Wired For Soundbites

If you think Cliff Richard’s “I’d rather ten guilty people get away with it than one innocent person suffer” quote in that ITV interview last night was a massive clanger, you should see some of the quotes he was giving before he underwent media training.

After the police raided his home, Sir Cliff engaged the services of a crisis management team to help him prep for television interviews. The feedback from those sessions makes for weird reading.

Before PR handlers put him on the right track, Cliff kept going off on tangents in mock interviews about mad rumours he’d read on the internet suggesting he was Jill Dando’s killer and had children buried under his vineyard in Portugal. In another, he started talking about how his really strong bladder meant he couldn’t possibly have got a moment alone with kids.

Given that these were his starting points, suggesting that Max Clifford and Rolf Harris should have walked to spare Cliff’s blushes is something of an improvement.

It’s been a trend among celeb chefs to release cookbooks encouraging healthy eating and balanced nutrition – but which TV foodie is using a much more old-skool method to stay trim? By necking diet pills until they get the shakes.

In recent years the phrase “personal reasons” has been used as an excuse or euphemism to cover such varied things as the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, a raging cocaine habit, the uncovering of a sexting scandal, divorce, allegations of workplace harassment, sensitive medical treatment, secret cosmetic procedures – practically anything a well-known personality may wish to brush over.

Correctly deployed by a PR department, it can provide tremendously helpful cover.

For example, now that Niall from Love Island is speaking publicly about living with Asperger’s, the nation is likely to infer that the “personal reasons” behind his departure from the villa are all as a result of that.

And nothing to do with, say, any non-prescription pharmaceuticals there might have been in his suitcase…

LADbible rolled the clock back a few years at their summer party in Manchester last Friday as staffers were entertained by a topless dancing waitress, to the shock of many of the women in attendance.

Their new advertising partner must be thrilled. The new “Free To Be” partnership between LADbible and a prominent vodka brand “looks to inspire positive changes in UK nightlife and drinking culture by creating a more inclusive environment for everyone regardless of their gender, sexuality or otherwise.”

How’s that working out so far, Smirnoff?

What is it with Tories and pigs? This week we saw the recently-published sexts of Andrew Griffiths MP – which showed that he, like David Cameron, was up for a bit of pork-play (he explains in one message how he had a woman “dress up like a pig: piggy nose, ears, ‘fuckpig’ written across her forehead and a piggy tail”)

There was also the story of David Prior’s former lover, who sprayed the phrase ‘big dick lord’ in pig’s blood over his house because the Tory peer supposedly “liked pigs”.

We won’t pretend to understand this fascination, but far be it from us to kink-shame. If they’re going to persist in doing it, we feel they should at least be doing it safely.

So Tory readers, listen up. Whether you want to have sex with a sow or a boar, this website has all the details of how to do it correctly and respectfully.

[The Zoophile Guide]

FYI: The site is safe for work insofar as there’s no pictures, videos or audio, but you’ll still be hard pressed to explain it if your boss or HR department catches you.

MR writes:
“Your story on Seal getting whisked past everyone in the queue at the US embassy is the opposite experience I had with Rebel Wilson. She was in front of me in the queue from 6am and waited her turn like everyone else. In a cracking velour tracksuit.”

Rebekah Brooks had a big 50th birthday bash in Chipping Norton recently, the tab for which appears to have been picked up by some mysterious benefactor. We’re trying to find out who exactly, but it doesn’t surprise us. Our Bex has always been good at getting others to fund her lifestyle.

Her expense account at News Corp was the stuff of legend, with her trying to get absolutely every possible charge written off by the company as an expense. When the suits above her told her that they wouldn’t be able to sign off such large claims, she found a useful way around it.

As she was the exec responsible for signing off her driver’s expenses, she had him submit the remainder of her own rejected expenses as his (her food shopping at Waitrose, her dry-cleaning, etc) and had the company pay for it that way instead.

R writes:
“In 2004 I was unfortunate enough to go on tour with ‘Turn Me On’ singer Kevin Lyttle. After several tedious weeks, everyone else on the trip was so fed up with him and his entourage that we were praying for the tour to end.

“At dinner on the last night, Kevin ordered himself a seafood platter – seemingly forgetting that he was allergic to fish. His lips and tongue swelled up, but no one really cared enough to take him to a doctor.

“Then, when getting into the people carrier to go back to the hotel, he forgot to take his hand out of the door, which someone (not me) slammed shut really hard.

“I’ll always fondly remember the journey back, with him sat in silence, his damaged hand hanging from a limp wrist, unable to talk through his swollen mouth.”

It may have become something of an unofficial national anthem over the last few weeks, but Three Lions isn’t quite yet in the public domain. Something which clearly escaped Coral’s attention when they chose to use it as the soundtrack to a video they stuck out on social media without clearing it with the songwriters first. (Cue legal letter from Baddiel, Skinner and Broudie’s people…)

Had they been a little quicker off the mark, they could have done what William Hill did and skirted the problem by buying the hashtag #ItsComingHome off Twitter and attaching a branded emoji.

Such a shame that we’ve got to wait another four years until brands can help us synergise our experiential-based cross-platform enjoyment of the World Cup again.

[Visit Hawker Union]

A playlist made up of the best track from each of the 100 Now albums
[Listen on Popjustice]

Wondered what happened to last year’s X Factor winners? (Or even who they were?)
[Listen on YouTube]

All about the decor and furniture in movies
[See on Film and Furniture]

Make toilets great again
[Buy on Etsy]

Local news headline of the week
[Read at Doncaster Star]

Great read about making the Street Fighter movie
[Read on the Guardian]

Why do otters juggle rocks?
[Watch on YouTube]

Still Bored?
Boo to Hackney Council for voting in an unpopular new draconian licensing policy for bars and clubs. And double boo to London’s Night Czar for refusing to get involved. Follow @WeLoveHackney for updates.
[Read more on Hackney Gazette]