Vesper

Meet Ibrahim Rabbaj, 15-year-old English Chelsea wonderkid compared to Messi with 52 goals and 60 assists in 40 games https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/31300099/ibrahim-rabbaj-Chelsea-wonderkid-messi-goals/ Published: 25 Oct 2024

Nobody Else Talks Like This in America (Carolina Brogue) 🇺🇸 Today we’re heading to one of the most remote islands on the East Coast—Ocracoke, in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. We’ll meet up with an old-school local who still speaks the dying Ocracoke Brogue—a mix of English, Scottish, Irish, and a sprinkle of pirate. Only a few still speak it. This is an inside look at a vanishing culture and a way of life few will ever experience.

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Alexander Isak could cost £250m to sign. This is why – and who could afford it https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6513565/2025/07/25/alexander-isak-transfer-cost-finances/ Alexander Isak wishing to leave Newcastle United is one thing; working out who could afford to buy him is quite another. Newcastle hope any serious transfer fee conversation will start at the mind-boggling figure of £150million ($203m). To put that into context, it would make Isak the third most expensive footballer in history, behind Paris Saint-Germain recruits Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. The field of possible destinations looks slim. Even ignoring the football factors, the financials in play are huge and an obvious barrier to entering the Isak market. Buying Isak for £150m is more like a £171m transfer once we add in some estimated agent fees and, if the buyer is a Premier League club, a four per cent transfer levy. From a profit and sustainability rules (PSR) perspective, spread over a five-year deal, those fees alone would add £33m-35m to a club’s costs. Then there are Isak’s wages. His exact demands are unknown but given his status as one of the world’s leading players a range of £250,000 to £300,000 a week is far from unreasonable. At that level, the hit to a club would be £15m-£18m annually. Essentially, it’s fair to say signing Isak would lump £50m in annual costs onto his new club — and that’s just from an accounting perspective. It’s often forgotten that clubs will need to pay the money in cash eventually and, over our hypothetical five-year deal, Isak would probably cost a new suitor more than £250m. Plainly, that rules a lot of teams out. But can anyone afford it? What You Should Read Next Alexander Isak’s transfer options assessed: Liverpool? PSG? Al Hilal? Examining where the Newcastle striker could look after telling his club he wishes to explore a move away Serie A In Italy, Juventus have lost around £670m in the past four years. Both Milan and Inter are recovering financially but the fee for Isak would be more than two-fifths of their most recently published revenues. Napoli, Serie A winners last season, have posted impressive profits recently and boasted a strong cash position at last check. They would be the most feasible Italian suitor yet still an unlikely one; their most recent wage bill was lower than Newcastle’s. Bundesliga In Germany, Eintracht Frankfurt’s heady player sales have imbued them with cash and regulatory headroom but signing up to a commitment like Isak is fanciful. Their 2023-24 revenues were £213m, so his signing would cost over 70 per cent of annual turnover. Borussia Dortmund’s wage bill in the same season, when they reached the Champions League final, was only around £12m higher than Newcastle’s, so meeting Isak’s demands seems unlikely even with the club on a generally sound footing. Dortmund weren’t expected to spend much this summer and have already spent their Club World Cup earnings on Jobe Bellingham and Yan Couto. Bayern Munich are a possible option, but success in their other plans, like getting Luis Diaz from Liverpool, would reduce that likelihood. The German champions are the fifth-highest-earning club in world football, according to Deloitte, and consistently profitable, generating a £135m pre-tax surplus in the past five seasons. Bayern Munich have targeted Luis Diaz at Liverpool (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images) Financially, Bayern are one of the few clubs who could afford Isak — they showed as much by being realistic contenders for the signature of Florian Wirtz earlier this summer. But the fact they are prioritising other targets would slim the chances of a deal for Isak. Ligue 1 In France, like with most big-name players these days, only PSG could afford him. They are unencumbered by lax financial rules at home and have enjoyed huge income from the Champions League and Club World Cup recently. Wages fell with the departure of Mbappe last year, but they remain big spenders. Compliance abroad is trickier — PSG are in a ‘settlement regime’ with UEFA until the end of this season, so there are some limitations on their spending. Still, moving on someone like the unwanted Randal Kolo Muani would feasibly open a space for Isak, both in the squad and in terms of remaining within any financial rules. Cash tends not to be a problem in the French capital. La Liga In Spain, Barcelona are having enough trouble making room to register players they’ve already signed. Atletico Madrid just about break even but have high debts to service and, based on most recent figures, the amortisation cost of signing Isak would be more than half their total amortisation bill. They’ve spent big (£65m) on Julian Alvarez since those figures were released, but that in itself likely rules them out of being able to enter the market at over double Alvarez’s price. Julian Alvarez joined Atletico last summer (Oscar Del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images) Real Madrid tend to be able to afford just about anyone and recently announced 2024-25 revenues of €1.2billion (£1.0bn), the largest in the world. Even with Mbappe’s huge wage coming onboard, Madrid were profitable last season, to the tune of €24m (£20m) after tax. Even so, they have pressing needs elsewhere, and there are only so many huge salaries you can take at once. Real have already spent just shy of £150m in transfer fees alone already this summer, and doubling that again looks unlikely, even for them. It’s not impossible, but it is improbable. Premier League And so, what of England? The world’s richest league is naturally the one where clubs could most realistically afford Isak, though even here he’d be limited for actual choice. Tottenham Hotspur have the PSR headroom but unlikely the cash or space on the wage bill, which is kept notoriously low relative to income, and especially as they’re already spending this summer. Further south, as we detailed in June, Brighton & Hove Albion have much in the way of regulatory headroom but are plainly an unrealistic option. That same piece outlined Chelsea as, ludicrously to some, the club with the greatest scope to spend from a PSR perspective. They don’t want for cash, having received not far shy of £1bn from their current owners, but this deal, alongside their other activity this summer, would be pushing things. Particularly as Chelsea are in their own UEFA settlement regime, and the impact of recent intra-group asset sales won’t boost their PSR calculations forever. Chelsea are already in the position of needing to sell players to free up space on their Champions League squad list and, in any case, it’s unclear how Isak’s salary would line up at a club where there’s been a concerted (albeit sometimes overstated) effort to reduce staff costs. Arsenal were long viewed as a viable landing spot for Isak, but the imminent signing of Viktor Gyokeres casts clear doubt on that. Even without Gyokeres, they have spent over £100m already this summer, albeit after a lean year last season (net spend: £20.9m). Arsenal probably could afford the £50m annual cost of signing Isak, especially as revenues continue to rise, but their activity this summer (both completed and pending) would mean they’d very much be pushing toward their limit by doing so. Viktor Gyokeres has already signed for Arsenal (Carlos Costa/AFP via Getty Images) Manchester City have plenty of money and PSR headroom, even after spending some £300m or more since the turn of the year. They could afford Isak, having booked nearly £200m in profit in the past three seasons. Football reasons seem a more likely impediment to moving there. Across town, Manchester United have been heavily loss-making in recent years but, as The Athletic detailed in June, their PSR losses are much lower than previously thought. United remain the fourth-highest-earning club in the world and have undertaken significant cost-cutting over the past year. From a PSR perspective, they may well be able to stretch to someone like Isak, even without Champions League football this year. But cash is another issue. United’s transfer debts were over £300m net even before the recent signings of Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo, and their need to sell players this summer is more cash-focused than rules-based. To that end, adding Isak’s wage and paying a huge fee to Newcastle looks highly unlikely, and would rely on either a further injection of shares (Sir Jim Ratcliffe invested £238.5m in 2024) or adding to an already hefty debt pile. Remarkably, despite their £300m-plus spend already this summer, Liverpool represent the likeliest Premier League destination for Isak. The Anfield outfit would need to sell players but are already planning to; the departures of Diaz, Darwin Nunez or Harvey Elliott, or even all three, would provide a boost to profits and cash, and help them back toward the policy of sustainability driven by Fenway Sports Group over the past decade and more. Liverpool have been able to spend so much this summer through careful financial management, and it’s exactly that which keeps them in the frame for Isak — even at the huge asking price. It’s a tall ask, even for a club as well managed as they have been, but the conditions to do it really are there: low transfer debt, strong cashflow, surging revenue and saleable assets to help offset the hit both now and in the future. Saudi Pro League Away from the Premier League, the oil-soaked elephant in this particular transfer room is the instance whereby Isak’s overarching employer doesn’t change. Al Hilal are, like Newcastle, owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and, at the risk of stating the obvious, have no financial worries at all. Since being taken over by PIF in June 2023, Al Hilal have spent over £400m on new signings and goodness knows what more on wages. If they want to sign Isak, they can afford to. The financials would be easy from Al Hilal’s perspective, and while selling to a club of such supreme wealth might comfort Newcastle fans in the knowledge they’ll get a chunky fee for Isak, the reality is more nuanced. Under Premier League rules, any sale to a fellow PIF-owned club would require a ‘fair market value assessment’. In other words, if the league deemed the fee spent by Al Hilal excessive, Newcastle would have to revise down their profit on Isak in their PSR calculation. The ramifications of a move to Saudi Arabia would be even worse on the continental stage. Under UEFA rules, player sales between related parties — which Newcastle and Al Hilal are — have to be measured at zero profit (or a loss), just as Allan Saint-Maximin’s move to Al Ahli in July 2023 was. Isak could be sold to Al Hilal for £150m and Newcastle would enjoy the cash, but under UEFA rules, they’d be disallowed from booking any profit — thus doing nothing to improve their ability to remain compliant on the European stage.

From €127m star to €20m flop - the remarkable rise and fall of João Félix https://www.transfermarkt.com/from-euro-127m-star-to-euro-20m-flop-the-remarkable-rise-and-fall-of-joao-felix/view/news/457478 Most players typically welcome the opportunity to thrust their profile into the public limelight when they make a transfer from one club to another, but few would begrudge João Félix from avoiding such attention when he inevitably leaves Chelsea in this summer’s transfer window. Because, much like his entire career to date, the Portuguese forward’s time at Stamford Bridge has largely been one of frustration and failure. And, once again, Félix has struggled to live up to the hype or indeed the transfer fee that was placed on him. According to reports in Portugal, the 25-year-old talent is set to return to Benfica in a deal that would see the Liga Portugal club pay €20 million for 50 percent of the forward’s “rights”. Should Benfica ultimately pay the full €40m to make the move permanent, it would take the total transfer fees paid for Félix over the course of his career to a staggering €236m - placing him above Ousmane Dembélé (€220m) and behind only Cristiano Ronaldo (€247m), Romelu Lukaku (€369m) and Neymar (€400m) on the list of players that have had the highest amount of transfer fees spent on them over the course of their careers. Indeed, when we flick through the pages of Félix’s career we can see that it has been one dominated by big moves and the player struggling to live up to any of them. For example, in 2019 the young forward swapped Benfica for Atlético Madrid for an astronomical fee of €127.2m - which remains the fifth biggest transfer fee ever paid for a player in the history of the sport. However, Félix certainly didn’t live up to that fee by any means and as we can see in the timeline of his market value, after it quickly shot up to a career high of €100m it began to then steadily fall as his performances for the Spanish side offered little to suggest that he was worth the hype. By the time Félix departed the club to join Chelsea on loan in January of 2023, his market value had halved to just €50m. And it was only going to continue going down. Despite a much-heralded move to Barcelona promising a restart for the Portuguese star, it did little for his market value as it continued to drop. And by the time Atlético were prepared to finally cash in on Félix in the summer of 2024 his market value had dropped to €30m. Although the fee Chelsea ended up paying for Félix was less than half that paid by Atleti five years prior, it still hung around the forward’s neck like an albatross. And since then he’s struggled to even live up to a relatively paltry fee of €52m. As we can see in the graphic above, which shows the player’s goals and assists in league competitions over the course of his career, Félix’s fundamental problem has been an inability to perform in Spain, England or Italy as well as he did in Portugal. Injuries have certainly played their part. Ankle injuries ruled the forward out for much of the 19/20 season and then again in the 21/22 campaign when he missed a total of 20 games. However, that doesn’t excuse the fact that the forward has typically averaged around half the goal contributions he achieved in his final season at Benfica in each of the following six seasons. As such, a move back to Benfica perhaps makes perfect sense for Félix. Despite the astronomical fees spent on him and the best attempts of no less than four of Europe’s biggest clubs, the Portuguese forward has simply failed to be the player he promised to be when he left his home nation in 2019. Maybe, once European football has moved on and the limelight is firmly behind Félix, he can get back to doing what he did so well in Portuguese football for the club that turned him into a world star.

lol at spuds

agree Malick Fofana at £40m or so is no long 'steal' territory Rodrygo is in 3rd place then Simons in 4th

and he gets to break in that superb new stadium

I think they meant £300m total, counting other players sold as well

Lyon have really jacked up their price for him after they won their appeal they went from wanting £24.9m including add-ons (which is when I was all BUY BUY BUY) to now wanting around £40m, including add-ons

you all will think me daft BUT do not sleep on Everton this season if they get their targets into the fold not saying they will be top7 or 8 but they may well be a decent club

I will do a dance if we get £20-25m for Sterling AND not have to pay anything more salary-wise (hello KSA)

Alejandro Garnacho Is Worse Than You Thought.

£40m and it is bye-bye

Huijsen being ambipedal was a huge plus for me at CB as well but Real Madrid came calling 😕

from other big boy clubs

coin flip between Yıldız and Rogers would LOVE either one here Rodrygo a cunt hair behind those 2, the more I ponder it

TOPJAW - Best Curry in London: Where Chefs Eat We’ve interviewed 200 chefs, industry dons and our favourite celebs on the Best of London, we’ve totted up all the answers and these are the Top 5 best curries as voted for by them. Best Curry doesn’t mean Indian, we receive answers from all regions around the world where curry is a significant part of their cuisine. However, I guess the Top 5 list is a reflection of our affinity towards Indian cuisine. Which question shall we do next? 00:00 Brigadiers 03:48 Tayyabs 07:20 BiBi 11:17 Darjeeling Express 14:15 Gymkhana Thank you so much for watching - we love seeing your comments!

Magic Grandpa is back — and Labour will laugh him off at its peril Everything about Jeremy Corbyn’s party launch seemed shambolic but there are very good reasons his former party comrades should be nervous https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/jeremy-corbyn-your-party-zarah-sultana-wqv373cwh It’s not altogether clear how seriously you’re meant to take a political party that can fit inside a single pantomime horse costume, especially when it’s riding about with no name. But still, it looked like it felt good for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana to be out in the rain. The launch event, if it can be called that, of Corbyn and Sultana’s new party took Westminster by surprise, but the party’s brand new leader denied it had been done on the spur of the moment. Launching a nameless political party was, he said, “totally coherent”, while standing in some very light drizzle in central London. For now, it is called “Your Party” and its leader explained that he couldn’t possibly name it until he’d read through all the suggestions, which can still be submitted at yourparty.uk. Suggestions, he said, had been coming in at “more than 500 a minute”, which does raise the possibility that some of them may not be altogether serious. When he was asked by a TV news reporter why it didn’t have a name, Corbyn cracked a little smile and said: “Well we’re open to suggestions for names so if you’ve got a suggestion for a name, bring it on. Any ideas out there, I’m ready to receive them.” He explained that the name would be chosen “by a final assembly later in the year”, which might sound hilarious, but don’t forget that was also his big idea, back in 2019, for his own party’s policy on Brexit. Well, not his big idea, his shadow Brexit secretary’s big idea in fact. Whatever happened to him. Things like, you know, just choosing the name yourself, is not for them. That’s the sort of thing, according to the two-page letter the pair of them published on X, that the “top-down control freaks” in the Labour Party do. His former party is doing its best to pretend not to be worried. “The electorate has twice given its verdict on a Jeremy Corbyn-led party”, was how one anonymous Labour Party figure put it to the BBC. But that cheery little smile on the face of magic grandpa is a little bit of an earthquake. One of the verdicts of the electorate on Corbyn wasn’t all that damning, in the sense that he received 12.9 million votes, which is about three million more than Starmer managed last year. Corbyn announced his new, unnamed party in central London on Thursday LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES Corbyn came within a whisper of victory, which we must believe would definitely have horrified the prime minister and half his cabinet, all of whom campaigned for him. Even in the middle of a Labour landslide, people out there who share Corbyn’s worldview cost Starmer Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire, who would both have been in the cabinet, and very nearly cost him Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips too. If smiley, twinkly, albeit still-wrong-about-everything Corbyn has got four years in him then he might even be, in a crowded field, straight in at number one as his former party’s worst enemy. It’s easy to laugh at Corbyn. In fact I would strongly encourage it. It’s the only viable psychological coping mechanism. But if they’re laughing in Downing Street, then they might live to regret it.

Gaza, Corbyn … and golf with Trump? Starmer’s summer of pain The prime minister is facing challenges on multiple fronts as Labour’s poll ratings continue to slide https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/nigel-farage-jeremy-corbyn-trump-starmer-pain-s5j7th20c Sir Keir Starmer is looking forward to President Trump’s visit. The prime minister is hoping that it will generate largely positive headlines, potential breakthroughs on US tariffs on steel and pharmaceuticals and an agreement to strengthen support for Ukraine. The wargaming in No 10 has even extended to what to do if Trump asks Starmer to play a round of golf — a sport the prime minister has zero interest in. The conclusion was that Starmer would be prepared to try his hand if it helped bolster the special relationship. But on the eve of Trump’s arrival, President Macron dropped the equivalent of a political bomb. The French leader announced that he would formally recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. • Why Israel can’t brush off France’s recognition of a Palestinian state “We must finally build the state of Palestine, ensure its viability and enable it, by accepting its demilitarisation and fully recognising Israel, to contribute to the security of all in the Middle East,” he said. Downing Street had advance notice that a shift in the French position was likely, but did not expect it to come so soon. It now poses a potential diplomatic nightmare for Starmer, and there is a risk that the pressure — from both without and within — becomes overwhelming. Labour is committed to recognising a Palestinian state — the party’s manifesto described statehood as an “inalienable right” — but Starmer has consistently argued that it must come when it has the “greatest impact”. Cabinet ministers, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, have been urging him to press ahead with recognition. More than 100 Labour MPs have signed a cross-party letter calling for recognition, describing it as a “historic responsibility”. The prime minister is hoping to seek clarification on tariffs CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES However, any shift in position during the Trump visit would have been explosive. To say that Macron’s announcement has not gone down well in the White House is an understatement. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said: “This reckless decision only serves Hamas propaganda and sets back peace. It is a slap in the face to the victims of October 7.” Starmer responded to Macron by putting out a statement that was strong on rhetoric, describing the suffering and starvation as “unspeakable and indefensible” and warning of a “humanitarian crisis”. On Friday, he hosted a call with Macron, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, to discuss the issue. In the end, he opted to keep the line. He said the government’s support for a Palestinian state is “unequivocal” but that it should only happen at a time of “maximum utility” as part of a “pathway to peace”. The UK’s preconditions — that there should be a ceasefire, the restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the return of hostages — remain. How sustainable that line is remains to be seen. Recognising a Palestinian state, as President Macron will do, was in the Labour Party manifesto TIMOTHY A CLARY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES How Corbyn’s new party could hurt Labour At home, Starmer is facing a new threat from an old enemy. In Downing Street, the launch of Jeremy Corbyn’s political project on Thursday was met with no little trepidation. But at Reform UK’s headquarters in Westminster, there was an air of celebration. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, said: “I think Corbyn’s going to attract a vote. “There is growing appetite in certain quarters for old-fashioned Marxist socialism, and it will hurt Labour. If they are able to organise sufficiently and field large numbers of candidates, it will help us enormously.” For all the farce surrounding the launch of Corbyn’s political project — which still remains nameless after initial confusion — it has the potential to do real damage to Labour. The Corbyn pitch is simple — the “mass redistribution of wealth and power” and an end to the “genocide” in Gaza. For those on the left disenchanted with Starmer after the compromises of a hugely challenging first year in power, it may prove to be irresistible. • Jeremy Corbyn’s new party could seriously damage Labour Reform thinks Corbyn’s party can pick up 10 per cent of Labour’s vote in many seats, splitting the left and potentially paving the way for Farage to reach No 10. Polling by YouGov suggests that 31 per cent of those who voted Labour would consider voting for a new party led by Corbyn. Corbyn said that 230,000 people have already signed up to support the project, which was launched sooner than planned. James Schneider, a former Corbyn aide who is helping set up the party, said it would offer “class war with a grin”. He added in an interview with the New Left Review: “The reason for our problem is the bankers and the billionaires. They are at war with us, so we are going to be at war with them.” He said there will be a conference in the autumn and that there will be a “collective leadership team”. “It basically means building the car while driving,” he said. The goal was political meetings that are “lively, participatory and rooted in popular culture — with music, food, even dancing”. Asylum hotel protests in the UK At the same time, Starmer is having to contend with the threat of riots. Downing Street is increasingly concerned by the scenes outside asylum hotels in Essex, Norfolk and east London, especially in the wake of the Southport riots last summer. On Monday, Farage used a press conference, given on the theme of law and order, to warn that Britain is on the cusp of “civil disobedience on a mass scale”. Nigel Farage, Reform UK’s leader, is delivering speeches on failing law and order in the UK THOMAS KRYCH/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES On Tuesday, Starmer and his ministers discussed the issue at cabinet, and in place of the usual banal readout was something far more evocative. • Why are we seeing anti-immigration protests again? Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, warned colleagues of the “profound” impact of migration and technological change on society. It was no coincidence, she said, that 17 of the 18 places that experienced the worst disorder last summer ranked among the most deprived. While Rayner’s diagnosis was clear, her solution — that the government needs to invest more in local areas to restore pride and deliver on its priorities — has been questioned. One minister said that Labour risked inflaming the situation further but putting the issue up in lights. Reform will use the backdrop of the escalating tensions to continue to hammer home its message on law and order. Farage said that next week he will hold another press conference with “acknowledged experts” on the issue as he seeks to put law and order alongside migration as the party’s core message. “I think it is societal collapse,” he said. “People sense it. They sense that something is going awfully wrong. The country is going down the drain for it, I’ve decided to make it a really big campaign.” How junior doctors’ talks unravelled Furthermore, the government’s clash with resident doctors has turned into attritional warfare. Starmer’s decision to take on the British Medical Association (BMA) directly means there is no hope of a quick resolution to doctors’ strikes. • Meet the BMA leaders behind the resident doctors’ strikes in 2025 After the acrimonious collapse of negotiations, ministers concluded that the union’s leadership was unable or unwilling to negotiate a deal, and the only option was, in effect, to break the strike. Streeting has accused the union of “holding the country to ransom”. Privately, he is said to have compared his emotions to a parent who has been “really let down by one of their children” after taking office with huge sympathy for resident doctors, previously known as junior doctors, but now feeling they have exhausted his goodwill. While there were some indications that fewer doctors were out on strike than during a previous campaign, grinding down BMA resolve will be a long, attritional process. Government negotiations with the BMA over resident doctors’ pay have broken down TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP Ross Nieuwoudt, the BMA resident doctors’ committee co-chair, asked: “Could this dispute last forever, if the government never negotiates with us? “I guess theoretically, yes. If they’re not willing to genuinely take on board the warnings of resident doctors with their strike action, then it’s going to be really difficult to reconcile.” A protracted campaign of strikes would destroy Starmer’s already fragile hopes of hitting the routine waiting lists target. Turning round the NHS is one of the main reasons voters give for choosing Labour, and a failure to make tangible improvements would be politically fatal. In the meantime, when parliament returns in September, there will be a host of tectonic events, culminating in the autumn budget, where the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces the prospect of having to announce huge tax rises to balance the books. Some in government are already talking about it as one of the most challenging fiscal events in history. At a reception in No 10 this week, Starmer said he is “ready for a summer break”. He’s hoping to get away for at least a week in August, and a chance to escape the “weird ways of Westminster”. He even managed a joke at his own expense, drawing comparisons to the last Labour government when Oasis were touring the country. “The only difference is the poll ratings, but things can only get better.” The problem for Starmer is simple. What if they don’t?

Bonnie Blue: 1,000 men and the worrying normalisation of porn Bonnie Blue, 26, is the Gen Z Brit who earned £1.5 million a month posting footage online of her having sex with multiple men, with controversial stunts targeting university students. Janice Turner meets the most notorious woman on the internet https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/bonnie-blue-interview-1000-men-normalisation-porn-dd6rcq8gq Tia Billinger, aka Bonnie Blue: “It’s going to be difficult when I’m ready to date again, because of what I do” TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE If you’ve never heard of Bonnie Blue, ask your teenage kids, the guys down the pub, your female colleagues. In fact, anyone with a social media account. They may respond with disgust or lurid fascination, but I guarantee they’ll have an opinion on this outwardly ordinary 26-year-old from Derbyshire, who claims that on January 11, within a 12-hour period, she had sex with 1,057 men. This purported world record — one that goes undocumented by Guinness — begs many questions. How did she do it, given that’s 41 seconds per man not including changeovers? What was the physical toll? What childhood trauma led her to relish such gross public degradation? Because let’s be clear, what Bonnie Blue does is by most standards extreme: in videos her small, slight, naked body is passed like a toy between multiple men who take turns penetrating her mouth and vagina, often at the same time. She kneels attending to a whole circle of penises, working manically in rotation like a music hall plate-spinner. Occasionally the men slap or choke or urinate on her: sometimes she gags and retches or looks overwhelmed by this sexual feeding frenzy. Unlike most porn stars, she doesn’t bother to fake orgasms: she is there not to receive but to provide pleasure for men who conclude by ejaculating on her face. From a social media post in January @BONNIE_BLUE_XOX/INSTAGRAM And yet Bonnie Blue — now the subject of a Channel 4 documentary — is mainstream. You don’t need Pornhub to watch her: you can scroll unexpurgated clips of her “events” on X. Meanwhile, on Instagram and TikTok she posts nonstop wholesome scenes from her life: Bonnie with her fluffy dog; on a beach in a bikini; hungover eating lunch. The notion is she’s a normal girl who simply loves doing porn, and not just with other professionals. If you are a man, any man, “barely legal or barely breathing”, just turn up, join a queue and she’ll do you, although her preference is for 18-year-old virgins recruited at college freshers events. (A clip of one mother turning up to drag her son home went viral: “Where’s your coat?” she demands furiously. But it’s too late; he’s already had his go.) Bonnie is where the influencer economy meets the porn industry: horny teen boys get free sex with a famous girl in exchange for filming content that she monetises to earn millions. Her queue of men has been compared to strangers recruited online to rape a drugged Gisèle Pelicot, but I’m reminded too of lines you see outside any Instagram-famous shop or café: screwing Bonnie is about sex, but also participating in a craze. Is Bonnie, as she insists, an “empowered” woman, the ultimate expression of female bodily autonomy? Andrew Tate has described her as “the perfect end result of feminism”, and certainly “sex-positive” feminism has long valorised sex work, which must make Bonnie, coolly getting rich on gangbangs, a modern Emmeline Pankhurst or Germaine Greer. In any case, the results of our global experiment in exposing children to pornography before their first kiss is now here in human form. From Tia to Bonnie Her real name is Tia Billinger and we speak at the Times offices, where someone has booked us a glass-fronted room in the newsroom, meaning a constant stream of curious journalists flows by. She wears a pink Balmain minidress chosen by her Italian stylist, Ermes, but otherwise she looks like any nice, well-groomed twentysomething: luxuriant hair, shaped brows, natural make-up and nails, an athletic 5ft 3in figure, no boob job or tattoos or piercings, sweet face, veneered smile, grey-blue eyes with a fiercely direct gaze, which her right-hand man and videographer, Josh, calls her “death stare”. I felt I was interviewing two people. Tia, the bright, funny, polite northern girl who loves her family, crafting, pets and Netflix, is occasionally possessed by lewd, crude Bonnie. Beyond our room is a Sunday Times leaving do. “Does he want a farewell blow job?” she asks. Er, I think it’s a woman. She grew up in Draycott, a village between Derby and Nottingham, the sort of place, she says, “where your parents are neighbours with people they went to school with, and they live two minutes down the road from their parents. Which is nice, but it’s as if you can’t leave.” Her father was a welder who repaired railway tracks, working long hours often away from home. Her mother stayed home looking after Tia and her sister, then worked as a childminder, shop assistant and nursing home carer. It was a warm, close, loving childhood. Tia and her sister were crazy about dancing, taking nine classes a week of tap, ballet and freestyle, and in 2015 they took part in the British street dance championships. School bored her, but she thought about becoming a midwife until she saw that after four years’ training she’d be on £21,000. She was already earning that aged 16 by teaching dance and working in Poundstretcher. So she dropped out of A-levels, “not because I didn’t have a good work ethic. Quite the opposite; I wanted to work. I was hungry. I wanted to earn money. University would only have slowed my life down.” • Why you should watch sex scenes with your children So she worked in recruitment, “a glamorised call-centre sales job” placing finance assistants and accountants mainly within the NHS. She did that from 7.30am to 6pm for five years. “I felt like my life got so serious so quickly. My friends were still talking about missing homework while I was thinking, ‘I need to find a finance director for Derby Hospital.’ ” Articulate and engaging, she was good at her job and it brought material success: by 19 she drove a Mercedes C-class. She’d met her boyfriend, Ollie, a private-school boy, at a New Year’s Eve party when she was 15. They bought a house and were saving for a lavish wedding. Yet Tia was still deeply dissatisfied. “I kept thinking, ‘Is that all there is?’ The desire to leave your home town is quite strong, isn’t it?” In older friends she saw her life mapped out: a kitchen extension, one nice holiday a year, 20 days’ leave, yearning for Fridays to come around. She wondered if a baby would help, but she wasn’t pregnant after 18 months of trying and tests revealed it would be hard for her to conceive. So once lockdown ended, she and Ollie, an estate agent, sold their house and cars, had a register office wedding in February 2022 and moved to Australia’s Gold Coast. Here material things mattered less, “because when you open your back doors, you’ve got the most beautiful beach and you get a cheap lilo from the corner shop”. A planned gap year turned into two. Then family and friends told her it was time to find a job. “They said, ‘You’ve had the best two years of your life.’ And that sentence was the biggest wake-up call, because I thought, yes, they were good years, but surely can’t be the best of my whole life.” Tia created her Bonnie Blue alter ego when she began performing in front of a camera online TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE ‘My first time as a cam girl, I was so nervous’ Resuming the nine-to-five filled her with dread and she’d noticed on TikTok “women, all different shapes and sizes and backgrounds, were getting extra money doing camming online”. Cam girls talk with and perform for men online. The first five minutes are free, and the trick is to lure a man into a virtual private room where he will pay per minute to watch you strip or perform sexual acts. “The first call, I was so nervous,” she says. “But I thought, worst case, I’ll slam the laptop shut and never mention it again. But instantly I enjoyed it, and I was good at it. It’s just sales, really.” Her alter ego, “Bonnie Blue”, was born, and Tia used skills acquired in recruitment to stand out from thousands of other cam girls. She knew how to work out exactly what a man wanted: “You ask them very open questions, so they fill in the gaps for you.” She kept a second laptop off-camera where she could google unfamiliar sexual practices. “One guy asked for SPH. I had to look it up. It’s small penis humiliation. Then I went, ‘Oh, your penis is so small. It’s pathetic. It looks like an AA battery.’ Some men love that, but I’d no idea.” Soon she was camming for hours, pulling in good money. I ask how Ollie felt and she says he encouraged her, “though he didn’t pimp me out”. In Australia she’d put on weight, lost her dancer’s body, felt self-conscious, especially as the Gold Coast was a hive of glamorous influencers. “I became really insecure. I’d cover up my body, cancel trips.” Having hundreds of strangers telling her she was beautiful raised her self-confidence. She insists her work wasn’t why Ollie returned to England and they are now divorcing. “We just grew apart.” After he left, Tia/Bonnie became a “full-service” escort. She recalls the first time she had sex for money. “I was nervous. I thought he might ask for a refund. It was a guy in his thirties with two kids and a missus. He booked a hotel. I remember saying to him, ‘OK, tell me what you like, what you enjoy.’ And he’s like, ‘Look, I just want sex. I’ve got to go in 20 minutes.’ It lasted about five or six. He hopped in the shower and left. I had the biggest smile on my face and £500.” • Porn, consent and body positivity: How to talk to your teens about sex She also joined OnlyFans, the British-owned subscription platform that, although it hosts content providers from chefs to celebrities, is chiefly known for porn. Then she applied her sales brain to climbing its rankings. She’d heard about Schoolies, a celebration at the end of Australian high-school exams, and went there to distribute business cards with a QR code to her OnlyFans page. She claims she was only musing whether to sleep with the boys when the Daily Mail ran a story calling her a sexual predator. So she leant into the publicity and offered herself free to 18-year-olds who would consent to be filmed, and then posted their brief encounters online. Her subscriber base soared. She had, it seems, invented a revolutionary category of sex work: the porn star who breaks through a laptop screen into a teenage boy’s life. Holding a sign saying “Bonk me and let me film it” (made by her mother), she slept with 150 18-year-olds at Nottingham University freshers week and 122 during US spring break in Mexico. The resulting outcry about her seducing and deflowering “barely legal” boys led to her being banned from Airbnb, Tinder, Hinge, Australia (for visa breaches), Fiji and Nottingham Forest’s City Ground stadium, where she’d advertised her location to fans. “But men,” she points out, “have made porn content with schoolgirls since day one. Sexy schoolgirls pretending they don’t want it, then two minutes later they’re bent over the desk. No one has ever caused an uproar about that. So why can’t I do a schoolboy?” She has a point. “Teen” is porn’s most searched online category and even before the internet, Hustler magazine’s most popular offshoot was Barely Legal: magazines and movies featuring girls of 18 who looked far younger and were frequently shot in student dorms being “sexually initiated” by older men. Porn as sex education Porn directors preyed on damaged girls from troubled homes, many of whom were abused as children: they had conveniently lower sexual boundaries and no one to protect them. Today such girls are still likely to end up in prostitution or grim Pornhub clips. But Tia/Bonnie is adamant she has no tragic backstory, no abuse, no “daddy issues”. As does Lily Phillips, another OnlyFans girl from Derbyshire, the subject of a YouTube film about having sex with 100 men. (Tia, who worked with her, claims Lily copied her world record idea.) Lily Phillips, who made a YouTube film about having sex with 100 men CHRISTOPHER L PROCTOR Tia tells me she lost her virginity at 13, to a boy of 14, and first started watching porn at 12. Lily was only 11. For their generation, born in the late Nineties, entering adolescence when smartphones first became widely available, this was unexceptional. In fact, Tia sees porn as vital sex education: “It’s probably best sometimes they watch some to see how it’s done.” Porn is first consumed now on average at 13, although 15 per cent are just 10. The fallout from this is just filtering through: in 2022, figures showed that the majority of sexual crimes against minors — including rape, assault, indecent exposure and voyeurism — were committed by other children. Tia and Lily didn’t think anything abnormal happened to them because porn’s narrative that a girl’s role is to serve male needs is now utterly normal. In her videos, Bonnie tells men she wants to be their “slut”, their “cum rag”. The disgustingness is not an unfortunate consequence but part of the point: she displays with relish her eyes almost blinded by semen, the bedroom floor littered with hundreds of discarded condoms. She claims gangbangs are her sexual kink. “I tell men, ‘Throw me around, destroy me, spit on me, slap me … I want you to make a mess of me.’ ” I say such porn has made men think that choking women during sex — a sometimes lethal act — is normal. “If I went on a first date, I’d want him to choke me,” she says. “I just think when rougher sex is posted, whether that’s on Pornhub or OnlyFans, it should have a warning. Like when you watch Britain’s Got Talent and it says, ‘Don’t try this at home.’ ” Yet she rarely orgasms in her films “because I need to concentrate, and there’s too much going on. Making sure my hands are both moving, my mouth is busy, the next guy is coming in …” So your porn has nothing to do with female pleasure? “I get a lot of pleasure from men’s pleasure,” she says, “knowing it’s turning them on.” Photographed on social media with (fake) police as a publicity stunt @BONNIE_BLUE_XOX/INSTAGRAM ‘If you could earn £1 million a month, you’d get your bits out’ By January, Bonnie claimed to have 800,000 OnlyFans subscribers — a mixture of free and paid accounts — making her its top content creator and, since it takes 20 per cent of earnings, its biggest cash cow. In the Channel 4 documentary, her mother remarks that although shocked initially by her daughter’s career, “If you could earn £1 million a month, you’d change your morals and get your bits out.” Tia/Bonnie turned the outrage about her having sex with young fans into online rocket fuel. She baited the (mainly) women who denounced her, saying they were too lazy to have sex with their husbands. To critics who said she was putting feminism back 100 years, she replied it was stay-at-home mums, not a financially independent woman like her, who were socially regressive. Soon everyone was talking and tiktoking about her and she felt her profile was high enough for her biggest event to date: sleeping with 1,000 men. The insatiable woman is a mythic figure, a source of horror and disgust from Messalina, wife of the Roman emperor Claudius, who was said to slip out of her palace to bed dozens of men in brothels, to the Singaporean porn actress Annabel Chong, who in 1995 replicated Messalina’s feat. Hired by the porn director John T Bone, Chong staged what was dubbed “the world’s biggest gangbang” on a set made to look like a Roman orgy. Chong, who was only 22 and had been brutally gang-raped as a student in England, claimed to be challenging gender roles when, over the course of 10 hours, she had sex with 70 men a total of 251 times. This record was broken by various porn stars and had been held since 2004 by Lisa Sparks, who at the third annual world gangbang championship in Warsaw reportedly had sex with 919 men. Tia/Bonnie organised her attempt on the record like a military operation, hiring a house in Marylebone and 16 staff to process the queue. Advertising her location on Telegram and X, she told men “to bring your friends, your family and your neighbours”. Hundreds showed up to have their ID verified and to wait in a corridor for hours. Condoms were provided and blue balaclavas for those who wanted to hide their faces on film. A “fluffer” was employed to get them excited. Some men had a few minutes alone but most took part in vast group sessions. To count towards her tally, each man needed to penetrate her vagina at least momentarily. Why do men like gangbangs? “Some find it fun,” she says. “I’ve had groups of friends just having a laugh, high-fiving each other. I feel more confident that if one of those guys felt depressed, he could reach out to one of his friends because they’ve got an open relationship, a connection.” (I wonder why they can’t, maybe, go paintballing.) She has security because, “I get scared that if a guy comes on another guy by mistake, they’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re gay. Why have you done that?’ ” When Bonnie appeared with him on the Disruptors podcast, Andrew Tate said men who enjoy gangbangs are gay. “He thinks everything’s gay.” Appearing on the Disruptors podcast with Andrew Tate in June @BONNIE_BLUE_XOX/INSTAGRAM Speaking of the physical toll of her world record, Tia/Bonnie sounds like a marathon runner pushing her body to the max. She talks of staying hydrated and keeping up her blood sugar halfway through with a doughnut. “Eight hours in,” she says, “I started to sting, so I thought I’m going to use some lube, but that stung more.” Her jaw seized up, but she was more concerned with her sexual reputation than the pain. I ask if she’s ever turned down a man and she cites one with a fake ID and another who shamed other men for their small penises. “I told him instantly to get out.” But aren’t some men disgusting or smelly? She says she tastes more Lynx aftershave than unclean penis. Then she tells me something so disgusting I gag — that she was once expected to lick the anus of a porn star with huge piles. Oh Tia, I say, and she says brightly she’d do it for anyone. “Mostly they’re quite clean.” What about loving sex? “I’m taking a break,” she says. “Me and my ex were together for a very long time and I’m fine not being in a relationship. It’s going to be difficult when I’m ready to date, because of what I do.” But, she adds, “Some of the sex I have with people is loving, but it’s not boyfriend and girlfriend loving.” TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE. STYLING: ERMES DE CRISTOFARO AND SUSIE LETHBRIDGE Too extreme for OnlyFans After she’d completed the 1,000-man gangbang and Josh was editing it to be sold to subscribers for an estimated £300,000, OnlyFans suddenly announced it would not host porn made with amateurs. Visa, which runs its online payment scheme, thought her material too extreme. Analysts have also noted that OnlyFans is preparing for an $8 billion (£6 billion) sale and didn’t wish to scare off buyers. So Bonnie hired 100 professional porn actors for another challenge. I sense she found this painful and unpleasant: the men were exceptionally well endowed and pounded her aggressively. But she needed new content to maintain her ranking. But then Bonnie announced another event: a human “petting zoo”. She would be tied up helplessly in a glass box, and people could do anything they liked to her while others watched. Some compared it to Marina Abramovic’s 1974 performance Rhythm 0, where the Serbian artist sat still before a table of 72 objects, including feathers, honey, a scalpel and a gun, which her audience could use on her. But Bonnie says she’d never heard of this, “and she gave them all these horrible sharp things — I was just going to have dildos and lube”. For OnlyFans the petting zoo was the limit: Bonnie was kicked off the site, cutting her income instantly from £1.5 million a month to zero. She quickly joined another platform, Fansly, where she has built up 30,000 subscribers. But she says OnlyFans then told her she could not upload her 1,000-men event, which she claims cost £100,000 to host, because the men’s consent forms don’t grant permission to other sites. So all her hard work is still in the can. The Andrew Tate podcast helped raise her profile, but also aligned her with a loathed misogynist who faces rape and human-trafficking charges, though he has denied acting unlawfully. So to keep relevant, to maintain her income, she is forced to create ever more extreme content. One option is to release a tape of her having anal sex, which, unusually for a porn star, she has never done. “That would probably get me £1 million.” (Lily Phillips is releasing hers too.) To feed online rage, she has just filmed a “sex education” lesson in a classroom with very young-looking OnlyFans creators dressed in school uniforms. All look nervous; none has ever had sex in public. The boys are flushed from taking Viagra. Bonnie talks on camera of these girls needing to be “stretched out” by men. She is adamant they’re all over 18 and are never forced to do anything that makes them uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I say, it feels like a shift from selling her own body to pimping out young people, who may not be as secure and mentally strong. I get the death stare. “I’m not their mum. I’m not there to guide them. I’m here to say, ‘Hey, this is a business opportunity.’ ” The youngsters are not paid but hope creating content with Bonnie will raise their OnlyFans ranking. But what, you wonder, will be their futures, now this material is online for ever? And what of hundreds of other girls — and boys — who will follow them into this rapacious industry? Or the millions who will view what Bonnie does as a template for their own sex lives? Posing for her Instagram feed @BONNIE_BLUE_XOX/INSTAGRAM A few days later when I ring Tia/Bonnie, she’s on a lilo in the south of France, planning her next move. She is far from Draycott and her parents’ relentless, decent toil. “Each day I wake up so excited. I can’t believe this is my life.” Yet no one believes she’s really happy. “They say to me, ‘You’re a suicide waiting to happen,’ ” she explains. Unlike Lily Phillips, who broke down after her 100-men gangbang, Bonnie insists you’ll never see her cry. But it feels like she’s painted herself into a corner: what will she have to endure to top her already extreme challenges? She’s stopped going out much, because she’s scared the barrage of online hate may manifest as real violence. With her toughness, drive, looks and engaging personality, Tia reminds me of the flinty young women who win The Apprentice. Given the right breaks she could have made it in business, say, or TV. Instead, she will always be Bonnie Blue, the Stakhanovite sex worker, the Ayn Rand of porn. 1,000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story is on Channel 4 on July 29

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