The Second Serve // Weeble Rehab

Manchester City have been semi-permanent fixtures in the League Cup Final over the past decade, winning four in a row before last year. So you can understand their confidence in booking up the Wembley Hilton – the best hotel near the stadium – for the weekend of the final in 2023.

Alas, a place in the final was not to be this year – but they still managed to get one over on local rivals Manchester United. When United enquired at the Wembley Hilton about booking in for the weekend they were told that, unfortunately, Man City had booked out the entire hotel. Furthermore, City were only willing to sell on their booking to the other cup finalists, Newcastle.

So Man Utd had to make do with the comparatively low-rent Novotel (complete with Costa Coffee and budget supermarket on the ground floor) on Wembley Way.

This weekend’s best celeb read was Deborah Ross’s interview with Danny Dyer in the Times. Some fun things we discovered…

* His first TV role was as a rent boy in Prime Suspect (“A good part, not just noshing people off”)

* He was in an Oscar winning short film, Wasp, by Andrea Arnold

* Says he’s “a Bentley wanker”

* Was obsessed with his Weeble toy as a kid, until it fell into a gas fire and melted (“Maybe that’s why I ended up in rehab – because I burnt my Weeble when I was four”)

F writes:
“I just read Thursday’s newsletter and the story about O’Donoghues Bar in Dublin. I used to work there in the early 90s. I remember one quiet night, mid-week, when Oliver Reed came in with his wife. They were pretty subdued and were about to leave when the manager saw them and made a big fuss.

“In no time, after a ton of free G&Ts, Oliver was in flying form. He was performing to the mainly English tourists and next thing you know his trousers are down and he’s up on the table, having whipped out his penis to show everyone his tattoo.

“I didn’t get close enough to actually see what it was, but heard later that he did this a lot. His wife didn’t say much. You could tell she had been in this situation many, many times…”

Former Loaded editor turned former MEP, Martin Daubney was spotted protesting a drag show at the Honor Oak Pub in South London on Saturday with a GB News co-star; then complained on Twitter that counter-protestors had been yelling “Nazi scum, off our streets!” at them.

It’s strange to see Martin getting so sensitive about people playing dress-up in the pub. Not least because one of the stand-out memories that staff have of Martin’s stint at Loaded was the time he turned up for work drinks at their regular pub (The Stamford Arms) dressed in full SS regalia.

There was one other good detail from the disastrous Beckham/Peltz wedding plans that we spotted trawling the lawsuits; one we don’t think we’ve seen picked up anywhere else.

At the heart of the fight is the wedding’s botched RSVP list. It caused endless headaches between family and planners, as nobody knew for sure who had been invited, who had replied, who was coming, etc.

The planners are getting blamed for this, but evidence in the case suggests a different problem. More than 30 invitations that had been sent out before the planners were even hired got returned to the Peltz household by the postal service because the addresses written on them had either been wrong or incomplete.

When the planners tried to rectify the problem, asking Nicola Peltz for a full list of her celebrity friends’ addresses – Nicola didn’t have one. The hot solution she offered the planners instead?

“Look them up on Google.”

Fresh from getting caught giving a paltry percentage of his I’m A Celebrity pay cheque to the charity he said he’d donate his fee to, Matt Hancock tripped himself up again this weekend. He uploaded a TikTok of him wearing a signed Newcastle United shirt for the Cup Final match – the same one he had supposedly auctioned off during the pandemic to raise funds for NHS workers.

The story reminded us of Jodie Marsh’s endless grift with her famous army tit belts; the ones she claimed to have auctioned off for charity in both 2012 and 2016 – only to then start selling them herself on her personal Depop site in 2019.

We wondered what had become of them and, weirdly enough, it turns out the Sun ran a piece on these unshiftable boulder holders just five days ago.

Last time we looked in 2019, they were on sale for £6K. The cost of living crisis is obviously pinching Jodie as today they’re going for… £25K.

Last week saw audio quizzes on the themes of Spelling, Record Breakers, Ladies and more. This week, we’ve got five more for you – each haphazardly crafted out of bits and bobs yanked from ten different songs.

All you have to do is listen to the resulting mess, identify the ten different songs and the ten different artists. Give yourself a point for each song and a point for each artist – twenty in total.

Monday’s Theme: Musicals – pop hits that sample/cover Broadway and West End songs

[Play it here]

Artificial Unintelligence
[Talk to a early 00s meathead]

The colorectal specialist at South Tees Hospital is called… Anil Reddy!
[The man for the job]

What really happens to bears if the do cocaine?
[Vox fact-checks Cocaine Bear]

Applications for the next series of The Traitors are open
[Sign up; cause carnage]