“BOOOOORRRRRRRIIIIIING!”

All the focus has been on Britney’s long-awaited memoir, but the best celebrity anecdote of the week comes from James Blunt.

Back when he lived in LA as Carrie Fisher’s lodger, James says he was once invited to visit Elizabeth Taylor.

Alas, when he arrived at her house, she was only able to greet him from the top of the stairs by shouting, “I can’t come down. I’ve got the shits.”

Whenever there was a media profile on Succession, much would be made of Jeremy Strong’s divisive choice to go method to play Kendall – yet we were never really given much detail on what that actually entailed.

We can now. That scene where Ken burst into a room after running across New York to make his meeting?

Strong wanted to get this entrance exactly right, so all the other actors in the scene had to sit and wait while Jeremy took himself blocks away from the set – so he could run Kendall’s actual run.

Which morning TV host never wears underwear on-air as she finds going commando in the chilly studio air-con helps keep her awake and alert with all the early starts?

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE NEW BRITNEY BOOK

* After years of press speculation about her virginity, she actually lost it to some friend of her brother’s when she was 14

* Britney says she owes the distinctive quality in her voice on Baby One More Time to staying up all night the night before recording it listening to Soft Cell

* Justin Timberlake did cop off with Nicole Appleton (Popbitch Issue #5)

* Britney did cop off with Wade Robson (Issue #43)

* The exquisitely named Andrew Wallet was paid $426,000 a year to co-manage Britney’s conservatorship

WHAT WE DIDN’T LEARN FROM THE NEW BRITNEY BOOK

* Whether or not Colin Farrell really did send her a bumper sticker that read “Honk If You’ve Slept With Colin Farrell”

* Whether or not Colin Farrell really did send her a T-shirt that read “I Slept With Colin Farrell And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt”

Having revealed that Justin Timberlake dumped her by text on the set of her video for Overprotected, Britney joins an illustrious group of celebs who have all been humiliated in similar fashion.

Katy Perry was informed that Russell Brand wanted a divorce by text in front of a documentary crew, moments before she was due on stage. Jessica Simpson got chucked by Adam Levine with the message “Really busy. Need space.” Jennifer Aniston got binned off by John Mayer with “That’s it – that’s the end.”

But they all have some way to go to beat Phil Collins. Despite having been persistently accused of ditching his second wife by fax (a charge he denies), his third wife not only broke up with him via text, she then took over his $40m mansion in Miami with armed guards, moved her new husband in, then squatted there for four months while the whole thing made its way through the courts.

On Frank Skinner’s Absolute radio show this weekend, he had a long discussion about Piers Morgan’s show where he kept describing it throughout as being “on GB News”. He’s obviously mistaken – Piers’ show is on TalkTV – but he might not be so wrong for long.

Before he retired, Rupert Murdoch made a personal pitch to buy GB News in an attempt to merge the two upstart stations. A second pitch has since been made and Rupert remains keen. Could that explain why GB News has been so ready to clear house recently?

True, they haven’t cut tons of hosts. Then again, it’s not as if they’ll need to onboard much talent…

Remember that weird-sounding song fund that was going around paying $200m for Justin Bieber’s back catalogue – and $140m for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’? Well, you’re never going to believe this. It’s run into some financial difficulties…

Anyone keeping tabs on Hipgnosis might remember we suggested in 2018 that it was only ever going to end one way. Yes, we were blessed with great foresight, but also because the man in charge of the fund had been involved in a company that pulled the same trick before – to the same ends.

What’s more, all the breathless coverage of Hipgnosis at the time made no secret of the fact that head honcho Merck Mercuriadis was one of the men who ran Sanctuary Records before it was sold to Universal. But they trumpeted it like it was some badge of honour, rather than a five-alarm red flag.

The reason Sanctuary was sold to Universal? The company had effectively been nosedived into the ground, in part because they had spent years and years overinflating the value of their catalogue in an attempt to artificially hike up its share price.

And what do you know? Lightning’s struck twice!

The curtain came down on the ENO’s recent revival of Iolanthe last night, and one of the most notable things about the production was that it took a few pointed shots at some very recognisable politicians. Certain characters had been sent up to look like Boris Johnson, Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees Mogg and Michael Gove.

Gove got to see the show just before it closed and seemed to enjoy it – but he’s getting roasted absolutely everywhere at the minute.

Even his kids have taken to heckling him mercilessly at dinner things with family friends. Whenever he tries to speak, they start yelling “BOOOOORRRRRRRIIIIIING!” and “Blah blah blah blah” over him.

In the last mailout, we ran a short piece on the first week sales of Graham Linehan’s recent memoir – which kicked off a week of people telling us we are liars, making things up and pulling numbers out of our arses.

We weren’t. The numbers were pulled from Nielsen BookScan, the tool the publishing industry uses to assemble the weekly charts. What you read in Popbitch last Thursday was nothing you wouldn’t have read in the Sunday Times Bestseller List (had the Sunday Times Bestseller List gone on long enough to reach it).

There’s been calls for us to retract the story, but we feel that would risk undermining the hard-won, legitimate chart victory of the colouring book Dinosaurs Around The World.

Besides, we’ll gladly tell you that Graham’s had a much better week of sales this week. This week’s Nielsen BookScan has him as having sold 3,255 copies. A mere six units behind The Dinosaur Who Pooped Halloween.

Last week, we linked to a story about a secondary school in West Yorkshire that staged an impressive string of rock gigs in the 90s – getting bands like The Lemonheads, the Levellers, the Wedding Present and more to play. Delightfully, one of CUD (who played Minsthorpe High School twice) got in touch to tell us a bit more about it.

Carl writes:
“I was in CUD, still am. Our bass player, drummer and guitarist gave music lessons during the day and the band’s manager and I gave a talk on all the tricks that a young band would need to learn so they could be a band but still sign on.

“We told them to organise tours around the aggregate of their signing on days. Keeping separate food cupboards if they co-habited but didn’t want to get the couple rate of dole. When we did those shows we were totally on the breadline, so we probably talked to them about doing supermarket skips too.

“Some of the kids started up a fanzine, Maggots and Mash, that was full of us first issue…”

[If you missed the original story]

Chicken in trainers
[The best thing this week]

Why are male actors so weird?
[Read on The Fence]

Want to snoop around Ellen DeGeneres’ house?
[It’s up for sale]

Pierce Brosnan’s first solo art exhibition is happening in Long Eaton, Nottingham, in early December
[Learn more]

We said it before, but some of the most interesting pop of the year is coming out of Mexico
[Watch on YouTube]

Nudist beach figurines for anyone looking to make their miniature railways more erotic
[1:87 scale]

Fascinating piece about how Riot Games is having a big impact on mainstream music
[Read here]

Otter cleaning a pool
[Watch on Instagram]