Benny Hizzle

Given all the changes the body undergoes during pregnancy, shooting Hollywood blockbusters is usually out of the question. So it’s a good job Margot Robbie has a side-hustle to fall back on now she’s up the duff.

She and hubby Tom Ackerley were spotted yesterday afternoon in that most glamorous of locales: Sainsbury’s head office.

There was no troupe of lackeys. No big celebrity drinks promoter. Just the two of them, there to hawk her new gin. Casually checking in at the front desk under the name “Margot Robbie”.

Kate Moss has got a new fashion collab in the pipeline. She was out at the label’s European headquarters recently and made quite an impression on her new colleagues there.

Kate arrived first thing, on her own, with a handbag from which she pulled a packet of cigs, a can of beer and a portable speaker. Then got stuck straight into them – spending the whole day “working” to the soundtrack from Grease.

Which new Lib Dem MP’s inappropriate behaviour in meetings at a prior job was so bad it resulted in the entire staff  having to go through sensitivity training?

Which Northern MP took full advantage of a free trip to New York with a parliamentary lobbying group – by binning off a meeting with a local dignitary to go and see Hamilton instead?

One of the most eagerly awaited films of the year is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder reprising their roles.

After the latest trailer was released this week, we’re honestly not sure whether we’re excited to see it or not. But we can offer one piece of advice: you won’t need to sit through the end credits.

Tim Burton had originally planned an elaborate post-credits sequence to tack on to the end of the movie. Everything was organised. Locations had been scouted and secured in the Bahamas and Spain. Then Burton decided that, actually, he couldn’t be arsed.

So binned the whole idea.

Snoop Dogg has been professing his love of Benny Hill in the press again – something he’s spent well over half his life doing now.

2024, Evening Standard: “You know what was an attraction of mine, to London, as a kid? It was to meet Benny Hill, right? Because Benny Hill was a bad motherfucker in California. He was funny as fuck, too! And we loved him. Like, I don’t even think y’all know how much he meant to the African-American community. He meant the fucking world to us.”

2012: Snoop lends his support to a campaign to get a Benny Hill statue commissioned in Southampton.

2011, The Observer: “I love Benny Hill. He one of my favourites of aaall time… I would like to play Benny Hill in the Benny Hill movie. I’ll even paint my face white.”

Apr 1994, Q Magazine: In a profile, Snoop describes Benny Hill as “the bomb”. Then does impressions of him with his crew, Daz and Kurupt.

Feb 1994, The Word: “That’s my homie! I love Benny Hill, yeah…” Then, when asked about his favourite sketches: “I like the one where he be tappin’ on the lil’ old man’s head.”

When Trump was shot at in Butler, PA the other week, Channel 4 moved fast to make sure that a scheduled repeat of a Simpsons episode (“Lisa The Iconoclast”) was pulled last minute as it featured a joke about a rooftop sniper taking aim at Lisa Simpson at a rally.

Unfortunately, not all pop culture works the same way.

Issue #3 of Deadpool & Wolverine WWIII came out this week. It’s timed nicely with the Deadpool & Wolverine film that’s also out this week too. But the comic went to print long before the events of Butler.

Which makes it all the weirder that WWIII features a panel where an assassin makes an attempt on Deadpool’s life. And misses his head by a fraction of an inch. Ripping off his ear instead.

MAGA man-child JD Vance was boasting this week about how much Diet Mountain Dew he drinks, before claiming Democrats would say that liking the vile yellow soda was “racist”.

Maybe they would. But they wouldn’t be the first.

At the start of the last decade, Mountain Dew had suburban white middle America all sewn up. So PepsiCo developed a marketing strategy to bring what they described as “urban cool” to the Mountain Dew image. It didn’t go altogether smoothly.

First they brought in Lil’ Wayne as a Mountain Dew ambassador. Then dropped him like a stone after he dragged the brand into controversy over “racist and offensive” lyrics (specifically a line claiming he would “Beat that pussy up like Emmett Till”.)

They also got Tyler The Creator to voice and mastermind a series of extraordinary Mountain Dew ads about a crazy goat on PCP called Felicia. The ads got pulled after an African-American academic accused Pepsi of “corporate racism”. In an article with the bold title: “Mountain Dew Releases Arguably The Most Racist Commercial in History”.

There’s a new documentary about Lou Pearlman – the dead, disgraced manager behind Backstreet Boys and N*Sync – out this week. As one of the all-time great pop music scam artists, it’s good to see his memory being preserved.

Pearlman died in prison in 2016 after masterminding one of the longest running Ponzi schemes in American history. But his pop management style was just as shady. Lou legally made himself a sixth member of the Backstreet Boys, so that he was able to take a 17% slice of the band’s money himself. That was after making sure he took his 15% managerial commission first. From the net profits.

In five years, Pearlman managed to make $10,000,000 from the Backstreet Boys. While the actual boys themselves made $300,000.

FYI: Lou Pearlman didn’t let his incarceration stop him. Like any scammer worth their salt, he pitched to be the star of his own reality show. In prison.

It’s been a tough few weeks for Katy Perry. First she caught a ton of flak for working with Dr Luke again. The resulting single – Woman’s World – got an absolute pasting in the press. The video fell so flat she had to issue a statement explaining it was supposed to be “satire”. And now the song has failed to crack the Billboard Top 50 – debuting at No.63.

And that still isn’t the most embarrassing thing about it. Shortly after Charli XCX sent social media into overdrive just by tweeting the words “kamala IS brat”, Katy has been trying to elbow her way onto the same bandwagon. By posting Kamala Harris memes using her own flop song as the soundtrack.

It’s all put us in mind of the final words of Sister Catherine Holzman – the 89 year old nun who died in an LA courthouse fighting her.

“Katy Perry. Please stop.”

How music lost its value
[Read on Fast Company]

How has Mambo No.5 affected the name popularity of Monica, Erica, Rita, etc?
[Dataviz on Reddit]

Crowdstrike fun
[Get your blue screens]

Bedtime reading for Armie Hammer: “Exploring The Evidence Of Sexual Cannibalism Among Amphibians”
[Read here]

The first chapter of Bobby Fingers’ erotic novel
[Listen on YouTube]

Why are there no new breakout YouTube superstars?
[Read on Business Insider]

AP had Headline Of The Week with “No, JD Vance Did Not Have Sex With A Couch”
[Until they 404’d it]

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