Nobby’s Gonna Sort You Out

What a beautiful coda to the Wagatha Christie trial. After losing the case she brought against Coleen Rooney – torching what little reputation she had into the finest, softest ash – who did Rebekah Vardy immediately go and sell her story to?

The Sun and its sister channel, TalkTV.

It’s easy to laugh. Fun too. But now that Becky is facing down a seven figure service charge for her day in court, maybe she should consider formalising her relationship with Murdoch & Co? Rupert is still chucking money at TalkTV like it’s going out of style, so if there was ever a moment to go mask-off and sign an official deal with NewsUK, it’s now.

That Vanessa Feltz transfer rumour we mentioned last week; her leaving Radio 2 to take over Jeremy Kyle’s show on TalkTV? Around the £1m mark, apparently.

We know Boris Johnson has been a few times. We know there was also an evening where Katie Price popped her knockers out at the dinner table for guests like Joan Collins and Pixie Lott. But who else has been invited over to Evgeny Lebedev’s? It feels like we need a comprehensive list.

We can get the ball rolling with Tom Hardy. He was invited to Stud House at some point during the pandemic years, where the two men enjoyed a long talk about Krav Maga and other martial arts – which also gave Tom a chance to wheel out his hoary old story of the “special relationship” he has with the SAS, explaining how he’s on speed dial for when shit goes down and they need all hands to the pumps.

Who else? Have you been to Casa Lebedev? hello@popbitch.com

Which socialite’s fashion business is running at an eye-watering loss – in part because one of the fancy department stores she loves to visit just to see her products on sale there is being massively incentivised by the company to keep stock visible on shelves?

Muse being the first act to release an NFT that’s chart-eligible seemed achingly on brand – and reminded us of this fun little titbit.

Someone who once bumped into Muse’s drummer Dominic Howard ahead of a gig in London got chatting with him. The pair hit it off so Dom invited him and a few friends to come along to the gig that night. He had a placeholder on the guestlist. All this guy had to do was tell them on the door he was down as ‘Nobby Burton’ – and, sure enough, it worked.

Who is Nobby Burton? The fictional character from The Office who sells David Brent his ties out of a suitcase, two for a tenner.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor are hitting the festival circuit hard this summer, from Atlanta through to California and Austin, culminating in a headline appearance at Barcelona’s AMFest.

A word of warning to any organisers: be extra careful with their rider requests. They once sparked an altercation at All Tomorrow’s Parties by refusing the food that was brought to their trailer because it was “the wrong sort of lentils”.

A heavily bearded Hugh Laurie flew into LA the other week and was stood in the long, hot queue for immigration. As he’s not actually a doctor – just played one on TV – he was unable to help the woman who fainted at his feet.

All he was able to do was use the ensuing commotion to slip from that queue over to a much shorter, much quicker-moving one. And, in doing so, got himself out of the path of the actual medics who came to the woman’s rescue and gave her the attention she needed.

So a win for all involved.

There’s an interesting pop story coming out of Hong Kong at the minute, after an incident on the set of boyband Mirror’s latest residency.

Mirror are massive in Hong Kong – Beatles/1D/BTS levels of fame. Part of the appeal is a subversive political edge. Cantonese rather than Mandarin singers, they maintain an androgynous look in the face of recent Chinese crackdowns on “effeminate male celebrities”. Two of the band also star in Hong Kong’s biggest TV show, Ossan’s Love: a drama about a gay love triangle. And the band have posted photos on social media of them wearing yellow as a gesture of solidarity with fans protesting the National Security Law.

That fanbase is every bit as passionate as the Directioners or the BTS Army. Mostly they’re heartwarmingly positive too. For example, after someone almost died in a stampede when crowds gathered to celebrate a band member’s birthday, fans started marking those occasions in a much gentler fashion – by raising money to pay for the entire city to enjoy free tram or ferry rides for the day (something they called the “Mirror Effect”).

But after a huge TV screen suddenly fell from the ceiling mid-concert recently, badly injuring two of their dancers – potentially paralysing one of them – things are now turning the way of all fandoms: towards online conspiracy theories.

Was it simply an accident? Or was it something more nefarious? The detail Mirror fans are finding hardest to square is that, for some as-yet-unexplained reason, somebody turned those screens (that had been horizontal for the first two gigs) 90˚ into a vertical position just before the night one fell…

21 years ago, The Strokes’ Is This It was released – an album held up as a pinnacle of early 00s cool, that influenced an entire decade of music and reinvigorated the NYC scene.

So what is its producer, Gordon Raphael up to these days? He’s living in Hebden Bridge and posting regularly to a local Facebook group asking neighbours for cardboard boxes to help him move house and for a handyman to help him unscrew some shelving he can’t get down.

Noted spoon-botherer Uri Geller waded into geopolitical affairs this week, telling Putin he’d use his mind-powers to foil any nuclear attack Russia launches – a threat that must have sent some serious shivers down spines at the Kremlin.

How does Uri do it? A reader explains:

“I spent a fascinating afternoon at Uri’s house once. I had learned how he bends spoons – he just bends them really quickly while you’re not looking, relying on the fact that you don’t think spoons are easy to bend but they are, then just pretends to do all the rubbing stuff while guffing on about molecules.

“So I brought a notably thick Ikea teaspoon for him to bend and was determined never to look away from him for a second. For a while it worked. He got super frustrated as he pretend massaged the spoon. Then, when it was getting really awkward, he slammed his hand down on my shoulder and shouted, ‘ARE YOU CLOSER TO YOUR MOTHER OR YOUR FATHER?’ which totally caught me and meant I lost attention for a second, so he got away with it.”

Buy Princess Di’s old shag wagon
[Lot listing here]

Outstanding Twitter account posting foreign language pop covers
[Incredible stuff]

The moment InfoWars’ Alex Jones found out that lawyers have been sitting on the full contents of his phone for a fortnight
[Legal drama on YouTube]

How do you advertise sex shops and porn in a SFW manner?
[Some examples]

A 99 year old Mexican granny got a gigantic cock and balls made for her grave
[See on VICE]

Otters x puppies
[See on Twitter]

How are celebrities’ crypto endorsements coming on?
[Read on Bloomberg]

Tracking celebrity jets: the sleeper hit of the summer
[Read on Guardian]

Still Bored?
Toxic by Britney, arranged for domestic appliances
[Listen on YouTube]