Dr Diamond And Dr Champagne

The big stand-out moment from Sunday night’s An Audience With Adele was Emma Thompson setting up a tearful reunion between Adele and her old English teacher. The clip went fully viral, getting picked up by outlets all around the world – but it did need a little trimming before broadcast.

Lost to the edit was the bit where Emma Thompson started talking about the BBC, mistakenly thinking it was airing there instead of on the channel that actually broadcast it: ITV.

Indie power-couple Phoebe Bridgers and Paul Mescal have been very coy about confirming whether or not they’re officially in a relationship, and it’s led to lots of fevered speculation from fans these last 18 months. But there’s an even weirder mystery at the heart of their relationship that we’d like to get to the bottom of.

The pair first met when they hosted an Instagram Live togther for Wonderland Magazine last May. Phoebe opened her side of the interview by asking Paul for some of his basic biographical information, which she then used to correct his profile on WikiFeet: the user-compiled website for celebrity foot-fetishists.

The story of Paul being a huge hit on WikiFeet got picked up by the tabloids the next day – who ran with the strange detail that Paul was so popular with podophiles that he had somehow earned an impossibly high rating of 5.42/5 for his tootsie pics.

Curiously though, there is no trace of a Paul Mescal entry on WikiFeet anymore. Nor is there any historical record of there ever having been one on internet archive The WayBack Machine. It’s just… vanished.

Do you know what happened to Paul Mescal’s WikiFeet entry? hello@popbitch.com

Which journalist – who has written a fair amount about how modern men ought to conduct themselves – concluded a recent press trip by throwing a huge tantrum at the airport check-in desk after he turned up without the correct paperwork, and ended up crying in a heap on the floor yelling at his trip-mates “I SUPPOSE YOU’LL TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS AND RUIN MY CAREER”?

Reviews for E4’s reboot of GamesMaster have been glowing, which will be a nice treat for the new GamesMaster, Sir Trevor McDonald. There might be some other nice treats in store for him down the line too.

Trevor’s predecessor, Sir Patrick Moore, enjoyed a great many perks of engaging with the younger audience that GamesMaster attracted – including one famous lads’ mag cover star. The model in question hit it off so well with the monocled old stargazer when the two of them met that she ended up giving him a blowie.

E writes:
“When I worked at ITV, at one point I was based at the Grays Inn Rd building where all the news studios are. I was standing in the queue waiting to pay for my lunch in the canteen one day and I could hear a torrent of bad language coming from the man in front of me.

“I thought I recognised the voice and when he turned around it was Trevor McDonald. Every other word he used was either ‘fuck’ or ‘fucking’. It really did sound so much more effective coming from him.”

The mad game of musical chairs at the Daily Mail plays on. First Paul Dacre left the company after 42 years of service. Then his successor Geordie Greig unexpectedly ‘stepped down’ (/got shitcanned) a fortnight later. Ted Verity was drafted in to edit both the daily and Sunday editions, only for Dacre to make a surprise return after three weeks away to become Editor-In-Chief.

It’s all very confusing, but they’ll need to get the pecking order sorted soon, if only because the commercial floor at Northcliffe House likes to decorate its Christmas tree with some custom-made decorations.

Baubles to have graced the branches previously have featured the faces of Mail royalty – including Lord Rothermere, Dacre, Greig and other senior execs. But the star who got placed at the top of the tree? MailOnline editor, Martin Clarke…

We sent out last week’s issue just as the axe was falling on more Daily Mail staff, and the last thing we heard was that Lord Rothermere was after “a hands-on cunt” to run things. If so, cunts don’t come more hands-on than Martin Clarke.

In the early days of the MailOnline’s US launch, some of the company’s most important execs were due to fly to New York to visit the new office. But that morning, hacks arrived for their shifts to see a big, juicy shit snuggly nestled on the doorstep of the office building.

Everyone agreed that something needed to be done about it before the bigwigs arrived, but various editors refused to tackle the offending turd. Eventually Martin Clarke grew so sick of the constant chatter from his underlings that he barked “I’ll fucking do it then!” and went down to personally remove it himself.

Last week, we mentioned that the QAnon devotees who descended upon Dealey Plaza to wait for JFK Jr to rise from the dead passed the time by singing ‘We Are The World’: a song co-written by Michael Jackson.

We also mentioned that David Icke once took his most passionate supporters to Peru for his 60th birthday, where they joined hands in a circle at a burial ground to the sounds of ‘Heal The World’: a song written by Michael Jackson.

This week, the FBI arrested James Beeks: a member of the Oath Keepers militia suspected of being involved in the January 6th insurrection. The feds were able to track Beeks down because – unlike his fellow Oath Keepers, who all wore camouflage combat gear – he chose to storm the US Capitol wearing his 1987 Bad World Tour souvenir jacket.

A jacket he sometimes wears for his job. As a Michael Jackson impersonator.

Reminding us once again why John Deacon is the only surviving member of Queen worth listening to, Brian May marked the 30th anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death by talking about how if Queen was formed today they’d be forced to have a more diverse line-up (somewhat glossing over the fact their original frontman was a flamboyant bisexual born to Parsi-Indian parents in Zanzibar).

It might seem bizarre, but it’s worth remembering that Brian May’s understanding of what made Queen interesting has always been very different to the rest of the world’s.

When Sacha Baron Cohen pulled out of the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, he recalled one of the incidents that made him feel uneasy with the way the production was headed. He said Roger Taylor and Brian May sat him down to talk him through the film, telling him, “This is such a great movie because it’s got such an amazing thing that happens in the middle.” Cohen asked them what happened in the middle, and one of them replied “Freddie dies.”

Our money was always on it being Roger Taylor who told Sacha that. Now we’re not so sure…

Keanu Reeves is Esquire’s winter cover star and their profile features a cute story about the time Sandra Bullock mentioned to him she’d never had champagne and truffles. A few days later, Keanu turned up to her house on his motorbike with flowers, champagne and truffles, so she could experience them.

All very heartwarming stuff – but before you fall too far in love with him, you should know that Keanu’s patter is fucking dismal. One Popbitch reader who spent the evening in a New York bar with him once said that although he was the perfect gentleman – generous with rounds, tipped the waitstaff handsomely, bussed his own glasses, etc – Keanu spent a lot of time trying to rank his high school days in order of which year he found best: (“10th grade is better than 9th. But 11th is better than 10th. And 12th is better than 11th…”)

Which sounds positively captivating compared to the reader who sat near him in The Cow in Notting Hill, who reports Keanu held court that afternoon talking to his companions all about different varieties of oyster.

The old Big Breakfast house is up for sale
[See on Rightmove]

A montage of 80s Soviet television visuals
[See on YouTube]

The Great NFT Heist
[Read on Kotaku]

Great fact of the week, ft. AstraZeneca and Tin Tin Out
[Read on Twitter]

Are the super-rich as miserable as Succession makes out?
[Yes, apparently]

Winners of the Comedy Wildlife Photo 2021 have been announced
[See them here]

Some good quotes from Stellan Skarsgård’s Q&A
[“A floppy penis I can provide anytime”]

Still Bored?

Turns out Kristen Stewart’s gay ghost-hunting show isn’t the first of its kind. ‘Knock Knock Ghost’ first aired in 2014…
[See on froot.tv]