When it was first broadcast the show was a staggering success, proving that the children yearn for technologically advanced hobbit-hole dwellings and tubby custard all illuminated by a sun with a baby in it.
Speaking of which, it’s actually been so long since Teletubbies was on that the baby from the sun, a woman called Jess Smith, has grown up and had a baby of her own.
The show became a global phenomenon as it was viewed by millions of tender tots around the world, with the notable exception of one episode which ended up getting banned after it traumatised a generation of kids with a creepy lion thing.
As for what this has to do with TV star Emily Atack, it turns out she has a familial connection with one of the Teletubbies.
That’s him on the top left playing Tinky Winky. (BBC)
Between the years of 1997 and 2001, a time one might argue was the golden age of Teletubbies, the role of Tinky Winky was played by Atack’s uncle Simon Barnes Shelton.
Atack is probably best known for appearing on The Inbetweeners and I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! but it’s likely that even more people saw her uncle Simon on Teletubbies during their younger years.
People discovering this nugget of information over on Reddit were amazed that you could ‘learn something new every day’ and this was going to be the day’s trivia.
Sadly, he died several years ago at the age of 52.
At the time of his death, Sky News reported that the actor had been found ‘frozen to death’ in Liverpool, with a coroner saying that he had been found dead from hypothermia on 17 January, 2018.
It turns out TV star Emily Atack was niece to the actor behind Tinky Winky. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Sky added that his niece had paid tribute to his memory following his death, calling him ‘the kindest and most talented man you could ever wish to meet’.
He’s not Atack’s only famous relative, as her grandma’s cousin is Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney and she’s also the niece of Phoenix Nights star Ted Robbins.
A famous family indeed.
As for Teletubbies, original sketches of the characters brought onto Antiques Roadshow turned out to be worth an astoundingly large amount of money.
Unfortunately for those hoping to revisit a slice of their childhood, the original set for Teletubbies ended up being flooded by the owner after they got sick and tired of people trespassing and making a nuisance for themselves.
Now all of these beloved memories are submerged.
Featured Image Credit: Karwai Tang/WireImage / BBC
Topics: Emily Atack, Celebrity, TV and Film
Former Inbetweeners star Emily Atack has spoken out against rumours that she is dating her cousin.
The 34-year-old spoke about her relationship with boyfriend Alistair Garner, who is a nuclear scientist, for the first time, touching on the claims which she has dubbed as ‘awful’, as it has impacted her family.
Atack, best known for playing Will’s love interest Charlotte Hinchcliffe in the E4 classic The Inbetweeners, became a mum back in June this year, as she welcomed son Barney James Garner with her partner.
The actress has hit back at ‘cousin’ rumours (Instagram/emilyatack)
The couple have reportedly known each other for decades through their families, as it is said that Emily’s mum, who happens to be actress Kate Robbins, is sisters with Alistair’s step-mum Jane Garner.
However, it should by said that it’s only a relation through marriage, i.e sister-in-law.
Atack was first romantically seen with her partner back in September 2023 as they were snapped walking hand in hand together in London, enjoying some drinks in the British capital.
According to a source at the time, they ‘couldn’t stop smiling’ as they left together while ‘holding hands’.
However, Atack has revealed that since the news on their relationship dropped, she has been suffering from a number of false comments about the relationship she has with the father of her child.
Speaking in an interview with the Guardian, she revealed: “There were so many articles which were really hurtful, trying to make out there was something untoward about my relationship,
“There were headlines saying that I was dating my cousin, which is very damaging, very awful,” she highlighted.
The couple have a child together (Instagram/emilyatack)
The 34-year-old went on to explain: “We’re not related in any way. I think some family members found that very tough. It’s anger towards women. Men are so angry with sexy women. It’s like, ‘We’ll give you a little bit of power, but not too much. Here, you look nice on this front cover, but also, you’re a fat, ugly pig.’”
Atack’s damning words sum up what the couple have been going through over the past year or so in the public eye, as she has no blood relation to her other half.
Garner is a graduate of the University of Manchester, obtaining a PhD at the institution, while also working as a lecturer.
It is stated on the University’s website that the boffin is a ‘Materials scientist and electron microscopist specialising in the degradation of high performance alloys for nuclear and aerospace applications’.
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/emilyatack
Topics: Emily Atack, Celebrity, Entertainment
Apple users have discovered a ‘mind-blowing’ trick they can use for the keyboards on their iPad to type in numbers without having to fiddle with all that back and forth nonsense.
One would hope it’s not literally causing their minds to explode as that sounds devilishly painful and is also likely to be fatal.
Anyhow, you know how it goes, your keyboard on an Apple device can be a bit cramped, so you sometimes have to switch between the alphabet and the numbers or symbols that you need.
This can get a bit annoying when you have to jump back and forth, and one of the more popular requests for the keyboard on your Apple device is to stick a row of numbers at the top.
It’d be nice to have a row of numbers at the top, wouldn’t it? (Getty Stock Image)
However, if you’re on an iPad and have a keyboard where the letters and numbers are both on the keys then you can access both easily without switching.
A bloke who’d just been told about this said it blew his mind to learn it, saying that a ‘kid who’s living in 3022’ told him how to do it.
The guy showed his iPad keyboard and said that all you had to do was have the keyboard showing you letters with the numbers faintly above and then press and pull down the key with the number you wanted to type.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
It might only save you a scant few seconds but what is a smartphone or tablet if not something to be used as quickly as possible, you certainly don’t want to be dawdling when you type.
Press and pull down for the numbers when it looks like this. (tiktok/ict_mrp)
People learning the trick thought it was a ‘great time saver’ and was a ‘brilliant’ thing to know to slightly boost the quality of life of using an Apple device.
As for your phone, instead of tap-tapping to switch to the numbers and then typing them in you can hold down on the ‘123’ button and then swipe to the number you want, upon release it’ll type it and you don’t need to switch the keyboard back.
Again, this is saving you only seconds but it can work wonders to alleviate frustration.
It’s likely that there’s lots of cool stuff you can do with your gadgets which you don’t even know about, either because there’s nothing about it in the instruction manual or because you put that manual in a drawer several years ago and it has since vanished off the face of the Earth.
Take screenshots, for example. How many of you will get a quick snap of something to post in the group chat and make use of the ‘copy and delete’ feature?
Instead, your camera roll is likely to be clogged up with loads of screenshots you no longer need, while other features like typing questions to Siri or being able to switch off the sound when an alarm goes off so your phone isn’t screaming at you until you attend to it are also underused.
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Photo / TikTok/@ict_mrp
Topics: Apple, Technology
If you’ve ever watched Emily Blunt show off her acting prowess on screen, you’d never have guessed that she grew up with a stutter.
The British star, 40, has openly discussed her struggle with the speech disorder, describing it as like ‘an imposter living in your body – who doesn’t pay rent’.
Take a look here:
She has been a voice for other sufferers across the world and regularly uses her huge platform to shine a light on the topic, as she is all too aware of how it can impede someone’s everyday life.
Blunt said in 2018 that she was ‘grateful’ to publicise the ‘disability that lives very often in the shadows alongside its friends: fear and shame and humiliation’.
Although her breakout role in in The Devil Wears Prada in 2006 saw her star as hoity-toity assistant Emily Charlton, the actress had gone through childhood lacking a lot of the confidence that her character had.
She previously explained: “I was a smart kid, and had a lot to say, but I just couldn’t say it. It would just haunt me.
“My parents took me to speech coaches and relaxation coaches. It didn’t work.”
Blunt was reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps and join the entertainment world due to her stutter – but it was actually acting that helped to remedy her speech issue.
Vera Anderson/WireImage
The Oppenheimer star said: “Then one of my teachers at school had a brilliant idea and said, ‘Why don’t you speak in an accent in our school play?’
“I distanced myself from me through this character, and it was so freeing that my stuttering stopped when I was onstage. It was really a miracle.”
Ed Sheeran famously revealed that Eminem‘s third album The Marshall Mathers LP helped to ‘cure’ his stutter – so Blunt’s story isn’t the strangest solution so far.
But not everyone manages to leave their stutter behind when transitioning through their teenage years, which is why the actress is on a mission to make a movie about a person who suffers with the speech issue.
She believes a stuttering protagonist would help ‘destigmatise’ the speech impediment and allow more people to understand the complexities that come with it.
Blunt told BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour: “The emotional trauma of living with the inability to speak will limit you in ways, that are for someone who speaks fluently, pretty unimaginable. There’s so much shame about it.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
“There’s so much shame about it because there’s not enough information, it’s neurological. People really deem it psychological. So you’re sort of deemed off-putting or unconvincing in order to get a job, or anything like that.”
Neurological conditions affect the brain, spinal cord or nerves, wheres psychological conditions affect your mental state.
The Girl on the Train actress continued: “So as long as we can keep destigmatising it, then there won’t be so much shame – it can just be more acceptable – because I think it is one trait that is easily bullied still.”
Blunt proudly added that she will ‘always be a stutterer’ and admits she ‘flip-flops words around to substitute ones that are easier to say’.
“Certain environments will still create a struggle for me – if someone asks me to pitch them anything it’s a nightmare, she added.
“But I did sort of grow out of it.”
Featured Image Credit: Robin L Marshall/FilmMagic/Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty
Topics: Health, TV and Film, Emily Blunt
I bet the origin story of your herbs and spices isn’t the first thing on your mind – but it might be interesting all the same.
A lot of us are guilty of overlooking our selections of seasoning and simply add a dash in the pan before locking it back up in the cupboard until the next mealtime rolls around.
And we really ought to give our favourite flavourings a bit more credit – take the pretty and punchy paprika, for example.
Getty Stock Image
It is loaded with nutrients, can help reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease, promotes healthy vision, reduces inflammation, improves immunity and can even help alleviate gas. Winner winner.
Paprika is packed with lots of healthy stuff, including vitamin A, capsaicin, and carotenoid antioxidants.
And to top it all off, a little sprinkle of the colourful powder – whether it’s hot, smoky or sweet – can really can take your meal to the next level.
It really is the everyman of the kitchen, sitting as confidently in a curry as it does in beef stroganoff.
But what actually is it?
Many spices and herbs are named after the plant from which they hail, with cumin powder made from dried cumin seeds and cinnamon taken from the inner bark of tree species from the genus Cinnamomum.
But there’s no such thing as a paprika seed, root or tree…so there aren’t many hints there.
In fact, the name ‘paprika’ stems from the ingredient it’s made from: pepper – sweet red peppers, to be precise.
But how does the salad staple end up turning into a delicious powder?
The red peppers are dried within an inch of their life and then ground down into a spice.
Getty Stock Image
You can add some chilli peppers in too to create varying levels of heat.
Simple, right?
Wrong – most people were still under the illusion that ‘paprika trees were a thing’ and have only just realised how the seasoning is actually made.
One said: “Learning that Paprika is just dried and crushed red bell peppers was really shocking.
Another added: “Like I dunno why I thought there was a Paprika tree somewhere.”
Some were baffled that others weren’t aware of the culinary fact as they believed it was ‘common knowledge’.
Getty Stock Image
Another social media user also posted a photo of a packet of paprika, which had red peppers on the front – and finally, the penny dropped for them.
They said: “I just pulled this out, which was obviously sent to me by my mother in one of her random packages and OMG.”
Others came forward with their own food-based misunderstandings, with one saying ashamedly: “You’re not as bad as me who didn’t realise guacamole is just avocados. I always thought it tasted familiar. SMH.”