RIPbitch 2020

There’s been enough digital ink given over to the horrors of 2020, so we don’t intend to use up any more. Instead, we’re seeing the year off with our traditional RIPbitch memorial issue: featuring stories of some of the celebs we lost this year – in all their fabulously filthy, foul-mouthed glory.

We’ll be back next year to shovel some more of the same into your inboxes.

Happy New Year x

When Terry Jones died earlier this year, the tributes all featured pictures of him in happier times. Editors seemed especially keen on shots where he was sat in front of that famous oil-painting of him perched on a stool, wearing nothing but a tie, playing the piano with his bum on display.

That wasn’t the only nudey portrait hanging in the hallways of his Dulwich home though. There was one of him wearing a crown and an ermine cape, clutching an ornament and sceptre, sat upon a throne, starkers.

And, according to a delivery driver who once dropped off some cases of wine to his house, there was another one on the wall by the cellar door of his close family members. None of whom had a stitch on either.

Queen_vic writes:
“I worked in a provincial theatre on the South Coast during a long run of Guys and Dolls starring Barbara Windsor and Christopher Biggins. One of my tasks was to take cups of tea and stuff to Babs’s dressing room between performances on a Saturday afternoon.

“Three weeks into the run I knocked and walked in as usual baring a tray of tea and some toast to find Windsor sitting astride the sink, knickers round her ankles, pissing like a racehorse. ‘Oh I beg your pardon,’ I stammered in my best Carry-On voice.

“‘Don’t worry darlin’,’ she shrieked. ‘I never use the loos in dressing rooms. You don’t know who’s been there before you.'”

After Eddie Van Halen died, people were quick to remember his contribution to the world of backstage riders, as he famously used to request a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. This wasn’t to be a diva (as many would later think), but as a quick way of checking to see that staff at each venue had correctly read the entirety of Van Halen’s extremely technical stage requirements. A sort of canary-in-the-coalmine clause.

It was smart, but it wasn’t the only backstage trick that Van Halen pioneered.

When the band were touring in their heyday, they would give each member of their road crew three backstage passes to dish out to attractive women they saw in the audience. Each pass was stamped with an individual reference code relating to each crew member, so that the band could give specific bonuses to whichever roadies invited the groupies that the band ended up shagging each night.

Back when Gazza was a young apprentice at Newcastle, he was so keen to impress the late Jack Charlton that he spent a week’s wages on fancy fishing gear and asked the legendary angler to give him a lesson.

Charlton gladly obliged but, at the riverbank, he tossed all of Gazza’s equipment away except for the fishing rod. Instead, the lesson Charlton gave him was to open a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale and pour it into the water. The fish started biting and he apparently reeled in a whopper within minutes.

When rock statesman Spencer Davis died in October, friends in LA were sharing their fondest memories of him.

Despite his successful music career, Spencer still liked to play the lottery, buying three sets of tickets: one for him, one for his wife and one for his dog. For many years, the tickets brought nothing but disappointment – until one draw in 2012 when his numbers suddenly came good.

He won $10. His wife won $10. And his dog? $250,000.

The following week, Spencer was due to attend an industry lunch at the Sunset Marquis, so brought his lucky mutt with him, who looked resplendent in a fancy new diamanté collar and leash. He announced his arrival in the broad Welsh accent he never lost, saying: “Lovely to see you all, my very successful friends. Now, I want you all to meet the richest fucking dog in America.”

Though he was remembered across most of the front pages in England for his infamous “Hand Of God” goal, readers of Popbitch might remember Diego Maradona for some of his other, equally brazen incidents.

When he was playing for Napoli, he would arrive back from Argentina carrying two footballs, which he’d hold up as he got off the plane for photos. They weren’t just props for a press opp though.

Inside each ball was a 1kg stash of coke.

As well as being one of the most admired novelists of the modern age, John Le Carré was also the holder of one of the greatest celebrity grudges of all time.

When his novel The Russia House was being adapted for the big screen, le Carré blackballed the casting of Jeremy Irons in the lead role. Not because he didn’t think Irons looked the part or wasn’t capable of capturing the essence of the role. It was because le Carré claimed that Irons’ dogs had terrorised his own dogs while out in the park one day and Irons had never apologised for it.

FYI: John le Carré claimed that he took cocaine once in his life and it gave him a “troublingly long-term erection”.

Back in the height of his James Bond fame, Sean Connery’s first wife Diane Cilento was asked what it was like being married to the world’s sexiest man. Her answer?

“There’s nothing in the world I find sexier than sitting at the end of the bath shaving your husband’s back and glueing on his hairpiece so he can go out and fuck other women.”

unpeeled writes:
“I once had to escort Nicholas Parsons to a local newspaper competition winner thing. Nicholas was as charming and urbane as you’d expect all the way through Croydon’s Whitgift Shopping Centre, but as soon as we were in the lift going up to the function he enthusiastically began a hyphenated swearing rant on how godawful Croydon and its inhabitants were.

“The lift doors opened onto the room as the C-word was being deployed, but Nicholas just looked back at me and said ‘And that is why I never use the word’ and pressed forward to press the flesh.”

Back in the 1980s Tim Brooke-Taylor agreed to meet the young child of a friend. The meeting had been dangled as a treat to the kid who had to be lured to visit Derbyshire in the middle of a particularly hellish winter with the promise of an introduction to a Goodie.

True to his word, Tim popped round to say hello to the young fan, only to see the child collapse into a fit of wails when he arrived.

“Nooooooo,” the kid yelled. “The beardy one! The funny one!”

RIP Andrew Weatherall
[Hear his Essential Mix]

Olivia de Havilland’s bloopers
[Watch on Twitter]

The 800 Men Who Look Like Kenny Rodgers
[RIP Kenny]

RIP Longcat
[“As a cat, you were long”]

Edgar Wright remembers Diana Rigg
[Read on Guardian]

Eddie Van Halen in action
[Watch on YouTube]