The Second Serve // Bad Fridays

As it’s a Bank Holiday, in lieu of a normal issue we thought we’d offer up a small insight into previous Easters at Popbitch.

Easter has a particular resonance here at PBHQ because traditionally it’s been the time of year we’ve been all but guaranteed to land in legal hot water. We don’t know why lawyers were so keen to mess up our long weekends, but historically it’s always been a time fraught with peril for us.

We thought we’d try and give you a flavour of this here – along with some of the Easter gossip that amused us in years gone by.

Popbitch’s earliest Easter was a breeze. Only three months old, we had yet to incur the wrath of lawyers (they didn’t make an appearance until later in the year when Schillings got in touch about Jeremy Clarkson). What sort of gossip were we peddling in that Easter mailout?

* Arista Records had assigned Whitney Houston two 24-hour “assistants” (one for each nostril, maybe?)

* Craig David outed himself as a Cliff Richard fan (“I went to a concert last year and he was excellent”)

* Arthur Baker’s dog was in trouble for pissing on Mick Jagger’s foot

* Dollar frontman David Van Day had started working in a burger van in Brighton

* Prince William claimed he gave his Britney Spears album to Harry

Then there was the Easter we got hand-delivered a legal letter and court order from Schillings. We’re still unable to tell you the exact details of it because some of the injunctions from that time remain active – and we don’t fancy making the same mistake twice.

But if you want to see what we look like when we’re asking politely not to be put in prison, this is it…

“Dear Sirs,
We refer to your letter and accompanying Court Order delivered by hand to our offices earlier today, and your email of 17:31. We were unaware of the identity of the recipient of the injunction to which you refer prior to your letter. The article was a general statement about the trend for footballers to take out injunctions which happened to contain a quote from [STILL REDACTED IN 2024].

In light of the above, we are happy to agree to the undertakings, as requested, under your points 2. a. to d., in return for you and your client’s confirmation that neither you nor your client will initiate legal proceedings against us for the claims to which you refer, which are not accepted.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully
Popbitch.com”

Good Friday 2003 saw us having to send out a rare extra email to the Popbitch readership, the day after the standard newsletter. The inspiration for this? Several hours of conversation with Messrs Theodore Goddard, acting on behalf of Warner Brothers.

“On 16th April we published an article ‘Fry On The Wings Of Love’ claiming that during filming of the new Harry Potter film, ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’, two owls burned to death on set after flying into candles. There is actually no truth whatsoever in this and we apologise to all. The owls are present and correct and fully feathered!

“Happy Easter from Popbitch….”

It might be that gossip in general gets cracked down on at Easter because on Good Friday 2009 there was a story that broke in the papers, kicking off a big political scandal known as “Smeargate”. A bunch of Labour types had been thinking of putting together a political gossip site called Red Rag (proposed as a sort of Guido Fawkes for lefties) and had been swapping possible stories for inclusion on it – not quite so secretly as they thought.

Cue everyone in media getting legal letters from Carter Ruck explaining that Tom Watson MP had NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS SITE and to say otherwise would constitute a false allegation (as Associated Newspapers discovered when they had to pay “substantial damages” the following month…)

The gossip discussed in those emails:

* Some embarrassing university photos of George Osborne

* Pictures of Mrs Osborne looking pissed off

* Something about Michael Fabricant and Andy Street

* David Cameron visiting Dr Christian Jessen

The best-timed legal threat we’ve got around this time of year came eight years ago today, on April 1st 2016. It was slightly after the Easter weekend – but getting shouted at by our long-time adversaries on April Fools Day has always stuck in the memory. Their missive ran:

“Strictly Private and Confidential: Not for Publication

We very strongly urge you to immediately remove your article on the subject of the above [injunction]. You know the reasons. Exactly as you intended is happening.

I repeat that we very strongly urge you to remove the article on your website entitled ‘Up the Injunction’. We await hearing from you.

Regards,

Carter-Ruck Solicitors”

[Our article is still up]

Thankfully Nigella Lawson didn’t see fit to call in the lawyers in 2019, when we besmirched her good name by re-running an old Easter-themed story we’d heard about the comedian Arthur Smith. We said he’d lost a £200 bet after challenging Nigella to eat a dozen pickled eggs in a row.

It turned out we were wrong about it – and Nigella got in touch to put us right.

She assured us it was a whole jar of pickled eggs she was challenged to eat (“I’m sure more than 20”) not just a measly dozen.

Last week saw our 600th audio quiz – and we’re rolling straight on with #601: an April Fools’ special.

The premise is simple. It’s ten songs all haphazardly splodged together that you have to wade through. You want to get ten song titles out of the resulting mess, plus ten artists too. You get a point for each bit you get right: a maximum of twenty points in total.

[Play Monday’s quiz here]

Need to know how to launder money?
[Learn on Business Insider]

Christy Kinahan loves reviewing restaurants on Google
[You have to have a hobby]

Seems like the big Dani Alves  interview is just around the corner…
[Mundo Deportivo reports]