Tarantino Takes Nottingham

Between him gorging on bugs, balls and arseholes in I’m A Celebrity and getting thrown out of helicopters in Celeb SAS, we’re going to be seeing a lot of Matt Hancock on our tellies over the coming months.

If it was up to Matt Hancock, we’d be seeing even more of him too. He’s been overheard working up a pitch for a show of his own in which a camera crew would follow him and his girlfriend on their journey as they fix up a second property on the continent.

A format he’s taken to calling Hancock’s Holiday House.

Celeb SAS bosses are said to be furious that Matt Hancock signed up for a rival survival show that will air ahead of the one they filmed with him. It’s no wonder they’re annoyed; Channel 4 has been dicked over like this before.

In the summer of 2018, former Emmerdale star Roxanne Pallett took part in E4’s Celebrity Coach Trip. Then, in the months between the show being filmed and being broadcast, Roxanne managed to squeeze in another quick TV gig: Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 5.

It was there she caused a career-ending scandal which went on to dominate the series and became a national talking point for weeks. There’s been barely a peep from Roxanne in the years since. Except for when her series of Celebrity Coach Trip finally made it to air a few months later – making E4 look like they’d made an utterly deranged hire of a disgraced, exiled celeb.

Which popstar – who once confessed to taking a driving test drunk – is at risk of losing her license completely after she was recently pulled over in Hampstead doing 60+ in a 20mph area?

A couple of spoiler-free rumours about the upcoming sixth series of Black Mirror, if you’re interested.

* The Aaron Paul episode is apparently about someone who finds themselves on a space station, but doesn’t have any idea how they got there.

* The Salma Hayek episode sounds curiously meta. It’s about a woman who signs a release form with a Netflix-style streaming website called Streamberry, who then go on to make a TV show based off of her life in which she is played by Salma Hayek. To further break the fourth wall, the episode also supposedly contains references to other Black Mirror favourites Bandersnatch and San Junipero.

John Terry and family are currently holidaying in Dubai, where a bikini-clad Toni Terry has been posting idyllic photos in and around their hotel pool with her shirtless husband (“Making memories with my beautiful family” etc…)

She was helping make memories for some of her fellow passengers on the journey out there too. Someone who checked in behind them at Heathrow tells us Mrs T was keeping everyone in the queue amused during the 15-20m minute wait by lifting up John’s shirt and showing off his belly – jokingly grumbling about how he’d lost his physique since he stopped playing.

FV writes:
“Quentin Tarantino definitely makes a lot of noise in cinemas. Years ago he brought Pulp Fiction to Nottingham to headline the film festival (quite a coup since it had just won the Palm D’or, but he wasn’t actually that well known). He stayed in Nottingham for about a week and spent most of his time in the bar at Broadway Cinema.

“Anyway, there was a double bill of John Woo movies showing so me and my friend Matt showed up. Nobody else did. Just me, Matt and Quentin Tarantino. It turned out Tarantino had brought his own laser discs to show and had a whole speech prepared for the audience that he still gave even though it was only me and my friend.

“The films were in Cantonese with Japanese subtitles so nobody could understand what was happening but they were great. Tarantino sat directly in front of us, blocking half the screen and laughed like a maniac, shaking his fists at the screen ALL the way through for more than four hours.”

He might have been sober for the best part of a decade, but Vinnie Jones still keeps a lavishly stocked bar for his hunting buddies when they’re out on a shoot.

Vinnie has a gigantic “refreshments trailer” that gets attached to the back of one of the 4x4s whenever they head out hunting. Effectively a 4ft coolbox on wheels, the trailer opens to reveal a three-tiered pull-out drinks cabinet (varnished wood with space for 50-odd bottles), as well as a toploaded compartment filled with a wide range of soft drinks, mixers and snacks.

Sounds like Darren Grimes’ luck at GB News has finally run out. After managing to pull off a Lazarus-style revival a few weeks back – relaunching himself when everyone thought he had been let go – his show is now being eased onto the off-ramp.

It’s nothing to do with complaints about his workplace conduct; it’s because of his viewer numbers.

Plus, bosses needed to free up some space on the schedule for John Cleese starting in the new year.

Another name for the “Celebs Who Speak To Servers Through Staff” list: Mick Jagger.

Someone who served the Stones in Lillies Bordello in Dublin many years ago remembers taking polite drinks orders from each of Keith, Ronnie and Charlie – but when it came time for Mick to order, a gentleman behind him spoke up asking for a bottle of Evian. When informed they only had Ballygowan, the gentleman smiled and replied on Mick’s behalf to “make sure there’s lots of ice and lemon”.

Mick remained silent throughout, but did offer a “Fanks” when his drink arrived.

Further to last week’s story about Jacob Rees Mogg getting pranked at Eton, it seems he isn’t the only one to have been punked by the National Anthem. In fact, the same gag dates back at least a century.

In Mary Kenny’s book on William Joyce, she mentions that when Joyce joined the Royal Worcester Regiment in the 1920s, his fellow soldiers found him so insufferable that they liked to amuse themselves by making him jump out of bed at night and stand to attention by whistling ‘God Save The King’.

Joyce later became known as Lord Haw-Haw; eventually becoming the last man hanged in Britain for treason…

Joan Didion’s stuff is going up for auction
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All of OK Computer, all at once
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Headline Of The Week: “An Entire Village Is Being ‘Terrorised’ By A Jackdaw Called Derek”
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The most streamed songs of each year from 1952-2022
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A 45 minute super extended mix of Joe Jackson’s Steppin’ Out
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On Wikipedia’s “deaditors” – the volunteers who update Wiki pages when notable people die
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Behind the scenes at The Onion
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Thanks to supporters who rallied round, A Gift From Ukraine now has a live website ready for Xmas
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