The Worst That Will Happen

Richard Madeley’s stint on C4’s social media show The Circle has dashed hopes that he might be appearing in the jungle for I’m A Celebrity this year – but, honestly, it’s probably for the best.

A few years back, Madeley filmed a segment for IACGMOOH’s spin-off show in which he was made to lie down and have snakes crawl all over him. Producers soon had to intervene and request that he do something to tuck his penis in a little more tightly as it kept lolling about in his shorts, making it look as if one of the snakes had slithered its way up there and was doing something very unnatural to him…

As he returns to the limelight for 2020’s Dancing On Ice, you might be wondering what Michael Barrymore has been up to since the police confirmed they wouldn’t be pursuing any murder charges against him after that debauched house party where a young man ended up dead in his swimming pool.

Us too. And while we can’t account for the last 11 and a bit years, we do know what happened the night in 2007 when Barrymore went out to celebrate those charges being dropped. He went to Century Club in Soho.

After a pretty lengthy session with friends, a well-refreshed Barrymore approached a group of strangers in order to propose on one knee to a handsome 20-something who had caught his eye from across the room.

Unsurprisingly, the boy declined – but Barrymore didn’t give up. Instead he turned his attention to one of the boy’s friends and spent the rest of the night trying to cajole him into coming back to his for a nightcap and a handjob. The guy (straight; attached; uninterested) kept politely turning the invitation down – even when Barrymore offered to sweeten the pot by getting him “the best prostitute in the whole of Essex” afterwards as a thank you.

Barrymore’s final overture? Telling the guy that “the worst that would happen” if he went back to his would be that he got tossed off – nothing more.

Which must have been tremendously reassuring.

Which Brit actor will be feeling a little nervous that all this high-profile talk of blackface is happening while his latest series airs? During his third year at uni, he sang a very touching rendition of Bill Withers’ Lovely Day at a student “Stars In Their Eyes” night – a performance somewhat overshadowed by his rather heavy-handed make-up and ill-advised afro wig.

John Humphrys wasted no time in getting his digs in at the BBC, complaining about it almost the second he had retired from his £600,000 place on the payroll there.

He won’t be surprised to learn that there were plenty of people in the BBC who felt the same way about him. In fact, one of the codenames that people used in order to discuss him behind his back there was ‘LWC’.

The L stood for ‘Little’.

The W stood for ‘Welsh’.

You can probably figure out the rest.

Last week, we included a small local news story about how teens in Leicester were setting fire to dog shit bins and huffing them in order to get high. This week we found out that it’s apparently part of a reciprocal arrangement we’ve struck up with our canine friends.

Earlier this year, vets in Denver announced that they had seen a significant spike in dogs turning up to their surgeries with marijuana toxicity. Why? Because they’ve been eating human shit. Shit that, even after it’s been passed through a human body, is still laced with enough THC to get a dog stoned.

[Read more here]

Ordinarily we wouldn’t dream of running a spurious, single-sourced rumour that had very clearly been circulated in an attempt to smear somebody’s political standing.

But seeing as that same standard is usually rigorous enough for her, what the hell…

Word around Westminster this week is that Isabel Oakeshott has developed a bit of a taste for swinging.

When Chris Evans first defected from Radio 2 to Virgin, Sky TV announced it would pay a whopping £5 million to sponsor the show. This year? Sky’s re-negotiations are closer to the £2 million ballpark. Why such a drop? Maybe because he only gained 60,000 new listeners at the last RAJAR count, and lost an estimated 20% of his audience over the summer.

Station insiders are braced for his official figures to drop below a million listeners at the next audit, but not everyone is unhappy with this development.

Evans’ team is supposedly so mean to everyone there that they’ve been known to make some of the other station staff cry. As far as they’re concerned, the thinner the ice he’s on, the better.

Is there nothing FIFA can do that doesn’t end up looking like a fix?

This week they hosted “The Best” awards where the best male and female footballers were voted for by representatives from football associations around the world (i.e. their national coach, captain and a media rep). Megan Rapinoe won Best Female and Lionel Messi won Best Male. All votes were published, so it seems like it’s perfectly straightforward and transparent, right?

And yet in the last couple of days a number of people whose votes had been tallied for Messi have come out and said that they didn’t actually vote for him. First it was Nicaragua, then Sudan, and now Egypt have all come out and said that the votes listed in their name (for Messi) were not actually cast.

It’s no real surprise that Messi ended up winning Best Male. For all the public perception of him being a quiet, humble superstar, Messi knows how to get what he wants – and has a hell of a lot more influence behind the scenes than it might first appear.

Back when Pep Guardiola abruptly left FC Barcelona, there were a lot of rumours swirling around about what had helped him to make his decision.

One of the stories went that Pep had tried to institute a ‘No Fizzy Drinks’ policy for players. One day in the dressing room, while Pep was having a heated discussion with his star players, Messi walked out and went to get himself a can of coke. He then brought it back into the dressing room, where he cracked it open and chugged it right in front of his manager – just to prove who had the real power.

Guardiola left soon after.

JG writes:
“I used to work in Richard and Judy’s local petrol station in Manchester when they lived in Didsbury. They’d stop by a couple of times a week to fill up and Richard was always very pleasant to serve and would make small talk.

“One busy night, not long after he’d been in court on his shoplifting charge, he came in. As I served him he said something to me which I didn’t quite catch, so I just smiled and nodded at him. I processed his card for the petrol, gave him it back and as he went to leave he picked up a copy of the Manchester Evening News on his way out. As I hadn’t charged him for the paper, I called out ‘Oh, sorry. I haven’t charged you for that!’

“Richard looked appalled, threw 30p at me and stormed out. Sorry Dicky, but I really didn’t hear you and I didn’t mean to embarrass you like that. I do hope you can forgive me.”

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THE POPBITCH POPQUIZ: The next one is on Tuesday 1st October at Smiths Of Smithfield – so come and join us
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Headline of the week: A Painting Of Channing Tatum’s Ball Bag Sold For Over £5,000
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A fig-based douche, a leek-wielding dominatrix and other brilliant Japanese mascots
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Are there new developments with the Trump piss-tape?
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Pachelbel’s Canon, arranged for rubber chicken quartet
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A radio station created for musical tradespeople by musical tradespeople
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Popbitch’s favourite fitness guru
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Still Bored?
“I drank my own piss because a man in a rave club told me that it would make you come up on the E again. It doesn’t”
[Anonymous confessions on Twitter]