Bad Week For The Otters

One of the big talking points (fnur, fnur) of the new Pam & Tommy series is the inclusion of Tommy Lee’s penis as a character with its own dialogue. In episode two, shortly after they first get together, Tommy has a big heart-to-heart with his dick (which required four puppeteers to operate) about his burgeoning love for Pammy.

It’s the sort of scene that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. Which is lucky, because the first person who was lined up to play Tommy Lee on screen (for a film adaptation of the Motley Crue biography that got stuck in development hell for 15 years) was… Ashton Kutcher.

Border guards in Germany were once treated to an even more intimate vision of Tommy Lee when he turned up at airport security. Covered with so many piercings, jewellery, zips, hoops and chains, he figured it would be far too much hassle to take off all his metal to walk through the detectors.

So rather than remove it, he simply climbed up onto the conveyor belt and launched himself through their X-ray machine.

[See it here]

Which highly acclaimed writer has just been busted by his production company for farming out some of his recent scripts to a ghostwriter? (When they took him to task on it, his response was: “What’s the problem? You have your scripts, don’t you?”)

The next natural step for the DJ who is tired of all the clubbbing, tours and travel? Why, organic farming, of course!

Calvin Harris has just announced he’s bought himself a farm in Ibiza where he wants to spend a year producing veg, eggs, wine and farm-to-table meals – but he’s not the first DJ-producer to have taken this path.

Andy from Groove Armada sold his publishing rights and ploughed most of his money into wild farming in France. He hasn’t quite let go of his old life and talents though. In fact, Andy’s just won an ad campaign for this trippy film with original music about… the story of bread.

[See it here]

Anyone know what other ex-DJs and dance acts are doing these days? Email hello@popbitch.com

Crosby, Stills & Nash have put aside their differences to release a united statement, pulling their music from Spotify in support of Neil Young’s stance against the Joe Rogan podcast. There’s been some surprise and some criticism of the old hippies for siding with the establishment like this – but David Crosby, who made the announcement, has always been very hot on calling out misinformation.

In fact, one of the reasons Crosby and Nash hate each other so much is because of Graham Nash’s memoir, which Crosby claims is “chock-full of misinformation”.

One section he took particular umbrage with is this one: “Often I would knock on Crosby’s hotel door, which he kept propped open with a security jamb, and he’d be getting oral sex from two women – all while he was talking and doing business on the phone and rolling joints and smoking and having a drink.”

Crosby’s emphatic denial of this? “Not true… I don’t roll joints when I’m getting oral sex.”

Ricky Gervais has been giving his interview again, telling everyone that his next show will be the one that finally gets him cancelled. He’s always banging on about it, but would he actually be able to handle it? Ricky’s notoriously prickly with bad press.

When he first went out to the US to make films, he kept a very keen eye on the column inches he was generating back home. Writers for one newswire service remember having to take calls from Gervais’s people every time they ran a story on him – not because they were diligently interested in their client’s profile, but because Ricky would make them.

Which they knew because Ricky could be heard in the background of the calls, telling his people what to say while they were on the line.

We know, we know. Talking about weird PR emails is the media wanker equivalent of talking about your dreams – but there’s been a surge recently in the number of emails we receive each day about how various celebrity incidents affect search term traffic online.

Companies ask if our readers would be interested to know that Megan Fox’s engagement led to searches for ‘Green Engagement Ring’ EXPLODING by 526%. Maybe our audience is dying to learn that searches for ‘Harry and Meghan Podcast’ SKYROCKETED by 248% after their Spotify statement?

Mostly, we figure this sort of shit would bore you to tears, so we ignore it. But we figured you might get a filthy chuckle out of one we got this week:

“‘PEARL NECKLACE’ SEARCHES SKYROCKET 237% JUST AN HOUR AFTER RIHANNA’S PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT.”

Spain’s national Eurovision heats are currently mired in allegations of vote-rigging, but they’re sitting on the perfect companion piece to that pussy-eating funk song by Latvia that we showed you a few weeks back.

Ay Mamá by Rigoberta Bandini is an ode to breasts which contains lyrics that translate as: “I don’t know why our boobs are so scary / Without them there would be no humanity and no beauty”.

Sung while Rigoberta dances in front of a gigantic tit globe.

[See for yourself]

The President of CNN, Jeff Zucker, unexpectedly stepped down yesterday after admitting to an undisclosed, consensual relationship with a colleague – shocking the media world. Zucker is one of those people who has had a weirdly outsized effect on the modern age, given his relative obscurity.

A brief timeline:

* Hired as the President of NBC Entertainment in 2000, Zucker quickly oversaw NBC’s fall from America’s most watched network, to its fourth.

* Attempting to resuscitate ratings, he commissioned a brand new reality show: The Apprentice – which revived Donald Trump’s public profile just as he was undergoing his third corporate bankruptcy.

* When The Apprentice ran out of steam, he rebooted it as The Celebrity Apprentice – which revived Donald Trump’s public profile just as he was undergoing his fourth corporate bankruptcy.

* Made Piers Morgan a primetime star on NBC; first as a judge on America’s Got Talent, then on The Celebrity Apprentice.

* Moved from NBC to CNN in 2013, where – after watching him lose control of an interview with a then-barely-known Alex Jones of InfoWars – axed Piers Morgan, sending him back to Britain for us to put up with again.

Want to know more about that animatronic penis in Pam & Tommy?
[Read on Polygon]

Type in fart morse code
[Play at Flatology]

Local Headline Of The Week: “The Reading Terraced Jazz Pub Where Kate Winslet’s Mum Once Won A Pickled Onion Contest”
[Read on Berkshire Live]

Richey Edwards’ old house is up for sale
[See on RightMove]

The latest in Prince Andrew Photoshop adventures
[Victoria Hervey to the rescue!]

The curious culture war playing out in the New York Times crossword puzzle
[Read on Kotaku]

Rent boys. Revolutionary communists. Frankie Goes To Hollywood. And a plot to blow up Mrs Thatcher. The Enemy Within, the latest thriller from Popbitch’s very own Adam Macqueen, is published today
[Buy here and get signed copy and free badge!]

Footage from the Las Vegas Strip, 1975
[See on YouTube]

Thailand is about to legalise weed thanks to an MMA fighter
[Read on the AllStar]

Still Bored?
Mapping the Celebrity NFT Complex
[Everything’s connected…]