The Daily Tonic: Lines For The Loos

2019’s juiciest celebrity saga – Rooney v ……Rebekah Vardy’s Account – is set for a second season with the news today that Vardy has launched libel proceedings.

If you can’t recall the details, Coleen Rooney used an old showbiz trick to smoke out a tabloid informant she feared was in her midst by planting knowingly false stories to friends to see if anyone was feeding them to the press. By systematically narrowing her circle, Rooney believes she whittled it down to one suspect. Vardy begs to differ.

If the case does make it to trial, things are likely to get a little messy – and Vardy is going to want to hope that she doesn’t get asked too many questions about her prior relationship with the Sun. If they ask her under oath about who it was that kept tipping the paps off to her husband’s whereabouts when they would go out on the town together, she might find it hard to convince anyone that her hands are entirely clean…

Thanks for all your stories of festival excess. We’ll gladly continue to hear them all week seeing as it’s the season, but today we push on with something new.

In Daily Tonics gone by we’ve mentioned the room in the Oslo Radisson that was christened “The Gina Wee Suite” after some mystery incident the night of Eurovision; the “Peter O’Toole Suite” in a Cardiff B&B near the BBC and Room 16 of The Ben Nevis Hotel in Fort William that was temporarily billed as “The Sir Jimmy Savile Suite”.

Today’s Question: Have you ever stayed the night in any similarly notable accommodation? Are there any hotel rooms you know of that deserve a some sort of memorial?

Send your answers to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll reward the best ones with digital goody bags.

Babs writes:
“A friend and I stayed in a caravan in the VIP backstage area at Glastonbury. Next to us were Keith Allen and his mates in a collection of small tents. They were perfectly pleasant.

“On the Sunday morning I came home from a late night out and found my friend sitting very happily in the caravan. She’d been letting the gang use our toilet and shower in return for treats – a line for the loo, a pill for the shower – and was high as a kite.”

BW writes:
“I worked at the Isle of Wight Festival for a few years running. One year, I remember some drunk yuppy got thrown out for walking up to Ronan Keating and picking him up to see how light he was, shocked by how small Ronan was in real life.

“Small man, big temper.”

Mrs Cat writes:
“I was in Hamburg in the early 90s and the local British ex-pat am-dram society were often cast as extras when any English language movie came to town. I went to a party held by one of the key members – who resembled Hyacinth Bucket at her finest.

“Someone there confided to me that Eartha Kitt had come to one of their previous soirees and packed up all the ‘leftovers’ (way before the party ended) in the host’s tupperware, before swanning off into the night.”

For those of you just joining us, here’s the deal. We snapped some 10 second chunks out of well-known songs and stitched them all together into one track.

It’s your job to identify the songs (for one point each) and the artists performing them (for another point each).

Ten songs, twenty points in total.

[Play it here]

York Press’s Big Chip news team have had a busy lockdown
[More big chip news]

Trump’s rambling ramp story rewritten as a folk song
[Listen on YouTube]

Rum cocktails for a heatwave
[How to make the classics]