The Daily Tonic: Trail Blazin’

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[Find your calm here]

A quick dose of gossip, smut and silliness Subscribe

* Keane to impress!

* Pippa’s placement!

* PLUS: A new audio round

>> Dog’s dinner <<

A slight change in menu

In this era of fake news, it’s more important than ever that we strive for accuracy and fairness. As such, we’d like to start today’s issue by handing things over to an Edinburgh correspondent.
boab writes:

“Just to correct your story of the Robbie Coltrane special available at L’Alba D’Oro in Edinburgh. The menu seems to have grown arms and legs over the years. The original order placed by Robbie was double fish supper, drowned in salt and vinegar, two pickled onions and ‘a black pudding, for the dug’.
“The owners then watched Coltrane eat the whole lot outside the chippy in his vintage convertible car with the roof down. There was no sign of any dog.”

There’s a pub in Reading called the Fox and Hounds which has a plaque commemorating the time a proto-Beatles Paul McCartney and John Lennon played a couple of gigs there in 1960. The name of the chippy two doors down? Wings.

>> Track stars <<

Question of the day

Today’s Question: Have you ever seen a celebrity doing karaoke? What was their song of choice? Were they any good? Have you done a duet with anyone interesting?
Tell us your stories of celebrity karaoke choices and we’ll send out some goody bundles to the best of them: hello@popbitch.com

O writes: “I used to be a PA at a popular TV listings magazine in the early 00s. I took over from a very friendly and charming young man who was a drummer in a band. He was a temp in the role while he plugged away trying to hit the big time. Which they did. Thank you Richard from Keane, your handover notes were perfect!”

>> Trail blazin’ <<

You reep what you sow

JH writes:

“My first proper job was at a media company, where we’d often have people in to do work experience. Around 2007 I was given the CV of a young guy who wanted to come and see what we did for a few weeks. It turned out to be Stuart Baker, aka Reepa from Blazin’ Squad, looking at new career options after the group’s popularity had started to cool.
“He was very sweet, and patient too – shrugging off a colleague’s attempts to embarrass him by playing Crossroads at full volume. He did ruffle a few feathers among the men, but only because he was so popular with the women in the office – and any pubs we went to for work drinks.
“The experience obviously helped, as last I heard he had a great role at the BBC.”

DC writes: “I looked after Josh Widdicombe as work experience before he made it onto every panel show going. He was very nice, good at the job and broke his foot in the office five-a-side, meaning he did his second week on crutches. A year later, he was pretty much everywhere.”

>> Nick junior <<

The early days of Grimmy

CGB writes:

“When he started as an intern at MTV, I had to show Nick Grimshaw how to use some boring logging software. He didn’t manage to grasp even the basics, instead asking questions about which celebrities were coming in and looking around at who was walking past. This was pretty much the pattern for his entire internship.
“The way he tells it now, MTV didn’t renew his contract because he was such a wild child. The truth is, it was because he was as thick as shit.”

SJ writes: “Back in his pre-fame days my mum worked in the big Co-Op call centre in Manchester on the same team as Jason Manford. She was very shocked when he abruptly left to do stand-up full time as she didn’t think he was funny at all.”

>> Royal appointment <<

Friends in skive places

J writes:

“Pippa Middleton was my intern for the day. She’d been passed around departments and if she’d ended up in mine it’s likely she hadn’t particularly endeared herself in the other, more respected departments.
“Part of my role involved looking after new interns. Struggling to think what she could do, I got her to phone around glossy magazines to get rate cards. It was a job that could be done in under an hour, but it took her all afternoon. When I went to check why it was taking so long a colleague told me that while she had been calling magazines, rather than speaking to advertising, she’d mainly been chatting to friends who worked at them.”

DT writes: “I was taught Design Technology by former child actor Oliver Rokison, who played William of Just William in the 90s BBC series. Quite a good teacher but occasionally a really irritating twat. Mostly nice, though.”

>> Quarantunes <<

Ten more mixed-up tracks

We know you know the rules by now. It’s just this section looks a little weird without some sort of introduction. So if you’ll excuse us repeating ourselves…
There are ten songs. That means twenty points on offer. One for the artist; one for the title.
[Here you go]

Popbitch Popquizzes are still available from the Popbitch website if you’re in need of something to do this weekend. All the questions, answers, materials and instructions you need to host your own version of our infamous pub quiz are contained within each. [Check them out here]

>> Hmmms <<

A few things for the weekend

Dave Chappelle’s 8:46

[A free 30 minute special]
Want to see an otter’s pocket?

[See on Twitter]
Criminals in Evesham beware…

[Headline of the weekend]

Thanks to: boab, albert_o’balsam, O, JH, DC, CGB, SJ, J, DT gentlemanthug – and everyone who has sent us an email these past few weeks.

Old Jokes Home

I was going to tell a time-travelling joke, but you didn’t like it.

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