It’s A Jungle Out There

On the day that the Mueller report landed, news leaked that the National Enquirer had been sold for $100m. $100m is a hell of a price for a toxic brand with free-falling sales and little digital footprint, but would you believe it? The new buyer (Jimmy Cohen of Hudson News) just so happens to be a very good friend of David Pecker’s.

Committing campaign finance violations and bungling blackmail attempts might not be quite as profitable as they once were, but Cohen reckons he’s found a very exciting new revenue stream for the company: National Enquirer theme parks!

The first one opens this weekend in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and there’s another under construction in Branson, Missouri. Fun though a “CHER ONLY HAS 6 MONTHS TO LIVE!” rollercoaster sounds, we’re not entirely sure how many $26.99 tickets you can sell to a theme park based around salacious gossip and scandal. Especially not in Branson, Missouri, a.k.a. “Christian Vegas”.

Katherine Jenkins might get her nail technicians to sign NDAs, but she clearly didn’t do the same for all her beauticians.

While on tour in Manchester once, Jenkins stopped off at a local salon in order to get her bikini line spruced. Her therapist must have been going at her minge pretty hard though because in all the mid-wax commotion a framed picture came crashing off the wall and landed on her.

Staff were absolutely mortified, but we’re told Katherine was “very gracious” about it.

A TV crew from which ITV newsroom turned up on the doorstep of a local bigwig businessman in order to put some pressing questions to him about his expenses – only to find the door being opened by their own boss, rather awkwardly dressed in just her dressing gown?

*** POPBITCH SOCIAL ***

Join us on Monday 17th June to celebrate the return of Popbitch favourite Neil Hamburger as he starts a new run at Soho Theatre. For the first show of the run, Popbitch readers can get a £10 ticket which includes a free drink. Use promo code “PBHAMBURGER” – and we’ll see you in the bar after…
[Get your tickets now!]

Moby’s new memoir has been getting absolutely pasted in the press these last few days as the famous women he says he’s “dated” are now lining up to refute his claims. He’s long been known to Popbitch readers as the sort of creep that even BBC light entertainers would be quick to distance themselves from – so none of this should come as any real surprise.

Moby was well known in his heyday for playing a game called ‘Knobtouch’, which involved him and a mate getting their knobs out in a crowd and seeing how many women they could touch with them without getting caught.

RIP Jake Black from Alabama 3. Best known for composing the song used as the theme tune for The Sopranos, Jake (a.k.a. the Very Reverend D. Wayne Love) died after playing a festival in Lancaster this weekend.

If it makes the news any easier to bear, we’re happy to tell you that he at least went out on a high. He spent a fair bit of the set snorting coke off someone’s shoulder at the back of the stage while the band was playing.

Jamie Oliver has never been good with remembering names. It’s completely understandable, when you’re working with so many people day in, day out (TV crews, chefs, waiting staff, administrators, etc.)

Instead then, what he invariably did was give people dirty nicknames of his own invention. He’d call someone “Big Balls” or “Penis Breath” – or, in one particularly memorable example, “Spermtank” – names that he’d then manage to recall with remarkable ease.

It’s always sad to see 1,000 jobs disappear in the blink of an eye. But with all of them being Jamie Oliver’s employees, it’s like losing an edition of the Profanisaurus as well.

One of the big mysteries of the last few years has been how James Corden – a man who is so widely loathed in the UK – managed to land one of the most prestigious presenting gigs in American late night TV?

But maybe the Yanks aren’t as immune to his charms as we first thought. Corden tried to do an AMA (an ‘Ask Me Anything’ Q&A) with posters on Reddit this week. And where most celebs find their fans flocking to them lovingly, all desperate to get their favourite stars to write them a reply, questions put to Corden all seemed to be variations on the theme: “Why are you such an asshole?”

[It’s beautiful stuff]

Iceland’s anti-capitalist Eurovision entry Hatari caused some controversy at the Song Contest last Saturday by waving Palestinian scarves and flags in protest as the camera cut to them during the scoring section of the evening.

Officials were furious at the stunt, but it appears it was left to Israeli airline El Al to mete out their punishment. Ground crew were caught bragging about how they’d deliberately assigned the worst seats on the aircraft home for Hatari.

The anarcho synth-punks were all separated, and given the middle seats of each row right at the back of the plane.

Will Ferrell’s new movie (a Netflix-produced comedy called “Eurovision”) was filming at the real Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv last weekend.

From what we can gather, Ferrell is competing as Iceland’s entry in it but an evil government figure is trying to usurp him behind the scenes because they don’t want to shoulder the cost of hosting it.

Whether he’ll be dressing in full fetish leatherwear, draping himself in BDSM twink dancers and screaming while pyros burst all around him isn’t clear. It did look like Amy Adams is going to be in it though.

We’ve been skirting around the edges of this for the best part of a decade now, trying to explain from the sidelines exactly why we keep getting things so badly wrong at Eurovision – so we’ve decided to fully map out the Popbitch Eurovision manifesto once and for all.

If you’re after a bunch of gags about dressing Ed Sheeran up as Cheryl Baker, putting a Brotherhood Of Man ‘tache on Adele, and then making the two of them sing a duet about IKEA then we’re afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed.

But if you want some sober analysis of the actual reasons why we’re spooning things so consistently year after year at the ESC, then we might have what you’re after.

[Read ‘Eurovisionary’ on Popbitch]

Last chance to book in for the Popbitch Popquiz at Smiths Of Smithfield this Tuesday
[Tables for 28th May]

Rod Stewart outs fellow celebrities as model railway enthusiasts
[Read on BBC]

Clapton FC’s promotion charge nearly stalled when one of the players was tackled by a French bulldog called Pie
[Read the story]

Local News Of The Week: Swindon Edition
[Read on Swindon Advertiser]

Another Soho landmark needs saving. Jeffrey Bernard must be turning in his grave
[See on change.org]

The Eazy E Memorial Bench arrives next week!
[See the update here]

Still Bored?
This week’s Media Masters podcast guest is Jeremy Darroch, who runs Sky TV. If you fancy imagining an alternate reality in which launching Sky ruined Rupert Murdoch, then this might give you a good jumping off point…[Listen/Download on Media Masters]