Cinzano Chasers

It’s that time of year again, when Popbitch readers can sit down and disturb friends, families and colleagues with their strangely detailed knowledge of pop culture ephemera and celebrity vulgarity. Yes, the annual Popbitch Xmas Popquiz is finally here!

We know times are tough, so we’ve capped the quiz at the price of a pint. £7. If you’ve enjoyed what we’ve done this year, consider buying us a festive round. In return we’ll give you eight rounds of pop trivia, gossip and silliness.

And if you have a lot of time to kill this December, there’s another 11 quizzes from earlier in the year on offer too. Pick and choose the ones you want, or get the full Popbitch Popquiz 2023 bundle for £35.

[Get your Popquizzes here]

Ed Sheeran was in Dublin the other week for the Katie Taylor fight – which was sponsored by Conor McGregor and his Irish stout brand, Forged.

Although Ed appears to have had a fine time out there, he doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of Forged. In fact, he was so unimpressed with the choice of stout at the venue (Forged and Ireland’s Edge) a skivvy had to be dispatched to the local Spar to pick up ten cans of Guinness to drink instead.

Which already accused media pundit is facing a grim new #MeToo allegation – that he slipped an unwanted hand into his accuser’s pants while watching ABBA Voyage?

There’s a salon in London that has given an array of celebrity clients haircuts for free over the years; the idea being that the stars then act as living billboards for the salon’s services.

That deal had to be slightly altered as a result of lockdown though. When the salon was finally able to re-open, they asked these stars if they’d be happy to pay for hairdos for a while – just until their books were back in the black. Claudia Winkleman, Nigella Lawson and Susanna Reid all replied that, yes, of course they would.

But after so many years of never paying for a cut, there was one client who couldn’t agree to those new terms. So Tess Daly goes elsewhere now.

What is it with the Sun’s showbiz desk? First Dan Wootton goes and gets himself placed under investigation over a string of scandalous allegations. Now his successor, Simon Boyle, has just had his desk cleared too – leaving quite a commotion in his wake.

It seems his wife found some incriminating content on his phone that suggested he’d been juggling a couple of concurrent office romances (each unaware of the other) so she set up a little group chat to make the necessary introductions.

If that wasn’t enough of a headache to contend with, HR also wanted to have a word about some of the showbiz desk’s expenses. There’s a couple of hefty payments on the books to one particular contact; someone who doesn’t appear to have provided the paper with all that much in the way of printable material.

Lewis Goodall, of political podcasters The News Agents, has a dirty little spoon habit.

We hear he’s been caught now on multiple occasions making a cup of tea in the LBC kitchen, stirring it with a spoon, then putting the spoon straight back into the cutlery drawer.

Even worse? He keeps putting them back in the fork section.

The government’s attempt to toughen up immigration legislation for Xmas had one reader keen to figure out precisely how many storylines in 2003’s Love Actually would become impossible under 2023’s new proposals.

Their assessment:

* Thomas Brodie-Sangster: Love interest is the dependant child of a non-EU citizen

* Liam Neeson: Claudia Schiffer is a non-UK citizen, so would need to earn £38K+

* Kris Marshall: Fine to go to America on holiday; couldn’t bring his nymphomaniac models back permanently

* Laura Linney: Glassdoor has the current average salary for a graphic designer as £37,154 – so she’d fall below the required earning threshold

* Colin Firth: Leaving aside the post-Brexit complications of keeping a holiday home in France, his Portuguese fiancée wouldn’t get leave to remain – and he’d struggle to get all his Christmas presents back through customs too.

Bill Nighy’s platonic porn-watching bromance, Emma Thompson’s cheating husband and Keira Knightley’s stalker would all be free to carry on, as would sex-scene stand-ins Martin Freeman and Joanne Page.

That just leaves the Prime Minister who shags his catering staff. Something the current regime would probably also tolerate.

Last week, we said the December charts are a write-off in the streaming era because the Top 40 gets flooded with the same old Xmas songs. If you think we were exaggerating, we really weren’t.

The midweek chart has only one non-Xmas song in the Top Ten (Jack Harlow’s Lovin On Me at No.6) – and it’s the same picture for the Top 20. Noah Kahan’s Stick Season is at No.13, but everything else is Bublé, Andy Williams, Band Aid, etc.

What makes this all the more staggering is that these Xmas songs are subject to streaming handicaps. Old songs have to stream twice as much to keep pace with newer releases – a rule introduced to ensure the chart didn’t stagnate. Yet Xmas songs are streamed so much in December that, even with that obstacle, this week’s Top Three is set to be Wham!, Mariah and the Pogues.

And if it hadn’t been for that streaming handicap, Wham! and Mariah would likely have been No.1 and No.2 throughout most of November too.

Journalists have been complaining all over social media about the overzealous emailing and constant chasing by COP28 PRs over their stories – but pissing off hacks is the last thing on the flacks’ minds.

The industrial level bollockings about media coverage have sent the flacks into a state of total exhaustion. Things are so bad at one agency, they’ve brought in a therapist to be available on-site for their team.

If anyone asks agency staff what they’re hoping to get out of COP, the stock answer now is “fired”.

IB writes:
“Further to your run down of Shane’s tipples. My husband used to work at a pub in Hackney, once frequented by Shane MacGowan. Apparently he ordered a pint of Cinzano.”

MH writes:
“Shane drank at my local shithole in N4 a few times in the noughties. His round then was a couple of B’n’Bs (Baileys and brandy; four shots of each per glass) with a chaser of a pint of Cinzano Bianco.”

AH writes:
“According to Here Comes Everybody, the (very good) memoir of Pogues accordionist James Fearnley, in the early days Shane MacGowan used to drink something called a “Black Zombie”. And what was in a Black Zombie? A double measure of gin, a double measure of vodka, a double measure of rum, a double measure of tequila, and two shots of pastis (the French liqueur). With a bottle of coke poured over the top of it.”

An oral history of the “David’s Dead” episode of Celebrity Big Brother
[Read on GQ]

An X-rated lip-sync of Fairytale Of New York
[Very NSFW]

What is politics’ big bonk-on for I’m A Celebrity all about?
[ft. Lembit Öpik]

A long read on our old pals, libel lawyers Carter-Ruck
[Read on TBIJ]

8 hours of festive department store muzak
[Listen on YouTube]

If you haven’t already seen the swearing newsreader
[A clip for the ages]

Latest on Hipgnosis
[Read on Digital Music News]

NYT’s best songs of 2023
[Read it here]

The Eternal Jukebox
[Play around here]