The Second Serve // An Incomplete Clown

One of the best things we learned over the weekend is that the Queen is not only a huge gossip fiend, but she gets a personalised private daily gossip email sent to her by government insiders.

The full story is here, but what’s particularly interesting is that the Queen specifically requests the proper, behind-the-scenes Westminster dirt that “doesn’t make the press”.

Given that we sparked a minor national security issue by pointing out Boris Johnson’s personal phone number was freely available on the internet, we figure there’s a fairly decent chance the Queen Of England has been forwarded a Popbitch story. But her evident taste for the hard stuff means it likely goes much deeper than that.

If she’s really keen to know stories about MPs that the press won’t touch – and demands fresh daily content to boot – there’s a non-zero chance she’ll have heard the one about Michael Gove using a hoover to unclog turds from his toilet.

If anyone has any idea of the sorts of stories that Her Maj delights in, we’re all ears: club@popbitch.com.

Maybe he thought by giving an interview in Welsh to a Welsh language outlet that the story would stay quiet, but Downing Street’s new press guy has had a hell of a first day.

In a now-widely reported interview with Golwg360, Guto Harri announced that he gave Boris a salute at their first meeting, Boris then joked about taking the knee and the pair of them recited a few lines of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.

However, the quote enjoying the most cut-through is Harri saying of his new boss: “He’s not a complete clown…”

Evidently not, because one of the other people Boris has just drafted into his inner circle is Andrew Griffith, who is taking over as policy chief. Griffith is known as one of Rupert Murdoch’s inside guys. A former Sky exec, he remains one of the most regular attendees at any of Rupert’s events where he is always a dead cert to be found sidling up to his old master.

Along with Guto (a former NewsUK man himself) political watchers say these two appointments are almost certainly the price of Murdoch’s future support..

Another of the less clownish details about Guto Harri’s appointment at No.10 is that he arrives by way of Hawthorn Advisors: the “strategic communications agency” co-founded by Tory Party chairman, Ben Elliot.

If the name is familiar to you, that’s probably because he’s the same Ben Elliot who keeps getting caught trying to sell access to his uncle Prince Charles, the PM and the Chancellor for six-figure sums.

But Hawthorn stories always catch our eye for a different reason. Because they’re the agency that once tried to leak a bunch of stories to Popbitch about Amber Heard in the hopes that we’d run them. On behalf of their client… Johnny Depp.

It’s been in the post for years now, but Channel 5 finally looks set to pull the plug on Neighbours. Unless another broadcast partner steps in to provide the funding that C5 is withdrawing, the show might fold completely, such is its dependence on its UK audience. And Neighbours definitely had lots of very prominent UK fans.

* A former concierge at the Gore Hotel in Kensington was regularly tasked with taping Neighbours for PJ Harvey when she stayed there as she couldn’t work the VCR in her room and didn’t want to miss any episodes.

* Prince William used to send Natalie Imbruglia flowers and chocolates.

* Ronnie Kray once rang The Sun’s Bizarre desk from Broadmoor, asking for a copy of The Locomotion by Kylie Minogue.

A lot of Neighbours actors used the fame the show gave them to launch a pop career, but Delta Goodrem did it the other way round – having a go at the pop thing before she signed on as Nina Tucker.

Those who worked with the teenage Delta on her early stabs at pop stardom mostly remember her incredibly pushy stage mother – a proto-Kris Jenner momager-type. While filming the video for her debut single “I Don’t Care”, the final section saw Delta in a floaty white dress surrounded by a stage of lightbulbs. However, when it came to shooting, the director couldn’t help but notice that Delta’s pants were showing through the fabric under all the bright lights.

A problem swiftly solved by Delta’s mother who walked over to her 17 year old daughter, whipped her knickers out from under the dress (in front of the assembled crew) and put her straight back to work.

The statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter was this weekend’s castaway on Desert Island Discs. The appearance has stirred a minor media storm surrounding comments he made about his personal approach to the pandemic – with a misleadingly quoted headline in the Observer kicking off another debate about accuracy and agenda in modern media, the scourge of clickbait, the death of nuance, etc, etc, etc.

All of which has very unhelpfully buried the real story. That he confessed to being a fan of Moldovan Eurodance act O-Zone, picking Dragostea Din Tei as one of his eight records to be stranded with.

[You know the one…]

Last week saw audio quizzes on the themes of foreign re-records, the periodic table and double word titles. This week sees another set of quizzes, where 50 songs are cracked up and crumbled over five 2’30 tests. You have to correctly identify the songs’ titles and their recording artists – a point for each, which means 20 per quiz/100 per week.

Monday’s theme: Diamond Jubilee – songs that were performed at the Queen’s last big Jubilee celebration concert, ten years ago…

[Play it here]

What the fuck is going on with Anthony Kiedis’ accent these days?
[Listen to RHCP’s comeback song]

The Jackass boys recall their favourite stunts
[Read on NYT]

Pangolins are getting kidnapped and held ransom now
[Poor mites can’t catch a break…]

Celebrities and NFTs: A match made in hell
[Read on the Atlantic]

A translation of that Guto Harri interview
[Read on Golwg360]