A Dogging Oasis

Gillian Keegan has been complaining this week about the lack of praise she’s received for doing her (“fucking good”) job as Education Minister. As hot mic moments go, it’s not an especially scandalous one – but this isn’t the first sweary strop she’s thrown.

When she appeared on the cover of The House magazine in her previous role of Care Minister, she had a hell of a tantrum when she saw the front page. The cause? She was miffed to be sharing the cover with the words “The Older People’s Edition”.

“What next,” she snapped when she first saw it, “fucking SAGA magazine?”

While we were away, there were press reports claiming Phillip Schofield is apparently making moves to return to TV, mere months after saying his career was over. If so, Phil must be feeling pretty confident that the KC they’ve got independently investigating the case over at This Morning isn’t going to find anything too incriminating.

He’s probably right to be, too. Word from inside ITV is that it would be “easier to find one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets than anyone at ITV Daytime who has been interviewed by the Schofield investigation”.

Which cast member on a reality dating show got doubly lucky when filming one episode, getting to enjoy a not-so-private threesome with two of the contestants – in full view of one of the production cameras?

Liam Gallagher’s new holiday home in the south of France is getting overrun with doggers while he’s not in residence, and it’s not just Liam who’s annoyed at the amount of action his bolthole has been seeing. Andrew Neil has been tearing what’s left of his hair out over the development too, because he lives next door.

Andrew used to enjoy the odd balmy, perfumed evening there, leisurely sipping G&Ts out in the grounds with the previous owner – and now he’s got a rock’n’roll star for a neighbour.

If it’s any consolation, Andrew should know that Liam’s celebrity isn’t responsible for the influx of shaggers. The house was always a prime target for doggers wanting to get a celebrity feather in their cap. Because the previous owner was… Noel Edmonds.

Huw Gwyther was one of the earliest successes of Dragons’ Den, securing a £175,000 investment to establish, then edit, Wonderland magazine. The magazine has managed to make it through an especially tough time for print media. Huw, however, hasn’t.

It seems Huw might have taken rather too “hands-on” an approach to his work with some of the magazine’s models and interns these last few years. And a number of complaints recently ended up in the in-tray of his celebrity investor (and Dragons’ Den dragon) Peter Jones.

So Huw’s LinkedIn now has him listed as ‘Unemployed’.

As funds get ever tighter at GB News, they’ve had to rework some of their expenses and allowances policies. For instance, employees are now no longer allowed to spend anything over £50 on taxis. Moreover, bosses have backdated the policy, making it effective as of last April. So anyone who has taken a £50+ taxi since then is having to retrospectively cough up.

When one employee went to CEO Angelos to complain about the changes to the system, Angelos told them the solution was simple: “Just move closer to work.”

Most weeks, we point out a celebrity home that’s on the market. This week we were spoiled for choice. We could have picked Rudy Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment – and helped him raise a bit of cash for his upcoming legal bills. We could have picked John Le Carré’s cottage, for the book nerd contingent. Or there was Jessica Simpson’s baffling seven-bed-but-13-bathroom home.

However, the one we’ve gone for is Hugh Grant’s Kensington penthouse, mostly because of the gigantic sex mirror he appears to have in front of his hot tub.

[See it here]

Quentin Letts has returned to the Mail, which isn’t a huge surprise as he was never really a great fit at the Times. Times’ readers didn’t just express their displeasure for his work in below-the-line comments, they also very intently expressed it in behind-the-scenes focus groups.

Among the things focus groups consistently picked up on were Letts’ “tedious Beano-style sketches”, “lumpen wit” and “bias”. Not a great return on investment for the £350K they shelled out, but his salary wasn’t the only cost the Times incurred.

When the Mail first lost Letts, they tried to get one over on the Times by luring Giles Coren away in retaliation. In order to stop him defecting, the Times upped Coren’s salary too. So they didn’t just end up overpaying for one columnist their readers think is a twat. They overpaid for two.

In the last issue, we told you that “CB” was cabin crew code for problem passengers – in honour of the legendarily difficult customer Cilla Black.

We probably should have said that we were talking about UK-based airlines though, because if you get called a “CB” on a flight to an East Asian destination, it’s likely to mean something slightly different.

Specifically, “cunt” – but not because of Cilla.

“Chee bye” is the Hokkien phrase for “vagina”, so “CB” has become a sort of “C U Next Tuesday” equivalent. Something one Popbitch reader tells us they learned the hard way when they first moved to Singapore and had to be quietly asked to stop signing off emails with their initials.

Stephen King has already made so many lasting contributions to popular culture, but he casually tossed off another all-timer in Rolling Stone this week when the interviewer asked him if there was any truth to the rumour he loved Lou Bega’s Mambo No.5.

“Oh, yeah. Big time. My wife threatened to divorce me. I played that a lot. I had the dance mix. I loved those extended play things, and I played both sides of it. And one of them was just total instrumental. And I played that thing until my wife just said, ‘One more time, and I’m going to fucking leave you.'”

Scanned and digitised manuals for all sorts of things
[Look here]

Goth chicken
[See on Instagram]

The decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes: an insight into how Hollywood’s most cherished metric is getting gamed
[Read on Vulture]

What Taylor Swift songs mean to a convicted murderer in prison
[Read in New Yorker]

Listen to 230+ Taylor Swift songs in one 13min mash-up
[Listen on YouTube]

Something to look forward to! Superinjunction specialists Schillings are setting up a PR reputation management agency…
[Excited to hear from them]

A very comprehensive list of dirty place names in Aotearoa New Zealand
[c/o The Spin-Off]

Elvis’s second cousin is running for governor in Mississippi
[Read on The Nation]

20 years of Badger Badger Badger
[Watch on YouTube]

Still Bored?
A clock that tells the time with videos from YouTube
[Try it here]