The Daily Tonic: Quit Playing Frames With My Heart

Yesterday’s video of a young Joe Swash getting turfed out of an Ibiza hotel in Club Reps caused a flashback in those of you that worked in record shops and video rental places around the turn of the century.

Another of Swash’s early moments on camera was in a BBFC training video for entertainment retailers, teaching staff how to respond when children want to buy horror films or porn without ID.

[See it here]

A lot of these daily questions have required you to have brushed up against a celebrity in order to be able to respond – so today we want to throw things open to the whole class.

Today’s Question: What’s your favourite bit of celebrity trivia?

Send your favourite titbits to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll dish out some digital goodies to our favourites.

MM writes:
“About five years ago I had a date at The Grapes in Limehouse. It turned out it was the pub quiz that night and we ended up competing. We finished in joint-third place with a team of drama students, so each team had to send up one player to answer a tiebreaker. I’d got most of our questions right, so I faced off against a member of their team who had been tucked around the corner all night: the pub’s co-owner, Sir Ian McKellen.

“The topic, unhelpfully, was film: I may have a degree in it, but Sir Ian is bloody in them! His guess at when Terms Of Endearment won Best Picture at the Oscars was closer than mine. Bastard.”

stoo writes:
“A while back I was in New York staying in a swanky hotel during its ‘soft’ launch and was mistaken for Moby whilst playing pool. Some other fellas asked to play, one of which was dressed all in black – black beanie, black nail polish etc.

“We told him we were playing along with my mistaken identity, but he said he actually was a pop star – in the Backstreet Boys, which sadly none of our party was aware of. As it was the pre-smart phone era we had to wait to get home to check. Sure enough, it was AJ.

“He was a good loser and even showed us a few trick shots before he left.”

JM writes:
“Living up in Perthshire, we used to visit the pool at Gleneagles every weekend in the 80s. It wasn’t uncommon to bump into some stars of a Saturday and my sisters and I used to love chasing them about the hotel in giggles.

“One day I was playing table tennis at the country club when in pops Paul Daniels to use the public payphone (next to the ping pong). As I got thrashed by my older sister, he was watching and when she went off in triumph, he asked if I wanted a game. I was about six years old and couldn’t believe I was going to play the king of game shows at ping pong so said yes.

“He then proceeded to beat me without giving me a single point. Arse.”

Another ten songs, another twenty points here – and there’s a theme to this one today that will be so painfully obvious after about three songs that we might as well tell you what it is.

It’s all “house” music.

[Don’t groan; just play]

Want some culture this afternoon? The Alaska Orchestra play Brian Eno’s Music for Airports at the Sydney Opera House
[Watch at the SOH]

Take On Me, arranged for Excel spreadsheet
[Listen on YouTube]

Simon Cowell’s pre-fame appearance on Sale Of The Century
[Watch on YouTube]