The Daily Tonic: Way Out West

Famous people can often be quite particular about the way you address them. For example, Lauryn Hill makes it very clear that staff are only ever to call her ‘Ms Hill’. Ben Kingsley is famously pissy if people dare drop the ‘Sir’ from his name (so much so that even his kids, half-jokingly, call him “Sir Dad”).

But king of them all was Ennio Morricone. Before he sat for an interview, he would have his people send out an email informing the interviewer to address him only as… “Maestro”.

Today we want to know about the most eccentric celebrities you’ve ever had dealings with. Who was charming? Who was creepy? Who was inexplicably batshit?

Bizarre habits, outsized personalities, intriguing behaviour – whatever it was that made them stand out, we want to know about it.

Send your tales of curious celebs to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll dish out some goody bundles to the best.

We take one day off and Kanye West announces he’s running for president. Obviously it doesn’t come as a huge surprise, as Kanye’s floated the idea for a while now, but if there’s one person capable of causing more daily drama in the White House than Trump, it’s Ye.

Like Trump, Kanye is guided purely by impulse and doesn’t much care for anyone who tries to stymie his ideas. During a production meeting for the Watch The Throne tour, Kanye became obsessed with the idea of him and Jay-Z opening the show by flying into the venue from outside and landing on the stage, ready to start the first song.

Much to Jay-Z’s annoyance, Kanye kept bringing it up and wouldn’t drop it even though he was continually told that, no, it wouldn’t be possible to remove the roof from Madison Square Garden for the sake of their two-night residency.

Kanye’s impulsive nature could easily result in a serious international situation too. When he was recording in Uganda a few years ago, he asked his security team to arrange a trip for him to get out of the studio and see a bit more of the country.

But just a few hours into the trip, Kanye became agitated and demanded to be flown back to his studio complex again. As night was falling and his security guys didn’t know the region too well, they told him they couldn’t secure a plane back that quickly and guarantee his safety, so he would have to wait until morning.

Kanye baulked at that, so went ahead and made his own plans, sourcing some local guys who told him that they could get him out easily (at great expense). Alarmed their world-famous client was about to pay a huge sum to an unknown, unvetted company to travel cross-country with them, his security team refused to let him leave – resulting in a huge Tarantino-esque stand-off between both sets of security.

The stand-off went on for so long that morning finally arrived – by which time Kanye’s agitation had thankfully subsided.

Today’s audio quiz is a little different. There’s still ten songs all chopped up and stitched together as normal – but instead of identifying the 70s/80s original you’re hearing, we want you to identify the 90s/00s dance track* that used it as a sample.

For example, the first track you’ll hear is Camille Yarbrough’s Take Yo’ Praise. You don’t get any points for knowing that, but you’ll get one point if you can get the name of the artist who sampled the line and a second point if you can get the song it’s sampled in.

[Make sense?]

* One of them was released in 1989. No letters, please.

Pet Shop Boys have remastered some of their old videos
[See on YouTube]

Shape Of You arranged for calculators
[Listen on YouTube]

For those of you who have been playing Animal Crossing New Horizons in lockdown…
[A ska-jazz cover of the theme]