Hit It And Squit It

The Euros start next week, which means it surely won’t be long before we’re treated to some weird novelty pop anthem released in support of the England squad.

What can we expect this year? Some filming in Hoxton this week has seen (in order of increasing horror):

* Bez, brandishing a pair of St George maracas

* Rowetta, with a cardboard cut-out of Keith Allen’s face hung from her hips

* Leigh Francis

This had better be for a great cause…

The consensus on Keir Starmer’s recent appearance on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories seems to be fairly positive; that the risk paid off and Starmer came across as broadly human. But a much more glowing endorsement of Starmer’s interview technique came from the Garrick Theatre, where he did a live Q&A last week with Matt Forde.

About 3/4 of the way through Starmer’s segment, someone in the audience sounded as if they were getting a real kick out of his stories. Not by laughing. Nor with applause. From the back rows came the suspicious sounds of someone receiving a handjob.

Murdoch’s media empire has spent much of the last year tearing into celebs who managed to pull the “Don’t you know who I am?” trick in his native Australia, securing themselves exemptions from the government’s mandatory hotel quarantine to do a luxury private quarantine instead.

Celebs like Dannii Minogue, Julia Roberts, Ed Sheeran, Nicole Kidman, Mark Wahlberg and Zac Efron all got rinsed. And then, all of a sudden, it just stopped.

Perhaps they got tired of flogging the same old story? Or perhaps it was because Lachlan Murdoch chose to do the same thing too?

Battersea Power Station has finally welcomed its first resident, but construction delays weren’t the only thing that caused complications for the developers.

The money for the redevelopment came from Malaysia. In order to assure Malaysian investors they’d made a solid choice, the development company put together a fancy glossy brochure detailing the building’s past and its importance as a London landmark – including the famous Pink Floyd album cover for Animals, which features the power station prominently.

Several thousand copies were made and sent over to the Malaysian moneymen. They shredded the lot and a note came back to London: “Reprint it, this time without the Pink Floyd cover”.

Clearly someone felt it wasn’t a smart idea for them to dish out promotional materials in the Muslim-majority country that featured a gigantic pig looming over their brand new investment.

Holby City is ending after 20-odd years and we wanted to mark the occasion with a story that combined a Holby actor with a fond farewell – but the best one we know involves James Redmond, who was mainly in Casualty. So – on the very tenuous premise that he did a couple of episodes of that Casualty/Holby crossover series – here goes:

James was one of the big shaggers of early-00s TV. However, one night, after bringing a girl home from a party, he found himself becoming a bit distracted mid-act by a car that was honking its horn impatiently outside his house. James delicately pulled out and went over to the window to investigate the source of the racket.

“What is it?” asked his lady friend.

“Oh,” said Redmond, “it’s your taxi,” returning to the bed and re-inserting himself. “So we’d better get a move on.”

The Brit Awards was heralded as a great success, gauging the feasibility of bringing back large live events with a testing and tracking system. Obviously we don’t want to say anything that risks derailing The Great Re-Opening, but are we sure the liggers of the music industry were the best guinea pigs for this?

In order to get into the Brits everyone had to take a lateral flow test at a centre, which gave immediate results. Those who passed were then required to complete two postal PCR tests to monitor any spread after the event.

However, a number of music biz types have noticed there’s been no follow-up or compulsion to submit these PCR tests. Anecdotally, we hear from a number of people who tried to do them, but couldn’t find the right postboxes to send them back in. Or did the first one then clean forgot to do the second.

Hopefully enough tests made it back in order to build up some robust data, but for future reference: this is what comes of relying on people who haven’t dealt with their own post in decades and whose short term memories are shot to bits from hoofing gak even longer.

After mentioning Sly Stallone’s overheard toilet tryst in last week’s issue, some stagehands were recently reminded of another Hollywood hot mic story.

While out in Utah at the Sundance Festival, filming for his series Project Greenlight, Ben Affleck took a short break from shooting to crash in his room for a bit. Ben didn’t unclip his mic before he left however, which soon became clear to the sound technician.

The sound of kissing was what first made him realise Affleck’s mic was still on, before he heard a voice cooing “You wanna get busy, baby? You wanna get busy?”

But it was Ben’s reply that had the mild-mannered technician slamming every mute button he could find.

“Are you sure you’re feeling better? I don’t want to get shit on me again…”

If any further evidence was needed that the Eurovision Song Contest has changed dramatically since the days of Bucks Fizz, here you go.

Måneskin’s winning song “Zitti e Buoni” made it to the UK Top 20 last week, but it’s not their only single that’s been creeping up the charts. Another of their songs, “I Wanna Be Your Slave”, looks set to crack the Top 40 this week too.

Some sample lyrics:
“I wanna touch your body / So fucking electric”
“I’m crying all my tears / That’s fucking pathetic”
“I wanna be your sex toy / I wanna be your teacher”

Jim Davidson is rebranding as a foodie YouTuber
[Here’s his spaghetti bolognese tutorial]

Gawker’s coming back again, again
[Read on Vanity Fair]

An hour long mix of unusual electronic pop covers
[Listen on SoundCloud]

Otters: on the rocks
[See on Facebook]

Ramblers tell their tales of nearly getting killed by cows
[Killer Cows]

An explainer of the Ellie Kemper KKK-Princess story
[Read on Slate]

Still Bored?
Want to read a 55-page academic paper on the enduring popularity of Phil Collins (aka the Phil Collins Effect)?
[It’s here if you want it…]