Getting The Banned Back Together

A few months ago, we ran a story about how Philip Green made a rather generous business offer to Kate Moss’s daughter Lila – offering to give her up to half of his annual profits in exchange for a kiss.

There has been a bit of development since then: Lila has turned 16.

Which is one legal obstacle out of the way…

After almost a full decade of development disasters, the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was finally released this week. Bryan Singer has managed to keep his director’s credit on the film, even though he left the project under a cloud when #MeToo hit, leaving Dexter Fletcher to step in and finish everything up.

Fletcher instead gets an ‘Executive Producer’ credit. If you’re wondering what an executive producer does exactly, one Popbitch mole who went out drinking with one of Singer’s former EPs asked him that very same question.

The guy’s reply? “Hauls the director out of gay sex cinemas when an important decision needs to be made.”

Now that her baby’s all grown up, which famous yummy mummy is free to date again? (Obviously by “free” we mean “available”. The dates themselves actually retail at about £1.2m per evening.)

Given how bored audiences clearly are with X Factor these days, you might be wondering how the judges manage to keep their interest up. We can’t speak for all of them, but the regular refreshment breaks that producers have built into the day certainly help put a little pep in Simon’s step.

Producers have noticed that whenever Simon is given the chance to stretch his legs and powder his nose, he becomes much more interested in what’s happening on stage upon his return. As such, they will line up their preferred acts to appear directly after these breaks so that Simon is more engaged in their performance.

These breaks can be so powerful that an unscheduled one during a recording of Britain’s Got Talent a few years back is suspected to be the primary reason those stormtrooper dancers unexpectedly got Cowell’s golden buzzer.

A book by Harvey Weinstein’s former driver in Cannes has just been released in France, and was serialised this weekend in Journal de Dimanche.

One of the details within it concerned the silver attaché case that Harvey always used to carry. Before #MeToo, it was always assumed the thing was full of scripts and contracts. Not according to the driver.

According to his account, Weinstein once left it open in the back of the car when he leapt out to chase down a crying starlet who tried to make a run for it. Turns out it was a literal sex case, filled with various bottles of lotion, lubricant, pills and prophylactics.

Headline on MailOnline, Sunday morning: ‘Not Exercising “is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease”‘

Earlier this month, a story spread like wildfire that Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho was getting sacked after the Newcastle game – regardless of the result. It originated in the Mirror but was reported pretty much everywhere after Gary Neville riffed on it live on Sky TV.

Man Utd quickly denied the story and Mourinho is still in his job, but at the time hacks on the Mirror were insistent that it was 100% true and that their source was impeccable.

Besides, why would Jose Mourinho’s agent have any reason to fib?

Last week we started a new three-part story about the strange history of Syco’s ITV/Netflix true-crime series The Investigator and how the show’s creative dynamos Simon Cowell and Mark Williams-Thomas have oddly interwoven histories with Max Clifford and Jonathan King.

This week focuses on Williams-Thomas’s part in the story and his decision to fob off actual police work in favour of going rogue and reinventing himself as a Max Clifford-style maverick. He was lauded for his work on Jimmy Savile, but his habit of wedging himself into the middle of every story is starting to cause some pretty serious problems.

[Read ‘Defective Inspector’ on Popbitch]

FYI: Need catching up?
The introduction is here [‘Syco Paths’]
Part One is here [‘Arrest & Repertoire’]

The Sun seems to be undergoing a strange pang of nostalgia at the minute. Rebekah Brooks has commissioned a special book to commemorate 50 years of Page 3 – a feature that the paper quietly dumped three years ago, and has gone out of its way to avoid addressing ever since.

Even odder, the person she’s brought in to head up the project is her former deputy editor, Geoff Webster – one of the journalists who was suspended from the paper following his arrest as part of Operation Elveden in 2012.

Happy days are here again!

The Dandy Warhols are headed out on tour early next year as a 25 year reunion thing. The whole line-up is back, but what have the Portland punks been doing in the meantime?

Keyboard player Zia McCabe – infamous in their heyday as the one who would always get her wabs out on stage – has since reinvented herself as a realtor, selling property in and around the Portland area.

[See A to Zia Real Estate]

It seems to get earlier every year, but it looks like Moldovan paedo season is officially open as Sasha Bognibov releases his annual Eurovision attempt.

If you’ve never heard of Sasha before, he is Moldova’s most determined Euro hopeful. Every year he enters a song for national consideration but, so far, he’s been unsuccessful. And with titles like I Like The Girls Of 13 Years Old, Fuck Me Once and Do You Like My Sexy Lips? it’s not that hard to see why.

Rather than tone things down, this year might be his most ambitious attempt yet. The track he’s put up for consideration for Tel Aviv 2019 is called… Love Me Like My Daughter.

[Listen here]

Iggy Pop’s extremely long, extremely chatty riders
[See on Iggy Pop’s site]

Unfortunately named Swedish restuarant
[See Rolf’s Kok]

Abandoned couches in Liverpool
[See on Twitter]

The stud muffin of the panda world
[Read on FiveThiryEight]

The Final Countdown in a major key
[Hear on YouTube]

NBC at war with Megyn Kelly
[Read on Daily Beast]

Still Bored?
Apropos of absolutely nothing, it’s currently absolutely free to read this story we wrote in March 2016 about injunctions and how they’re reported in the UK press.
[Read ‘In Jokes And Injunctions’ on Popbitch]