The Daily Tonic: Swedehearts

Back when we started this daily edition, we promised we’d reveal a few answers to some of the Big Questions we’d posed over the years. Hearing all your stories of writing to celebs reminded us of one.

About ten years ago, a primary school class sent off letters to celebrities with a picture of a lifeboat which they asked the stars to colour in. As the days went on, pupils started to get letters back, which they all opened in class. Paul O’Grady sent the picture back featuring his dog, Buster, and David Tennant’s was particularly good too. But which Newsnight presenter caused one little girl to cry?

As she opened the envelope, her letter and lifeboat picture fell out. Untouched and uncoloured, with nothing else.

(Answer: it was Jeremy Paxman.)

Thank you very much for all your stories of celebrity correspondence. There was a secondary theme threaded through some of them that we found quite interesting, so we’re going to follow that up today.

Today’s Question: Has a celebrity ever helped you out with a project? School, university, charity, community, some sort of surprise for a friend, etc. Whatever the project, we want to know.

Tell us about the stars who lent you a hand at hello@popbitch.com and we’ll send a goody bag to our favourite ones.

Cressida1979 writes:
“It was the mid-90s, I was 16 and heavily into Britpop – especially the band Pulp. I was also an aspiring guitarist. I decided to write to the lead guitarist from Pulp, Russell Senior. On paper, with a pen, posted with an actual stamp to the Pulp fan club address. I told him about my hopes to form an indie band and also about the A-levels I was studying for.

“He sent an encouraging response with some chords he’d written for me to try out and some musings on his own geography A-level, including a drawing of an oxbow lake. What a lovely bloke.”

JC writes:
“When I was around 8 years old my best friend and I wrote a letter addressed to ‘Our Postman’ on the street in Stockholm where we were living. We said a few things about ourselves, probably along the lines of ‘We love ice cream, crisps and our favourite band is Roxette’.

“A few weeks later we get a lovely reply from the postwoman and a signed picture of Roxette! Turns out her brother was their sound guy (or something like that) and she had called in a favour for us. The signatures were in biro and we thought you couldn’t see them properly so traced them in with black marker pen, thus ruining it.”

CP writes:
“I once wrote to Adam Ant when he split from the other ‘Ants’ to exclaim my disgust and disappointment. I expressed a hope that the remaining ‘Ants’ got their revenge on him. I was eight at the time.

“He wrote a very sweet letter back explaining that it was a harmonious split, enclosed a signed photo and hoped I liked his new solo single, Goodie Two Shoes. I didn’t.”

If you thought your AirMiles were turning out to be worthless, that’s nothing compared the Popbitch Audio Round points you’ve been accruing. 75 rounds means a potential total of 1,500 points (more if you played the bonus Will Smith sample quiz) all amounting to nothing.

Still, we push on.

You get a point for identifying each song, a point for identifying each artist. There’s ten songs; twenty points – and, this time, all the answers are questions.

[Audio Round #75]

Star Wars redubbed with Cardi B doing sound effects
[See on Digg]

Nominative Determinism of the Day: Designing the gardens of Hackney… Jenny Bloom
[See here]

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