Silk Cut

Poor Dua Lipa. Mere days after splitting with the management company that reared her from a chick, she and her songwriters suddenly find themselves named in a plagiarism lawsuit over her international smash hit, Levitating. And just a week after we mentioned that her management dispute supposedly revolved around songwriting credits. What rotten luck!

The suit was filed in a California court on Tuesday by members of the band Artikal Sound System who say Levitating lifts from their 2017 song Live Your Life. How did a relatively unknown reggae outfit from Miami end up on the radar of Dua’s team? Maybe Levitating co-writer Clarence Coffee Jr will be able to shed a bit of light, being from Miami himself.

And if they do get him in the dock, maybe they could make him answer for his other, more significant crime against music: co-writing Swagger Jagger for Cher Lloyd.

[Listen for yourself]

One thing we enjoy of an idle afternoon is to flick through lookalike agencies to see which unlucky buggers have seen their work dry up on account of their celebrity counterparts getting cancelled. The Bill Cosby who’s still on the books. The Kevin Spacey whose phone has fallen silent. The Woody Allens. The Mel Gibsons. The Michael Barrymores.

Potentially joining their ranks this week: Roman Abramovich’s double. He wasn’t available for public hire. He was mostly used by Abramovich himself at Chelsea. Occasionally he’d send him off to watch rival clubs to cause a bit of turbulence there. Other times Fake Roman would be sent out to take Real Roman’s car home, acting as a decoy while Real Roman would leave the ground through a secret underground tunnel.

What does his future hold now? Well, if he knows how to pilot a yacht, Roman might have one last job for him…

Which Fleet Street hack has been bringing a bit of old-skool glamour back to the profession? He’s been getting regularly sloshed at the nearby pub these last few weeks and becoming so lairy with the bar staff that complaints are now being sent direct to the paper’s newsdesk.

Tory MP Bob Seely went on a bit of a tear in the House of Commons this week, using his parliamentary privilege to reel off a list of British lawyers he said have been representing Russian billionaires in various libel lawsuits, attempting to silence journalists from writing about their connections to the Kremlin. And how nice it was to hear some of our most esteemed pen-pals getting a shout-out!

Among the lawyers Seely mentioned by name was Nigel Tait of Carter-Ruck. The same Nigel Tait who came thundering into our inbox in 2016, demanding we retract an article we wrote on injunctions because it risked annoying his client who was busy trying to stop anyone talking about the time they threw an olive oil sex party in a paddling pool? Yes indeed!

In fact, it was that letter we turned into a mixed-media artwork so we could bypass sneaky copyright laws and show you the type of fiery letters celebrity lawyers like to send.

[Take a look]

Another of the lawyers singled out in the House Of Commons this week for helping shady businessmen sue British reporters: Hugh Tomlinson QC.

Known more widely as the chair of Hacked Off (the self-styled “campaign for a free and accountable press”) Hugh was juggling three libel cases last summer, all brought by Russian billionaires claiming to be defamed by former FT journalist Caroline Belton’s book “Putin’s People”. One from Roman Abramovich, and one each from the recently-sanctioned Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven.

A free speech loving lawyer like Hugh, taking on a case in which a dodgy rich bloke was using ill-gotten gains to silence damaging stories from getting out in the press? You bet! We have first-hand experience of it too. Hugh was the lawyer who argued in court in favour of the injunction taken out against us by Gordon Ramsay’s father-in-law and CEO of Ramsay Holdings: the (now-convicted) computer-hacker, occasional embezzler and secret-family-haver, Chris Hutcheson.

What about John Kelly of Harbottle & Lewis, another lawyer pointed to in the Commons as having acted against British journalists at the behest of rich, powerful, foreign clients? Surely anyone who worked for the same law firm that the Royals once used to tell us to shut the fuck up (we paraphrase) would have a stronger sense of patriotic duty?

Who knows? “John Kelly” is a pretty common name. Maybe Harbottle & Lewis have a bunch of them on staff and it was a completely different John Kelly who oversaw the fierce warning shot sent out to UK journalists on behalf of Sandra Bullock in 2015, informing them of the grave dangers they faced if they dared run any stories or publish any photos of her and her family.

Not out of any serious concern for her privacy, but because she had an exclusive tell-all profile and photoshoot of her and her family set up with People Magazine – and didn’t want anyone scooping it.

One joke from last night’s National Comedy Awards that may not make the broadcast on Channel 4 on Saturday came courtesy of Rob Rinder. He and Al Murray were there to present the award for Best Female Comedy Entertainment Performance and Rob tried to channel Julian Clary’s infamous Norman Lamont moment by telling the audience he “couldn’t open the envelope because he’d been fisting Vladimir Putin”.

To the sound of tumbleweed.

When you pay thousands of pounds to get a sports personality to do a corporate motivational talk, what do you expect? Lots of talk about the importance of team mentality? Yes. Hammering home the idea that working together is your greatest chance of success? Naturally.

What about a series of cock jokes, ranging from risqué comments about the girth of Winter Olympics equipment, to the suggestion that they’d just been crossing swords with the event’s compere in the bogs before coming on stage?

Only if you shell out for David Coulthard.

Boldest PR pitch of the week? From Sydney’s legendary Max Markson:

“While Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine there’s a right royal VITAMIN WAR brewing in the heart of Double Bay with multi-millionaire Jessica Sepel’s JSHealth faced with price gouging rip-off accusations from rival brand Life Botanics who have the identical formulation but at half the price.”

Unsurprisingly, no-one took him up on that particular framing…

We told subscribers to our premium-edition Club Popbitch email a story on Monday about a certain popstar who fired her longterm band over the pandemic and replaced them all with session musicians who were willing to do the same work for a fraction of the price(/job security).

Such selfishness is not uncommon in the industry but, thankfully, it’s not the case with everyone.

When Björk tours, she likes to space out her shows, trying only to perform once every 4-7 days to protect her voice. Where many touring artists would only pay their musicians a full rate for days when they actually had shows (and then a lower rate/lunch money for non-show days) Björk doesn’t let her musicians suffer as a result of her own schedule.

Not only does she pay them full show rates for every day they’re out on tour – show or not – she puts them all up in the same hotel as her and has them all fly the same class too.

An official book of Brian May fan-art, published in aid of badgers
[Yeah, no idea…]

Track your favourite oligarchs’ jets!
[See on Twitter]

A browser game of Pong where you control the ball, not the paddles
[Almost Pong]

Local News Of The Week: Big Eyebrow Edition
[Read on Bristol Post]

Otter on the loose in Salisbury Cathedral
[See on Twitter]

Cataloguing the lies Robert Pattinson has told interviewers since 2009
[Read on The Ringer]

Interesting read on the truth behind movie score composition
[Read on Vanity Fair]

TikTok in the time of war
[Read on Wired]

Still Bored?
1990-1999: 600 songs in 34 minutes
[Listen on YouTube]