The Dirty Half-Dozen

In 2016, Donald Trump had the National Enquirer arrange a $150,000 hush money payment for former Playboy model Karen McDougal in order to buy her silence about the details of their extramarital affair.

Someone should have bought Trump’s silence too, as we’d have paid 10x that amount not to have heard this little detail. During discussions with the Enquirer’s editor (Dylan ‘Dyldo’ Howard) Trump bragged that his nickname for McDougal was “Hoover Dam”. Why?

“Because she was always so wet.”

Ah, such sweet, sweet locker room talk…

Jeep have had to pull their big Super Bowl ad after it emerged its star, Bruce Springsteen, was arrested last November on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

While it’s not quite as bad as 2012, when Honda decided to use Matthew Broderick (a man who famously caused a car crash that killed two people) in their Super Bowl ad, it’s still not a great look.

There’s always a risk that celebs will end up bringing your product into disrepute like this. That’s why the legendary advertising creative John Webster – the man behind the Honey Monster, the Smash Martians, Kia-Ora’s Crows and the Cresta bear – always used to invent characters for his campaigns: “They don’t age. They’ll never molest children. And you’ve got them forever.”

Which reality show judge used to like livening up parties by discreetly popping in a remote-controlled love-egg? She’d then hand the controls to her partner, who would give her a little buzz every so often while she chatted with unsuspecting guests.

To mark the most romantic day of the year, here are six stories of celebrity seduction. Below that are six celebrity names. We’ll leave it to you to match up the names to the story. (Try not to libel anyone, please.)

1/ Likes to get partners in the mood by whispering in their ear: “I want your milk deep.”

2/ Kept getting their Tesco home delivery orders flagged as ‘suspicious’ because they consisted solely of booze and johnnies.

3/ Uses the chat-up line “I’d love to split your whiskers.”

4/ Likes to shag to the sound of their own records.

5/ Likes to impress potential hook-ups by name-dropping all the famous women they’ve shagged.

6/ Would take a different partner to Blockbusters each week at the height of their fame, shower them in Haagen Dazs and treat them to a movie – all on their dad’s card.

MrsNameRedacted writes:
“At the height of Deal Or No Deal mania, I was working for a company that did a tie-in game. Ahead of the big launch at a trade show, our graphics guys created a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Noel Edmonds – only to be told no by his agent.

“It seemed Noel didn’t like people seeing his actual height. The only way we were allowed to use a cardboard cutout of his image was if we made it over six foot. So our graphics guys simply added another 12 inches to his legs. People at the trade show were slightly bemused to see a strangely elongated Noel, complete with three-foot long thighs.”

Pootle writes:
“Years ago I worked on a series presented by master baker Paul Hollywood. As a gesture of thanks, everyone who worked on the show was gifted a copy of Paul’s book. At the wrap party, bosses installed a life-size cardboard Paul for the real man to stand next to as he had an impromptu book signing for all the books that staff members begrudgingly queued up to have signed.

“There were a few over-enthused young female staff members buzzing around, buoyed by the free bar and the prospect of an autograph from the silver fox himself, and he was more than happy to oblige.

“But guess who was seen being bundled into a cab at chucking out time? Paul Hollywood and… cardboard Paul.”

Football hacks in Italy are starting to quietly discuss something that isn’t being said openly, but would hit the world of sport like an earthquake if it happens: that European giants Inter Milan might go bust.

Chinese owners Suning’s retail empire has suffered this year, to the extent that they’ve given back the rights to showing Premier League football in China, and haven’t paid players at Inter or their Chinese Super League club, Jiangsu Suning, for months. Last year’s transfer fees – like those for Romelu Lukaku and Christian Eriksen – are still being negotiated.

Private equity giants BC partners recently offered 750M but were rebuffed and are believed to have walked away. Current owners and management are reluctant to relinquish control while Inter are still in the hunt for the league championship.

If they wait too long though, the legacy they leave might be demotion to Serie D.

Trump’s second impeachment trial didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts, with even ride-or-die media cheerleaders like Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Alan Dershowitz roundly ripping the piss out of his defence.

It’s no secret that this legal team wasn’t exactly his first pick. In fact, one of the three lawyers Trump has hired to represent him was, just a few months ago, trying to sue him himself (and is reported to have previously called him “a fucking crook” to boot).

So what happened to Trump’s former knight in shining armour: the slayer of Gawker, Charles Harder? Weirdly enough, Harder was supposed to have his hands full with a big case for a cryptocurrency client, suing Forbes Magazine for leaking documents that allegedly implicate them in some serious regulatory issues. Mysteriously enough though, that suit was quietly withdrawn a few days ago – just as the shitshow Senate trial got going.

Such unfortunate timing…

We feel we owe the Sun an apology. For the last few weeks, we’ve been repeating a story about their impromptu, rule-bending office Xmas party – at which a 50-something male executive and a female staffer 30 years his junior breached social distancing guidelines by getting minus three inches away from one another, in full view of the rest of the office.

In doing so, we may have given an impression of NewsUK as an old-school toxic workplace, where powerful old men take advantage of their position by preying upon ambitious young women. However, we have since been made aware that a much more progressive sex act also took place in the women’s bogs that night – between a high-powered female exec and one of their top-flight female journalists. So their Covid rule-breaking was actually admirably diverse and inclusive.

Aside from all the money they’re going to need to earmark for an HR department, there’s another reason GB News should maybe rethink their plan to emulate the Fox business model.

One reason Fox News became so profitable in the States is because of carriage fees: money that cable providers pay channels to carry their output. As Fox is seen as a “must-have” channel, cable networks have to include it in their packages or they would lose customers – which means cable companies pay Fox a very handsome per-subscriber, per-month rate. With over 77 million cable-paying households in the US, even a rate of $1 would work out at almost a billion dollars a year before they’d sold a single ad slot.

It doesn’t work quite the same way in the UK though. Because BBC News meets the needs of most UK viewers (a service they already get as part of the license fee) there’s not such a demand for cable news with paid-for packages. Which means no-one offers UK news channels a carriage fee.

That still leaves advertising on the table though. But given that actual Fox News pulled the plug on its UK feed back in 2017 because its daily viewership circled around the 2,000 mark, the prospects of getting lucrative sponsors don’t seem too rosy.

Rebecca Black’s Friday has just turned 10 years old
[Hear the anniversary remix]

Best photo of a car-crash causing koala you’ll see today
[See on New York Post]

Joe Pesci’s house is up for sale
[See on Zillow]

The US ambassador to Vietnam has released a rap for Lunar New Year
[It’s… quite something]

Live platypus cam!
[See at San Diego Zoo]

A long-read on the Brazilian Butt Lift
[Read on The Guardian]

A vintage jazz and big-band radio station, broadcasting from a remote Svalbard island
[Arctic Outpost Radio]

An oral history of Panjabi MC’s Mundian To Bach Ke
[Read on FiftyTwo]

Still Bored?
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[Check out the Brazen Ms Chazen]