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Cheltenham Festival – the greatest week of horse racing in the world – starts Tuesday. We’ve teamed up with Coral to give you a great offer. Open an account, bet five pounds and get 20 pounds free bets:
http://bit.ly/1G2jk2L
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“By the way, I don’t know the days of the week” – Kanye West
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|_| |_| 06.03.15 ISSUE 728
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Email stories hello@popbitch.com
* Popbitch in court!
* Poor Cuthbert Hogsbottom
* Charts: Years & Years for No.1
>> Signed off <<
Modern art is rubbish
Remember those ten-foot words that were floating about in the air during the BRIT Awards? Well, because they were written in Tracey Emin’s handwriting (like a lot of her other neon works) those words could have been extremely valuable pieces of original Emin artwork. If only they hadn’t been smashed up and stuffed in the bin.
How could such a travesty occur? Was ISIS running rampant behind the scenes at the BRITs? Erm, no. The organisers did it. They were so concerned that some light-fingered guest might make off with one and flog it for a small fortune, they had them all destroyed after the show.
RIP Leonard Nimoy – actor, writer and one-time pet shop owner… http://goo.gl/9zMbW9
>> Cock-mocking <<
The monster gets a name
Apparently a story we ran last week about one travel journalist’s surprisingly large tallywhacker has caused much amusement among his colleagues. They spent most of last Thursday trying to come up with good nicknames for it.
Some plumped for the classic “Jumbo”. Others preferred the model-specific “A380”. But the one that has really taken off?
“The Pendolino”.
Leonard Nimoy used to pay for the security patrol of his whole street – and for its landscaping too.
>> Big Question <<
Who’s asking what this week?
Which Grammy winner used to pay ordinary civilians who took his fancy 200 quid a pop to send him dick pics? (Must have helped while away a lonely hour or two…)
US citizens spent more on food in bars and restaurants this January than they did in actual grocery stores. Solid work, America!
>> The write stuff <<
Still bad at radio
She may have been shitcanned from her radio presenting gig in Dubai but somehow Steps’ third best female singer, Lisa Scott-Lee, continues to carve out a career in Middle East media. Her latest job is writing a column for a UAE version of Hello! magazine, called Ahlan.
Sadly, she hasn’t got off to the greatest start, having hit a bit of trouble in a recent radio interview. Despite trying to pronounce the name of the magazine many times, she didn’t manage to get it right once.
Dubai accessory of the year – the ultimate for the boys in sports cars cruising around the beach is a white tiger cub sat on the passenger seat.
>> Diviner intervention <<
Not mad, just disappointed
Russell Crowe has always had a bit of a reputation for taking a fist-heavy approach to conflict resolution, but we’re happy to report that he appears to have mellowed a little with age. It hasn’t made him any less frightening though.
At a recent screening for his directorial debut, The Water Diviner, a technical hitch put the entire event in peril. Understandably, the staff on hand weren’t thrilled by the prospect of having to break the bad news to Russell.
When someone finally did brave it, Russell received the news stony-faced. But instead of throwing a punch like in the good ol’ days, he responded like a stern headmaster with a single, gruffly-uttered word:
“Explain.”
55% of the citizens in Palm Springs, California identify as gay. (Or so says the city’s tourist agency…)
>> Inverse Midas <<
A Mote of no confidence
You might not know the name Jane Mote, but it has been gaining some notoriety in TV circles (in much the
same way that Typhoid Mary’s name gained some notoriety among epidemiologists…)
A brief reading of her CV:
* She took over GLR and rechristened it BBC London, which no-one liked.
* She took charge at Current TV, and it soon went off air.
* She was the Launch Director of London Live.
Yet, far from being contained and isolated, Jane Mote has just taken on a new job. So watch out, everyone at TruTV.
Pampas grass may be the way UK swingers identify themselves but it’s different in Scandinavia. They put windchimes outside the house.
>> Heart of Stone <<
Getting down and Lowe
We were very sad to hear that David Walliams and his model wife Lara Stone have split. The tabloids seemed to imply it was because David couldn’t cope with the racy photoshoots she’d been modelling for – but that seems a little unlikely.
Maybe it was his Pet Shop Boys fixation? One past conquest told us that Walliams refused to have sex unless their music was playing.
Or maybe it was his choice of nightwear? Another ex of his tells us that he would wear lilac pyjamas and a brown silk dressing gown to bed.
Surely it can’t be his wedding tackle? Showbiz rumours say his package is pretty impressive. Even Barbara Windsor had nice things to say about it when David gave her an informal showing at a party (though apparently it isn’t a patch on Sid James’s…)
David Walliams was famous at school for dry-humping smaller boys against a wall. His nickname back then was “Cuthbert Hogsbottom”.
>> They’re (Almost) Off! <<
Fergie & Pricey at the races
It’s the Cheltenham Festival next week. 27 races, culminating in the Cheltenham Gold Cup next Friday. Spectators will knock back more than 230,000 pints of Guinness and 120,000 bottles of wine, so it’s no surprise to see celebs like Sir Alex Ferguson, Katie Price, Lily Allen and Jeremy Kyle among them.
Oh, and us, because the horse Popbitch part-owns, Double Dash, runs in the race right after the Gold Cup!
We’ve got some tips for you here but follow @popbitch for more every day.
http://bit.ly/1wJE5kl
Sign up with @coral – bet a fiver and get twenty quid in free bets.
http://bit.ly/1G2jk2L
Classiest restaurant PR we’ve seen this year: 34, which boasts of a champagne glass moulded from Kate Moss’s left tit.
>> Passing judgement <<
Our day in court
“I’m not sure how familiar your Lordship is with Popbitch?”
That was a question that David Sherborne QC put to the judge presiding over the Mirror Group phone-hacking trial this week.
While we would never dare to out any of our subscribers (and therefore make no attempt to answer that particular question) we can say that in the last year alone at least three judges have contributed to these pages, and that the legal profession in general has a talent for passing on gossip that far surpasses anything that journalists or PRs can lay claim to.
Ex-MP Nicholas Winterton spotted on a Virgin flight to Cape Town. “Kept his nose buried in the free Daily Mail for much of the flight.”
>> Hackbitch <<
We’re not done yet
The reason David Sherborne had cause to ask the judge if he’d ever heard of Popbitch is that, thirteen years ago, we published details of how phone-friendly newsdesks were managing to acquire their celeb stories.
A lot of that has since made it to trial, but there are still a few stories from our archives that haven’t had an airing in court yet.
For example, no-one has yet discussed the hacking blacklist – the ledger of names that journalists knew never to hack because the stories they’d get would be so boring it wasn’t worth their time (highest on the list: Noel Gallagher).
Nor has anyone discussed the Friday afternoon competition held at one particular tabloid when, after a boozy lunch and a few refreshing lines in the toilets, journos would compete to see who could hack the best story from a celebrity phone.
Still, there’s time…
Nom den of the week: Bristol FC’s ex-physio… Buster Footman.
>> Hmmms <<
Fingers, bees, ISIS
How a crop of red honey and a swarm of bees uncovered New York’s biggest marijuana farm:
http://thebea.st/1w2fd6J
We got some good disco suggestions off of Jimmy Somerville:
http://bit.ly/1aLmQ8c
Seeing as they’re back in the news once again, our piece on ISIS – Making The Brand:
http://bit.ly/1Gk0709
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Thanks: deep_stoat, plasticflamingo, sydbarretthomes, manikman, meow, the_sundance_flid, fayekorgazm, whatever_yeah? CF, clinton, BB, AM, JM, SK, LOC
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Old Jokes Home:
My wife walked in on me last night and shouted “What the hell are you doing with that white and gold dress?!”
I said, “It’s not what it looks like!”
Still Bored?
Crawley’s 89 best dressed shoppers:
http://bit.ly/1M6UHpq
