Jay Slater’s mother has returned to Tenerife for a documentary investigating the circumstances surrounding her son’s death.

The 19-year-old disappeared in the north of the island in 2024 after attending a music festival. His body was not discovered until 29 days later.

An inquest concluded that Mr Slater had fallen from a height and sustained fatal traumatic head injuries. No evidence of third-party involvement was found, and his death was ruled accidental.

During the search, his family faced a barrage of online speculation from amateur detectives, with social media users—including many on TikTok—promoting fantastical theories about what had happened to him.

In a new Channel 5 documentary, Debbie Duncan reveals that one question continued to trouble her after her son vanished. Hours before his disappearance, he had called friends to say he was lost and had no water—but did he suffer?

Ms Duncan, 57, travelled with her brother Glen to Tenerife’s Rural de Teno national park for the programme, Cause of Death, retracing the route Mr Slater is believed to have taken.

The filming took place several weeks after Ms Duncan received the delayed Spanish post-mortem report. It stated that her son died after falling into a ravine measuring 82ft in depth.

She also discussed the Spanish and British post-mortem examinations with pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd, who carried out the Home Office examination of Mr Slater’s body.

Dr Shepherd told The Sun that Ms Duncan’s main concern was whether her son had been conscious of what was happening before he died.

“She wanted to know how his injuries would have affected him,” he said. “I was able to tell her that yes, it was an awful injury, and yes, it killed him.”

“But the head injury was so severe that it probably would have killed him immediately. It was the end—there was no pain and suffering.”

“He wasn’t injured on the hillside dying slowly, and that was important for her to understand.”

Dr Shepherd said Ms Duncan’s determination to establish the truth had been intensified by the “hurtful speculation” surrounding the apprentice bricklayer’s death.

Online rumours claimed that Mr Slater had been murdered, while manipulated footage purporting to show him being tortured was also circulated.

However, investigators found no evidence that he had been deliberately harmed.

NEXT UP: Mayor Andy Burnham Puts Wife in Spotlight and Shares Kisses

Dr Shepherd said the Spanish and British authorities’ investigation moved slowly between the two countries, creating an information vacuum that online sleuths attempted to fill.

Despite the speculation, he said there was nothing to support any account other than the tragic fall recorded by the inquest.

He joined Ms Duncan and her brother on a visit to Masca, the village where Mr Slater left his Airbnb after partying with friends he had met at the NRG music festival.

Half an hour after leaving the house his friend Lucy Law called him and was told he was thirsty and ‘frightened’.

At 8.50am, 20 minutes after the first call, he rang Ms Law to tell her he was in the ‘middle of nowhere’ and ‘all I can see are mountains’ before his phone battery ran out two minutes later.

Ms Duncan said in the programme that she had thought of her son: ‘Why did you not ring me?’

She continued: ‘But then I also think: “Why did I not ring him when I saw his Snapchat that morning?”‘

‘Nobody knew what was going to happen. I need to stop feeling guilty about that. It’s really hard.’

She wanted to know why her son did not turn back after telling Ms Law he felt scared on the road but in her visit to Masca, she understood his helplessness as he stood among the rocks.

She said: ‘We thought, how was it possible to get to a place where he said to Lucy: “I’m lost, all I can see is mountains”? He must have been so scared, thinking, I can’t turn back.

‘And when you look at it, you just know why. The closure I’ve got is from the walk, knowing where he set off from, how he has seen the ocean and gone down, and where he got to before he died.

‘Seeing all that now, I understand it better. That’s what closure has given me.’

Ms Duncan said she knew her son would be ‘sorry’ for the ‘mistakes he made’ and the consequences which came thereafter.

Cause of Death is on Channel 5 on Wednesday at 9pm.

Andy Burnham promised to put “hope in every heart” as he arrived in Liverpool for his first Labour conference as Prime Minister, with tensions rising among some of the party’s most prominent figures.

Standing outside the conference venue beneath Labour’s “Hope Again” slogan, a determined Mr Burnham addressed reporters in his familiar all-black “working man” attire, posing with his hands resting on his hips.

The Prime Minister said he intended to steer Britain in a fresh direction, arguing that the decade since the Brexit vote had been marked by “too much drift and too much division”. The country, he said, now needed to “draw a line under that”.

Reiterating his promise of “good growth in every postcode”, Mr Burnham said: “We’re going to make this a really important week where we set out a new direction for the country.”

He said his plans were designed to give people “hope again” that their circumstances could improve, adding that life “will get better”.

Mr Burnham described arriving at his first Labour conference as party leader and Prime Minister as a “proud” moment. Reflecting on his family history, he said: “My grandad drove a lorry for Tate & Lyle up and down these docks. I wonder what he would make of this right now.”

The Everton supporter also joked about the city’s football rivalry, saying: “I love coming to Liverpool on a Saturday, normally to support the Blues, but we’re all supporting the Reds today, aren’t we?”

As Labour supporters gathered to welcome him, his wife Marie-France van Heel stood nearby. She recently left her job to support her husband in his new position as “First Lady”.

Moving away from the designer style that attracted criticism when Mr Burnham entered Downing Street, including an £850 Victoria Beckham dress, she opted for a smart burgundy faux leather midi skirt from Next priced at £46. The outfit was completed with matching kitten heels, a handbag and a white shirt.

Mr Burnham’s outfit consisted of £295 jeans, an £80 T-shirt, a £695 suede Harrington jacket and £110 low-top Adidas Topanga trainers.

Ms van Heel, known as Frankie, met the Prime Minister while they were both at Cambridge. She recently stepped down from her role as a marketing executive to support her husband and accompany him on official engagements and overseas tours.

Earlier in the week, she joined a lunch hosted by US First Lady Melania Trump while Mr Burnham was making his first official visit to Donald Trump.

She also met Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, and Diana Carney, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, during a gathering at the UN General Assembly in New York.

The couple travelled to Liverpool from their home in Warrington, where Mr Burnham had earlier been photographed out for a run.

He is likely to need all his resilience and energy to fight off growing unrest this week from senior party figures who have challenged him and have sniped publicly at each other.

Former Business Secretary and Streeting supporter Peter Kyle said the PM was not doing enough to boost economic growth, while former Deputy PM Angela Rayner lashed out at the Home Secretary’s plans to lengthen the time before foreign care workers could claim settlement rights.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kyle suggested the Government needed to make more short-term decisions to boost growth, like slowing the rollout of new workers’ rights.

‘We might need to look and have honest conversations with unions about how we sequence some of the rights going forward to make sure that we get growth into the economy in the shorter term,’ he said.

Meanwhile, communities secretary Ms Rayner said increasing the timeline for permanent residence from five years to 15 years for foreign social care workers and applying it retrospectively to all those who have come to the UK since 2021 would ‘change the goalposts’.

She has previously called Shabana Mahmood’s migration proposals, which have been welcomed by others on the right of the party, ‘un-British’.

Ms Rayner’s increasingly vocal opposition, which is supported by others within the party and the growing unrest at the Government’s economic plans – or lack of them – ahead of next month’s Budget could cause a headache for the PM, curtailing his honeymoon period.

The backbiting continued when Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy hit back at Mr Kyle, suggesting Mr Burnham was moving faster than Sir Keir Starmer did as Prime Minister.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Mr Burnham was ‘impatient for change, and he thinks big about the sort of change that the country needs’.

With the PM also ruling out an early snap election in pre-conference interviews, saying he wanted to ‘knock dead’ rumours of one, party chair Bridget Phillipson also sounded a note of caution about winning the next election despite Labour’s initial poll boost since Sir Keir Starmer was toppled.

Speaking to the Press Association today, she acknowledged the PM’s role in boosting polls as thanks to his ‘real sense of connection’ but said the party recognised it had a ‘massive fight on our hands with Reform, with the Tories’.

As polling showed a snap election would not give any party a majority but Labour the largest share with Reform and the Tories neck and neck, she said:

‘We’ve got a big fight on our hands come the next election and I don’t underestimate that challenge for one second, but there’s a real sense of purpose and energy as conference gets underway.’

Commenting that ‘the only poll that will matter is the one that happens on election day in 2029,’ she added: ‘What we have seen with Andy Burnham is a real sense of connection with the public, taking things to the next level. That hope, that optimism, that sense that Britain’s best days lie ahead of us.’

Florence Pugh turned heads during a stylish night out in Mayfair on Friday.

The 30-year-old actress let her hair down after attending a screening of her upcoming Netflix series, East of Eden.

She made a bold entrance in a sheer black dress that offered a glimpse of her figure, pairing it with a black thong for coverage.

Florence layered a black coat over the revealing outfit and completed the look with open-toe platform heels and silver drop earrings.

East of Eden stars Pugh as the complicated Cathy Ames in the seven-part adaptation of John Steinbeck’s acclaimed novel.

Set in California’s Salinas Valley during the early 20th century, the drama follows several generations of the Trask and Hamilton families as their lives become closely connected.

Cathy is portrayed as a highly manipulative woman who rejects the expectations placed on women of her era. She abandons her role as a wife and mother, leaving her husband before finding work in a brothel.

While discussing the new series, Florence also responded to questions about reported tensions with director Olivia Wilde during the making of Don’t Worry Darling.

Speculation about a rift between the pair intensified during the film’s 2022 press tour and release. Reports suggested the alleged disagreement was linked to Wilde’s relationship with singer Harry Styles.

Wilde, 42, has previously rejected claims that she and Pugh had a “screaming match” on set. Pugh has also referred to the “difficulties” surrounding the production in an interview with Vanity Fair.

Asked about the subject, the actress said: “Oh, no. I feel like there’s so much stuff we’ve covered that is important for me and on track with my life and my career,” before being questioned about whether she had seen Wilde’s new film, The Invite, which has received praise from critics.

Pugh replied: “I haven’t, but I’ve heard it’s fantastic, and a great cast. Great cast.”

Later, she appeared to reference the reports by saying that, if she directed a film in the future, she would not want the atmosphere on her set to become “messy.”

She explained: “I don’t like messy sets. I want people to come to work and work, and enjoy that it’s a luxury to do this.”

“When moods change on set, it’s because someone is preventing that from happening, and that’s what makes people feel like they haven’t been cared for.”

Wilde addressed the speculation about her relationship with Pugh in June, denying claims that she had shouted at the actress while filming Don’t Worry Darling.

At the time, reports claimed the disagreement stemmed from Wilde’s relationship with Harry Styles, with Pugh allegedly upset that the director was involved with the singer while still engaged to Jason Sudeikis.

Olivia specifically denied a claim she and Florence got into a ‘screaming match’ on the set of the film, a movie about women who were unknowingly made to become Fifties housewives at the behest of their boyfriends.

‘I have never had a screaming match on my set. I was never not available on set. I wanted to be like, ‘None of this is true,” she told the publication.

The relationship – which Olivia called ‘loving and wonderful and joyful’ – lasted for nearly two years.

Olivia, who directed the movie, claimed she was advised against speaking up about the speculation by the studio and other parties – a request she acquiesced to but now regrets.

‘I was told, “Don’t say a f**king word. Just go out there and smile,”‘ Olivia, shaking her head, told The Cut. ‘I resent that, but it taught me it’s not the way I want to handle things.’

At the time, a report in Page Six claimed Florence took issue with Olivia for supposedly taking up with Harry while still engaged to her ex Jason.

The apparent feud intensified when Olivia referred to Florence as ‘Miss Flo’ and said she needed a ‘wake-up call’ during the rehearsal period of the movie, in a video to actor Shia LaBeouf that was leaked.

At the time, Vulture reported that the director and her star got into a ‘screaming match’ with one another while filming the movie, as the director would often disappear with Harry.

‘Olivia and Harry would just disappear,’ an insider claimed to the outlet.

According to an unnamed insider on the movie, Florence and Olivia came to blows over her ‘frequent, unexplained absences’, on set which resulted in a ‘screaming match’ between the two women.

Olivia did praise Florence when asked about the feud during a press conference for the film at the Venice Film Festival, which was not attended by Florence due to previous filming obligations.

‘Can you just clear the air and address whether there has been a falling-out there and if so why, because it’s something that people are discussing?’ the reporter asked.

Olivia responded: ‘Florence is a force and we are so grateful that she is able to make it tonight despite being in production on Dune.’

‘I know as a director how disruptive it is to lose an actor even for a day so I’m very grateful to her and Denis Villeneuve for helping us – we’re really thrilled we’ll get to celebrate her work tonight.’

She continued: ‘I can’t say enough how honoured I am to have her as our lead. She’s amazing in the film and, as for all the endless tabloid gossip and all the noise out there, I mean, the internet feeds itself. I don’t feel the need to contribute, I think it’s sufficiently well nourished.’