The Filth And The Furious

The New York Times ran a column this week about how Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson – who made his name railing against the mainstream media, calling them “animals… not worthy of respect” – is actually a massive gossip and a regular anonymous source for many media stories about Trump, Fox and even himself.

Keen to protect his colleague’s honour, Sean Hannity rushed to attack the piece on air, trashing the NYT in time-honoured Fox News fashion. But Hannity might not have been quite so quick to jump to his defence if he knew how Tucker spoke about him in those off-the-record gossip sessions.

Any brothers-in-arms, comrades-in-crusade spirit between the two appears to only flow one way. Turns out one of Tucker’s favourite topics to chuckle about with his MSM mates is how much of a cringing Trump sycophant Sean is.

Have fun in the green room together, chaps!

If you didn’t catch the story at the weekend about Michael Owen texting women for tit pics in his inimitably dreary style (“Come on then, fire them through” / “Tremendous, by the way”) it’s worth a read. But his tepid tone belies the fact that Michael is actually a bit of an old hand when it comes to glamour photography.

Back in his early Liverpool days, when digital cameras were still in their infancy and press photographers routinely used film, Michael had a little prank he liked to play whenever the team was gathered together for a photo.

It was only when the photographer had returned to work and developed his roll of film that he’d notice one of the younger players had tugged down his shorts and exposed a bit of his arse for the camera – rendering most of the pictures unfit for publication.

The persistent bumflasher? Michael Owen.

Advocates for wild swimming are ten a penny on Fleet Street these days, but which senior journalist has a very particular pitch? He encourages friends and colleagues to take up the hobby by extolling the thrill of taking a shit in the sea – telling them, “It’s so liberating. Everyone should do it. You just shit and swim away as fast as you can.”

Anne Robinson has been doing a round of interviews to distance herself from her old “Queen Of Mean” persona ahead of starting on cuddly tea-time quizshow Countdown next week. She’s promised to treat contestants more kindly, but will she extend that courtesy to production crew too?

Anne made a lot of extra work for people on The Weakest Link because of her reluctance to record pick-ups, something most presenters happily toss off at the end of filming to help editors smoothly cover any mistakes.

She all but refused to do them and was so disagreeable whenever she was asked to re-record a fluffed phrase that editors soon devised a workaround. They found it was marginally less painful just to wade through the rushes to find examples of her using similar sounds elsewhere in the recording, and splice together replacement words, syllable by syllable, to correct her errors.

A task which should be all the more fun on a predominantly word-based show.

The strangest story of the week comes from New Zealand, where two meth dealers bonded in prison over an episode of The River Cottage in which Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall showed how to make your own yoghurt. Inspired, the pair started using their rations to produce their own illicit yoghurt supply in their cells. The stuff was so popular with other inmates that it became a trading commodity – eventually smuggled throughout the entire New Zealand prison system, spawning stories of the NZ Yoghurt Mafia.

It’s a weirdly heartwarming and wholesome tale, if you’ve got the time. And how nice to finally have a story about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s yoghurt production that doesn’t leave a strange taste in the mouth. Or a strange crust in the hair.

Cursed by the dual ills of coronavirus and celebrities pretending to be more and more eco-friendly, aeroplane maker Bombardier will be discontinuing one of its most iconic models – the Learjet – at the end of 2021.

Widely considered to be the original celebrity private plane, the Learjet will be remembered fondly by the rock’n’roll greats. At the height of the Eagles’ fame in the 1970s, Don Henley would pick up women from all over America while the band was touring. He’d take them back to his hotel room, let them hang out with the band for a few days until he got bored, and then had them flown back to their homes on his private jet.

A dating technique he called The “Love ’em And Lear ’em” Method.

Seeing as he followed his dad into the music business, it made a certain sort of sense that Pat Handlin would follow his dad out of it too. A Guardian investigation into the toxic workplace at Sony Australia saw long-time boss Denis Handlin step down from the label this week – and the boy Pat quickly followed suit.

It would be easy to chalk Handlin Jnr’s career up to nepotism, but that doesn’t tell the full story. Pat’s expertise was also spotted by noted A&R genius Simon Cowell, who brought him onboard in 2016 to run A&R at Syco for a couple of years. It’s not entirely clear what he did there as – by our reckoning – the only hits Syco produced around that time were by Camila Cabello and Little Mix: two long-time signings from Cowell’s own reality shows.

None of that stopped Pat from securing a promotion though, as he left Syco to become VP A&R for Sony Australia. Having lost two of the label’s biggest acts (Jessica Mauboy and Dani Im) during that time, Pat had little else to do each day but try to find a hit for his fiancée – the woman he left his wife for: X Factor winner, Samantha Jade.

Hopefully the industry will find a way to struggle on without him.

It was only a month ago that Michael Gove was being accused by colleagues of masterminding a Cummings-led coup to wrest control of No.10 from the PM. Now he’s suddenly getting wheeled out everywhere as the Government’s spokesperson on the Scottish Independence question – placed in charge of “Union Policy”.

Quite a plum position for someone who’s supposedly been such a snake in the grass, isn’t it?

Unless someone is having a cruel joke at Gove’s expense, making light of the persistent rumour that’s been dogging Westminster for months now about the state of his own union?

John McAfee’s death in a Barcelona prison is going to leave a lot of mysteries unsolved – including one very dear to us here at Popbitch.

Last year, a reader asked McAfee the old PB perennial: who would win in a fight between a baboon and a badger? McAfee’s reply remains unfinished: “How big is the badger? What climate is the fight being fought in? If extreme North… Badger will eat Baboon for a few weeks. If South… need more data…”

Sadly, the data never reached him – so we’ll never know for sure.

After a long fight with Beijing, today marks the last day of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily. Started in 1995 as a gossipy tabloid, Apple Daily was full of pap shots and chequebook journalism, smut and scandal. It was anarchic and scurrilous and had story-getting methods that would have made the News of the World’s eyes pop – but it did was it was set up to do: push back against a prevailing media culture that never challenged those in power.

It’s easy to scoff at the “importance” of gossip rags and tabloids but – if nothing else – they do provide a useful gauge of the health of a media ecosystem. When they’re working well, tabloids help prick the bubble of pomposity around the powerful, ignoring the bullshit formality and respectability that the ruling classes wrap themselves up in, and actively test the limits of the rules that are set.

And when they aren’t, it helps make it all the more clear that something is wrong.

HK media today quoted one Apple Daily reader as saying what they’d most miss is that once, thanks to the paper, “Top ministers would dare to admit they’d done wrong and be accountable. Nowadays, officials are always right…”

Mel B’s house is for sale
[See on Yorkshire Post]

Is the celebrity foot fetish site WikiFeet falling victim to partisan infighting?
[Read on Trashberg]

What’s KT Tunstall up to these days? Guesting on this banger on the new Blood, Wine Or Honey album
[Listen to Attraction]

James Corden vs the Jersey authorities
[Fingers crossed for escalation]

A transcript of Britney Spears’ statement
[Read on Variety]

Otters with a popcorn machine
[Watch on YouTube]

A charmingly named Turkish rap star
[Listen on YouTube]

Backstreet Boys and N*Sync are forming a supergroup called… Back-Sync?
[Sounds like a plumbing problem]

A follow-up to last week’s Partridge
[Dubiously dubbed Peep Show]

Still Bored?
His sexts were embarrassing, but they’ll never top the Hall Of Fame cringefest that is Michael Owen’s Dubai promo
[Revisit it]