New to Club Popbitch?
Get previous Second Serve issues [here]
The Popbitch Popquiz archive is [here]
The Daily Audio Quiz archive is [here] |
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“We aim for euphoria” – Neil Tennant |
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A second serving of scandal and slander Subscribe
Email stories to us club@popbitch.com
* Gallagher’s late night delights
* Mariah’s corny poetry
* PLUS: Dead Queen sweeties |
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| >> PP + PB << |
| Conversation with legends |
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As well as sending you this second mailout on Mondays, we want to treat our Club Popbitch members to a couple of little extras wherever possible too. Tortoise Media are hosting a conversation with soul legend PP Arnold on July 12th – and Club Popbitch members have been invited to snap up tickets for free.
Arnold has worked with everyone in her 60 year career, from Ike and Tina Turner to The Rolling Stones, Primal Scream to the KLF, Oasis to… well, The Fratellis (but she’s only talking for an hour, so the chances of them cropping up are slim).
It’s both an in-person event and a digital one, so you don’t even have to be a London media wanker to attend. If you want to claim yours, go to ‘Book A Ticket’ -> ‘Buy A Guest Ticket’ and then use the invite code PPPOPBITCH.
NB: In-person tickets are being offered on a first come, first served basis.
[Get yours here] |
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| Billie Eilish has a pitbull called Shark. |
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| >> Sexy Times << |
| When the Sun goes down |
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As the mysterious disappearance of a Boris’n’Carrie story from this weekend’s Times rumbles on into its third day, stories are now emerging that No.10 intervened directly to get it pulled.
The Times’ editor (and Rachel Johnson’s tennis partner) John Witherow is off the hook for this one because he was absent from the office, which means fingers are now pointing at the Times’ deputy editor Tony Gallagher. We couldn’t be more pleased that Tony is the one who stepped in shit because it gives us a chance to tell you this:
Back when Tony was editor of The Sun, the paper commissioned a survey all about its readers’ sex lives. In among the results, one curious bit of information that cropped up was that Sun readers claimed that they were most likely to have sex at around 7:30pm.
When this came up in an editorial conference, Tony’s only response: “What?! But it’s not even dark then…” |
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| Sam Fox had not one, but two Eurovision winners play at her wedding this Saturday (Katrina off of Katrina and the Waves and both of Bobbysocks). |
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| >> Unicorny << |
| From bad to verse |
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At her inauguration into the Songwriters’ Hall Of Fame at the weekend, Mariah Carey gave a characteristically bonkers acceptance speech. In among the mad word salad, she mentioned that she had been writing poetry since the age of six, that alarmed everyone because it was so dark and sad.
Clearly she managed to shake those demons loose because during the huge craze for celebrity-authored books in the early 00s, Mariah Carey put together a proposal for a book of poetry. One of the poems included in it – that sadly appears to have been unpublished anywhere else – was called ‘The Unicorn And I’.
It went as follows:
I love my unicorn, he knows I am true,
My troubles go poof, my unicorn named Boo.
My lambs are all here, all smiling and gay,
Boo and I dance, we sing and we play. |
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| Nominative Determinism Of The Day: Leading the UKHSA’s monkeypox incident response team… Dr William Welfare! |
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| >> Sugar crash << |
| A sweet tribute to Queenie |
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One of the weirder things we learned this weekend: Haribo designed an entire Platinum Jubilee range of sweets to honour Queen Elizabeth’s 70 year reign, including special gummy crowns that they pulled shortly ahead of their launch.
Apparently the Haribo higher-ups got so spooked by stories of the Queen’s ailing health that they worried she might cark it just as their goofy line of gummies hit the shelves – thereby making it look like they were celebrating her death via the medium of pick’n’mix.
So the entire expensive project got nixed. |
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| Carol Cadwalldr is the scourge of her neighbourhood WhatsApp group, forever spamming it with article after article that she implores the rest of the chat to read. |
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| >> Private practice << |
| Some very expensive rehearsals |
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If Thursday’s story about Tom Newton Dunn approaching former Westminster colleagues at drinks events to ask if they’ve been tuning in to his ailing TalkTV show didn’t cause you to curl up into a ball of pity, then the follow-up might.
He’s also been heard telling former colleagues that it’s actually good that nobody is watching his show because it’s giving him “the chance to perfect it”. |
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| Tom insisted on his show being called The News Desk because he liked that it had the same initials as him: TND. So much so, that he blackballed any other suggestions. |
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| >> Popquiz << |
| This week’s audio rounds |
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After giving you audio quizzes themed around each year of the 80s and 90s, we thought we’d give you a break before hitting up the 00s. We hope you’ve caught your breath, because those rounds start today.
Each mix will be made up of ten songs that were big hits in the 2000s: a different year every day. You can give yourself a point for every song title you correctly guess and another for every artist.
Monday’s theme: 2000
[Play it here] |
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| Want an automatically updating page you can use as a bookmark for the latest daily audio quiz, so you can play them the minute they’re released? [Here you go…] |
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| Thanks to: MB, bobbifleckmann, M, TD, MS, A, monstris, H |
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Old Jokes Home
Q/ What is the Pope’s favourite chord?
A/ G sus |
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