The Milk Of Human Weirdness

The rise and fall of Lee Cain these last 24 hours has been a strange thing to watch: lined up for a huge promotion at No.10 on Wednesday morning, only to hand in his resignation Wednesday night. So what happened?

The quote that’s doing the rounds in the papers from an unnamed Westminster source is “Sorry if this sounds sexist, but the women swapped notes to kill this off.” That may well be the case, but why was it women in particular who didn’t much care for him? Maybe these quotes from other unnamed Westminster sources will shed some light…

“Total lech.” / “Seen him try it on with three women at the same time.”

FYI: For balance, someone from the civil service says Cain is just “following in the tradition of his forebears, Craig Oliver and Damian McBride.”

There have been a few encouraging signs over the last week that the world might slowly be returning to normal. Trump’s days are all but numbered, there’s the prospect of an effective vaccine on the horizon, and – perhaps most important of all – Geri Halliwell has an absolutely batshit new project in the pipeline.

Over the weekend, Geri debuted her new YouTube series that she’s written and directed: Rainbow Woman – the first episode of which sees her delivering a monologue in character as Elizabeth I…

[Nature is healing]

Which salt-of-the-earth singer-songwriter has a few more airs and graces than he lets on? He once offered to pay for an ex-girlfriend to take elocution lessons, to sand off the rougher edges of her South African accent.

Kirstie Alley is one of the few celebrities to have been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, backing his spurious claims of electoral fraud. But she might not be the most helpful advocate for the cause, as she hasn’t exactly been blessed with great judgement.

Kirstie once had to interrupt a press event for her 1990 movie, Sibling Rivalry, because the pet possum she’d brought with her was squeaking. The poor thing was hungry but Alley hadn’t brought anything to feed it with, so asked one of the production PRs who had just returned from maternity leave if she’d mind feeding it. With her breast milk.

Even more weird? The PR obliged.

Usually when you hear a story that starts with a record label boss throwing a party in their hotel suite, requesting that six call girls be sent up to the room, you don’t expect it to have the sort of ending you can repeat in polite company.

But when one of the founders of Global Underground did exactly that during a trip to Miami once, the only request he made of the women? That they help him demonstrate the offside rule to the Americans he was with.

Since his death, there have been some attempts to grapple with Sean Connery’s grim history of domestic abuse and his terrible views on hitting women, with quotes from his infamous interviews re-emerging. It’s a shame we rarely get to hear much from his first wife, Diane Cilento, though – because she was funny as fuck.

Back in the height of his James Bond fame, someone asked Cilento what it was like being married to the world’s sexiest man. Her answer?

“There’s nothing in the world I find sexier than sitting at the end of the bath shaving your husband’s back and glueing on his hairpiece so he can go out and fuck other women.”

As controversy surrounding Princess Diana’s Panorama interview continues to bubble away, we found ourselves wondering what Princess Diana’s former priest and confidant, Father Frank Gelli, had to say about the whole thing. Turns out, rather a lot.

In an email to his followers this week, Father Frank wrote that Diana once claimed to possess a handy piece of insurance that she could fall back on if she ever felt her life was in danger: taped testimony of a courtier who had witnessed what was described as a “gross ‘contra naturam’ act” involving Prince Charles that would prevent him from ever taking the throne.

What a palace courtier considers to be a gross act against nature is anyone’s guess. It could be anything from wearing a wing collar with black tie, to full-on shapeshifting, blood-drinking Reptilian virgin sacrifice.

Obviously, Diana’s been gone 20-odd years now and there’s been no sign of this fabled tape. But if anything is going to wrap up 2020, the downfall of the House of Windsor isn’t something we’d bet against.

This week in the daily editions, we’ve been collating our favourite stories from various music scenes and sending them to subscribers as a little light relief each afternoon. Tuesday was jazz legends; Wednesday was heavy metal; tomorrow we’re hoping to tackle dance.

With the end of the year almost in sight, we’ve really been glad of this pandemic-era daily edition and the stories you’ve been sending. Hopefully you’ve found it useful too – but if you haven’t signed up yet, then we’ll continue to send out a few bits and bobs each afternoon, at least until lockdown ends.

[Catch up/sign up here]

In Monday’s daily, we dug up some stories on the newly-confirmed line-up for this year’s I’m A Celebrity. Which prompted a reader to share one of his own…

Boscoe writes:
“My university rugby club was trying to raise money for a rugby tour in early 1996 and did a deal to shoot a Daz commercial with Shane Richie. A bunch of us were asked to turn up at 7am one morning to do the filming, where we were met with a distinctly orange Shane Richie. He seemed nice enough, but in an attempt to bond with a bunch of hairy-bummed rugby players (I assume) he kept talking/boasting about shagging a Nolan sister.

“The sad thing is that I’m pretty sure that none of those middle class 19-21 year olds in 1996 knew who the Nolan Sisters were, let alone be impressed by it. Filming took about four hours, was a complete shambles, but ultimately we got our £3k.”

Most weeks we like to feature a weird local news story. This week, we had our pick from ‘Child Trips And Gets Dog Shit In Mouth‘ or ‘Police On Hunt For Hit And Run Clown‘ – but something else caught our eye instead.

There’s a genuinely fascinating local news story coming out of Miami-Dade County in Florida, where local reporters have been chasing up third party candidates in various districts of recent state senate elections – and finding something pretty murky behind them.

[Take a look here]

Want Noel Edmonds’ Land Rover?
[Bid on it here]

Hanson fans are staging a mutiny
[Read on Vice]

Japanese ads, featuring famous faces
[See on Instagram]

Nick Cave Watch: Being a good egg. Again.
[Read on Bright & Hove News]

The President of Turkmenistan has just unveiled a new statue of his favourite dog
[See it here]

Will deepfakes change pop music?
[Read on The Guardian]

An official Four Seasons Total Landscaping background for Zoom calls
[Be just like Rudy Guiliani!]

An interview with the owner of the sex shop by Four Seasons Total Landscaping
[Read on Slate]

How clubbing in Singapore will look when it reopens
[Read the pilot plans]

Play-At-Home Popbitch Popquizzes: The Autumn Bundle
[Get your copy here]

Still Bored?
All the American states in which you can own an otter
[See on Twitter]