The Daily Tonic: A Texan Pebbledash

Photos of a masked-up Harry and Meghan walking out in LA hit the tabloids yesterday. It must be so annoying for the publicity-shy couple, who so famously left the UK to avoid exactly this sort of press intrusion. Who could have foreseen that moving to the only city in the world with a more ferocious paparazzi scene than London would have turned out to be a bit of a blunder?

The photos in the Sun are credited to Jeff Rayner of LA-based photo agency Coleman-Rayner. You may remember Jeff as the man who previously set up the staged shots of Thomas Markle getting fitted for a wedding suit and searching for pictures of Harry at an internet café – the ones that kicked off the entire Markle family imbroglio in the first place.

What a welcome to the neigbourhood!

Still, if Harry and Meghan need are in need of a silver lining, just imagine how small Coleman-Rayner’s carbon footprint is going to be now that they don’t have to travel too far to source these pictures any more.

As well as all the stories of you sitting on celebrity shitters, someone emailed in yesterday to tell us about the time they spotted a fancy white limousine parked up outside the Spearmint Rhino on Tottenham Court Road with the personalised number plate ‘M11NJE’.

Obviously it begs the question “Who had the minge plate?” but it sparked a slightly broader question too.

Today’s Question: Which celebrities do you know who have laughable personalised/vanity plates?

There’s Popbitch goody bags for the silliest, stupidest and most obnoxious ones. Send your spots in to us at hello@popbitch.com.

W writes:
“Once in the 90s I had to visit Sharleen Spiteri’s house in Glasgow for a meeting. Unfortunately I had a stomach virus of nuclear proportions and was desperately hoping that double dropping extra strength Imodium and pepto bismol just before arriving would get me through the meeting safely.

“When I got there Sharleen was already in a meeting in the living room that was running late and I was told to wait in the kitchen. An hour went by and inevitably my stomach began an internal collapse. Getting to the bathroom in the nick of time, I suffered a simultaneous diarrhoea and projective vomit situation that looked like a scene from Alien.

“I managed to pebbledash both the toilet and the closet door which was made of slatted wood, the vom getting in between all the slats and dripping like plasma. Panicking about both keeping Sharleen waiting and ruining her bathroom I frantically cleaned up with loo paper until it was (mostly) gone before being ushered into my meeting probably stinking like roadkill.

“The bathroom was very nice and tasteful and had, thankfully, tons of toilet paper.”

N writes:
“Several years I ago, I went to a dinner party at Derren Brown’s house in East London. Wonderful meal, charming host (once you get over the fact he can read every microexpression on your face).

“About halfway through, I nipped to the downstairs WC to find it completely plastered with spectacularly vicious hatemail. Most of it claimed poor Derren was a Satanist and a vile figure of the Occult — which, come to think of it, must be high praise for an illusionist.”

PM writes:
“I once used James Martin’s toilet. On the wall was a framed seating plan for a meal he’d had at Buckingham Palace – he’d been on a table with Queenie and Prince Phil.

“He’d also framed a Jay Rayner review which praised James for creating the best dish Jay had eaten all year (in 2013) and the wallpaper was silhouettes of different dog breeds.

“The levels of taste demonstrated in his toilet reflected elsewhere in his property: low.”

As we blaze past the 300-song mark, we return to our usual scoring system after yesterday’s Will Smith special.

This one has ten songs and twenty points on offer – one for the song title, one for the artist.

[Round 31: For your pleasure]

Some sweethearted Popbitches have made us a Spotify playlist containing all of the 300-odd songs we’ve used in the Quarantunes quiz rounds to date
[It’s… eclectic]

Someone’s collating all the coronavirus shop signs
[duetocovid19.com]

Amanda Knox is boldly joining in on the MeAt20 meme
[See on Instagram]