Tantrums! Tears! Sob stories and secrets! We all know how TV talent shows work on screen, but what are they like behind the scenes? The Talent Factory: Inside The Music Machine is a new 8 part podcast series from BBC Radio 1, hosted by Amelia Lily, that chronicles the whole story – from talent, to fame, to survival.
[All parts, available now on BBC Sounds] |
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| “Should I be dancing at my age? Fuck yes!” – Mel C |
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* Susannah’s stinky cake slice
* Celebrity cabinet snooping
* PLUS: Pocket money for Rolf? |
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| >> Media wankers << |
| Appealing to their members |
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Say what you like about Soho House, they sure know their clientele.
The event they have marked on the calendar for members at White City House on October 18th? A panel entitled “Wanking: An Act Of Self Care”.
Can’t imagine there’s much left to teach them though… |
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| Shane McGowan told The Times this week that he used to rent Bono’s house, then would stand at the window and wave his willy at passing trains, hoping passengers would mistake him for the U2 frontman. |
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| >> Mucky business << |
| A right Royal mess |
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We didn’t think we’d ever hear a better clogged bog story than the one where Sarah Vine returned home one night to find her then-husband, Michael Gove, using the hoover to try to slurp a massive turd out of the bowl, but Susannah off of Trinny and Susannah might just have clinched it.
She was on Kaye Adams’ podcast this week telling the tale of a time she blocked the toilet at a fancy lunch event she was at. Unable to flush a particularly troublesome log, her guardian angel came in the form of Princess Margaret. Margaret – having inspected the situation – sent Susannah off to find a knife. She ended up coming back with a cake slice, which HRH then used to chop Susannah’s poo up into more manageable chunks and flushed.
Susannah kept the cake slice as a souvenir. |
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| Ronnie O’Sullivan says he’s developed his own religious belief system. It’s based on the “snooker gods”. He thinks there’s a snooker god out there who has been looking after him and Ronnie talks to him before he goes to sleep. |
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| >> Big Questions << |
| Who’s asking what this week? |
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As Suella Braverman suggests reclassifying cannabis as a Class A drug, which sitting Tory MP (a former minister himself) used to get his cocaine delivered direct to Westminster? |
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Got the stomach for one more catastrophe? Last Sales Conference of The Apocalypse is a brand new LGBTQ musical comedy at the Waterloo East Theatre this October. With 15 original songs, Marcus Bentley from Big Brother playing God, and a nuclear countdown initiated by the Head of IT’s bottom – this is a disaster you can actually enjoy.
[Until Oct 30th: info and tickets here] |
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| >> Art problems << |
| Robbing Nazis to pay nonces |
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Channel 4 has announced a new show in which an audience gets to decide if Jimmy Carr should take a hammer to one of Hitler’s paintings. Hitler is grabbing all the headlines (as he tends to) but the show has a couple of other controversial pieces lined up for debate and destruction too – including a Rolf Harris original.
The channel has been keen to point out they engaged an art expert to buy these works from “reputable auction houses” – presumably to head off any accusation that they acquired the Furher’s paintings by any sketchy means. However, this clarification might come back to bite them.
By engaging an art market professional, the paintings could be subject to Artist’s Resale Rights (ARR) where the original artist recieves a share of the sale. As Hitler died more than 70 years ago, he wouldn’t be eligible – but it’s not impossible that Channel 4 has just given the convicted sex offender/cartoonist Rolf Harris a little bit of pocket money. |
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| If you fancy a Rolf Harris original yourself, he still does a roaring trade on eBay. [Take a look] |
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| >> Celebrity cabinets << |
| More famous bathroom adventures |
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In other art destruction news, Damien Hirst has been busy setting fire to a number of his own works as part of his latest project, The Currency – but destroying a Damien Hirst is surprisingly easy to do.
Hirst’s old mucker Keith Allen once brought a woman back to his place one night. As she was freshening up in his en suite, she became enchanted with two old-fashioned medicine cabinets he had hanging there. Filled with intriguing objects like ancient ornate razors, pill packets and other odds and sods, she was enjoying rummaging through all the strange pharmacy stuff when suddenly the door opened. It was Allen, checking she was alright.
Seeing the cabinets open and her holding something from them, he went pale, started swearing and informed her that she was pulling apart a Damien Hirst installation worth several million. Hirst’s team had painstakingly recreated the medicine cabinets exactly as their master had instructed – every object perfectly placed – only for her to haphazardly ruin it all with her snooping.
The evening went downhill pretty swiftly from there… |
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| The “Elephant Love Medley” in the Moulin Rouge musical contains snippets from over a dozen different songs. Those five minutes are the most expensive of the show, costing $5,600 in royalties to perform on Broadway each night. |
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| >> Cleesy does it << |
| Clickbait and switch |
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With hindsight, it was inevitable that John Cleese would end up at GB News, banging his drum ever louder about cancel culture. It was still quite surprising that he made the jump though – not least because of how critical he’s previously been of the channel.
Just a few weeks ago he was calling the channel “KGB News”, insinuating that the station was in the pocket of Russia. As recently as July he described it as the “late, unlamented GB News” too.
Which makes it all the more surprising to learn this show of his has been under discussion for six months. |
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If you like sport, you’ll love the Upshot – a Popbitch-inspired email newsletter dishing out gossip, controversy and tittle-tattle from the world of British sport. Sign up free and get a five minute hit of irreverent sports coverage every Friday.
[Sign up free here] |
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| >> Angela’s assets << |
| Picking up after Poppins |
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It’s well-known that Angela Lansbury got the part of Miss Price in Bedknobs And Broomsticks after Julie Andrews initially turned it down, but it’s not the only time Dame Ange benefited from Julie’s cast-offs.
Producers of the recent Emily Blunt/Mary Poppins sequel thought it might be a fun nod to the original if Julie Andrews made a cameo at the end of the movie as a balloon seller. Julie was interested but there was a lot of back and forth about how much she would need to be paid. Fee discussions rose and rose until producers made her a final offer of $8 million. Ms Andrews told them it had to be $10 million or she wouldn’t do it.
So they asked Angela Lansbury instead, who gladly accepted. For $200,000. |
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| Nominative Determinism of the Week: the executive director of the Board of Texas Peanut Producers is called… Shelly Nutt! |
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| >> Spy games << |
| Later: alligator |
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MI5 released some top secret files surrounding the Profumo affair this week. The most interesting stories in them concerned Eugene Ivanov: the Russian spy who was sharing Christine Keeler’s attentions at the same time as John Profumo.
A known womanising drunk, Ivanov also had some other, more eccentric tastes. One file details how he apparently left a lunch at Simpsons In The Strand one day so steaming drunk that he went immediately to Harrods to try to buy himself an alligator from their pet store.
Ivanov arrived at the Russian embassy in London as an assistant naval attaché in 1960 but MI5 pretty quickly suspected he was an intelligence officer. What gave him away? Two things. One, he didn’t seem to know anything about ships.
And two, he always carried an umbrella. An explanatory note was left on file that “Russians who frequently carry umbrellas are more likely to have an intelligence function than those who do not. The following Russian is known frequently to carry an umbrella – Ivanov EM”.
[Read more] |
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| Antony Costa from Blue says when he and Lee Ryan first met they bonded over a shared love of Only Fools and Horses. |
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| >> Zone = out << |
| Mother Russia meets Auntie |
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Adam Curtis’s new series “Russia, 1985-1999: TraumaZone” is released on BBC iPlayer today.
It’s seven immersive episodes without the trademark narration and music, but jam packed instead with footage showing what it was like to live through the collapse of communism and democracy.
From the secret science lair trying to meld a hybrid chimp-human combo, to two drunk Russians in a bar discussing lemurs, to the leader of the newly created republic of Uzbekistan trying to send his favourite horse to John Major, it’s not all serious ideological analysis – although there’s plenty of that as well.
[Watch it now] |
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We hosted an exclusive Q&A chat with Adam Curtis for the VIPbitch members of Club Popbitch this week – just one of the benefits of signing up. Other bonus goodies include a second weekly email, daily music quizzes and more. Sign up today and help support Popbitch!
[Find out more here] |
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| Thanks to: NG, frenziedmonkey, morlandovic, JR, MW, X fayekorgazm, bobbifleckmann , RJ, RB, AC, NC, WOM, john_lewis_partnership |
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Old Jokes Home
I have a joke about the benefit of Liz Truss’s mini-budget
But 99% of you won’t get itStill Bored?
One Ukrainian refugee family wants to bring some great Ukrainian products to the UK in form of Xmas gift baskets and hampers. Pre-order now and help kickstart this plan to keep these independent Ukrainian businesses afloat
[Take a look here] |
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