Who’s At Goochapalooza?

As Kate Moss enters the final month of her partnership with Diet Coke, we tip our caps to her and one of the smartest brand partnerships of the modern era.

Obviously, the reported £5m she drew down as Creative Director was reward enough. But the bonus she received was priceless.

Just see what happens now when you Google “Kate Moss coke”.

The Co-Op Live Arena has had a hell of an opening week. Postponing Peter Kay, postponing Olivia Rodrigo, then having to cancel last night’s show 10 minutes after doors had opened.

The venue said the problem last night was with a component of the air conditioning system, which was found to be “defective”. That’s true. But what they didn’t say is that it was also found to be “on the floor” – after a chunk of it came crashing down from the ceiling.

Falling machinery is far from the venue’s only problem. The place is apparently still a building site, with backstage toilets yet to be installed. So these postponements are probably for the best. We can’t imagine Olivia Rodrigo would have been too pleased having to take her pre-show piss front of house.

Transfer speculation is always rife at this point in the season, but the question some directors of football are wrestling with at the minute is this: do they take a chance on a big name star who has picked up a fun new recreational drug habit this season?

Is Sydney Sweeney the new Coleen Rooney? We ask because someone in the Popbitch inbox this week was very keen to let us know that a “casting director friend” of theirs had told them Sydney has just signed up to star in an upcoming legal drama (opposite Daniels Radcliffe and Craig) playing an investigative journalist who uncovered a real-life iron-ore mining scandal in Guinea in 2006.

It’s possible – of course – but it sounded suspiciously like the sort of story Sweeney’s people would feed out to a suspected leaker in their midst (a la Wagatha Christie) and watch to see if it ended up in print.

This “friend” has been quite the chatterbox it seems, because a few days later we noticed variations of the same rumour started appearing on Reddit – including on the very niche subreddit r/mining (“for those involved or interested in the extractive mining industry”).

So either Sydney is making a serious play for Oscars glory, seeding some early buzz about this Spotlight-esque role. Or some loose-lipped casting director is going to be out of a job tomorrow…

George Galloway captured the news cycle briefly on Tuesday by announcing that one of the candidates his party will stand in the next election is Monty Panesar – the former England cricketer.

And what was one of Monty’s first public appearances as a freshly minted candidate for the Workers Party Of Britain?

Yesterday, he was billed as a guest at an event called “Goochapalooza”.

There’s about 50,000 sq ft of office space in the Heals building on Tottenham Court Road. The landlord is a foreign fund which  just spent a cool £100K on a branding agency to find ways to refresh the building’s rather trad image.

The big idea that £100K bought? Change  its name from “Heals Building” to… “The Manufactory”.

Unfortunately, this proposed change has gone down like a cup of cold sick with one of the existing tenants. It’s the site of Liverpool FC’s London office.

They went ballistic when they heard, making it quite clear they would never rent space in a building with Man U in the name.

Spotted on a train from West Sussex to London Victoria this Monday lunchtime: Alan Yentob, doing his best to keep passengers up to date on the latest breaking news from Scottish politics – whether they were interested in it or not.

It’s possible he got his wires a little crossed though, as he was heard loudly informing a woman sitting a few seats over from him that Yusuf Islam had resigned.

Puzzled, she responded “What? Cat Stevens?”

To which Yentob replied, “No… another Yusuf.”

Another hot story from our Mum Gossip bureau:

One reader was talking to their mum the other day and happened to mention the author Jeanette Winterson. The name prompted a very peculiar memory.

Their mother had apparently been at school with ‘Netty’ and remembers Jeanette developed some very passionately held opinions on literature at quite an early age.

She was known among schoolmates for borrowing books she didn’t like from friends’ home bookcases – then setting fire to them.

And so the era of TalkTV is over – and it leaves much like it entered: tripping over its own feet.

The ‘fuckable funeral’ leaving party they threw last Friday was – surprise, surprise – a bit of a fiasco. An unwisely pitched farewell speech managed to upset almost everyone at various stages (jokes about Jeremy Kyle’s ITV inquiry; jokes about the salaries paid to presenters of The Talk; jokes about Julia Hartley-Brewer’s brief flirtation with GB News) – leading to some early walkouts.

But the worst of it? Management hadn’t put any money behind the bar.

When do we stop finding new music?
[Read on StatSignificant]

Tim Hunkin of Novelty Automation talks you through one of his weird arcade machines
[Watch on YouTube]

How do you leave the Taylor Swift fandom?
[A piece on Swiftie Rehab]

Can you still enjoy Soho the way Tom Baker did in his prime?
[The Fence investigates]

The script for missing Seinfeld episode “The Gun”
[Read on archive.org]

Vancouver bear cubs emerge from hibernation
[Cute from YouTube]

The Ingram-Moores are selling up
[Sans spa facility]

Still Bored?
Piers Morgan v Kermit The Frog
[Who’s the best dressed?]