The Second Serve // Nefarious Playtime

We’re sure by now you’ve seen that perennial Popbitch punchline Dan Wootton is in something of a pickle ever since allegations about his personal and professional conduct over the last decade and a half have been emerging in the press.

Dan is refuting any alleged criminality (while staying conspicuously silent about the central allegation of him using fake identities to catfish people) insisting that there is a smear campaign in operation, aimed at taking down GB News.

We pointed out on Thursday that Popbitch has been reporting on Dan Wootton’s shifty history for many years – long before GB News was even a glint in Andrew Neil’s eye.

But as there are more revelations to come this week, we figured it might be useful to gather together a little history of Wootton, so you can have a more rounded appreciation of the story as it develops…

We had cause to remind you of this very recently, because Wootton’s weeks-long coverage of the Phillip Schofield/runner affair made it public interest – but we’ll tell you again because it explains how we ended up with him.

Dan’s media career began back in his native New Zealand, where he gained fame as the much younger lover of a morning TV presenter, for whom he was a junior researcher.

He was 21. She (Lisa Manning) was 40. Much like with Schofield, Lisa ended up leaving the show amid fevered gossip in the local papers, and the relationship met a rough end too. Lisa dumped Dan after falling for actor John Rhys-Davies (a.k.a. Sallah from Indiana Jones/Gimli from Lord Of The Rings).

Having arrived on these shores, Dan Wootton’s first proper appearance in the Popbitch newsletter came way back in May 2009 – shortly after he had been given a showbiz column of his own at the News Of The World.

For someone who now says he feels “uncomfortable – as a journalist – becoming the story”, he sure as hell didn’t used to.

In fact, he was so pleased to put himself front and centre at News Of The World that when he got that column, he commissioned his own theme music for it.

Back in 2016, we wrote how it became a bit of sport on the showbiz desk at the Sun to deliberately misspell Dan Wootton’s surname on his online stories, then set a stopwatch to see how quickly he’d send a sniffy email about it.

What we’ve never revealed before is that Dan Wootton had someone fired as a result of us printing that. Sick of being mentioned in Popbitch, Dan used this story to start an investigation to smoke out our source.

Unfortunately for pretty much everyone involved, Dan bungled this little mole hunt so badly that he ended firing the wrong person: someone we had – hand on heart – never spoken to.

You can tell when you’ve really made an impact on the world when your name becomes synonymous with something. For Dan Wootton, that something is outing celebs.

The phrase “pulling a Wootton” (to mean “outing a celebrity in the press”) entered wider tabloid parlance shortly after George Shelley from Union J decided to come out in a heartfelt YouTube vlog in 2016.

Dan was apparently so furious about not being given that story by George as an exclusive, he let slip to colleagues that he believed his newspaper column was the only place a celebrity should be revealing their sexuality.

A common complaint of celebrity couples is that the tabloid press put their relationships under such immense pressure that they often break up.

So, in the spirit of fairness, we should say that Dan Wootton was actually directly responsible for Cheryl and Liam Payne staying together a little longer than they would have otherwise.

The couple had all but broken up but because Dan Wootton was writing about their relationship troubles with such glee in his column, the two of them decided to put on a big display of public affection at the BRIT Awards.

It wasn’t hugely convincing, but it got the desired result. Publicly, Dan responded by writing a hissy piece ‘unveiling’ Cheryl a lying media manipulator. Privately, he responded by throwing things around his desk.

One dangling thread in the wider #MediaToo scandal that Schofield kicked off is that of Dr Ranj. Dr Ranj also spoke up, saying that he found ITV to be a toxic workplace too, but his complaints were never really fleshed out much.

In looking through our old clippings, we noticed something that might help explain the root of it all.

Back in 2018, the Sun’s TV editor Andy Halls got himself banned from Strictly Come Dancing events because his coverage of the show had been so vicious. Halls’ boss at the time was Dan Wootton – who had been especially keen to see the knife stuck in ever since they signed up Dr Ranj Singh as a contestant.

As a fellow pundit on ITV’s daytime programming, Wottoon considered that his own profile was better fit for Strictly and was terribly sore about seeing Ranj getting the gig instead.

If you’ve seen Dan Wootton’s attempt to crowdfund a £150,000 defence against “far left online smears” (current total: £37,000), you may have noticed that the only people running to his defence at the minute are those he’s currently working with.

For a man with an 18 year media career behind him, there’s a real dearth of old pals willing to rally round – and, for a showbiz reporter, a notable lack of celebrity chums too. He might have had a bit more help had he not treated them all so abysmally when they were facing hard times themselves.

We once heard the Dan Wootton routine for ourselves, live and direct, when we were out with a popstar’s people for lunch. In the middle of the meal, Dan called and started screaming down the line asking for an interview. What had caused such an fiery temper? Nothing in particular.

Dan was claiming that the popstar’s father was gravely ill and demanded she give an exclusive interview all about it, so figured his best chance was to loudly and sustainedly yell down the phone that he would ruin her career if she didn’t agree to it.

She didn’t. And that’s why you never hear of Adele any more…

A couple of weeks back, we revisited the chart battle of Blur V Oasis to see what other songs were making up the Top 40 that week. This week, we’re going to try another classic: Sophie Ellis Bextor v Victoria Beckham.

The mix is made up of ten songs that were all in the Top 40 the week that Groovejet stole VB’s chance at a No.1. All you have to do is name the song titles (a point each) and the artists who performed them (a second point each).

Couldn’t be easier.

[Play it here]

WGA strike merch is fun
[Read on NYT]

An old future-disco playlist
[Listen on Soundcloud]

Bob Dylan is selling his Scottish mansion
[£3m, if you want it?]

Keanu Reeves Crashed My Wedding
[Read on the Guardian]