The Daily Tonic: Calm Before The Storm

After Sean Connery turned up his toes at the weekend, a lot of people have asked us to pay tribute to him with the famous story of his greatest celebrity conquest. We’ll get to that in due course, but while we were digging it out we found a couple of other stories about stars offering up similarly immortal lines.

So, as a little distraction before we hit what’s bound to be a gruelling week of news, here they are.

And if you have any stories of meeting a huge celebrity icon, only to hear them say something properly bizarre to you, email us: hello@popbitch.com. We’ll send a digital goody bag out to our favourites.

X writes:
“When I was younger, I worked on a CD-ROM called Charlton Heston’s Voyage Through The Bible. We had loads of press down to meet the man and, despite my initial concerns, he was a pleasant chap. During the day, I popped into the toilet and noticed there was no toilet paper. A few minutes later, Charlton asked me where the restroom was. I pointed him in the right direction and watched him shuffle off. Then the thought struck me.

“I stopped him just as he reached the door. ‘Hi, this is a bit awkward, but I just wanted to mention that there’s no toilet paper in that restroom. Hang on and I’ll pop back and get some for you.”

“Seeming to grow in size and stature, he paused, put his hand on my shoulder and leaned towards me. The voice of God boomed loudly: ‘Son, that won’t be necessary for what I’m about to do.'”

FM writes:
“At the Cannes Film Festival in 1996, Mark Wahlberg took my friend back to the Hotel du Cap. They were having a swim in the pool later when Mark decided to kiss her.

“As he leant in to do so, he said: ‘You remind me so much of my sister.'”

Anthony Bourdain used to tell a story of his days working in a restaurant at the top of New York’s Trump Plaza.

One night while Bourdain was working, Frank Sinatra made an appearance, sang a few songs for the people there – and then disappeared to the bathroom.

Bourdain followed him in a few minutes later, and quickly noticed a pair of high heels visible underneath a cubicle door. At which point he heard Ol’ Blue Eyes utter the words:

“It’s the Empire State Building, baby! Suck it!”

When Gazza was at Lazio he once paid for his mate Jimmy Five Bellies to pay him a visit; Jimmy’s first trip out of the country. Raring to go, Jimmy arrived at Heathrow to collect his ticket only to find that, rather than being booked on a flight to Rome, he had been booked on one to Munich instead.

Not to worry, he was told, the ticket for the next leg of his flight to Rome would be at the ticket desk at Munich airport. Only the next ticket turned out to be to Copenhagen, with a similar instruction attached.

All in, Jimmy was sent to 10 different airports in a series of flights taking more than two days. The footballer responded to Jimmy’s baffled calls by telling him that this was how international air travel always worked.

To mark the new month, today’s ten tracks were all November No.1s in the UK charts at some point in the last 50 years. All you have to do is name the same song and the artist/s you can hear performing it. You get a point for each of those, which – across ten songs – amounts to twenty points in total.

[Play it here]

A thread of low-key Japanese Halloween costumes 2020
[Keep scrolling for the zookeeper]

Good news: All those otter videos we send might be good for your health
[See on CNN]

A New Yorker long read on what might happen with Trump’s lawsuits if he loses
[If you’ve got the will]