No Fanny Business

Obviously it’s handy when the government you’re opposing becomes totally engulfed in scandal (not to mention an active police investigation) but Boris Johnson isn’t the only person who’s been helping Keir Starmer boost his profile this last little while.

We hear Starmer has apparently been getting a bit of outside assistance recently, helping to train him up for media appearances. From Dermot O’Leary.

Just before news broke in the papers, we told our Club Popbitch subscribers on Monday the real reason Adele’s Vegas show got cancelled was because she hated the set design – particularly the big swimming pool that set designer Esmerelda Devlin had plonked on the stage (Adele’s response on seeing it: “I ain’t getting in no empty pond and I ain’t doing the whole show in water.”)

This isn’t the first time Es Devlin’s ideas have been met with disapproval by the talent. One of Es’s more notable contributions to Beyoncé’s Formation tour was a huge, inflatable lotus flower. The lotus motif was part of the tour’s aesthetic, but Es’s giant inflatable caused big problems. Mostly on account of the fact that, on the occasions it worked, it looked like a humungous fanny.

FYI: A good rule of thumb for telling how well things are going on an Es Devlin production? When things are peachy, she’s billed as “Creative Director”. When they get tense, she suddenly starts being described as “Set Designer”.

Which Harry Potter actor has been dabbling with the odd spot of shoplifting? Despite being a regular customer, happily spend big amounts without batting an eye, they’ve been sneaking bonus chocolate bars into their pocket when they think no-one’s looking.

AW writes:
“When I was working at Radio 2, Meat Loaf came in for a session. He asked if there was somewhere he could go to warm up his vocal cords so we let him use an adjacent studio up the corridor that was empty.

“Five minutes later he could be clearly seen through the glass gargling with a bottle of tequila. He was a lovely man and completely batshit crazy. RIP.”

Nic Cage has been telling the LA Times how much he’s been enjoying his ‘goth’ pet (a crow named Hoogan who has taken to mugging Nic off by using its very limited vocabulary to call him an asshole).

Nic’s clearly mellowing in his old age as his taste in pets was decidedly more metal twenty years ago. Back then, if you’d popped in on him, you were more likely to find him sitting in a specially-constructed cell in his home, drinking wine with his two albino King cobras, Moby and Sheba. Even though he says they kept trying to kill him.

More metal, Cage once owned a two-headed snake called Harvey. He invited Werner Herzog round to see it when the pair were making Bad Lieutenant together and Herzog was so amazed by it he wanted to put it in the movie. Cage refused, however – telling Herzog his relationship with Harvey was “personal”.

Having got himself snared in yet another high-profile feud, Damon Albarn was extremely quick to apologise to Taylor Swift after he felt the full force of the Swiftie fan army rain down upon him – so this latest beef is unlikely to escalate to Britpop levels. It may still simmer at a low level though.

While Damon has often tended to appear as if he’d risen above the petty Blur v Oasis squabbles, someone who visited the Notting Hill flat he shared with Gorillaz collaborator Jamie Hewlett couldn’t help but notice the brand of toilet paper he’d chosen to kit the bathroom out in.

Oasis.

Presumably hoping he can dazzle them with that famed charm of his – Prince Andrew is now demanding a jury for his upcoming trial. Quite why Andrew thinks it’s a good idea is anyone’s guess, but it’s not hard to see where he gets his inflated sense of self.

Back in the mid 90s Andrew was invited to the wedding of one of Lord Braybrooke’s daughters; a daughter who also happened to be an ex-squeeze of Andrew’s.

Getting invited to an ex’s wedding is usually quite a delicate matter, but Andrew went along. And, as the most important person there, was seated in the centre for the wedding photographs. Neatly upstaging the bride and groom.

FYI: As per last week’s story, Andrew also required a toilet to be cordoned off at the venue for his exclusive use, guarded all day by a member of staff.

Football hasn’t done brilliantly with its recent attempts to break into the crypto world. John Terry’s promo tweets for Ape Kids Club this week have got him in hot water not just with the EPL, but UEFA and Chelsea FC as well. Meanwhile Lionel Messi’s decision to take a €1m bonus at PSG in their new fan-tokens has meant that if he tried to cash them in today he’s currently looking at making a loss of around €750,000.

It’s not much better across the Atlantic. The group of NFL stars who decided to get paid in Bitcoin for 2021 aren’t all sitting pretty in this crypto winter. NY Giants’ Saquon Barkley can afford to be pretty sanguine about it, as he signed up last July when BTC was lower than its current price of $36K. But LA Rams’ Odell Beckham chose last November to take his salary in Bitcoin – back when it was worth $64K…

It’s always been considered pretty tricky to sue someone for libel in the USA – which is why it was briefly fashionable for American celebs to pack a bag for London whenever they fancied suing the stuffing out of someone. But it looks like things might be changing.

Cardi B has just won a whopping $4million in a libel case against YouTube gossip blogger Tasha K for claiming that Cardi B had herpes, was a prostitute, and engaged in what are now being coyly referred to in reports as “lewd acts with beer bottles”.

What kind of support can British stars expect from the courts when bloggers malign them here? Ask Tulisa. After she got into a fight with celebrity blogger Vas J Morgan at V Festival over their vendetta, she ended up having to pay court costs of £3,000. (Though admittedly that had more to do with the punch she threw…)

Moldova’s most determined pop star, Sasha Bognibov, is once again trying to represent his country at Eurovision with what might be his 15th attempt? (We don’t know, we’ve genuinely lost count…)

Having failed to secure any support with previous entries such as “I Love The Girls Of 13 Years Old”, “Fuck Me Once” and “Do You Like My Sexy Lips?” (among many, many others) he’s got a better chance than normal of getting picked this year.

Not because the songs are any good – but because he’s managed to get two tracks onto the Moldovan long-list. One called “I Just Had Sex (With Your Ex)”. And another called “My Friend Is Gay”.

See you again in 2023, Sasha!

Every one of Logan Roy’s “Fuck off”s in Succession so far…
[An NSFW supercut]

This week’s Wordle spin-off: Double Wordle (aka Dordle)
[Play it here]

Local News Of The Week: Angry Chicken On The Run In Littlehampton
[Read on Littlehampton Gazette]

A map of lighthouses around the world
[Look at the pretty lights!]

If you didn’t see the Meat Loaf anecdote about trying to push Prince Andrew into a moat…
[Read on the Guardian]

As the M&Ms get a rebrand, some weird facts about their history
[Read on Mashed]

Childish Headline Of The Week: “Dorset Knob-Throwing Festival Axed Over Size Issues”
[See on BBC]

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