u2014 Ready For Rishi (@RishiSunak) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Kemi Badenoch vows to do ‘whatever it takes’ to deal with migrant crossings

Kemi Badenoch has promised to do “whatever it takes to deal with the small boats issue” as she put immigration at the centre of her bid for Tory leadership.

The former equalities minister is currently in fourth place but many MPs believe she is well placed to pick up votes during the third round tomorrow.

She wrote in The Sunday times: “Property ownership should be spread as widely as possible. Nations need borders. The family is the first, and best, source of welfare.

“People – rightly – recognise that building more homes while doing nothing to bring immigration down is like running up the down escalator.”

Kemi Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch has said she will do “whatever it takes” to deal with the small boat crossings. (Image: PA)

Matthew Dooley

Poll shows shocking new favourite in leadership race

A new Conservative Home poll has shockingly put Kemi Badenoch ahead of the other candidates, giving her real momentum ahead of tonight’s ITV debate.

The poll surveyed 850 Tory party members and appears to show a stall in support for frontrunners Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak.

Our Next Tory Leader survey. @KemiBadenoch opens up a double-digit lead. @trussliz , @PennyMordaunt and @RishiSunak are bunched together second, third and fourth. https://t.co/Vmz7damGFo

\u2014 ConservativeHome (@ConHome) July 16, 2022

Matthew Dooley

‘You can’t tax your way out of a recession’ Rishi Sunak warned

John Redwood, Tory MP for Wokingham in Berkshire, has warned Rishi Sunak that higher taxes won’t stop inflation.

The MP also blamed Mr Sunak for current financial woes, citing his “permission” given to the Bank of England to “create £450 billion of new money”.

You cannot tax your way out of recession. Higher taxes like more VAT on fuel does not bring inflation down. It puts prices up. Rishi Sunak’s permission to the Bank to create \u00a3450 bn of new money caused the inflation. Inflation falls next year as the money printing has now ended.

\u2014 John Redwood (@johnredwood) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Liz Truss will do away with

Liz Truss has claimed she will scrap “Whitehall-inspired Stalinist housing targets” instead favouring tax cuts and deregulation to encourage companies to build new homes.

In an interview with The Telegraph, she said she would enact “the biggest change in our economic policy for 30 years” to tackle low growth and inflation.

The economy and cost of living crisis are likely to be a major focus of tonight’s debate as Britons feel the bite of high inflation and rising costs.

Liz Truss

Liz Truss claims she will focus on deregulation and tax cuts to stimulate the economy. (Image: GETTY)

Matthew Dooley

This cycle has ‘come to early’ for Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch

Although the underdogs of the Tory leadership race aren’t likely to make it to the final two Tory leadership vote, they could be building their platforms for a future shot at the leadership, according to a political commentator.

Speaking on GB News, Benedict Spence said: “The next leadership contest, I think you’ll be sitting there and going ‘well I like the look the look of these two people’. They are clearly quite competent, now they’ve got the profile.”

Although unlikely to win the contest, it will be interesting to see if Kemi Badenoch or Tom Tugendhat are selected for a position in the new government.

\u2018I think that this cycle has come too early for Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch.\u2019 https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/mbhWkIXijA

\u2014 GB News (@GBNEWS) July 17, 2022

Matthew Dooley

Boris Johnson led world on Ukraine war – now it’s time for the new Tory leader to do the same

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited the final two Tory candidates to Kyiv to lay out how they plan to continue supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to reporting by The Sun.

The invite was extended via Ukraine MP Oleksii Goncharenko who was in London last week. He plans on writing to Tory chairman Andrew Stephenson and backbenchers’ leader Sir Graham Brady to garner support for the move.

Mr Goncharenko said: “Boris Johnson led the world stage on helping Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky

“He demonstrated solidarity with the Ukrainian people and boosted morale across the country when we faced our darkest moments.

“It is essential for global security that the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a good friend to Ukraine and willing to do whatever necessary to tackle the barbarism of Putin.

“I urge both candidates to visit Kyiv and set out their vision for foreign policy, how they will address the invasion of Ukraine and how the UK, under their leadership would stop the genocide taking place at the heart of Europe.”

Boris Johnson and Volodymyr Zelensky

Boris Johnson “led” the world in support of Ukraine. (Image: GETTY)