Fuzzy Waawaa

Now that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have tested positive for Covid-19 (and the theory that cocaine kills off coronavirus has been widely debunked) celebrities are going to have to be doubly careful about who they pal about with in the coming weeks.

Luckily for them, Popbitch readers answered our call, so we’ve been able to add to our list of notable walkers and washers.

SPOTTED SINK-DODGERS: Adrian Chiles, Rachel Johnson, Chris Eubank, Jo Whiley, James Corden, Steve Coogan, Justin Bieber (seen in the Carlton Hotel in Cannes not washing his hands after a shit, then doing meet-and-greets with waiting fans outside)

FASTIDIOUS HANDWASHERS: Paul Weller, Charlie from Busted, Yoko Ono, Gillian Anderson (who doesn’t much care for the slowness of the hand-dryers at the Curzon Mayfair)

HIT-AND-MISS: Alex James (declined to shake a fellow celebrity’s hand in the Groucho with the excuse “I won’t shake your hand, I’ve just had a piss” – which is disgusting, but also kind of considerate)

We know we’ve already told you more about Michael Gove’s urinal etiquette than you ever wanted to know (about how he unzips a long way from the urinal, ambles up to the trough with his chap out for all to see, etc). Sadly, because of the looming threat to public health, we feel compelled to give you yet further details.

Someone who had the misfortune of using the Cabinet Office loos at the same time as Gove tells us that not only did he not wash his hands, the first thing he did on entering the toilets was to lay the red ministerial box he was carrying down over the sink – meaning that nobody else could wash their hands there either.

Is it any wonder the cabinet are needing to self-isolate?

Which Hollywood superstar needs a little bit more than coffee to help get him up? Word around LA parties is that he requires the insertion of three digits in order to get things pumping.

Whenever Gregg Wallace or John Torode find themselves feeling thirsty on the set of MasterChef, they will put on a baby voice and ask the nearest runner to get them a “fuzzy waawaa”.

“Fuzzy waawaa” is not, as you might imagine, just fizzy water said in an eerie way. It is very specifically (and all studio runners must understand this) a glass of sparkling water served with exactly two cubes of ice, one slice of lemon and one slice of lime.

It is only ever referred to as “fuzzy waaawaa”.

Obviously we will always wholeheartedly support Paul Danan in anything he chooses to do, but we can’t help but feel he’s picked the wrong time to get into the hip-hop management game.

While a national health lockdown looks increasingly likely, Danan is currently inviting people to attend an “intimate gig” he’s hosting next week to promote a new act he’s looking after, whose new album is called…

Patient Zero.

Unsurprisingly, there’s still space on the guest list.

After last week’s story about the mystery surrounding Priti Patel’s secondary education, we’ve heard from a number of people who were keen to shed a little more light on it.

It seems that, despite what you may have read in articles in almost every single established news outlet in the country, Priti Patel wasn’t a contemporary of Geri Halliwell and Liz Kendall at Watford Grammar for Girls after all. She attended Westfield Technical College.

If anyone is ever tasked with updating the articles which make mention of her studying alongside Geri and Liz, the famous alumni from the school she actually attended are Naughty Boy and three out of the four members of Rak-su.

Whenever there’s any sort sort of global panic, the media is always accused of cynically fanning the flames just to muster up clicks – but that’s not the case with Covid-19. It seems that journalists are genuinely concerned about it.

An email went around the Guardian earlier this week reminding employees that the hand-sanitiser dispensers they had installed around the building were for the use of everyone, not just the first few people who could manage to nick one.

In fairness to the Guardian though, they kept a lid on it longer than the Sun did. Things started getting all Lord Of The Flies at the Baby Shard last Thursday – with bosses having to reprimand hacks there for bringing in empty containers from home to drain the company’s supply of hand gel.

This week’s set of stories from the Popbitch archives is pruned from the 2007 collection: a year in which we reported on Marilyn Manson’s pubic problem, Tara Reid’s insatiable hunger for house music, Guy Ritchie’s reputation in Scotland, the positive side of music piracy and our favourite Nick Cave spot of all time.

[Read more here]

We could hardly have asked for a more 2007 rock star than the Towers Of London front man Donny Tourette.

One night when the Towers played a small bar in Hoxton, a drunken fight ensued where the bar was trashed, the cops were called and the band were taken to a police cell. When the time came, Donny was entrusted to make the band’s phone call.

Did he call his lawyer? His mum? His manager? Er, no. His call was back to the bar to ask the barman to get the phone number of the girl he’d been chatting up all night.

Lock Stock actor Jason Flemyng is part-owner of The Duchess pub on Battersea Bridge Road, near to where he grew up. Flemyng has got to know a lot of the regulars from the nearby estate from doing the weekly pub quiz and just introduces himself as Jason, without letting on about his day-job.

In 2007, he was called over to Hollywood to work. One of the regulars asked the barman why Jason wasn’t the quizmaster as usual that week. The barman told him that he was out working in LA.

The regular, replied “Fack me, does he do a pub quiz there too?”

Of course there’s already Coronavirus ASMR videos
[The mash-up of the year]

Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy re-written in a major key
[Hear on YouTube]

Investigating the statistics on inappropriate sexual jokes made in the workplace…
[…Kelly Beaver!]

Iceland’s 2019 Eurovision anarcho synth-punks Hatari are the subject of a new documentary
[Watch trailer here]

How to make cocktails from leftovers
[Bartender tips on Salon]

Headline of the week: Meta Coronavirus edition
[Read on Bloomberg]

Still Bored?
Personalise your 20 second hand-washing routine with your favourite pop songs
[Wash Your Lyrics]