The Five Minute Encore

It seems that the golden age of celebrity chat-up lines may finally be over. Not because of #MeToo, but because the new breed of Hollywood A-listers have developed a subtle new method of seduction that they prefer to use.

The hottest trick among LA’s most eligible bachelors? Wearing a fake wedding ring on nights out. Rather than warding women off, there’s a pack of them who are convinced it makes them all the more irresistible to ladies.

Many of you were charmed by last week’s story about Bill Nighy stopping to help a reader locate the disposable fork in their Tesco pasta salad, before wishing a cheery ‘Bon appetit!’ – so here’s another.

A few years ago, Bill Nighy had an appointment at the Radio 2 studios. He walked into Wogan House, introduced himself at reception and was invited to take a seat.

“No thanks,” he told the receptionist. “I’m just going to stand here and stare at people.”

No sarcasm. No malice. Just Bill Nighy, being Bill Nighy.

Which former children’s TV host may have knocked a good seven years off his age on his Bumble profile – but will make it up to any ladies who match with him with “OK” sex and “a huge dick”?

If you haven’t signed up to our daily lockdown mailout to take the edge off self-isolation yet, then you’ve missed another great week of weirdness. Business with the Vengaboys, midnight run-ins with Christopher Biggins, Jade Jagger’s ad hoc taxi dispatch – and loads more.

As the daily editions aren’t that long, we can’t fit everything we want to in there, so here are a few of the bits we held back to share in the weekly.

[Sign up for The Daily Tonic]

In yesterday’s daily, we asked people to tell us about the best secret celebrity identities they could unveil.

A writes:

“I used to work at a hotel in London where Pink often stayed. She liked to use the definitive celeb alias: Mike Hunt.

“Employees were required to use a celeb’s alias when speaking about them, so there were quite a few incredible staff meetings where her rider was discussed. Nothing compares to watching a humourless manager inform their staff that “Mike Hunt would like a dozen white roses and some chamomile tea.”

In Tuesday’s daily, we asked if anyone knew of any pop stars who liked to serenade their conquests before, during or after sex.

M writes:

“I used to live below the lead singer of The Kooks and every couple of nights I’d hear him playing the guitar and singing for about 30 minutes. Then, like clockwork, this was followed by shagging noises and grunting. This encore performance lasted around five minutes, and there was never any applause from his audience.”

We made passing reference to Steven Seagal’s birthday in last Friday’s daily (along with a showbiz tale of him shitting his pants) but didn’t have the space to tell you this other tale of his time in the industry.

Seagal once put a call in to the casting director of a project he was lined up for, telling them that he was flying in to town and wanted a casting arranged for young Asian women. The casting director went through the script a couple of times, but couldn’t find any role that matched the one Seagal seemed so keen on seeing people for.

So they called Seagal to ask what he was talking about and Seagal replied that he didn’t care about the roles, he just wanted a casting with young Asian women.

They left the project shortly after.

In any big break-up, there’s always one possession that gets tussled over. In the case of AMI and Dylan Howard, it’s been RadarOnline.

Poor Radar. It came from such ignoble beginnings – funded initially by Harvey Weinstein, then by Jeffrey Epstein – before ending up in David Pecker’s writhing crime pit: American Media, Inc.

Now Pecker and Howard are trying to palm it off on each other, because neither seems to want it. AMI tried to include it as part of his severance/shut-the-fuck-up package, but Dyldo refused it – and wisely so. As its outgoing editor, he knows better than anyone that he managed to tank its unique visitor count under 4,000 readers a month.

And with his gout playing up as much as it is at the minute, he’s just not going to have the headspace to turn those numbers around.

As so many of you seemed to enjoy last week’s Easter quiz, we thought we’d do you another.

With our regular pub quiz out of commission for the time being, we’re going to try to make weekly quizzes available to download instead. So if you want to host something with your friends, family or colleagues, then Popbitch can provide all the questions, answers and worksheets you need to play. (Just know that there’s the occasional question about celebrities sticking Alka Seltzers where they shouldn’t.)

This week’s edition contains trivia, music, puzzles, a celebrity seduction quiz and an exclusive audio round with a filthy hidden message. £5 gets you the whole lot, ready to play.

[Get this week’s Popbitch Popquiz]

Back in the 1980s Tim Brooke-Taylor agreed to meet the young child of a friend. The meeting had been dangled as a treat to the kid who had to be lured to visit Derbyshire in the middle of a particularly hellish winter with the promise of an introduction to a Goodie.

True to his word, Tim popped round to say hello to the young fan, only to see the child collapse into a fit of wails when he arrived.

“Nooooooo,” the kid yelled. “The beardy one! The funny one!”

How well would you do answering the Coughing Major’s Millionaire questions?
[Play on Twitter]

Ecstasy paperweights
[See on Bandt]

Cute animal news! A zonkey has been born!
[Look at it!]

Denise Welch as confectionary
[See the thread]

Jarvis Cocker’s domestic disco playlist
[Hear on Spotify]

Disinfecting the Siberian streets with a jet engine
[See on SBS]

“Me being normal — that’s not even a true statement”
[Kanye West in GQ]

Still Bored?
We know times are tight, so if you want some free Popbitch mini-quizzes, we’ve been running an audio round every day in the Daily Tonic
[There’s an archive here]