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Popbitch together with Street Feast presents London’s biggest US election night party: Dinerama, Tues 8th Nov. Will the Trumpocalypse be averted? With 10 hours of the best American street eats, craft beers and bourbon you’ll no longer care. Limited tickets on sale next week – register interest here: trumpkin@popbitch.com
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“I have had multiple Daniel Craig birthday cakes in my life” – Joe Jonas
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|_| |_|13.10.17 ISSUE 805
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* More Trumped up philanthropy
* Craig David’s dinnertime flavas
* Charts: James Arthur still no 1
>> Video nasties <<
Caught red and white-handed
It’s been quite the year for Simon Danczuk MP. Allegations of rape, an investigation into his parliamentary expenses, a two-night stint in a Spanish police cell after a reported domestic incident with his estranged wife Karen… and now it looks as if there may be more headlines to come.
Spanky Si appears to have been making some rather intimate videos of him (ahem) enjoying his own company. Videos which have not just found their way into the hands of some lucky ladies, but possibly into the hands of some journalists too.
Simon will no doubt be kicking himself for being so careless. If only he’d watermarked the footage, he’d have been able to negotiate a much better fee for himself.
President Assad’s favourite band is Electric Light Orchestra.
>> Price matching <<
Bet on the devil you know
Following the Sam Allardyce scoop, one of the Telegraph’s further revelations had Harry Redknapp saying that his players once bet on their own match. This is one bet Harry definitely wasn’t in on.
Back in 2003 Harry’s star-studded Portsmouth team had wrapped up the league by April. The players were so confident in their abilities, some backed themselves to win the last game of the season in order to get an extra bit of holiday spending money.
Redknapp knew nothing about it, however, and so decided (rather sensibly) that this might be a good match to give some of his youth and squad players a chance to get a bit of game time in. Cue senior players (Tim Sherwood, Paul Merson etc) being asked to plead with the boss to play their strongest team.
Redknapp relented, and Pompey flattened Bradford 5-0 (much to everyone’s relief…)
Congrats to restaurant critic AA Gill and “The Blonde”, who have applied to get married at Chelsea Town Hall. (Gill was formerly married to Home Secretary, Amber Rudd).
>> Big Questions <<
Who’s asking what this week?
Which celeb is claiming they were royally shafted by the Fake Sheikh, and looking at making a claim for damages to News UK following his recent guilty verdict? She might not want to aggravate them though as former News of the World colleagues claim there’s a a very revealing tape on which she offers to shag the Sheikh for the right price – a detail that never made it into paper, but one they could release if she decides she wants to try to rewrite history.
Dane Bowers has quite the portfolio career. As well as his pub gig in Dubai, he was doing celebrity bingo in Brighton the other week.
>> What’s your flava? <<
Craig David talks dinner
Craig David’s career is going from strength to strength – which is great news for his PR people, but they’re really having to earn their wage.
Apparently the R&B legend has a habit of going wildly off-topic if he’s not babysat during interviews. And even when he is he’s still prone to giving some pretty Trump-esque answers to even simple questions:
“I would go for extra chicken korma with peshwari naan. And then if that hasn’t already slammed me because I’ve gone for two naan and extra chicken on the thing, I might just bang home a cheesecake. Maybe two cheesecakes. With ice cream. And I think we’d be good to go.”
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>> Four to the floor <<
James Arthur’s theme
It’s been a big year for long lasting number one singles. The last time a record failed to put in at least four weeks at the top of the charts was way back in early February: Pillowtalk by Zayn.
Since then the top spot has been taken by Lukas Graham (5 weeks), Mike Posner (4), Drake (15), Major Lazer (5) and Chainsmokers (4).
The charts haven’t seen a run like this since they were invented – and if James Arthur wants to maintain the trend, he has to stay at the top til next Friday. But even if he doesn’t manage it, he’ll still be the most successful British singles artist of the year.
(It’s been a weird old year, hasn’t it?)
Move over Sweden. 2016’s unlikely pop music powerhouse is Canada, giving us the highest proportion of number one artists so far.
>> Speech bubble <<
Poking fun at Paul Dacre
Andy Coulson’s return to public life gathers pace after he was spotted schmoozing with various Daily Mail bigwigs at deputy editor Jon Steafel’s leaving do last week.
The big speech of the night was given by the Mail’s editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre. Dacre has spent much of the last few years in print pointedly attacking David Cameron for his lack of judgement in appointing Coulson, insisting on attaching the epithet “disgraced” to every mention of the former number 10 spin doctor.
So guests particularly enjoyed seeing Dacre have to just suck it up and quietly seethe – especially when Steafel went out of his way to namecheck his old tabloid pal in his speech.
Jon Steafel’s replacement, Gerard Greaves, is great pals with Mail proprietor Viscount Rothermere. Their sons go to school together at Eton.
>> Virtual insanity <<
Trumped up philanthropy
The Oculus Connect conference took place last week in San Francisco (a conference which deals with the latest advances in virtual reality technology).
One of the main sessions was entitled “Virtual Reality For Good” and set out to present a panel discussion about how tech companies can use the power of VR to affect positive social change.
Presumably the discussion didn’t focus too much on the fact that Oculus’s founder, Palmer Luckey, has been donating portions of the $2 billion his company got from their sale to Facebook to fund an organisation dedicated to posting alt-right, white nationalist Trump memes across the internet.
Like Billy Idol, The Killers also change their lyrics for big corporate tech gigs, singing the refrain “Are we human, or are we software?”
>> The trend of days <<
Sunchyme on a rainy day
Usually when someone you haven’t heard of in a while trends on Twitter, it’s because they’ve died or been unveiled as a paedo. So our hearts were in our mouths when we saw the name “Dario G” trending last Thursday morning.
Thankfully, it turned out that Toby Anstis had chosen Sunchyme as the first song on his Heart FM show – which meant that each of the Heart stations around the UK all tweeted his name at exactly the same time.
We’re not sure which detail is most surprising about this: that Toby Anstis can still manage to make an actual living playing Dario G’s Sunchyme in 2016, or that all it takes to trend on Twitter these days is 22 tweets.
Will Young: self-confessed wanker. Will once answered a press question “What record would you most like to beat?” with this “Most masturbation in one day”. (His record? “Six”)
>> Nuclear policy <<
Adam Curtis talks Trump
Donald Trump’s old bankruptcy is interesting for more than his 18 year tax holiday. Back in 1990, when he could no longer pay the interest on his bank loans, the final straw came when a Japanese gambler came to Trump Plaza and won $6 million at baccarat.
Trump panicked. He turned for help to a genius casino consultant called Jess Marcum, who analysed the gambler’s data and told Trump how to get the gambler to lose. And, eventually, he did: by $10 million. Trump was elated and thought he’d secured his casinos.
But before Trump got his money, the gambler was hacked to death by Yakuza. Without the $10 million, the real estate mogul went tits up.
Ironically, Marcum’s previous claim to fame was developing the Neutron Bomb which, of course, kills people but leaves buildings standing.
FYI: HyperNormalisation is Adam Curtis’ new film. An epic narrative of the last 40 years it tells the story of Donald Trump, Syria, Russia, Gaddafi and more. From Sunday on BBC iPlayer. Watch trailer:
https://youtu.be/AUiqaFIONPQ
The Trump Taj Casino featured a 42-storey hotel tower, but Trump numbered the top floor 51, because he wanted it to sound more huuuuge.
>> Flower power <<
Don’t stop ’til you get enough
Michael Jackson’s childhood home is situated in a crumbling part of the decaying old steel town of Gary, Indiana, but the bungalow nonetheless hosts a big memorial to Jacko.
In the last year, however, the shrine had been allowed to go to ruin. The Jackson family were in dispute with the gardening firm that tended the memorial garden because they didn’t want to pay the upkeep fees. Things got so bad that fans started to protest the state of the MJ garden, and so in the last couple of weeks the family started to pay wages and flowers were planted again.
The gardeners must have been interested to read in Forbes yesterday that Michael Jackson was the top earning dead celeb for the fourth year running. In the last 12 months his estate made $825 million.
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>> Hmmms <<
Dog, kitten, raccoon
The St Petersburg raccoon festival threw up some good photo ops:
http://bit.ly/2e3N9sR
An awful story, illustrated with the greatest ever stock photo of a dog photo:
http://dailym.ai/2edTdDs
This week’s Media Masters podcast sees BBC broadcaster Rhod Sharp weigh in on Trump’s easy ride and spills the beans on 20 years at 5 Live. Listen:
http://bit.ly/2dxT4pD
Last week we made a joke about Russell Brand bringing back The Trews. And now he has. We apologise unreservedly:
http://bit.ly/2dzdj6c
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Thanks to: NW, CC, shagpile_perm, SamStoat, AM, posh_duckhunter, TM, tobythespank, AC, monstris, RB
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Old Jokes Home:
I recently bought some shoes from a drug dealer. I’m not sure what he’s laced them with but I’ve been tripping all day.
Still Bored?
As Savile-esque sexual allegations start to roll in about Trump, we revisit our theory about the crack smoking mayor Rob Ford, and add three brand new comparisons for you to consider:
http://bit.ly/2ecSKO0
