Ova Extended

“I get loads of beard haters constantly messaging me. They’re always heckling me, saying ‘Shave ya beard, shave ya beard.’ Beard haters are not nice” – Howard Donald

Later this year, Tom Hardy will produce and star in a BBC adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Paul Bettany was keen to get a part in it too and texted Tom to ask, but was told pretty bluntly to fuck off and was promptly blackballed from the production.

Why so unfriendly? The grudge seems to stem from Tom’s first major film role in The Reckoning, which also starred Paul Bettany. Eager to be involved on set, Tom lay down on the floor one day to watch Paul do one of his scenes. Paul found it distracting to have Tom lolling around in his eyeline, so politely asked him to move. Tom flipped out, tried to throw a punch at Paul and swiftly got himself chucked off set.

Tom has since got great mileage out of cultivating his hard man image and will tell anyone who’ll listen about the time he “knocked the leading man out on [his] first film” – but the beef isn’t just for show. When Hardy found out that Paul Bettany had been cast in his Krays biopic, Legend, he threatened to cut the director’s throat.

As the sexy priest in Fleabag, Andrew Scott’s character caused viewers to grapple with some very complicated feelings about lust and power, religion and responsibility.

In real life though, he’s a much less complex beast. Someone who met him at LA bar Beaches the other night didn’t need to go through weeks of agony and self-reflection in order to score a hot snog off him.

And nor did the barman that Andrew went and copped off with almost immediately after…

Getting invited to the judges’ houses is a huge honour if you’re an X Factor contestant, but which of the judges has invited more than just their acts over?

One of the judges’ LA pads has played host to a fair few sex parties over the years, with at least one famous former WAG attending (though she declined to participate in the action because it was too weird – even for a footballer’s wife…)

Our sincere apologies to Nigella Lawson. We said in last week’s issue that she once won £200 off Arthur Smith after he bet that she couldn’t eat a dozen pickled eggs in a row.

Since publication, Nigella has assured us that it was a whole jar of pickled eggs that she was challenged to eat (“I’m sure more than 20”) not just a measly dozen.

We apologise unreservedly for the error.

People have been sniggering that the lead singer of The Longpigs is going to be standing for European Parliament in next month’s elections as a Change UK candidate, but Crispin is actually one of the Independent Group’s better hopes. He certainly knows how to reach out to a desperate public.

Back in the 90s he lived in a flat in Notting Hill and would open it up to the public during the festival so that people could use his toilet if they needed.

According to the sign he put outside it was “10p a wee, £1 a poo”.

We told you last week that if you wanted to get a selfie with RuPaul while he’s in London you’d better be ready to cough up, because he was quoting his price as $25 per photo.

But even having cash on hand still might not be enough to secure it. Someone else who approached him didn’t even get that far in negotiations. Ru paused, taking a second to consider their request. Then, after looking her up and down, from head to toe, replied with a simple “No.”

Last week Facebook hosted a marketing conference in London called Leadership In A Day, about the skills you need to be a leader. One of the guest speakers was Tim Chatwin: now VP of Public Affairs at Google, but formerly David Cameron’s comms guy, who talked about the importance of being a good listener.

Now, a Google exec talking about this is brave enough, with more and more people convinced that their Google-powered smartphones and speakers are eavesdropping, but Tim doubled down by singling out an old colleague at No.10 as being an absolute master of this skill. In his words, “a really great listener” who he thought they’d do well to emulate.

That colleague? Andy Coulson.

Perhaps best known as the tabloid editor who was so good at listening – especially to answerphone messages that he shouldn’t have had access to – he went to jail for it.

We never would have predicted ten years ago that Sweden’s 2009 Eurovision entry would go on to become a key weapon in the ongoing culture wars, but here we are.

If you’re unaware of how ‘Eurovision Privilege’ works, here’s our quick cut-out-and-keep guide.

* Malena Ernman (Sweden, 2009)
21st place, 33 points out of a possible 504
Privileged European elite; disqualifies her 16 year old daughter (Greta Thunberg) from ever talking about climate change

* Bucks Fizz (UK, 1981)
1st place, 133 points out of a possible 240
Salt of the earth patriot heroes; perfect choice to headline the fated Brexit concert BpopLive and to play at LeaveEU’s official referendum party

Once a new media darling rumoured to be worth $100m+ and touted as an acquisition target for Apple, Boiler Room is desperately trying to find new revenue streams to help stabilise the business after a brutal round of layoffs and resignations.

Their latest hope? Turning their entire model pay-to-play and booking up a regional tour. They claim this is being done to escape the “chaos” of London and reconnect with their underground roots. In practice, what it means is they’re squeezing the pips of any unsuspecting promoter who will pony up five grand for the luxury of putting on a (previously free) Boiler Room branded night.

They’ll be praying that the partnerships they’ve struck up with venues like Bermuda Bob’s Rum Shack in Norwich are profitable – because word is that their Viceland show Gasworks is being eyed for the chopping block too…

If you picked up Time Out this week, you’ll have maybe seen that the Popbitch Popquiz was featured as one of their best pub quizzes in London. If you haven’t been yet, what are you waiting for? The next one is on Tuesday (April 30th) at Smiths Of Smithfield, with our host Tom Webb. We still have a few tables left, so come and join us!

[Book your team in here]

There’s some other dates in May lined up too, but if you’d like advance notice on future dates before they go public, we send out a special mailshot once a month to alert our PBPQ insiders early – and we usually include a little play-at-home quiz round for you too, to make it worth your while.

[Sign up for the monthly Popquiz mailer here]

Railed is a Western-themed, all-male acrobatic show from Australia playing at the Brighton Fringe in May (they had us at “bare chested circus meets bare knuckle bar fights”…)
[Book tickets here]

Wes Anderson wallpaper
[See on Murals]

An AI neural network has been trained to write its very own country song
[Hear ‘You Can’t Take My Door’]

Mo Farah signs his texts ‘Sir Mo’
[Read on Guardian]

We spoke on The Hearing podcast this week (alongside our lawyer) about the legal side of Popbitch, injunctions and some of our more creative responses to lawyers’ letters…
[Listen to it here]

Harvey Price has had his first exhibition
[See at The Argus]

If you didn’t catch Eric Cantona’s uncensored Instagram post before it got taken down
[Very NSFW – and pretty weird to boot]

Local news of the week
[Read on Bristol Post]

COMPETITION TIME!
The official Eurovision 2019 album comes out tomorrow (April 26th) and we’ve got a fistful of copies to give away. Want one? Send us your favourite joke to things@popbitch.com before Monday 10am and we’ll randomly select the winners from there.
[Make us laugh, punks]