Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

2/48 Click These Coloured Tabs To Switch Quickly Between Sections The Difficult Second Decade Phone-hacking. Superinjunctions. Yewtree. #MeToo. A pigfucking prime minister and a reality TV host as POTUS. These last ten years have been quite a ride – and 2019 has been the batshit crown it deserves. So join us, won’t you, as we bid farewell to another year of scandal, depravity and general shithousery.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// Jan/Feb/Mar ...... 3-14 Pole-dancing otters! Strap-ons at the National Theatre! Snoozing celebs and beloved character actor Lorraine “Lorraine” Kelly. PLUS: Is Michael Gove a swinger? We investigate the evidence...

Apr/May/Jun ...... 15-23 Boris Johnson’s knobby pint! Farage’s Five Guys splurge! Barbra Streisand’s precious Fanny and Gary Numan’s macerator toilet. PLUS: Some free legal advice for Cheryl Cole...

Jul/Aug/Sep ...... 24-36 Brooklyn’s photo friendly entourage! Out on the pull with Vin Diesel! The Amber Rudd Test and Love Island accounting. PLUS: Dead Cat Theory – what’s it actually all about?

Oct/Nov/Dec ...... 37-47 Harry Styles’s pilfered jacket! Fruitbowling with Hugh Grant! Rolf Harris’s fall from grace and the live-saving work of Selena Goatmez. PLUS: We teach Prince Andrew a lesson or two...

Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

3/48 Mid-Morning Spatters January Crystal Palace’s goalie joined in the ongoing Nazi craze, throwing Hitler salutes over dinner; Zac Efron caused quite a stir with the trailer for his Sexy Ted Bundy movie; and two competing Fyre Festival documentaries introduced us to an extremely novel way of smuggling bottled water through customs... //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Morgan Tissue << And how did critics respond to this dildo in A very delicate arsehole print? Quentin Letts of the Mail described it as “vast”. Dominic Cavendish of the Telegraph There was uproar at the studio building said it was “sizeable”. Alice Jones of the i where they filmGood Morning Britain at the plumped for “big”. But Henry Hitchings of start of 2019 – and Piers Morgan’s arsehole the Evening Standard? “Medium-sized”. was right at the centre of it. Attaboy, Henry... There’s apparently a pretty big discrepancy between the quality of toilet paper on ______offer to staff there. Most of the workers “I thought, and I’m sure I’ve been told, at Television Centre had to make do with that if you turn a sloth up the right way, it cheap TP that caused some people terrible will explode” – Holly Willoughby trouble with haemorrhoids. So you can ______imagine their fury when they discovered that Piers Morgan was treated to a nice >> Otter Madness << supply of fancy paper and even had access Chiitans never prosper to “special wipes”. Susaki, Japan is Popbitch’s city of the year, ______thanks to the their unofficial mascot: Chiitan Someone who had a go on Idris Elba – a giant furry otter who kept upsetting many moons ago says that he requested local authorities by constantly going on mad she call out his name when they were at Jackass-style rampages on social media, it. Not just his first name. His full name. tipping over cars, pole-dancing and going ______beserk with a weed strimmer.

>> Under-Studies << Chiitan came to international attention in They do like it up ‘em January, after the crazy otter was officially Cate Blanchett gave an acclaimed turn at the banned from representing the city after National Theatre this year, in a play which some particularly creepy posts on Twitter featured a rather arresting scene where and Instagram. she was seen to strap on a dildo, lube up and then slip a quick length to a man who Chiitan’s YouTube channel is still up though, was dolled up in women’s knickers. and is well worth 15 minutes of your time... Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

4/48 Big Questions: Lines Of Succession Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

5/48 The Googles Of Baby Hitler February Virginia Governor Ralph Northam kicked off the year’s hot trend of getting caught out in blackface; Jodie Marsh tried selling off a pair of tit belts she previously claimed she’d given away to charity; and we were all forced to think about Jeff Bezos’s dick as the National Enquirer‘s plan to blackmail the richest man on the planet backfired. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Tox Of The Pops << could do with a little refining. An unlikely inspiration One woman who made his acquaintance at February 2019 saw the 20th anniversary of a Brits afterparty this year was met with Britney Spears smashing into our lives with a simple “Awright, shagger?” – before he Baby... One More Time. She also provided nodded down at her tits and then stumbled us with one of the greatest bits of pop trivia off. of the 21st Century. ______The man who inspired the Britney Spears “Adolf Hitler, like every other healthy baby, track Toxic was someone that the song’s once googled and gaggled and started to co-writer Cathy Dennis had been dating in smile and wave his little chubby fist and the early part of the century, who broke up everything in exactly the way that my with her in 2003: Noel Fitzpatrick. beautiful grandchildren do” – Richard Madeley ______It’s unlikely you’d have known who Noel was at the time unless you had a sick spaniel – but he’s better known to most people >> Snoozy Rider << nowadays... as Channel 4’s Supervet. Tube tricks of the stars ______Tamsin Greig has a neat little trick for not giving up her tube seat. When things Before personal data laws changed, Elton are busy, but not rammed, she’ll read John’s credit card statements used to be her hardback book very intently to avoid used in fraud detection training. ______meeting the eye of anyone with a walking stick who might need the seat she’s in. >> Party Talk << You staring at my Brits? Anyone can be oblivious when engrossed in a good book. But when the train pulled You’d think that someone who gave their into Paddington and she saw just how debut album the title Divinely Uninspired To packed the platform was with commuters A Hellish Extent would be able to extend about to embark, she quickly changed tack that eloquence when talking to the ladies – and pretended to fall asleep so that she – but it sounds as if Lewis Capaldi’s patter wouldn’t be hassled into giving it up. Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

6/48 Hung Parliament Swing Vote Michael Gove made an infamous quip about some MPs at the start of the year, likening his colleagues to swingers in their mid-50s. As we mentioned in 2018, there’s been persistent Westminster rumours about the Goves hosting some rather specialist parties at theirs – but we’d always assumed they were just that. Rumours. Now? We’re not so sure…

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// Earlier this year, in advance of the so-called his wife (the Daily Mail columnist, Sarah ‘Meaningful Vote’ on Brexit, Michael Gove Vine) had supposedly been hosting a few announced that MPs who still harboured specialist parties at their home for selected visions of a perfect Brexit were like “mid-50s couples and singletons. swingers, waiting for Scarlett Johansson to turn up.” We were careful at the time to report it as being only a rumour. Not through fear To the regular citizen, such a statement is of causing any embarrassment to the unlikely to have inspired much of a reaction Goves (Michael’s a cappella performance (nothing beyond the unsettling thought of of Wham Rap! and Sarah’s nationally Michael Gove trying to put the moves on published columns prove that the pair of ScarJo, anyhow). them are physically incapable of being embarrassed). Mainly we were being To the regular Popbitch reader though, it careful because stories like this are usually might have caused a rather unwelcome too good to be true, and are often the work flashback – for this is not the first time of bad actors actively trying to smear their they’ll have been forced to contemplate dual political opponents by spreading irresistibly thoughts of Michael Gove and swinging. lurid claims.

Back in July 2018, we reported on a However, those swinging comments from curious rumour that was doing the rounds Gove’s own mouth started to sow a little bit in Westminster that Michael Gove and of doubt in our minds. Given all the ways he could have described Various studies have been commissioned the lunacy of Brexit fantasists, why did the to determine the prevalence of swinging 51 year old Michael Gove choose to hit on the in Britain and, between them, they tend analogy of swingers in their 50s? It’s hardly to put the number of swingers in the the most statesman-like of metaphors, and UK somewhere between 500,000 and would only really be relatable to a very slim 1,000,000 people. proportion of the public. As a percentage of the population who Does he know of what he speaks? partake in swinging (or swinging adjacent activity), we’re looking at 1-2%. It gives us absolutely no pleasure to do this, but we wouldn’t be doing our jobs Assuming that the politicians we have properly if we didn’t investigate this rumour elected truly are representative of the a little more forensically. The man is a high- people that they serve, that would mean at ranking government minister and one of least six of the 650 members of Parliament the people most responsible for delivering who currently have a seat in the House the Brexit result. As such, we really do owe Of Commons should be swingers – and it to the nation to delve into this question a perhaps even as many as double that. little further. Statistically speaking then, it wouldn’t be Is Michael Gove – MP for Surrey Heath and that unusual if Michael Gove was indeed erstwhile Secretary of State for Environment, a swinger. In fact, if he is at all interested Food and Rural Affairs – a swinger? in representative democracy, it could be argued that he actually has a moral duty Let’s consider the evidence. to swing (at least until such a time as six of his colleagues declare themselves to be wife-swappers – thereby letting him tap //////////////////////// out for a bit.) Man Of The People But the question at hand here isn’t “Should Michael Gove swing?” The question is “Does There are no official statistics available Michael Gove swing?” – and the numbers regarding the number of practicing swingers alone can’t prove that. To find an answer, in the UK, so we are going to have to figure we’ll have to look elsewhere for clues. some of this out for ourselves.

The most recent census (2011) recorded //////////////////////// the UK population as being 63.2 million. Approximately 11.9 million of those were A Mental Picture children below the age of consent (16) and therefore ineligible to legally engage in any When we first heard the swinging rumour swinging. back in July 2018, we noticed that Michael Gove was the subject of a few social media That drops our pool of potential swingers posts – posts which made an awful lot to around 51,300,000. more sense if people were trying to put out word that Gove was active on the swinging spending to fund new tractors for Britain’s scene and courting some attention. farmers. Nothing of the sort. So what on earth inspired that particular caption? Take this picture from Liz Truss’s Instagram, for example. Let’s infer a slightly more childish reading of the words “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares…”

Whether it’s calling a shagger a “swordsman” or talking about his “pork sword” (or, more generally, his “weapon”) swords have long been synonymous with penises. The phallic interpretation is further compounded with the suggestion the “sword” be “beaten” – a common euphemism for masturbation.

And what is this “sword” being “beaten” into? A “ploughshare.” In agricultural terms, It shows Michael Gove posing with a book a ploughshare is part of a plough – the with the eye-popping title Ploughing A New sharpened element of the moldboard that Furrow. Furthermore, Truss has chosen cuts through soil. In Urban Dictionary terms to publish it with the following caption: however, ‘ploughing’ is code for vigorous “And they shall beat their swords into sex stuff. ploughshares…” A ‘ploughshare’ could therefore be code There are two very different ways to for some sort of shared sexual partner. A interpret this. swinger, in other words.

If you’re not up to snuff on your scripture Could it be that Liz Truss was actively (and if you’re reading Popbitch, chances trying to signal to the wider world that are you strayed from the path of light a her colleague Michael Gove is a swinger? long time ago) that quote is part of a Bible It seems unlikely, but she has previously verse, Isiah 2:4. outed herself as being a Popbitch reader…

The full verse encourages man to lay down his weapons and transfer his war effort into agriculture instead, repurposing the sword as a plough blade and the spears as a pruning hook. It’s a noble sentiment – and one (dealing as it does with the provision of farming equipment) that had some vague topical crossover with Gove’s DEFRA remit.

However, Liz Truss didn’t post this picture as a way to announce a cut in defence …so who knows?

If this was an isolated incident, we wouldn’t have cause to mention it – but around the same time, someone in his department was encouraging Gove to endorse repeated official Government use of the Twitter hashtag #BeaverFever.

Again, it’s true that beavers and their welfare did fall squarely under Michael Gove’s remit at the time as secretary for Environmental Affairs. Of any of our elected officials, he had the most business involving himself with beavers (and was therefore most susceptible to catching a dose of Beaver Fever).

It can’t have escaped his notice though that the #BeaverFever hashtag is used for more than just innocent tweets about buck-toothed rodents.

If a politician could move through state school, private school, Oxford, the London media scene and into Parliament without ever once learning that the word “beaver” is famously a slang word for “fanny” and that #BeaverFever might not be the safest thing to promote across government social media channels, then that – quite frankly – is a national embarrassment.

Had the DEFRA employee who put Gove’s portrait next to the #BeaverFever hashtag heard the same rumours we had? Again, we can’t be sure – but the fact remains that he does seem to be attracting a lot of sly jabs about it all from his colleagues. It takes two to tango though (and even Or what about the column she wrote about more to swing) so we shouldn’t just how the #MeToo movement has caused the confine our search for clues to Michael modern man to lose his “raw, masculine Gove’s output. What of his wife, the other edge” which has corresponded with a big implicated party, Sarah Vine? drop-off of fun in the bedroom?

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The Swinging Vine You may feel that speculating about a government minister’s sex life at such length is a pretty tasteless thing to do. You may feel it lacks class. We don’t disagree. The only reason we’re happy to give this many words over to discussion of Michael Gove’s boudoir arrangements is that we aren’t the first ones to do it. Or the time she took the anti-sex stance in a written debate she had with Candida For years, Sarah Vine has been writing Crewe about sex in your 50s… extraordinarily candid columns about some of her most personal experiences – and she hasn’t drawn a line when it comes to sex. Sex that she’s presumably been having with Michael Gove.

She hasn’t always been wildly flattering about it either. Take, for example, the column she wrote about the women who claimed they experienced ‘sleep orgasms’. It started off about her sleeping patterns, but very quickly descended into talk about how little she enjoyed banging her husband.

Did you notice what all these columns have in common? Apart from suggesting that Michael Gove maybe needs a little more B12 in his diet, there’s a shared thread across them all. Or what about the column she wrote about how the #MeToo movement has caused the modern man to lose his “raw, masculine edge” which has corresponded with a big drop-off of fun in the bedroom?

Obviously we know that this is proof of absolutely nothing – but, before you write it off completely, consider this:

As a professional writer, Sarah Vine knows better than most that it pays to be careful with your choice of words. Especially with the type of writing that she does, every sentence is crafted specifically to either make a point or to elicit a laugh. Her sense of humour relies on being extremely precise with the phrases she picks. The choice is telling – for we have heard from multiple eye-witnesses that Michael So why then is it that every time she writes Gove is no stranger a bit of willy-waving about having sex with her husband she himself. And not the metaphorical sort is drawn to using the words ‘swing’ and either. The actual, literal sort. ‘swinging’ to describe it? People who had the grave misfortune of Again, we’d be happy to write this off as sharing a neighbouring urinal with Gove at simple coincidence if it was an isolated a Conservative party conference a few years example – but it isn’t. back report that he has a rather unnerving habit of unzipping his trousers a long way Late last year Sarah appeared on the Marr away from the urinal, and sauntering up to Show and derided the male politicians who the porcelain with his dick out with plenty were making Theresa May’s job difficult of time to spare. because of all the “willy-waving” they’d been doing. “Willy-waving” is not a phrase Furthermore, once he’d finished, they that she herself has coined. It’s a well- noted that he would make his way over to known vulgar turn to mean “showing off” the sinks long before he began the process – but it’s one she uses a lot. of tucking himself back in – meaning that any and all passers-by in the gents were treated to the sight of his willy, waving.

So if Sarah Vine has been subliminally influenced in her choice of language in that regard, it’s no huge leap in logic to explain why her mind might keep grabbing for the word “swinging” so frequently when discussing their sex life.

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The other question it’s probably pertinent to ask here is “Does it matter if Michael Gove is a swinger?” – the answer to which is “No, not really”.

Provided that everyone who attends these parties – which may, or may not, happen – does so with full consent and understanding, then he can share ploughs and beat swords and wave willies until he’s chucking dust as far as we care. It’s of very little consequence to us.

The only slight reservation we have is that swinging parties have previously caused a tiny bit of turmoil in British politics, what with the whole Profumo affair thing in the 60s.

Still, we’re sure Michael Gove wouldn’t be so stupid as to get into bed with friends from outside of Westminster who would later transpire to have hidden and deeply inappropriate connections to undercover Russian operatives; connections that would eventually lead to the resignation of the Prime Minister and the collapse of the government.

Could you imagine? Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

14/48 Mixed Spice March Felicity Huffman was arrested as part of a giant bribery scheme in the States; Lorraine Kelly avoided a £1.2m tax bill with the ingenious ruse that she was actually a theatrical performer who played the character of a nice host on TV; and paedo-defending pundit Milo Yiannopoulos staged a very unexpected comeback as... a gospel singer. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> If The Shoe Fits...<< for nearly 20 years now) but it’s really no Not quite the shirt off her back surprise. It would be more interesting to hear about the list of people that Mel tried Lorraine Kelly insisted to Her Majesty’s to bonk but couldn’t. Revenue and Customs that she wasn’t really a fun, bubbly person all the time; it’s At the height of her fame, Mel B’s pulling just a part she plays on TV. But someone power was so unbelievably potent that who attended a big fancy awards dinner friends claim she even managed to with her recently begs to differ. temporarily turn the head of steadfast homosexual Ivan Massow for a night, after At the end of the evening, as Lorraine was a birthday party at George Michael’s house. about to leave, someone from a big charity ______came over to ask if she would consider providing a prize for their upcoming auction. “I didn’t fuck my cat. I didn’t cum on my Quick as a flash, she took off her brand cat. I didn’t put my dick anywhere near new pair of designer shoes and handed my cat. I’ve never done anything weird with my cats” – Shane Dawson, YouTuber them over – leaving her to walk out of the ______building and down the street in bare feet. >> Celebrity Stalking << Sounds like the taxman might have grounds A Libyan love story for appeal. You thought phone-hacking was bad? The ______British tabloids have got nothing on the There have been 26 official members of the Libyan security services. band Rednex over the years; more than So Solid Crew and Blazin’ Squad combined. When Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Al-Saadi, ______was living in Sydney, he developed quite an infatuation with Nicole Kidman. So his >> Melange A Deux << former minders took it upon themselves An irresistible spice to rent an apartment next door to hers in It was good of Mel B to finally admit that Milsons Point – and then drilled holes in the she and Geri shagged back in their Spice walls to install bugs throughout. Girls days (confirming a story that half the media had already written, and that All of which enabled them to give some everyone else has known in their hearts very detailed reports back to their charge.

Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

16/48 Hedgehogs v P.Doh April Elon Musk released a rap track in memory of Harambe, the gorilla who was shot in 2016; the drummer from Bentley Rhythm Ace/Pop Will Eat Itself confessed that he’d once dipped his knob in Boris Johnson’s pint; and Pete Doherty had to cancel an appearance on BBC Radio because he was stabbed in the hand by a hedgehog and got an infection. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Kiss ‘n’ Tell << Those who have had cause to email Robert Some like it Scott over the years note that he likes to type his messages in all caps, WHICH RATHER As the sexy priest in Fleabag, Andrew Scott’s GIVES THE IMPRESSION THAT HE IS ‘Hot Priest’ character caused many viewers EXCITEDLY SHOUTING THINGS AT THE to grapple with some very complicated PEOPLE HE IS WRITING TO. feelings about lust and power, religion and ______responsibility. “Brexit: it goes on and on without end” – Shamima Begum In real life though, Andrew is a much less ______complex beast. >> A Helping Hand << According to onlookers who saw him working Wanks for the memories the room at The Glory in Haggerston earlier this year, all you have to do if you want The Daily Star sacked off Page 3 in April, a snog off him is tell him how much you which got us thinking about the secret to liked him in Sherlock/Pride/Fleabag and Katie Price’s success. Our opinion? Always he’ll have slung his arms around your neck giving the crowd what they wanted. before you know it. ______A few years back, she did an outdoor event at a race track as a promotion for a motoring Barbra Streisand has a dog called Fanny. ______magazine. They’d set up a live version of the TV show Blind Date on stage, with >> Cure Thyself << racing driver Eddie Irvine as the bachelor “HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL” and Pricey as one of the three girls behind the screen. A clip of Robert Smith giving a deadpan response to a wildly enthusiastic TV host Eddie’s first question was “What would you became a viral sensation when The Cure do if you heard the four minute warning?” were inducted in to the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame – but it’s worth pointing out that Katie’s answer? “First, I’d wank you off. Then Robert is no stranger to a bit of that sort of I’d wank myself off. And then [gesturing to behaviour himself. the crowd] I’d wank you lot off!” Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

17/48 Big Questions: Back On The Market Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

18/48 Milkshake It Off May After 14 years and over 3,000 episodes, the Jeremy Kyle Show was hastily taken off air; Game Of Thrones finally reached its conclusion after what felt like twice as long; and Nigel Farage got a rather unexpected reception on a visit to Newcastle, where security had to swiftly pull him off after somebody tossed Five Guys all over him... //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Rick-Rollers << him too, saying “I can’t believe it’s you! Are “Mr... Mick Pastley?” you two a couple? Oh my god!”

Ahead of his support slot for Take That It quickly became clear that the stranger at the O2 this May, Rick Astley booked a had mistaken him for someone else but, to hairdresser’s appointment in Greenwich to his credit, McDonagh played along rather get his quiff looking just so for the big night. than correct them and ended things by telling them “I’m glad you like my music so He clearly didn’t book under his own name much.” though, as when he sat down the first thing his stylist asked him was if anyone had ever Turns out they thought he was Sting. told him that he looked like Rick Astley. ______Gary Numan has a macerator toilet. Katherine Jenkins gets her nail technicians ______to sign NDAs. ______>> Cordoned Off << Reddit and weep >> Flight of Fancy << A sting in the tale One of the big mysteries of the last few There aren’t many playwrights working years has been how James Corden – so today that the public would recognise. widely reviled in the UK – managed to Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of them. Martin land such a prestigious presenting gig on McDonagh? Not quite... American late night TV?

The pair of them were on a flight together But maybe the Yanks aren’t as immune when a stranger who recognised PWB to his charms as we first thought. Corden popped over to say how much they loved her tried to do an AMA (‘Ask Me Anything’) and her work, before clocking McDonagh on Reddit in May. And where most celebs and saying “Oh, wait. You’re famous too, find their fans flocking to them lovingly, aren’t you?” all desperate to chat with their favourite stars, Corden’s questions all seemed to McDonagh told them that he sort of was, be variations on the theme: “Why are you before the stranger started gushing over such an asshole?” Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

19/48 Return Of The Gag Chimjunctions Cheryl Cole had her lawyers fire off some pretty weird legal threats in 2019 to stop journalists talking about that time she once punched a toilet attendant in a nightclub. Sadly for her, the plan didn’t quite work – but if she’s in need of some other suggestions as to how she can best use the law to shut us up...

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// You can understand why she’s getting a We very rarely mention the time that she little frustrated. It’s been almost seventeen got caught trying to make off with bog years since it happened, but the Nation’s sundries in a Surrey nightclub and ended Sweetheart™ Cheryl is still having to up trying to scrap her way out it because, endure journalists mentioning the time normally, whenever Cheryl does something that she once got arrested for punching a newsworthy, we’re much more inclined toilet attendant in the face in a nightclub in to find an angle that ties it into the long- Guildford after she tried to take a lollipop standing music industry rumour that she’s without paying for it. been in a secret lesbian relationship with her former bandmate Kimberley Walsh. The whole thing has got so far under her skin that, in 2019, she hired famed In fairness to Cheryl, it’s not as if she hasn’t celebrity guard dogs Carter-Ruck to dish done her part. In the years since, she has out some spicy legal letters. One that was provided plenty of A-grade material for sent to the Guardian supposedly made the journalists work with instead. She married bold suggestion that repeating the fact that an immaculately bearded Frenchman under Cheryl was once convicted of assault back mysterious circumstances. She contracted in 2003 puts them at risk of breaching of malaria while on a hastily arranged holiday the Rehabilitation Of Offenders Act 1974. with a Mormon ballroom dancer. She had a baby with someone who technically Thankfully, our hands are pretty clean in amounts to being her former student. She that respect. pretended to date will.i.am. She’s really spared no effort to give the spheres of life, that is safe, hygienic, secure, media something else to report on besides and socially and culturally acceptable and the fact she once punched a woman in lieu that provides privacy and ensures dignity.” of paying for a handful of Chupa-Chups. If we can all agree on one thing, it’s this. Yet here we are, nearly 17 years later, still What took place in that nightclub toilet in talking about it. Surrey that fateful night in 2003 falls very short of this description. It wasn’t safe, it As we say, you can understand why she wasn’t dignified and – if Cheryl started might be getting a little frustrated. throwing punches before she’d properly washed her hands – it may not even have Cheryl’s decision to bust open the legal been hygienic. textbooks in order to find the most obscure and esoteric laws with which to gag the But crucially, it most definitely hasn’t been media shows real resourcefulness. It shows private. moxie – and we’d be lying if we said we didn’t even admire it a little bit. But getting The incident – in which Cheryl Cole (formerly a notoriously fearsome law firm to send out of Girls Aloud; most recently a judge on spurious threats to journalists on a flimsy BBC’s The Greatest Dancer) thumped Sophie pretence is not necessarily the smartest Amogbokpa in the face after attempting to way of dealing with this particular problem. steal sweets from her toiletries stand – has been splashed across all manner of national So, in order to help her out a bit, we and international outlets. thought we’d suggest a couple of other legal strategies Cheryl might want to The BBC. The Daily Mail. The Guardian. The consider seeing as her plan didn’t end up Telegraph. All have arguably stripped Cheryl working out the way she hoped. from her inalienable human right to use a toilet in private. Really, it’s the least we can do. The legal scholars among you will have //////////////////////// likely have spotted that nowhere in the UN’s wording do they offer international toilet users any sort of immunity from crime while 1/ Human Rights Abuse using the facilities. And, yes. You’d be right to point that out. A few years ago, the right to sanitation was officially recognised as a human right. It’s true that you are only really protected by According to no lesser an authority than international law so far as piss and shit are the United Nations General Assembly, concerned. If you decide you want to start everyone in the world is entitled to use a snorting coke off the seats of a nightclub toilet with a certain level of privacy. bog, Antonio Guterres is not going to come to your rescue. UN peacekeeping troops will Their exact wording is this: “The right to not set up a perimeter around your cubicle if sanitation entitles everyone to have physical you try to drill a glory hole in it and a bouncer and affordable access to sanitation, in all tries to kick you out. The same presumably goes for stealing sweets and punching night- their children the victims instead. workers. Though the UN hasn’t ruled on it specifically, they are unlikely to intervene on Ordinarily we’re sure these celebs would your behalf. have been only too happy to hold their hands up and take the blame for their The good news for Cheryl though is that it transgressions. Some of them would doesn’t seem like her lawyers will much care welcome it, even – but it just wouldn’t be about that. Their absolutely wilful misreading fair on their children, your honour. Those of the Rehabilitation Of Offenders Act 1974 poor innocent children who might get shows that they’re more than happy to take bullied or suffer other adverse effects if the broadest interpretation of legal wording their parents’ bad behaviour was plastered and misapply it to situations where it really all over the papers. has no bearing. They weren’t taking those extremely So if the UN says your toilet activity ought to expensive gagging orders out to spare their be private, then newspapers need to respect own blushes! Perish the thought! The only that. Even if that activity is committing thing at the forefront of their minds – the egregious acts of ABH, you need some ONLY thing – was the welfare and safety of discretion. their children.

//////////////////////// Back in 2003 this isn’t a tactic that would have worked for Cheryl. However, she has since had a child of her own: Bear. 2/ Minor Offences It will doubtless help her case that she If that fails to work, here’s another angle. hasn’t done the typical celeb circuit with her baby, showing him off to all the weekly One of the reasons that so many injunctions glossies, or sending pictures out to all the were handed out freely in the great tabloids. So if she ever does want to use Superinjunction Craze of 2010/11 was his emotional well-being as a cover to have because of a neat little bit of emotional us all keep mum about the time she get manipulation that quickly became popular caught throwing fists in the lavvies, then among certain sorts of celebrities. why not have a crack at that?

Using their kids as a bargaining chip to get There must be some kindly judge who will what they wanted. agree that Bear should only find out that his mother once got arrested on suspicion Whether they had been rumbled for having of racially aggravated assault after a an extra-marital affair, shagging a colleague’s violent, drunken outburst in a Guildford girlfriend, fathering a lovechild, or setting up shitter when the time is right (when he’s an extravagant olive oil/paddling pool sex fifteen and needing bailing out after he’s party in one of London’s most prestigious gone crazy on bath salts and tried to hump hotels, the play was always the same. a police car*). Instead of framing themselves as the victim * For example of press intrusion, they chose to make They’re also unlikely to just accept just 3/ Forget About It ‘Cheryl’ on the form either (no matter how Maybe you can’t force the papers to stop hard she tries to make this mononym thing writing about you with threats of legal take off) so with three names and a stage retribution, but another thing you could name now attached to this story, despite try is having your lawyers file a complaint Google’s best efforts, they’re probably not with Google. At least that way anything going to be able to solve Cheryl’s problems that pesky journalists do write about you without overhauling their entire system. duffing up low-paid workers while trying to pilfer merchandise will be lost to the But maybe that’s all the more reason to internet wilderness. try? Google is compelled now by EU law to offer this service to people. If it’s not fit for The so-called ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ is purpose then maybe it needs something one of these big-sounding, tech-forward like the strong arm of Carter-Ruck to get it modern laws that would basically solve a fixed? big chunk of the problem for Cheryl in one handy swoop. And, really, what better purpose could there be than to finally afford Cheryl Cole – the Funnily enough, the law was actually most persecuted pugilist in Britain – some forged with things like the Rehabilitation much-deserved respite? Of Offenders Act in mind; a way for people who were trying to escape continued We’ll see you in court. reference to their past indiscretions, allowing them to gain back some control of the way their life was presented online.

So if Cheryl really is determined to stop people from persistently dredging up the time she was arrested after thundering a right hook into Sophie Amogbokpa’s eye, then this could be the key to it.

There’s just one snag.

There’s currently a limiting factor on the application form that you have to fill out and submit to Google. It only allows you to enter one name. This poses quite a significant problem for a woman who committed the crime as Cheryl Tweedy, became a household name as Cheryl Cole, and then created an astounding number of digital inches about herself as Cheryl Fernandez-Versini. Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

23/48 Sticky Sweets June Big celebrity beef erupted between Phillip Schofield and Amanda Holden; Lou Bega released a posthumous duet with Scatman John called Scatman And Hatman; and media circles started batting around a very strange rumour that Boris Johnson had been conducting an affair with an Instagram influencer called Bip Ling... //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Raab-a-dub-dub << to launch on the people who displeased An absolute shower her. Her pissing-in-the-Jack-Daniels-bottle routine is legendary. Her shitting-in-a- The Tory leadership contest was a trying briefcase one likewise. But here’s another enough ordeal as it was, but please spare a that’s so far gone unreported. thought for one poor Popbitch reader who was recently alerted to the fact that she Someone who was working for Sharon once shagged Dominic Raab at a wedding Osbourne’s lawyers once received a mystery in the 90s. package in the post from the woman herself. Upon opening it they found it contained a The evening is somewhat hazy in her single, unwrapped wine gum. When they memory, but she remembers a few key asked their colleagues if they knew what things. She remembers him being kind it was about, they very quickly warned her enough to walk her back to the pub where not to eat it. Apparently Sharon had a thing she was staying, even after she’d spent the for sticking wine gums up inside her and whole night laughing at his politics. She then posting them to people for kicks. also remembers him waking up the other guests there when he started doing comedy Something that one former employee had schtick in an extra-loud ‘Tory Boy’ voice. discovered a little too late. ______But the truly indelible memory she has is of him dancing around her tiny hotel room “Noel Edmonds doesn’t know all the answers” – Noel Edmonds wearing nothing but a frilly shower cap. ______>> Celebrity Phobias << By June, 50 people had gone to A&E in Christina keeps off the grass Iceland with trampoline-related injuries. ______Christina Ricci suffers from a very specific fear of plants, known as ‘botanophobia’. >> Trick or Treat? << Apparently she can just about deal with My gummy Valentine the petals of flowers, but if she brushes up Sharon Osbourne is well known for the against a leaf she is liable to “lose her shit” inventively disgusting attacks that she used and walking on grass is out of the question.

Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

25/48 Diesel Powered Pulling July The year’s most hotly anticipated cinematic car-crash, Cats, ­released its trailer; Donald Trump intervened with Swedish authorities to secure the release of A$AP Rocky from Stockholm jail; and at a fan Q&A event, someone asked Nick Cave the greatest question ever: “Hi, Nick. I live in your old flat in Hove. Do you know where the stopcock is?” //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Picture This << he kept on changing his outfits too. Even The spirit of Oaten lives on though he was the one behind the camera. Our commiserations to Ed Davey, pipped ______to the post by Jo Swinson in the Lib Dem “I just say shit all the time without thinking” leadership contest earlier this year. It was – Billie Eilish disappointing for him, no doubt, but he ______probably wasn’t quite ready to become the face of a major political party. >> Vincapacitated << He’ll never be your wingman According to people who have had the pleasure of being photographed with him, Out at an LA bar, Vin Diesel bumped into his best advice for looking good in photos an old schoolfriend of his in the toilets. This is to “think of the dirtiest, naughtiest, most friend had been trying (and failing) to work depraved thing you can – then just relax.” his magic on a woman he’d met that night, so asked Vin if he’d maybe mind helping ______him out. Swing by their table, talk him up a Jo Swinson’s first dance at her wedding was bit in front of her. That sort of thing. to Better Together by Jack Johnson. The single most Lib Dem choice imaginable. Vin gamely agreed and shortly made his ______way over to them, giving it the whole “Hey man! Great to see you. Ah, wow, you’re >> Brooklyn Style << the best. Y’know that? This guy and I go The brand’s in good hands way back. He really is the best. What a guy. Brooklyn Beckham was given the task of What a guy.” photographing Rocketman co-stars Taron Egerton and Jamie Bell for the cover of Then, after laying it on good and thick, Vin Man About Town magazine. Though he made his excuses and left to give his friend did a decent job of it, Brooklyn’s personal a chance to seal the deal. entourage for the shoot was bigger than that of the two actors combined. It was only when Vin was out of earshot, that the woman turned back to his friend to say: Not only did Brooklyn have a hair stylist and a make-up team on hand throughout, “God, who was that? What a weirdo...” Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

26/48 Big Questions: Scatman Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

27/48 Uncivil Service August Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road set a new record at the top of the Billboard singles chart (19 weeks – the longest run at No.1 ever); My Little Pony makers Hasbro made the strangest acquisition of the century, buying up Death Row Records; and the king of celebrity sex offenders, Jeffrey Epstein, was found murder/suicided in his high-security cell. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Island accounting << >> Idiot Proof << Who needs off-shore in Salisbury? Testing the limits

Lucie Donlan from Love Island made a lot There’s an unofficial test that a certain of headlines over the summer when it was branch of the Civil Service conducts to make announced she’d signed a £200,000contract sure its briefing documents are written to be the face of Peng Hair. Seems like an clearly enough so that even ministers of awful lot of money for a hair company with limited intellect are able to grasp them by a five followers on Twitter to shell out for an third reading. ITV2 celeb who wears extensive extensions. So what’s the deal here? For a while this was known as the ‘Amber Rudd Test’. However, when Ms Rudd found Well, if you go to the Peng Hair website, herself promoted to the Home Office, those it lists the address you can return items to in the service felt it was maybe a little as 35 Chequers Court, Salisbury. By some improper to name the test after someone remarkable coincidence, 35 Chequers Court who held one of the Great Offices Of State. happens to be the registered business So they changed it. address of Neon Management: the talent agency that represents Lucie. To the ‘Priti Patel Test’.

Even more remarkable, 35 Chequers Court Thanks to Priti’s surprise promotion this is also the address of the accountancy firm summer, they’re now on the look-out for that files Neon Management’s reports. another replacement. ______A huge, headline-generating deal sorted between three companies that are all “Spend more time on your knees than on the internet” – Mike Pence registered at the same address! What are ______the chances? >> Old Jokes Home << ______Q/ What do you get if you cross Bill Clinton Gil Chesterton from Frasier is Chuck and Donald Trump? Palahniuk’s literary agent IRL. ______A/ Found in your cell, unresponsive

Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

28/48 Mythed Opportunities The Dead Cats Society Of all the strange contortions involved in trying to rationalise the increasingly bizarre gaffes our politicians make these days, one of the strangest is the idea that they’re actually master tacticians making extremely smart PR moves. Why have we all become so obsessed with these so-called Dead Cat tactics? And why do we see them everywhere we look?

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// In dying midway through an eight year The story of Max Clifford’s safe. prison sentence for sexually assaulting young women and girls, Max Clifford’s If you don’t already know it, the legend was lasting legacy is all but cemented as that of that Max Clifford owned a safety deposit a serial sex offender. box in which he kept all of his ‘insurance policies’. These weren’t formal policies, An unfortunate end for someone who made with a reputable broker. They were was set to be better remembered as photos. Videos. Covert recordings. Evidence a public relations maestro who made of his clients in compromising positions. himself immensely rich and powerful by Explosive secrets he knew that, if released, aggressively and amorally protecting the could cause an unprecedented amount of reputations of some of the world’s more reputational damage to certain individuals. repulsive Z-listers – but here we are. No-one knew for sure exactly what was Instead, he’ll now be known to future in this fabled safe – only that, whatever it generations as a disgraced paedophile. was, it had to be dynamite. Such is life. But there’s a lesson that we would do well to learn from the life of Max The point of such a safe, you’d think, would Clifford before Operation Yewtree went be to act as a nuclear option. Something and clapped him irons. A teaching that you could smash the glass on if your back might help us make a little more sense of was ever up against the wall. Emergency our current era of confusion. material with which to negotiate your way out of a catastrophe – or, at the very least, Yet what good did any of that do when explode everything to fuck in a final act of NOTW became the primary focus of the malice. A ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card. phone-hacking scandal? Just look at the millions of pounds their parent company is Yet when the moment came for Max still chucking at minor showbiz names just Clifford, and he found himself up in the dock to get them off their back. Whatever that answering to multiple charges of indecent safe held (if it even existed at all) wasn’t assault against girls as young as 14 (all enough to stop these claimants – or to while testimony was flying back and forth avoid the shutters being brought down on about whether or not he had a medically the whole paper. recognised micropenis) what was the best thing he could offer up to spare himself And no-one’s heard a word about that safe from seeing out his days in nonce jail? ever since.

A character witness statement from Pauline It’s a strange time to look back on. In the Quirke… early 2000s, when Popbitch first started, Clifford and the News Of The World seemed So where was the safe in all of this? Why, in practically invincible. Both were apparently his hour of need, did it not provide for him? able to make things extremely unpleasant for their enemies; both were apparently The most likely explanation is that the safe armed to the teeth – yet both ended up didn’t exist. Or, if it did, it didn’t hold any falling without much of a struggle when decent blackmail material (probably just push came to shove. The secrets that were undeclared cash payments made to him by supposed to be their safety net failed to unregistered clients, out of reach of HMRC). materialise at the critical hour. Where are they now? Dead and disgraced. Yet even if that safe sat completely empty, the myth of it alone was invaluable to him. If we sound like we’re being wistful for the The idea – the very plausible idea – that days of these mythical safes, that’s not our Max Clifford was sat atop a huge stockpile reason for bringing them up. It’s more that of receipts that could destroy a career with we’ve noticed that (aside from the one that the flick of a wrist? That’s what gave him Putin allegedly keeps the piss-tape in) you his edge. Of course he was going to let a don’t really hear much about these secret legend like that spread. Why wouldn’t he? safes nowadays.

Clifford wasn’t the only one to have a safe They appear to have been replaced in the like this. There was another equally fabled public’s imagination with a different story; one at the News Of The World. Like Clifford, another bit of wildly overblown bullshit NOTW traded on its reputation that it could we’ve been hearing an awful lot about this sink any uncooperative celebrity it set its last year. sight on. It revelled in the rumours that it was sat on just as many stories as it was Dead Cats. publishing, and it did nothing to dissuade people that it was squirrelling the real dirt //////////////////////// away in their safe for a rainy day. Strewth Spinner the table. In doing so, you are guaranteed that, no matter what people were talking The Dead Cat Tactic is credited to the about before that moment – no matter Australian political operative Sir Lynton how engaged or enraged they were – all Crosby. Crosby – who has had a long anyone will want to discuss from that career of advising suspect political moment on is the Dead Cat centrepiece. campaigns in Australia, America and the UK – is best known on these shores In political terms, a Dead Cat is simply as the man behind Boris Johnson’s two a spectacular distraction, designed to successful mayoral campaigns and the allow you to wrest control of the day’s 2015 General Election that lifted David news cycle – no matter how disgusting, Cameron out of the Lib Dem coalition outrageous or unhygienic it is. and into a Tory majority. The tactic itself is not new, but the Though you probably already know what nomenclature is relatively recent. The first the Dead Cat Tactic is, the basic gist is major mention of it in print – assigning the this: If, at a dinner party, you become phrase to Lynton Crosby – dates back to unhappy with a turn that the conversation 2013, when a grossly overpaid Telegraph has taken, a quick and effective way columnist chose to let the Dead Cat out of changing the topic is by tossing the the bag by writing about it in his weekly body of a dead cat into the middle of column.

Much like Max Clifford’s Secret Safe, you’d fleeced by a master tactician. think that a tactic like this would only work if the general public didn’t know about it IT WAS A DEAD CAT! – and that the most effective way to stop it from ever working again would be to let The whole reason that Boris had started people in on the secret. talking about buses, these theorists claim, was in order to clean up unflattering search In practice though, the exact opposite engine results about him – and that, by appears to be true. talking about it, we were playing right into his hands. Tipping people off to the existence of the Dead Cat Tactic has had its own curious Not only was everyone now talking about it benefit. Armed with this tiny touch of insider (DEAD CAT!) it meant that anyone who ran knowledge – one that seems, on the face a Google search for “Boris Johnson Bus” of it, to explain so much about our modern would no longer be treated to stories about world – suddenly all a person sees is Dead that big Brexit bus with the discredited Cats. Dead Cats everywhere. Even when ‘£350m For The NHS’ slogan written on there aren’t any. the side of it. Now, after his seemingly unhinged answer, all anyone was going to Boris Johnson himself provided a perfect see would be stories about his goofball bus example of this during the Tory leadership painting habit. race this summer. In the dying days of the campaign, Boris gave a very weird interview DEAD CAT! to TalkRadio in which he spoke about a rather unusual hobby.

In it, Boris revealed that he liked to unwind by painting wooden wine crates to make them look like London buses. This answer set the British public reeling.

At first, the nation was gripped with incredulous laughter; no-one quite able to credit that even Boris Johnson would be so absolutely fucking cuckoo.

After that came a wave of people who felt convinced that he must have been lying about it, but couldn’t quite decide why he’d consciously make up such a bizarre story about himself. DEAD CAT! DEAD CAT! DEAD CAT!

That same train of thought soon developed It all makes for a pretty neat theory, but it into a something of a conspiracy theory. really doesn’t hold up to much in the way One that suggested we had all just been of scrutiny. Firstly, that £350m Brexit Bus story was old. Most importantly though, Boris Johnson Years old. Photos of Boris standing next had already confessed to this hobby before, to that slogan had long since flooded the under zero pressure, in an interview in internet and, by mentioning buses again, 2011. he only risked dragging all those old stories up to the surface again, long after they’d A full two years before he started holding been laid to rest. forth about Dead Cats in the pages of the Telegraph, he had mentioned his love of Second, if he was actively trying to scrub painting old brie and camembert boxes in over any unfavourable “Boris Johnson Bus” the Metro, in exactly the same way he said results on Google, all he ended up doing he likes to paint wine boxes. was adding some fresh new ones to the pile. Now there are stories online which So unless this Dead Cat slam was almost make him look either: a decade in the making, a more likely – Inept (for his widely criticised explanation is that Boris Johnson actually reintroduction of boiling hot Routemaster does genuinely choose to paint wine boxes buses as London mayor in 2012) as his way of unwinding – and he is every – Dishonest (the debunked £350m Brexit bit as soft in the head as that makes him bus slogan in 2016) sound. or – Posh, drunk and insane (painting wine And this is the trouble with the Dead Cat crates) Tactic being public knowledge. Rather than giving us a key to understanding This guy also has an illustrious track record and identifying political manipulation, of mixing with high-profile perverts and what the Dead Cat Theory has done is predators. He’s someone you’ve been filmed scramble our minds. We drive ourselves cavorting with a gaggle of much younger wild with theories that we must be getting models in your private club. Someone who outsmarted at every turn, because it just was named alongside you as a co-defendant doesn’t seem feasible to us that our elected on a lawsuit which accuses the pair of you officials could be so weird/stupid. of both sexually assaulting a 13 year old girl. We convince ourselves there has to be some greater game plan afoot. We insist You probably don’t need the blanks filling in there must be hidden levels that we’re just here, but this little thought experiment was not seeing. designed to put you – dear reader – into the size nines of Donald J Trump: a man who Like with Max Clifford’s safe, offering this tiny caught a fair amount of heat as his former glimpse behind the magician’s curtain has friend (the famed paedophile, Jeffrey given us a half-idea that makes us believe Epstein) was arrested and imprisoned, there must be more to it all. An all-powerful facing down some seriously explosive child Machiavelli in control; an invisible prevailing sex trafficking charges. force guiding these things around. The situation immediately generated a lot Once people start to view things through the of unfavourable headlines and sparked a prism of a Dead Cat, they begin seriously lot of analyst chatter about how badly his assigning genius to genuine gaffes. relationship to Epstein would reflect on Trump going into the 2020 election. And nowhere is that more evident that with Donald Trump. However, the summer news cycle was swiftly refocused after a days-long racist tear that Trump went on, initiated against //////////////////////// four minority Congresswomen (Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib Method V Madness and Ayanna Pressley –aka ‘The Squad’). Imagine for a second that an old acquaintance of yours – already a convicted and registered sex offender – goes and gets himself re-arrested on two new charges of sex trafficking minors.

To make matters worse, this same acquaintance is a guy you have previously gone on record as saying is “terrific”, ”a lot of fun” and “likes beautiful women as much as I do, many of them on the younger side”. In a series of tweets, Trump told the PR savvy to this move (especially after Congresswomen, in no uncertain terms, to polling suggested certain Republicans go back to their own countries – despite viewed Trump in a more favourable light the fact that all four of them are American after his tweet-storm; and the crowd at citizens, and three of them were born in his rally in Greenville, North Carolina felt the United States. inspired to chant “Send Her Back! Send Her Back!” when Trump started laying into Ilhan It was a huge and noteworthy story, and Omar) that’s not what’s happening here. it marked a definite ramping up of Trump’s racial rhetoric ahead of his re-election Like Boris Johnson with his brie-box painting campaign. But very quickly a certain in 2011, if this truly was a Dead Cat tactic, strain of media pundit emerged to ponder then a hell of a lot of groundwork has gone whether these two stories were somehow into setting it up. connected, positing the theory this was actually just another masterstroke from We could double the length of this article Trump to wrest control of the day’s news by listing all the times that Trump has cycle. banged exactly these same drums over the last decade, whether it was insisting It’s true that headlines like this are exactly on seeing Barack Obama’s birth certificate, the type that Dead Cats are usually dropped calling Mexican immigrants rapists and to deflect from – so it would make sense for murderers, standing up for the avowed him to try. white nationalists in Charlottesville, calling African nations “shithole countries”… By their very nature, Dead Cats are also supposed to be shocking and unpalatable. If we attributed every single one of Trump’s A week-long racist tear against four high- grouchy racist outbursts to Dead Cat profile women definitely fits that bill –so Strategy, he’d be going toe-to-toe with the was that what happened here? Trump Croydon Cat Killer in terms of a body count deliberately dropped a racist Dead Cat to by now. Clearly that isn’t what this is. distract from the Epstein story? So why does the idea of this being a We asked some PR professionals of our huge PR pose seem so appealing to the acquaintance if they could ever envision commentariat? a situation in which they’d recommend their client behave in a more actively racist Because now that everyone is clued in to the fashion. Dead Cat tactic, Dead Cats are something that pundits, columnists and readers all feel The general consensus was, no, they they have to consider each and every time couldn’t – and those answers only became a story like this crops up. And rather than more emphatic when we asked if they the Dead Cat providing the distraction, it thought it might be a good way of stopping is now a meta-discussion about Dead Cats their clients from looking like a potentially and their place in modern politics that ends guilty paedophile. up distracting them instead.

Tempting though it is to assign some It’s understandable to want to seek out method in the madness. We are programmed to look for patterns, even where there are none – and no-one likes to feel as if they’re being duped (especially by someone as outwardly wacky as Boris Johnson or Donald Trump) – but it’s exactly this habit that the Dead Cat feeds on.

And just like the safe of Max Clifford, that myth is infintely more powerful than the truth. Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

36/48 ”Minogues Don’t Sweat” September It was a month of unexpected comebacks with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer appearing on Dancing With The Stars in a lime green silk shirt; Whitney Houston’s hologram announcing it would be touring the UK in 2020; and Michael Barrymore being unveiled as one of the contestants lined up for the next series of ITV’s Dancing On Ice. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Snakes Alive! << sea of bodies, she’d managed to remain Man and beast together cool, dry and perfectly composed.

Richard Madeley’s stint on C4’s social media One sodden reveller approached her, show The Circle dashed hopes that he might desperate to know how she’d managed have been chalked up to appear in the to avoid getting soaked, whereupon she jungle for I’m A Celebrity – but, honestly, it turned to him, fixed him with a stare and was probably for the best. uttered the immortal line: “Minogues don’t sweat.” A few years back, Madeley filmed a segment for IACGMOOH’s spin-off show in which he ______was made to lie down and have snakes “I never said the world was bullshit, I just crawl all over him. Producers soon had to said this world was bullshit” - Fiona Apple intervene though and request that he do ______something to tuck his penis in a little more tightly as it kept lolling about in his shorts, >> Stumped << making it look as though one of the snakes Ballsed that one up has slithered its way up there and was doing something very unnatural to him... Back in 2007, a 17-year-old Aussie signed ______for a village cricket team in Cheshire: Grappenhall CC. He arrived on a Tuesday Dominic Cummings’ family farm is just off but by the Friday, before a training session the A167 at a junction known locally as had even been held, he was already on his “Cock O’ The North”. ______way home. The teenage cricketer had been so appalled by the boorish, drunken antics >> Rock’n’Roll-on << of his would-be teammates in their local, The freshest family in showbiz the Mulberry Tree, that he left.

A few years ago, Dannii attended a Sydney It’s a shame because, as the son of a UK Pride/Mardi Gras event where things got passport holder, if things had worked out roasting hot in the dance tent. Before there he could have gone on to play for too long everyone on the dancefloor was England. absolutely drenched in sweat, all except for one person: Dannii. Somehow in this salty As it was, Steve Smith opted for Australia.

Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

38/48 The Scousetrap October In a year of surprising celebrity beefs (Kelly v McVey; Schofield v Holden) the one that really caught the nation on the backfoot was WAGatha Christie. After months of deliberately planting fake stories on Instagram to snare a rogue tabloid informant in her inner circle, Coleen Rooney informed the world it was... Rebekah Vardy’s account! //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Sun Exposure << >> Pipped To The Post << The Vardy origin story More celebrity snitching

In her statement of defence, Rebekah Not to take anything away from Coleen’s Vardy said “I’m not being funny, I don’t flawless execution, but the “Feeding Fake need the money” – but surely Vardy knows Stories To Friends” tactic is hardly a new that money isn’t the only reason celebrities one. It’s been used by all sorts of celebrities strike up transactional deals with the press. over the years to smoke out suspected snitches. To pick an example out of totally thin air: let’s say your partner had been heard directing Back in 2013, Pippa Middleton set up a a racist slur towards a Japanese man in a similar sting to see which of her mates kept casino back in 2015. An incident like that ratting her out to the tabloids. She invented could cause quite a lot of unwelcome three different stories (one that she was turbulence. engaged, one that she was pregnant, one that she was moving to America) and But what if the Sun had some further details planted them with her top three suspects. of this event? Details that it chose not to publish. Video evidence, for instance, that Sure enough, news of her fake engagement could have made life even more difficult for soon made it to the pages of the Sunday a rising-star striker. People – and, lo! Pippa had her grass. ______Obviously a paper that showed such “We think we need to send the Houses of kindness and goodwill to a couple in a Parliament some Lighthouse Family CDs so predicament like that may end up expecting they can chill the fuck out” a favour or two offered in return. – Lighthouse Family ______Serialisation rights to his autobiography, perhaps? Or the odd insider story? >> Old Jokes Home << ______Q/ Why does the Duke Of York not sweat? Spotted in Munich for Oktoberfest: Usain Bolt, in full regalia, singing along with gusto A/ He uses Andy-perspirant to Sweet Caroline. ______Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

39/48 Big Questions: The Ministerial Box Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

40/48 The Fine Art Of Fruitbowling November Emma Watson out-Paltrowed Gwyneth Paltrow by telling the world she wasn’t “single” but “self-partnered”; Prince Andrew gave a skin- crawling interview about his sweat glands to the BBC; and a music industry fever dream came to life as Joe Pesci released a duet with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine – a cover of Stevie Wonder’s My Cherie Amour. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Golden Handshake << quite so caked in dog shit and cat piss – and A very dirty business can think of only one other person who has ever let their domestic pet waste situation Sajid Javid may have found it “incredibly get so out of hand. rude” that Hugh Grant refused to shake his hand at the premiere of The Irishman, but But the chances of the council placing if you ask us Saj had a lucky escape. Pricey in the care of Sharon Osbourne are pretty slim. When Hugh stands at the urinal, he doesn’t ______just use a simple finger and thumb to point his pecker at the porcelain. According to Turns out my interview is no longer car crash of the century” – Kerry Katona those who have shared the space with him, ______Hugh likes to pop out his entire packet – balls and all – and cradle the whole lot in >> Monkey business << his hand like a guinea pig while he wees. Australian rehabilitation ______Big congratulations to Tones And I, whose The act of cradling one’s cock and balls single Dance Monkey managed to break a while weeing is called “fruitbowling”. Hugh very impressive record in the UK Top 40. In Laurie also does it. ______November the song racked up its seventh consecutive week at No.1, making it the >> Priced Out << longest run at the top of the UK charts for House of the rising dung an Australian artist.

November was a rough old month for Katie Beating the six-week run of the previous Price. Dumped, declared bankrupt and now title holder... Rolf Harris. potentially facing the threat of eviction. ______Silver linings can be hard to find in this sort Among the hundreds of goats that ate of situation, so here’s one for her. If she does the scrub surrounding the Ronald Reagan get turfed out of her current abode, then it’s library, saving it from possible wildfires: highly likely she’ll end up somewhere much Vincent Van Goat, Selena Goatmez and Goatzart. cleaner and fresher smelling. Visitors to her ______home say they have rarely seen a house Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

41/48 Barely Regal Royal Blush For years, the Royal Family’s motto has been ‘Never Complain, Never Explain’ and Prince Andrew neatly demonstrated why. It takes real finesse to talk your way out of a close friendship with a suspected international child-trafficker – and Andy absolutely spooned it on his first go. So here’s a few notes for His Royal Highness for next time…

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// At the height of Operation Yewtree – back of a newscaster and then had a crack team in the days when you could barely go a of PR handlers, media analysts and legal week without some new celebrity sex advisors pore over the tape to make notes offender getting themselves splashed on how well Cliff responded under full test across the front pages – we were handed conditions. a very interesting document. A copy of the performance notes written up on Sir Cliff It won’t surprise you to learn that Cliff’s Richard’s closed-door interview prep. first attempt was more than a little rough. Guided by anger, and letting personal A few months prior, South Yorkshire’s nonce embarrassment cloud his judgment, Cliff squad had broken into Sir Cliff’s mansion fired off some very unpolished, emotional and live-streamed their raid on the BBC. answers; answers that almost certainly Cliff – who was exonerated of all charges – would have caused him even larger was understandably eager to go on TV and headaches had they been broadcast on clear his name, but his team knew that his national television. But, with some hard first public response would be critical and graft and a little fine tuning, Cliff eventually felt that it was worth taking the time to do managed to clear his name, rehabilitate his things properly. reputation and get back to work without any lingering suspicion. So as part of his media training they set up a fake TV studio, loaded a blank tape into That document is now more than five a camera, hired an actor play the part of years old, but it’s been back in our mind recently after seeing Prince Andrew’s hour- long squirm on the BBC: a masterclass in Mind Your Language just how bad things can get when you don’t Creating an effective soundbite is a tricky heed good advice. balancing act. Obviously a good one shouldn’t sound overly rehearsed, but it Presumably, his objective in sitting down definitely shouldn’t be left to chance either. with Emily Maitlis was to put an end to the Freestyling under the pressure of these speculation about his relationship with dead types of accusations can often cause serious paedophile and suspected international problems. child-trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, so that he could draw a line under it and move on. For example, when Cliff Richard sat down for his mock interview, he emphatically Instead, he ended up broadening the scope declared “There is no child porn in my life!” of people’s interest in the story. First by – a soundbite so perfectly packaged for a talking about attending a birthday party at a front page, Cliff could probably get himself Pizza Express in Woking. Then by discussing a gig on a tabloid. It’s understandable why the 30+ year dry patch of his life in which he thought it might have been a sensible he claims he was physically unable to sweat. thing to say in the moment, but his advisors Then by trying to reinforce a weird theory were quick to point out the potential pitfalls that the photo of him with his arm around of having the words “child porn” plastered his accuser was doctored (pivoting from the next to your face on the front of the nation’s previous defence of “his fingers are actually papers. As such, he tended to temper his chubbier than the photo suggests” to the phrasing moving forward. new line “I never went upstairs in that house”). To Prince Andrew’s credit, his style was so freewheeling that he managed – for the As an exercise in damage control, it could most part – to avoid handing the papers hardly have been worse. It has since been any usable quotes on a platter. Instead, he described as a “car-crash” and “reputational painted more impressionist pictures with his suicide”, all of which makes his reported words. Viewers were treated to the bizarre thoughts of taking a second run at it all the mental image of him bumbling around a more baffling. birthday party in the Woking branch of Pizza Express (while keeping a very keen eye on Still, it took Cliff Richard more than one go the date and time) but he articulated it all in to get things right (even though his first such a weird way that there was no snappy attempts were smartly kept under lock and quote for the papers to pounce on. key). So to make sure Prince Party Hands stands at least a fighting chance of getting It’s a very unorthodox technique, but it through his second round, we thought we’d almost worked. do him a favour and pass across some of the expert media advice that was given to Cliff All except for the section where he was when he stood accused of similar crimes. describing his erections as “positive actions” and implying that every erection he’s had (We’ll accept New Year or Birthday Honours has been so memorable that there is no way as payment, Andy. Thanks in advance.) one of them could have slipped his mind. Or the bit where he described Epstein’s to explain at length how getting shot at in conduct (which, to remind you, includes the Falklands left him physically unable to a conviction for soliciting a minor for sweat, that’s exactly what everyone wanted prostitution, multiple federal charges of to talk about. sex trafficking children, and all sorts of civil cases brought by women accusing him of Clearly, Andrew thought this was an iron-clad assault, unwanted sexual advances and way of contradicting an accusers’ account. A rape) as “unbecoming”. perfect, Johnny Cochran-esque “If the pits are dry, it must be a lie” reasoning. Open- Or the bit when he said that his biggest and-shut. problem was that he was probably “too honourable”. Has the media reacted the way he’d hoped?

But other than that… good job? No. Of course not. Instead, all the morning shows and news sites are roping in their //////////////////////// resident medical experts to discuss the finer points of anhidrosis, the function of sweat glands and whether or not an overdose of Body Talk adrenaline in the 80s is an effective alibi against accusations of sexual misconduct in For some reason, whenever a well-known 2001. personality is facing down these charges on camera, they always seem to end up talking Plus it leads to headlines like this.. about some peculiar quirk of their intimate bodily function.

When Cliff Richard was rehearsing for his big interview, one of his genuine lines of defence was that he had excellent bladder control. Because he was able to hold in his piss for hours on end, he said, he couldn’t possibly have assaulted someone in a stadium toilet. His bladder was so strong that it was just medically impossible.

The advisors reviewing the rushes of this taped interview gently recommend that Cliff not bring up his “bladder, or any other inherently private issue” in an interview, as doing so would make discussions of his bodily function fair game as talking points.

They were pretty much on the money with that assessment too because when Prince Andrew thought it would be a swell idea some factual; some less so – that you can Internet Rumours find about Prince Andrew if you ever log on Another thing that Cliff’s handlers were to the internet: keen to steer him away from was waffling on about rumours he’d read about himself – Prince Andrew once took a flight aboard on the internet – and with good reason. Epstein’s Lolita Express plane with Naomi There are all sorts of mad, unverified claims Campbell on the internet; and a lot of them are about – Prince Andrew had his mother, the Queen Cliff Richard. of England, arrange for Jeffrey Epstein to be murdered in his Manhattan prison cell In his earliest attempts at being interviewed, – Prince Andrew is a member of the Cliff couldn’t keep from going off-message, Illuminati and was sworn in by a soul- constantly turning the conversation around scraping ceremony that left him with a black to the strangers on the internet who were eye saying that he had ordered the hit on Jill – Prince Andrew is a shape-shifting lizard- Dando, or that he had children buried in his like reptilian alien, masquerading as a vineyard, or that he knew the whereabouts human to help him secure world domination of Madeline McCann. – Prince Andrew was photographed wrapping his arm around a 17 year old’s It’s not hard to see why accusations like waist in Ghislaine Maxwell’s Belgravia home, those would weigh heavy on a sensitive soul shortly before the 17 year old says he had like Cliff, but – as his advisors rightly pointed sex with her out – his primary goal in the interview was to quash any remaining concerns about Quite why he thought it might be a good his investigation. Not to spark any new idea to alert viewers to these reports and ones about whether or not he should be rumours is something only he can know. questioned about his involvement in the Maybe he was hoping they’d all just stumble unsolved Dando murder. across the stories that he’d been secretly dating Kylie Minogue? Prince Andrew almost made it through his hour without directing viewers’ attention //////////////////////// to the internet, but he stumbled at the last hurdle. When Maitlis asked him, as a wrap- With Friends Like up question, if this interview signalled a sea These... change in the way that Royals would now respond to scandals, Andrew clearly had In times of great stress, it’s common for some thoughts to get off his chest about people to turn to their friends for support. social media and the sorts of things that get When Cliff Richard was first questioned published there. under the glare of the fake studio lights, he seemed to take great solace in talking You may already have an inkling as to to the interviewer about his good friend why it’s a bad idea for Prince Andrew to Gloria Hunniford. encourage anyone to run a search for him on the internet. In case you don’t, here is a So much so, that his handlers had to tell non-exhaustive list of scandalous stories – him to knock it off. If PR experts warned Cliff away from talking would be, we imagine, quite a humbling too much about a sweet, beloved TV experience. personality like Gloria Hunniford, then you can imagine how horrified they’d have been Or it should be, at least. But there’s to watch Prince Andrew repeatedly lean something about famous people that they on his friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell as just can’t avoid but use it as an opportunity some sort of defence: a woman who has to peacock. been repeatedly described as Epstein’s “chief procurer”. Cliff Richard’s advisors stamped straight down on any attempt he made to declare Maxwell, whose whereabouts are currently himself “one of the biggest names in Britain” unknown, became the number one person or “probably the most recognisable person in of interest after Epstein snuffed it. Not Britain”. True though that may be, his team least because the same accusers who reasoned that it probably wasn’t the time to have given detailed depositions of Prince be trumpeting your brand recognition. Andrew’s conduct at Epstein’s parties, have also accused Ghislaine of being the one Similarly, when he slipped in phrases such as who approached young girls on Epstein’s “people like me” and “you don’t know what behalf and even went so far as to give them it’s like to be people like me”, they thought pointers on their oral sex techniques. it risked him coming off as being “superior”.

As far as character witnesses go, it’s probably Prince Andrew was unable to help himself not one that a professional communications either. There were a few occasions where the expert would recommend you lead with. Duke chose to draw rank, reminding Maitlis that “as a member of the Royal Family” he (NB: It’s probably important that we rarely posed for pictures, or engaged in say Maxwell has repeatedly rejected PDAs. He suggested that Jeffrey Epstein – these allegations and denies ever having an extraordinarily well-connected billionaire facilitated any sexual liaison on behalf of in his own right – would subtly alter his Prince Andrew. But it’s probably equally behaviour around “people like me”. He said important to point out that the accusations that, without wishing to “appear grand”, keep on piling up – and one of the main he was used to having hundreds of people accusers, Virginia Guiffre, sued Maxwell scuttling about his home (“Buckingham for defamation and the case was settled in Palace”) so didn’t find it out of the ordinary Guiffre’s favour, costing Maxwell millions.) that Epstein had lots of people coming in and out of his apartments. //////////////////////// This might seem like a fairly trivial PR problem – especially when compared side- Big Up Yourself by-side with coining a new euphemism for an erection, or implicating yet another pizza Subjecting yourself to a nationally broadcast restaurant in an increasingly well-known television interview in which you are called conspiracy theory about the global elite upon to defend yourself from accusations running a international child sex ring – but of heinous sexual crimes would be, we this is the one that can really put people off. There are all sorts of sins the public can Cliff] not only successfully communicates forgive. Some of the people that we as a his points, but also wins huge support from species have lionised over the years have the nation…” done some truly despicable stuff and gone on to maintain a good reputation and If we could just add two key words to that illustrious career in the public eye. – there’s something we feel that would really help the Duke demonstrate solemnity Sometimes we care, sometimes we don’t. and gravity. Something that also got rave As a mob, we can be extremely capricious, reviews five years ago in an interview with but we aren’t so devoid of sympathy that Emily Maitlis. we’d let a botched phrase or an unwise admission pass if we felt there was a sincere If His Royal Highness could just be persuaded attempt to apologise behind it. to wear a black turtleneck, he might find a lot of his problems would disappear. The document concludes by saying “Sticking to these key messages and toning down some parts of his language will ensure [Sir Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

47/48 The Mean Girls Of NATO December Trump threw a hissy fit when world leaders started gossiping about him at a summit; the UK endured a gruesome general election which saw the prime minister hide in a fridge to avoid being interviewed on breakfast television; and Elon Musk squeaked his way out of the year’s best lawsuit – getting sued for calling people paedos on Twitter. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Present Incorrect << fact, it’ll save him a job. Because every time The gift that keeps grating he wears it, he grabs at any opportunity to drop it into conversation. He’ll constantly be What do you get the cast of your new touching the jacket, tugging at it, brushing musical for opening night? What’s a it down and jostling about until somebody suitable gift to say “Thank you” to the mentions it. group of actors, singers and dancers who have spent months rehearsing your songs, Then he’ll launch into a casual “Oh, this old breathing life into your art and agreeing to thing...?” routine where he’ll explain that make your music a massive part of their the jacket once belonged to Harry Styles, everyday life – not just now, but for the but Harry Styles left it behind the time that foreseeable future? Harry Styles came over to his house (etc). ______For Robbie Williams, the answer was easy. He got them all a copy of his new Christmas- “I guess be careful what you wish for” - themed double album so they can enjoy Elon Musk, 2019 even more of the good stuff in their leisure ______time too. ______>> Stong And Stable << The worst typo mistake “I fucking hope he sues me” ______– Elon Musk, 2018 Michael Gove delivered electioneering pamphlets through the letterboxes of his >> Carr Jacking << constituents with a rather unfortunate Jimmy’s biting Harry’s style mistake on it, saying in big letters he was “a stong local voice for Surrey Heath”. If Harry Styles notices that he’s one jacket down next time he takes stock of his At least we hope it’s a mistake, and not wardrobe, we know where it’s gone. Jimmy another Freudian slip from the Goves? Carr has it and he’s been wearing it out and about like it’s his own. A quick look on Urban Dictionary shows the word ‘stong’ is a combination of ‘stunning’ Jimmy won’t mind us telling you this. In and ‘dong’ – literally a ‘stunning penis’. Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

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