The Daily Tonic: The Bluest Peter

For some reason, a lot of our favourite stories from July just involved famous people talking filth. So although we’ve asked this question before, it probably bears repeating as we’re clearly suckers for swearing.

Today’s Question: Who is the sweariest celebrity you’ve ever encountered?

And a subsidiary question, because our autocorrect just suggested it: Who is the sweatiest celebrity you’ve ever encountered?

Whichever one you have an answer to, send it to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll dish out some digital goodies to the best of them.

A tell-all biography of the Harry and Meghan “Megxit” incident made quite a splash in July when it was serialised in the Times, leading to a steady drip of Royal stories, including one in which Prince William supposedly warned Harry not to be “blinded by lust”.

If that’s what he actually said, William clearly has a more delicate sense of phrasing than Charles. When Harry pulled out of an event at the last minute a few years ago Charles asked organisers to excuse his son’s behaviour, explaining that Harry was just a little bit “cuntstruck” at the moment.

Back in July, we asked readers if they’d ever shared a lift with a celebrity. We mainly meant “lifts” as in “elevators” – but we’re glad we left it open-ended as it led to us getting this story…

pauline writes:
“Back in the 90s I was an intern at Lynne Franks PR. One of my jobs was to drive Anthea Turner from London to Birmingham where she had been paid to host an organ festival at the NEC (exactly as weird as it sounds).

“She was really friendly and the journey was a breeze but I was shocked by her constant swearing which was truly off the charts. It was incredibly jarring to hear a Blue Peter presenter ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ her way through an entire two hour drive.

“She slept the whole way back.”

ennuyee writes:
“Your story about how celebs like to be addressed made me think of a friend’s story from years ago. He was working a busy desk at New Line Cinema in New York in its heyday and a fellow with a ‘foreign accent’ called and asked to speak to his boss. The guy diligently asked the caller’s name and heard ‘Suryan’. He wasn’t too sure he was hearing such an exotic name right though, so asked Suryan how his name was spelled.

“To which the caller responded, ‘Sir Ian! Sir Ian Fucking McKellen!’

“Ever since, I can’t see McKellen without mentally inserting a ‘Fucking’ between his first and last name.”

Scandal struck the publishing world in July when author Mark Dawson was stripped of his Sunday Times Bestseller status after he let slip that he’d bought 400 copies of his own book to nudge his way into the top ten.

This sort of hustle has been standard in the music industry for decades though. In Boyzone’s heyday, there was a point where Ronan and co started getting a little cocky and began talking about ditching Louis Walsh, telling him that they had so many fans they didn’t need his help any more. So Louis marched the boys out to his car and popped open the boot. Inside were hundreds of copies of their latest single.

“There you are, boys,” said Louis, “Here are your ‘fans’.”

Our journey through the chart calender reaches July. Each of the ten songs in today’s audio quiz was a UK number one in the month of July at some point over the last 40-odd years. All you have to do is recall the title and artist of each.

There are two points at stake for each song (title and artist get you one each), with a maximum total of twenty points.

[Easy as pie]

Look out of strangers’ windows, all around the world
[Window Swap]

Debbie Harry’s isolated vocal on Rapture
[Listen on YouTube]

Crap jokes on stock images
[PunHub]