Emilia Clarke has revealed she was afraid of being fired from Game of Thrones after she suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2011. Clarke, 36, played “Mother of Dragons” Daenerys Targaryen on the hit HBO adaptation of George R R Martin’s fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire. The British actor revealed she “was struck” by the bleed on the brain after filming the first season of the show, in a 2019 essay for The New Yorker. Clarke described how she began to feel a “bad headache coming on” while she was getting ready to work out at a gym in north London “to relieve the stress” around the release ofThrones. Soon after, the star collapsed and was taken to hospital. “The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain.” she wrote at the time. In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the Me Before You star reflected on being diagnosed with the brain condition that turns fatal for a third of all patients, and how she feared it would cost her the part which eventually catapulted her to global fame. “I wasn’t afraid of dying,” she said. “I was afraid of being fired! “I decided: ‘This is not something that’s going to define me’. I never gave into any feeling of ‘Why me? This sucks’. I was just like – gotta get back on it,” the Emmy winner added. Clarke also said she felt “very ashamed” and like she was “broken” after a routine operation to address a second bleed went horribly wrong, as she worried the show’s producers would see her as an “unreliable person that they’ve hired” for the job. After the second surgery, Clarke experienced aphasia – a disorder that impacts a person’s ability to speak or understand speech – as she worried about the security of her job which “centred on language, on communication”. “Without it, I was lost,” she wrote in the first-person essay. Elsewhere in the new interview, Clarke admitted “I might have turned into a right old d***head” if she hadn’t had the brain haemorrhages, “thinking I was the bee’s knees, living in Hollywood”. “I’m so much more aware of what’s happening, in the moment that it’s happening. I don’t worry about failure – I thrive on failure! If something goes wrong, I always think you can fix it. It hurts, it’s scary, but then you can do anything,” Clarke, who co-founded medical charity SameYou for survivors of brain injuries, added. Read More Duchess of York ‘proud’ to launch breast cancer campaign on Loose Women Doctor highlights most commonly misdiagnosed health conditions in women Mom explains how to ‘raise your baby like it’s your third’ Duchess of York ‘proud’ to launch breast cancer campaign on Loose Women Doctor highlights most commonly misdiagnosed health conditions in women Mom explains how to ‘raise your baby like it’s your third’

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The Duchess of York will make her debut on ITV’s Loose Women to launch a breast cancer awareness campaign following her treatment for the illness earlier this year. Sarah Ferguson underwent an eight-hour single mastectomy operation after discovering she had an early form of breast cancer during a routine mammogram. The special episode, billed as Ferguson’s first TV appearance since revealing her diagnosis, will launch its “Don’t Skip Your Screening” campaign to highlight the importance of being checked for cancer. The duchess will join presenters Christine Lampard, Coleen Nolan and Brenda Edwards on the show’s panel to discuss the campaign and her own experiences since being diagnosed with breast cancer. Ahead of the show on Thursday (2 November), Ferguson revealed she nearly skipped the screening appointment “that saved my life” adding that her cancer journey “underlines the importance of getting screened” regularly. “I couldn’t face a journey into London on a hot day this summer and it was only my sister Jane’s insistence that I went, that persuaded me,” the mother-of-two said. “My cancer was completely symptom-free – I never found a lump and did not feel ill.” Doctors noticed a “shadow” in one of her breasts during the screening in May, which was later diagnosed as cancer. Ferguson added that she is “proud” to support the campaign, which is being backed by NHS England, to encourage other women to attend the appointments when they are invited. In July, Ferguson confirmed she underwent an eight-hour-long single mastectomy, adding that the diagnosis was “scary” for her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, during an episode of her podcast Tea Talks. She said: “I think it’s scary for any family member out there, you really start looking at your own demise. It’s a wake up call, and you think, right okay, how am I going to deal with this?” Ferguson also advised her listeners to “do the screening, catch it quick”, while thanking the medical professionals at King Edward VII’s Hospital in London for their care and treatment. Earlier this year, Ferguson also explained how the mastectomy helped her overcome the “self-hatred that stemmed from years of being compared to Diana. During a separate episode of her podcast, Ferguson suggested she had to have a “body part cut off” before she could “wake up”. She told her co-host, Sarah Thompson: “Not because of seeing death, but waking up to stop worrying, stop self-hatred, stop self-doubt, stop all these things. Stop not liking yourself, really, please, honestly. “Does it take that?... Yes, it did in my case,” Ferguson continued. “[I] didn’t like myself and that was because I think I was always compared to Diana and I think at the end I sort of believed my own press which is not too good.” Charity Breast Cancer Now said it is “extremely grateful” that the show is “shining a bright spotlight on breast screening” and “highlighting the important issue of tackling the shortfall in women having breast screening caused by the Covid-19 pandemic”. In a statement, it added: “Breast screening is a vital tool in helping to detect breast cancer at the earliest possible stage, when treatment is more likely to be successful. “We encourage all women to attend breast screening appointments when invited and to regularly check their breasts, reporting any unusual changes to their GP as soon as possible.” The duchess will join the panel on Loose Women on 2 November from 12:30pm on ITV1 and ITVX. Read More Sarah Ferguson shares heartfelt tribute to Matthew Perry following his death Doctor highlights most commonly misdiagnosed health conditions in women Mom explains how to ‘raise your baby like it’s your third’ Doctor highlights most commonly misdiagnosed health conditions in women Mom explains how to ‘raise your baby like it’s your third’ ‘It was terrifying’: All the things Jada Smith Pinkett has said about her alopecia

We’ve all been there. A friend’s wedding is three days away and you don’t have anything to wear. The last thing you want to do is drag yourself around high-street shops, so it inevitably you turn to ASOS. After all, the company is known for its next day delivery and simple free returns service. Though many of us are reliant on the online fast fashion retailer for last-minute holiday purchases or big seasonal shops, a new report shows that ASOS’s pre-tax losses ballooned to almost £300m in the year to 3 September, compared with £31m the previous year, according to the results published on Wednesday (1 November). Despite its huge popularity, the once undisputed queen of online retailers now faces stiff competition from abroad, challenging economic headwinds, and a maturing clientele potentially seeking a more tailored experience. Leading some to ask, is ASOS in SOS? When ASOS was launched in 2000, the online retailer was considered revolutionary. It was like a supersize department store at your fingertips and became the first online retailer that UK customers could visit and find hundreds of dresses for £30 all in one place. But, in recent years, the company has been cutting its stock as it faces severe profit and revenue losses. In July and August, the retailer said it was hit by wet during the summer months, forcing the retailer to cut its stock by 30 per cent. Some experts now say that the holes within ASOS’s business model are becoming apparent. Rick Smith, Managing Director of business recovery firm Forbes Burton tells The Independent that ASOS’s business model of allowing large numbers of free returns makes the company susceptible to financial losses during challenging economic conditions. “The buying culture within their target demographic sees several items returned for each order placed, which can make for slim profit margins,” Smith explains. “ASOS has enjoyed a stratospheric rise since their inception, but have perhaps reached their ceiling now and need to cut their cloth accordingly, especially given the amount of economic headwinds [such as as the cost of living crisis] in play at the moment.” The buying habits of consumers have also shifted in the 23 years since ASOS launched. Smith says that sifting through hundreds of products has become a painstaking and often unenjoyable task for its customers. “Once large online retailers get to a certain size, it can become laborious for customers to scour their whole catalogue,” Smith explains. “The online fashion landscape is evolving now to a point that customers are looking for a more tailored service from websites.” With the rise of shopping on social media, too, young people are increasingly buying individual items from retailers on Instagram and TikTok or instead shopping directly from the brands that ASOS stocks, such as Pull and Bear, Stüssy and Bershka, which all have their own websites. “ASOS’s busy 20-something [target] market doesn’t necessarily have the time to sift through dozens of item pages,” adds Smith. “So curated collections and recommendations based on user input may be one of the changes they eventually look at.” ASOS, which originally stood for As Seen On Screen, initially started trading with the tagline “Buy what you see on film and TV” as it exclusively sold imitations of clothing worn by celebrities. That business model quickly expanded away from the world of replica products: ASOS now offers 850 affordable to mid-range high-street brands and ships to 196 countries. But the company is also now tackling a debt issue, with net debt including leases now at £648.5m, up from £533m the year before. Analysts predict that the online fashion site may need to raise quick cash soon – potentially through the rumoured sale of its Topshop brand, which ASOS acquired when the Arcadia Group went bust in 2021 and closed Topshop’s bricks and mortar stores. Despite the profit slump and predicted future losses, José Antonio Ramos Calamonte, ASOS’s chief executive, said in the report that the company has made “good progress” in “a very challenging environment” and would continue to invest in its brand and stock more fashionable lines of clothing. The company plans to spend £30m more on marketing and said it was going “back to fashion” with its products “geared around fashion and excitement”. As ASOS faces huge losses, it was reported this week that the Chinese-founded retailer Shein has acquired UK company Missguided, with plans to “reignite” the online retailer that was only bought out of administration by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group a year and a half ago. Despite calls for boycotts from anti-fashion campaigners, Shein is currently valued at around £53bn, having expanded globally and bought many of its rival brands. In 2022, it was the most-googled fashion brand in the world and made a reported £18.9bn in revenue, suggesting that fast fashion is not falling out of favour with consumers who want to find entire outfits on a budget. 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