Our pranks went viral but we had to call a truce... we didn’t want to end up in hospital!
Warning hi-tech store may have knock-on effect
into depression after his panned appearance as the ITV’s show’s host, alongside Caroline Flack, in 2015.
Despite that, he is still one of The X Factor’s most successful acts, selling 17million records with four No1 singles and six albums. Still having a massive fan base, he was set to embark on a huge UK tour last year, which is due to resume this summer.
And this time around, he says he is itching to leave the house. “I’ve really struggled with this last lockdown, much more than the first.
“I’m not sure why, if it’s because I’m more frustrated and angry. It’s just dragging on too long, but I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“The Voice has been a great distraction. Because we recorded the battles last year, I have had a lot of time to get the contestants ready.”
Olly embarked on a romance with Amelia, 27, a Lloyds Bank worker and bikini model, in 2019 after coming across her Instagram profile.
He asked her to move in with him at the beginning of last year. A year on, he says they are both “stronger than ever”, while the fitness enthusiast, who lifts weights every morning, has helped him get back into shape.
He says: “I’d asked her to move in before lockdown and that kind of saved me. It would have been weirder for us if we’d been pushed into it by the pandemic. We’re happy and life’s great. Our first date was at the gym. We have a common interest in training. In lockdown we made our own little room with some weights, it’s pretty basic but we’re doing what we can to keep fit and keep our minds active. We work really hard together and I enjoy it.
“Her exercises have helped me. If I’d continued doing what I was doing I’d have become really depressed. I love being around her.” He hints it might not be too long before there are others in his house he can play his pranks on.
“I want to have a family. Every birthday I think, ‘I’m not getting any younger, and I’d like to be a young, fit dad’. Amelia and I talk about it, and we’re both in the same place. Could it happen soon? Let’s see.”
The Voice UK’s first semi-final airs tomorrow at 8.30pm on ITV
STRANGE as it may seem, Boris Johnson and I have one big thing in common.
We were both sacked from
The Times newspaper.
I got my P45 for joining the strike by print workers against Rupert Murdoch during the Wapping dispute of 1986.
He got the boot in 1988 for making up quotes while learning to hate the EU as the Brussels correspondent.
There, the resemblance ends. I have not had cause to take industrial action since then, but he is still at it.
Like his hero Donald Trump, our Prime Minister inveterate, unrepentant liar.
Or, to quote (accurately, this time) a former French ambassador to Britain, “a congenital liar”.
I didn’t know you could lie with your genitals, but if you can, he will.
He lied to MPs, in Parliament, during Prime Minister’s Questions last week.
Asked by Hull North MP Dame Diana Johnson about the Government’s 40% cut in funding for Transport for the North (TfN), he blithely retorted: “There is no such cut.”
TfN board papers last is an month revealed the organisation’s core funding would drop from £10million in the current year to £6m in 2021/2022.
PMQs is a well-rehearsed, choreographed event. He must have known he wasn’t telling the truth.
Dame Diana isn’t the kind of politician to let him get away with it. She wrote to Number 10 asking him to put the record straight.
He didn’t reply.
She’s pursuing him in Parliament. It’s not over yet.
Dame Diana tells me: “In all the time I have been an MP, with five different PMs, he is the first one who has so obviously misled the House.
“And when given the opportunity by the media afterwards to come clean, and accept he got it wrong, refuses to do so.
“The evidence is clear. There has been a 40% cut in the budget of TfN.”
This isn’t an earth-shattering issue, so why did the Prime Minister lie? Because that’s his nature.
He’s built a meteoric political career on bluffing, fibbing and indulging in what his other hero, Winston Churchill, called “terminological inexactitude”. I just thought you ought to know that.
Johnson’s built a meteoric political career on bluffing and fibbing
AMAZON’S new hi-tech, till-free supermarkets could cause “considerable” job losses if rivals copy the idea, warns a financial analyst.
The online giant’s first Amazon Fresh store outside the US opened yesterday in Ealing, West London.
Customers scan a quick response code as they enter the shop then put items in their bag.
A network of cameras and sensors detect what they have picked. Shoppers simply walk out with their purchases which are then charged to their account.
Amazon’s Matt Birch said it offered a “super fast, friction-free way to shop”. Rival supermarkets will watch it closely,
with some already testing till-less stores.
Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, warned it would have a huge impact on jobs if others follow suit.
He said: “This is a cashless and cardless operation so think of all the people that affects, not just in stores but in banks too.
“It is absolutely going to lead to a considerable reduction in roles for people at head office and in branches.”
Mr Black predicted that rather than open hundreds of new Amazon Fresh stores, the huge company may snap up an existing supermarket chain instead.
Morrisons and northern chain Booths were among those he mentioned.
Last year Amazon, which already owns the small Whole Food Markets chain, saw its UK sales surge 51% to £19.4billion.
It came as experts at campaigners TaxWatch predicted a measure in the Budget could wipe out Amazon’s UK corporation tax bill. Chancellor Rishi Sunak increased the tax to 25% from 2023 but included a “super deduction” for companies when they invest.
Firms can offset the tax break against profits. Amazon has argued that heavy investment since it arrived in the UK two decades ago is one reason it had paid so little corporation tax.
TaxWatch executive director George Turner said: “It is highly questionable whether a tax cut for Amazon today is the best use of public money.”
Amazon has not said how many jobs the new stores venture will create in the UK. But it has previously spoken about the large numbers of workers it had taken on in its fulfilment centres, research and development.
The company said it has also launched a By Amazon range of hundreds of ownbrand products for the stores.
Cashless & cardless, think of all those it will affect
CLIVE BLACK WARNS OF IMPACT ON JOBS