Influencer Molly-Mae Hague has made a return to vlogging, and in her Christmas YouTube video described a shopping trip in Manchester that was ’10 out of 10 horrendous’.
The 24-year-old social media star explained that she got stuck in a city centre car park for more than 45 minutes before facing busy Christmas shopping crowds.
Molly-Mae said she was in ‘a state of shock’ at the ‘absolutely not good’ shopping trip.
It’s the first live vlog she has shared in several weeks on YouTube, where she has more than 1.8 million subscribers.
Molly-Mae had previously only posted pre-recorded videos, bar one small clip where she tearfully addressed that she had been ‘going through it, in more ways than one’.
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In that older video, she said: “I’m hoping that in about a week I might be in a place mentally, physically and emotionally, where I can start filming some proper content for you again’.
Her silence had fuelled rumours that she and her fiance, boxer Tommy Fury, had split, but in her Christmas vlog she squashed any whisperings of that.
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The pair documented a cosy night in with a takeaway and Molly-Mae explained that they had changed their New Year’s Eve plans to take baby Bambi on their romantic trip to the Maldives with them.
The vlog of her Christmas shopping trip has already racked up 206,000 views.
Molly-Mae Hague vlogged herself stuck in a car park in Manchester for 45 minutes on a ‘horrendous’ Christmas shopping trip
In it, she said: “I have been sat in the queue for the Selfridges car park for heading on 45 freaking minutes. Is this a joke? Screaming, crying, throwing up.
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“Like I committed to the queue. I came around the corner, saw the queue, and I thought ‘if I commit to this, there’s no gong back, because a car will come behind me and I will be stuck’.
“Yep, stuck was the word. I instantly regretted it 10 seconds later because I was like ‘this ain’t moving darlings, this ain’t moving’ and now I’m stuck.”
Molly-Mae then showed her followers a pan of a relatively busy Selfridges on Exchange Square, before cutting back to herself sitting back in her car, slack-jawed.
“I’m not actually exaggerating when I say I think I’m in a state of shock. I think I’m actually in a state of shock at how horrendous that experience was.
“I don’t actually believe what I’ve just gone through in that, what, sorry, completely lost for words. What was I thinking?
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“What was I thinking that experience was going to bring me, seven days out from Christmas, in Manchester city centre?
“Like where is my brains, do I actually have any brains?
“It was from start to finish, not good. Absolutely not good.”
The video landed on Boxing Day as shoppers reported similarly busy scenes in stores for the start of the winter sales.
Chester Zoo welcomes The Traitors stars Claudia and Alan – but it’s not what you think
Lydia Mastrolonardo
No, Chester Zoo isn’t keeping actual Claudia Winkleman and Alan Carr in enclosures – everybody stand down.
The zoo is in fact welcoming its first pair of hooded vultures, to hopefully boost the critically endangered species, and they just so happen to be named after some of our favourite celebrities from The Traitors.
As famous as Alan Carr and Claudia Winkleman are, these two give them a run for their money, as the first of their kind to ever come to Chester Zoo – making them pretty big celebs in the animal kingdom.
The pair of vultures are currently nestling in to their new home, alongside their new white-headed vulture roommates, at the Heart of Africa aviary. It is here that conservationists are hoping the newly bonded pair will start a family, as part of a Europe-wide breeding programme, to help safeguard their species from extinction – no pressure or anything.
Bird Keeper Heather-Anne Pedley said: “Alan and Claudia came to us from the Horstmann Trust, a conservation breeding centre for vultures, where they are an established breeding pair. We named them after Traitors stars Alan Carr and Claudia Winkelman, because what better way to reflect how funny and engaging they are, than to name them after two national treasures?
“Nobody prepared me for how much I would fall in love with them, their antics and characters. They look like they’ve just put a hood up, and they have this beautiful blue ring around their eyes, like natural eyeliner.”
Alan and Claudia, Chester Zoo’s new vultures. Credit: Chester Zoo
Hooded vultures are distinctive with dark brown feathers, a buff ‘hood’ and a bald face and throat, with wingspans of up to 180cm. They are native to west, central and southern Africa, where they typically pick up their lunch by soaring over the land, looking for carcasses to feed upon as part of ‘nature’s clean-up crew.’
It’s not all gore though, they are very active, clever and interested in their environment. The couples are monogamous, will preen each other, gently touch each other’s bills and co-build nests – quite the romantics.
Heather-Anne added: “This pair are real love birds, and we are hopeful they’ll go on to breed. Any youngsters they go on to have will become part of a European conservation breeding programme, helping to create an insurance population for this incredibly rare species.
“In the wild, vultures help prevent zoonotic diseases – illnesses that can spread between species – because their stomach acid is so strong they can eat decaying meat that other animals would not be able to digest. This helps prevent the spread of diseases like anthrax and botulism into the soil.”
Despite their crucial role across various ecosystems, vulture numbers are declining and they are now sadly classified as critically endangered, according to the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species.
This decline is driven by mid-air collisions or accidental electrocution by scanning the ground for prey whilst perched on uninsulated power lines. These birds are also at risk of being poisoned or even hunted to facilitate an unsustainable demand for vulture body parts and eggs to be used in traditional medicine and rituals, while there is no scientific evidence to support this use.
We are really rooting these two and hope that they settle into their new home.
The BBC is looking for people to apply for the next series of The Traitors
Clementine Hall
The BBC is currently casting for the next series of The Traitors, and is looking for some deceptive Mancunians to take part.
It’s safe to say that The Traitors is pretty much a cultural phenomenon at this point.
Pretty much everyone and their dog is tuning in to watch The Celebrity Traitors on Thursday and Friday evenings, but this time it’s not about the celebs.
Producers describe The Traitors as a ‘game of trust and treachery’, and there’s always plenty of twists, turns, shocks, and surprises along the way – but do you reckon you’ve got what it takes to play?
If so, the BBC is currently casting for the next series of the popular show, and is calling on people in Greater Manchester and across the UK to apply.
Applications are currently open to players who are over 18 years of age and have the right to legally reside in the UK.
The first series of the smash-hit BBC reality competition show proved pretty popular when it premiered back in 2022, but the second series took things to a whole new level, and truly seemed to capture the attentions of the nation like no other – with millions of viewers tuning in to watch the three episodes each week.
But in case you haven’t seen it, The Traitors is, put simply, a competition series that’s built on strategy, suspicion, and deception, where a team of players are tasked with competing in a series of missions – with the more missions they complete successfully, the bigger the prize pot gets.
However, hidden among the players are the ‘Traitors’, who meet in secret and decide who to eliminate from their fellow players known as the ‘Faithfuls’.
The aim for the ‘Traitors’ is to stay undetected until the end, while the aim for the ‘Faithfuls’ is to banish all of the Traitors before the game ends.
Up for it? You have until 31 May 2027 to apply for the next series of The Traitors here.
Daisy Jackson -
27th December 2023 
