The Second Serve // Killer Instinct

Sad though we were to hear about the death of Kate Spicer’s dog Wolfy, there’s someone other than Kate who forged an extra special connection with that pup and deserves our thoughts at this time too.

In Issue 761 we asked:

“Which British actor remembers the dog very fondly? In a scene that could have happened to his most famous film character, he woke up on a sofa once to find his balls being licked by Wolfy.”

The actor who will be flying at half-mast? Rhys Ifans.

John Terry has thrown his hat into the Chelsea ownership ring, heading up a consortium that’s looking to buy a 10% stake in the club. Terry’s big drive is to get the most devoted True Blues to buy up ‘fan tokens’ from £100 a pop so each get a stake in the ownership.

This sort of ownership model isn’t new. Fan tokens are all the rage with a certain sort of big money club at the minute. To give you an idea of how successful they’ve been elsewhere:

* When Paris St Germain signed Lionel Messi, their fan tokens were worth $60. Now they’re at $12.

* Man City’s are 66% down on their highest value.

* An Argentine FA fan token has dipped down 78%.

These sort of figures are daunting enough on the page, but John Terry has first-hand experience of financial assets plunging like this. The NFT range he launched at the start of the year? It lost 90% of its value within a month.

There’s another consortium putting in a bid on Chelsea. One which has an extra special secret weapon at its disposal: legendary music PR Barbara Charone. A formidable force in showbiz, Barbara’s chokehold on the media was such that even her own superstar clients couldn’t escape it.

Back when Madonna was based in London, she had a French photographer friend who was chummy with a Sun hack. If Madge ever wanted to leak a story, she’d tell her photographer mate, who’d phone it over to the Sun and – without fail – it would run in Bizarre the next day.

Except for the time when her (then-)husband Guy Ritchie was seeing his sister’s best mate on the side. Madonna had known about that for a while, but had chosen to bite her tongue knowing the hell it would unleash if it ever became public. At some point though, Ritchie had annoyed her once too often, so Madge told her French friend everything. They duly told the Sun journalist and then… nothing. Nothing ever got printed.

Why did this juicy, well-sourced scoop end up on the spike when so many others had run? As the friend was later told, Barbara Charone killed it. She “owned” Bizarre at the time and she didn’t want any stories of her client’s marital disharmony getting out. Even if that was what Madonna actually wanted.

Thanks to a big property investment in Portugal going tits up, Ant and Dec reportedly lost £2.5m last year. Coming on the heels of his £30m divorce, it seems Ant McPartlin will really be feeling the pinch at the minute. Or not quite feeling it, as the case may be.

One area in which Ant seems to be making some savings is on forehead botox. An aesthetician has been explaining to us that you can very clearly see Ant hasn’t been getting enough of it. He’s had the very middle of his forehead done, which remains smooth and youthful, but hasn’t been getting enough to do the sides. This leads to tell-tale creasing at the edges of his forehead – there, and only there – while a front panel of flesh remains static.

His increasingly pronounced ‘Spock Brow’ on one side is also apparently an obvious giveaway to those in the trade.

(Dec, if you’re wondering, appears to be filler-free.)

You’re never in bad company when ragging on Simon Cowell, but this weekend has seen a Hall Of Fame songwriter, Diane Warren, take a little dig at him too.

In an interview she recalled the time she sent her song “I Was Here” to Cowell to gauge his interest, before realising it might also be perfect for Beyoncé. So she called Jay-Z and played it for him over the phone. Jay told her to hold on a moment and, within half an hour, Beyoncé was on the line making plans to record it.

Two days later – having postponed the mastering of her entire album to accommodate this new track – Beyoncé was in the studio with Diane doing take after take (in Diane’s words “singing the shit out of it”) to try and nail a version she was happy with. She eventually got it, it made the album and Beyoncé went on to perform that same song live at the UN General Assembly.

A few days after this whirlwind session concluded, Diane received a letter from Simon Cowell. A rejection.

[Read the full interview]

We mentioned on Thursday that there was a strange rumour floating around that a contestant on the latest season of Married At First Sight Australia is related to one of the country’s most notorious serial killers, Ivan Milat.

It turns out to be true. Samantha Moitiz is the granddaughter of Milat’s sister and the revelation caught everyone a little off-guard. The connection came to light when Moitiz and her ‘husband’ were discussing options for movie night and he floated the 2005 film Wolf Creek. Immediately, the atmosphere between them became extremely awkward and the crew couldn’t figure out why.

Until Samantha discreetly explained off-camera that the movie had been based on a series of murders committed by her great uncle – so would they mind picking something else…

We’ve hit the first 100. Last week saw rounds on the themes of Simon Cowell, St Patrick’s Day and songs that have won awards for being the absolute worst.

For the next few weeks, we’re going to go year by year through some of the biggest selling singles of the 80s. You just have to remember the name of the track and the name of the artist.

Monday’s Theme: 1980 – ten of the 50 best-selling songs of that year.

[Play it here]

Why does Catherine Tate’s Nan Movie have no director credit?
[Curious story on Bleeding Cool]

Tonight sees the launch of the American Song Contest; sadly nothing quite as batshit as Eurovision in this first round…
[See some previews]

Musical tones as you type
[Typeatone]

Mundane gossip is taking over the internet
[Read on The Face]