The Second Serve // Sex & Drugs & Mayonnaise

Popbitch Popquiz // February Edition

Featuring eight brand new rounds of trivia, gossip, music and guesswork, inc. Rebekah Vardy: Text Offender, Celebrity Cupid, Guess The Lookalike, Real Housewives or Readers’ Wives? and more. Your Club Popbitch membership means you get it – and all other Play-At-Home Popquizzes – for free.

[Download it here]

“Crack’s not really my thing” – Donald Trump Jr

A second serving of scandal and slander Subscribe

Email stories to us club@popbitch.com

* Oligarch lifestyle management

* Further tales of Tom Hardy

* PLUS: More Big Answers…

>> Sesh gremlin <<

Ripping off the band aid

We mentioned on Thursday that there’s some talk behind the scenes that Ellie Goulding might follow Dua Lipa out the door at at TaP Management. We’ll wait to see what comes of it, but it sounds like Ellie has no issue cutting people adrift if they pose a cost to her career.
For example: a few months into the pandemic, when touring really looked like it was going to be complicated for a good long while, she let her longtime band go and drafted in some session musicians and singers who were willing to work for less instead.

Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” is now certified 9x Platinum in the UK. It’s the best selling single this century.

>> Club rules <<

An indispensible service

Roman Abramovich’s oddly worded statement that he was passing the “stewardship and care” of Chelsea FC over to the club’s charitable Foundation has caused some speculation that he’s maybe trying to get ahead of possible government sanctions. It’s likely he can simply sense which way the wind is blowing – but Roman does have at least one very helpful contact with No.10: current Tory Party chairman, Ben Elliot.
Ben has been in the news a fair bit these last few months – mostly for having been caught selling access to his uncle (Prince Charles) and his boss (Boris Johnson) to foreign businessmen in exchange for quarter-mil donations. This cash-for-access model is one that Ben perfected at his previous gig as the director and co-founder of ultra-luxury lifestyle management service, Quintessentially.
Quintessentially prides itself on being on-hand 24/7/365 for members, going the extra mile to provide an absolutely indispensible service to its super-rich clientele.
And who, for years, paid Quintessentially a six-figure annual fee to avail himself of their unadvertised, super-secret membership tier? Why, a certain R. Abramovich…

Of course, £100,000 is piss in the ocean to Abramovich. He used to pay someone aboard his yacht €30,000 a year to ensure he always had freshly prepared fruit at hand.

>> Follow through <<

Yet more Hardy tales

We didn’t have space in Thursday’s issue to detail every one of the Tom Hardy on-set horror stories we’ve ever heard – and we don’t have the space here either – but here’s a couple more.
* A sound technician who was tasked with adjusting Tom’s microphone on one set got thumped for his trouble. Then, when the same techie was asked to do it a second time, Tom bit him. On the head.
* A reader who went to watch ‘A Night With Inside No. 9’ recently says Reece Shearsmith spoke about his experience on the set of the Venom sequel, where his brief part as a priest ended up taking days to shoot as Tom Hardy repeatedly no-showed on set.
* A runner who was sent to Tom’s trailer to let him know that everyone else was ready and waiting for him on set was subjected to an unexpected outburst, when Tom slapped them and said “No-one tells me what to do on my set.”
* A crew member on the set of Taboo (where Tom’s nakedness was a regular feature) found themselves struggling to write a series of prop letters because a nude Tom Hardy was hovering behind them, dick and balls dangling freely, quietly watching as they wrote.

For balance: someone from cabin crew tells us “Tom Hardy is an easy passenger, doesn’t ask for anything and makes sure his PA is OK as well.” (Elsewhere: “James Corden is a prick, just like everyone says.”)

>> Big Answers <<

Who wants to know?

On Thursday we asked:
“Which PR and communications bigshot had a cynical little trick up his sleeve to guarantee himself an audience with the Royals whenever he was in their presence? He’d scan the room for any wheelchair users in the crowd and then install himself next to them, knowing that whichever Windsor was present would be ushered their way.”
The answer: No.10’s current Director of Communications… Guto Harri!

William Hill have placed Diana The Musical at 10-11 odds on favourites to win this year’s Worst Picture at The Razzies. Space Jam: A New Legacy is second favourite.

>> Mugged off <<

Sex & drugs & mayonnaise

It’s been interesting to watch the respective careers of Rita Ora and Dua Lipa. Both started out around the same time, both are Kosovar, both were teenage singing prodigies, both touted around the same labels in London – yet Rita was instantly successful, while Dua took some time to rise to megastardom.
One label exec who remembers being pitched both around the same time said Rita was immediately fun, engaging and mischievous, which meant she got picked up really quickly. Dua – although beautiful with a great voice – was a bit stiff and didn’t show much personality. Though this blank canvas element was a slow burn, they tell us, it really ended up working for her.
Hopefully her new father/manager insists on her maintaining an aloof air of mystery, because this weekend’s interview in the FT doesn’t mark her out as a rock’n’roll great. Among Dua’s thrilling confessions:
* She has a huge collection of mugs
* She prefers her mugs extra large because she really loves tea
* She’s really big on condiments (“I’ll have everything from vegan mayo to normal mayo to mint sauce.”)
* She has always preferred nighties but has recently got into pyjamas.

The latest in Hollywood dipshit fashion? Kevin Sorbo turned up to the CPAC conference in a jacket with a lining made up of all his own printed-out tweets.

>> Klept secrets <<

Who bills the billionaires?

As the crosshairs turn on London’s financial class for getting bloated off Putin and the oligarchs, let us not forget that there’s plenty of silks in the legal world who have done pretty well out of billing Russian billionaires to help keep pesky journalists off their backs too.
One lawyer who has done extremely well for himself in this regard is Hugh Tomlinson, the chair of press reform group Hacked Off. Last summer he was juggling three cases – one brought by Roman Abramovich, one by businessman Mikhail Fridman and a third by the head of Alfa-Bank, Petr Aven – all of who had beef with the book “Putin’s People” by former Financial Times journalist, Caroline Belton.
It was a highly lucrative little battle, all things told. Hacked Off fans might say it was Hugh’s distaste for Rupert Murdoch that led him to take on cases against Murdoch’s publishing house HarperCollins, rather than any lack of commitment to a free media, and that we’re just being bitter.
What reason would we have to be bitter? Because another of Tomlinson’s big cases was representing the computer-hacking, secret-family-having Chris Hutcheson when he tried to take out an injunction against… Popbitch.
(For a story that turned out to be… absolutely true.)

Spotted at the Ukraine rally: Gruffalo illustrator, Axel Scheffler.

>> Popquiz <<

This week’s audio rounds

Last week saw audio quizzes on the themes of Stage School Kids, One Hit Wonders and The Sea. This week will play host to another five: each haphazardly crafted out of a bunch of MP3s lying around on a Popbitch hard drive, each consisting of ten songs.
You get a point for every song you correctly name and a point for every artist too. Ten songs; twenty points.
Monday’s Theme: Siblings
[Play it here]

For those new to Club Popbitch, you can find all the various back issues, daily audio quizzes and Play-At-Home quiz packs for download at any time, here:

* Second Serve Back Issues

* Daily Audio Quizzes

* Play-At-Home Popquizzes

>> Hmmms <<

A few quick things

A perfect coda to last week’s Hollywood Unlocked “The Queen Is Dead” story

[Their ‘Fact Check’]
A supercut of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s winning Dancing With The Stars appearances

[Watch on YouTube]
A reminder of Putin singing Blueberry Hill

[Watch on YouTube]
A bowl of baby otters

[See on Twitter]

Thanks to: monstris, CP, cereal, K, AE, SS, JD, MR

Old Cold War Jokes Home

A Russian man standing in line at the liquor store says to his friends “I’ve had enough of this. Save my place, I’m going to go and shoot Gorbachev”. Two hours later, he returns. His friends ask “How did it go? Did you get him?” “No,” the man says. “The line there was even longer than this one.”

Fancy Another?