The Second Serve // Swedish Taboo

Moby was the first celeb out of the traps this morning, using the COP26 summit as a way to get his idea for a new global “Plant Based Treaty” out to a wider audience – issuing a press release in the hopes that it would get in front of world leaders.

It’s all very noble, but Moby hasn’t had a huge amount of success in getting people onboard with his non-musical projects.

Another idea he once tried to get off the ground was a business that provided ‘Funeral Clowns’. His big pitch was that people would pay for him and a friend to attend their funerals, to (in his words) “liven things up a little bit” – honking horns and riding miniature bicycles, while wearing make-up and big red afro wigs.

BJ Novak (Ryan from The Office) spent some time last week sharing pictures of all the weird international products that his face has been used to market after his image was accidentally added to a public domain library. It turns out he is now the face of a Swedish aftershave, Uruguayan face paint, multiple Chinese beard trimmers and a cheap European rain poncho.

With digital images so easy to come by, this sort of thing happens a fair bit – but Novak got off relatively lightly. A few years ago, a picture of Carol Vorderman somehow became attached to a series of online ads for a Swedish singles site.

The caption for which translated as “You can fuck a horny mother tonight”.

[See the ad here]

We can’t remember how or why this came our way last month, but the BJ Novak story also reminded us of the ad showreel that Steven Seagal once made for his ill-fated energy drink back in 2005: Lightning Bolt.

If the ads passed you by at the time, you can see them here – and they’re absolutely worth two minutes of your time.

This week, we want to know: What are the cheapest/most dismal/inexplicable celebrity products you’ve ever seen marketed?

Email club@popbitch.com with your examples of shit celeb tat and we’ll find some way to reward the best. Or worst.

A couple of months back, we mentioned that Steve Wright’s Radio 2 studio is well known among colleagues for its distinctive aroma (a byproduct of Steve’s fastidious oral hygiene regimen, which sees him constantly swilling brown Listerine and TCP, then spitting it into a nearby bin.)

Steve isn’t the only DJ to have a studio with a signature scent though. Those who worked with Tim Westwood remember the studio always smelling a bit different whenever he was in it.

Something they later discovered was because he liked to carry air freshener with him and would always give a subtle squirt of it whenever he walked into the room.

In Thursday’s mailout, we mentioned a rumour that Ben Shephard once owned three dogs named “Ben”, “Shep” and “Herd”. While we don’t yet have any concrete evidence to definitively prove or disprove the dogs’ existence, we might be a little closer to understanding where the rumour might have started.

A former gym buddy of Shephard’s says that when they were hanging out, Ben would constantly tell the same joke to people about how he wanted an Alsatian (aka, a German Shepherd) so that he could call it “Ben”.

So we know that the ambition to name his pets after himself is real. Confusing matters, however, is another rumour that “Ben” “Shep” and “Herd” aren’t dogs – but the names of Ben’s goldfish.

Mon/ November No.1s

Tue/ Spoken Word Sections

Wed/ Mash-Ups

Thu/ Gibb It Up

Fri/ Bonfire Night

[Play them here]

On the Popbitch stereo: German musician Roosevelt is getting a lot of buzz for his pop remixes, working with everyone from The Wombats to Charlotte Gainsburg, Glass Animals to Chvrches
[Here’s a Spotify playlist]

Was this the world’s worst Halloween party?
[Shanghai Disney]

Japan’s best ‘Mundane Halloween’ costumes 2021
[The highlight of the season]

Some Elvis Presley erection news
[Read on Page Six]

The Rise & Fall of the Evening Standard
[Read on Guardian]

Kylie x Jessie Ware
[Listen on Spotify]