Returning The Giraffe

The Wagatha Christie trial finally got underway this week and though we’ve only heard ……….Rebekah Vardy’s account so far, it’s already been dynamite. Celebrity dick chat, Gemma Collins invoked as a semi-alibi, phones dropped in oceans, disputed legal interpretations of the cry-laugh emoji, potential perjury and more.

Because we can’t offer too much surrounding context of how WAGs and hacks have historically interacted while the trial is active, we’ll just have to sit back and enjoy the reports from court.

But if you want to heighten your experience of the trial at any point, just remember that the actor who had supposedly been lined up to play the part of Rebekah Vardy in that mooted Jamie Vardy biopic that never saw the light of day was… Meghan Markle.

(Netflix, make it happen.)

With £4 million spunked on launch advertising for TalkTV, and Piers Morgan’s flagship show drawing its lowest audience yet on Wednesday (44,000) some frantic buck-passing is going on at News UK.

Rebekah Brooks has been reminding people whenever she can that this wasn’t her idea. Piers is blaming Tom Newton Dunn for having no viewers (literally zero on May 3rd) for him to inherit. The Ealing studio and the Baby Shard are barely co-operating, and Daisy McAndrew’s show is being lined up on the chopping block.

The in-fighting isn’t confined to News UK either. Sky News Australia are also furious because they already had their own in-house blowhard (Pete Murray) who they had to bump to make space on the schedule for poster boy Piers. Only Piers has lost them viewers and they’ve had to pay more for it.

Which UK indie band have some gigs abroad next week, but a currently unvaccinated lead singer? Without proof of a jab, he can’t get into the venues they’re booked for – so his bandmates are currently training up a stand-in so they don’t miss their payday.

(Reports from rehearsals suggest the stand-in has turned out to be a much better singer than their actual frontman, so there may be some awkward conversations to be had about the band’s future when they return…)

Among the guests invited to the BAFTAs last weekend were the wife and kids of Sean Lock.

Having to get all dressed up to spend the evening among her late husband’s colleagues as they all celebrate their achievements must make for quite a poignant night out – so, naturally, she asked if Sean had won before accepting the invitation.

BAFTA refused to tell her. So she decided not to go in the end. Which is just as well, because Sean lost.

The relative levity of WAGatha Christie has been a welcome reprieve from the unending bleakness of the other big celebrity defamation trial happening across the pond. There’s not much to add to the Depp v Heard coverage, but there’s one little piece of the puzzle that might be of interest.

Back in 2018, we were approached by a company called Hawthorn Advisors, who were looking to leak some stories to Popbitch about Amber Heard in the hopes we’d run them on behalf of their client. Johnny Depp.

There’s nothing particularly astonishing about that, in and of itself. Laundering the reputation of celebs is a lucrative business and we get obvious approaches like that from time to time. The more interesting bit is Hawthorn itself.

At the same time they were courting us, Hawthorn’s co-founder Ben Elliot was working another angle, setting up a soft-soap profile for Depp with GQ. How do we know? Because he got himself a little shout out in the body of the piece.

And where is this master of reputation management now? Boris Johnson appointed him Chairman of the Conservative Party in 2019. And no fewer than three former Hawthorn associates currently make up No.10’s comms team.

An interesting whisper reaches us about the sale of Chelsea FC. It was revealed this week that chairman Bruce Buck and director Marina Granovskaia would be staying on after the sale of the club: the reason given in the media being that the new owners wanted them to remain.

While that might be true in the strictest sense, it might not necessarily be the full story either.

Roman Abramovich wanted the pair kept in place after he sold and the submitting consortiums were informed of this desire. Stephen Pagliuca’s bid met the request with a resounding no. Todd Boehly’s acquiesced.

Pagliuca was soon informed his bid was unsuccessful. Boehly became the new owner.

S writes:
“Lovely to see the James Stunt story last week, but you missed out the best bit.

“A few days after he’d purchased the painting, Stunt and his motorcade entourage showed up again. Stunt pulled the painting from out of his car boot, strolled back into the Mayfair gallery and told the dealer he wanted his money back. ‘Turns out it’s not a giraffe,’ said an indignant Stunt, obviously feeling like he’d been cheated. ‘It’s a fucking ZEBRA.'”

The semi-finals at this year’s Eurovision have been total carnage. Most of the year’s fun, upbeat songs fell at the first hurdle – so already we’ve had to say goodbye to the fanny-licking Latvians, San Marino’s S&M stripper, Israeli high-camp and Slovenian lounge-lizards.

Sure, we still have Norwegians in wolf masks, Serbian performance art and Moldovan Tim Westwood. And for the first time in years, the UK is entering the home stretch as the bookies’ second favourite – ahead of Sweden, ahead of Italy and with only Ukraine a hotter ticket. So there’s still plenty of reasons to watch.

As ever, we’ve put together a free, full-colour, 60-page guide to the whole shebang – filled with trivia, stats, some backstage gossip, snark and love.

[Download it free here]

Usually if countries select their Eurovision entrants from a TV talent show, they go for the ones who won it. Not Sweden. Their story is pretty different this year.

Cornelia Jakobs tried to audition for Swedish Idol back in 2008 at the age of 16. Back then, getting an absolute hosing from the judges on these shows was par for the course – and the panel didn’t let her age hold them back. They told her she was “crazy, but not in a good way”, that they heard “a lot of alarm bells” and that she “wasn’t as good as you think you are”.

14 years later, she won Sweden’s national selection, Melodifestivalen, and the honour of performing at Eurovision.

And the act she beat into second place to clinch it? Former 2008 Swedish Idol judge… Anders Bagge!

Can anyone tell us why Take That are suddenly the hot new darlings of cinema? Last week we had two stories connected to TT-related film projects:

1/ Robbie shooting his biopic in Melbourne (one other scene we didn’t mention was a recreation of the band’s devil suit-Relight My Fire performance with Lulu; a scene in which Robbie looks like he’ll be represented by a CGI monkey)

2/ A mystery film shoot claiming to be Mamma Mia 3 at Stansted where Take That were apparently present (Howard Donald confirmed on Friday Take That are back together and working on something secret)

Now there seems to be third production in the pipeline, shooting at the RAF Museum in Hendon last week (a location supposedly doubling up as Manchester Airport). The crew were telling interested punters it was for a Take That project. Lots of extras on set, but no actual band members.

Anyone know what the boys are up to? hello@popbitch.com

The hot new sound of the summer: NATOwave
[Listen on YouTube]

Can you guess the 80s song in one second?
[Play it here]

Can you guess the 90s song in one second?
[Play it here]

Otters on ice
[Watch on Twitter]

Why has a non-single album track become Billy Joel’s biggest song?
[Read on MEL]

Larry Shippers are back in business!
[Read on Input Mag]

What’s in the White House’s weirdly hip record collection?
[Read on Washingtonian]

Baby goats playing King Of The Castle
[Play on TikTok]

The hipster grifter is making a comeback
[Read on The Cut]

Metal songs on different percussion instruments
[Watch on YouTube]

PS: If you downloaded the guide earlier this week, we’ve fully updated it so that it’s in the correct order for Saturday – so get it again.