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“I still look good in leather. I reckon I’ve got about a year and a half left before it starts looking tragic” – Jason Donovan |
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Email stories to us hello@popbitch.com
* Chris Moyles’ holiday promo
* Rock rivalries get literary
* PLUS: Loads of sex offenders |
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>> P Drippy << |
Nostradamus alert |
Much has been made of the fact that the feds who raided P Diddy’s “Freak Off” sex-dens brought back a haul of 1,000 bottles of baby oil.
Two thoughts immediately came to mind.
The first: How long would 1,000 bottles of baby oil keep you lubed? (Baby oil has a recommended use-by date of three years, which means Diddy was planning on getting through the best part of a bottle a day.)
The second: It reminded us of an old episode of The Osbournes (Jan 2003) in which Sharon tries to fix up her 19-year-old daughter with Diddy. In it, she tells Kelly, “I bet he’s got a nice old willy… I bet it’s smooth and I bet it’s oiled.”
Looks like she was spot on. |
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Whenever the indictment refers to Diddy, it does so as “SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P.Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love”. Every single time. |
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>> Out of his league << |
One final indignity |
The fallout from the Huw Edwards case has sent shockwaves throughout the whole of the BBC – even extending as far as a staff fantasy football league.
Somebody entered a team into the “Serie BBC” league this season, using the name Huw Edwards.
However, what with one thing and another (Huw being added to the sex offenders register, for instance) the team – Huventus – has been quietly withdrawn from the competition. |
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Bloomberg estimates that Lionel Messi signing for Inter Miami has added $3.2 billion to the value of American Major League Soccer. |
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>> Big Questions << |
Who’s asking what this week? |
Which celebrity businessman likes to keep a lady in every market in which he operates? Then, when his roving eye moves on, buys their silence and loyalty by getting someone on his staff to pick out a new Porsche for them. |
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It’s not just Shavekit’s creams and post-shave balms that are naturally sourced. They also make the handles of their razors from cork – which is harvested, not cut down. So the tree lives, you get an immaculately clean shave and the world is that little bit better for it. Popbitches can get a trial box for £3.95 and 10% of their next Shavekit box. Join 300,000+ other UK customers today.
[Get it here] |
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>> Greece 2 << |
More celebrity summer spots |
After Alan Johnson’s Kefalonia resturant meltdown last week, this week we’ve got another late-summer celebrity holiday report from another of the Greek islands.
One reader, currently in Zante, tells us they were sharing the bus into town earlier this week with a guy who was proudly sporting a Chris Moyles Show T-shirt.
Chris Moyles. |
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Freudian Flub Of The Week: Mark Goodier on Radio 2 referring to 90s boyband 911 (“Nine-One-One”) as “Nine-Eleven”. |
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>> ‘Deer heart << |
You’ve come a long way, baby |
anon writes:
“Back when Jessica Gunning of Baby Reindeer fame was at drama school in SE London I worked in one of the local boozers that she and her classmates used to frequent. While most of them were full of their own self-importance (and the cheapest booze they could lay their hands on) she was usually, if not always, the friendliest and most down to earth person in the room and a pleasure to have around.
“Seeing her pick up an Emmy in front of a room full of disingenuous Hollywood types is an absolute case study in getting places without having to be a cunt.” |
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Happy 65th birthday Marshall Jefferson, the genius behind the first piano house classic Move Your Body. He says Elton John, and particularly Bennie and the Jets, inspired him to make the song. |
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>> How he kept clean << |
Stories from the shop floor |
With new allegations emerging about Mohamed Al-Fayed in the new BBC investigation, we’ve been hearing some extra details about his behaviour from former Harrods employees.
One victim in the doc says she was made to wash herself with disinfectant – which squares with Al-Fayed’s known hygiene obsession.
Any shop assistant who caught his eye would receive a summons to Occupational Health. Once there, they would receive an intimate check up. One girl who had just turned 16 was sent back unexamined by the nurse who refused to do it.
And it wasn’t just the shop staff. Al-Fayed’s obsession was such that his daughters’ boyfriends all got sent to OccHealth for a once-over too. |
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Always worth revisiting the old, unbleeped footage from the documentary Starsuckers at times like this – where Max Clifford explains the services he provided for Mohamed Al-Fayed. [Watch it here] |
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>> Spoiler alert << |
Here’s how the story ends |
Not all rockstar rivalries are as bombastic as Dave Navarro and Perry Farrell brawling live on stage. Some work themselves out much more subtly.
One reader remembers being out on tour many years ago sharing a split-bill with Foals. There wasn’t much camaraderie between the two bands – and Foals’ habit of stealing up all the soundcheck time every night really started to wind the other band up.
Midway through the tour, the other band decided to enact revenge. Foals frontman Yannick had been carrying around a load of classic novels in his backpack (Moby Dick, Frankenstein, The Catcher In The Rye).
So while Foals were doing another of their drawn-out soundchecks, the other band crept into his dressing room and carefully cut out the last page of each one. |
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Grab a hot date (or a mate) and be one of the first to see WHY AM I SO SINGLE? the “dazzling new musical from the creators of SIX” (Financial Times). This all-singing, all-dancing musical extravaganza “erupts like a shaken bottle of prosecco, fizzing and flowing with astute hit after hit” (The Stage).
[Book now at the Garrick Theatre] |
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>> Mars attacks << |
Hello pot, kettle is calling |
Miley Cyrus is being sued over her song Flowers for supposedly infringing the copyright of Bruno Mars’s When I Was Your Man.
Weirdly, she’s not being sued by Bruno Mars or even his record label. Instead, it’s coming from one of those odd Hipgnosis-style private equity vehicles that started buying up much of pop music publishing these past few years.
Tempo Music Investments is bringing the suit, after it bought a slice of the rights off one of the song’s other writers, Philip Lawrence. But Tempo might want to think twice about the precedent they’re setting here.
Not least because they are now custodians of a bunch of other Bruno Mars hits Lawrence co-wrote – many of which could be open to similar retaliatory legal challenges.
Like Locked Out Of Heaven (Sting’s lawyers should take a listen), Grenade (ditto Coldplay’s), Treasure (which Breakbot publicly called them out on) and… When I Was Your Man, which sounds so much like Elton John’s Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, it’s hard to believe they can point fingers at Miley with a straight face. |
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Nominative Determinism Of The Week: the lawyer Ruth Langsford has hired in her high-profile divorce from Eamonn Holmes is called… Catherine Costley! |
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>> Shell/shock << |
Scooped inside out |
Jaws dropped at Guardian HQ on Tuesday morning when news began to circulate that Tortoise was in talks to buy The Observer. The Observer’s blindsided staff were hauled into a meeting with management just moments before its competitors began reporting the news in their own outlets.
As for the rest of the Guardian Media staff, they found out about the proposed deal not from any official email, but from TVs beaming Sky News into their newsroom.
FYI: Page 60 of the new Scott Trust financial statements says that £23K was paid to the partner of a director of the Scott Trust. So presumably this is what Adrian Chiles gets for his columns? |
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>> Farmed out << |
Letter of the week |
Further to last week’s titbit that Theo Walcott keeps calling the production company that makes Clarkson’s Farm, asking to be on it – even though producers have no idea what they could have him do on the show: one reader offered up a suggestion we felt could work.
“Surely they could have him running up and down the side of a field to no great effect for 90 minutes?” |
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Are you – or do you know – a talented, quirky or mischievous designer? We’re looking to create some Popbitch merch and need some help. Want to know more?
[Get in touch] |
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Thanks to: RL, PJM, CB, bobbi_fleckmann, PD, A, I, HG, TH, MB, N, MC, C, BB, AD, PD, ST |
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Old Jokes Home
A nun caught me dipping my balls in holy water.
She told me I was sack-religious.
Still Bored?
A leaked copy of the MrBeast production manual
[Read it here] |
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