Grass, Grasss, Grassss

Earlier this month, the government pledged £1.6bn to save Britain’s cultural industries as they face an uncertain future under the coronavirus. At the front of this effort was theatre and film director, Sam Mendes.

As part of his consultation with the government, Mendes was required to ring 10 Downing Street, where he was told to hold for the Prime Minister. But there was no hold-tone or background music. The PM’s phone was simply left upended.

Whether or not Mendes heard the ins and outs of the discussion happening on the other end of the line, we don’t know. Dominic Cummings will just have to hope he growled the phrase “Tell the fucking dancers that they’re at the back of the queue” quietly enough that it was masked by the sound of Boris picking up the receiver.

While lots of people will be sad to miss their usual company summer party this year, the music industry is secretly breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Over the last few years, record labels’ Xmas and Summer parties have become increasingly fraught affairs, because the level of debauchery hasn’t really gone down – but levels of scrutiny and accountability have ramped right up.

Certain labels have stopped inviting talent to their parties because they don’t want their big stars getting puked on by pissed-up employees (2018), encountering errant turds on the dance floor (2017), or plastered all over social media by coked-up A&Rs looking for some online clout (most years).

But without any celebrities there to draw attention, the more ambitious employees have started turning on each other instead – trying to get their in-house rivals to disgrace themselves somehow and capture it on their phones so they can get them sacked and steal their jobs.

Which 90s Britpop star is trawling the dating apps, very eager to hook up with a police woman “or similar”? (Odd for a Scouser to be so into the bizzies…)

With the Depp/Sun/Heard trial coming to an end this week, those who have developed a taste for scorched earth celebrity libel cases won’t have to wait too long for the next one.

Rebekah Vardy has filed the particulars of claim against Coleen Rooney and, from the looks of it, she’s going guns out…

A large part of Vardy’s complaint is that the whole WAGatha Christie incident has led to her becoming a meme on Twitter. In this latest legal filing, her lawyers have focused in on a couple of the incidents that have really stuck in Becky’s craw.

The first dates back to November 2019, when Donald Trump tweeted “ISIS has a new leader. We know exactly who he is!” – and a bunch of tweeters replied with “It’s………… Rebekah Vardy!”

The most recent? June 2020. Same punchline, but this time in response to the announcement that the police had a new suspect in the Maddie McCann case.

One name we weren’t expecting to see to in the Vardy libel filings was that of the Sun’s executive editor, Dan Wootton.

The Sun journalist who always appeared to have the closest relationship with the Vardys is Simon Boyle, the reporter who has followed Rebekah’s every move for years now – dating right back to his time at the Sunday Mirror, when Vardy was better known as Becky Nicholson. Yet his name is curiously absent from the legal papers she’s just filed.

It’s probably for the best, all things considered. Boyle will be relieved to be out of the spotlight. And as anyone who worked with him at the News Of The World can attest, Wootton’s never had a problem with his name being attached to a colleague’s story.

As the Depp libel trial has shown, regardless of the verdict, there are rarely any winners in high-profile libel proceedings – but that’s not always the case. Edwina Currie made out like a bandit in her 1991 libel trial against the Observer.

Before she admitted to her affair with John Major, Ms Currie took the Observer to court over an article in which she was compared to a fictional adulterer. The judge ruled in her favour, awarding her damages and costs at a reported £150,000.

Ten years later, she got another £150,000. This time in the form of a publishing advance for The Edwina Currie Diaries: the book in which she revealed her four-year extramarital affair with John Major.

Then, to cap it all off, she got another £150,000 for the serialisation rights – letting the papers print the details of her adultery.

The new biography of Harry and Meghan that’s been serialised in the Times has led to a steady drip of Royal stories this week, including the one in which Prince William warned Harry not to be “blinded by lust”.

It’s a rather more delicate way of phrasing it than Charles ever managed. When Harry pulled out of an event at the last minute a few years ago, Charles excused his son’s behaviour by explaining to organisers that Harry was a little bit “cuntstruck”.

J writes:
“A story in the last edition reminded me of when I was working on the Lego concession in Harrods one Christmas in the late 90s.

“Next to my stand in Toy Kingdom was a girl selling karaoke machines. They were quite a big thing at that point so you’d often find sober people singing badly to piss poor instrumentals because of the novelty of it all.

“As it was Christmas we had to suffer the Christmas CD all day every day. The only high point was one day when I came back from lunch I saw a scruffy old man singing merrily along to A Spaceman Came Travelling in front of zero crowd. It was, of course, Chris De Burgh.

“I don’t think he bought a machine.”

As it’s just three weeks until our 1,000th issue, we’ve been using our special Covid-era daily edition to have a quick rundown of some of our favourite stories from each of the last twenty years of Popbitch.

We’ve covered 2000-2006 so far, which you can still catch up on. But if you want to get yourself signed up to relive things like Leveson, superinjunctions and the mystery olive oil paddling pool sex party, they’re all coming up soon.

[Sign up here]

Which songs will be remembered from the 90s canon?
[Researching Gen Z’s music knowledge]

Scammers on Spotify are imitating bands to steal their streams
[Read on Input]

An oral history of Big Mouth Billy Bass, 20 years on
[Read on MEL]

Olivia de Havilland’s bloopers
[Watch on Twitter]

Britney’s old Beverly Hills mansion is back on the market
[$6.8m if you want it?]

Hamilton, performed by the Muppets
[Listen on YouTube]

Ben Fogle is selling off his clothes if you’ve ever considered him a style icon
[See on Marrkt]

POPBITCH POPQUIZZES: It’ll be a while until we can host our usual pub quiz IRL again but, in the meantime, you can download one of our play-at-home versions. All the smut and silliness, without having to leave your sofa.
[A fiver each, or better-value bundles]

Still Bored?
Make Judi Dench, Danny DeVito, David Attenborough and others say whatever you want
[A celebrity type’n’talk]