The Second Serve // Noel Edmonds’ Dickens Cider

Usually we stick links down at the bottom of the mailout, but this Halloween mix is too good to risk getting lost down there.

It’s been a few years since we first heard it, but it’s brightened up our dark afternoon immensely today – so we wanted to pass it on to you. We don’t want to spoil anything by saying too much, but this might be the greatest mix ever assembled.

[Listen here]

People have done a decent job of honouring Matthew Perry’s wishes, in not just remembering him as Chandler off of Friends, but for the good work he did in helping people overcome addiction. It’s also worth remembering that he was responsible for one of the all-time great late night talkshow anecdotes too.

One afternoon, alone in his home, Matthew decided he wanted to spend a little quality time with himself, so fired up a dirty movie on his home entertainment system. Intending on treating himself to the full luxury experience, he lingered over it, spending a good half-hour enjoying the build up – before throwing himself into it for a really mucky orgy scene.

After he had finished, he tried to turn his TV off, but found he couldn’t. The best he could do was turn the volume down. But when the sound display read 00 he swore he could still hear noises.

It was another couple of minutes before he remembered that the previous night he’d been outside in his garden, relaxing with a glass of wine, piping music through his outdoor speakers. Speakers which were still connected – and had been blasting out porn sounds to his neighbours around the San Fernando Valley at full volume.

We don’t know how close an eye you’ve been keeping on Noel Edmonds recently, but he’s making a spectacle of himself again. After tanking a community radio station project in the North Island of New Zealand, angering a number of locals in the process, Noel recently moved to the South Island where he is currently… angering a number of locals.

Part of the reason he’s become so disliked nearby is to do with his love of bawdy puns. He’s been driving around in a Ford Ranger with the number plate “4 Q” (“Fuck You”) and opened up a pub on his estate called The Bugger Inn, where he serves a drink called “Dickens Cider”.

It’s possible these jokes wouldn’t have gone down so badly by themselves, but Noel has insisted on telling everyone he meets that they’re all good examples of “Kiwi humour” – which the locals are, rightly, taking objection to.

Ahead of his new Netflix docu-series, Robbie Williams gave a big interview to the Times this weekend. One of the more interesting reflections he shares is that we’re long overdue a proper documentary about boybands and girlbands, showing what popstars think they’re letting themselves in for versus what actually happens.

Using Take That as his case study, Robbie lists off some of the big ticket issues that he and the boys have dealt with as a result of their fame – addiction, depression, suicidal thoughts, agoraphobia, bulimia.

But there’s also tiny details in the Take That story which highlight the problem well too. At Gary Barlow’s lowest ebb, when he’d been dropped from his record label and was sleeping under his piano, one of the things he did was call his bank to get his name scrubbed off his credit cards. Why? Because he hated cashiers recognising his name, but not him, and then giving him big glances of pity when they put two and two together.

RHB writes:
“Denise [Pearson, Five Star] might not have been the youngest person to drive a Lamborghini but she probably was the youngest person to own one in the UK (which might amount to the same thing).

“The Lamborghini Countach is a notoriously difficult car to master, even for a veteran motorist. Rumour has it that Denise’s insurance premium – and that for her bandmate brother Delroy’s Lambo – were both set at the list price of the vehicles, meaning that their insurance underwriters reckoned there was a 100% chance they would both write them off within the first twelve months of ownership.

“They paid the premiums, but did not stack the supercars.”

A couple of months back we had cause to mention Morrissey’s well-known trick of signing his own name on other people’s albums (Patti Smith’s Horses; Lou Reed’s Transformer, etc) then selling them for $300 at his merch stand at gigs. It was already bizarre enough, but we heard something this week that casts it in an even stranger light.

Merck Mercuriadis (head honcho of that flailing song fund Hipgnosis; the one in a bit of a financial muddle) briefly managed Morrissey when he was signed to Sanctuary. Or rather, represented by Sanctuary. Apparently Morrissey didn’t actually ever sign things as he had an aversion to committing his signature to anything. That meant every deal with him – no matter the size – was done on a nod and a shake.

Last week, we had music quizzes on the themes of Famous No.2s, Kidz Bop Clean-Ups and tracks from the best-selling edition of the Now series – Now 44.

This week, we’ve got another five ready for you to play. All you need to do is pick out the ten song titles in each two-and-a-bit minute mix and the identify the ten artists.

Give yourself a point for each; hell, give yourself five points each – no-one’s counting. It’s just a bit of fun.

Monday’s Theme: AI Covers – can you name the originals of the songs these AI voices are singing?

[Play it here]

Japanese Mundane Halloween 2023
[A highlight of the year]

Fun interview with Ray from 2Unlimited – talking about fronting up to The Prodigy for slagging them off
[Read on NME]

Intriguing twist to the Pierce Brosnan Art Show nugget: it seems like Pierce Brosnan has had his lawyers send that gallery a cease and desist letter – because he knows nothing about it…
[See on Instagram]