Great Canal Journeys with Deckard + Batty

Poor Vin Diesel. He was only trying to help.

Out at an LA bar one night, Vin bumped into an old schoolfriend of his in the toilets. This friend had been trying (and failing) to work his magic on a woman he’d met that night, so asked Vin if he’d mind helping him out. Maybe swing by their table, talk him up a bit in front of her. That sort of thing.

Vin gamely agreed and shortly made his way over to them, giving it the whole “Hey man! Great to see you. Ah, wow, you’re the best. Y’know that? This guy and I go way back. He really is the best. What a guy. What a guy.”

Then, after laying it on good and thick, Vin made his excuses and left – giving his friend a chance to seal the deal.

Only when Vin was out of earshot, the woman turned back to the friend and said “God, who was that? What a weirdo…”

In Madrid Sergio Ramos is known as the footballer who can get anything he wants. A sort of David Beckham squared.

When Ramos fell out with manager Jose Mourinho, it was Mou who got the boot. When Ramos was said to have failed a routine drugs test, club doctors worked relentlessly to make sure it caused him no problems. And despite a dreadful league season and an early dumping from the Champions League, Ramos still stars in an Amazon Prime fly-on-the-wall doc: the modestly titled “The Heart of Sergio Ramos”.

But when he came to get married this summer, he was denied something he wanted. A huge heavy rock fan, Ramos made a big announcement that rock legends AC/DC were going to perform at the ceremony. Yet despite offering them a rumoured million euros, the band declined (a story that wasn’t PR’d quite so quickly…)

So who did Ramos get to play instead? Europe. The Swedish one-hit-wonders, who performed The Final Countdown as the bride and groom made their way into the evening reception.

Which funnyman filmstar has brought a very British sense of formality to his Hollywood sex play? For example, he keeps a special plate in his house that’s specifically reserved for his more adventurous conquests to shit on.

With all the tributes to Rutger Hauer that have been pouring in these last 24 hours, it’s clear he made a lasting impression on the people he worked with.

When Rutger was filming the Métal Hurlant Chronicles series around 2011/12, crew on set noticed that his phone was constantly buzzing with text messages. Someone on the other end of the phone was badgering him quite incessantly, keen to arrange a boating holiday with him. A certain Harrison Ford.

We have no idea if it they ever managed to arrange it, but it’s a huge shame that we’ll never get to see Great Canal Journeys with Deckard and Batty.

Our commiserations to Ed Davey, pipped to the post by Jo Swinson in the Lib Dem leadership contest earlier this week. It’ll be disappointing for him, but he’s probably not quite ready to become the face of a major political party.

According to people who have had the pleasure of being photographed with him, his best advice for looking good in photos is to “think of the dirtiest, naughtiest, most depraved thing you can – and then just relax.”

Last month we mentioned that Molly-Mae from Love Island has had someone working for her on the outside, keeping an eye on media coverage and issuing £150 invoices to certain outlets that egregiously lift photos from her Instagram feed without permission. Now it looks like this savvy little money-spinning trick is being picked up by other celebs too.

Last week, Gemma Atkinson (Hollyoaks/Emmerdale) popped some pictures of her newborn baby up on Instagram. Showbiz desks wasted no time in writing up posts for their respective sites on little baby Mia, illustrating them with the shots that Gemma had so thoughtfully uploaded for them.

And no sooner had they done so, a picture agency followed up with them to dish out an invoice for the use of Gemma’s copyrighted materials.

Les Dennis got himself a little worked up this week by Robert De Niro’s star turn in the latest Kia advert, firing off a (since-deleted) tweet in despair at Bobby’s decision to tarnish his great body of work with such a crappy ad.

And while we don’t begrudge anyone a payday, we can understand why Les took it so much to heart. He loves Robert De Niro. So much so that Les used to keep a cardboard cutout of the man himself in his private screening room at home. It used to sit in the seat next to Les as Les watched movies.

Another palm-tickler to add to the pile alongside Savile, McCririck and Su Pollard? John Redwood MP.

A reader who once interviewed him for radio remembers the incident distressingly well as not only did Redwood tickle her palm with an errant finger when they shook hands hello, he tried it again when they said goodbye.

Needless to say, it didn’t get results.

Amanda Knox (a.k.a. Foxy Knoxy) is getting married next year – and the plans for her intergalactic/multiverse/space-themed ceremony are quite something. The registry and invitation are well worth a read if you get a minute.

But the thing that really caught our attention? Knox and her partner, Robinson, have designed a little ‘KR’ logo for their website – which you can see in the corner of your browser tab when you visit their registry. One which looks eerily similar to the ‘KR’ logo that Keith Raniere and Allison Mack-off-of-Smallville would burn onto the skin of the women they enslaved in their sex cult, NXIVM.

Something Knoxy might want to reconsider if she hasn’t got the stationery printed yet.

[Take a look]

There’s an issue in computer programming known as the Scunthorpe Problem. It relates to offensive language and a program’s ability to spot it (named after the oversensitive filters that would autocorrect Scunthorpe to ‘Sc*nthorpe’).

The Guardian seems to be having trouble with something similar with the new formatting software they have for their print editions. For some reason, words that contain “anal” appear to force a line break, meaning that a word like “analogue” will get snapped in two: with “anal-” appearing in the top line and “ogue” appearing in the one below.

Let’s just hope they don’t print any in-depth analysis until the bug is fixed.

We’ve got one last Popbitch Popquiz before our summer break
[Join us on August 6th]

Is there a cat in the movie you’re watching?
[Run a search through this]

Happy 50th birthday to J-Lo – who delivered what may well be the worst line in cinema history
[Gobble Gobble]

Natasha Bedingfield is back!
[Stream on your platform of choice]

Data visualisations of 100 years of American baby names
[See here]

New defamation case in Australia, suggesting that people might be liable for defamatory comments posted by others to their own Facebook walls
[Read on ABC]

Boris Johnson gets the Cassetteboy treatment
[Watch on YouTube]