Frozen Knives Of Poo

Richard Madeley was always going to be great value on a show like The Circle, but story producers who worked on it got a little bit extra thrown into the bargain too.

Madeley insisted – as Madeley does – on sleeping naked, even though he was told that cameras would be rolling in his apartment 24/7. He was mainly pretty discreet about it, with most of his nudism being confined to the bedcovers.

But, like many men of his age, he found himself needing to get up three or four times in the night – traipsing his way through to the toilet in all his natural glory.

A very early Popbitch Big Question asked which newsreader had a secret on-air code whenever he was feeling frisky. If you ever saw him adjusting the knot of his tie as the credits rolled after his bulletin, that was a sign to a special viewer watching at home to prepare to get shagged.

RIP Peter Sissons.

Celebrities will often have preferred paparazzi that they call on to capture their staged ‘candid’ pap moments – but which reality star has taken it one step further? She’s got one on hand for regular booty calls too.

Of all the names that were unveiled for X Factor: Celebrity this week (or, as TV people are so cruelly calling it, “X Celebrity”) former Panorama journalist Martin Bashir was the biggest surprise.

We knew his brother had worked as a chaffeur for Syco’s parent label, Sony – and that he regularly tried to fob off his own band’s demos to any celebs or execs he was tasked with driving – but that seemed like too tenuous a connection, even for Cowell.

Then we remembered. Martin Bashir’s been moonlighting in the music business for ages. He released an entire album of reggae music back in 2010 called Bass Lion.

[Listen on Spotify]

Andy Coulson’s PR company is back in business. This time he’s partnered with Jon Steafel (former deputy editor of the Daily Mail) and has roped in former Telegraph boss Murdoch MacLennan as an adviser.

Andy’s desperate for this to fly under the radar for a bit, so is using every bit of behind-the-scenes dark arts he can to stop people publicising this new venture. He was particularly keen to avoid any publicity around the time of David Cameron’s book launch as he knew he was going to get a pasting from the former Prime Minster within those pages.

Luckily for him, The Times kept the bits about Coulson out of their serialisation.

Nice of Rebekah Brooks to do her old lover one last favour.

If any of her competitors at Dancing On Ice want to get the edge on Trisha Goddard, a foolproof way to wind her up is to discuss her stint starring on Play School in Australia.

Quite why she bristles at being reminded of those early days is unclear, but someone who brought it up backstage ahead of an appearance on her chat show found out the hard way. Upon the mere mention of Play School, the temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees, as she turned on her heel and wordlessly walked out of the room – followed by two ashen-faced runners.

She wasn’t able to put her bad mood aside for the cameras either. Apparently she savaged the guest in question to such a degree that the producer had to run after him once he’d left the stage and apologise for Trisha’s attitude, explaining that she’d gone off-script and wouldn’t listen to her earpiece, telling her to cool it a little.

The final part of our latest story on American Media Inc. – and the sketchy, secretive billionaires who have funded Radar over the years – is here.

This last chapter takes in Amazon dick pic extortion, flying sex pests, tainted sushi, FBI immunity, Hollywood’s most fearsome lawyer, drunk Mel Gibson and much, much more.

[Read ‘Art Of The Dyl’ here]

FYI: If you need to catch up…
INTRO/ Back On The Radar [Read]
PART I/ Talk Of The Town [Read]
PART II/ A Social Animal [Read]
PART III/ The Coalition [Read]
PART IV/ Art Of The Dyl [Read]

Ronan Farrow has a new book out later this month called Catch And Kill. It’s about how powerful interests, including some in the press, helped suppress stories and protect Harvey Weinstein for so long.

He’s facing a last minute snag though. A potential libel fight is now on the cards thanks to our old friend Dylan ‘Dyldo’ Howard who has issued legal letters in US, Australia and UK saying that he believes the book contains “false and defamatory allegations”.

That’ll be the same Dylan Howard who, as editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, oversaw such totally true and uncontentious stories as “Hillary Going To Jail!”, “Ted Cruz Father Linked To JFK Assassination!” and “Dying Cher Turned Me Gay!”

Every month, the BBC publishes a list of pages on its website that Google has delisted from its search engine because someone has requested its removal under the ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ rule.

Such is the BBC’s bonk-on for transparency, they’ve decided to keep a running tally of these pages so that none of them is, erm… forgotten.

Recent pages that the BBC has been sure to highlight the removal of include:

* Multiple stories about Chris Huhne and Vicky Price,

* A personal essay by someone with erectile dysfunction

and in classic W1A fashion

* The BBC’s own list of delisted pages from November 2018

Greta Thunberg sings death metal
[Watch on YouTube]

Angela Lansbury hears Chaka Demus & Pliers’ Murder She Wrote for the first time
[See on Billboard]

Nic Cage Rainbow pillows
[Buy at Amazon]

Scientists have been trying to make knives out of frozen poo
[Unsuccessfully, it turns out]

The perfect mugshot of a chronic masturbator
[More on News Channel 9]

Join us for an upcoming Popbitch Popquiz at Smiths of Smithfield, Farringdon. There’s bar tabs, theatre tickets and prizes from the Jade Goody-Bag to be won!
[Tuesday 15th October]
[Tuesday 29th October]

Still Bored?
This week’s Media Masters podcast is a chat with Roula Khalaf, deputy editor of the Financial Times. In it, she discusses the “rebirth of fact checking”, Brexit through a global financial lens and introduces their AI bot, Janet.
[Listen on Media Masters]