RIPbitch: 2018

As the year draws to a close, we thought it might be nice to take a brief moment to pay a dignified, respectful tribute to some of the famous faces who died this year – and maybe relive a few of the cherished memories that they bestowed upon us along the way.

Sadly, we couldn’t find anything like that in our archive. So you’re going to have to settle for this sordid little bunch of stories instead.

See you in 2019!

When off on his book tours, Anthony Bourdain would regularly take recommendations from his readers on where to drink locally.

One fan who whiled away about four hours with him at the Kelvin Arms after a signing in Houston, Texas remembers that he had plenty to say about films, Elvis Costello and Steven Seagal after a few pints of Guinness. However, the one story that really stuck out was about a dinner he once had at Nigella Lawson’s house.

A number of top chefs were round at Nigella’s that night and the conversation turned to the most rock’n’roll things they had ever eaten. Bourdain wouldn’t reveal what Nigella told the table she’d eaten but it was enough to have him declare her a “hardcore cool bitch”.

The trouble with being the world’s most recognisable genius is that people will always be trying to impress you, bending your ear about any old shit they can think of.

So it was when Stephen Hawking was booked to be a guest speaker at an event at the Bodleian Library, Oxford a few years ago. Sure enough, the bigwig in charge of the event cornered the good professor directly after his speech and proceeded to proudly boast about all the important work that his department does.

What the bigwig couldn’t see from where he was standing was that, as he was speaking, Hawking spent the entire time surfing Right Move on his computer.

Barry Chuckle wasn’t shy about working his catchphrase “To me… To you…!” into every possible situation – but one Popbitch reader who once found themselves being chatted up by the Chuckle Brother in question was a little disappointed to discover he didn’t try to work it into his pick-up routine.

He made a mundane innuendo about eating a fish supper instead.

In Issue 813 of Popbitch, we asked “Which beloved sci-fi actress has a rather odd daily routine which involves manually wanking off her dog to stop it from becoming too aggressive – seven days a week?”

The answer? Jacqueline Pearce (aka Supreme Commander Servalan off of Blake’s Seven).

glossygirl writes:
“Many years ago, when he was still a controversial big name, Peter Stringfellow had just opened Angels after a planning fight with Westminster and I was sent to interview him one rainy afternoon at his apartment above the club.

“He took a while to appear and when he did it was in an enormous, fluffy, black dressing gown and nothing else. I know there was nothing else under the gown as during the course of the interview he slowly (and I’m sure deliberately) let the gown fall more and more open until I could see a good portion of his man-bush.

“A few days later, a lifetime VIP pass to the club arrived at the newspaper’s offices, hand-signed by him in gold ink, with a very polite note saying how lovely it had been to meet me.”

While Paddy Ashdown will doubtless be missed in the political arena, he’ll be particularly missed at the next Lib Dem conference – where he was generally considered to be something of a sex symbol.

At the 2009 conference in Bournemouth, Paddy could barely get a moment’s peace from adoring, grasping fans. When he entered the hotel bar at the Highcliff at 1am, two women shrieked and started trying to cradle his arse, while a sozzled elderly male delegate followed him around bellowing “I’M GAY BECAUSE OF YOU!”

Montserrat Caballé is best known in pop culture circles for recording Barcelona with Freddie Mercury, but she was better known to the Spanish authorities as a tax cheat.

These two facts aren’t unconnected. As we mentioned back in 2010, the opera diva always requested that she get her share of the royalties for Barcelona in cash. So, once a year, someone from Freddie’s financial team would have to take a briefcase full of notes over to Spain for a handover.

In 2015, she was given a six month suspended prison sentence for tax evasion.

May 2018
Spotify announces that XXXTentacion will be banned from their promoted playlists (along with R Kelly) after allegations of abuse emerge.

June 2018
Spotify announces “Rest In Peace, XXXTentacion!” across its homepage, with a specially promoted playlist advertised all over Spotify.

Best known for his work as a soap star, murderer and finger-sucking webcam sexpest, the final chapter of Leslie Grantham’s career saw him turn his moist hands to children’s fiction.

His Harry Potter-lite fantasy story about wizards and magical creatures, Jack Bates And The Wizard’s Spell, is an absolute masterclass in subtext. Even if you ignore the fact that he named his main character after two separate words for wanking, it’s filled with so many Freudian slips it’s hard to believe the whole thing wasn’t intentional.

[See for yourself here]

If you were anywhere near social media on Christmas Eve, you maybe saw how Kevin Spacey responded to the news that he’d been charged with sexually assaulting a teenager. By recording a video in character as his killed-off House Of Cards character, Frank Underwood.

It was a weird move, for sure – but it’s not the first time he’s used his art to channel his ill-advised urges.

During the 12 years he was artistic director at the Old Vic, Kevin Spacey kept on suggesting they stage the same plays season after season, only to have them vetoed every single time.

The reason he kept picking them? The same reason the rest of the creative team kept refusing them. They were always plays about older men striking up May-December romances with younger, impressionable boys.

RIP Eddie the slam-dunking, self-pleasuring otter
[Read on Oregon Live]

RIP Dale Winton, whose stories we collected here
[Read ‘The Final Checkout’ on Popbitch]

Jon Ronson had an interesting Dennis Nilsen anecdote
[See on Twitter]

A highlights reel of Leslie Grantham’s last role, in a Bulgarian soap opera
[Watch on Vimeo]

RIP Northumbria Police’s ex drug-sniffing dog, Snoop
[Pay your respects on Twitter]

A Home Alone booby-trap flick-book
[Watch on YouTube]

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