Total Banter Lad

She fucked the share price of Snapchat with the flick of her wrist; could she do the same for Wicked?

Last summer Kylie Jenner was in London filming her show, Life of Kylie. She wanted to see Wicked, so her people organised for the first three rows of the theatre to be cleared for her, her Glam Squad and security.

Twenty minutes in, she decided she’d had enough – so left (much to the displeasure of the Glam Squad, who had been enjoying the show).

David Beckham launched a grooming brand, House 99, at Harvey Nichols earlier this year.

Beckham’s not just a figurehead for these sorts of things though; he likes to be properly involved. Organisers said he insisted on total control of certain elements of the launch. In particular, he was keen to dictate exactly how the models hired for the press launch should dress and look: brunettes in tight black dresses and high heels.

It’s no surprise that he formally demanded this control. At a previous press launch, some rogue representatives for Brand Beckham turned up at the event early to do a sweep of the promo girls that had been hired, and suggested that the three prettiest girls be sent home. So that Becks couldn’t hit on them.

FYI: The ’99’ in House 99 is from the year he and Victoria got married. How sweet.

If what we heard about the dressing room activity on an old ITV light entertainment show is true, then we are very much looking forward to whichever series of The Crown will deal with the early 90s. But which member of the Royal family ended up being back there? And what on earth was all that banging noise about?

Caudwell Children held a charity auction at a Ladies Lunch event last November to raise money to help disabled kids. Reality star Stephanie Pratt put in a winning bid for the holiday to Mauritius, but every time they’ve tried to get her £2,500 for it they’ve been fobbed off.

Stephanie told them to get the money off a “Mr Jonny Mitchell” but as they’d split up by December even he wasn’t so stupid to pay it off.

The charity’s boss ended up writing to her to tell her she had a legal obligation to pay. That was two weeks ago…

Steph, did you pay up?

If Prince Harry is inviting the Spice Girls to his wedding, a word of advice: be explicit about what you want on your gift registry, or Geri will improvise.

When she was invited to Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday party, guests were politely asked to make a donation to his chosen charity in lieu of buying him a present. Geri was the only person to ignore that instruction and brought him a gift instead.

A George Foreman grill.

You may soon start to hear a rumour that has been whizzing around media circles for a couple of weeks, but we’re here to put your minds at ease. Regardless of what you might get told, Piers Morgan has not been offered the job of editor of the Sun.

The story hasn’t materialised out of nowhere (there’s a tiny grain of truth to it) but it’s mainly a case of crossed wires. There was some talk recently at NewsCorp that Piers might take a slot on Fox News. This inspired some wistful, but not entirely serious, chat about whether they could maybe get him back to run the Sun.

Piers might be terminally thick, but even he’s smart enough not to swap the couple of million he gets presenting breakfast TV part-time and doing a piss-weak Mail on Sunday column for the daily hassle, stress and grime of a newsroom.

The Sun is similarly not so stupid as to hire Piers Morgan while desperately trying to avoid a court case that might implicate it in the phone hacking scandal.

So how did this particular rumour spread beyond the confines of the Baby Shard? Fingers are pointing at… Piers Morgan. Because another rumour that’s going around the Mail offices is that he’s potentially up for a pay review.

In revisiting his excruciating Dubai promo video last week, we may have left you with the impression that we think Michael Owen isn’t much of a banter lad. Make no mistake. Michael Owen is a total banter lad.

Back in his Liverpool days, when digital photography was in its infancy and press snappers would still routinely use film, Michael had a little trick he’d play when the photographer would gather the team together for a photo.

Every time the photographer got back to work and developed his roll of photos, it was only then that he’d notice one of the team had tugged down his shorts and exposed a bit of his arse for the camera – rendering many of the pictures he’d taken unusable.

That arse? Michael Owen(‘s).

First he lost his $250,000 book deal. Then his billionaire backers, the Mercers, pulled out on him. After embarrassing himself in court, he has since withdrawn his $10m lawsuit against Simon & Schuster. So what now for the paedo-defending darling of the alt-right, Milo Yiannopoulos?

He’s taken to selling milk thistle supplements on InfoWars.

It’s a pretty precarious gig though. InfoWars has just been given its second strike from YouTube for suggesting that survivors of the school shooting in Florida were crisis actors.

Lucky that Milo’s got such a glowing track record with online media ventures then, isn’t it?

Never one to miss a chance to wag its finger at the FA, the Daily Mail wasted no time in making a song and dance over their decision to charge Pep Guardiola for wearing a yellow ribbon in support of jailed Catalan politicians.

Their article “How FA tied themselves in knots over Pep’s yellow ribbon” pointed out how the FA “got their moment of cheap poppy-day glory” by finally allowing players to wear remembrance poppies, but the Mail also noted that the FA “never see it coming, do they?” “Did it never occur to them there may be issues?”

Presumably those issues were laid out in comprehensive detail in the following pieces?

– “Poppy ban enforced ‘in case we upset the Germans'” Daily Mail, 6th Nov 2011

– “How dare they ban the poppy?” – Daily Mail, 31st Oct 2016

– “FIFA have finally come to their senses over the farcical annual controversy over England’s football team having a poppy on their kit” – Daily Mail, 24th Sept 2017

Help homeless people out of the freezing cold
[Donate to Connection at St Martin’s]

Girls Aloud or Russian escorts?
[See on Twitter]

A piece of musical theatre we can really get behind
[Falco: Das Musical]

Street Feast have taken over Woolwich Market and launch their latest street food stadium, Public, tomorrow. Old favourites meet new local food traders, all washed down with great wines from Street Vin and the Gin Kitchen
[Details on Street Feast]

A parrot doing impressions of other animals
[Watch on YouTube]

Monica Lewinsky – 20 years on
[Read on Vanity Fair]

Gary Numan and his daughter sharing the stage on the Old Grey Whistle Test
[See on YouTube]

Essential Celebs Go Dating reading
[Read on Vice]

Track Scotland’s road gritters
[See on ScotGov]