Humungous Face

Revelations that Mo Farah was trafficked to the UK as a child had the nation reeling this week, as the story emerged in the new documentary “The Real Mo Farah”.

It might seem a little gauche to ask, given the sensitive and emotive subjective matter, but if the story is now that everything we’ve been told about Mo Farah over the last ten years has been a carefully constructed fiction, how can we be sure we’re getting the god’s honest truth this time around?

Perhaps we wouldn’t need to ask had the name of the production company that made the documentary not been curiously absent from most of the reviews and reports, consistently neglected in favour of citing its co-producers Red Bull and the BBC.

Who are Atomized Studios? Oh, just the in-house production wing of those famed straight-shooters… Freuds Communications.

a.k.a. Sir Mo’s long-standing PRs.

Here’s a little something for the history books. What might have been the first recorded public statement from Prince George (future king of this country; third in line to the throne) was given this weekend – and then almost immediately hushed up.

During a pool interview on Sunday, someone asked Prince George on camera who he wanted to win the tennis. George replied “Djokovic”.

Buckingham Palace then asked reporters not to use it.

Which of the potential Tory leaders (now sadly fallen by the wayside) gave himself the supremely icky nickname at a former job “The King Of Anal”?

The new Tim Westwood documentary makes for a pretty grim watch. One of the women speaking out says she was assaulted by him while part of his street team as a teenager, recalling an incident in which she claims he forced his tongue down her throat in his van.

One reader remembered seeing Westwood’s van parked outside their office around the time of the Westwood Two album (late 2001). It was easy to spot as every inch of the vehicle had been covered with a full body wrap advertising his new album, with photos of his humongous face over every available panel.

They had always wondered why, if his name and face were plastered all over it to draw attention, he would go to the trouble of fitting tinted windows on it.

And now they know…

We mentioned last week that the Myatt’s Field Dog Show is doing everything it can to ensure soon-to-be neighbours Boris and Carrie will be ineligible to enter their dog if/when they leave No.10. They’re right to be taking precautions too, because it sounds like Dilyn will enter absolutely anything he can.

When Boris and Carrie recently celebrated their wedding anniversary on Pett Level Beach in East Sussex (the same beach where Bowie filmed Ashes To Ashes) Dilyn spent most of his time snuffling about, unattended and unwatched, stealing other dogs’ balls – and also trying to shag them.

Their security detail spent a lot of their afternoon trying to stop Dilyn from humping every other pup he saw, but their desperate finger-clicking and “come to me” budgie noises didn’t really do the trick.

Wonder who he learned that from…

VICE has gone in pretty hard on Amazon in recent years, filing some serious reports on its workplace conditions – how staff needed to piss into drinks bottles while working, for example. How management have violated multiple labour laws, threatening workers and persistently trying to break up attempts at unionisation, etc.

So it’s nice to see there’s no hard feelings between the two companies. In fact, just this week management at VICE sent a memo round their entire global staff letting them know about all the great deals they’d managed to secure for Amazon Prime Day this week – encouraging their reporters to make any Prime Day purchases through their affiliate links so that VICE gets a kickback.

HD writes:
“During a recent ride on the Greenwich to London Bridge commuter train, I spotted Lord Frost, former Brexiter in chief. Glued to his phone I saw him smiling so I shuffled over to catch a glimpse of what might be amusing him. Over his shoulder I saw he was on a WhatsApp chat named ‘A Touch of Frost’ and the participants were sharing Brexit related memes.”

Now that Bernie Ecclestone is being charged with fraud, we’re interested to see if any other stories of his suspicious behaviour will come to light.

There’s an interesting rumour about a time in the early 80s that Bernie attracted a bit of unwanted attention from authorities after importing a bunch of extremely dubious motorcycles. He was going to get badly stung if he was caught handling any moody merchandise, so needed to be rid of them quickly.

Around the same time, he supposedly managed to convince John Button (father of Jenson) that the forecourt of his Audi Dealership in Wiltshire was in rather bad shape – and was in urgent need of being replaced. With a brand new poured concrete one.

Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox last Friday featured a “former advisor to Boris Johnson”: Thomas Corbett-Dillon. He told Tucker that Boris was resigning because he had been elected to be a “British Trump” but had “[fallen] in with that elite crowd” and had let Greta Thunberg turn him woke.

Who is Thomas Corbett-Dillon? We’d never heard of him, and neither had some of the bigger political nerds we know in Westminster. Maybe that’s because this “former advisor” is better known as Craig Dillon, the founder of a digital comms company that occasionally offers advice to MPs.

He doesn’t seem to be that great in a social media crisis though. Shortly after his mad interview went viral online, Craig’s personal Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn pages all mysteriously disappeared.

His YouTube account is still live though. That’s where we saw one of his other appearances on telly, where he offered this sage bit of advice: “If you try and pretend to be someone you’re not, that’s the trap some people fall into.”

Celebrities looking at the number 69 on Pointless
[Twitter. Where else?]

A website that points at your pointer
[Pointer Pointer]

Make your own version of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports
[Play on Reverb Machine]

Cincinnati Zoo has a baby skunk
[Cute]

A supercut of Harrison Ford asking people what they’ve done with his family
[Watch on YouTube]

Monkey pool party
[Perfect for a heatwave]

Who’s that whispering ‘wanker’ on mic while Jacob Rees-Mogg was talking on R4’s Any Questions last Friday?
[It happens at 30’26]

Hamlet performed in Grand Theft Auto
[Watch on YouTube]

Still Bored?
Michael Flatley’s self-directed film Blackbird finally has a trailer
[See it here]