Morning Gory

There were lot of column inches devoted to Simon Cowell’s big Sony buy-out this summer when it was announced he would be leaving the label to concentrate fully on Syco Entertainment’s TV interests. Yet there barely seems to be a peep now that Sony has gone and pulled the shutters down on Syco Music for good.

It might not seem like a big deal but, without a label to sign acts to, what has Cowell got left to offer the winners of X Factor? A slot on Britain’s Got Talent?

Doubts were already sown about it coming back for 2021. Could this be the sign that X Factor has ended for good?

We can’t pretend we’re not morbidly curious to see what an Ofcom under former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre would look like – not least because one of Ofcom’s main jobs is to regulate the use of offensive language on air.

It’ll be interesting to see what the man known for perfecting the art of the ‘Double Cunting’ has to say on the matter, as the C-word was used so liberally in his afternoon meetings they became known in-house as The Vagina Monologues.

Which prominent anti-masker once caused a fight in a European brothel between his minders and the house security after insisting his bill be comped on account of the fact he was a big international star?

Brooklyn Beckham made headlines this week by revealing that he’d been chosen by the WWF to photograph Sir David Attenborough as he made his latest documentary.

How did the plucky young upstart land such a plum gig? If you think it’s because of his famous dad, think again. It’s because of his famous dad’s publicist: Nicola Howson, who juggles her time repping Brand Beckham with sitting on the WWF’s council of ambassadors.

It’s a nice bit of client synergy, for sure, but Brooklyn is luckier than he realises. Because if #MeToo hadn’t comprehensively trashed his career, then the client that Howson would have been pulling these sorts of favours for instead is Kevin Spacey.

The BBC has announced a new daytime show, Morning Live, to be hosted by Kym Marsh and Gethin Jones. Our fingers are crossed for Gethin as he doesn’t always have the smoothest time hosting.

During the filming of his short-lived gameshow, The 21st Question, poor Gethin had a lot of trouble getting his lines right. It held shooting up so much that someone had to feed the script to him line by line – but even that didn’t help as he appeared to have trouble understanding the director’s Australian accent, mishearing words and then misspeaking.

When these slips were brought to his attention he’d either snap “Well of course it sounds wrong! I’m fucking Welsh!” Or – more chillingly – he’d start mumbling to himself something that sounded like “Puppy meat, puppy meat. I just repeat what I’m told, therefore I call it puppy meat.”

The village of Oxshott is very popular with footballers and their families, as is the nearby independent preparatory school, Danes Hill.

The best part of a decade ago, parents of pupils at Danes Hill had a social coffee morning where the topic of university admissions came up in conversation. Despite it being a long way off for their own little treasures, almost all of the parents already had meticulous plans in place for their children’s higher education.

All except for one mum, a footballer’s wife, who became the subject of considerable snickering when she expressed ambivalence, asking “What’s the point of going to university?”

Given the reports coming out of the halls that some of those parents ended up sending their kids to this year, Louise Redknapp doesn’t look quite so stupid now.

The Swires might seem like they’ve become famous overnight for being wildly indiscreet, but Hugo Swire has been putting in the groundwork for years now.

The News of the World sent someone to blag their way into the Conservatives’ Black and White Ball with a secret camera, back when they were still in opposition under David Cameron in 2008. Hugo took the role of MC for the charity auction (as he often did at those events) and his entire patter basically revolved around taking the piss out of poor people, while the audience fell about laughing.

The reporters who witnessed it described it as “truly grim”. Yet, for some reason, the paper whose former editors include David Cameron’s neighbour (R. Brooks) and David Cameron’s communications officer (A. Coulson) didn’t end up running it as a story.

So it’s nice Hugo’s finally getting a chance to shine.

We’ve been discussing all sorts of things in the daily edition of Popbitch this week. David Hasselhoff smashing up a polystyrene Berlin Wall. Mike Oldfield taking a lion to the pub. The mums of Marilyn Manson embarrassing their boys.

Every afternoon, to liven up the monotony of pandemic workdays, we’ve been sending out weekday mini-issues with a handful of silly stories that we don’t include in this weekly mailout. If you don’t want to miss out, you can sign up to receive the daily edition here – and catch up with the hundreds of other stories you’ve already missed.

[Sign up/catch up here]

On Tuesday, we asked daily readers to tell us about the strangest things they’ve ever seen celebrities doing on stage. Someone mentioned they’d seen Robbie Williams pinging about the stage on a toilet pan he’d had grafted onto an electric wheelchair – a vehicle that had a registration plate: BOG 2000.

Which, in turn, has led to a reader telling us this…

drivelcast writes:
“On that tour, Robbie’s support acts included Scottish indie-poppers The Supernaturals. The band liked to kill time before each gig by taking the toilet for joyrides around the arena. This caused headaches for Robbie’s people, who’d find a motorised toilet with a flat battery right before showtime. It got so bad that, after a few nights, a stern sign was attached: ‘THE BOG 2000 IS NOT A TOY'”

For various reasons, Uri Geller also came up in the course of conversation this week, which prompted a reader to get in touch with this story…

R writes:
“I spent a fascinating afternoon at Uri’s house once. I had learned how he bends spoons – he just bends them really quickly while you’re not looking, relying on the fact that you don’t think spoons are easy to bend but they are, then just pretends to do all the rubbing stuff while guffing on about molecules.

“So I brought a notably thick Ikea teaspoon for him to bend and was determined never to look away from him for a second. For a while, it worked. He got super frustrated as he pretend-massaged the spoon. Then, when it was getting really awkward, he slammed his hand down on my shoulder and shouted, “ARE YOU CLOSER TO YOUR MOTHER OR YOUR FATHER?” which totally caught me and meant I lost attention for a second, so he got away with it.

“I’m still annoyed.”

A nice afternoon mix of 70s soul and funk
[Listen on Mixcloud]

Happy fat bear week!
[Meet Chunk]

Verka Serduchka x Cardi B = WAV
[Hear on Soundcloud]

“Parrots Removed From UK Family Safari Park After Teaching Each Other To Swear”
[Read on Manchester Evening News]

A beat-swapped remix of Fatboy Slim’s Weapon Of Choice
[Sounds weirdly good]

Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara and more tell the oral history of Best In Show
[Read on The Ringer]

An ambient take on Phil Collins
[Listen on YouTube]

An otter munching ice
[See here]

A beaver munching cabbage
[See here]

Still Bored?
This Gawker investigation is worth a re-read now we know that Trump once made a $70,000 tax deduction for hair styling…
[Read on Gawker]