Celebrities Category
Celebrity news & gossip from the world’s showbiz and glamour magazines (OK!, Hello, National Enquirer and more). We read them so you don’t have to, picking the best bits from the showbiz world’s maw and spitting it back at them. Expect lots of sarcasm.
Male daytime TV star shocks world: I’m not gay
Newspapers are full of news that daytime TV presenter Phillip Schofield is gay. “I’m gay, I’m proud, and I love my incredible wife” says the Sun, reflecting how Schofield broke the news to viewers of ITV’s This Morning, the show he presents. As the show broadcast other segments – Bear Can’t Find Toilet In Woods – Is Austerity to Blame?; Kate Price: Why I Sleep On My Back; When Will Ruby Union Come Out? – we read of other celebrities rooting for Schofield. Ant and Dec sent their “huge respect and admiration”. David Walliams dreams of living in a world where people can “just be who they are”. Dermot O’Leary says Schofield has “the heart of a lion”.
What of Mrs Schofield, you wonder, good old Phil’s wife of over 20 years? In the Telegraph, Sara Wilson notes: “It may be a weight off his shoulders but it will go straight on to the shoulders of his wife.” “You doubt everything you’ve ever believed in your life,” says one woman to the BBC. She found out her husband was gay six years ago.
Said no-one: Maybe one day other TV presenters will be brave enough to come out as straight.
Posted: 8th, February 2020 | In: Celebrities, News, TV & Radio | Comment
Kirk Douglas: what I’ve learned in life and my one big regret
In 2001, Kirk Douglas (December 9, 1916 – February 5, 2020) told Esquire what he’d learned in life. The actor summed up: “In order to achieve anything, you must be brave enough to fail.”
I tell my sons they didn’t have my advantages growing up. I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.
Give your children lots of rope. Allow them to make their own mistakes. Don’t give them too much advice. Each child is different; you have to respect that. It’s a crapshoot: You roll the dice, and you see what happens.
Noting that “making movies is a form of narcissism” , he harks back to the movie that got away:
One big disappointment in my life was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I bought the rights to the book, but no one wanted to make it into a movie. So I paid to have it made into a Broadway play. There was one line in there that was so beautiful. McMurphy is trying to help all these people on the ward. There was a sink, and he tried to lift it out of the wall, but he couldn’t. He tried really hard, but it wouldn’t budge. As he was leaving the room, with all the guys watching, he turned around and said, “But I tried, goddammit, I tried!” Sometimes I think I should have that as my epitaph.
Lead image: 10th May 1969: Ken Kesey (1935 – 2001), American author of ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘Sometime’s A Great Notion’ – Photo by Roy Jones
Posted: 8th, February 2020 | In: Celebrities, Film, News | Comment
The haunting opening credits to the Jimmy Greaves chat show (1988)
In 1988, Central TV hired former England footballer Jimmy Greaves to front a chatshow. The intro was interesting:
Jimmy featured “surprise guests” and a weekly progress report from Frank Bruno’s training camp. In February 1989, Bruno challenged Mike Tyson for the undisputed world heavyweight title. Bruno lost in three rounds. Jimmy lasted not much longer.
Posted: 6th, February 2020 | In: Celebrities, Sports, TV & Radio | Comment
Paris creates Rue David Bowie – and we’re not sure why
There’s to be a street in Paris named in honour of David Bowie. “There will soon be a Rue David Bowie in the 13th arrondissement of Paris,” says district Paris mayor Jerome Coumet. Although “the naming must be approved by the Paris council in February”.
We know Bowie, a Londoner, moved to Switzerland, West Berlin and New York City, but why Paris? He was familiar with Jacques Brel and Marcel Marceau, sure, and did smoke Gitanes for a while when living in LA, but for the major to say Bowie “had a strong link with the city of lights” is a bit of a push – like saying Lou Reed is synonymous with the London Underground, no?
Posted: 4th, February 2020 | In: Celebrities, Music, News | Comment
Ant McPartlin doesn’t ‘give’ Lisa Armstrong anything – she earned it
Ant McPartlin “gives” his ex-wife Lisa Armstrong £31m, says the Sun. The paper claims the settlement was reached out of court. An unnamed source arrives to tell us: “Ant made a very generous settlement that works out to be more than half of everything that he has.”
Isn’t this about what ‘they’ had amassed during their long relationship and marriage? Didn’t she merely get what she was entitled to?
Why she walked away more than half we can only guess at, but no court date might mean less revelations that could damage his future earnings and that all-important image.
Posted: 16th, January 2020 | In: Celebrities, Money, Tabloids | Comment
So Long Meghan and Prince Harry – can you take Andrew and the Yorkies with you?
Royals are lining up to replace The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who have announced they will step back as “senior” royals and work to become financially independent. It’s the moment the Yorks have been waiting for, surely.
Princess Eugenie cost us a few million in security when she married last year in a televised event. But Eugenie never gelled with the public. Prince Andrew honourably tried to promote his girls and keep the York torch burning by appearing on the BBC in a one-on-one interview. It had worked for Diana when she sat down to chat with Martin Bashir. But whereas Diana came across as likeable, abused and isolated, he came across as an entailed prig who’d been mates with a prolific paedophile.
Diana perished in a car crash. Andrew created a car crash of his own and tried to creep away unscathed.
Maybe Meghan Markle’s abdication from guest editing Vogue as a Royal to guest editing Vogue as a celebrity, becoming the kind of Hollywood star Liz Hurley pretends to be as Harry demures and self-deprecates at her side, can provide the distraction Andrew needs to get away and push his kids and brand to the fore?
The Mail has 17 pages on Harry and Meghan’s decision to do what those in the know call “not the done thing”. People who know what done things are include: anyone who says “gels”; anyone who can recognise a horse from a pony; anyone who knows which spoon is proper to scoop out a serving wench’s foetus. The rest of us wonder why any one of these minted toffs are on the public payroll and if the Sussex’s pile we paid a couple of million quid to do up will now provide shelter for the homeless?
Meanwhile, what of Princess Beatrice, the other Yorkie, notable until now for having once worn a hat modelled on a vampire quid’s entrails, eating a pizza and, well, anyone got anything else? But worry not because Beatrice’s story is to swell. She is to marry a property developer. Neither the BBC nor ITV plan to broadcast the wedding live. But in this busy media landscape they’re not all, and any one of Netflix, Amazon or Dave could step in and fill the void between reruns of Cash in the Attic.
Farewell, then, Meghan and Harry. Your leaving is a new beginning for the Royal Family. And if you can take the rest of the hanger-ones and freeloaders with you, perhaps as part of a US trade deal with the post-Brexit UK, we’ll consider the chlorinated chicken a fair exchange for Princess Michael of Kent.
Posted: 9th, January 2020 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment
Ricky Gervais stirs up Hollywood AGM in fifth season finale
For the fifth time, the big Hollywood AGM for TV types was hosted by comedian Ricky Gervais. Like all telly, the Golden Globes sticks with the familiar until even the most slack-jawed viewers can stand no more. But Gervais did his best to wake up the telegenic, well-powdered audience by telling them to get a grip and stop harping on about woke stuff.
“You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything,” said Gervais from the podium. “You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. If you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, thank your god, and fuck off.”
Lots of praise all over the web about how great it is that a multi-millionaire entertainer told other multi-millionaire entertainers on a TV show that no-one gives a toss abut their views.
Ricky Gervais Does The Golden Globes Seasons 1-5 is not yet available as a box set.
Posted: 6th, January 2020 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment
Cass Elliot and Keith Moon died in the same bed at Harry Nilsson’s London pad
Cass Elliot died choking on a ham sandwich; everybody knows that. Except that she didn’t. The myth began because the first doctor who examined her after her death, Dr Anthony Greenburg, in a late-night press conference, said, ‘She was lying in bed eating and drinking a Coca-Cola while watching television. She was half propped up by pillows and it seems that she choked on her sandwich and inhaled her own vomit.’ Dr Greenburg added, ‘She had been dead for some considerable time before her body was found.’
Dr Greenburg, Elliot’s own physician, had overlooked the relatively important fact that the ham sandwich was by the side of her bed and untouched, but by then it was too late. The press reported his initial comments and the doctor unwittingly gave rise to the sandwich myth. A few days later at the inquest Gavin Thurston, the Westminster coroner, recorded a verdict of death from natural causes. ‘There was left-sided heart failure,’ wrote pathologist Professor Keith Simpson. ‘She had a heart attack which developed rapidly.’ Cass Elliott had been going on crash diets for years which in the end fatally weakened her heart. She was just thirty- two when she died.
Cass Elliot eating a typically healthy meal interspersed with cigarettes at a party at Crockford’s casino in London, circa 1974. (Photo by Joe Bangay/Evening Standard/Getty Images)
Keith Moon (1946 – 1978), the drummer for The Who, with his girlfriend Annette Walter-Lax, circa 1975. (Photo by Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images/Getty Images)
Four years after the death of Cass Elliot at Harry Nilsson’s flat, Keith Moon, after fitting in enough partying and convivial nights in his short life for a small town, died of an overdose of Heminevrin tablets in the very same bed. Keith and his girlfriend, Annette Walter-Lax, had been to a party held by Paul McCartney at the trendy chrome and neon-lit cocktail-bar restaurant called Peppermint Park on St Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden. By many accounts Keith was unusually quiet and sober and shared a booth with the McCartneys, David Frost, John Hurt and, Kenny Jones – Moon’s eventual replacement, ironically. At midnight, everyone went to the Odeon, Leicester Square, for the late-night première of the Buddy Holly Story that starred Gary Busey. Before the end of the film Keith and Annette caught a taxi back to Curzon Place. Keith started watching the film The Abominable Dr Phibes but fell asleep after taking several Heminevrin sedatives that had been prescribed to aid alcohol withdrawal. At about 7.30 a.m. he ordered Annette to cook him steak for breakfast. She complained but Keith retorted with, ‘If you don’t like it, you can fuck off.’ They were to be his last words.
Taken from: The Death of Cass Elliot and Keith Moon at Harry Nilsson’s Macabre Mayfair Flat
Posted: 5th, January 2020 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Caroll Spinney as Big Bird sings ‘Bein’ Green’ at Jim Henson’s funeral
Caroll Edwin Spinney (December 26, 1933 – December 8, 2019) gave life to Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street from its inception in 1969 until 2018.
On May 16, 1990, Muppet creator Jim Henson died. That following July, at a memorial service for the great entertainer held at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, Spinney, dressed a Big Bird, sang Bein’ Green, the song Kermit the frog made famous. Stay tuned til the end. It’s heart-warming.
Posted: 9th, December 2019 | In: Celebrities, News | Comment
The Shining In Gingerbread
Twin brother Aaron and Austin Keeling recreated scenes from The Shining with Gingerbread. They’re pretty tasty:
Spotter: Flashbak
Posted: 21st, November 2019 | In: Film, Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
Art Nouveau and the path to psychedelic 1960s music posters
All great art contains a degree of copying. Those psychedelic 1960s music posters borrow much from Art Nouveau, which borrowed from the Arts & Crafts Movement. In his 1920 work The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, T. S. Eliot looks at how imitation is one form of flattery:
One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
Martin Hohn, president of the Rock Poster Society, has a word:
“You can draw a straight line between Art Nouveau and psychedelic rock posters,” Martin Hohn, president of the Rock Poster Society, says. “Mucha, Jules Chéret, Aubrey Beardsley. Borrow from everything. The world is your palette. It was all meant to be populist art. It was always meant to be disposable.” He later adds: “What the artists were saying graphically was the same thing the rock bands were saying musically.”
Norman Orr, who did about a dozen posters for Bill Graham from 1970 to ’71, says he was influenced by was the Moravian artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939). “It was the sensuality of the graceful, flowing lines of the Mucha work, and the way that the female form was combined with the sensuality of the line work that I found to be most appealing.”
Buy gorgeous Art Nouveau posters here.
Spotter: Kottke
Posted: 20th, November 2019 | In: Music, News, The Consumer | Comment
Ant McPartlin related to I’m a Celebrity co-star
I’m a Celebrity returns and with it come still more news on how fabulous Ant and Dec are. Dec has always been great, of course, but people might have read about Ant’s drink driving, drug taking and love life and thought him less than admirable. But in truth national treasure Ant is just like Dec because they both carry “the unique DNA marker, S660″.
News is that “both Ant and Dec can trace their bloodlines back the skeleton of a Viking, who was believed to have died in Dublin in 790AD. The pair are both descendants of the Viking, through their father’s bloodlines, which means they are distant cousins.”
How did they take the news? Like showbiz pals. The Chronicle notes:
“That’s brilliant,” gasped McPartlin. “Oh my God,” added Donnelly , leading McPartlin to jokingly ask whether he was disappointed.
Ant’s only human, of course, and we wish him well. And he’ll remain only human until the next press release when we discover that he’s related to another of his I’m A Celebrity co-stars, the perennial witchetty grub.
Posted: 12th, November 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
‘I am Jew’ : John Lydon slams Jeremy Corbyn and his ‘f***ing racist party’
Johnny Rotten is still swearing. The former Sex Pistol known as John Lydon has message for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party: “Just a quick mention to the @UKLabour Party… to @JeremyCorbyn and his f••king racist party…I am Jew!” John Lydon rock legend tells it how it is.
Via : @RabbiZvi
Posted: 8th, November 2019 | In: Celebrities, Politicians | Comment
Kurt Cobain’s cherry-burned sweater sells for $334,000
Someone just paid $334,000 for a cardigan with stains and a cherry burn hole in it. The green cardi was worn by Kurt Cobain for Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged performance.
“This cardigan, it’s the holy grail of any article of clothing that he ever wore,” says Darren Julien, CEO and president of Julien’s Auctions. “Kurt created the grunge look; he didn’t wear show clothes,”
Posted: 29th, October 2019 | In: Celebrities, Music, News, The Consumer | Comment
What fool buys this revolting Captain Beefheart shirt for $1000?
Stuck for a gift this Christmas? (And how can you be when Flashbak’s new Prints Shop offers such great deals on wonderful art.) But if you stuck, then do not panic and at the last minute invest $1285 in a silk shirt struck by a painting by Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart. As Richard Metzger rightly says, it is revolting.
It’s made by Enfants Riches Deprimes (“Depressed Rich Kids”). At least they know their target market. This is impulse shopping for the daddy-fed rich, entitled and inflicted. Expect to see some berk wearing it on the streets of Notting Hill soon…
Posted: 27th, October 2019 | In: Celebrities, Fashion, Key Posts, Music, The Consumer | Comment
‘Everyone’s favorite game: Cohen, Pacino or Hoffman?’
Play along to ‘Everyone’s Favorite Game – Leonard Cohen or Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman?’ On Facebook one reader did ask : “Leonard who?” They’ve been banned and sent for re-education at one of our camps. The rest of you can carry on…
Spotter: Tara McGinley and Flashbak
Posted: 8th, October 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Tabloids pit Prince Harry against Elton John
This pesky tabloids have upset Prince Harry. Not settling with suing the Mail on Sunday over its reports on his wife and her family, the Mirror and Sun. Gossip sells papers. But it seems that only the right sort of gossip pleases Harry, what he calls “responsible” gossip.
Harry v the tabloids. The tab love a fight. Does Harry?
“For years and years the royals have been a free shot for the press,” says the founder of Hacked Off, a campaign group which represents phone-hacking victims. “This man has suffered very badly because of that – we know what happened to his mother. I think we’ve moved on from the idea that celebrities are not entitled to privacy. The duke and duchess need to draw a line, they’ve had years of abuse.”
Byline says Harry’s latest claim to do with the papers allegedly hacking his phone.
Should the claim against the Sun and Mirror reach court we can expect to see editors and Harry in the dock. Indeed. Time to get courtroom doings live on the telly. A nation will be gripped.
Posted: 5th, October 2019 | In: Celebrities, News, Tabloids | Comment
Third Person Watch: John Craven’s Newsround
It wasn’t called Newsround when John Craven first presented the BBC teatime news show for children in the pre-Internet age. It was called John Craven’s Newsround. Vanity shakes its pompadour once more as John Craven tells us that telly was much better than John Craven was presenting John Craven’ Newsround on one of the UK’s three TV channels. Ok, you get the idea.
Grumbling about how children’s TV has become “youth-orientated” – more summer camp than extracurricular – he opined: “Unfortunately, we don’t have the Tony Hart figures, the Johnny Morris figures, the John Craven figures on children’s television. They are all much younger.”
John Craven is 79.
Posted: 4th, October 2019 | In: Celebrities, News | Comment
Our Hobby is Depeche Mode
In 2007, artist Jeremy Deller and filmmaker Nicholas Abrahams accepted a commission by Mute Records and Depeche Mode to make a documentary about the band’s No.1 fans. The result is Our Hobby is Depeche Mode.
As Deller explains:
“A friend of mine, Nick Abrahams, told me that Mute Records were looking to make a film about Depeche Mode for an anniversary ‘greatest hits’ package. I thought that could be quite interesting. And either he or I or both of us – I can’t actually remember –suggested that we do something about their fans, as you hear almost mythical stories about their Eastern European fanbase, particularly in the 1980s. We went to Mexico, the US, Germany, Romania, Brazil and
Canada – all in under three weeks.“In Russia, 60 fans met us at the airport and basically kidnapped us for two days, which was brilliant for the film. As we suspected, the story from Eastern Europe was massive. The effect of Depeche in that region during the 1960s was similar to the effect of the Beatles on the UK during the 1960s.”
Flashbak has a get interview with Deller and Abrahams about their film. you can also see the entire film over therehttps://flashbak.com/our-hobby-is-depeche-mode-419797/.
Posted: 3rd, October 2019 | In: Celebrities, Film, Music | Comment
Liam Gallagher answers 73 as he strolls about Hampstead Heath
Might be best not to bark out questions should you see Liam Gallagher bowls about his local area in north west London. In any case, Joe Sabia has beaten you to it, putting 73 questions to the former Oasis frontman as he takes the air on Hampstead Heath.
Posted: 30th, September 2019 | In: Celebrities, Music | Comment
John Waters picks his favourite films and TV shows from ‘the closet ‘
John Waters’ took a look inside the ‘film closet’ at Criterion.
Night and The City- the best London film ever?
Jeremy Smith has compiled a list : ‘The signature film of every major city’. London is the only British city to make the list. And the choice of film? Night and the City, a great London noir film.
A blacklisted American filmmaker in London summoned up his rage and resentment to make one of the nastiest noirs of of the 1950s. Perhaps a non-Englander’s perspective is required to place this film above the numerous classics shot in this prominent world capital, but there is something about Dassin’s lensing of London as a city of granite and steel — a hard place with no give — that leaves you aching once the tawdry tale is finished. Honorable mention: Lean’s “Brief Encounter,” Mackenzie’s “The Long Good Friday,” Crichton’s “The Lavender Hill Mob,” Cammell/Roeg’s “Performance,” Leigh’s “Naked,” Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” and Boorman’s “Hope and Glory.”
The Moebius Hendrix
In 1967 journalist Jean-Nöel Coghe accompanied Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) on the France and Belgium legs of his first tour outside the USA. Coghe took a photograph of Hendrix eating soup at a cafe in France. In 1996, French artist Jean Giraud (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012) adapted that image for the cover of Voodoo Soup (1995), a posthumous compilation album of the great musician’s work. Giraud, better know as Moebius, portrayed Hendrix as a blaze of colour.
See the rest on Flashbak.
Posted: 19th, September 2019 | In: Celebrities, Music | Comment
How they created the cover of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’
Kirk Weddle descibes how he took that photograph for the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind album:
4-month-old baby was cast and I conducted the shoot with just his parents and a lifeguard present. I placed a camera with a motor drive , in an underwater housing, mounted on a tripod at the bottom of a pool. Since kids are always an unknown at shoots, I did several prelight and prefocus passes with a doll. Once I felt I had the framing, light, and exposure dialed in; the parents slipped the child into the water. I took seven frames on the first pass and four frames on the second. As expected, the baby started to cry, this had been the babies first time underwater, and we wrapped the shoot. The dollar bill and the fishhook were stripped in in post.
Spencer Elden was that baby.
Spotter: life is so beautiful , Flashba
Posted: 16th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment
Samantha Quek fails her audition as a football pundit
Woman’s football is more popular than ever. England’s World Cup run was great entertainment. More than 24,000 fans came to watch Chelsea play Spurs in the Woman’s Super League. Over 31,000 fans paid to watch Manchester City beat Manchester United in the same competition. And with more fans, comes the need for more pundits and journalists versed in the game. Step forward, then, Samantha Quek MBE (born 18 October 1988) a former British field hockey player who won gold as part of the British team at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
As arguably the most photogenic member of that glorious, hugely dedicated and richly talented Olympic hockey team and keen on building a media career, she’s been spotted beyond her sport.
You may know her from I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!, Pointless Celebrities and as a host for the BBC’s flagship football phone-in programme, BBC606. s
Doss she know football as well as she knows field hockey? Would a male field hockey player get a job talking about football on the BBC? There’s not been.
Good for her for going where to action is. But are there not enough female footballers and female journalists working in football to work as pundits? Or for women in the public eye, is it all about looks first and content second?
PS: Teemu Eino Antero Pukki plays for Finland. He is Finnish.
Posted: 16th, September 2019 | In: Celebrities, Sports | Comment
