The Second Serve // Badgering The Primates

For years we’ve been telling you that Prince Charles is a big fan of swearing, but have only had one definite example with which to make our case (the one where Harry had to pull out of a charity appearance last minute in the early days of dating Meghan, leaving his father to fill in for him – who asked that the event organisers cut his boy some slack because he was a “little cuntstruck”).

Anyhow, a second anecdote of Charles’s pottymouth has since been brought to our attention.

[It’s here]

There’s been a fun story going around over the weekend about how The Queen once left a party early where Paul McCartney was due to play a private gig for her because she wanted to watch Twin Peaks instead (as told by Angelo Badalamenti here).

Her Maj wasn’t the only recently departed Head Of State to enjoy the show.

The mystery of who killed Laura Palmer was a hot topic of conversation when the series first aired and David Lynch refused to tell anyone the answer ahead of time – including the president of the production company that was paying for it. Even when the person who wanted to know the answer was the actual president: George H.W. Bush.

Which meant George Bush then had to pick up the phone and disappoint the guy who’d originally asked him to ask Lynch: Mikhail Gorbachev.

Last week, we told a story of Boris Johnson making a spectacle of himself at a summer fete day at his kids’ private school. It seems only fair then that we share any stories we hear of Liz Truss doing the same at any family events she attends.

Norfolk constituents recall a local tale of Liz visiting a nearby garden open day for a charity event. It was the usual sort of English Country Garden affair with all the trappings of a classic fete. Sadly for her kids, they weren’t allowed to take advantage of the attractions and get their faces painted like the rest of the children there.

Liz was heard refusing their pleading with “No, we’re not that kind of person”.

One of the Popbitch-adjacent stories in this weekend’s media was a zoologist’s study of animal behaviour through Covid. They’d been watching Britain’s zoo baboons and, with visitation curtailed, scientists found that primates altered their behaviour patterns.

Baboons: had a lot more sex with no-one there to watch them
Chimps: ate less
Bonobos: spent more time alone
Gorillas: became more sedentary

When crowds returned, they reverted to their pre-pandemic behaviour.

The opposite, we happened to learn recently, was true of baboons out in the national parks of Uganda. National Park guards kept up daily visits to the primate troupes habituated to humans and, unlike in zoos, they reported that there was no discernible difference in their behaviour.

Particularly the baboons, who sat by the side of the road happily masturbating even when there were no tourist Land Cruisers trundling by. Exactly the same pre- and post-pandemic.

We had some examples of overheard celebrity ringtones in Thursday’s email. Here are a handful more.

Chesney Hawkes = The theme from Rainbow

Mark from Westlife = Let’s Push Things Forward by The Streets

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen = The Imperial March from Star Wars

Macaulay Culkin = California by Phantom Planet (a.k.a. the theme from The OC)

And though he’s not a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, the ringtone on the mobile phone of South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens is I’m Too Sexy by Right Said Fred. (It chimed during a media huddle.)

It’s been fun watching Dan Wootton take such a public pasting for getting someone to film his moment of “quiet reflection” at Buckingham Palace so he could plaster it across social media – but it’s no real surprise he’d choose this moment to make things about himself. He’s constantly looking for ways to make himself the centre of attention.

When he first took over the showbiz column at News Of The World, he celebrated by recording a theme tune for his page. In the paper. Which can’t play music.

And in his final Bizarre column for the Sun he somehow managed to included 19 photos of his own face across the double page spread.

The BFI had a special event for Dr Who fans last weekend: a preview screening of an old, mainly lost Patrick Troughton episode, which used the original soundtrack but a lot of animation to reconstruct the episode.

Whovians flew in specially from around this world for this event. In the theatre, fans congregated at the side aisles to see who had managed to get the most coveted seat.

This seat wasn’t in the centre, in the very front row, or next to a guest of honour. Instead, superfans were staring at the attendee who sat proudly back a few rows, to the side.

The guy who’d managed to bag seat… K9.

Last week saw audio quizzes on the themes of Boris’s Departure, Duets and TFI Friday. This week, there’s five more three-minute mixes, each made up of ten songs on some arbitrary theme. You get a point for every song you correctly identify and a point for every artist you name too. That’s twenty points per quiz.

Today’s has the potential for a bonus ten points too as each song is the selection of a celebrity castaway on Desert Island Discs. If you want to make things a little trickier for yourself, we’ve given you the ten celebrities for you to match up to the ten songs.

Monday’s Theme: Celebrity Desert Island Discs

[Play here]

What happened in newsrooms on the day the Queen died?
[Read on Wired]

The Fyre Festival fraudster is out of jail and pondering his next move
[Read on NYT]

Tom’s putting it on the market now
[Mr Baker’s house]

Remember that captial fund that was buying bands’ back catalogues for insane amounts of money?
[It’s struggling…]

Old Jokes Home
Q/ Why won’t the Bank Of England need to print any new notes?
A/ They’ve all had charlie on them for years