Police Vulgarity

The biggest celebrity story continues to be the Johnny Depp libel trial, which culminated in a literal airing of dirty laundry this week as the court engaged in deep discussions about who left a honking great log in the middle of his and Amber Heard’s marital bed.

Usually this sort of stuff is the preserve of urban legends, but whoever was responsible can rest assured that these sorts of stories aren’t always so sticky for famous people.

For example, who remembers the stories that Jean Claude Van Damme once shat himself on the set of his Coors adverts? Or that Meat Loaf had to cancel an appearance on Loose Women last minute because of a backstage incident? Or that Tom Hardy once chose to soil himself on set rather than break the flow of filming a scene?

Not us…

A photo of Michael Gove emerging from a Pret A Manger without a mask has been widely criticised this week – but no-one took the time to mention what a nice, neat haircut he was sporting.

Michael was turned on to his regular salon by his wife, Sarah Vine, who was invited to avail herself of their launch offer of free haircuts for invited journalists. Sarah mentioned to them that Michael might like a free haircut too, so the salon obliged.

There seems to have been a breakdown in communication somewhere along the line though as Gove has come in to the salon about once a month since and still seems to think their launch offer holds – years later.

No-one quite knows how to bring it up with him but not only has he yet to settle up for one of his haircuts, we’re told he hasn’t left a tip either. Even after lockdown.

Last week’s Jane Moore silent rollercoaster story was confirmed by the woman herself on Loose Women yesterday lunchtime. What we want to know now is, seeing as the ladies are reading Popbitch, when are we going to get confirmation about the former LW panellist who once got tipsy on a flight and started telling fellow passengers all about the colleague she once very generously licked out, but never had the favour returned?

Next month, Popbitch will send out its 1,000th weekly issue. Ahead of that, we’re going to be retooling our lockdown daily editions slightly and using them to revisit some of our favourite stories from the last 20 years in the lead up to our milestone issue.

Each weekday, from Monday, we’ll start with 2000 and work our way through the years. If you want to join us for this trip down memory lane, you’ll need to sign up to the dedicated daily mailing list here – and you can catch up on the 100 daily issues we’ve sent out so far.

[Get The Daily Tonic]

To mark the anniversary of Live Aid, last Monday’s daily was an excuse to write up some of our favourite stories about the acts that played there – including the long-standing beef between Sting and Stewart Copeland.

Tensions between the two Police-men are famously fraught, and one way Copeland works through it is by scrawling various messages on his drums, like “Sting Is A Cunt” or “Fuck Off You Cunt”.

Copeland seems keen to make sure his message is understood by the widest possible audience too. On this photo you may see he’s also scrawled a few Japanese hiragana characters on his toms. They translate out as “o”, “ma”, “n” and “ko”.

No prizes for guessing what “omanko” is Japanese for…

We’ve regularly been asking daily readers to tell us about the strangest things they’ve ever caught celebrities doing.

HT writes:
“When I was a young teenager I used to attend drama workshops at our local theatre. As a result of this I was allowed backstage for a show when Matthew Corbett brought Sooty to town.

“I loved Sooty as a child so was horrified when standing in the wings I saw Matthew reach down and scratch his bollocks with Sooty on his hand.”

To add to the pantheon of “Tupac is alive” conspiracy theories, there’s a great little rumour going round the tony brownstones of western Manhattan.

Suge Knight thinks Pac’s alive and making music in Malaysia. A new documentary alleges it was a body double that got shot and the rapper actually made a getaway to live with the Navajo. But P Diddy’s neighbours in Chelsea have a different story.

His neighbours are all convinced that Diddy has Tupac’s body entombed at his apartment.

“Like Lenin,” as they delight in telling people.

There’s been another huge swathe of job losses across the media this week as the industry struggles to find effective ways to keep itself afloat.

One idea we’ve been trying is Axate: a pay-as-you-go wallet that works across multiple sites and replaces traditional subscriptions with a small fee for individual stories as and when you want to read them – which always struck us as the way a lot of normal people actually use the internet, not as a bunch of high-salaried, long-lunch media execs keep pretending.

If you wanted to test the system out, there’s a piece we wrote a few years ago that might be of interest. It’s about how expensive celebrity libel proceedings can be, how lawyers’ bills quickly rack up – and how two bad tweets ended up costing Katie Hopkins £300,000.

It requires an Axate account to read, but once you’ve signed up you get access to any of our individual long reads for a one-off payment of 25p. There’s a weekly spending cap of 50p too, so if you really want to blitz our back catalogue, you can do it really cheaply and still help support us.

[Read ‘For Whom Libel Tolls’]

Among the other celebrities to have sued the Sun for libel is Cameron Diaz, who won “substantial” damages in 2005 after they suggested she’d been caught snogging colleague Shane Nickerson while dating Justin Timberlake.

Of course, anyone who had the misfortune of seeing Cameron and Justin together will know just how passionately devoted they were to each other when dating. The pair of them were sucking face so vigorously at one BAFTA event they attended together, that Cameron’s PR had to physically separate them, chastising them with the line “This is not SCHOOL!”

NASA’s recurring announcement that they know of a 13th Zodiac sign is picking up steam again, so celebrity astrologer Russell Grant is going to have to brush up his party trick.

When being introduced to new faces, Russell will take their hand to shake, give them a big beaming smile and say something like: “Ooo! Pisces! Interesting…”

That 12-1 shot is now a 13-1 shot, but the people it works on are so impressed it’s probably still worth it.

Know a celeb with better introductory patter? hello@popbitch.com

Look out of strangers’ windows, all around the world
[Window Swap]

Plasticine penguin v Shape-shifting alien
[Lee Hardcastle’s “Thingu”]

Local News Of The Week: Shed Head Man Edition
[Read on Bristol Post]

Is streaming changing the DNA of pop music?
[Some interesting thoughts]

A very peculiar local angle to the death of Kelly Preston
[Read on Kiis1065]

If Jess Glynne still wants some sexy fish…
[Weird headline of the week]

Why are Linkin Park T-shirts everywhere in China?
[A Wired investigation]

Fun conspiracy theory of the week: Is Ghislaine Maxwell secretly one of the world’s most influential Redditors?
[A brief primer]

Still Bored?
Please help out a fellow Popbitch reader by taking this quick anonymous survey on drinking habits in the UK…
[We did it in two minutes]