Detective Dick Holder

Remember those Spice Girls reunion pics from earlier this year? All of the girls turned up at Geri’s house that day in individual limos – except for Mel B, who cadged a lift from the journalist Louise Gannon.

Gannon is thought to be the one ghostwriting Mel’s newly announced tell-all book, Brutally Honest, which is due out this November. Apparently “brutally honest” is right, as there are absolutely no punches pulled on Mel’s time in the band. So much so that there’s some serious concern behind the scenes that this book – more than anything else – will be the thing that finally scuppers the chances of a reunion gig.

Olly Murs has been talking this week about that Oxford Street ‘shooting’ that he got wrapped up in last year. Remember? The one that he was live-tweeting from Selfridges. The one that didn’t actually happen.

Well, Murs still thinks there’s something more to it all and that there’s been some sort of cover-up – but this isn’t his first conspiracy theory.

In 2010 a Popbitch reader remembers being in the Old City Arms pub on Hammersmith Bridge Road, watching a televised Man Utd v Bayern Munich Champions League game. He was sat on his own, when a “studenty looking guy” plonked himself down next to him and started up a conversation.

The guy started chatting about how UEFA had rigged the match so that Bayern would go through, that United just weren’t allowed to win this one, how it was all arranged by The Powers That Be. He apparently became very animated about it.

He left shortly before full-time. Which is when people on the next table came over to ask our man how he knew Olly Murs.

He has a successful new show in the West End, but the advice to cute young actors in which theatre director’s casts is always the same? Don’t get left alone with him – and never, ever go to the toilet if he’s within earshot.

Last February (2017), organisers of the Grand Prix Ball approached Tinie Tempah’s people to see if he would perform at their big annual charity bash. They were looking for him to do a set of 5/6 songs around 11pm. All the staging and PA would have been in place and they had a £15,000 budget for him.

Last week, Tinie’s management finally responded “Unfortunately 15K won’t be enough. Let me know if this offer can increase.”

14 months after the original request was made. And nine months after the actual event took place.

Ex-Grazia editor Natasha Pearlman was all over the broadsheets this weekend, thanks to a hand-wringing interview she gave about wishing to have done more to speak out against the super-skinny models in the fashion industry.

Obviously Grazia’s history with this sort of stuff is long and rich, but what’s particularly interesting about Natasha’s recent crusade is that, in 2016, the magazine shot plus-size model Ashley Graham for the cover. But when Natasha saw the pictures she decided she looked too fat so relegated it to the subs cover.

At the peak of his post-I’m A Celeb fame, Eric Bristow was signed up as a tournament ambassador for the darts world championships by then-sponsors, Ladbrokes (a job which largely consisted of him giving darts tips to punters, posing for pics in his jungle hat and smoking in the VIP area).

Two young Ladbrokes staffers were tasked with chaperoning Eric around Ally Pally. Eric was especially pleased to be introduced to the female chaperone and immediately handed his phone number to her, telling her that he wakes early to eat breakfast so she can happily call him any time after 7am.

As for the male chaperone? Bristow never once asked his name, ignored his attempt at a handshake and sent him straight off to the bar to fetch him two pints of Strongbow.

A routine that continued throughout the entire tournament.

Among the many possessions that Danniella Westbrook has lost in this tumultuous spell, the strangest is probably the folder that she kept of individually laminated pages which detailed Brian Harvey’s legal case against the News Of The World.

The comprehensive dossier included timelines, news clippings, police reports and photocopied pages from Glenn Mulcaire’s notebook.

Quite why she kept it is not too clear (much less why she had it laminated) but let’s hope Brian is returning the favour and keeping extensive notes on Danniella’s arrest this week for witness intimidation.

Part Four of our four-part series on the cultural fallout from the two Writers Guild Of America strikes is finally here, and this one deals with why a few of the crucial figures behind modern reality TV are the very same people responsible for conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s sex dungeon pizza restaurant bleeding into the mainstream.

And not just in a general sense. In a very actual sense.

[Read ‘Strike Three’ on Popbitch]

FYI: If you need to catch up…
[Introduction – A Tale Of Two Strikes]
[Part One – Journalusting Repugnance]
[Part Two – The Name Of The Scientist]
[Part Three – Surreal World]

Private investigator Daniel “Danno” Hanks was sentenced to 16 months in prison in the States last week, for his role in aiding a gambling and drug organisation.

Hanks plead guilty to extortion after he was hired to take photographs of the family tombstone of an individual who owed the organisation money. According to court documents, he splattered the headstone with red paint and altered the photos to add the victim’s name, then listed the date of death as “Very Soon”.

And exactly who is Daniel Hanks? Good question.

Why not ask some former reporters for the News of the World, the Sun and the Mail on Sunday? Once upon a time he was their go-to private investigator in Los Angeles.

[Read more at PBS]

TV chef James Martin has had a bad week. First, there was BurgerGate, where a tweeted photo of a miserable looking burger at one of his restaurants went viral. Then he had a car-crash interview in the Sunday Times which beat seven bells out of his reputation as an affable housewives’ favourite.

To be fair, it was a reputation that Martin never really deserved. 10 years ago, his autobiography was pulped because he libelled his stepmother so badly in it – claiming she burned “every scrap” of his childhood, including baby pictures, school reports, toys and clothes (an incident his lawyers clarified later had never actually happened).

An autobiography did finally come out, a self-styled look back to his working class childhood in Yorkshire. And what a typical working class childhood it was! His dad was not only described in the local paper as “the Rolls Royce-driving mastermind of the ‘Last Night of the Proms’ concerts which attracted thousands of classical music lovers to the grounds of Castle Howard” but as a “gourmet and chancellor of the Jurad de St Emilion wine club”.

[Read more on The Times]

Tune in to see if today’s races throw up any clues about how heavy the ground is going to be for the Grand National on Saturday, and just how tired the horses who competed last month at Cheltenham are looking.
[Enter Lucky 7 here]

2018’s greatest movie, The Meg, has a trailer
[Watch on YouTube]

All the words you couldn’t write on Aussie film posters in the 90s
[Read on Twitter]

People taking photos of mirrors
[Look at on Twister Sifter]

What does your favourite Spice Girl say about you?
[View at YouGov]

Local news of the week
[See on YorkPress]