Splitting Beave

You may have noticed that the latest Go Compare adverts on TV have gone a bit Fleabag, with the opera singer opting to talk to viewers as himself, Wynne Evans.

Evans is clearly keen for viewers to know more about his career as a serious singer, firing up his laptop mid-advert to show off clips of him in concert. But if he really wants people to know about the things he’s done aside from goofy insurance ads, he’s overlooking one that loads of people are bound to recognise.

Wynne was supposedly the singer that Russell Watson used to rope in to help beef up the sound of some of his albums’ higher notes.

In 2011, Dominic West was called back to his alma mater, Trinity College Dublin, to receive the Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage from the Philosophical Society.

As part of his speech, he paid tribute to his wife (who was present in the audience) by telling the assembled students a story about the time he once shagged her on the roof of a campus building instead of watching Ireland in the Italia 90 World Cup.

This romantic sentiment was later eclipsed in the Q&A portion, when a very earnest young student asked West what his favourite part of his studies had been.

West’s candid reply? “To be honest mate, I spent most of my time… er… What do you call it…? Downing pints and splitting beave.”

Is everything alright with Laurence Fox’s bladder? Someone who had Sunday lunch across the way from him at the Wolseley recently noticed that Lozza had to take three trips to the toilet in the space of 90 minutes – all separate from the trips he took outside to smoke.

For all the splash it caused when it was announced, it seems Sasha Swire’s Diary Of An MP’s Wife hasn’t sold quite as well as expected. Things had looked so promising when The Times entered the fray, outbidding everyone for the serialisation rights with a hefty six-figure sum.

Sasha’s advance was apparently given a healthy boost in light of it but, now that the dust has settled and the receipts are being tallied, it looks like the bidding might not have been sparked entirely out of genuine enthusiasm for the book.

More that Sasha’s agent is the sister-in-law of Rachel Johnson, who is (among other things) Times Editor John Witherow’s tennis partner.

Amy Schumer has regularly been accused of plagiarising other comics’ material, with comedy fans noticing that her 2015 bit about a sexual practice called ‘The Houdini’ bore some similarity to Patrice O’Neal’s 2006 bit about a sexual practice called ‘Poltergeisting’. However the bit seems to stem from an even more unlikely source: an old urban legend about Cannon and Ball.

While Cannon and Ball never made any bones about the fact that they enjoyed womanising separately, the shaggy dog story of The Houdini/Poltergeist double act dates back to (at least) their heyday.

The story goes that C&B would invite a willing fan back to their hotel room. After a time, one of them would start shagging her from behind at the windowsill. Then, unannounced, the two would switch places – with the original shagger quietly leaving the room, then pegging it down the corridor to stand outside the hotel and surprise the woman by waving at her from the other side of the window.

You’d think that living next door to a tabloid scandal magnet would be tough on the neighbours, what with all the gossip and attention it attracts, but not Frank Bough’s. A journalist who was tasked with doorstepping Frank after details of one of his sex dungeon parties leaked was interrupted on his way up to the door by a neighbour calling down from their window, “What’s Frank done now?”

The neighbour in question turned out to be Ernie Wise, who invited the journalist and photographer in for a cup of tea and a chinwag. We’re told he and his wife were “a joy”, dressed in matching bathrobes from the Dorchester and very keen to get the inside scoop on Frank’s many misadventures.

This week, in support of the areas that have been pushed into Tier 3 lockdown, we’ve been sending out daily mini-issues focused on local Popbitch legends. Now that the government appears to be creating a number of exciting new tiers for other cities – 1 Plus for Bristol, 3 Plus for Nottingham, and floating the idea of a possible Tier 4 TBC – it looks like we’re going to be kept quite busy.

So if you want a little brightness in your inbox each afternoon, or want to catch up on the last few months’ worth of mini-issues, you can do that here.

[Sign up/catch up here]

In Monday’s Daily Tonic, we had cause to discuss Hollywood producer Jon Peters and the networking trick he developed called “mantelpiecing” – where he would go to house parties in Beverly Hills armed with small framed photographs of himself that he would quietly sneak on to his hosts’ mantelpieces so they’d have a subliminal reminder of him long after he’d left.

We asked daily readers if they knew of any other celebrities with equally weird networking tricks to ensure that they stayed lodged in the minds of the people they met. And sure enough…

JJ writes:
“I once had a business meeting with Russell Brand’s dad. He gave us all extremely vigorous handshakes then bellowed ‘Congratulations, you just met Ron Brand!’ A few minutes later I went to get the drinks in and he tried to have his way with my wife.”

Yesterday, in preparation for Halloween, we asked daily readers to send us stories that would send a chill up our spine. This one certainly did.

Moments before one particular broadcast, Sky News’s then-political editor Adam Boulton had a minor wardrobe malfunction, resulting in the seat of his trousers splitting. With the clock against them, his producer hit upon an intricate but effective solution: using black gaffer tape to seal up the gap. However, the black side of the gaffer tape was facing ‘in’, while the adhesive side (i.e. the side peeking out of Boulton’s trousers) was white.

Solving this problem would take the presenter–producer relationship to a brand new level of intimacy, as his producer sourced a black marker with just seconds to spare before going live, and had to hand-colour the gap in Adam’s ‘seat’ to complete the disguise.

Cracking the redactions in Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition
[Read on Slate]

Issue 5 of The Fence magazine is out now. An excellent mix of funny investigations, serious short fiction and brilliant artwork – we’ve loved all the issues so far.
[Best enjoyed in print]

Want the rights to haunt a Canadian cinema?
[$25 and your everlasting soul]

K-Pop Stans v QAnon
[Read on Bloomberg]

Cute red panda
[Oregon Zoo’s finest]

Blur’s Song 2 – with Mario doing all the woo-hoos
[Hear it here]

The South Park boys and Peter Serafinowicz appear to have started a deepfake comedy series
[Sassy Justice]

A YouTube song about flamingos inflicting bloody, horrible carnage
[Watch on YouTube]

Play-At-Home Popbitch Popquiz: Halloween Edition – the perfect thing now we’re stuck indoors this weekend…
[Get your copy here]

Still Bored?
Need something to do on Nov 3rd to distract you from the US election? Rebel Reel Cine Club is hosting the only UK screening of Freak Power: a new documentary about Hunter S Thompson running for office in 1970. At The Shuffle Club’s outdoor covered terrace, Shoreditch. Nov 3rd, 6pm.
[Tickets and info here]