The Daily Tonic: Tight Fist, Tight Trousers

As it’s Saturday, here’s a quick story about The Saturdays.

In such PR-coated, media-managed times it can sometimes feel like the excesses of sex and drugs and rock’n’roll are missing from the modern pop scene – but appearances can be deceiving.

For instance, if you get squeaky clean girl-group The Saturdays together in the same room it won’t be long before they all start talking in detail on their favourite topic of conversation: fingering.

They’ve been the hottest celebrity accessory of the last five years, but their constant overuse has meant that famous people now turn to them for the most tenuous of reasons. We know we’ll have to tread very lightly with this one, but…

Today’s Question: What is the strangest/silliest/most unnecessary reason that you have been asked to sign a celebrity NDA?

Tell us what you’re not supposed to tell us at hello@popbitch.com. We’ll remain completely discreet – and we’ll send some goody bags to our favourites.

Early doors at Wimbledon a number of years back, a rather well to-do lady came out of the VIP toilets to ask one of the security staff in attendance why the toilets had no soap, sanitiser, hand cream, wet wipes – or anything resembling a toiletry.

This mystified them as they had loaded the toilets with lots of miniature bottles of top-of-the-line products, but the woman was right. The place had been rinsed clean.

The only other person they knew who had used the VIP toilets that morning? The Duchess of Kent.

To prevent a repeat incident, when staff restocked the toilet the following day they laid out only one of each item, holding back a stash with which to regularly replenish the supply.

Sure enough, when the Duchess next visited the toilet she popped out to ask if they had any more toiletries anywhere. When she was handed a single bottle in return, she barked “Is that all you’ve got?”

JM writes:
“I worked in a small town in the Hamptons in the 90s. The Piano Man himself, Billy Joel, used to dock his boat in the town (a replica of the boat from Jaws) and used to drop into local bars for a drink.

“His habit was to have one, maybe two drinks, and leave. His tip was always the same no matter what he had. $1. Hence the nickname he had locally, Dollar Bill.”

C writes:
“A couple of weeks after the opening of the Virgin Atlantic staff club at Gatwick, Richard Branson popped by to great fanfare. He drank more than a few glasses of fizz to pose for the cameras, then claimed he never carried cash – so had one of the poor flight attendants shell out for him.”

S writes:
“I used to work for Loot, the free ads paper, on the editorial desk in the 1990s. Stirling Moss used to ring up the editorial line directly, pretending he was someone else to put ads into Loot without having to go through the recording lines that the plebs had to use.”

T writes:
“In Battersea in the early 90s a group of us would go to a local Italian every Sunday night as it offered 50% off your bill. It was incredibly popular and packed to the rafters with punters including, like clockwork, Helen Mirren.”

Thanks to some accidental double inclusions (and a couple of occasional repeats for the sake of theme integrity) this audio round – the 51st – should contain the 500th song that we’ve asked you to identify since lockdown began.

Ten songs; twenty points – one for each song, another for each artist.

[Play it here]

One of the great magazine features of the 20th Century: Spy strings along some celebrity skinflints
[Guess who won?]

Otters’ birthday ball pool
[See on Instagram]

Nick Cave x saving bars in crisis
[Two of our big loves, combined]