The Daily Tonic: Fairy Fingers

It’s a trite observation to make in 2020 that the news has been running rings around satire, but whoever it was at the Spectator that commissioned Alan Dershowitz to write the essay “The Ghislaine Maxwell I Know” a mere 24 hours after her arrest on suspected sex trafficking crimes deserves the fucking Mark Twain Award.

Second only to Prince Andrew as a character witness, Dershowitz – you may remember – is pretty heavily implicated in the wider Epstein sex-crimes case himself, so Ghislaine can’t have been overly thrilled to see him running so publicly to her defence.

We can’t imagine Sir Evelyn de Rothschild will be thanking him much either after Dershowitz identified him by name in the very first line as the one responsible for introducing the two of them.

Sir Evelyn really doesn’t like to be identified. Not according to his lawyers, anyhow.

J writes:
“I was the assistant on a photo shoot with Sharon Stone following her big burst of fame after Basic Instinct. She and I were talking right after we finished shooting her in one outfit and she was about to change into another.

“Rather than go into the dressing room to change, she stripped off, continuing the conversation the entire time. The same crew shot lots of fashion and were used to seeing models in various stages of undress. Still, it was surprising, since she was one of the biggest stars of that time.

“Her handler said, ‘You know, Sharon, there’s a dressing room right there.’ Stone just shrugged and said ‘Meh – anybody with five bucks has already seen it.'”

Had a naked run-in with a celeb? hello@popbitch.com

Yesterday we asked you for suggestions of who might be a suitable candidate for Popbitch to recommend for a knight/damehood. For some reason loads of you are keen to see Bernard Cribbins get the nod but, for services to pissing off Richard Branson, this is our leading choice so far…

BR writes:
“May I nominate Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath – the originator of heavy metal, and genuine national treasure. Along the way, he has blown up Richard Branson’s fish, painted his drummer Bill Ward gold from head to toe – and the band also set fire to Mr Ward on occasion.”

If you have a better suggestion of someone who deserves Popbitch’s nomination for a KBE, send it to us at hello@popbitch.com.

AB writes:
“The Tara Palmer-Tomkinson story (‘Sweaty, darling…’) reminded me of this occurrence years ago in a voiceover studio.

“TP-T came in to record a session and was shown into the recording booth, whereupon the agency folks spent a good five minutes instructing her what was required. At the end of the very detailed briefing, TP-T declared ‘Sorry, didn’t catch a word of that. I was just thinking how the shade of green on these walls would make a lovely colour for a handbag!'”

Today’s audio round is made up of classic American rock. For each of these ten songs from US rock bands, you get a point for naming the title and a point for naming the artist.

[Play it here]

Remember the Popbitch reader who made a Jarvis Cocker dummy for their GCSE art that Jarvis endorsed?
[They found a picture]

Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s life on the lam
[Read on Vanity Fair]