The Corpse Still Twitches

E4 threw a little summer party yesterday where the channel’s new controller announced a number of the fresh-faced, shiny new stars they had lined up to appear on their upcoming schedule. One of the stars who actually showed up in person to party was 80-year-old Margie Keefe, a.k.a “Grime Gran”.

Fellow revellers were very impressed with Grime Gran’s stamina. She stayed out longer than most of the Made in Chelsea lot.

Daniel Radcliffe was a guest on Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 breakfast show this week, laughing off suggestions that he’s in the running to play James Bond when Daniel Craig retires, saying that it’s a ridiculous idea.

We tend to agree. We’re not sure he has quite what it takes to play cinema’s greatest shagger.

We once heard a story from someone who went home with Daniel after a party. A little tipsy and deep in the throes of passion, she couldn’t help herself from saying, mid-deed, “Harry Potter is fucking me right now!”

He was so miffed that he promptly pulled out, put on his clothes and left.

Boris Johnson will have to give up his Telegraph column when he becomes Prime Minister next week, but it sounds as if he’s already built a new media relationship with The Times – having engaged in some rather vigorous back-and-forth with which one of its writers?

David Beckham officially launched his content/media company, Studio 99, last week – a new enterprise co-founded with his mate Dave Gardner (aka Mr Liv Tyler) and his new PR BFF Nicola Howson as MD.

If they’re hoping to be taken seriously in the content-generating biz though, Nicola might want to tidy up her old Twitter account sooner rather than later. Having a stream of photos of Kevin Spacey from 2015 at the top of your timeline doesn’t really send out the message that your finger is right on the pulse.

Especially the one that Kevin labelled with the caption “He’s behind you!”

PD writes:
“Re, the tale of McCririck and Savile tickling the palms of ladies while shaking their hands: I regret to inform you that Su Pollard also does this to young lads that she takes a shine to.

“I met her at a chat-show afterparty some 20+ years ago, having been goaded by a mate into approaching her for an autograph. I introduced myself by shaking hands with her and had my palm stroked, while Su cheerily advised me of her hotel and room number and an open invite.”

Can the celebrity version of X Factor save the franchise for Simon Cowell and ITV? If Brendan Cole and Jeremy Edwards are the kind of names they’ve secured as contestants then we’ve got to say the odds aren’t great.

But it’s not just Cowell struggling. Karaoke TV shows the world over are suffering the same. Diane Rouvas, who won the Australian version of The Voice earlier this month, has just seen her winner’s single miss out on a spot in the ARIA top 500 chart. Estimates suggest it sold just 300 copies. Even getting the winning judge, Boy George, to tweet out a Spotify link to his 460k followers only managed to muster up about 8,000 streams.

It’s embarrassing, but not nearly as bad as what might have happened if fellow finalist Zeek Power had won. The song they chose for him to sing in the Grand Final?

Michael Jackson’s Earth Song.

Broadcast, the TV industry news source, recently made the decision to scrap the ability to leave anonymous comments underneath articles on their website.

They aren’t the first site to clamp down on trolls in this manner – but there’s a rumour going around in TV circles that the decision was made because loads of anti-Channel 4 comments appeared to be coming from one user in particular.

Someone they have a sneaking suspicion is ex-C4 controller, Jay Hunt.

This time next week, it is highly likely that Boris Johnson will be Prime Minister of the UK – even after his prediction that nobody would ever “elect a prat who gets stuck on a zipwire”.

One of our readers went on that same zipwire the day after that little photo opportunity. In the course of making small talk while she was being fastened into her harness, our reader made a passing joke to the two operators that she hoped she wouldn’t get stuck like Boris had – which caused the operators to roll their eyes.

They then explained that if Johnson really had got ‘accidentally’ stuck, then they would have had to shut the ride down immediately as it wouldn’t have been safe. Confused, she asked why it had happened if it wasn’t an accident, and they told her “because he asked us to do it”.

She didn’t get a chance to ask if it was Boris or someone from Boris’s team who made the request before her descent – but she made it down the line without getting left to dangle. As did everybody else that day.

A new Eastside/Westside hip-hop beef is emerging – but this time it’s between East Sussex and West Sussex.

As we mentioned at the start of the year, a resident of Newhaven, East Sussex, managed to raise £1,500 after getting permission from the local council to erect a park bench in tribute to the late NWA rapper, Eazy-E.

Now it looks as if rap fans in Lancing, West Sussex, are firing back. Having flouted council regulations, they have installed an unlicensed memorial plaque to Tupac Shakur on a bench at the Monks Recreation Ground. In what appears to be a deliberate attempt to stoke up tensions, they’ve also scrawled the words “Fuck You, Newhaven” underneath it.

It has since been removed, but quite how the proposed renaming of Worthing Pier to “Wu-Tang” Pier will go down is currently anyone’s guess.

[Read more about it here]

After Donald Trump ratcheted up the racist rhetoric this week, there’s been a bit of talk from media pundits that this is a calculated ploy of Trump’s, played in order to distract attention from the close connections he has to the recently-rearrested sex offender (and alleged child trafficker) Jeffrey Epstein.

These so-called ‘Dead Cat’ tactics are all anyone is talking about these days, but is that what’s really happening here? We’ve taken a longer look at the situation – and thrown in a bit of talk about Max Clifford’s micropenis and Boris Johnson’s bus paintings for good measure too…

[Read ‘The Dead Cats Society’ on Popbitch]

Evangelical Christian disco mix, anyone?
[Hear Divine Disco]

Johnny Vegas, Asim Chaudhry, Jack Carroll and Antonio Aakeel star in the British comedy Eaten By Lions, out on digital download Monday 22nd July and DVD 29th.
[Get your funny fix here]

The Pigeon Movie Database
[Visit PMdB]

Meet the grunting gimp of Claverham
[Read on the Mirror]

Local News Of The Week: randy badgers edition
[Gloucester Live]

Everything you wanted to know about Pet Shop Boys but were afraid to ask
[PSB analysis]

New Tuxedo album is out tomorrow – great summer vibes
[Hear The Tuxedo Way]

Still Bored?
Tickets for next Tuesday’s Popbitch Popquiz are almost all gone, but if you want to get in ahead of the crowds for Tuesday 6th August (our last quiz of the summer) sign yourself up now.
[Info and tickets here]