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Despite years of calls to see greater diversity in the upper ranks of BBC management, Tim Davie’s coronation as the next Director General has seemed like a foregone conclusion ever since it was announced that Tony Hall would be stepping down. But Davie has been acting like he owns the place for a lot longer than that.

During his stint as Acting DG during the Jimmy Savile crisis of 2012/13, Davie decided to make the most of the position and do the rounds at the BRITs after-parties. Arriving to one record label function, he was saddened to discover he was not on the guest list.

When asked to identify himself, he said: “I run the whole fucking BBC, mate. The whole thing.” The security guard let him in.

As part of our semi-regular series of celebrity check-in names, we think Ansel Elgort checks in to hotels under the name Steven Rock. Why the uncertainty? Well, we’re not really sure that Ansel knows for definite either.

A member of hotel staff who was called to his room one day had their suspicions that the occupant wasn’t quite who he said he was – and brought a colleague along on a second call to confirm that it was actually the Hollywood star in disguise.

They both agreed that the guest did look an awful lot like Ansel. And they figured it would explain why his room service bill was signed ‘Stephen Stone’ when the name he’d given at reception was ‘Steven Rock’.

Which A-List star has a secret passion for rugby commentary? A former conquest says that while he was on the job, he liked to narrate his performance as if it was a rugby league game with “Little Russ” passing, punting and charging, eventually scoring a “try”.

As lockdown’s official easing is starting, but by no means complete, we’re going to continue sending out our special daily editions to anyone who feels they might need a little pick-me-up of Popbitch silliness each afternoon.

There’s been 72 editions of it so far and it seems like we’re headed for 100, so there’s still plenty of reason to sign up. Or if you just want to catch up with some of the stories we’ve been running in it, you can do that here too.

[Sign up/catch up here]

Last Friday, we asked daily readers to tell us about the sweariest celebs they’d ever met. This anecdote almost got a reporter sued when they tried to print it at the time, so we’d be interested to see to how his lawyers would argue we’re defaming his character now.

anon writes:
“At his Oscar party some years back, Harvey Weinstein took new guests around for a little tour of the event and its A-list attendees. He’d take great care to point out Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling and whoever else was there. And then he reached his kids, and I heard him say ‘…and these are my fucking kids.'”

For anyone who’s been enjoying the Jarvis Cocker tales of recent weeks, there’s been more in the dailies (including a great one about a revenge cake Jarv once baked in yesterday’s issue) but here’s another.

ned_smanks writes:
“I was wandering up Charing Cross Road in the late 90s with my then-girlfriend when we spotted Jarvis heading straight towards us. Girlfriend, a besotted lover of all things Jarv, insisted we ask him for an autograph.

“She rummaged around in her handbag to find something for him to sign but all she had was a diary. So she proffered that and a pen to Jarvis, who asked us what our names were. We told him and then he said to my girlfriend, “When’s your birthday?”

“He then turned the pages of the diary to the date and wrote ‘Happy Birthday [GIRLFRIEND], love Jarvis xxx’ right across the page. What a chap.”

Another thread of this week’s daily edition was asking readers for stories of celebrity accidents they inadvertently caused.

RX writes:
“I was asked to be in a Kings Of Leon video. It was £300 for looking moody at the camera for a day, so I said yes. The band were sullen (with the drummer getting shitty at a runner for not buying the right type of rosé wine) and the frontman told the director I was freaking him out (because I was looking moody, which was what the director asked for).

“It was 30 degrees and I was in a woollen dress for the shoot. I was roasting, so was sipping some water trying to cool down, when the director called for a shot. I left my bottle of water hidden behind a car. Unbeknownst to me, the car was needed for that scene and drove over the water bottle and completely drenched the little guitarist (who seemed quite nice). I just hid.”

One of the more significant pop culture stories of the week was the cancellation of the long-running reality TV show, Cops.

We wrote about the history of Cops and its monumental influence on modern culture back in 2018. Not only was Cops instrumental in creating the reality genre as we know it today, its wider social impact has been absolutely incalculable.

What’s weird is that it almost never happened. For years in the 80s, the show’s creator had been trying to sell the format to TV networks with no success. He almost binned it off completely until the Writers’ Guild of America went on strike in 1988 and networks were suddenly in desperate need of cheap, non-union shows to fill their schedules.

One network in particular was already on the verge of collapse before the strike, so commissioned Cops as bit of a Hail Mary to save the company’s unsuccessful expansion into TV.

That ailing network was Fox. And the man who intervened directly to green light the show? Rupert Murdoch.

As we’re currently undertaking a widescale review of the sorts of statues, memorials and tributes that have been put in place to honour problematic personalities, we have a submission for the list.

There’s a fish and chip shop in Herne Hill that offers the “Cilla Black Experience”: haddock and chips, three king prawns, three scampi and pickled onions.

While we don’t think that it should be pulled from the menu, it could be changed to more accurately reflect history. Cilla’s career stalled in later life thanks to the fact she once bollocked a runner on Blind Date who went on to climb the ladder at ITV, enjoying a position of significant influence where they vetoed her every opportunity to return to our screens.

So maybe they could look at offering a more realistic Cilla experience? Say, having the waiter bring out a nice smoked salmon sandwich for the customer, letting the customer loudly berate them and humiliate them in front of the whole restaurant, before demanding to be presented with tinned salmon instead.

P writes:
“I was working on an event with Meryl Streep. We got into the elevator at the venue and it got stuck. For quite a while. Just the two of us. Not knowing what to say, I apologized. She grabbed my arm and said ‘No, it’s my fault. I have had all kinds of problems with electronics this week.'”

Get a bundle of over 1,000 indie video games for a $5 donation to raise funds for racial justice and equality
[Nearly $5m raised so far]

Run The Jewels have released their new album for free too; taking donations for the Mass Defence Fund instead
[Get it here]

Toto’s Africa played on Tesla coils
[Watch on YouTube]

Amazing picture of swan graffiti
[See on Daily Record]

Bad Romance: Medieval Cover
[Listen on YouTube]

Sax duet between one man and a pipe
[Watch here]

Local News Of The Week: Ed Sheeran Sausage Edition
[Read on East Anglian Daily Times]

15 years ago: Coldplay released the lead single (Speed Of Sound) from their third album. Expected to be a big number one, it was kept off the top slot by the Crazy Frog. By a whopping 113k copies.
[Read more on Offical Charts]

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If you haven’t been playing along with our daily audio quizzes, there are now 80+ of them collected here…
[Daily readers, it’ll be back tomorrow]