The Second Serve // The Curse Of The Naff

Dominic Raab’s habit of submitting FOIA and subject access requests about his officials – as we mentioned on Thursday – is unlikely to have yielded anything juicy. Not least because everyone in Whitehall knows better than to leave a paper trail when slagging off their ministers, so they pass across their best titbits verbally.

Sadly, this verbal tradition means there’s no written record of which minister it was who was known for refusing to do any ministerial visit unless he received a guaranteed feature on him in the area’s local press and had a TV crew follow him around.

The TV crew was a dealbreaker, as the minister in question primarily thought of himself as a TV presenter in waiting, and felt the camera training was essential.

CNN threw a big party in DC this weekend to celebrate the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, headlined by DJ Tiesto.

Tiesto’s come a hell of a long way since he first started his DJ career as a teenager in a nightclub called The Spock, in Breda, The Netherlands. He started out as the club’s cleaner until he persuaded the owners to let him spin some discs.

Seems as if he’s still in the habit of blagging his gigs nearly 40 years later, as this DC one was a bit of a freebie. According to this week’s Confider, Tiesto apparently agreed to play in exchange for a seat at CNN’s table for the dinner.

The news today that Vice is headed for bankruptcy won’t have come as a shock to seasoned media watchers. Rumours that the entire brand was built on a bluff have been spilling into mainstream reporting on the company in recent years, but it’s always amused us just how early on in Vice’s history the bluffing began.

Back when it was still trying to make a name for itself in New York, Vice created a print edition of the magazine with a normal front cover but designed the back to look like an upside-down front cover of Maxim.

The plan was to stock the issue on newsstands back-to-front and upside-down to dupe punters into buying it thinking it was Maxim (which was selling two million copies every month at the time). That way, they could steal up a slice of those sales and then shop that month’s receipts round to advertisers to show them just how popular their mag was.

Conspiracy theories abound at the BBC that Richard Sharp was quite a convenient fall guy for the Tories. With a tricksy election looming next year, they now get to appoint someone new for another four years. And with Sharp said to actually be fairly popular in W1A, and more of a Beeb defender than expected, they might now get a more pro-Conservative/anti-BBC person installed in the chair in his place.

One leftfield tip to be the chosen candidate? Cass Horowitz, the man behind Brand Rishi.

Edward Enninful recently stated that he personally vetoes any ads in Vogue which don’t align with his own values. As with any of his pronouncements, it was heralded as being trailblazing – but this has been going on at style magazines for at least 40 years.

Rod Sopp, ad manager and The Face, would regularly veto advertisers who didn’t fit his personal tastes – and had a specific term for it too: “The Curse Of The Naff”

Weird though it was to watch Peter Andre celebrate his 50th by singing Mysterious Girl with a sealion, it’s nice to see he’s finally developed a sense of humour about that song.

Some years ago, Peter was exploring the opportunity of opening a bar-restaurant in Birmingham. He’d found a site and was canvassing for a PR company to help him launch it – but he hadn’t settled on a name for this venture.

When one person working on the project suggested “Mysterious Grill”, Peter didn’t initially seem to understand the joke. When the penny eventually dropped, the atmosphere turned very frosty.

The project never got off the ground.

As the stories about the drunken antics of theatregoers in the West End and Broadway are starting to quieten down, stories from the theatre district in Sydney are stepping up to replace them.

One reader who attended a show at the Wharf Theatre found out exactly how much better Aussies can handle their drink. They were sat next to a woman who, having had a skinful during the interval, threw up into the coat that was folded on her lap shortly after the second half started.

There was no big scene. No uproar. No threatening to lamp the ushers. She just sat there quietly for the next hour watching the show, puke soaking into her legs, while the smell of sick wafted out around her.

Our run through the alphabet reached its end yesterday, so we’re back on our regular bullshit of tenuous themes. This week will see five new quizzes all compiled of ten chunks of songs, all cobbled together into one mix.

Give yourself a point for every right title, give yourself a point for every right artist. Piece of piss.

Monday’s Theme: Z
Tuesday’s Theme: Please And Thank You

Play Solitaire like it’s Windows 95
[Retro Solitaire]

John Wick as a Steven Seagal movie
[John Thick]

Local News Of The Weekend: Princess Diana Ham Vision Edition
[Read on Birmingham Mail]

Interesting long read on how and why nostalgia is selling in music at the minute and why we’re hearing the same old samples again and again and again…
[Read on Pitchfork]