The Second Serve // Splashback

Sebastian Vettel’s sneaky puking in the club is simply the latest in a long line of F1 public chunderers.

One Popbitch reader remembers being at the wedding of an F1 bod, where James Hunt was also invited. Hunt put in an impressive performance at the pre-wedding drinks in Gleesons of Booterstown (a posh pub in Dublin’s South suburbs).

James was on the pints there and maybe had one too many, as he was sick at the bar and onto the floor. And then immediately called for another.

JC writes:
“Spotted a typically dapper Bill Nighy wandering around the Cardinal Place shopping centre in Victoria at rush hour on Wednesday. He had some strategically placed literature under his arm (a Philip Larkin book) and was stopping every few paces outside Bill’s restaurant looking around seemingly in confusion that people didn’t recognise him.

“He ended up heading into Marks & Spencer – perhaps they’re more likely to be his target audience.”

* SADIE FROST
Sadie Frost has his’n’hers bidets in the en suite of the master bedroom.

* SIENNA MILLER
Sienna Miller has “a cacophony of images” all over her downstairs bathroom, including a signed picture from Tippi Hedren wishing her luck for her portrayal of her in The Girl.

* IAN MCKELLEN
Ian McKellen has tonnes of the same page from the bible plastered up over his downstairs loo wall. It’s the page which denounces homosexuality – and they’ve all been torn from the bibles in the hotel rooms he’s stayed in.

With two massive celebrity defamation trials taking up all the oxygen, Laurence Fox’s libel trial (in which he started calling strangers on Twitter paedophiles) has slightly fallen by the wayside – but there have been a couple of interesting developments on that front.

Firstly, his appeal to have the case put in front of a jury (instead of just a judge) was declined last week.

But what caught our eye is that he appears to have bolstered his legal team. Now that he’s on the defence, it seems the lawyers representing him are a lot more expensive than the ones he used when he was the one firing off libel threats.

But poor Antony Costa. Of all the places they could have sent him out to interview the public about Blue’s big comeback, where did they do so? Within spitting distance of the infamous cash point he was photographed pissing up against…

Pauline writes:
“Was interesting seeing Mika switch effortlessly between languages on the Eurovision stage. I was once a guest at a Mika gig in Tokyo and I was blown away by his perfect on-stage Japanese. Only to find out after that there was a lady backstage telling him exactly what to say in his earpiece!”

Something about the UK coming second at Eurovision appears to have opened up a wormhole back to the late 90s – because last week saw the sort of chart battle we thought we’d never see again in the digital era. One which came down to a bit of good old fashioned CD shifting shithousery.

Sam Ryder’s Space Man picked up a fair bit of steam in the Eurovision afterglow, and it wasn’t long until it was holding its own against a Spotify titan like Harry Styles. Within days, Harry and Sam’s streaming figures were so close that their labels had to switch focus to try to clinch Friday’s No.1.

Sam Ryder’s tactic was to game the digital download market by releasing multiple versions of Space Man, getting fans to buy the radio edit, the acoustic version, the guitar solo version, etc. By Thursday afternoon, it looked like the trick had paid off. Sam was ahead of Harry by a few thousand sales – but there were rumblings that it might not be an entirely done deal.’

And it wasn’t. Because, after six weeks at number one, Harry Styles’ label decided that this was the week to order a big run of individually numbered CD singles to sell to Harry stans who still hadn’t got enough of his song. And at some point late on Thursday, they managed to ship a few thousand more of them just in time to be counted ahead of the chart cut-off…

Last week saw quizzes on the theme of Nile Rodgers, Duets and Heavy Metal Covers – and this week sees another 50 songs crumbled up into chunks and inexpertly tossed together.

Each round contains ten songs. You get a point for each song guessed correctly and a second point for the artist – so 20 points in total.

Monday’s theme: Japanese Covers

[Play it here]

A website dedicated to ape slides
[Possibly some monkey ones too]

Local Headline Of The Week: “Necrophilia Street Row In Dursley”
[Read on Gloucester Gazette]

Baby Yoda clothes for babies
[See on Vinted]