Massive Celebrity Choppers

Even Murdoch’s own associates have been lapping up the juicy revelations in Vanity Fair’s recent feature on him – marvelling at how accurate a picture was painted.

If you haven’t read it, it’s filled with incredible details – particularly about his divorce to Jerry Hall (their settlement banned her from giving storylines to the writers of Succession) and his failed engagement to Ann Lesley Smith (Rupert was apparently alarmed to discover Ann sincerely believes that Tucker Carlson is a “messenger from God”).

One thing that caught them all by surprise though was learning just how frail his health seems to have been recently. The saga of Rupert’s broken back on a yacht was previously reported but the Covid hospitalization, the falls, the other broken vertebrae – not so much.

It’s especially significant as it’s well known behind the scenes that his UK titles are almost entirely unprepared for the moment his nine lives are actually up. Rebekah Brooks has banned all talk of such things at NewsUK (no doubt not wanting to think about what it will mean for her career) so there’s been practically nothing drafted in advance. No pull-out supplements laid out, no videos recorded, no podcasts ready to go.

Good job he won’t be around to see it…

Rupert Murdoch letting Jerry Hall know he was divorcing her via email is surely enough to get the grisly old fucker inducted into the Celebrity Break-Up Hall Of Fame – where he’ll sit alongside such luminaries as…

JIMMY WALES: In 2008, Jimbo used Wikipedia to dump Rachel Marsden, a Canadian Fox News pundit he’d been seeing, by breaking the news on his personal Talk page. (Marsden was so pissed off with him, she put the clothes he’d left at hers up for sale on eBay.)

ELON MUSK: After already going through one painful divorce with Talulah Riley in 2012, Elon tried to simplify the whole process for their second divorce by telling friends (and his kids) that Talulah had died.

PHIL COLLINS’ THIRD WIFE: Rumours still persist about Phil Collins dumping his second wife by fax (a charge he denies) but Phil’s third wife actually did break up with him by text. She then took over his $40m Miami mansion, locked herself in, changed all the alarm codes and placed armed guards outside to stop Phil from getting back in.

Which celebrity assistant once refused to pick up the phone to her charge all day because the planets weren’t properly aligned?

Not content with racking up massive carbon footprints with their private jets, it looks as if celebrities are now trying to speed up environmental collapse by actively picking off endangered species, one by one.

Europe’s most endangered seabird, the Balearic shearwater, lives on the small island of Tagomago off Ibiza. The island has recently started being rented out to celebs, causing even more of the birds to be killed off thanks to all their helicopters landing there.

Among those choppering in in a cloud of blood and feathers? Cristiano Ronaldo and Justin Bieber.

Memories of music industry legend Seymour Stein have been passing between those who knew him this last week. One of our favourites concerned a huge sweeping staircase that Seymour once bought from a derelict mansion at auction.

He was so taken with this particular staircase, that he wanted it installed in his own mansion. When it became clear that it wouldn’t fit, despite the builders’ best efforts, he did what any self-respecting millionaire music industry icon would do.

He bought another, bigger mansion up the road – just for the staircase.

Warner Bros Discovery’s stock price took a bit of a tumble after their big HBOMax merger presentation yesterday. It’s not the only recent announcement they’ve fumbled either.

Warner/Discovery are currently moving everyone in their offices across London into one consolidated office in Chiswick Business Park. The company-wide announcement was made via a video fronted by an American woman who extolled the virtues of Chiswick Business Park to unenthusiastic staff by telling them “It has a lake!” and that Chiswick is “Tom Cruise’s favourite part of London!”

A claim which caused the actual Chiswick office to break into laughter.

What with one thing and another (a global pandemic; the live music industry being on its knees, etc) it’s been a while since we’ve had any celebrity rider stories, but they’re slowly starting to come back.

Ryan Adams is currently doing some dates in the UK. He’s been demanding a pinball machine for his dressing room, alongside six organic hard boiled eggs and PG Tips (“PG TIPS ONLY”).

Elsewhere, UK rapper Central Cee’s big ask on his rider? A Diptyque scented candle.

After last week’s story about the Guardian deleting comments about its employees’ Oxbridge backgrounds, we’ve been told there’s another innocuous but surefire way to get your comments there nuked.

When they put out one of their regular requests for readers to send in questions for a celebrity Q&A, if you post ‘Who would win a fight between a baboon and a badger?’ it doesn’t stay up long, and it definitely doesn’t get put to the star interviewee.

Unsurprisingly, going back later to ask ‘Why have you deleted my question about which would win a fight…?’ also guarantees a deletion.

Trump’s arrest on hush money payments last week gave us the opportunity to wheel out one of our old four-parters on the wild history of the National Enquirer. This week, the Writers Guild Of America opened voting for its members to decide whether or not to strike – which gives us a chance to wheel out another one we did on the equally fascinating history of the WGA strikes.

Given the front-line service pay disputes happening right now, the plight of TV and movie writers might feel relatively trivial, but the unintended consequences of previous WGA strikes have been absolutely seismic – inadvertently (and irreparably) changing our pop culture, news and politics.

It’s a winding story that takes in the rise of Fox TV, Geraldo Rivera, Nancy Reagan, Kim Kardashian, Gordon Brown, the legend of Al Capone, Donald Trump, InfoWars and – sadly, unavoidably – Piers Morgan.

[Read A Tale Of Two Strikes here]

What are influencers trying to write off on their tax returns?
[Pet costumes, dildos and 15,000 lego bricks]

Scientists have been investigating what makes a aesthetically pleasing scrotum
[Of course…]

Harvey Weinstein’s old Connecticut mansion has been razed to the ground; now the land is up for grabs
[$21m, all in]

How are pop artists’ catalogues valued at such massive prices? The woman behind some of the biggest ones explains how it works
[Read on Billboard]

“What I Learned Dogsitting for New York City’s Opulent Elite”
[Read on NYT]

Hedonistic club night photos from the 90s and 00s
[Semi-NSFW from Vice]

Republicans as drag queens
[RuPublicans]

A Fyre Festival II is being planned?
[Hell yes]

Still Bored?
If you haven’t read that exquisitely gossipy Murdoch profile in Vanity Fair yet…
[…you should]