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[Perfect for Valentine’s Day…] |
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“I shouldn’t be criticising Ed Sheeran because he does his best. But it’s very limited. I couldn’t sit through a whole concert” – Matt Stock |
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Email stories to us hello@popbitch.com
* Jeremy Hunt’s flat fee
* A Narstie accident
* PLUS: Lipgloss v gossip |
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>> Lord of the dance << |
Fred’s family tree |
Dance music darling Fred Again has been having a tricky week. He’s currently in the middle of a digital war between various Wikipedia editors – some of who are very keen to make clear the full extent of Fred’s nepo baby credentials.
It seems the final straw was Fred getting a place on the all-male (but officially gender neutral) Best Artist BRIT shortlist, because since it was announced there have been so many attempts to map out his family tree on his Wiki page that it was temporarily locked.
There’s no telling how long any information pertaining to his forebears will stay up (right now it fluctuates throughout the day) but for the sake of providing the info a fixed home: Fred is the son of Charles Anthony Warneford Gibson KC and Mary Ann Frances Morgan, both members of the British peerage. His great-grandfather was Shane O’Neill, 3rd Baron O’Neill; his great-grandmother, Ann, later married both Lord Rothermere (owner of the Daily Mail) and Ian Fleming.
Oh, and his godfather is Brian Eno. |
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Kim Petras says her new album will feature tracks with her idol, Max Martin, plus one of Dua Lipa’s closest collaborators. (New single Brrr is a continuation of that Unholy sound with the same producer, Ilya.) |
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>> Simply dead << |
Loverat and mouse |
Mick Hucknall was having breakfast at a café in Hampstead on Wednesday morning (he had shakshuka, if you like those sorts of details) when all of a sudden a mouse came whizzing past his ear, falling from above and landing dead on the floor next to his chair.
The incident spooked a lot of the customers sitting nearby – but not Mick. Surprisingly, he stayed completely calm, asked staff if they could bring him a broom and then swept the poor wee fella up – all while assuring fellow diners that a little mouse needn’t cause any upset.
He then resumed getting stuck into his shakshuka. |
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Echidnas like to blow snot bubbles as a way of keeping cool. |
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>> Big Questions << |
Who’s asking what this week? |
Which podcast millionaire is more ghost than host? Despite being paid a fortune to create an audio series, a number of the interviews in it were actually conducted by the show’s producer – with the star host dropping by later to overdub them asking the questions. |
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Make sure you finish Dry January as you started. Try Jitai- a new app that learns your triggers and delivers you from temptation. Popbitch users can download the app free for a month of clear heads and clean consciences.
[Try here] |
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>> Narstie accident << |
Could have been a disaster |
In order to get the best stories for panel shows and chat shows, celeb guests often undergo a pre-show interview in which production crew will probe them for any potential material.
One pre-show interviewer was struggling to get anything halfway interesting out of Big Narstie, so fell back on a classic prompt “Did you ever get in trouble when you were younger?” to which Narstie said he once got in trouble with his mum for trying to wash stray cats.
Their ears pricked up. A young Big Narstie soaping up little kitties in the kitchen sink, getting clipped round the ear for mucking up his mum’s sponges? It had the hallmarks of a promising story. As he went on to explain a bit further however, it became clear that the kid Narstie’s thwarted plan was to wash the cats in the washing machine…
Sensing a viewer-letter nightmare, they quickly changed the subject. |
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Australian TV exec Chris Walker’s naked Zoom scandal in 2022 obviously didn’t amuse his longtime TV presenter partner Carrie Bickmore as much as the rest of the world. She’s announced she’s starting 2023 by giving him the heave-ho. |
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>> Flat fee << |
A missing ingredient |
Jeremy Hunt is currently starring in a video on social media in which he explains why inflation is so high and what he’s going to do about it, using the price of a flat white coffee as an example.
By drawing on a bunch of disposable coffee cups, Hunt goes on to map out why a coffee that cost you £2.50 a year ago is now costing you nearly £3.
One small detail he doesn’t touch on is that, thanks to heavy subsidies from the taxpayer, a flat white from The Despatch Box coffee shop in Parliament is still only £1.85. |
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New York oil dynasty the Belfer family have a good claim to fame this month: they lost billions in Enron, tens of millions to Bernie Madoff and now it’s been revealed a good chunk of the family fortune ($35m) was invested in… FTX! |
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>> What a shower! << |
Lipgloss v gossip |
One of the weirder Royal stories of recent weeks was that Meghan and Kate’s falling out came about because of a breach of lipgloss etiquette. Maybe it did, but that feels like quite a minor incident to break up an entire monarchy over. Besides, there’s a far more compelling explanation for the frosty relations between the two.
Meghan didn’t agree with the way that Kate handled the so-called “Rural Rivalry” situation and told everyone who attended her US baby shower so – filling them in on all the ins and outs of it, explaining what she would have done differently had it been her instead.
Naturally, the gossip soon spread all over NYC and the Hamptons, before making its way back across the pond to Kate – who was furious to find out she’d been such a hot topic of conversation at the party. |
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Controversial golf upstarts LIV have finally found a US TV deal. It’s with The CW – hitherto best known for teen dramas like Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls and Smallville. |
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>> Breaking the SAW << |
Confessions with Priest |
There’s a new Channel 5 documentary series on 80s super-producers Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) starting this weekend. In it, they talk about the wildest night out they ever had: with Judas Priest in Paris.
It was one of the SAW boys’ birthdays, so Priest took them to the Folies Bergère and bought them all expensive bottles of champagne. The old studio bods started to get a little bit nervous when a group of hookers joined them, so they pretended they were gay in order to be left alone. A plan that quickly backfired in a French cabaret hall however as the ladies soon gave way to a gaggle of Paris’s prettiest twinks instead.
They never went out with Priest again. |
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You could be hit by a bus tomorrow. There really is no time for average stays. Plum Guide cuts the crap in holiday rentals, selecting only the best.
[FIND OUT MORE] |
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>> RIPbitch << |
Crosby, Stills & Nosh |
And so the grudge goes to the grave. Crosby, Stills and Nash had one of the all-time great showbiz beefs, which remains a high watermark for celebrity squabbling. One of the reasons Crosby continued to hate Nash was because of Nash’s memoir, which Crosby claimed 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.” |
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Ben Savage (a.k.a. Cory from Boy Meets World) has filed papers to run for Congress in California. |
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>> Camera tricks << |
What’s in a name? |
There’s a piece of specialist camera equipment that’s used in the filming of Hollywood blockbusters; a car mounted crane that allows crews to film high speed car chases steadily and smoothly. For years, this bit of kit was known as the “Russian Arm”. Since Putin’s illegal invasion though, they’ve undergone a name change in the industry as a show of support.
It’s now called a “U-Crane”. |
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We mentioned a few months back that “Mickey Rooney” was camera crew shorthand for slowly inching a dolly forward (i.e. “a little creep”). When DOPs ask crew for a “Joan Collins”, they want the camera lens fixed at maximum aperture (i.e. “wide open”). |
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>> Government waste << |
Muck in an elevator |
The Treasury isn’t the only government department to be plagued by surprise turds turning up in unexpected places (as per last week’s Popbitch). Departments all across Whitehall have had to deal with sneaky dumpers in their time.
The Department of Education has suffered horribly from one in the past and, a few years back, DEFRA was home to a mystery lift shitter too. Initially, their “work” was mistaken for a large dog’s – until a security camera was installed to catch the culprit. Once unmasked, the pooper was offered counselling, but there was no such aftercare for the colleagues who were forced to ride in the lift with his stinky gifts. |
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Hate your neighbours, but also hate spending money? Pick My Postcode is the UK’s FREE daily lottery. Over half of the UK’s postcodes are now registered, so your neighbours might win some money without you, if you don’t sign up now. Simply enter your postcode and check back daily. Over £1.5 million has been won so far, probably by your neighbours.
[Play Pick My Postcode here] |
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Thanks to: JS, dom_kaos, DF, FL, AR, KB, SR, CW, SK, GS, NZ, HW, PK, CM, theabominablehoman
ALSO: In last week’s Popbitch we said that the recent Chelsea v Man City game was Chelsea’s first without an academy player in the team since Frank Lampard’s debut. We misread the original message: it should have been from Frank Lampard’s debut as Chelsea manager (not as a player as we’d inferred). |
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Old Jokes Home
My 4-year-old has been learning Spanish all year but still can’t say the word ‘please’.
Which I think is poor for four.
Still Bored?
Nick Cave reviews ChatGPT’s AI attempt to write Nick Cave lyrics
[Read on Red Hand Files] |
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