The Second Serve // Brooklyn Bolognese

Given that he was brought up in the full glare of the fame machine, often used as a publicity prop by his parents, it’s a minor miracle Brooklyn Beckham has grown up to be nothing worse than a sweet, dim, slightly lost celeb.

He’s been out doing a fresh round of promo interviews to celebrate his new “pop-up menu” collaboration with Uber Eats this week. Once again, Chef Beckham has offered some incredible insights into that head of his.

Despite his declared passion for food, Brooklyn says he only likes to eat one meal a day. Also, he has never taken a cooking class (“unfortunately”). But he does loves watching the film Ratatouille. And his favourite thing to cook is… spag bol.

The word around TV types suggest s Amazon aren’t going to be renewing The Power, the eye-wateringly expensive sci-fi series they made based on Naomi Alderman’s novel.

Not only did Amazon spend hundreds of millions shooting the nine episodes of S1, they then had to fork out a further eight-figure sum to do reshoots when they watched the first assembly – and discovered they hated it.

Kanye West is in a bit of trouble again after wearing a Burzum top last week. Ye is no stranger to stirring up a bit of controversy, but the Norwegian black metal scene he’s flirting with is no joke. Scandi metal beefs make hip-hop look like child’s play.

The founder of Burzum is Varg Vikernes (aka Count Grishnackh): a noted Neo-Nazi who founded white power movement the Norwegian Heathen Front in prison while serving 21 years for a spate of church arsons and the murder of a former bandmate, Euronymous.

No drive-bys for Norwegian metallers though. Varg stabbed Euronymous 23 times in the head, neck and back, claiming to friends that he’d couldn’t stab more as he drove the knife so hard into Euronymous’s skull he couldn’t get it back out again.

Euronymous was pretty hardcore himself. When another bandmate of his took his own life, leaving Euronymous to find the body, the first thing he did was to nip out to buy a disposable camera so he could take pictures with the corpse. Shots which later become the cover of a live bootleg album.

Euronymous also made a necklace out of the skull fragments he found blown across the room. But the story that he made a stew out of chunks of brain he’d found (with ham, peas and paprika) has been walked back in the years since.

It seems will•i•am has prior history with lifts. Many years ago, Will and his entourage entered the London Studios for a meeting – but looked extremely lost. A helpful staffer spotted him and asked Will where he needed to be, then sent him and his entourage to the nearest lift and packed them off to the top floor.

They thought nothing of it again until a long time later, when they did some work on The Voice. They mentioned this will•i•am anecdote in passing to the team, when one of the producers piped up and said “That was you?”

It turned out that day had been fraught with confusion. Will and his team had apparently reached to the top floor, but didn’t have a pass that would let them out there. So they ended up taking the lift to a random floor where the could get out and tried to use the staircase instead. However, in his infinite wisdom, Will though the best way to get to the top floor of the building was to walk… down the stairs.

He was spotted walking through practically every office in the building, as the Voice team scrambled around trying to find where he’d wandered off to.

MB writes:
“On our way to a testimonial dinner during the 1990s at Stamford Bridge, my friend and I found ourselves sharing a lift with Dutch footie maestro Ruud Gullit and his wife. Patting his pockets, Chelsea’s former player-manager revealed he’d mislaid his invite. My friend timorously joked, ‘Oh, no! They won’t let you in!’ To which he replied – in all seriousness – ‘But I am Ruud Gullit’.”

S writes:
“I was supervising Nicholas Parsons on a meet’n’greet thing in Croydon. We have to take a lift up to the big conference room thingy where all these old biddies are waiting. In the lift, Nicholas is chatting away and super-sweary and the lift doors open as he’s in full flow. He doesn’t miss a beat and sternly tells me ‘And that’s exactly the kind of language I refuse to tolerate’ before plunging genially into the stunned biddies.”

L writes:
“W Hotel Westwood in Los Angeles. David Byrne got in, just me and him. He’s total hero for me but I did the respectful ‘I’m not that fussed mate’ countenance. He stood too close and stared intently at me like I was the celebrity. So uncomfortably that when some folks got in before my floor I got out and took the stairs.”

Ozzy Osbourne just gave a big interview to Rolling Stone UK to show that rumours of his imminent demise are overblown. What comes out strongly from it is that his love affair with Sharon is still the biggest thing in his life. He didn’t always make it easy for Shaz though.

Returning from a festival in Russia, Ozzy drank most of a case of vodka he had brought back with him. This tripped a switch in his head and he suddenly began walking towards Sharon saying “We’ve decided that you’ve got to go” before he started to strangle her. Sharon hit the panic button on the house alarm and the police came and took Ozzy away. He woke up the next morning in jail and found out he’d been arrested for attempted murder.

It was an extremely low moment – but Ozzy cut off all his hair and sent it to Sharon in a shoebox, convinced this was a suitable apology that would make everything alright again.

And it did.

Last week, we set you quizzes on the Accordion, the Traitors, FIFA and Freaks.

This week, we have another five lined up to test the edges of your pop knowledge. Each quiz consists of a three-minute mix, made up of ten different song snippets. All you have to do is figure out the songs (a point each) and the artists (a second point each).

Get all ten songs and all ten artists, that’s twenty points for you to do with as you please.

Monday’s Theme: Breakfast

[Play it here]

Pudding fingers and rubbing snot – memories of Ron Desantis’s weird presidential run
[Read on Rolling Stone]

Fun browser game: Combo Pool
[Play it here]

RIP Marlena Shaw
[Our personal fave]