Deeply Dippy

Kanye West has pulled out of this year’s Coachella owing to a disagreement over his staging requirements. Usually we’d be inclined to think that “staging disagreements” was code for something, but in Kanye’s case we can believe it.

During a production meeting for the Watch The Throne tour, Kanye became obsessed with the idea that he and Jay-Z would open the show by flying into the venue from outside and landing on the stage, ready to start the first song.

Much to Jay-Z’s annoyance, Kanye wouldn’t drop it – even though he was told multiple times that it would be impossible to remove the roof from Madison Square Garden for their two night residency.

Lee Ryan has been absent from his role of Aladdin at the New Wimbledon Theatre’s panto since last Friday. The Sun, in an unusual act of kindness, reported the pop star’s departure as a “mysterious disappearance” – but from what we hear there’s no real mystery to it.

Lee slipped out of the theatre during the interval, popped over to the Wetherspoons across the road and had to be hauled out of there by theatre crew when they spotted he was missing. He was handed his papers before the curtain went up on Act 2, and his understudy has been on ever since.

That’s now two Popbitch untouchables who have flamed out of their panto commitments in spectacular fashion (though it’s still not a patch on Paul Danan getting the sack for screaming “MAKE SOME MOTHERFUCKING NOISE, PRESTON!” in front of children and the elderly at the Christmas lights switch-on in Preston city centre).

Fingers crossed Danny Dyer has something special up his sleeve for the 2019/20 season.

Which of the national treasures featured on the New Year’s Honours list has a stack of women’s shoes that he’s collected from his conquests over the years? They weren’t really given as a memento exactly; more because the women rarely wanted them back after he’d, ahem… finished with them.

If you watched that amazing Bros documentary over Christmas, you’ll no doubt remember the scene where Luke and Matt describe their favourite frugal childhood game of throwing a single dart up in the air and watching it land in the ground over and over again.

Their fortunes really turned around when they hit the big time though. During the height of their success in the late 80s, the boys often took to staying at the Effingham Park Hotel to hide away from the hordes of teenage fans who camped outside their home. While there, staff remember the day their dad came to pay them both a visit.

To the 20 year old twins’ visible delight, he brought them both a top-of-the-range Scalextric to play with.

FYI: The boys used to swim in the hotel’s pool in full make-up.

He might be one of the smartest people alive, but the simplest of riddles has had Professor Robert Winston stumped for years.

A producer who booked him to give a talk recently was keen to impress, so laid on a backstage feast of bagels, hummus and other assorted healthy nibbles. The Prof arrived and was charm personified to everyone there, but he expressed some bewilderment when he saw the choice of refreshments on offer, so pulled the producer to one side to have a word.

Everywhere he went, he said in a mystified tone, he noticed he was being presented with bagels and hummus. Everywhere. The same bagels and hummus. He liked bagels, sure, and he was perfect happy to eat hummus, but this had been going on for years now. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why everyone who hired him was so keen to feed him this same snack.

The producer had to explain to the professor that they were what he had listed on his rider.

We don’t want to overload you on stories of the celebrity customers of regional branches of video rental chains in the early 2000s. So here’s a story about a celebrity parent customer instead.

Rachel Weisz’s mum Edith used be a regular at Choices Video in Cambridge in 2004/5, but she only ever rented films with her daughter in them. She was always very keen to discuss the movies with staff when she brought them back to return, but she didn’t take anything like the same sort of interest in the work of Rachel’s boyfriend at the time, Darren Aronofsky.

When asked by an inquisitive cashier if she’d ever seen Requiem For A Dream, Edith rolled her eyes so hard that they almost unscrewed themselves from their sockets. (She had seen it, and she didn’t much care for it.)

She stopped coming in once she’d seen all of Rachel’s movies.

Noel Edmonds will be kicking himself about Michael Palin’s recent knighthood. The one thing that has set Sir Michael apart from the rest of the Pythons in the race for the gong is his work as a travel documentarian – and almost every report of his honour this week has made mention of his seminal series, Around The World In 80 Days.

But Michael Palin wasn’t the BBC’s first pick to host that show. He was fourth. And ahead of him on that list? Ol’ Crinkly Bottom himself, Noel Edmonds.

So as we enter a brand new year, full of political uncertainty and cultural division, here are two bits of info gleaned from the set of the most recent series of Gogglebox that may help give a sense of where the country at large is at right now.

1/ Pretty much everyone featured on the show supports leaving the European Union, and

2/ Pretty much everyone featured on the show hates Boris Johnson

Michael Gove has just appointed Ben Elliot as the government’s new ‘food waste champion’, helping advise the nation on how best to cut down the 10 million tonnes of food waste we create each year.

There’s been a bit of criticism of this choice, given that Elliot is yet another Eton-educated millionaire with Establishment connections, who runs a luxury company and is the nephew of a mid-tier Royal – but he’s more than qualified for the job.

If anyone is capable of picking something unpalatable off the scrap heap and convincing people that they can still get some use out of it, it’s Ben Elliot. He’s the guy who set up that embarrassingly soft-soap profile that GQ wrote on Johnny Depp a few months ago.

Last year, we told you that Facebook had launched a free ferry service for their employees who lived on the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay. The ship was known in-house as “Boaty McFaceboat”.

Sadly, because of low usage, Facebook has since suspended this service.

Was the CIA trying to recruit otters into its MKUltra program?
[Read on Newsweek]

How to wank off a honey bee
[Get your instructions]

If you feel as strongly as Matt Goss does about conkers, someone set up that petition he asked for
[Sign on change.org]

John Wayne Is Big Leggy. In German. With kazoos.
[Marvel on YouTube]

Bands that should be font names
[See on Twitter]

Fancy a nose around Paloma Faith’s gaff?
[Take a tour]

RIP Bob Einstein: teller of this filthy (NSFW) joke
[Hear on YouTube]

RIP Mike Champion: The Prodigy’s (in)famous manager
[A tribute on Facebook]

Still Bored?
Want to know how old you are? This site will put it into horrifying perspective.
[you.regettingold.com]