The Daily Tonic: The Louis Spence Shuffle

Yesterday was the 50th birthday of 90s It Girl and media personality Dani Behr. Though she has since left the world of UK showbiz for American real estate, Dani will always hold a special place in the heart of Popbitch for her personal contributions to the world of celebrity weirdness.

Better known in the business as “Mountie” (because she always got her man) one of Dani’s more famous boyfriends was Les Ferdinand – whose ‘thing’ was to have her dress up as Princess Diana in the bedroom.

In fact, that whole relationship was tremendously romantic. One reader remembers the day they were sat with Dani’s agent as they picked up the phone to their client. Dani was calling from a hotel just minutes after having shagged Les for the first time.

The purpose of the call? Purely to tell her agent just how huge Les’s wang was.

The world of showbusiness is filled with all sorts of little rituals, routines and customs. Some of them are individual, some of them are industry-wide. We want to know which famous people engage in them and when.

Today’s Question: Which celebrities do you know of who have their own superstitions?

Send your stories of strange showbiz observances to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll give out some PB goody bundles to the best of them.

MW writes:
“I approached famously bubbly, fun Louie Spence at a video game event at the height of his fame a decade or so ago.

“Me: Hi Louie, are you a gaming fan then?

“Louie: [groans, eyerolls to companion, doesn’t crack a smile] Oh yeah, yeah, what shall I say, I’ve got really fucking good wrist action because of all the wanking? [makes wanker sign, sneers] There you go, will that do?”

“Keen to get something in the can in case he abruptly ended the interview, I waited until the final question of the allotted time before bringing the subject up. Seagal gave some long-winded guff about practising Eastern meditation, respecting his fellow man and how all his film sets were a calm oasis of yin and yang.

“As he finished his answer and the moment the camera red light went off he turned to a nearby PR man and said ‘Yo, shithead. Get my lunch.’

“Classy.”

JC writes:
“I used to be a reporter on the Leicester Mercury. In the late 1990s, the Leicester City manager Martin O’Neill was being linked with Leeds and the paper launched a campaign to persuade him to stay.

“The news editor told me to get some celebs to back it. So after working my way through the usual Leicester Mercury list (Bill Maynard, the singer of Showaddywaddy, the long-suffering David Attenborough) I decided to ring Barbara Cartland, not really expecting to get through.

“She was only too happy to talk. ‘In the days when I would dance all night, I used to enjoy football,’ she said. ‘Of course he should stay.’

“Then things took an odd turn. ‘The Germans are taking over our hotels,’ she said, with sudden urgency. ‘Only you can stop them.’

“We left it there.”

Each of the songs in this, your 107th audio quiz, features a comedian – either as the lead or featured artist.

Some of them are serious. Others are charity embarrassments. A couple fall somewhere in between. It’s your job to name the track (for one point) and the comedian/s involved (for another point).

There’s ten songs, which means twenty points in total.

[Play it here]

Why are Linkin Park T-shirts everywhere in China?
[A Wired investigation]

Indie bands playing weird covers
[Hear on Soundcloud]

Fun conspiracy theory of the week: Is Ghislaine Maxwell secretly one of the world’s most influential Redditors?
[A brief primer]