The Daily Tonic: Priti Fly (For A White Lie)

As allegations of Priti Patel’s bullying get swept under the carpet, maybe now we should address the other dangling scandal concerning her?

A common line in profiles about Priti Patel is that she went to Watford Grammar School for Girls with Liz Kendall and Geri Halliwell. As this claim has appeared in a number of established publications, there’s plenty of sources for Wikipedia to cite. Wikipedia then gets plundered by journalists looking to crib details for their articles – and the cycle continues.

But Priti didn’t go to Watford Grammar School for Girls. What’s more, she knows this mistake is causing issues for the school but won’t do anything to help. WGGS has complained to her constituency office, trying to get Priti to clear up the matter so they don’t have to keep fielding inquiries but the most her office has done is send a reply apologising for any confusion, claiming to be powerless to correct the editorial content of media outlets.

The one place that could provide some clarity – Priti’s own website – is curiously vague on the matter as well, saying she was “educated at a comprehensive girls school in Watford” but not actually going so far as to name it.

Maybe it’s weird of us to care about this. But is it any more weird than the UK’s Home Secretary knowingly letting a fib circulate that she was at school with a Spice Girl?

We’ve had film, we’ve had TV. Now, to round out the third part of the Set Pieces trilogy, we want to hear your stories from the sets of the stage. West End, Broadway, regional tours, fringe productions, school plays – we want to know what was happening backstage, in rehearsals, in the wings, or wherever.

Today’s Question: What are your best celebrity theatre anecdotes?

Send your tales of the theatre to us at hello@popbitch.com – and we’ll dole out some goody bundles in return for our favourites.

gotsmanov writes:
“I once spoke to a grizzled old film and TV producer at a party who told me that in his several decades in the industry the single biggest cunt (his words) he had ever had the misfortune to work with was Jimmy Nail.

“He told the story of how Jimmy once humiliated a young runner because she hadn’t precisely lined up the pages of his script before stapling them together, then successfully demanded that she be sacked.”

tabloidwhore writes:
“I worked on a very bad low budget film with Keith Allen in the early 90s, called Beyond Bedlam. Keith insisted on bringing his precocious kids, Lily and Alfie, on set. They tormented the production staff no end.

“It culminated in one of them tearing the innards out of the photocopier and destroying it. As the production staff approached them, Keith’s spawn started screaming it wasn’t their fault. Keith rocked up and backed up his kids to the hilt. No-one could afford to lose him from the shoot, so everyone had to back down and apologise to the children. And from then on write out hand-written script changes and production notes for the whole crew, until the budget could stretch to a new photocopier.

“Nice to see them doing so well in the business now…”

bendandstretch writes:
“Many years ago I was producing a live TV show for Granada’s satellite TV in Manchester. Our studio had a glass back wall looking out onto a lovely garden next to the Coronation Street set that made the studio look much better than the budget would otherwise allow.

“One morning, halfway through an item, I heard the director fuming at a cameraman: ‘What do you MEAN I can’t cut to your wide?’ Three seconds later we went to a VT and the camera in question zoomed in through the back glass wall to reveal Charles Lawson (Jim McDonald off of Corrie) walking his dog in the garden – and the dog was very obviously busy straining to squeeze out a particularly distressing shit.

“Our poor floor manager had to leg it out of the studio to warn the actor that he and his constipated canine were in danger of being on live telly to an audience of literally hundreds.

“Charles was simultaneously embarrassed and furious, muttering that this was ‘…the fucking Coronation Street garden.'”

As we’ve done a TV theme audio round previously (you can play it here) today’s ten tracks are a round of November No.1s.

Each of the ten songs was a UK number one hit in the month of November at some point in the last 50 years. You just have to names the titles (a point each) and the recording artists (a second point) each. Ten songs gives a potential of twenty points on offer – each of them functionally worthless.

[Play it here]

Hairdressers’ expert opinions on what was dripping down Rudy Giuliani’s head
[Read on NYTimes]

Local news of the day: Man-Sized Pothole Edition
[Read on Manchester Evening News]

An archive of BBC show’s title sequences
[A huge nostalgia trip]