Served Cold

“It’s all about having sex and feeling sad” – Harry Styles

We were happy to postpone our summer holidays once when a notorious, internationally-connected celebrity paedophile died suspiciously in prison – but we’ll be damned if we’re going to let Boris Johnson get in the way of our rearranged week off with his latest round of shenanigans.

So here’s a compromise: a few quick stories to help lighten the mood, and a promise that we’ll be back properly next week.

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Another dark lord of PR bites the dust – and, like Max Clifford before him, death did not spare Tim Bell from one final trashing.

Bell’s 1977 criminal conviction for wanking at his window while women walked by was given comprehensive coverage in his Times obituary. Why would a high-minded paper like the Times include such tawdry and prurient details in their send-off?

It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Bell’s PR company, Bell Pottinger, represented Rebekah Brooks during the phone hacking era – and were the ones who let it slip that Rebekah kept bursting into tears during cross-examination practice whenever something uncomplimentary about Rupert Murdoch was brought into the interrogation, could it?

Lucky NewsUK’s CEO isn’t the type to hold a grudge…

Which famous media brand might be about to be rocked by a new #MeToo scandal? One of their head honchos has been at the root of two big payoffs to two women recently – and we hear a major exposé is in the pipeline…

Mark Jones, the music impresario behind the legendarily debauched Wall of Sound record label, was recently thrown out of Soho House.

What kind of crazy behaviour was he indulging in to get himself ejected? Some sort of stupendous drug binge? Getting so sloshed he took a piss in the plant pots?

Not quite. It was his habit of loitering in the restaurant, waiting for people to leave their tables before swooping in to nick the leftover food off their plates.

We didn’t think the list of Brexit Party candidates could get any weirder-sounding (featuring, as it does, names like Marc Bozza, Dominic Frisby, Hortense Sheppard and Alaric Bamping). But then we didn’t count on Bucks Fizz singer Jay Aston tossing her hat into the ring.

She might not have much in the way of political experience, but she’s got one skill that’s invaluable if you’re going to flourish in a Farage-fronted party: the knack of making her apologies memorable.

When Jay was caught having an affair with her former manager’s husband, she wrote the couple a huge, grovelling letter of apology.

Which she signed off “The Slut”.

With so many rampant shaggers in the upper echelons of government, we thought it might be worth keeping an eye on the comings and goings at Cliveden – the notoriously posh country house hideaway that played a central role in the Profumo scandal of the 1960s.

Spending his Bank Holiday weekend lounging by the very same pool that Christine Keeler did when she attracted the attention of John Profumo, leading to the torrid affair that brought down the government of the day?

Erm… Ross Kemp.

Nothing much has been heard from Mazher Mahmood (the News of the World’s notorious Fake Sheikh) since he was jailed for 15 months for conspiring to pervert the course of justice in 2016. He’s out now – but is he back in action?

Mahmood was the first journalist to reveal the links between Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein. It was a Mazher investigation that resulted in that picture of Andrew and Epstein walking together in Central Park. And it’s thought that Mazher’s team were behind the video published by the Mail On Sunday of Prince Andrew in 2010 waving off a young woman leaving Epstein’s mansion (later revealed to be Katherine Keating, daughter of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating).

The MoS is declining to reveal the source for this video but Mahmood is known to have kept meticulous files of all the covert videos and audio recordings from the Fake Sheikh’s investigations over the past 25 years. It’ll be interesting to see which other Mazher scoops come back over the next few months if he really is on the prowl again…

We’ll be returning to our four-part story on Radar next week but in the meantime:

It’s been widely reported that the National Enquirer could get stories killed by anyone who was considered to be an “FoP” (short for “Friend of Pecker” – David Pecker, the company’s CEO).

It turns out that Radar offered a similar sort of service too, but for friends of one of Radar’s big investors, billionaire Ron Burkle. The requests to do so were known as “FoB”s.

One of the FoBs who used his friendship with Burkle to nix an embarrassing story about his love life coming out? Leonardo DiCaprio.

Drill + dildo = Drilldo
[NSFW – but worth a look]

Olafur Eliasson’s zucchini carpaccio recipe, anyone?
[See the Frieze cookbook]

More musical tilers
[Hire Bonny Tiler]

Politicians with football managers’ hair
[See on Twitter]

The woman who collated the ONS’s latest dataset about the UK’s top baby names is called… Katheryn Littleboy!
[See the breakdown]

Jazz funk nostalgia is the perfect way to end summer
[Listen on Spotify]

Cafe war ends with insanely painful tattoo
[Read on the Guardian]

Local News Beef Alert: Hackney Gazette seems very pleased that Hackney Today is closing.
[Check out Hackney Gazette]

POPBITCH POPQUIZ!
Our Popbitch quiz night returns this Tuesday (Sept 3rd) to Smiths Of Smithfield. Gather together your team, book yourselves a table and come and play at London’s most salacious trivia night. Brand new rounds, with bar tabs, theatre tickets and much more to be won.
[Get your tickets here]