The Second Serve // Shite Club

A few weeks ago, we asked you:

“Which Tory MP once lured a parliamentary intern back to his house for (what turned out to be) an unexpected seduction attempt – with the promise of ‘din-dins south of the river’?”

The answer? Man of the moment… Chris Pincher MP!

Picking up on Thursday’s tip about Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch’s divorce being down to her (lack of) relationship with Rupert’s kids, the Mail had a lot of insiders willing to spill the beans this weekend about just how bad things between the various generations were.

Why aren’t these insiders giving juicy quotes to outlets where they could at least earn the old man a few bucks for his trouble? Maybe because a missive was sent out to all staff at NewsUK/talkRadio/talkTV that NO mention whatsoever must be made to the impending divorce in any media that Rupert owns.

So much for the fearless fight for free speech…

If you thought the takeover of Soho stalwart Blacks by a cringesome group of “Crypto Gammon” was bad, wait until you hear what they’re doing to the Colony Rooms. Someone is resurrecting the Colony Rooms’ name in the Dorchester as “Tales from the Colony Rooms at 45 Park Lane” (because nothing says tawdry Soho bohemia like the London outpost for Arab playboys…)

Consultant to the project Darren Coffield has been quoted as saying it will be a challenge to recreate the club’s atmosphere on the tourist edge of Mayfair.

And as Popbitch’s most enduring memory of the OG Colony Rooms was being asked by Lisa Stansfield in the toilet queue “Does cocaine make your fanny itch?” we’d say he was probably right.

With Australia’s music industry now having a second #MeToo reckoning, you might wonder if HR departments there ever actually did anything. Well, one label exec who’s under renewed scrutiny at the minute did once feel the power of HR after a member staff lodged a complaint about the Roy Lichtenstein-style pop art picture he’d hung on the wall of his glass box office.

The picture she faced every day was a wholesome nuclear family portrait, all sat around a breakfast table, each with a speech bubble that would light up, one after the other, to display the same word: “cunt”.

The exec was asked to remove it. He refused on the basis that it was “a media environment” and that the complainant was “being wet”. On further threats of disciplinary, he took it home for a while. Only to bring it back later and hang it on a different wall, slightly out of the complainant’s line of sight.

We didn’t really have much of a theory as to why Barry Manilow so callously shafted a Leeds community choir that was mostly made up of local mums the way he did last week – but it seems our Barry is very particular about who he hangs out with.

A female hairdresser who lives in Vegas and has provided services for stars in town on residencies was asked by Barry’s hotel to go up to his suite to do his hair. When she got there, he, quite curtly, said no, thank you for coming up, but that he insists on having a male hairdresser.

The reason? “I just don’t really allow women in my circle.”

Last week, we polished off the 00s – giving you an audio quiz on 2005, ’06, ’07, ’08 and ’09. This week, we barrel right on through to the 2010s.

Each day we’ll tear ten songs up into strips and stitch bits of them into one 2’30 mix. If you can correctly guess a song title, you get a point. If you can correctly guess a performing artist, you get another. Each quiz has ten songs, and twenty points at stake.

Monday’s theme: 2010

[Play it here]

90s Summer Vibes mix
[Listen on Mixcloud]

Catch up on drunken groper MP Chris Pincher’s monthly column on… drinking
[Latest one just dropped!]

Headline Of the Weekend: “Genesis Star Peter Gabriel Eats Baked Beans To Stay Young But Worries About Side Effects”
[Read here]

Teens banned from wearing suits to see the Minions movie
[Things are getting wild]

How a Saxophonist Tricked the KGB by Encrypting Secrets in Music
[Read on Wired]