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SWANSEA: British judo champion Zac, 14, wanted to quit when his mum was diagnosed with cancer

When Zac Thomas found out his mum had breast cancer, the Swansea teenager wanted to give up and stay at home with her.

The news “shocked me a bit”, the 14-year-old said. “I wanted to quit and stay home with my mum, but I thought that I just had to push through it.”

He didn’t quit. In the past 10 months he has become British Judo champion and British School Judo champion, the awards say.

On Friday night he won the Young Sporting Hero award for over-13s at the Child of Wales Awards.

The ceremony at Swansea Building Society Arena marked the awards’ fifth anniversary, with 700 guests.

Zac on the podium at a British Judo event (Image: Child of Wales Awards)

The only Welsh child picked for the British squad in Japan

Only one Welsh child was picked to go to Japan with the British squad, and it was Zac. He is also a three-time Welsh jujitsu champion and a member of the Welsh Jujitsu Squad.

His family say he has been invited to South Africa and has trained in other countries. He “went to Malta for the Commonwealth Games” and came home with a bronze, they said.

At one competition he won three gold medals in three different weight categories, they added.

Zac lives with autism and the attention deficit conditions ADHD and ADD, the awards say. He also passes on what he knows about judo to other young people.

Zac at a Welsh Judo Association event (Image: Child of Wales Awards)

Judo started when he watched his brother

Football came first, when he was four or five, and he played for Cardiff City, he said. Then came rugby, which he loved, but he wanted another sport.

Judo came from watching his brother. “I watched my brother do it for like a month. Then I really wanted to start doing it,” he said.

His coach told his dad he was ready. After his first training session, Zac said, he “loved it”.

Football and rugby have not gone anywhere. He helped Penlan Football Club win the league, cup and Champions Cup, and was part of Dunvant Rugby’s Ospreys Cup win.

Zac playing rugby (Image: Child of Wales Awards)

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Christmas morning, serving dinner to people who are homeless

Every Christmas morning he gives up to six hours to serve a three-course meal to people experiencing homelessness, the awards say.

He and his brother have done it for “a good few years now”, his family said, going down to “cook, and give out the food”.

“I can stick up for myself now”

Everybody loves him, his family said, “but he is the lovable rogue in school, out of school, in judo”.

They were “gobsmacked” by the award. “He deserves this, especially all that he’s been through,” they said.

Zac Thomas with his Young Sporting Hero award at the Child of Wales Awards (Image: Child of Wales Awards)

Zac has plans of his own. When he finishes school, he said, he might start his own company, called Zac Thomas Club.

The reason is what judo has given him. “I can stick up for myself now, which I’m very happy,” he said.

He wants to pass that on to others, “so they can feel the way how I feel now”.

BBC Morning Live presenter Gethin Jones hosted the awards for a fifth year. The night raised money for Wales Air Ambulance and the mental health charity Big Moose.

Neath dad John Jenkins, who carried his daughter Leah to the top of Pen y Fan, also won on the night.

So did Pontardawe’s Cian Evans, 11, who plans to walk up it 10 times in 24 hours.

Llandovery firefighter Cathryn Moore, 19, was named Young Leader.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

PONTARDAWE: Crash survivor Cian, 11, plans to walk up Pen y Fan 10 times in 24 hours
Young Fundraiser at this year’s Child of Wales Awards.

LLANDOVERY: Firefighter Cathryn, 19, got thank-you cards from her swimming pupils after the wildfires
Cathryn Moore, Young Leader winner.

NEATH: Dad ran 27 miles to Pen y Fan, carried his daughter to the top, then ran home
John Jenkins, Above & Beyond winner.

More on the Child of Wales Awards
Every story from the awards for Wales’ young people.

#Autism #CardiffCityFC #ChildOfWalesAwards #CommonwealthGames #DunvantRFC #GethinJones #homelessness #JuJitsu #Judo #Swansea #SwanseaArena #WalesAirAmbulance

SA1: Marketing agency that started as a one-woman business moves into the J-Shed after Workplace of the Year win

A Swansea digital marketing agency that began as a one-person business in 2018 has signed for Unit 6 at the J-Shed in SA1, days after being named Workplace of the Year at the South Wales Business Awards.

AD Marketing runs search engine optimisation and paid search campaigns for clients across Wales and the UK. Founder Alix Charles set it up and ran it alone before the team grew.

The firm says it is taking on staff and new clients and needed more room.

Charles, its managing director, said: “To win Workplace of the Year and then sign for our new office within days of each other made September a pretty special month for us.”

From grain warehouse to agency office

The J-Shed was built in 1895 as a grain warehouse beside the Prince of Wales Dock and is Grade II listed, the last survivor of the row of dockside sheds. It now holds offices, businesses and leisure units.

The lease was handled by RJ Chartered Surveyors, whose associate director James Smale-Davies is pictured with Charles at the new unit.

Charles said the firm had wanted “somewhere that reflected where AD Marketing is heading”. She added: “J-Shed has so much history and character, but it also sits in an area full of businesses that are growing, innovating and investing in Swansea.”

“Winning the award and securing J-Shed within the same week felt like two very clear signs that we are moving in the right direction,” she said.

‘If you invest in good people, they grow with the business’

The company puts the award down to how it treats its staff, promoting from within and involving the team in decisions about where the firm goes next.

“We have always believed that if you invest in good people, give them opportunities and listen to them, they will grow with the business,” Charles said.

“What we have created here hasn’t come from copying somebody else’s idea of what a good workplace should look like. It has developed around our team, what motivates them and what helps them do their best work.”

The agency made Faith in Families its charity of the year in 2025, setting out to raise £10,000 by offering its SEO and paid search training courses free in return for donations to the charity.

The firm has not put a figure on the size of the team or the number of new roles.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Local Swansea business sets £10k fundraising goal to support families across Wales
AD Marketing’s 2025 charity of the year partnership with Faith in Families.

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#ADMarketing #JShed #RJCharteredSurveyors #SA1 #SouthWalesBusinessAwards #Swansea

MICHAEL DOUGLAS: ‘I won her back? It was a mutual’: Hollywood star on his 2013 split from Swansea’s Catherine Zeta-Jones

Michael Douglas has pushed back at the idea that he had to win Catherine Zeta-Jones back after the couple’s 2013 separation, insisting the time apart was “a mutual” decision.

The 82-year-old was asked by The Sunday Times, in an interview to promote his memoir One Helluva Ride reported by the Daily Mail, how he “won back” the Swansea-born star after they split 13 years into their marriage.

“What, I won her back? It was a mutual,” he replied. “You know, we had our problems but I love her dearly and, 25 years, you know.”

“I mean, I don’t know about your marital status, but marriage is a lot of work, you know. And so, you know, we’re good. We’re in good shape. It’s all I can say.”

In the book, which goes on sale in the UK today, he writes of the separation: “I never gave up hope that we would reconcile.”

Michael Douglas with One Helluva Ride, which is published in the UK today (Image: Michael Douglas / Instagram)

“She was magic”: the excerpt he posted for her birthday

The couple share a birthday, 25 September, 25 years apart. Douglas marked this year’s with an excerpt from the memoir about seeing Zeta-Jones on screen before they met.

“I had never fallen in love on a movie screen before. Until I saw Catherine. She was magic, in a way that went beyond beauty,” he wrote. “And I was certain, as much as I had ever been about anything, that she was the one.”

“It’s the kind of moment that only comes around once in your life, if you’re lucky. The one time that you know, without any doubt in your mind, that you’re meant to be with someone. Happy Birthday Catherine! I love you always and forever!”

She replied: “Thank you darling. Thank you. Happy Birthday to you too my love.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdtGQCxpeFY/

A “bump in the road” after two years of illness

The couple met at the Deauville Film Festival in 1998 and married at New York’s Plaza Hotel in November 2000. In 2013 they said they were “taking some time apart to evaluate and work on their marriage”.

It followed a bruising few years. Douglas was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, and Zeta-Jones spoke publicly in 2011 about being treated for bipolar II disorder, returning to a clinic for further treatment in 2013.

The same year Douglas told The Guardian his cancer had been caused by HPV, a virus passed on through oral sex, remarks he later said he regretted for the embarrassment they caused his wife.

“We had a little bump in the road,” he told Event magazine in 2015. “The problem in this business is that everything is so public. I love Catherine as much, more than I ever have. And hopefully the feeling’s mutual.”

“We worked things out. If both people want to work something out and make it better, you can do it. You can’t do it if it’s just one person.”

Zeta-Jones: “Do that job, that’s amazing”

Zeta-Jones, 57, gave her own account of what has kept the marriage going when she spoke to The Sunday Times last month, in the interview in which she called the “nepo baby” label attached to their children Dylan, 26, and Carys, 23, “horrific”.

The secret, she said, was that she kept working rather than staying at home. “Michael is, like, ‘Do that job, that’s amazing.’ Then he’s able to fly in and see me. Much better than waking up, going, ‘What do you want for breakfast, honey?’ I don’t think our marriage would ever have lasted if it was like that.”

The couple marked 25 years of marriage last November, when she posted “I love you today as I did then” and he wrote, to “my darling Catherine”: “Who knew?” Douglas has been a regular visitor to Wales with his wife, and was at the Brangwyn Hall in 2019 when she was given the Freedom of the City.

Last month she told Heart Breakfast she had turned down Ryan Reynolds “many times” over Welcome to Wrexham because “Swansea City is my team”.

Douglas stepped back from acting in 2022 after nearly 60 years, and was last seen as Benjamin Franklin in Apple TV+’s Franklin. His wife has kept doing the job, as Morticia in Netflix’s Wednesday and now as Jackie Price in Kill Jackie, the Prime Video thriller partly filmed in Swansea in which she uses her Welsh accent on screen for the first time.

“Jackie is just getting started,” she posted from the set last month.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdeV6GKse2F/

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Swansea’s Catherine Zeta-Jones celebrates 25 years of marriage to Michael Douglas – “I love you today as I did then.”

SWANSEA: Catherine Zeta-Jones blasts ‘horrific’ nepo baby label as children follow famous parents – Dylan, Carys and the Sunday Times interview.

CATHERINE ZETA-JONES: ‘I can’t go to Wrexham’: Swansea’s Hollywood star turned down Ryan Reynolds ‘many times’ – “Swansea City is my team.”

More Catherine Zeta-Jones coverage

#CarysZetaDouglas #CatherineZetaJones #celebrity #DylanDouglas #KillJackie #MichaelDouglas #Swansea