The Second Serve // Gotcha Journalism

For decades, we’ve offered all sorts of suggestions as to how the UK should treat Eurovision if it wants to have a hope of winning again. But it seems convincing the British public to take the song contest seriously will be an uphill battle.

PornHub tallied up the viewing habits of competing countries during the contest and compiled a chart of which countries stopped watching porn while it was on.

Greece was the country most willing to shut off the smut to concentrate on Eurovision, with a drop of 27.6% in their PornHub usage during the final.

The country least willing to give it up? The UK – which saw a piddling 3.3% reduction in porn consumption.

The Baby Reindeer effect continues apace. It seems that other Scottish comedians aren’t taking any chances with their safety any more.

Kevin Bridges has been spotted turning up to new material gigs with a bodyguard in tow.

OpenAI have pulled the voice of “Sky” – a ChatGPT chatbot that sounds uncannily like Scarlett Johansson.

It’s no surprise ScarJo’s voice has got wrapped up in AI as she was famously the voice of the virtual assistant in Spike Jonze’s Her. But it’s also no surprise that OpenAI are shitting bricks about everyone clocking the similarity. Scarlett Johansson is a notable name in celebrity-likeness case law.

Back in 2014, Scarlett sued a French novelist – Gregoire Delacourt – for defamation after he used her name in his book, likening his lead character to her. The story’s female lead was described as looking so much like Scarlett Johansson that some characters mistakenly thought she was her. The character had two affairs.

Scarlett won damages for it.

The big bronze knight that Noel Edmonds had installed on his New Zealand River Haven estate is not the first time he’s celebrated his own achievements via the medium of massive statue.

You may remember he once used to have a gigantic ‘Gotcha’ statue up in his old estate in Okehampton –shaped like one of the trophies he gave the celebrities he pranked on Noel’s House Party.

Whatever became of it? It was last spotted in a scrapyard in Hatherleigh.

[See here]

AF writes:
“Back at some by-election, Lembit Opik approached me (a photographer) and asked me to take a picture of him and then-girlfriend Sian Lloyd at a local curry house as they were eating. Apparently this very tabloid-style snap would make me money and boost the party fortunes by showing a celeb in town with a Lib Dem MP.

“I was dubious and asked how much he would pay me. He said nothing – I was bound to make money by selling the snap.

“I told him to do one.”

If you’ve slightly tuned out of the Trump trial, here are some of the best bizarre revelations that we wanted to mark somewhere for posterity.

* Trump would spend his days talking to whoever called him – until either he got bored or someone better called. Then he would sign off  with the farewell: “You’re the greatest. Bye-bye…”

* Trump didn’t write his own tweets. He would look at a print-out and make edits instead – including capitalising certain words and adding Oxford commas.

* Trump has an aide called Natalie who is known as “the human printer”, who even accompanies him to court with a wireless printer, printing out media stories favourable to him.

Last week, we gave you an assorted grab bag of quizzes – with no real rhyme or reason. This week, we’re back on the themed stuff.

Each of the ten songs you’ll hear in each quiz will be linked by something. All you have to do is name the ten songs and the ten artists who perform them – a point each, for twenty points in total.

THAT SAID: Today’s quiz is slightly different. For this one you have to name the original artist who has had their song baby-fied.

Monday’s Theme: Lullaby Mixes

[Play it here]

Singers falling down the stairs
[Listen on YouTube]

How good is your pitch?
[Play Perfect Pitch]

The Music Industry’s New Age Of Arrogance
[Read on The Quietus]