The Second Serve // Mystery Knight

JR writes:
“The Bear Grylls story reminds me someone once told me they saw Craig David in a convertible (top down) on the Kings Road blaring out his own music.”

Suggs put in quite the performance at De La Warr in Bexhill-On-Sea over the weekend. He was booked to DJ there but, thanks to some serious pre-show lubrication in the dressing room, he didn’t quite manage it.

He staggered onto stage half an hour late, then proceeded to play records at the wrong speed, checked his phone incessantly and slurred all his patter. About 40 minutes into his 2 hour set he mumbled “I always wanted to be a DJ but it’s not what it’s cracked up to be”, before throwing a record into the audience, dropping his mic and storming off to boos.

The audience have all been offered refunds.

In Issue 1022 we asked:
“Which British music exec used to treat one of his male underlings to loads of global travel, sending him off to look after the label’s acts in various territories – specifically so that he could conduct an affair with the guy’s fiancée while he was away?”

Farewell to Ferdy Unger-Hamilton, who is now stepping down as president of Columbia Records. The underling in question once bumped into Ferdy in the street after learning of this devious little plan – and thumped him square in the jaw for it.

Execs at Columbia told Ferdy that he really did have this coming, but he still pressed charges.

The first few episodes of Disney’s acclaimed new Star Wars series, Andor, were directed by British director Toby Haynes. Many years ago, Toby was seeing someone in the wider Popbitch orbit behind his (then-)girlfriend’s back. This women ended up breaking things off after Toby started crying when he thought his girlfriend might find out about the two of them.

Not because he was worried it would hurt her feelings, but because he feared he might lose the expensive new shower system they’d just had installed.

For the last few years, the FA has been conducting an interview series with various England players called ‘If I Could…’. Here are some of the answers we’ve enjoyed most from the series.

…only eat one item of food for the rest of my life
HARRY MAGUIRE: “Pasta. Not sure if it comes under a pasta dish but I love lasagne and I love all sorts of pasta – tagliatelle, penne, all sorts.”

REECE JAMES [Injured]: “Lobster. I like lobster, it is top. I don’t know what it is about it. It is just different and ever since I have tried it, I have loved it.”

…invite three guests around for dinner
MASON MOUNT: Winston Churchill, Leonardo DiCaprio, Conor McGregor

JORDAN PICKFORD: Tiger Woods, Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio (“but off of The Wolf of Wall Street”)

CONOR COADY: Sir Bobby Robson, Ed Sheeran, Michael Schofield (“but him as the character from Prison Break”)

…choose who would play me in the film of my life
JORDAN PICKFORD: “Thomas Turgoose, who plays Shaun in This is England. It would have to be him because I get that a lot off the lads.”

In his If I Could… interview, Luke Shaw said his fantasy dinner party guests would be the Queen and Barack Obama as he’s “quite into conspiracy stuff and Obama and the Queen must know a lot of conspiracies so I would get them both in and find out what’s going on.”

Squad handlers out in Qatar will want to keep a close eye on Shaw then, because there’s a bizarre conspiracy theory currently picking up steam throughout the Middle East, that’s been making its way through Arabic YouTube and social media.

The story goes that – contrary to the Western version of events – the origin of the Covid outbreak wasn’t Wuhan, but 37 secret biohazard labs in Ukraine. The conspiracists claim that the labs deliberately infected flocks of migratory birds with the virus, then set them free to infect the global population and Russia getting wind of this diabolical, highly classified plan is what caused them to invade.

For the last two weeks, we’ve been hopping across various editions of Now That’s What I Call Music, taking a song from every edition of the series from #1–#100. This week, we’re back to the regular, more tangible themes.

Each day, we slice ten songs up into little pieces and reassemble them into a ~3min mix. All you have to do is identify each of the songs (a point a piece) and the artist/s who performed them (a second point). Twenty points per day; a hundred points per week.

Monday’s Theme: Football

[Play it here]

Create a Pokemon with a text prompt
[Pick anything]

Find out (roughly) what time it is with excerpts from novels
[The Literature Clock]

A Metallica x Men Down Under mash-up
[Listen on YouTube]