Ronan Keating took the plunge into the Irish Sea at Holyhead last night at the start of a charity swim from the UK to Ireland. The relay for Cancer Research UK will see five celebrities swim 56 nautical miles (120 kilometres) from Holyhead, in Anglesey, North Wales, to Dublin.
Ronan is joined on the challenge by TV presenter Jenny Frost, Strictly star Pamela Stephenson, gadget guru Jason Bradbury and Olympic medallist swimmer Steve Parry. They are hoping to raise £1 million.
The team, supported by five ‘super swimmers’, had been due to set off at lunchtime today, but favourable weather led organisers to bring the event forward by 15 hours. At 9pm last night, hundreds of people clapped and cheered at Holyhead Sailing Club as Ronan, wearing a black wet suit, pink swimming cap and flippers, made the sign of the cross and took his first step into the water. Once at sea, each of the 10 participants will take turns swimming for one hour until the arduous task is complete after an estimated 40 hours. Keating, (34), came up with the idea with Sir Richard Branson, who was also due to take part in the relay but pulled out at the weekend after his Caribbean home on Necker Island burned to the ground.
Ronan tweeted six hours ago: “Time for a quick snooze before I'm back in the sea again for @JoinTheSwim.”
Justin Bieber was involved in a traffic scare in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon after his Ferrari collided with a Honda. Justin and his flashy motor are reportedly fine and undamaged following the prang, which has been described as a "minor" fender bender by local cops. It’s not clear who was at fault, but neither party is expected to be charged with any traffic offence.
Beyonce Knowles's pregnancy announcement at the Mtv Vma awards on Sunday night sent social media website Twitter into overdrive according to Twitter's official global PR feed, @TwitterComms. It set a new record with an incredible 8, 868 tweets per second shattering the previous record set during the US women's soccer team nail biting penalty shoot-out against Japan in July earlier this year which created 7,196 tweets per second. Although only 5 years old, in the past week twitter announced that its users are sharing 350 billion items per day and has 600,000 users signing up daily.
X Factor JUDGE Tulisa Contostavlos went on a romantic break with her boyfriend and fellow N-Dubz star Fazer.
The pair, who are two thirds of the band that also includes Dappy, took a trip to Cork before she jets to Greece to film judges' houses.
Tulisa, 23, who also sported over-sized shades, recently thanked 24-year-old Fazer for his support, saying: "I'm really happy and have the best boyfriend.
"He's really supportive in what I'm doing with the show. He's my rock. He's been there for me throughout the past few months and I couldn't do it without him."
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