Crying At The Pizza Express

GOOD NEWS FOR ADELE FANS: After everything fell through at the 11th hour, Adele is currently gearing up for an August relaunch of her Vegas residency, drafting in Take That’s creative team to redesign the show from scratch in an attempt to recoup the $15m that went down the pan with the ill-fated ‘baggy pond’ staging.

GOOD NEWS FOR DRAMA FANS: Once again, production insiders are panicking that the deadlines to turn around this entirely new show are miles too tight – an issue that’s been compounded by a production manager quitting this week as it was all so out of control.

Here’s a little feather in the cap for Jason Momoa. Apparently he’s such a good shag that those working on set with his current squeeze can always tell when the two have spent a night together. How? Because she’s in such a good mood the next morning that the crew finds her just about bearable to work with.

Which TV presenter hosted a big party at her house to thank colleagues for their tireless work on her show – a booze-laden affair that got so debauched two women ended up hooking up in her pool? A guest who returned to the house the next day to pick up some belongings they’d left behind was surprised to see the pool had already been drained that morning, in preparation for a deep clean.

Last week’s Big Question – about the stand-up who insists on being paid a share of venues’ car parking as well as his standard fee – led to quite a few people sharing their experiences of him.

One story goes that he told an arena he was playing that he wanted a pound for every car parked in their car park. The management replied that it was an unusual request and not something they’d ever done before; to which he trotted out his well-worn line that punters wouldn’t be parking there if he wasn’t on, so he deserves a share, etc.

Eventually they concede and the demand is folded into the contract. Come settlement time, the comedian is poring over the details with a fine-tooth comb and sees a figure of £8 a night listed under ‘Additional Revenue’. Further investigation reveals this is the car parking money he angled for.

£8? For an entire arena? Are they having a laugh? No, they tell him. He asked for a pound for every car that parked in their car park, and the arena has eight spaces in the loading bay. The big car park he’d had his eye on? That was owned and operated by NCP, outside the venue’s control…

NB: It’s Peter Kay.

There was a very poignant interview with the remaining members of 5ive in the Guardian this weekend, full of punching, puppy-buying and crying in Pizza Express. The whole thing is worth a read to get some insight into the bleak behind-the-scenes experience for boybands, but Scott’s story was a particular rollercoaster.

Scott’s primary reason for becoming a pop star was that he wanted to have spiky hair and didn’t think he’d be able to have spiky hair in any other career. He took such pride in crafting those spikes that, one day, ahead of shooting their video for We Will Rock You, he called Abz into their hotel bathroom to check them over to make sure they were looking primo. Unfortunately, Abz left the cigar he’d been smoking unattended and it accidentally set their whole room ablaze.

They tried to escape, crawling out with wet towels over their heads, when Abz had a panic about leaving his Timberland boots behind – which Scott had to convince him not to return for. The pair ended up needing treatment for minor burns and smoke inhalation.

[Read the whole thing here]

A few weeks ago we mentioned that his team stopped hordes of horny Harry Styles fans from storming the Barbican by pretending that the video shoot for As It Was was actually a yoghurt commercial. Styles isn’t the only heartthrob to have pulled this trick. Seems like it’s de rigeur for stars with hardcore fanbases.

One reader remembers passing their local Co-Op in Crouch End and noticing that a film crew had set up outside, with a weird-looking police car loitering nearby. They stopped to ask what was being shot there and were told by crew members that it was an “ad for a supermarket”.

Shortly before Benedict Cumberbatch emerged from the police car – to shoot scenes for The Child In Time.

Adrian Chiles’ Guardian columns have become appointment reading in certain quarters. Week after week, efforts like “Croatia Has Enchanting Words For Genitalia. Why Doesn’t The UK?”, “If Dishwasher-Loading Was A Sport, My Dad Would Be World Champion” and “I Panic Bought A Dart Board” enjoy plenty of viral success, while outlets like Gawker and GQ are lining up to run glowing profiles on him.

Chiles appears to have struck gold with today’s effort too: “I Have A Urinal In My Flat And It Has Changed My Life – So Why Are People Appalled?”

If he’s truly feeling alienated, he should know he is by no means the only celebrity urinal owner. Maybe it’s a West Midlands thing, but another big advocate of keeping a personal pissoir in the home? Ozzy Osbourne.

We always knew that Murdoch’s TalkTV would follow in GB News’s footsteps, but didn’t realise quite how closely.

Shortly before GB News launched, we told you their big-money signing Andrew Neil had the channel install a purpose-built studio close to his home in the South of France so that he could do his show without much of a commute.

Looks like Piers Morgan has gone and done much the same thing too. After causing no small amount of disruption at the Baby Shard, relocating an entire department to a different floor just to make way for the big dressing room he was insisting on, he’s now not going to be broadcasting from NewsUK HQ at all. Instead, his show has been relocated to a purpose-built studio in Ealing – so he doesn’t have to leave West London.

Nicky Haslam was in the Mail On Sunday this weekend, dropping details about the (fucking hideous sounding) interior design work he’s done for Russian oligarchs over the years.

There were a couple of interesting little nuggets in there – like Oleg Deripaska’s sole request for his Moscow penthouse being “dancing poles for girls”; or how Roman Abramovich hated a plaster statue Haslam installed so much that he immediately hired someone else to re-renovate the whole place. But, all in all, it felt a bit tame. Especially compared to the report we once heard of the decor in Evgeny Lebedev’s private office at the Evening Standard.

A visitor there remembers Evgeny had an extremely eye-catching art collection on show. Above his desk was a painting of a naked man wearing a pig mask, holding a whip and standing over three decapitated pigs. And the office’s pièce de résistance? A statue of Pinocchio with an erect penis for a nose.

Remember about six weeks ago, when an MP named and shamed a bunch of London lawyers for representing shady Russian clients in cases against British journalists? Then, a few days later, another UK law firm hastily pulled a page on their website specifically courting tax-efficient Russian VIPs? And then the whole thing blew over and no-one’s really mentioned it since?

Perpetual own-goal scorers, Schillings, have very helpfully reignited the story for… some reason? Letters were fired off around Fleet Street this week to forcefully remind journalists of their stated position that they DO NOT represent any sanctioned individuals (Russians or otherwise) but that – even if they did – it would “offend the rule of law” to point it out.

The weirdest thing about this sudden outburst? Schillings was one of the few firms that nobody was really pointing fingers at. Until now.

The Cheeky Girls have a new single out
[Let’s Have Fun]

New scientific paper on the Management Of Unusual Rectal Foreign Bodies just dropped
[Read on Science Direct]

Rudy Guiliani singing Bad To The Bone on the Masked Singer
[See on Twitter]

A compilation of Lorde trying to shut her fans up
[Watch on Twitter]

American Song Contest: Week Five
[Recap on Gawker]

A Stanford psychologist reckons he’s cracked the code of one-hit wonders
[Read on The Atlantic]

Headline Of The Week: Easter Bunny Inadvertently Hands Out Eggs Stuffed With Condoms At Texas Elementary School
[Read on HuffPost]

The inside story of marketing 50 Shades Of Grey
[Read on The Fence]

Still Bored?
Ronan Farrow’s latest report details how spyware infected UK government devices between July 2020 and June 2021. Good job Boris decided to change his phone number in April 2021 then…
[Read on New Yorker]