Undressed For Success

A number of Married At First Sight stars attended the launch of a swanky new bar in Sydney last night. The hospitality was obviously pretty lavish as one couple from the latest series was getting increasingly frisky as the night wore on, nipping off to the bogs together so that she could give him a sneaky blowie.

Unfortunately, the groom had had such a skinful that he couldn’t get it up, so their first attempt was unsuccessful. As was their second. And their third.

How do we know? Because after each failed attempt the couple returned to their table and gave the other guests a detailed debrief of their fruitless efforts.

Her turn at the Jubilee concert this weekend reminded us of a great Diana Ross story we heard over lockdown, but didn’t have a chance to tell more widely.

Many years ago, a music magazine landed an exclusive photoshoot with Ms Ross. Despite being braced for all sorts of crazy demands from the legendary diva, she only really had two.

The first was that, after the shoot, she insisted on staying while the negatives were developed and a contact sheet hurriedly printed for her approval.

The second was for a single cigarette. Despite not being a regular smoker, she asked the editor for one. Then, lit fag in hand, she carefully inspected every contact. And if she wasn’t happy with one, she would burn a neat little hole right through the negative.

Which tedious opinionated gobshite has been throwing temper tantrums in the studio whenever technical glitches affect the broadcast of his show? He was heard complaining in one recent outburst that even his own family were no longer watching…

Seeing as they’re both the toast of the town at the moment (one for giving us a four-day weekend; the other for recording and releasing Running Up That Hill) here’s a story about the time the Queen met Kate Bush.

Kate once got invited to a music industry party at Buckingham Palace along with a bunch of other big stars. She was contentedly wandering around, taking Sandie Shaw on a little tour of the art collection hanging there, when the Queen appeared behind them both and offered a hand to shake.

Sandie was the one who took it and started talking to HRH about who she was and what she was doing at the moment. Kate meanwhile was busy rummaging around in her handbag for something.

It turned out to be a pen and paper, which she whipped out to ask for the Queen’s autograph. It was left to Sandie to break the awkward silence, explaining that the Queen didn’t really do autographs – telling her, “I think that’s a pop star thing, Kate”.

Fifteen series in and Britain’s Got Talent still commands endless digital coverage – but that coverage is pretty easy to come by if you’re mates with tabloid proprietors.

One former Express journalist vividly remembers the time Simon Cowell popped in to their offices to pay a visit to his friend, Richard Desmond. It was early December (the final few weeks of an X Factor series) and Desmond ordered every single journalist in the newsroom to bring an X Factor story up on their screen ahead of Simon’s arrival and pretend to be working on it for the duration of his visit. Which they all did.

The reason they remember that day so specifically is because Simon and Desmond then left the office in Desmond’s chauffeured car and immediately got stuck in rush hour traffic. Desmond was so embarrassed and furious about it that he came in the next day demanding that his journalists start a brand new “Express Crusade” – against traffic. Which they also all did.

BuzzFeed’s stock dropped 40% on Monday (its worst single-day drop since it went public) and is currently worth about a fifth of the $1.5bn valuation it had last year.

Everyone in media sorely wanted to believe that BuzzFeed had cracked the digital journalism code; that it wasn’t all just smoke and mirrors. But there’s a legend from the BuzzFeed glory days that shows something like this was always in the post.

Remember ‘The Dress’? That optical illusion where some people saw a black and blue dress, while others saw a white and gold one? BuzzFeed’s coverage of it racked up 37 million views. At one point, it was drawing 14,000 hits per minute. CEO Jonah Peretti walked into a board meeting absolutely buzzing, saying “Loved the dress thing… must be one of the biggest things online… how much did it make us?”

The answer, reluctantly given: almost zero.

* PARTYGATE

Popbitch, 26th May: “The infamous karaoke machine that Helen McNamara brought to one of the parties actually belonged to… Sue Gray”

GB News, 6th June: “GB News can also reveal that the karaoke machine Ms Gray is using – kept in the Cabinet Office – was used in the 18 June 2020 Downing Street Party detailed in the Sue Gray report.”

* NEIGHBOURS FINALE

Popbitch, 6th May: “There’s a leaked script that’s been going around (which may well be a decoy) that suggests Charlene and Scott don’t get much of a storyline, but do get the final scene of the series. The two of them pull up in a car, step out and bring the curtain down with the line: ‘We’re home.'”

The Sun, 7th June: “[EXCLUSIVE] The Sun can reveal the final scene will show Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan returning to Ramsey Street – 34 years after they quit the soap. In an emotional moment, the pair turn to each other before beaming and declaring they are ‘home’.”

A prison in Hertfordshire flirted with introducing new restrictions on accepting birthday cards for inmates this week, supposedly as a way to prevent drug-soaked stationery being sent there.

The policy was swiftly scrapped following public outcry, but it was interesting to note that they announced they’d only be accepting cards from “trusted sources” such as Moonpig.

It’s good to see Moonpig has graduated to the title “trusted source”. In its early days the story was that its logging system was so lax that some of the internet’s most nefarious types specifically used the service as a safe way of sending obscene content through the post, knowing that nothing got vetted and couldn’t be accurately traced.

Chris Blackwell – founder of Island Records – released his memoirs this week. While we’re interested to read them, the person whose anecdotes we really want to hear are those of Trevor: the old landlord of the King’s Head pub next to Chris’s studio/health farm retreat, where visiting musicians would decamp of an evening.

Trevor was notoriously uninterested in pop music and was not shy about letting his disdain be known. Paul McCartney had a farm just over the hill and would always give Trevor a friendly toot of his horn whenever he drove past in his Land Rover. Trevor would respond, often without even bothering to look up, by flicking the Vs at him.

He once got into a scuffle with The Cure after one of their party drunkenly mistook Trevor’s roll-up for a spliff and tried to cadge a puff. When Robert Smith came over to smooth things over, Trevor told him to go and “get a job”.

But best of all was what he did to The Corrs. When they were there, too pissed to figure out how to work the cigarette machine and pestering him to fix it for them, Trevor told them there was a better machine in the other room. He guided them through a couple of doors which actually led to the car park – where he promptly shoved them all out and locked the door behind him.

Sylvester Stallone deepfaked as Terminator
[Plus lots of celeb cameos]

Kourtney Kardashian’s anal fingering tips
[Anyone?]

An interview with the man who put nipples on the Batman suit
[Read on MEL]

How the Spitting Image puppets came to be – and how they almost killed their creator
[Read on The Fence]

Photos from a night porter’s decade in London hotels
[See on i-d]

Take a guess at how many weeks Mr Brightside has been in the UK Top 100
[Then see the answer]

Kitten ambush
[See on Twitter]

Still Bored?
Kate Bush, Stranger Things and the charts
[Read on The Ringer]