Legally Boned

The meeting rooms in BuzzFeed’s UK offices are all named after various popular TV shows. So you might have a conference call in ‘Crystal Maze’ at 11, or you might need coffee and biscuits delivered to ‘The Day Today’ for a pitch meeting.

The room in which bosses held the meetings where they told the soon-to-be-redundant employees they were about to be fired?

‘Black Mirror’.

Miriam Margolyes took a bit of flak from the #MeToo movement after an interview on Sunday morning’s Peston.

In the interview she made a joke about not having been groped herself as she wasn’t attractive enough – which landed a little flat with some viewers. To be fair to Miriam though, she was probably just chasing a laugh as she hasn’t been shy in talking about her unwanted experiences with grotty men on other chat shows.

A few years back she told a story on Graham Norton’s show about a man who tried to frot himself against her on the tube. The outspoken Miriam was surprised, but decided to tackle the problem head on – turning around to boom at him, in classic Margolyes fashion, “WILL YOU TAKE YOUR COCK OUT OF MY ARSE!”

Which British popstar made quite an impression on an American groupie he met on tour? He kept running his tongue over her pubic hair again and again, while softly muttering the word “wicked” to himself.

The story of Paul Cattermole from S Club 7 putting his Brit Awards on eBay went viral last week, causing the bidding to reach £66,000 a piece. That’s not really a price point most S Club fans can stretch to, but those on a budget needn’t worry.

A whole subcategory of Paul Cattermole memorabilia-memorabilia has sprung up on eBay, thanks to some enterprising folk who are offering cut-price items to commemorate this moment in pop music history.

You might not be able to afford Paul Cattermole’s actual Brit award, but maybe you can buy this drawing of Paul Cattermole’s Brit Award instead?
[See on eBay]

What about a screenshot of the eBay listing for a drawing of Paul Cattermole’s Brit Award?
[See on eBay]

Or maybe just a piece of paper with the words “Brit Award Best Newcomer Presented To Paul Cattermole S Club 7” written on it?
[See on eBay]

The opportunities are endless.

It’s easy to laugh at S Club Paul being on eBay, but he isn’t selling his trophies after spunking millions on private islands, drugs and divorces. His is more a story of music industry rip-offs.

S Club 7 had a hit TV show, four UK number ones, a top 10 in the States and sold more than 10 million albums around the world. The whole set up made more than £20 million for creator Simon Fuller’s 19 Management. But the band? In their first year (when they were having hit after hit) they were on £500 a week. That’s a £26K salary.

We talked to three of them a few years back about their time in the band. The worst thing, they said, was that they never got the chance to really enjoy it. They were on a tight schedule at all times, rushed from place to place without ever stopping.

The Brit award that Paul sold? The moment the band left the stage after collecting it, they were packed into a minbus and sent off to their next engagement. No celebrating, no after party, no nothing.

Jodie Whittaker made her debut in Doctor Who over the Christmas break. While it was no longer a surprise that the Doctor would regenerate as a woman, viewers weren’t necessarily expecting a proper Yorkshire lass.

It was a natural choice for Jodie though as she comes from Yorkshire. Specifically, a village in West Yorkshire called Skelmanthorpe – a place known locally as “Shat”.

Shat is not a cruel nickname from neighbouring locales though. The people of Skelmanthorpe wear the name with pride. So please don’t laugh if you ever book a taxi with Shat Travel. Or if you attend the village’s famed annual fair… Shat Feast.

If you haven’t heard of Positively Happy, it’s an internet radio station that Noel Edmonds set up to help broadcast positivity and good vibes into the world.

There’s one for for meditation, one for birdsong, one for plants. There’s a bunch that play positive message chart music too. As you might imagine, it’s all relentlessly upbeat stuff.

All except for one stream.

The ‘Positively Noel’ channel has taken a bit of a serious turn of recent and is currently broadcasting a series of vignettes where Noel Edmonds appears to be interviewing himself about being a victim of banking fraud, telling listeners how money worries brought him to the brink of suicide and explaining the mayhem running unchecked throughout the global financial system.

All interspersed with songs like Honesty by Billy Joel; Be Honest by Jason Mraz; Love, Truth And Honesty by Bananarama; I Need A Dollar by Aloe Blacc (you get the gist…)

Not very positive, is it Noel?

[Listen in, if you like]

MTV Cribs may take you inside the homes of some of the best known celebrities, but Popbitch can get you a sneak peek into the homes of some much more interesting people.

For example, Peter Wright QC: the barrister who prosecuted Dr Harold Shipman.

Wright made so much money from his work on the Shipman case that when walking new guests around his sprawling home, he gestures to part of the building and says “That’s the Shipman wing.”

After decades of trying to make digital pay, the media industry still doesn’t really seem to know what it’s doing about online. So we’re going to try something new.

We’ve partnered with a company called Agate, who we think have come up with a rather neat, fair and equitable solution to the industry’s problem. Essentially, they’ve created a digital pay-as-you-go wallet that lets you automatically pay a small fixed amount for certain articles.

That means no monthly subscriptions, no being charged for any of the sections you don’t read, no impenetrable full-screen ads. Just a simple, frictionless way to pay a micro-fee on a page-by-page basis.

They’re testing the system out on our site first, but the plan is to roll it out to other sites very soon – and any money in your Agate wallet will be completely transferable to other sites. Like a contactless card for media.

We’ve set our price for articles on the Popbitch website at 10p, and we’ve set a weekly limit of 30p – so you can read as much of our site as you like and know you’ll never spend more than 30p each week.

We’d love for you to try it, so if you want to know more about the Agate system, we have an FAQ here.
[Read our Agate FAQ]

Or, if you want to dive straight in, this week we took a look at the history of celebrities selling stuff on eBay (and, in the process, we think we might have found out what Rolf Harris has been doing since leaving prison…)
[Read ‘Taking Care Of Bidness’ on Popbitch]

Mark Jones, the legendary boss of Wall of Sound, was the epitome of 90s music industry excess. Now it seems the days of four-gram, all-day blowouts are behind him, substituted for a quieter life of mid-range Thai lunches.

Jones was recently asked if he’d take a meeting with indie musician, Thomas Rowe (of Mass Datura). Rowe just wanted to meet for a coffee and a chat, but Jones dug his heels in. Lunch at Patara in Soho, or nothing.

After a bit of back and forth, Rowe finally acquiesced – but when the meeting rolled around, he was nowhere to be seen. Jones, sat waiting in Patara, finally sent a text to ask Rowe where he was.

The reply? “I’m at home cooking Thai and thinking about how pathetic you are.”

So don’t expect a huge industry push for the new Mass Datura single.

Nicole Appleton has developed a new social network app for your pets…
[Take a look]

Need help visualising a blockchain?
[See on InsideOutside]

Want to stay at the farm from Abz On The Farm?
[View on AirBnB]

A brief history of hip-hop (1985-89)
[Listen/Watch on YouTube]

Katie Hopkins has just had her final appeal denied in the Jack Monroe libel trial. A brief reminder of why her legal bills became so massive
[Read ‘For Whom Libel Tolls’ on Popbitch]

A classic of the “Angry people pictured with thing making them angry” local news genre
[Read on Worthing Herald]

Cats watching mice on TV
[Watch on YouTube]