The Second Serve // Truly Disgusting

Liz Truss has put a lot of stock in saying that she’s “prepared to be unpopular” as Prime Minister. Luckily, she’s had a lot of practice.

When she was at Oxford (studying PPE at Merton) it was common for students to be paired up for tutorial sessions. However, her fellow coursemates found her so “thick” and “annoying” that they would actively lobby tutors to make a case for themselves not be coupled with her.

Which football club CEO once bought a sports car with club funds to give to his mistress? The fact only came to light when she crashed it – surprising the club officials who came to the car’s rescue.

D writes:
“A family member served with Prince Andrew in the Navy and he used to insist he was called ‘H’ as a nickname. It stood for HRH. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard this family member refer to someone as the C-word and this was BEFORE all the allegations.”

J writes:
“Your stories about royals reminded me of some family tales of Randy Andy. My uncle served with him on HMS Edinburgh for about 18 months in the 1980s. He was a royal cunt. Made everyone call him ‘Your Royal Highness’ and also was rumoured to be a shower wanker, leaving others to clean up after him.”

T writes:
“Your piece about Prince Andrew reminds me of his nickname given to him by the Met royalty protection police officers working at the Palace. He was known as The Cunt and apparently this was his nickname when he was in the Royal Navy. A nasty bully, I saw him reduce a young page to tears over some rubbish that he didn’t like.”

An interview with Norman Cook in the NME last week has added a little piece of the puzzle to an old Popbitch story about Christopher Walken.

A technician who worked on the Fatboy Slim video for Weapon Of Choice (the one where Christopher Walken is dancing in a hotel lobby) once told us that when they arrived to the shoot they were surprised to find that the hotel’s lift operator was the absolute spitting image of Walken.

When they mentioned this incredible likeness to the receptionist, they replied “Yes, it is Christopher Walken. Mr Walken arrived earlier and has been dressed like that ever since.”

Anyhow, it turns out that Norman was supposed to make a cameo in the video as a bellhop but had to cancel last minute as Zoe Ball went into labour with their son Woody. Which is presumably why there was a spare costume kicking about.

The unbroadcast Rob Rinder pilot that we mentioned in Thursday’s issue (the one where Rinder interviewed Kwasi Kwarteng as the pair of them received massages) went by the working title of “Rinderland”. Weirdly, it’s not the first show of its type.

In 2015, a New Zealand news programme had a segment in which one of their reporters interviewed the leader of the NZ Conservatives while the two of them sat in a hot sauna.

It was, to quote the reporter, “truly disgusting”.

[Watch it here]

There was an interesting interview in Rolling Stone this weekend with Michael Fanone, a Capitol police officer who got beaten up, suffered a major head injury and had a cardiac arrest on the January 6th siege.

Our favourite detail was that Don Lemon recommended Fanone to CNN as an analyst. Unfortunately, he hasn’t had much airtime as Fanone struggled with moderating his language – and got in a lot of trouble early on for saying he thought “History was going to shit on Mike Pence’s head”.

CNN called the language “inciteful”, but Fanone gave this excellent rebuttal.

“If a person named History takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head I will apologise for having incited that behaviour”, he said. “But until a person named History literally takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I’m not saying shit. Nor do I regret what I said, because history is going to shit on Mike Pence’s head”.

[Read the rest]

Last week, we had audio quizzes about the currency crash, David Guetta, and the two shortlisted Eurovision cites (Glasgow and Liverpool).

This week, we’ve swept up the clippings of another 50 songs to make you some more. Each quiz has ten songs to identify: you can give yourself a point for every title you get and every artist performing it. That makes 20 points per quiz; 100 points across the week.

Monday’s Theme: (U-)Turning

[Play it here]

Sam Smith and Kim Petras have the new UK number single. The day before the chart was announced, it was ahead of the number 2 by 123 sales – one of the closest battles in history.
[Full story here]

Gawker does a full investigation on Liz Truss’s day collar
[Read on Gawker]

Why do bankers love techno?
[Read on Spectator]

How a group of art students hoaxed the British press
[Watch on VICE]