The Second Serve // Cracking Out The Boos

The Sydney Morning Herald has spent the weekend desperately trying to unshit its bed after one of its gossip columnists revealed he was likely the cause of Rebel Wilson coming out last Friday. There’s been a fair bit of public astonishment that anyone would out someone for column inches these days – much less a gay man – but it’s something of a antipodean speciality.

For a time, it was known in the UK as doing “a Wootton” – named for the former News of The World and Sun hack, Dan Wootton of New Zealand. It was coined after George Shelley from Union J decided to come out in a heartfelt YouTube vlog. Dan was so furious about not being given it as an exclusive he let slip to colleagues that he believed his column was the only place a celebrity should be revealing their sexuality.

Pete Doherty has been telling people that he hasn’t actually read his autobiography and that lawyers have snipped out all the good bits anyway – but that’s not entirely true. A quick flick through an advance copy this weekend threw up some great moments.

* Doherty once burgled his bandmate Carl Barat’s flat. He missed his first court hearing about it because the expired ham he stole from Barat’s fridge gave him food poisoning.

* He split from Kate Moss when Kate covered his teddy bear, Pandy, in petrol and set him on fire. (Pete used to carry Pandy all around London with him.)

* Kate was annoyed with him as Pete had accidentally pressed the panic button by her bed and 12 armed police had turned up.

* When they split after the cocaine video, Pete and Kate used to secretly meet in a Pimlico tenement flat. Kate’s friend James Brown used to call him with a codeword for him to go there.

Andrew Lloyd Webber drew boos from the audience at Cinderella’s closing night last night, after he appeared to refer to the musical as “a costly mistake”. There’s been a bit of debate as to what he was actually referring to (the musical itself, or his determination to forge ahead despite Covid complications) but these sorts of misunderstandings are quite common with ALW.

It used to be a good rule of thumb that anybody who worked with Andrew took nothing he said after about 2pm at face value because he always liked to get tucked into the vintage wines at lunch.

Following any order he gave of an afternoon was usually pointless because he’d either have forgotten he issued it by the morning, or – worse – he’d have changed his mind and you’d have to fix it. Like the memorable incident when ALW demanded someone be fired from a production after lunch. Then came in fully rested the next morning, screaming and shouting at staff asking why he had so many tetchy messages from his dear friend about being booted off the project.

Andrew Lloyd Webber wasn’t the only person getting booed by crowds these last few days. The Stones played Anfield Stadium on Thursday night and we hear reports that when Mick Jagger namechecked local lass Cilla Black, he did so to pockets of boos from the audience.

We probably don’t need to rehash the many and varied reasons why Cilla inspires that response in so many (though we’re always happy to direct people to this collection of anecdotes). However, the incident also reminded us that Cilla Black once did some demos at Ronnie Wood’s place back in 2001.

In fact, she was the one who introduced Ronnie to fellow scouser Paul O’Grady – who was such an almighty hellraiser at the time even seasoned caners like the Stones were astonished at his capacity for the stuff.

Since then Jagger has maintained he needs people to keep three things away from the band: “Drugs, booze and Lily Savage.”

We have a slight correction to make after Thursday’s story about Richard Desmond making everyone in the Daily Express office pretend to work on an X Factor story when his friend Simon Cowell came to pay a visit.

It’s not quite true – as we’ve since heard from a journalist who was working on the Daily Star at that time. Desmond made all of them pretend to work on X Factor stories while Cowell was there as well.

We told you last week that Matt Hancock had been given honorary membership to the ‘world’s first crypto club’ – the one that the new owners of Blacks are looking to start. Since then, Matt has been out flying the fintech flag, sitting down for a podcast with Isabel Oakshott this week about why we shouldn’t be worrying about a crypto-crash.

It’s nice to see he’s got a positive attitude, because someone who’s been keeping an eye on the various bits of crypto the new tech bros of Blacks were touting as proof of their concept’s brilliance has taken a bit of a tumble in recent months.

They reckon that one of the crypto items the team was lauding as being worth $9,000 when making their pitch a while back is currently sitting around the $12 mark.

Last week saw audio quizzes on the themes of Black, White, June No.1s and Doctors. This week sees five more: 50 songs all tossed in the grinder and then chunked up into five ten-song mixes.

All you have to do is name the song and the artist performing it. Simplicity itself.

Monday’s theme: Booms

[Play it here]

Some Australian coverage of the Married At First Sight story we had on Thursday – which features the delightful phrase “slurp on a knob”
[Read on Pedestrian]

Double dickhead Halloween mask
[Never too early to buy]

Addictive little word puzzle
[Play Cell Tower]