Tails Of The Unexpected

If you haven’t yet seen the video of Paul Scholes chewing his daughter’s toenails like he’s trying to get the last bit of meat off a chicken wing, then we recommend you spare yourself the horror.

For those of you already exposed, it may not surprise you to learn that this isn’t the first time Scholes has unwisely let his guard down around cameraphones. A couple of years back he was spotted in the local pub, drunk as a skunk, getting very close to a woman that locals could clearly see was not his wife. Videos of it ended up being shopped around the tabloids (footage that one red-top shelled out for). Up until this week, we thought he’d got lucky that the papers ended up spiking the story over privacy concerns. Now we’re not so sure.

Embarrassing though it would have been for Scholes, it might have taught him a much-needed lesson about what you let people capture on film.

Matt Hancock has complained to IPSO, asking that they clamp down on coverage of his private life after photos of a “private visit abroad” (a.k.a. a dirty weekend in Croatia) made the papers this week.

His reason for complaining is that he wants to protect his children from having to read the details of his personal life in the press. Normally we give pretty short shrift to anyone using this tired old excuse – but in fairness to Matt Hancock, he has more reason than most to hide this sort of stuff from his kids.

Not least because this recent trip appears to have taken place on the same weekend as one of his kids’ birthday celebrations…

Now that she’s landed a well-respected millionaire author for a boyfriend, who has just treated herself to a celebratory labial tuck?

Idris Elba announcing that he has chosen not to make his performance as Knuckles The Echidna in Sonic 2 “sexy” seems to fly in the face of the established canon. So we checked in with our resident Sonic erotica expert (who worked on video games magazines in the 90s when people would post all their homemade Sonic fanfic to journalists, rather than on the internet) to check our facts.

ulysses writes:

“Mate, we used to get filthy stories about all of the Sonic family. It was usually to do with Sonic and Shadow, but Amy Rose and Charmy Bee used to get the brunt of the hetero slash stuff, while Tails and Knuckles were the most common boy-on-boy recipients. Oh, and Rouge The Bat was the most common perpetrator of anything sapphic.”

Something for producers of the threequel to chew on.

A clip from quiz show The Tipping Point went viral this week after a couple of the contestants on it accidentally confused the poet Homer with Homer Simpson (answering that they thought Homer considered ‘doughnuts’ to be the food of the gods.)

The answer got some chuckles from host Ben Shephard, but the whole same-name thing reminded us of a great rumour we heard last year that we’ve been meaning to get to the bottom of.

Namely, that Ben Shephard apparently used to have three dogs – called ‘Ben’, ‘Shep’ and ‘Herd’.

Can anyone confirm or deny? hello@popbitch.com

Reviews for Kristen Stewart’s new Diana biopic Spencer have been surprisingly positive, which is not something we were expecting when we heard it contained the line of dialogue “Leave me! I want to masturbate.”

But maybe they’ve tapped in to something? The line reminded us of the story that Will Carling used to tell his chums about the night she kept booty-calling him while he had friends over. He kept trying to put her off, so told her that she could only come round if she “shaved her mott” for him.

Thinking that would be the end of it, Carling returned to his friends. Only to hear the phone ring a little later and picking it up to hear: “I’ve done it. Now can I come round?”

There was a nice little detail in a fan-led Q&A with Dave Gahan in the Guardian this week.

At some point, the idea had been floated that Depeche Mode would make an album with legendary musician/producer Brian Eno. Until Dave discovered that Eno had worked with Coldplay, that is. Now he absolutely refuses to let it happen. Ever.

The recent John Lewis home insurance ad – the one with a boy in a dress, smashing up the family home – has been pulled this week, which must be a bit of a blow for the ad’s director, Tom Kuntz.

Maybe John Lewis would consider hiring him to make their Christmas ad though? Tom has certainly got previous form when it comes to making engaging festive content.

This short film of an elf suckling Santa, for example. Or the one of a retired couple unwrapping a cute Christmas puppy with an absolutely enormous wang. Or these two happy-go-lucky fellas, just hanging out by the fire, enjoying a nice creamy eggnog.

(If you hadn’t guessed: they’re a little NSFW…)

This week saw us sending out our first Second Serve issue: an extra bonus weekly newsletter for members of our new subscription service, Club Popbitch.

For those of you who’d like a little more Popbitch in your week, we’ve brought back our pandemic-era daily music quizzes; introduced a second weekly newsletter filled with some of the stories we can’t fit into this one – plus a bunch of other exclusive stuff, for a small monthly subscription fee.

[Find out more here]

The Nightmare On Elm Street house is up for sale
[$3.25 million]

Spin the otter!
[See on Twitter]

Does Steven Seagal owe his career to a bet?
[Read on MEL]

Memories from a publicist who worked on Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook
[Read on The Fence]

Headline Of The Week: “Pablo Escobar’s Cocaine Hippos Are Legally People, Court Rules”
[Read on Gizmodo]

Which actor from the Succession cast is getting the most attention?
[Slate’s Power Rankings]

Adrian Chiles has made it to Gawker
[He’s going global]

On Obama’s attempts to become an influencer
[Read on the Atlantic]

Still Bored?
Stanley Tucci’s martini recipe
[Read on Bon Appetit]