The Daily Tonic: The Leicester Special

The original purpose of these daily editions was to alleviate the boredom of lockdown. With Leicester being singled out for a new round of rule-tightening, we figured it might be nice to feature a few stories of local interest for our readers locked down there.

For example, the story about how the longstanding collaboration between Gary Lineker and Walkers – two Leicester powerhouses – almost didn’t happen.

Local crisp rivals Golden Wonder had been chipping away at Lineker trying to make him a brand associate for years before he went with Walkers. One of the ways GW had tried to cement the relationship in the early 80s was by luring Lineker to their head office in Market Harborough and getting him to judge their “Miss Golden Wonder” contest.

All of the company’s departments had picked out a lady to put forward for the final and then told Gary it was up to him to pick the winner. Surprised, and a little flustered, Gary made his excuses and left.

(But not before choosing the rep from Personnel.)

Leicester’s other great footballing hero is goalkeeper, broadcaster and keen lizard-spotter, David Icke.

During his turquoise tracksuit days, a Popbitch reader crossed paths with Icke after one of his lectures. She was working at the venue rather than attending the talk, but when she came in to clear up the dressing room she thought he’d vacated, Icke mistook her for a diehard fan who’d muscled her way backstage.

Not that he was annoyed by the intrusion. In fact, his reaction was to tell her that she was prettier than most of his other fans, before offering her a free copy of The Truth Vibrations.

The late Richard Attenborough had a long association with the city of Leicester, but he famously kept a home on the Isle of Bute.

Whenever new police officers started work on the island, it was something of a tradition for the station to pretend that the alarm for Dickie’s house had rung. The new officer would then be dispatched to the house to check everything was OK as a “precaution”.

But it was mainly a cover so that they could gawp at all the Jurassic Park memorabilia he kept there.

After yesterday’s mention of Iggy Pop, someone emailed us to tell us that Iggy’s work has appeared in an academic journal. Classics Ireland published his reflections on Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Which got us thinking…

Today’s Question: Which other celebs have unexpected academic credentials?

Whatever form they take (official or otherwise) tell us about superstars with a sideline in academia and we’ll send some PB goodies to the best: hello@popbitch.com

ulysses writes:
“Me and Mark Labbett from The Chase were on University Challenge for our respective universities back in 1996. All the teams were staying in the same hotel, and me and The Beast got into the same lift together. I was standing nearer to the control panel so pressed the buttons in the proper manner to get to our floors, but he kept insisting quite vehemently that I’d done it wrong.

“And even when the lift correctly delivered him to his floor with no let or hindrance, he let out a massive sigh like everyone else in the world was an idiot but him and chucked me serious daggers for the rest of the time we were filming there.”

Today’s ten tracks are a sort of grab bag of leftovers: songs we thought might fit well into rounds, but never quite found space for. So as we wave goodbye to June, we’re just cramming them all into one and moving on.

There are ten points on offer for guessing all the artists correctly (one each) and another ten points for getting the song titles (also one each). That’s twenty points in total.

[Play it here]

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