Holly’s Slander Hotline

Ever since the shit started hitting the fan with Schofield, it seems as if everyone he’s ever crossed paths with has been lining up to take a pop at him. Eamonn Holmes, Fern Britton, Kim Woodburn, even Rylan got in an uncharacteristic dig.

One person who hasn’t yet said anything is Phillip’s Friday cover, Dermot O’Leary. But maybe that’s because he can’t.

Schofield’s people keep a close eye on the Friday scripts on This Morning to ensure that Dermot doesn’t get too many lines – in case he becomes too popular with the audience and overshadows Phil.

While Phillip has hired all sorts of lawyers and crisis PRs to help him navigate this last week, Holly appears to have done alright by herself. She’s always been pretty proactive at stamping this sort of stuff out at the source though.

Back in 2015, Holly’s husband – the TV producer Dan Baldwin – took part in a special 24 hour edition of Big Brother for the Edinburgh International TV Festival where all of the housemates were TV execs. The show was really only of interest to industry types (and even then, only just) but Holly was very unhappy about Dan’s involvement all the same.

Terrified he would spill something salacious about her to show off in front of his fellow housemates, Holly would ring the production crew like clockwork every 40 minutes to check that Dan hadn’t said anything slanderous about her and to make sure that nothing even vaguely risqué stayed on tape.

Who is subediting at Tatler these days? The Delevingne sisters are not going to be happy when they read the profile they’ve just done on their wine range. Not only is the girls’ surname misspelled, they’ve also mistyped the tasting notes – describing the Della Vite Prosecco Superiore as tasting like “ripe crap apple”.

A Twitter poll asking users to decide who was hotter, young Al Pacino or young Robert De Niro, went viral this week, seeing over quarter of a million votes cast. The final result? Split perfectly, 50/50. In the hope of breaking this stalemate, we’ll tell you this.

When staying at the Shelburne Hotel in Dublin some years ago, Al Pacino was holding court in the bar for a while, being the life and soul of the party, before nipping away to his room for a while. On his return, he took the young woman who had been tasked with taking care of him to one side and asked if she’d mind popping upstairs to flush what he’d just done.

She remains traumatised.

FYI: If that hasn’t tipped you, Al Pacino is known for having the worst nails in Hollywood, thanks to a long-standing, untreated fungus.

Sad news for UK hip-hop/ice cream fans: Krept and Konan’s dessert shop in Croydon – Crepes and Cones – has closed down. According to an eyewitness, the restaurant appears to have been repossessed and completely cleared out.

Looks like Krept’s degree in Accounting and Finance was no match for the cost of living crisis.

Last week we told you that there had been an almighty blow-out at TalkTV’s first anniversary drinks, with walk-outs, screaming and even a little bit of physical scrapping – all because the video highlights package they put together featured all the blowhard primetime hosts from the 7-11pm shift (who weren’t at the party) and none of the blowhard daytime hosts who fill the rest of the schedule (who were).

Interestingly, TalkTV higher-ups have since put together an internal presentation looking at the latest audience figures. Things are looking pretty dreadful for the primetime hosts as their viewing figures are falling 10% quarter on quarter, 25% year on year.

As for the overlooked hosts of daytime? Their audiences are rocketing. Julia Hartley Brewer, Vanessa Feltz and Ian Collins all have much healthier numbers – but the real hot ticket? Let’s just say at the next drinks event, you can expect to see Mike Graham’s sizzle reel playing on a loop.

From time to time, we like to feature disgusting celebrity recipes. Richard Madeley’s tuna-soup-crisp casserole, for example. Julian Assange’s hot plate spaghetti, for another. (Sadly, Phillip Schofield has removed his pea sandwich recipe from his website – the coward).

This week we were treated to a vintage one: Bryan Ferry’s spaghetti a la toilet. Someone who was at art school with him remembers Ferry draining a colander of spaghetti over the toilet, and accidentally sending a huge wad of the stuff into the bowl.

Unperturbed, Ferry simply pulled it all out and added it to the rest.

Know of a more disgusting celebrity dinner? hello@popbitch.com

Staff at Associated Papers received a company-wide email this week introducing them to the new Director of Publishing Strategy: Vere Harmsworth.

Not that the son of the 4th Viscount Rothermere needs much of an introduction to the staff of Daddy’s paper. The young Vere has been making himself known to the office without any help from anyone. He’s made himself unmissable when he made his way through the office wearing a custom Chelsea shirt with HARMSWORTH across the back.

JK writes:
“I was out some years ago at a birthday party for a club in Brighton, and was weirdly the only civilian in the group I was with (Zoe Ball, Norman Cook, Mark Williams, Steve Coogan and some others). While chatting with the ever-charming Mark and an already downbeat Coogan, a fan came up with a camera and asked for a photo. Steve begrudgingly readied himself for the photo with the fan and Mark, when she handed the camera to a crestfallen Coogan.

“His face never recovered all night.”

Ghanaian movie posters
[Thread on Twitter]

The Taika Waititi-taken photo from last week’s issue
[See on Twitter]

The widow of Fox News’ mastermind Roger Ailes claims Rog used to call James and Lachlan Murdoch Tweedledum and Tweedledummer
[From the excellent Confider]

Computer Art of the 50s and 60s
[Nice]

Daft Punk’s Discovery using the Super Mario 64 sound bank
[Listen on YouTube]

Last week, slow motion goats; this week, sped-up penguins…
[Watch on YouTube]

Take a tour of RuPaul’s pad
[Architectural Digest]

A requiem for MTV News
[Read on the Daily Beast]

New Zealand has just changed its pop charts rules to stop popular old albums from crowding out all the new stuff
[Interesting approach]

Still Bored?
An interactive article about how exposed you are by online data breaches…
[Read on ABC]