The Daily Tonic: Shill Behaviour

In yesterday’s mailout, we told you that Kirstie Allsopp had drawn the ire of her village community in Devon by fleeing London and bringing Covid-19 to the doorstep of Broadhembury. The consensus among residents is clearly that she’s been reckless and thoughtless – but maybe they underestimate Kirstie? Maybe she knows exactly what to do in a disaster scenario?

A reader who once rented a holiday cottage from the Allsopps discovered that the property had formerly been used by a younger Kirstie as a sort of summerhouse annexe from the family home. The cottage boasted a huge DVD library which guests were free to use, but they noticed that two films had been clearly branded with the name KIRSTIE, written in thick permanent marker.

One was Deep Impact.

The other was Armageddon.

There’s a third person to add to the Groucho Marx/Alice Cooper friendship: Paul McCartney.

Back in the 70s, Groucho gave Alice a huge circular bed that he’d kept from the set of one of his movies and had had in his house for decades. Groucho palmed it off to Alice during a divorce-inspired clear-out with the parting wish: “I never had any luck in it. Maybe you will.”

Not long after that, Alice was visiting McCartney in the UK and felt that the bed would be a better much fit in Macca’s pad, so regifted it. The parting wish that Alice passed it on with was a little different though. He had the bed’s headboard fitted with a brass plaque bearing the charming inscription: “May all your stains be large ones. Love Alice and Groucho.”

Paul still has it.

We asked you to tell us about some of the weirdest celebrity endorsements you’d seen. Here are a couple of the more curious ones…

* Pop Idol runner-up Gareth Gates now runs his own coconut tea business
[Cuppanut, anyone?]

* Lou Reed using Walk On The Wild Side to advertise… scooters
[See on YouTube]

* Buff up with Muhammad Ali brand shoe polish!
[Bid on eBay]

* Harness the power of Racquel Welch, with the Racquel Welch Power Wig
[There’s a whole line of them]

anon writes:
“I don’t know if it’s still the case, but about 15 years ago I visited a monkey sanctuary in South Wales. It was VERY weird and had rescue monkeys with all sorts of issues (visible prolapses, nicotine patches for cigarette withdrawal, personality disorders, etc) and you were strongly advised not to make any eye contact with them as they would likely kick off.

“On the door into the building was a tatty piece of paper claiming Graham Norton was their patron. I’m not sure how legit it was but there was a small picture of him and a short statement about the value of the work being done there.”

Thanks for all the stories you’ve been sending in these last few weeks. Even though we can’t feature everything we get, we’ve been loving it all – and we’re trying to reply to as many emails as we possibly can. In the meantime, we’ll keep chugging on…

Today’s Question: Who is the most unlikely celeb you know that’s been in a band, or had a sideline career in pop?

Send your stories of secret celebrity rock stars to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll dish out some digital prizes to our favourites.

If you’ve missed any of the previous 16 audio rounds over the last few weeks, then we’ve put them all together on a page on the Popbitch site. It’s a little bare bones, but we figured you’d rather we spend our time splicing up copies of Now That’s What I Call Music to make you more quiz rounds – so it is what it is.

Here’s #17 for you. Ten songs, twenty points.

[Have at it]

Jim Davidson singing Lionel Richie’s Hello
[Watch on YouTube]

Bounce some cats
[Cat Bounce]

If you were as tickled as we were about Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing’s private Looney Tunes impression sessions, here’s some footage from their final meeting. You can see Lee giving Cushing a Sylvester golf club cover as a gift – and hear a tiny smidge of his Sylvester impression too.
[The Gift]
[The Impression]