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.
Watch Sinead O’Connor perform ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ On Irish TV
This week, Sinead O’Connor performed Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ on Irish TV. She was spellbinding:
As a bonus, here’s the original version of Nothing Compares 2 U Prince wrote for The Family in 1985:
The Mystery of Picasso : time-lapse study of the great painter
The great Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s process is revealed in this neat video. Filmed by Henri-Georges Clouzot with time-lapse photography, the video premiered in the 1956 documentary The Mystery of Picasso.
Posted: 6th, September 2019 | In: Celebrities | Comment
When Iggy Pop could have been a Neil Diamond impersonator
Iggy Pop, the electric punk musician who made Cole Porter growl, one-time member of The Prime Movers, thriller of high schoolers and Zanzibar nights might have been a Neil Diamond impersonator.
“You know, I finally got the voice that I was supposed to have in some senses. When I was 21, I was in love with a girl from Cleveland and we actually got married for a couple of weeks,” he explains.
“I had just put out the first Stooges album and I met her dad, he was a big shot in business. He said, ‘Well, meeting and listening to you talk I guess you probably sing like Neil Diamond right?’
“I’ve since learned a lot of respect for Neil but at that time, you don’t tell Iggy Pop that he sounds like Neil Diamond. But on the other hand, a part of me was thinking, ‘Damn, if I sang like Neil Diamond, I’d have a lot more money you know’.”
Iggy Pop was talking to the BBC about his new album Free.
Posted: 6th, September 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Manchester United and Leeds great Eric Cantona’s UEFA awards speech in full
Eric Cantona was invited to say a few words before the 2019-20 Champions League draw in Monaco. That speech in full:
“As flies to wanton boys we are for the gods, they kill us for their sport.
“Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the ageing of the cells, soon the science will fix the cells to the state and so we will become eternal.
“Only accidents, crimes, wars, will still kill us but unfortunately, crimes, wars, will multiply.
“I love football. Thank you.”
And now for the classified results: Barking 1 – Braintree…
Posted: 29th, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, manchester united, Sports | Comment
Falsettos : Jews and Non-Jews can pretend to be Jews
Set in New York City in 1979, Falsettos is the musical that begins with the number “Four Jews in a Room Bitching”: “Marvin, his ten-year-old son Jason, his psychiatrist Mendel, and his boyfriend Whizzer are in the midst of an argument.” The show about a Jewish family has won Tony Awards for book and score. But the London outing has hit a snag: there are no actual Jews on the show:
Miriam Margolyes and Maureen Lipman have accused West End producers of “overt appropriation” after they cast non-Jewish actors in a musical about a Jewish family. They are among a group of 20 Jewish artists who signed an open letter to the team behind Falsettos, which opens at The Other Palace Theatre in Westminster on August 30. It claims that the UK debut of the award-winning show – which has a plot centred around a boy’s bar mitzvah – features no Jewish talent.
Can Jews play non-Jews? Isn’t a play all about, you know, pretending? Playing yourself isn’t really acting is it, not of the sort that makes you a dame. And what of a black Jews – are they able to black Muslims and Hasidic Jews or just one or the other, or neither? Does Hamlet have a Danish accent? Is Maureen looking for a job?
The row was ignited when the message, backed by Harry Potter actress Ms Margolyes, 78, and Coronation Street star Ms Lipman, 73, was published by The Stage website on Wednesday. “To the best of our knowledge no one in the cast of the UK premiere is Jewish, and neither is the director or anyone on the team,” it states. “Jewishness is easy to caricature and this seems all the more disappointing when Jewish representation is absent and the ability of Jews to tell or contribute to their own stories is dismissed.”
Why not trust the actors not to caricature the roles? The best actors can pick up accents and slight facial expression. The worst play versions of themselves on Hollyoaks, The Only Way is Essex and The Producers. The best plays are not racially-driven propaganda. And then this:
Selladoor Worldwide, the production company, said it could not confirm if its company members were Jewish because it would be discriminatory to ask them.
I don’t think they’re Jewish, but their agent might be?
Lead image: Miriam Margolyes playing ‘not a Jew’ in Blackadder
Posted: 24th, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
Sarah Silverman fired for making jokes in blackface in 2007
Who need context in the age of offence taking? American comic Sarah Silverman told listeners to The Bill Simmons Podcast about how the knowing came for her. She once posed in blackface on The Sarah Silverman Show. She might be a victim of “offence archaeology”: digging into someone past in the hope of finding evidence of wrong thinking. It matters not a jot what happened in the intervening years. The offence is an indelible stain.
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part, then, at 11pm the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode… I think it’s really scary and it’s a very odd thing that its invaded the left primarily and the right will mimic it…
“It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone. It’s so odd. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.'”
Context be damned:
“It was like, I’m playing a character, and I know this is wrong, so I can say it. I’m clearly liberal. That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism. I don’t get joy in that any more. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person any more… There’s a still of me on Twitter in blackface and it’s totally out of context and I tweeted it when Twitter was new and the people who followed me watched that show and it was from that show,” she said. “Now it’s forever there and it looks … it’s totally racist out of context and I regret that.”
Everyone, stay in your lane or else.
Posted: 13th, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, News | Comment
Jeffrey Epstein : Clinton, Prince Andrew and the smoking gun
“Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”So says Buckingham Palace in response to the accusation that
Prince Andrew groped a woman against her wishes at convicted paedophile – now dead! – Jeffrey Epstein’s US home.
We know what Prince Andrew did not do because a day before Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell, court papers about his case were released. Epstein was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The papers feature an allegation by Johanna Sjoberg. She claimed Andrew touched her breast at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment in 2001. She alleges: “I just remember someone suggesting a photo, and they told us to go get on the couch. And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet, the puppet on her lap. And so then I sat on Andrew’s lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.”
‘Virginia’ is Virginia Giuffre, known as Virginia Roberts when she allegedly had sex with toe-licking Andrew at Epstein’s ‘Lolita island’. He denied that, too.
The British press is looking hard at ‘Randy Andy’:
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says Epstein’s death is “way too convenient”. “What a lot of us want to know is, what did he know?” asks Mr de Blasio. “How many other millionaires and billionaires were part of the illegal activities that he was engaged in? Well, that information didn’t die with Jeffrey Epstein. That needs to be investigated, too… How on earth is he not under special protection? What’s really going on here? I think that’s a question that we must get a full answer to.”
Why did he need them to be close? And what did he have on them? Epstein was accused of hiring girls aged 17 and under for sex at his Manhattan and Florida piles between 2002 and 2005.
He escaped similar charges in a plea deal in 2008. He and his accomplices received immunity from federal sex-trafficking charges that could have sent him to prison for over 40 years. Back then he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of soliciting prostitution, including with a minor. For that Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in the private wing of a county jail. Was it tough? No. The paedophile was allowed to leave for work – up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. No-one else – not one other person who allegedly arranged the girls and enabled Epstein’s crimes – was prosecuted.
“How come people who don’t have money get sent to jail — and can’t even make bail – and they have to do their time and sit there and think about what they did wrong? He had no repercussions and doesn’t even believe he did anything wrong,’’ asks Micelle Licata, who was 16 when she says Epstein abused her. “His lawyers were just in my life inside and out. They asked if I had a baby, if I had an abortion, ‘did you sleep with 30 different guys’ and ‘do you think that played a part?’ I said, ‘you’re going to come at me like that when you represent a guy who is doing this to hundreds of girls? How do you sleep at night?’”
Epstein “had a revolving door of middle and high school girls coming to his gated compound throughout the day and night.”
Why did he get away with it? And why now is he dead? We know that he kept photos of young girls. Did he keep records of comings and going to his mansions. Did he keep tapes?
Posted: 11th, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment
Meghan Markle : without the money, titles and snobbery and she’s just like us
Meghan Markle doesn’t have a job. So bored is the Duchess of Sussex that she’s apparently taken to writing snooty missives to the local parish council, helping Harry look as out of touch with the rest of us a teenage toff in Nazi uniform and editing TV Quick Vogue magazine. Her drive to be significant has succeeded in making the royals look even less significant.
Harry recently took a moment out from the polo and the holidays to explain racism to the masses huddled at his feet – “just as stigma is handed down from generation to generation, your perspective on the world and on life and on people is something that is taught to you. It’s learned from your family, learned from the older generation, or from advertising, from your environment.”
Prince Harry gets racism because he married “biracial” Meghan. This act of fancying a woman makes him woke. And if you can shell out the £4 for a copy of Vogue you can discover the 15 women Meghan views as “forces for change”. No changing your clothes, but global change from Namibia to Norway. You too can b like Harry. You too can learn from Meghan.
Among all of her women on the cover, there’s a mirror — “a space for you, the reader, to see yourself. Because you, too, are part of this collective,” she says.
It is, of course, laughable bollocks, a parodist’s dream, an exercise is ego-puffing from one of their own tribe, a parade of ideal womanhood more in keeping with an exclusive country club beauty pageant than a universal democratic wish list. Making you part of it is Meghan saying she understands that the nannies, cleaners, staff and serfs are people, too. In some ways you are her equal, although 3billion of you will need to fit into the square on Vogue’s cover reserved for one of her mates. Breath in. Think thin. And for that you and we are grateful. Now collect your Christmas orange and get back to work…
Posted: 1st, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Royal Family | Comment
Mick Jagger dances to the theme from ‘On The Buses’ –
Mick Jagger interprets the theme from ‘On The Buses’ – by @CuriousUkTelly:
Posted: 30th, July 2019 | In: Celebrities, Music, TV & Radio | Comment
Chuckle Brothers Clickbait : trolling a man’s death for clicks
Chuckle Brothers’ entertainer Paul Elliott has been “forced to deny that he passed away after his late brother Jimmy died this week”. So reports The Metro. How ugly. A grieving man is forced into something. “Following the death of his older brother Jimmy, 87, the 71-year-old was quick to stamp out rumours that he was the one who had died.”
‘The world is falling apart, Paul Chuckle has now died a year after his brother,’ one distressed fan wrote. To which he also responded: ‘Nobody told me,’ with a whiskey glass. While another wrote: ‘Click-bait. He wasn’t a “Chuckle brother”. Paul didn’t die.’ To which Paul added: ‘I don’t intend to mate,’ with the fist and thumbs up emoji.
Where on earth did readers and Chuckle Brothers’ fans get the idea that one of the comedy duo had died?
Clickbaiting a man’s death and then writing a second story about a grieving man “forced” to set the record straight. Charming…
Posted: 27th, July 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment
Rutger Hauer : ‘I saw the future’
Rutger Hauer (23 January 1944 – 19 July 2019) is best known for his starring role in Blade Runner (1982), a take on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. He gave sic-fi movies an ending to rival that of all other genres. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,” says his character Roy Batty. “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Here he is telling us how the ending came about – “At the same time I was doing this film, I saw the future”:
Posted: 26th, July 2019 | In: Celebrities, Film, Key Posts, News | Comment
The 5 best movies of the decade (2010-2019)
Indiewire have listed their 100 best movies of the decade. Any movies released later this year stand not a hope of making the list – because it’s closed. Top of the pile is “Moonlight” (Barry Jenkins, 2016), ahead of:
2: “Under the Skin” (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
3. “Certified Copy” (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
4. “The Act of Killing”/”The Look of Silence” (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2013/2015)
5. “Inside Llewyn Davis” (Ethan & Joel Coen, 2013)
No – I’ve not seen any of them. But a tip’s a tip so will do…
Nass Festival : rip-off travel and bonkers sex advice
The NASS Festival has been exciting Somerset locals. Sited at the Bath Show Ground around 6 miles from Castle Carey mainline train station, music fans arriving by rail can catch a coach to take them to the venue for £6 return. That’s on top of the cost of the festival ticket. Why the extra charge? The shuttle buses should be free.
On Thursday people getting off the train were stood in a queue waiting for one of the buses. Many waited well over an hour. It was hot. The police handed out bottled water. Understandably some decided to walk the 6 miles. Cue much moaning in the local newspaper about youths slowing down traffic and asking for lifts.
Nass treats customers as fools. Doubt that? Get a load of some of the advice on its website.
Please DO NOT WALK in the road. Help us keep you safe. Hop on a bus. #NASSSafe
If you opt to walk you have to walk in the road. It’s all road. There is no pavement. Nass knows this. Nass should make the buses free and provide more of them. Or provide bicycles, rickshaws, a bag collecting service and more. Do something more than treating their customers with disdain and having them stand in the sun waiting for an overpriced bus.
And then this:
SAFER SPACES
Everyone deserves to have fun and enjoy themselves at NASS. Because of this we have a zero tolerance policy towards any kind of sexual assault or harassment. We also don’t tolerate any racism, discrimination or any other anti-social behaviour. To make it clear, this is what we classify as unacceptable behaviour and may get you ejected from the festival:
• Any unwanted physical contact
• Groping
• Grabbing
• Catcalling
• Leering
• Stalking
• Rape
• Upskirting
• Verbal or physical intimidation
If you experience any of this or see it happening, please call it out and/or report it to the nearest steward or security guard.
“Unacceptable behaviour” is leering – i.e. looking intently – and rape. Rape “may get you ejected from the festival”. Or it may not. If you’ve been the victim of a violent sexual assault call the police.
Welcome to planet Nass.
Posted: 14th, July 2019 | In: Key Posts, Music, News | Comment
Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop Duet for Cole Porter’s Did You Evah
The 1990 album Red Hot + Blue features features pop performers reinterpreting several songs by Cole Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) – the title of the album comes from Cole Porter’s musical Red, Hot and Blue – with money going to AIDS research. The album kicks off with Neneh Cherry singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, which was released as a single, peaking at number 25 in the charts. But the real highlight is Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry’s version of “Did You Evah,” written for the 1939 musical DuBarry Was a Lady, and famously sang by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the movie High Society (1956). The single failed to break into the Top 40, hitting 42. (Btw – the B-side was The Thompson Twins asking us “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?”)
Iggy and Debbie’s video was produced and directed by Alex Cox of Repo Man fame. He told Spin: “Iggy had always wanted to make a video with animals and Debbie had always wanted to publicly burn lingerie so I let them.”
Sing-a-long if the know the (new) words:
Debbie: I have heard, among this clan, you are called the forgotten man.
Iggy: is that what theyre saying? well, did you evah!
Both: what a swell party this is!
Iggy: and have you heard the story of a boy, a girl, unrequited love?
Debbie: sounds like pure soap opera. I may cry.
Iggy: aw…
Both: what a swell party this is!
Iggy: what frails!
Debbie: what cocks!
Iggy: what broads!
Debbie: what jocks…
Iggy: what furs! theyre beautiful!
Debbie: why, Ive never seen such…
Both: yuppity!
Debbie: neither did I.
Iggy: its all just too…
Both: swellegant!
Debbie: this french champagne…
Iggy: (domestic!)
Debbie: so good for the brain.
Iggy: thats what I was gonna say!
Debbie: well, you know youre a brilliant fellow.
Iggy: thank you, I am!
Debbie: hehe, drink up Jim.
Iggy: so… have you ever been out to L.A. lately?
Debbie: well no, not recently.
Iggy: well, I went there and had a rent-a-car and all…
Debbie: oh, really?
Iggy: yeah and I got invited to Pia’s house… Pia Zadora’s house…
Debbie: really? oh.
Iggy: yeah.
Debbie: was it nice?
Iggy: well, I didnt… I didnt go!
Debbie: oh! hehe.
Iggy: it woulda been swell though!
Debbie: shoulda gone!
Iggy: it woulda been elegant!
Debbie: elegant.
Oh wait, look… look whos coming in now… can you believe it?
Iggy: …I hear they dismantled pickfair.
Debbie: they did.
Iggy: it wasnt elegant enough. hehe!
Debbie: yeah. probably full of termites.
Iggy: yeah.
Both: its great!
Its grand!
Wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wonderland!
La la la la la la la la la la la la la.
We sing so rare, like old camembert.
Iggy: have you heard that Diane Star – she got bit in the Asster bar.
Debbie: sauced again! well, did you evah…
Both: what a swell party this is!
Have you heard?
Its in the stars.
Next July we collide with Mars.
Well did you evah!
What a swell party.
What a swell party.
What a swellegant elegant, (sm) party…
Debbie: smarty?
Iggy: party… yeah!
Debbie: a smarty party?
Iggy: I am! a smarty! Im pretty smart!
Debbie: you are a smarty for coming to this party.
Iggy: yeah, thats right!
Debbie: well piss off.
Iggy: hehehe, thats good! I like that.
Posted: 5th, July 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Freddie Starr never ate a hamster
Freddie Starr (9 January 1943; died 9 May 2019) never ate a hamster, at least not Supersonic. In 1986 the Sun told how the entertainer had put the rodent between two slices of bread and bit into it. It was just his loveable, madcap way of punishing the critter’s female owner for her refusal to make him a sandwich.
“Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster,” said the Sun. The story was false, cooked up by Starr with his agent, convicted paedophile Max Clifford. Starr noted in his autobiography: “I have never eaten or even nibbled a live hamster, gerbil, guinea pig, mouse, shrew, vole or any other small mammal.” It’s the kind of line Starr would have ended with “But I bet he had a cockatoo”.
Starr’s dead now. But the story lives on, the Sun modestly hailing the original as the “greatest headline in the world”. Back then the story promoted Starr’s career. Told now the casual misogyny and cruelty would have ended it.
Posted: 10th, May 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment
Daily Star sacks all its Page 3 topless models
The job market is looking bleak for topless stunnas. The Daily Star says it will no longer feature pictures of topless women on Page 3, following the Sun’s move to end its Page 3 feature 2015. Readers looking for tit-bits of news will be lost to the web.
“The Daily Star is always looking to try new things and improve,” says the paper’s editor, Jonathan Clark. “In that spirit, we’ve listened to reader feedback and are currently trialling a covered-up version of page 3.”
Do Daily Star readers do feedback in anything other than sales?
How different things were when the Sun sacked Dannii from Basildon. “The Daily Star is proud to continue the great British page 3 tradition,” announced the paper. “It brightens the day for our readers during tough times and has launched many successful careers. We will continue to listen to what our readers want and put a smile on their faces with our lovely, bright, talented and independent young ladies. Page 3 is as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pud, fish and chips and seaside postcards. The Daily Star is about fun and cheering people up. And that will definitely continue!”
What the Star is about now is unsaid. Maybe it’ll be about a different kind of hard news?
Posted: 12th, April 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment
Hollywood PRs weep as Felicity Huffman admits guilt
In a move that has sent a chill wind through the offices of the Hollywood PR industry, actress Felicity Huffman offered no sympathetic backstory or refreshingly dishonest non-denial denial as she accepted “full acceptance of my guilt” in buying her daughter a place at college. She is in a state of “deep regret and shame” over her actions.
“I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues and the educational community,” says Huffington, the voice barely audible over the din of wailing spokespersons.
“I want to apologise to them and, especially, I want to apologise to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly… In my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her. This transgression toward her and the public, I will carry for the rest of my life.”
Says one Hollywood PR: “Maybe therapy can save her – and us! I think she must be ill.”
Posted: 9th, April 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
They’re playing Michael Jackson in Selfridge’s but he’s ‘banned’ on the BBC
They were playing Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall in Selfridge’s department store in London today. BBC radio DJ Craig Charles says there’s no “official ban” on the singer but they’ve not played a single Jackson song on his show since the TV show Leaving Neverland aired last month. The show featured accusations that Jacksons was a paedophile.
The accusations were compelling and convincing. But, then, they can be unchallenged because Jackson remains dead. So it comes down to taking sides: do you believe guilt should be proven or is an accusation enough to try and convict? The lawyer for the two men who detailed the abuse they says Jackson subjected them to said the singer “was running the most sophisticated child sex operation the world has ever known”. If sophistication is a grown man putting on a sing-song, girlie voice and inviting kids over to ride his Ferris Wheel, then a Florida bride in hot-pants is the stuff of monarchy.
Circumspection is overrated.
In 2014, a top copper said said officers had spoken to a man known as “Nick”, who said he was abused by a paedophile ring, and that his account was “credible and true“. This year Nick was charged with 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud. Radio stations have banned his music.
So what of journalistic standards and the BBC not playing Jackson? Radio DJ Paul Gambaccini was falsely accused of sexual abuse. Gambaccini has presented shows on BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4. He accused BBC bosses of persecuting old presenters in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. Last year Gambaccini spoke to the Times. He called the Metropolitan Police “the most dishonest organisation I have ever encountered”, adding:
“The Metropolitan police of Bernard Hogan-Howe was a third-rate Stasi. If the police are allowed to do what they did to me, and to so many other people in the witch hunt, this country is now unliveable.”
If it can happen to one of your own, the BBC should reserve judgment. Presuming guilt is a travesty. If we need to wonder and investigate something, let’s marvel at how a man as rich as Jackson could get away with what he’s accused of and why big media never saw it?
Posted: 3rd, April 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
Danny Cipriani in a mum’s ‘hallway’ and trailing Caroline Flack’s Love Island
And to think they said it wouldn’t last. Days after “rugby ace” Danny Cirpriani was linked with Stanislavsky-honed Love Island presenter Caroline Flack, the Sun, the paper that broke the news on its front page, says he’s “bedded” a mum of two.
Meet Amy D’Ambrogio, whose kids will be the toast of their school playground as she tells the paper of her alleged shagging. Amy’s fluent in the kind of language that requires no work from the Sun’s busy sub–editor’s, revealing: “After sex he was saying, ‘I feel really bad now. I feel guilty’ and told me he had cheated on someone.” Who? No matter because we get to the maul, tackle and ruck, which according to the scummy mummy (come on, Sun subs) went like this:
- Amy follows Danny on instagram
- Amy asks Danny for a “birthday kiss”
- “To her surprise [he] later arrived at her home”
- They spend 90 minutes “exchanging intimacies” in her “hall”
- His breath was a bit garlicky,” says she
- “I really needed that release,” says he
Another alleged shag is explained: “He stopped outside my bedroom, took all his clothes off and folded them in a neat pile.”
No word from ‘Copping some’ Flack, but after Danny and she were “caught” together at Babington House, a members’ club in Somerset, where spotting a frotting celebrity and their PR is akin to spotting the sky, we look forward to another series of Love Island very soon.
Posted: 3rd, April 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment
The Cure’s Robert Smith nails a red carpet interview (video)
The Cure’s Robert Smith was on the red carpet as part of the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His reaction to a hyperventilating TV host neatly showcases the difference between the UK and the US.
Posted: 2nd, April 2019 | In: Celebrities, Music | Comment
Danny Cipriani and Caroline Flack collide in the Celebrity Petri Dish
Love Island presenter Caroline Flack and “rugby’s bad boy” Danny Cipriani “shared a romantic getaway” in… Somerset. The Sun peers into the Celebrity Petri Dish and spots the “smitten rugby ace” and Flack sharing a “passionate goodbye kiss” after a “raunchy” weekend. An anonymous source adds: “They did start tongues wagging quite quickly.” Wagging Tongue might be the celebrity sex aide we need, one up on Love Island’s‘ Under Duvet Hand Assister and rugby’s maul, ruck, scrum, praise of the “nice tackle”, lots of “playing with one another” and a “hooker” pressed on with cries of “heave” – to think they broadcast that stuff before the watershed.
The Sun sees romance but perhaps this was an audition for the much-awaited Celebrity Love Island, in which Cirpriani, a man whose entire rugby playing career appears to be an audition for the moment he shares a televised hot tub with drip-dry incarnations of Kate Price, and Flack, a woman whose genitals are often accused of being a PR stunt – Flack, presenter of an X-Factor spin-off show enjoyed a “romance” with a teenage Harry Styles (who he?) enacted before anonymous sources and passing paps. Celebrity Love Island is the show we need.
That Celebrity Love Island line-up in full:
Caroline Flack
Danny Cipriani
Nigel Farage
Edwina Currie
Sarah Ferguson
Katie Price
The Teletubbies
Terry Waite
Shamima Begum
Uri Geller
Posted: 1st, April 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Tabloids | Comment
Stephen Pinker’s 13 rules for good writing
Want to write well? Harvard Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker has outlined his 13 rules for good writing on Twitter. That Twitter keeps things brief is a clue to what Pinker thinks works best. Editor’s should be like vultures.
- Reverse-engineer what you read. If it feels like good writing, what makes it good? If it’s awful, why?
- Prose is a window onto the world. Let your readers see what you are seeing by using visual, concrete language.
- Don’t go meta. Minimize concepts about concepts, like “approach, assumption, concept, condition, context, framework, issue, level, model, perspective, process, range, role, strategy, tendency,” and “variable.”
- Let verbs be verbs. “Appear,” not “make an appearance.”
- Beware of the Curse of Knowledge: when you know something, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like not to know it. Minimize acronyms & technical terms. Use “for example” liberally. Show a draft around, & prepare to learn that what’s obvious to you may not be obvious to anyone else.
- Omit needless words (Will Strunk was right about this).
- Avoid clichés like the plague (thanks, William Safire).
- Old information at the beginning of the sentence, new information at the end.
- Save the heaviest for last: a complex phrase should go at the end of the sentence.
- Prose must cohere: readers must know how each sentence is related to the preceding one. If it’s not obvious, use “that is, for example, in general, on the other hand, nevertheless, as a result, because, nonetheless,” or “despite.”
- Revise several times with the single goal of improving the prose.
- Read it aloud.
- Find the best word, which is not always the fanciest word. Consult a dictionary with usage notes, and a thesaurus.
Spotter: Big Think
Posted: 27th, March 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Uri Gellar : he can’t save Michael Jackson but he can stop Brexit
Renowned spoon bender Uri Geller says he can stop Brexit with the power of this mind – just as he’s stopped Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.
Geller’s powers are mighty but, alas, he has been unable to prevent his old mucker Michael Jackson from being dug up and beaten with sticks:
Jean-Claude Junker dines with the long spoon.
Posted: 23rd, March 2019 | In: Celebrities, Politicians, Strange But True | Comment
