The Second Serve // Rat Hunt

Tonight sees the second part of the BBC’s headline-grabbing Harry And Meghan documentary. One of the people said to feature heavily in this episode is lawyer Jenny Afia from our old pals, Schillings.

We have previous with Jenny, as she’s one of the very few lawyers who has managed to draw blood from Popbitch (on behalf of Max Beesley back in 2007/8).

Elsewhere though, Jenny’s probably best known as being the lawyer who took over the infamous PJS injunction from Carter-Ruck, when it was felt that Carter-Ruck weren’t being sufficiently hardcore in maintaining their famous client’s court-enforced right to host private extramarital threesomes in olive oil-filled paddling pools in five-star London hotels.

The other notable thing about tonight’s episode of the Royal saga is that they’ve renamed it “Sussexit” ahead of broadcast, where its original title was “Megxit”.

The switch came about after Harry gave a statement on the origins of the term, saying: “Maybe people know this and maybe they don’t, but the term Megxit was or is a misogynistic term, and it was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media.”

The statement caught our ear, because it squares with something we heard from a documentary researcher once – who said the biggest headaches they invariably have when making these sorts of shows don’t come from the Palace. Nor do they come from BBC bosses.

The most consistent source of drama, hissy fits and egomania when doing anything on the Windsors? Royal correspondents, who absolutely hate others horning in on their patch and are unbelievably precious about their representation on screen.

Brooklyn Beckham is the new ambassador for Superdry’s sustainable collection and while it seems like he’s inherited his parents’ smarts, he hasn’t got their publicity savvy quite yet.

He gave a big interview to the Evening Standard to announce this new partnership, the highlights of which include:

* Revealing that he flew from LA to the UK specially for an interview about sustainability

* Turning up at Superdry’s new Oxford Street store in his big 4×4 as he likes to drive in the UK (staff then had to run and find him somewhere to park)

* Claimed he was big on environmentalism because he was “good at recycling”

* When asked what he thought of Cop26, his reply made it sound like he thought it was a Line of Duty-style police procedural, telling the interviewer he’d “seen a bit of that but not as much as I wanted to.”

Sarah Vine’s Mail On Sunday column this weekend took aim at the “mischievous Westminster elves” otherwise known as SpAds. As she proved with her column about MPs cheating on their wives days before she and Michael Gove announced their plans to divorce, we know that Sarah’s not afraid to go heavy on the subtext.

So when she writes a sentence like “Spads are generally absurdly young and good-looking, with shiny first-class degrees and slim-fit shirts” it’s a fairly safe bet she has someone particular in mind.

And when she follows that up with a sentence claiming that SpAds are “…not afraid to get their hands dirty” and are “always on hand, night or day, to do their master’s – or mistress’s – bidding,” the erotic undertones are unlikely to be a slip of the pen.

Could she be alluding to the elusive story that the Westminster press bubble spent months failing to stand up: that Michael Gove enjoyed a little SpAd dabble before his marriage ended?

Or did she only just hear those rumours last week?

Today is Billy Connolly’s birthday, and we won’t be the only ones sending our best to him. Film crew from the Mrs Brown set have very fond memories, particularly on the coldest day of the year. While all the other actors would scuttle off to their trailers between takes to keep warm, Billy would stay out in the elements to do stand-up for the extras and have lunch with them, happily signing a stream of autographs in-between mouthfuls.

He also revealed that when he did the famous nude swim scene in the film, the other actor with him wouldn’t stop worrying about how the cold water was going to make his todger look tiny.

That actor? Gerard Butler.

There was a great interview in the New York Times with Don Johnson this weekend in which he confirmed that Nash Bridges was originally conceived between him and Hunter S Thompson.

Hunter was the actor’s neighbour and told him one day he was broke. Johnson suggested they develop a show idea and he’d take it to CBS as he owed them a new series. At 3am one night the pair sketched out an idea about two off-duty cops, hired to protect a senator’s wife with Tourette’s – which is an absolutely outstanding premise.

Sadly, in the cold light of day, Johnson soon realised their idea was unmakeable. But it became a procedural about two on-duty cops – Nash Bridges – in which he starred with Cheech from Cheech and Chong. Thompson ended up being given two episodes to write in series one and got a cameo appearance too.

The Sun had a story about a Premier League football “love rat”, who they inexplicably titled “Rat Nav” after he arranged for a lover to be picked up and dropped somewhere for him to meet. Among the details they dropped of the mysterious “Rat Nav” they mentioned he’s on £150K a week, Manchester based, drives a Lamborghini, with a partner and a baby…

There’s obviously a reason why the Sun’s handsomely-paid legal team stopped short of naming the player, but they may have given one of the easiest jigsaw identifications on record. There aren’t that many Manchester-based players on £150K a week – and, of the two that are, one is noted for his decision to drive a very modest Smart ForTwo.

So they’d better hope they’re right, because the clues they’ve given point very specifically at one man.

We’ve got a bit of a gremlin with our fancy new auto-updating system for daily audio rounds – but it should be ready for next week.

In the meantime, your quizzes for this week will be:

Mon/ Double Names
Tue/ Cathy Dennis
Wed/ December No.1s
Thu/ Levis Ads
Fri/ Shittyflute

You can play them [here]

As the charts are already clogged with Christmas pop, here’s the antidote

[Heavy Metal Xmas]

Tune Of The Week: Traps from Bloc Party, ahead of a new album in 2022

[Listen on Spotify]

X Factor runner up 2017 Grace Davies is back with a well-hyped new song
[Somebody]

We’ve got a new, automatically updating page on the Club Popbitch site for these Second Serve emails if you’d prefer to read this on a browser.
[Read it here]

And if you miss it (or for any newcomers who want to delve back into some back issues) the Second Serve archive is here now too.
[Second Serve archive]