“Popbitch Is Still Going?”

Reader, you hold in your hands the 900th issue of Popbitch. What started nearly 19 years ago as an extremely lo-tech, plain text email has since grown to become the extremely lo-tech, HTML email you see before you today.

12 people read the very first Popbitch. We’re sending issue 900 out to hundreds of thousands of you, all across the world.

To celebrate this milestone, we’ve put together a little digital goody bag for you which includes:

* A Best Of collection, featuring some of our all-time favourite Popbitch tales

* A 30+ page PDF selection of some of our longer stories

* A 15-minute Popbitch Untouchables mix

[Download from Popbitch]

Georgia Toffolo’s new book, Always Smiling, came out last week and her manager (Gemma at James Grant Management) will no doubt be delighted at the effusive praise that Toff heaps on her on page 50.

We hope it doesn’t tarnish the sentiment too much if we let Gemma in on a little secret. The entire thing is copied word-for-word from a section she had in an earlier draft of the book that was all about her former manager, Matt. Toff appears to have simply switched Gemma’s name in at the last minute and left the rest of the page exactly the same.

We’re sure it’s just as heartfelt though…

Which radio host will have to change his ways now that GDPR laws are in full force? He used to like scribbling down the numbers of listeners who texted in to the show, taking them home so that he could send a sneaky dick pic or two when he was off the clock…

After a particularly gruesome week of hearing stories about the wandering tongue of Hardeep Singh Kohli, we asked you to send us some nice, wholesome celebrity stories to cleanse our palates. So our undying thanks to one reader, who told us about what happened when Rick Astley moved in near her parents.

A younger member of her family came to stay for Christmas that year. The kid was an autograph hunter who knew Rick Astley from the Rickrolling meme. He wrote a very polite note and posted it through Rick’s front door asking if he would sign something for him.

On Christmas morning, their doorbell rang. It was Rick Astley, pen in hand, offering autographs to anyone who wanted one and stuck around for a festive glass of champagne too.

Why is The Queen, The Audience and The Crown writer Peter Morgan so obsessed with the Royals? Word on set at The Crown is that Peter’s mother once had an affair with Prince Philip.

Quite what prompted Morgan’s fascination with Tony Blair is probably a stone best left unturned.

The newspapers have been keen to point out what a blow it must be for Sara Cox to lose out to Zoë Ball on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show – especially as the two are such close mates.

The phrasing might have caused a few longtime Popbitch readers to raise their brows as, back in the height of the ladette scene, the two of them were heavily rumoured to have been dabbling in a little Stevie Nicks-style action.

So it’s probably not the first blow they’ve delivered to one another.

Spare a thought for Mark Lamarr. Not only is he due up in court next month on charges of common assault and false imprisonment, he was also one of the unsung victims of 9/11.

They shot an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks that same evening in 2001. The studio audience had been kept out in the lobby beforehand, where they saw footage of the planes hitting the twin towers over and over on the BBC’s rolling news coverage, on screens dotted all around the building.

It must have affected their mood a little as poor Mark Lamarr didn’t get anywhere near as many laughs as he felt he deserved that night. At the end of the shoot he lost his rag completely, shouting at them “YOU ARE THE WORST AUDIENCE WE HAVE EVER HAD. I MEAN IT. NOW FUCK OFF.”

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall appears to be stepping up his crusade against calories, lending his voice to the debate about whether restaurant menus should include nutritional values for each dish – but where has this new healthy eating kick come from?

Does it stem from his own health worries? Is he keen not to be outshone by Jamie Oliver? Or is it because he noticed that he wasn’t getting picked up anywhere near as often as he once used to be at swinging parties?

Who knows? A little something to chew on though, eh?

Tony Gallagher has been reading the riot act in recent weeks at the Sun, complaining that the newspaper needs to be breaking bigger stories. Things were particularly fraught last Friday when there was gaping hole where the cover splash should be. Gallagher made it clear to everyone that they needed to do better before leaving the building early, at around 3pm, for an urgent appointment.

What could possibly be so urgent as to keep him from finding a front page?

A spot at the Abergavenny Food Festival interviewing his chef pal, Jose Pizarro, it turns out.

Having previously fingered Dodgy for the theft of Black Box’s booze at the Cool Britannia festival, someone else has now come forward with some circumstantial evidence about Urban Cookie Collective.

This reader once booked the Collective for a gig in Leeds. The band requested a very extensive rider (which was provided in full) yet, before they agreed to go on stage, the singer demanded an extra bottle of brandy – insisting “I NEED IT FOR ME VOICE!”

The brandy was provided. They then did four songs, before leaving the stage and taking every last bit of their untouched rider back to their tour van with them.

They were so keen to clear out the rider that they actually forgot to take one of the bags they’d brought with them. One that contained three wraps of coke, a bunch of pills and a small lump of hash.

If you’ve got the stomach for more icky Hardeep content
[Read on The Observer]

Local news of the week
[Read on Croydon Advertiser]

Sounds hard being a Stoke City fan
[Read on Stoke Sentinel]

Bryan Cranston and Jack Dee to star together?
[See on FundSurfer]

RIP: The Celebrity Profile
[Read on New York Times]

How autotune changed pop
[Read on Pitchfork]

A fantastic new mosaic project opens today on Hackney Downs. Mosaicist Tess Hunkin, and a team of volunteers recovering from addiction or mental health problems, have documented the dogs they see walking every day. More local dogs to come…
[See The Hounds of Hackney]

The Popbitch 900 second mix in your goody bag is compiled and mixed by Alex Macnutt from The Common Rooms, Tunbridge Wells’ premier (and only) cocktail and vinyl bar
[Check out on Instagram]

An open letter from Bar Termini’s Tony Conigliaro to Martini, complaining about how they took over his charity Milan-Turin bike ride, and cut out him and Great Ormond St.
[Read on Instagram]