The Daily Tonic: International Scandal

Being proactive about your health has never been more important. Thriva has nifty little blood tests that can give you peace of mind, help nip small issues in the bud and track your lifestyle changes. Do your test at home, pop it in the post and get your results within 48 hours. Each kit can test your iron levels, vitamin D, cholesterol, thyroid function and more. Code POPSEPT10 gets you 10% off.

[Order your kit today]

A quick dose of gossip, smut and silliness Subscribe

* Vorderman on Vorderman!

* Eamonn’s dinky shield!

* PLUS: A stage school audio round

>> Van outing <<

An international scandal

The latest crusty old rocker to start kicking off about face-masks is Van Morrison. We should have known he’d get grumpy when international travel started getting curtailed and group socialising was stripped back.
It’s been a long-standing legend from Van’s touring days that his after-show entertainment of choice was something known as “The United Nations”: three ladies, each from a different continent.
No wonder he’s so miffed.

Van Morrison is one of Jim Davidson’s top three most hated acts of all time. The other two are Coldplay and Sade.

>> Killer gossip <<

Question of the day

With all the Dennis Nilsen chat that’s been doing the rounds over the last week or so, we’ve been reminded of a strange bit of gossip we heard when Nilsen died a few years back: that one person who had an unexpectedly close shave with Des, managing to make a lucky escape from his clutches, was 80s pop legend Limahl.
So today’s question is a bit of a two-parter:
a/ Has anyone else ever heard this story?
b/ Do you have any other bits of strangely plausible half-gossip kicking around that you swear you’ve heard but never had confirmed?
Let us know on hello@popbitch.com and we’ll try to investigate some of the more interesting ones.

SW writes: “When working in PR at a corporate education company in 2010, we met with Carol Vorderman to discuss a maths campaign. She arrived in full TV make up and spoke about herself in the third person the entire time.”

>> Wheel discreet <<

How to make an arrival

anon writes:

“I used to work for a very upmarket car dealership in Surrey and we had sold a car to Prince Naseem Hamed. When it was ready to collect he insisted that we stay open after hours as he was ‘too famous’ and couldn’t possibly turn up during the working day as he would ‘attract far too much attention’.
“A couple of us stayed back until 7pm to do the handover for him. Nas eventually turns up with a six-car entourage of SUVs with blacked-out windows. All of his ‘people’ caused almost all of the traffic on the dual carriageway to come to a halt to see what the hell was going on.”

Prince Naseem used to live in the house upon which Lara Croft’s manor in the Tomb Raider games was based.

>> Justice4Sarah <<

Eamonn’s dinky shield

OF writes:

“A very long time ago I worked at the Piccadilly Circus branch of HMV. One of my co-workers there was Sarah Cawood, who was entirely lovely and absolutely dinky.
“She’s probably best known for co-presenting the mid-week National Lottery draws on BBC1 with Eamonn Holmes. In particular the evening in May 2006 when a group of Fathers4Justice protesters invaded the studio and Eamonn Holmes demonstrated his innate gallantry by using her as a human shield.
“A moment saved for posterity here.”

A writes: “Comedy actor Steve Furst is, in public and with friends, a silk director’s scarf-wearing, fey voiced, wrist-flopping, dyed-in-the-stage-curtains luvvie – with no hint of his Orange cinema ad or Annually Retentive everyman to be seen. Not even a single laddish glottal stop.”

>> Quarantunes <<

#139: Stage School Kids

The ten tracks in today’s audio quiz all come courtesy of ex-students of the famous Sylvia Young stage school. As ever, you get a point for identifying each of the artists and a further point for any of the song titles you correctly name.
That’s a grand total of twenty points on offer.
[Play it here]

POPBITCH POPQUIZZES: Now that the Rule Of Six has put the kibosh on face-to-face socialising for a bit, it’s back to Zoom we go. So if you want to host a Popbitch Popquiz with friends from the Covid-safety of your sofa, we’ve got some all ready to go. Just £5 each, or find a bargain bundle.

[Take a look here!]

>> Hmmms <<

Some things for the weekend

Wanna buy Billy Connolly’s old snooker table?

[See on eBay]
Van Halen’s Jump, arranged for cat and right hand

[See on Instagram]
Edgar Wright remembers Diana Rigg

[Read on Guardian]

Thanks to: C, RH, SW, anon, OF, MT, LEW, A

Old Jokes Home

Just read a great book about an immortal dog.

It was impossible to put down.

Fancy Another?