“Unleash The Lion!”

“Please edit out the fact that I said ‘freaking'” – Mariah Carey

There’s been all sorts of rumours doing the rounds about Boris Johnson and his private life over the last few months. There’s talk of him and Carrie having split, of him shacking up with a Russian violinist (or cellist, depending on who’s telling you), of Zac Goldsmith having cucked him, of him having faked his coronavirus, of him still being extremely sick with coronavirus. Absolutely everything you could imagine.

But none is a patch on the most bizarre rumour we heard about him this week.

When he attended a parents day at Bedales one summer, he fell asleep under a tree listening to his iPod. Someone who took a sneaky look at what was on there says it was “basically The Clash and Wu Tang Clan”.

Surely not…?

With the sad death of Eddie Van Halen this week, people have been quick to remember his contribution to the world of backstage riders, as he famously used to request a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. Not to be a diva, but as a quick way of checking to see that staff at each venue had correctly read the whole of Van Halen’s extremely technical stage requirements. A sort of canary-in-the-coalmine clause.

It’s smart, but it wasn’t the only backstage trick that Van Halen pioneered.

When the band were touring in their heyday, they would give each member of their road crew three backstage passes to dish out to attractive women they saw in the audience. Each pass was stamped with an individual reference code relating to each crew member, so that the band could give specific bonuses to whichever roadies invited the groupies that the band ended up shagging each night.

Which former soap star got a bit of practice in ahead of lockdown by shacking up in a holiday lodge for a dirty weekend with a mystery man, not emerging from the villa once for two straight days? The only difference with lockdown was that she did that with her husband.

This week saw the 30th anniversary of German reunification, a seismic geopolitical event that was brought around after David Hasselhoff single-handedly tore down the Berlin Wall while singing “Looking For Freedom”. Given his immense success in Europe, it’s always been a surprise that not a single one of his 14 albums has charted in his home country. But there’s a strange reason for it.

OJ Simpson fucked it up for him.

In 1994, David arranged a big pay-per-view TV special in the US to introduce his musical stylings to the American public. Sadly, the special was scheduled for broadcast on June 17th – the day that OJ Simpson decided to go for an impromptu drive in a white Bronco along the LA freeways, monopolising TV coverage.

Understandably, it somewhat eclipsed the Hoff’s big moment. But the weirdest detail of the whole thing? The man who greeted David as he stepped backstage and told him that the entire nation had been watching OJ’s big Bronco chase instead of him was… Donald Trump.

A familiar feeling of doom crept over us as Katie Price and new beau Carl Woods revealed their matching arm tattoos of each other’s faces. Like clockwork, after a few months of dating she’s talking about being married to him forever, but maybe they should live together just a little longer before making that commitment.

From what we hear, Carl is a fastidious neat-freak and keeps his house compulsively clean. We already know about Katie’s shit-caked ‘Mucky Mansion’ but she has another habit that is absolutely guaranteed to cause domestic tension.

Despite getting all of her TV remotes bedazzled with crystals to make them look fancy, she has lost the battery cover to every single one of them – and doesn’t seem to care.

Almost a year to the day that the story broke, Coleen Rooney submitted new documents to the High Court this week, laying out her evidence and claims that ……….Rebekah Vardy’s account was responsible for leaking fake stories about her to the press.

Rooney seems pretty resolute in her stance, a far cry from the picture painted this summer when the press loudly announced that her case was collapsing around her.

As the tabloids are usually implicated in stories like these, it’s obviously in their interests to suggest the cases are hitting the rocks ahead of a showdown. But, for what it’s worth, media lawyers take a slightly different view.

It’s been noted with some interest in legal circles that lawyer-sacking has become quite the fashion with celebrity clients. Coleen Rooney, Meghan Markle and Johnny Depp all dispensed with their original legal teams at some point in their most recent cases. However, rather than it being over some moment of genuine legal crisis in each instance, it seems optics-obsessed celebrities get spooked by the sound of common incidents like the loss of an interim application and decide to clear house immediately.

With the prospect of a second lockdown dangling, and social restrictions in place for the foreseeable future, we’ve put together another of our special play-at-home editions of the infamous Popbitch Popquiz.

It features eight brand new rounds of trivia, challenges and pop culture puzzles, and contains of all the worksheets, questions and answers you need to host your own version for friends and family, in quarantine, in person, or anything in between.

[Get the Gold Edition: Just £5]

The world has come to something when Popbitch is the one providing the more calming, soothing stories of the day – but 2020 has been an undeniably fucked year. So if you want a little shot of levity each afternoon, our pandemic-era daily edition provides just that.

It’s a mix of stories old and new that we don’t have space to include in this weekly newsletter – so if you fancy signing up (or just want to read some back issues online) you can do so here.

[Get The Daily Tonic by Popbitch]

After Boris Johnson nicked a line from M People for his conference speech, we reminded daily readers of Heather Small’s pre-performance routine of necking a shot of vodka and shouting “LET’S DO THIS FUCKER” before going on stage. Which led a reader to telling us about another celebrity’s pre-show preparation…

TC writes:
“I was backstage at some Berlin enormodome around 2000 as Fleetwood Mac were about to go onstage. Just behind the curtain, preparing himself for two hours of drumming, was the imposing figure of Mick Fleetwood. About 6’6” tall, dressed in black velvet pantaloons, riding boots and a cape, he was standing looking at the floor, breathing in deeply, with his arms outstretched – as if to grasp some invisible object.

“At the exact moment I drew level with him, he drew himself up to his full height and roared out loud in his deep, and rather plummy, voice: ‘UNLEASH the LION!'”

Yesterday we asked for any readers in publishing to tell us about the weirdest celebrity projects they’ve ever been asked to work on…

MG writes:
“I was asked to read a book by Nick Knowles with the potential for a re-write. It was about an old sailing ship frozen in ice that a modern nuclear sub discovers. There are good pirates and bad pirates aboard who somehow get defrosted and come alive. Don’t remember how. What I do recall is a persistent authorial fascination with describing women’s bums.”

Lemmy face-mask anyone?
[Buy from Motorhead]

Seoul has a racoon cafe
[See on YouTube]

The Gunnersaurus saga reminded us of one of our favourite Tumblrs
[Minute Silence Mascots]

The story of Vanilla Ice
[by Vanilla Ice]

Penguin Of The Year Awards 2020
[Voting opens tomorrow]

Dog singing along to Pavarotti
[See on YouTube]

Want a live, highly offensive, socially-distanced magic show in your own home by Jerry Sadowitz?
[Bid on eBay]

K-Pop fans are trying to get their idols out of national service
[BTS Army v the actual army]

Has Trump ruined political comedy?
[Read on NYT]

Disney v WAP
[Lyrically NSFW; visually PG-ish]

Still Bored?
Join Bananarama for a livestream of their wonderful career. From the male dominated early days of the music industry to world tours, party games with George Michael and hanging out with Andy Warhol in New York, Sara and Keren did everything their way. £10 tickets – or free when you buy a copy of their new memoir, Really Saying Something.
[Sunday 1st Nov, 6:30pm GMT]