“Don’t Take The Piss Out Of Andrew”

Paul McCartney was out having dinner at the River Cafe with Stella the other night when he suddenly looked like he was about to pass out. Waiting staff were concerned for his health as he was helped out to his car, but everyone was soon able to breathe a sigh of relief as Stella discreetly explained to a member of staff what had happened.

Harrison Ford was also dining at the restaurant that night and he’d beckoned Paul over during the meal. The pair managed to slip away briefly as Harrison had a joint in his pocket and wanted to share it with his old pal, Paul.

Alas it had proved a tad strong. McCartney hadn’t collapsed ill at all – he’d just pulled a whitey.

********* EDITOR’S NOTE *********

We have been contacted by George Osborne and Thea Rogers’ lawyers who inform us that ‘The Email’ alluded to below is “full of false information” and subject to a legal complaint and police investigation.

Pointing out – as we did – that most of London’s media and much of Westminster had been sent an extraordinary/unprintable email is perfectly accurate and in no way suggests that we endorse the actual contents of the email.

**********************************

There’s going to be some awfully awkward chatter in the pews at George Osborne’s wedding on Saturday. Yesterday, the bulk of the happy couple’s guest list (alongside a number of national newsdesks and a handful of Westminster power players, who were helpfully BCCed) received an eye-popping email from an anonymous sender.

Running to 2,500 words, with multiple attachments and links for further reading, most of the allegations it contains about George’s personal conduct are absolutely extraordinary (and absolutely unprintable). Suffice to say, they all fall under the header of “Bombshells”.

It’s led to some feverish speculation as to who would do this in the run-up to the big day. A disgruntled former colleague? A disgruntled former wife?

Whoever it is, even the most hardened hacks on Fleet Street were left open-mouthed at the nerve required to send such an incendiary email. It’s certainly not the most dignified way to air your grievances with the groom, but at least they had the good grace not to leave it until the vicar asked if anyone had any objections.

Which Hollywood star is spending the summer holidaying across Europe doing such big bags of toot with his entourage that the US showbiz correspondents following him are now just trying to outdo each other in getting the most obvious drug references into their copy?

This week, the Times Scotland reported on the “inappropriate sexual behaviour” of Hardeep Singh Kohli. Popbitch readers have known for years just how widespread stories of his misconduct have been in the media industry. We even wrote one of our sporadic long pieces on him specifically and how he still managed to keep getting work despite it all.

Keener readers may also recognise that paragraph above – because we wrote it word-for-word in July 2020. Yet here we are again.

How do such illustrious sex menaces continue to be hired by media companies in this post-Weinstein era, despite hefty catalogues of misconduct complaints that – in some cases – span decades? It’s a real mystery. Five years ago, when a number of our readers who’d had the misfortune to brush up against Hardeep in the workplace offered to share their experiences with two big news operations, they found their stories getting nixed by execs (“Too Z-list” apparently – a reason that will surely comfort the women who have suffered at his hand/s in the years since…)

Hardeep is by no means the only one to benefit from the cover that a freelance career affords in a media landscape that seems institutionally unwilling to report on its own rotten apples, but his story is an illuminating one – so we’ve made it available for everyone to read.

And no doubt we’ll see you back here in 2026 to tell it all over again.

[Read After The Storm on Popbitch]

The Times’ coverage of Hardeep Singh Kohli paints a clear and consistent pattern of his sexual misbehaviour, but there’s also some grisly outliers.

Other HSK incidents include:

* Covering his otherwise fully naked cock and balls with a bowl of cherries and offering them to a colleague, asking them if they “fancied one”.

* Inviting a colleague to his home for a meeting in his kitchen at which he licked her face.

* Muttering “I want to cum on your face” under his breath as he passed by another colleague.

* Telling a stranger he sat next to at a charity dinner for terminally ill children, totally unprompted, that she would have to suck him off “good and hard” before he would ever consider licking her fanny.

Netflix’s new documentary on Wham! is a gorgeous snapshot of the friendship between George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. There’s hundreds of stories about the bond they shared, but here’s another nice one we heard.

During Robbie Williams’ first coke bloat era (post-Take That; Glastonbury with the Gallaghers) he found himself at Jimmyz nightclub in Monte Carlo where he saw George Michael on the dance floor. Aware that every boy band member who went solo always said something along the lines of “I want to be the next George Michael!” Robbie thought it might be funny to turn that whole trope on its head.

So he went up to George and said: “I wanna be the next Andrew Ridgeley…”

A line which not only failed to raise a smile out of George, but caused George to look Robbie dead in the eye and snap: “DON’T take the piss out of Andrew.”

We’d sooner watch ourselves being operated on than see a single minute of a James Corden-produced Byker Grove reboot, but we have to admit: we are a little curious to see how they pick up the threads given the way the original run ended.

After years of issues-based, youth-focused storylines, the final episode of Byker took a bit of a swerve. The cast somehow become self-aware, learning that they are all characters in a TV show who exist purely to be tormented for kicks by an omniscient writer.

In the grip of this existential terror, the characters choose to write their own endings to their story, thinking it might be cool to see their youth club invaded by aliens, infested by a zombie-mummy outbreak, ravaged by a T-Rex and, finally, blown to smithereens by a home-made bomb – appearing to take every cast member (past and present) with it.

We were surprised to hear Ant and Dec sounding so keen to bring Byker Grove back. They definitely didn’t enjoy the national treasure status they do now during their PJ and Duncan days.

Back then, the pair used to swan around the Toon in voluminous tracksuits and oversized trainers hoping to be mobbed by fans. One Saturday they ventured to The Square – an area of Newcastle where Hell’s Angels, goths and rockers would meet weekly to get pissed, smoke weed, and chill out.

Miffed at the mocking reception they got as they passed the assembled black-clad crowd, one of them muttered something about “dirty goths” and they were promptly caught, placed in large metal wastebins and upended. Lit cigarettes were then flicked at their highly-flammable street gear, with the promise that it would be OK if they went up, as “we’ll piss it out.”

Seconds after we hit send on last week’s issue, we heard that Erron Gordon – Piers Morgan’s series director at TalkTV – had left the channel under a bit of a cloud. More details have emerged over the week and there seems to be some pretty personal spats at the centre of it, with Piers unfollowing his former bestie on Twitter in the aftermath.

Erron is now shifting over to rivals GB News, but insiders say the whole thing was potentially a bit of a bluff gone wrong. It was known that Erron had been taking secret meetings with GB News on the not-so-sly, but it seems that he was trying to use those meetings as leverage to improve his lot at TalkTV.

Only before he got the chance to pull that trick off, he was fired for breach of contract and escorted from the building.

So he’s ended up taking the gig at GB News after all; no doubt for a fraction of the price they’d have had to fork out if his little gambit had worked.

Last week we told you the story of a staggering Sun journalist at Glastonbury with piss-wet pants. As we’re always glad to offer a right to reply, we thought it was only fair to let Simon Boyle explain for himself how his shorts came to be in such a state.

Simon Boyle writes:

“I think more likely I’d attempted to piss in a pint cup amid crowds – but I’ll take it. Can’t exactly dish this stuff out if I can’t take it back, can I? Much love x”

Can you tell what year it is from the YouTube footage of London?
[Fun game by Monkeon]

Gizzi Erskine’s house is for sale
[£900,000]

Whoever could have known?
[Hardeep on high heels]

The five biggest tracks of the year so far are all by female artists – Miley, Raye, SZA, PinkPantheress and Taylor
[Read on Official Charts]

About to join them is Olivia Rodrigo with her latest slice of genius
[Listen on Spotify]

Headline Of The Week: “I Started A Nudist Magazine. I Didn’t Expect How Badly I’d Be Treated Because Of It.”
[Read on HuffPost]

The astonishing story of Stockton Rush and the crushed submersible
[Read on the New Yorker]

Aubrey O’Day tells Michael Cohen on his podcast she had an affair with Donald Trump Jr back when she was on Celebrity Apprentice – and that they first had sex in the bathroom of a gay club
[Hear it here, if you must]