Rectal Ozone Therapy

As we turn the page on another year of celebrity chaos, mayhem and shithousery, we thought we’d collate a few of the stories from 2023 that still raise a smile out of us – plus a couple that won’t wait until 2024.

If you’ve enjoyed these last 50 issues of Popbitch and want to get us an Xmas pint in, we’d never say no. And if you fancied chucking in a little more to help keep the lights on at PBHQ so we can continue to ply you with gossip, pub trivia, WhatsApp jokes and other showbiz chicanery for another year – then we’ll love you forever.

A merry Xmas to you all and we’ll be back with our annual RIPbitch tribute issue next week.

[Buy Popbitch a pint or two]

As the ties between the increasingly disgraced Tory peer Michelle Mone and Mark Williams-Thomas look even murkier, we really shouldn’t be surprised that MW-T has been trying to squeeze every penny he can out of this situation. It’s been his MO since day dot.

When the BBC went to make a documentary about Jimmy Savile and his victims a few years after all the allegations surfaced, they approached around 200 people for an interview. Of those 200, they ended up filming interviews with 50.

Only one person – of the whole 200 –  asked for payment. Mark Williams-Thomas.

Which leading celebrity journalist raised eyebrows with her coke habit recently? Relatives were a bit uncomfortable with her doing lines at family events. Such as a funeral.

There’s a deleted scene from In The Loop where Malcom Tucker’s right hand man, Jamie, is reading the riot act to a hapless minister and his SpAd. He wraps the rant up by telling the SpAd to get back to “sitting on your arse all day, drinking lemon zinger and reading Popbitch”.

Earlier this year, we found out that this actually is an official duty at No.10 now. Ever since the Boris Johnson phone number incident, Popbitch has been placed on No.10’s media monitor list. So it’s now some poor advisor’s job to scour this mailout each week to make sure we haven’t caused any other national security complications.

Something we’ve more or less managed this year (not that we’ve had a word of thanks for it…)

Now that he’s king, Charles ought to command a little more respect from Palace staff – but we doubt he’s getting it.

A few years back, while preparing for a visit at one of his charities, an advisor of Charles’s was sent ahead to the venue to talk organisers through how the royal visit would work.

It was when they were all working out the best place to line people up for the handshake procession that the advisor used the phrase “shake the Royal sausages”.

Allegations of bullying levelled at Lizzo are still making headlines as the year draws to a close. Staff at Fabletics – the parent company of her athleisure brand Yitty – aren’t as shocked by them as everyone else though.

On a Yitty photoshoot, Lizzo demanded a young runner on the set go and get her some lunch from a very specific place in LA. A place which just so happened to be about an hour and a half from their location.

When the poor girl returned with the food hours later, Lizzo shouted at her in front of the entire crew for taking so long. Then never actually touched the lunch.

Paul McCartney was out having dinner at the River Cafe earlier this summer when he suddenly looked as though he was about to pass out. Waiting staff rushed to him, concerned for his health, and helped him to his car – but everyone was soon able to breathe a sigh of relief when Stella discreetly explained what had happened.

Harrison Ford was also dining at the restaurant that night and he’d beckoned Paul over during the meal. The pair managed to slip away briefly as Harrison had a joint in his pocket and he wanted to share it with his old pal, Paul.

Alas, Harrison’s weed had proved a tad strong for Macca. He hadn’t collapsed ill at all – he’d just pulled a whitey.

The award for Unfortunate Backfired PR Stunt Of The Year goes to Self Esteem.

When Gary Lineker got himself suspended from Match Of The Day for criticising the government’s asylum policies on Twitter, Self Esteem took to the stage that night in Hammersmith wearing a custom Wham!-style “FREE GARY” T-shirt.

Pictures of her in her “FREE GARY” T-shirt made the press the next day. Just in time for the story to break that noted turbononce Gary Glitter was being returned to prison for violating the terms of his parole.

Phillip Schofield’s fall from grace wasn’t one we expected to see happen so swiftly in 2023, but whispers of his “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a young runner on This Morning quickly became unmanageable.

The strange things is, when Phil was a tender young teen himself – working as a lowly teaboy at the BBC, trying to break into showbiz – he attracted the attentions of a famous older broadcaster too. Someone who gave Schofe his very first bit of Radio 1 airtime. Jimmy Savile.

In his 2020 autobiography, Schofe recounts the piece of valuable advice Savile imparted to him back then. Advice he sadly failed to heed: “Be nice to everyone on the way up; you’ll need them all on the way down.”

FYI: Phil offered to buy Savile a drink in exchange for this wisdom, but Savile turned him down – saying that it “wouldn’t be appropriate”.

During the Phillip Schofield saga, Dan Wootton wrote in his regular Mail column that the reason he quit his job at ITV was because they tried to ban him from talking about Schofield and Meghan Markle on air. Unwilling to be bound by such suffocating conditions, Dan claims he proudly told them where to stick their job – and left.

This might astound you, but it seems recollections of those events differ somewhat from person to person.

The story that survives at ITV is that Dan was suspected of leaking stories that he’d gleaned from hanging around at ITV and feeding them back to his paymasters at The Sun – in breach of the terms of his employment.

To make sure it wasn’t coincidence, they tried pulling the old Wagatha Christie trick on him: deliberately floating some fake gossip his way to see if – by some miracle – it made its way into the paper.

And it did. So they dropped him.

Spotted partying in Brighton’s Legends bar after headlining the city’s Pride concert: Lisa Scott-Lee.

At the bar, she tried to order a drink from an area that wasn’t in service. When a bartender told her she’d need to move round to the other bit to get served, she replied “…but I’m Lisa Scott-Lee?”

The singer looked baffled when the young staff member didn’t recognise her and was forced to queue with the masses for her prosecco.

[Lisa herself has the receipts]

Stephen King has already made so many lasting contributions to popular culture, but he casually tossed off another all-timer in Rolling Stone this year when the interviewer asked him if there was any truth to the rumour he loved Lou Bega’s Mambo No.5.

King’s response?

“Oh, yeah. Big time. My wife threatened to divorce me. I played that a lot. I had the dance mix. I loved those extended play things, and I played both sides of it. And one of them was just total instrumental. And I played that thing until my wife just said, ‘One more time, and I’m going to fucking leave you.'”

A TikTok account that reviews the experience of taking a shit in VIP bathrooms across America
[Watch here]

Twitter account of the year
[Shit British Pics]

Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso) doing the Muppets Christmas Carol in six minutes
[Watch on YouTube]

Radiohead’s In Rainbows – recreated with Mario64 sounds
[Listen on YouTube]

Iceberg Of The Year: the dick shaped one that appeared off the coast of Dildo in Canada
[See it here]

Guess the niche dance subgenre
[dancemusic.wtf]

Martin Daubney literally breaking news
[THE TERROR MAN]

Still Bored?
If you haven’t watched the half hour video of Bobby Fingers making a rowboat in the shape of Jeff Bezos’s face – there’s not been a better thing made this year…
[Watch it here]