The Daily Tonic: Knightshade

Whatever we were expecting from Dominic Cummings’ rose garden press conference, never in our wildest dreams did we think we were going to be able to add “I took a 60 mile roundtrip to Barnard Castle to test my eyesight” to the index of excellent celebrity excuses.

In its honour, we want to hear your favourites too.

Today’s Question: What is the best excuse a celebrity has ever given in defence of their ill-judged actions?

Whether they’re widely known or cult classics, we want to hear them all. Send your best to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll dish out some goodies to the ones that get the biggest laughs out of us.

Rod Stewart has had a lifelong passion (one shared by many) for drawing penises on pretty much any surface he can find.

He once drew a lovely set of them all across McFly’s passports on a flight to Dublin. When the boys asked him how they were supposed to explain these crudely drawn dobbers to the immigration officials who checked their papers, Rod suggested they use this excuse:

“Turn it into a tree and say that your three year old did it.”

NR writes:
“I was in sixth form with David Warburton (Tory MP for Somerton and Frome). He was a pleasant and slightly gormless figure – except behind a keyboard, where he was a genius.

“He joined the unlikely school band for 1983-4, with the unbeatable name of Snail’s Migration, who were unapologetically prog and played 12-minute jams with titles like ‘Green Mountain Vegetable Ointment’.

“They were good – very good – so it did not surprise me to find out that David had gone on to great success as a composer and musician. It absolutely did that he went into business and politics.”

claret_badger writes:
“In the early 2000s I was at a Charlton vs West Ham game on a cold Monday night in SE London. Urinating next to me in the away end toilets of this fine establishment was none other than Macaulay Culkin. He took a phonecall mid-piss so I could confirm it was him not some doppelganger.

“I think he was there as a friend of Elijah Wood, who had developed a taste for West Ham’s below average football after doing the hooligan film Green Street. It was a strange place to see a Hollywood star on a Monday night!”

Seen a bigger celeb in a stranger situation? hello@popbitch.com

SM writes:
“We were in a nightclub once in Dublin when a group came in and one of the women looked just like Keira Knightley. Then we remembered she was filming the King Arthur movie nearby.

“She seemed in good form and was up on the dancefloor a lot. A friend of mine overheard us talking about Keira and her movies and got a bit jealous. So when Keira was on her way back to the bar from the dancefloor, our friend stopped her and said in quite an aggressive, dismissive tone, ‘These guys say you’re some famous Hollywood actress?’

“Keira’s comeback was: ‘I’m not a famous actress. But I am a really rich one.'”

We didn’t realise quite how much overlap there was about castles, driving, eyesight and birthdays in the modern pop repertoire – but our second Dominic Cummings themed audio round is made up of ten songs that cover exactly those topics.

You get one point for each artist you correctly identify and one for each song.

[Play it here]

Someone’s made 30 Miles To Barnard Castle for the PlayStation
[See it here]

The US Library of Congress is encouraging people to get sampling with a century’s worth of their royalty free recordings
[Citizen DJ]

Sweet profile of Steve Buscemi
[Read on GQ]

Sexy weasels in renaissance art
[What are they there for?]