The News of the World site has published the following article:

News of the World - Celeb Line-up for CelebFA
[list][*]ULRIKA JONSSON[*]WILL MELLOR [*]RUBY WAX [*]PAUL ROSS [*]JO BRAND [*]JOHN THOMSON [*]FEARNE COTTON [*]DAVID GINOLA [*]K KWEI-ARMAH [/list]

Thanks Andy dead chuffed to see David Ginola there....been out on the beers and am delighted to see his name there. Shall sleep happy tonight

Not a bad line up BUT no French & Saunders!

Please excuse my ignorance but who are ................

Will Mellor and K Kwei-Armah?

Will Mellor is an actor. A bit of a sex symbol - always taking his shirt off. His first major part was in the Channel 4 soap, 'Hollyoaks''. He then appeared in the sitcom, ' Pints of Lager etc...' and is presently appearing in either 'Holby City' or 'Casualty' (forget which one).

Don't know anything about K Kwei-Armah.

Thanks for the info Eejay

Have just found out that K Kwei- Armah is also an actor, he appeared in Casualty.

Ulrika being on is my worst nightmare. That media whore is one of my most hated celebrities

A quite good line up

I've put lots about Will Mellor on the thread about Marli & Celebdaq.
(I didn't think I knew who he was either, until last night, when I went Googling to good effect.)
He plays the 2nd lead male in '2 pints of lager & a packet of crisps': Gazza.
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Kwame Kwei-Armah I'd not heard of, till I just came online and saw this thread; but he's in the Radio Times last week (at least), in the Casualty cast: male (Finlay Newton, who is/was also a Holby City character).
Googling has shown me that he was born 1967 and has 3 children.
He is or was studying for a Masters degree in screenwriting; and has already written (or in some cases maybe co-written) several plays (including 'A Bitter Herb', which was produced at Bristol Old Vic in 2001, and 'Blues Brothers, Soul Sisters', which I think was a bit before that, and which I had hoped to see but didn't manage to get to).
<http://www.casualty.me.uk/characters/Fin/actor.shtml has a photo, as well as much of the about info plus some extra, and links to other photos.
By the time of that interview he was "going to the gym four or five times a week".
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Great to have John Thomson - the lovely kind 'softie' from Cold Feet.
He might get a lot of female sympathy votes.

Only if he stays off the booze and doesn't start thumping any women about!

Now Monsieur Ginola.............ah,please keep him in till the very end......sigh!

Sorry: perhaps you know something about him that I don't?
[Not difficult: I don't know much about him - I even - regrettably -managed to miss the first series or 2 (or 3?) of Cold Feet.]

Back to the actor/playwright (or vice versa):
I found this quote in a long article online (about August Wilson)
by John O'Mahony, Saturday December 14, 2002, The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4566479,00.html>
"the new generation of Wilson-influenced black dramatists, including British writers such as Tanika Gupta, Roy Williams and Kwame Kwei-Armah, whose new play opens at the National Theatre in London next year".

John Thomson has had a lot of bad press recently. He was done for drink driving and he split up form his partner either just before or after she gave birth to their child. He has - I believe - been in some kind of rehab for alchohol abuse.

As far as I am concerned IF he is indeed a woman basher then I just don't want to know - no matter how accomplished he may be as an artist. Men who bash about women (& no excuses are acceptable in my book) are just low-life scum bags.

Is it likely to be True press, or tabloid exaggeration or even invention?

I certainly don't think it's invention or he would have sued by now. His alchohol problems are fact (ie drunk driving offence and thus being dropped from the Lloyds TSB ads), the stuff about him hitting his fiance I'm not sure on. I do know he left her and made a statement that it was for the safety of his child so that it could be brought into a world where there was no animosity between it's parents. I'd wager it's safe to say they had a stormy relationship if nothing else.

Well said Eejay. As you say, we dont know, but if the pics and press reports are anything to go by, he wasn't being one of the Waltons or The Brady Bunch in his treatment of his fiance. Paul Gasquoine springs to mind

Tally, honestly, you can't judge this guy on the basis of stories in the papers. He may well have had a "stormy relationship", and decided that it was best for his child not to grow up in a household in which two parents are antagonistic towards each other. That might have been a mature and reasoned response in that particular situation. It certainly doesn't need to have entailed domestic violence. "Stormy relationship" can mean a lot of things.

Perhaps he has his problems, but I'm not going to condemn him on the basis of the tabloids' word.

Anyway...

Some people might recognise John Thomson as "Fat Bob" from Coogan's Run, and he was also in The Fast Show. I first noticed him doing warm-up for Steve Coogan as "Bernard Right-on", a northern comic in the Manning mould, but who only ever did very politically correct material, like:

"Two 'omoseckshuwels, right, two 'omoseckshuwels in the back of a van...

They're over 21, nothing wrong with that."

Well, perhaps you have to see it live.

Paul Ross is someone I really can't stand. He just seems utterly insincere to me. Ginola has always struck me as being in love with himself, so it'll be interesting to see what Wax does with him (if anyone ever saw her interview with Jean-Claude Van Damme, you'll know what I mean). Wax is the most interesting person in there, I reckon.

And it doesn't surprise me that there's someone in there who's had a couple of hits. But, I mean, what's the problem, really? It's a talent show, for celebrities. So they're all bound to have some degree of fame, anyway, to have even got this far (one hopes). And it's not as if that song went to number one - it only went top five. Ruby Wax once sang a couple of lines in a Shakespeare play she was in, I think, so it's perfectly fair.

I suspect Will won't say much for the first shows, and then become quite a clown towards the end, and perhaps even cheat on his girlfriend.

Do they get representation by The Firm?

News Article About Celebs in FA

Sounds like a good mix of Celebs, I wonder which ones make it into the FA house & who gets thrown out before it starts!

Your accent is certainly improving since being on this forum, you've almost lost that Flemmish twang!

I gave myself a get-out clause on John Thompson Mr P. He may be OK, all I said was he wasn't a saint- but none of you men are!

I see Will being the Darren Day of the bunch, but I'll not prejudge. Ruby Wax should be interesting. As for DG, it'll take a bit of time to take my eyes off him before I start analysing his character defects.
.....ah, the fickleness of women

Nicely put, Mr P: I second that.
We don't know the truth - we shouldn't make assumptions.
No-one's presented us with any evidence at all about women-bashing.
(I wonder whether the original announcement or whatever actually did say 'safety' of the child - or whether it may have used the very different yet possibly confusable term 'welfare'....)
(And the alcohol could stem from the unhappiness of the relationship - it's not necessarily the other way round.)

As regards Will Mellor: were you entirely joking, Mr P, or do you know whether he does have a girlfriend?
And does Fearne have a Significant Other?
Does Ginola?
Any others?
(I posted somewhere that KK-A has 3 children. I've read since that 2 are twins.)
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This afternoon my husband saw either this thread or the Celebrities Rumoured thread open, and asked whether he could reply and post "Who Cares?!"
I of course screamed "Not In My Name You Can't!", saying he'd have to Join himself if he really wanted to - but I did say I'd Make His Feelings Known!
Re Celebrity FA, last night he said "We're Not Having That On!".
Today he may have relented a little:
he said "We're Not Having That On, are we?"

Do any of you have any bright ideas re how to get him a bit more interested?
He does like football, but Ginola's not his ideal.
He also likes Jo Brand; but the other women in there he either dislikes or has never heard of (you'll know which).

Originally posted by Old Biddy
As regards Will Mellor: were you entirely joking, Mr P, or do you know whether he does have a girlfriend?

Sorry, no idea - I was trying to shoehorn a fairly lame gag about Will being the Lemar of the group in there (previous record, you see) - didn't really work, though, did it?



Re Celebrity FA, last night he said "We're Not Having That On!".Today he may have relented a little: he said "We're Not Having That On, are we?"

lol

Have just had a horrible thought - what if he doesn't get voted in on Friday night?

That'll teach you to be serious and humorous in one post! Actually I was going to pick up on the Will Mellor/The Firm thing but I couldn't think of a witty riposte

And fruitie, get the troops round to man the phones Friday night-Honestly comparing DG to a Belgian midget. Some people might want an eye test!