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1/50 Click These Coloured Tabs To Switch Quickly Between Months

2015: Notorious P.I.G. Welcome to the Popbitch Annual 2015. A collection of our favourite stories of the year – both the short, gossipy snippets from the mailout; plus some of the longer articles from Popbitch Magazine. This is a recap of the year you might not remember, but definitely shouldn’t forget...

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// Jan/Feb/Mar ...... 3-11 Diddling to Dimbleby! Dancing shoulders! The return of the Wookie Monster! Timewasting with Professor Hawking! Paedo pop! Beckham’s unfortunate look-a-like – and much, much more...

Apr/May/Jun ...... 12-25 The great UKIP bake sale! Sexy talk with Keith Harris’s old chap! We find the lostprophets! PLUS: internet comments, a good look back at Alanis and some deep milk for Katy Perry!

Jul/Aug/Sep ...... 26-37 David Cameron knobbed a pig.

Oct/Nov/Dec ...... 38-50 Cosplay with Andrew Lloyd Webber! Peanuts at the BBC! A prime minsterial pale ale! Sandra Bullock invades her own privacy! Calvin dishes out lawsuits! PLUS: the return of injunctions!

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

3/50 Prince Party Hands January It was a fairly grim start to the year, what with the brutal attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris; the deaths of Deirdre Barlow and Demis Roussos; and then Brian Harvey smashing up a platinum disc to make a point about paedophiles. Still, we managed to find a few stories that made us laugh... //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Barely Regal << Deirdre Barlow (a.k.a. The Weatherfield “Do you have any Radioheads?” One) on Coronation Street.

Prince Andrew kicked off another year filled Anne was a hugely popular castmate on with celebrity scandal and suspected the Corrie set. One of the reasons for such sexual offences. popularity? She could always be relied upon to provide her colleauges with a decent Andrew is known in certain circles as Mr bifta. Tickle (thanks to his wandering ‘party ______hands’) so it was no real surprise to hear A scene in Caitlin Moran’s sitcom Raised he had found himself in a spot of bother. By Wolves featured a scene where a He wasn’t surprised at the level of press character had a wank to Question Time. attention he received either. Channel 4 had to ask for David Dimbleby’s permission to use a clip. Dimbleby was At a party at Cameron Diaz’s house a few fine about it. years ago, one poor soul ended up talking ______to the Duke about this and that. Apparently he spent most of the evening complaining >> Sweet Cärolein << about how the UK press liked to build Dancing shoulders people up only to knock them down, saying it had happened not only to him but also 2015 brought us the best Europop tune his favourite band, “The Radioheads”. since Whigfield’s Saturday Night... Dancing ______Shoulders by Cärolein. It’s got everything.

Richard Dawkins’ wife was overheard telling There’s a dance (basically, shaking your someone that she reads his books to him to shoulders to make your “apples” dance); help him sleep. ______there’s a mad video (a group of people with misshapen mirrorball heads blindly >> RIP Deirdre << staggering about); great lyrics (“I shake my Bye bye, Barlow ass / My ass has friends on Facebook”) and one motherfucker of a catchy tune. Tributes poured in for the late Anne Kirkbride, who was best known for playing Hear it for yourself... Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

4/50 CD Behaviour Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

5/50 The Wookie Monster February Madonna got hoiked down the stairs by her cape at the BRITs; John Travolta was creepy as heck with Scarlett Johannson and Idina Menzel at the Oscars; Amanda Holden fired her aide after a fancy dress disaster with her child – and, suddenly, it started to seem like all was well with the world once more. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Tea for Vendetta << the best advice their mates ever gave them. Hair today, gone tomorrow Presumably he doesn’t count his legal team George Osborne made some big enemies in as ‘mates’, as the best advice Justin says he Whitehall this year, but not for the reasons ever got from a mate was to try Lilt. you might think. It’s because of his lack of ______lunchtime etiquette. “I had a dream that a cat came onto me Not only does George routinely ignore and I had a sexual relationship with a cat. the canteen’s queuing system completely, That was a weird one. Not that I’m into he also has a bad habit of swanning in fiddling with animals or anything.” and stealing up the last plate of any one – Lee Ryan option – meaning that those waiting in ______the queue miss out. >> Model behaviour << George has done this to one particular A minor stroke of luck individual so often that they’re finding it Nightclubs and members’ bars have really hard to believe it isn’t personal... upped the level of service they provide to ______their A-list clientele. A few years ago, all they’d offer you was a late license ajd a flat We’ve no idea if the Dogs’ Trust in Basildon surface to snort your gak off. But nowadays? has heard the same showbiz rumours as us, but we enjoyed their decision to call two One high-profile venue really pulled out pups... Paul Spaniels and Doggie McGee. ______all the stops for one VIP when a star- studded fashion party started going a little >> Justin Case << Pulp Fiction. The combination of an ultra- The wookie monster returns discreet private ambulance service and an expensive PR contract has meant the story Justin Lee Collins made a surprise has been successfully kept out of the press appearance in February’s issue of FHM. Not all year. as a cover star. Not as a profiled celebrity. Just as one of a dozen members of the Unrelated, we hear Kate Moss’s appetite for public interviewed for a voxpop piece about a good night out remains undimmed. Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

6/50 Paedo Popped Rock And Royalties As Britain continues its campaign to collectively airbrush them out of history entirely, it seems that some of pop music’s biggest perverts are still enjoying a huge audience over in America. And one of them is managing to make a pretty penny out of the whole thing too.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// Gary Glitter seems to be a permanent offence charges. fixture in the dock these days, but he can’t get himself arrested on the radio. You This isn’t because sports fans in the States don’t find X Factor contestants essaying a are a bunch of paedo-sympathisers. There’s Glitter Band hit, or Another Rock ‘N’ Roll a more simple explanation. Though they all Christmas played at Costa Coffee over the knew Rock And Roll (Part II), no-one in the holiday season. His only cultural resonance States really knew who Gary Glitter was. for years here in the UK has been as a big He was never a star there. They therefore old perv. didn’t know about his later, less family- friendly career segue. So why would they It’s not quite the same story in America. stop playing this tune?

Rock And Roll (Part II) – the Glitter Band’s Sometime after the 2006 underage finest moment – has long been a staple convictions in Vietnam, the NFL did decide song in American sports stadiums. Better to take action. They took steps to stop the known to most as “The Hey Song” after record being used in its matches, but the its refrain (the only obvious word in that individual teams didn’t much like being sparse, largely instrumental setting) told what they could and couldn’t play, so Glitter’s 1972 hit has been used in pretty they got round the NFL’s ban by using a much every sport, all across the country. cover version. A pretty star-studded cover From American football to hockey, via major version too, performed by an alt-rock league baseball and basketball, everyone supergroup comprising members of Hole, loved a bit of Glitter. Even after all the sex Smashing Pumpkins, Blondie, White Flag and The Go-Gos – all perfoming under the Suspicious Minds and Always On My Mind). name Tube Tops 2000. It was a top five hit in the States by BJ Thomas. The original featured an unusual But in 2012 the NFL had had enough. They electric sitar, but not a sign of any Ooga told Super Bowl finalists the New England Chakas at all. Patriots that they couldn’t even play the cover version any more. So where the hell did they come from? Well, for that we have to thank Mr Jonathan King, So Rock and Rock (Part II) was killed off from another of Britain’s big 70s stars who is now the NFL, but it still enjoyed something of a languishing on the Sex Offenders Register. life in other sports. Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, King has just written the second part of for example, don’t have any say over what his memoirs, 70 FFFY, and in it he outlines teams can play in their own arenas. Billboard how he turned the pop song into a novelty reported that, even as recently as last year, masterpiece. the song was generating something in the vicinity of a quarter of a million dollars in “At the time I’d been quite successful reviving royalties for Glitter and his co-writer, Mike great songs that had missed out on the UK Leander. charts; doing them in a totally different style… one such song was a country and However, social media has been spreading western hit by the very talented BJ Thomas. the message around fan forums – the I wanted to turn it into a pop reggae track 2014/2015 National Hockey Season started since country was less appreciated in without the song being played for the Britain. Trying to routine it for my wonderful (unfortunately named) Nashville Predators arranger, Johnny Arthey, I always sang the for the first time in many years. Finally it individual parts onto a tape to give him the seems the Glitter Band are being booted bass and string lines etc. I couldn’t quite into touch. decide how to start the recording and simply sang the reggae rhythm – ooga chagga But as one paedo-pop door closes, another [sic] ooga ooga – thinking I’d tell him which opens… instruments to play it on later.”

The biggest-selling soundtrack by far last “When I listened back to my demo, I liked year was from Guardians Of The Galaxy. the sound of Ooga Chagga and decided The song leading this 70s mix tape? Hooked to get my male singers to grunt like that. On A Feeling. Original, different, catchy.”

And just like Rock And Roll (Part II) is The song was not a big hit but it nevertheless widely known as “The Hey Song”, Hooked ended up being covered by a Scandinavian On A Feeling is pretty much known as “The band, Blue Swede, who copied the new JK Ooga Chaka Song”. arrangement, not the BJ Thomas original.

Hooked On A Feeling started off as a The resulting version, complete with full-on sensitive country and western record, Swedish ooga chakas, was a huge number written by Mark James (who also did one single in the States. It then went on to be covered by David Hasselhoff, included on the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack, used as the music for Ally McBeal’s Dancing Baby and is now the lead song on a million-selling smash-hit film soundtrack.

It is a slightly different case to Rock and Roll (Part II), as King doesn’t earn a penny from it being on Guardians of the Galaxy (you don’t get royalties for an arrangement).

Still, the grand tradition of British sex offenders infiltrating American popular culture continues apace. Long may it be the case… Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

9/50 Look-a-likes Glitterballs David Beckham’s shoot for H&M was well received in the fashion press, with all the regular candidates swooning over him. But we couldn’t help but notice a certain unhelpful similarity... Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

10/50 Cunt Com Four March Jeremy Clarkson was a fixture on the front pages after punching his producer over a botched dinner order, but March was also the month when the Daily Mirror ended up in court over phone-hacking, “Dr” Fox got arrested by the cops again, and people lost their goddamn minds over a multicoloured dress. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Pissed-on Heads << modelling for – but that seems a little Silence is golden... unlikely to us.

Jeremy Clarkson’s temper tantrums were so Maybe it was his Pet Shop Boys fixation? frequent at Top Gear that some production One past conquest told us that Walliams staff developed a code for his moods. If refused to have sex unless their music was things ever reached a ‘CC4’ (‘Cunt Com playing? Four’) then you’d know not to approach him under any circumstance – even if it Or maybe it was his choice of nightwear? was urgent. Another ex told us he wore lilac pyjamas and a brown silk dressing gown to bed. Given that he punched a man over a plate ______of cold cuts, we can only imagine how high Clarkson would place on the Cunt Com scale David Walliams was famous at school for if he ever found out that crew members dry-humping smaller boys against a wall. had taken to pissing in the water pistol he His nickname back then was Cuthbert Hogsbottom. used to spray himself down with to keep ______him cool when filming in the States. ______>> Surfing with Stephen << “Moses comes down with the ten A brief history of timewasting commandments and says ‘Thou shalt not...’ Stephen Hawking was booked to be a He didn’t say shit about 3D printing.” guest speaker at an event at the Bodleian – will.i.am ______Library, Oxford. After his speech, Stephen was approached by the bigwig in charge, who proceeded to proudly boast to the >> Heart Of Stone << Bedroom habits of the stars professor about all of the important work they do. We were very sad to hear that David Walliams and his model wife Lara Stone The bigwig couldn’t see from where he was parted ways in March. The tabloids seemed standing but, as he was talking, Hawking to imply it was because David couldn’t cope spent the whole time surfing Right Move on with all the racy photoshoots she’d been his little computer.

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12/50 “Pure Filth” April The run-up to the general election had everyone acting a little strangely. Russell Brand invited Ed Miliband over for a playdate; the Greens tried their hand at musical comedy; and UKIP had scandals ranging from expenses-fiddling, to starring in porn, to bribing people with sausage rolls. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> What A Swizz! << >> RIP Keith Harris << Scamming the Tide Puppetry of the penis

With a combined wealth of over $2 billion, ccbaxter writes: “A friend told me that April saw some of the biggest names in music Keith Harris, of Orville fame, hit on her gather together to launch Tidal – a new when she was a dancer in a pantomime streaming service which has done wonders they were both in. After a few drinks he in helping highlight just how obscenely well got her back to his dressing room, and said paid some musicians can be – even after ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet’. two full decades of crying about how the bottom of the music industry has fallen out. “He then proceeded to unzip his trousers, remove his old chap and make it talk. Not We were particularly surprised to see just talk, but ‘sexy talk’. that Jay Z was suddenly so interested in ensuring that hardworking artists get paid “For at least five minutes.” a fair price for their work. Because he didn’t ______seem all that bothered in 2013, when he Despite being declared bankrupt twice, Keith took an uncleared, uncredited sample Harris refused to be in Ricky Gervais’ Extras from Swiss jazz pianist Bruno Spoerri as he thought the script was “pure filth”. on Magna Carta Holy Grail. ______

The ensuing legal back and forth went on >> Lost And Found << for 18 months – with a final settlement Prophets of doom reached just two weeks before Jay took to the stage and announced his new crusade You’d have thought that after all those to ensure hard-pressed musicians get paid Ian Watkins paedo stories, the Daily fairly for their music. What a stroke of luck! Mail would have had nothing more to do with lostprophets – but no. Who should ______appear in the Mail’s State Of The Nation sex “We believe Frederich Nietzsche couldn’t poll, discussing the sex diary he kept with have been more right when he said ‘Without his (of legal age) wife? music, life would be a mistake’” – Alicia Keys The uncredited guitarist from lostprophets, ______Lee Gaze! Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

13/50 My Cool Crack Bender Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

14/50 The Great UKIP Bake Sale May It was a big month for unusual comebacks. Charlotte Church returned to the public eye as a Brand-esque celebrity activist; So Solid Crew reformed and failed to crowdfund a brand new album; and the guy who wrote Jimmy Savile’s popular theme tune found a new gig – writing the UK’s Eurovision entry! //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Dick Moves << ______For Richard, for poorer The word ‘faraj’ (pronounced ‘farage’) Richard Desmond is UKIP’s most famous means ‘vagina’ in Malay. ______donor – and, like any good businessman, he never misses an opportunity to make a quick buck. >> Daddy Cool << Offices of the rich & famous After the birthday party he threw for his daughter this year, Desmond Simon Cowell let cameras into his West saw that there was quite a lot of London mansion a couple of years back, celebratory cheesecake left over. in order to show off his beautiful white sofas, scented candles and Steinway So he had it taken to the Northern & Shell piano. canteen, cut it up into slices, and sold it on to his staff. But someone who paid him a visit recently says that, while Cowell was as charming ______as ever (and that the catering was Nigel Farage has a weird hatred of fabulous), fatherhood has brought about a Dexy’s Midnight Runners. change of decor. ______Cowell’s home office is now absolutely >> What’s In A Name? << covered in shirtless pictures of him posing Taking elections seriously with baby Eric.

Whatever your personal politics, one thing we can all agree on is that general elections ______are usually pretty scant on laughs. But this Old Jokes Home year saw an unprecedented number of strange names on the ballots. Q/ What’s the best thing about Switzerland? A/ Well, there’s the flag. That’s a big plus. 3/ Dick Wraith (Labour, Wombwell) 2/ Mike Hunt (UKIP, Braintree) ______1/ Wayne Kerr (UKIP, Wombwell) Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

15/50 Below And Beyond Trash Talk 2015 saw a number of high-profile websites choosing to turn off comments on their articles. It’s obvious why comments sections are so reviled, but why have so many news outlets stuck with them despite them being such slurry pits? They couldn’t possibly be providing a worthwhile service – could they…?

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// The world of online media is not a pretty wasn’t because they expected you to find place at the best of times. There’s a top soil anything enlightening, enriching or fun in of respectability, sure. Then you’ve got your there. crust of clickbait and cat videos, followed by a thick mantle of mindless filler. But then No. The chances are that if someone’s you reach the core. A boiling magma pit of getting you to read below the line it’s bad opinions, poorly articulated philosophy for one reason, and one reason only: and chronic contrarians. The comments the comments section is an unmitigated section. shitshow.

Think for a second. When was the last time But why, if they’re so hugely unpopular, do that someone said to you, “Have you read websites persist in having them? And we’re the comments section on that article? Oh, not just talking about websites that are man. You should really read the comments desperate for attention – like your sister- on that article. Go on. Here’s the link. Take in-law’s fitness blog or the Independent. a look at what they’re saying.” We mean proper news outlets. The type that should pride themselves on providing It’s not impossible that something like that authoritative coverage. Why are otherwise has happened to you – it may even happen serious media organisations so obsessed fairly frequently – but we will bet our fucking with turning everything into a conversation? boiler money that the last time somebody Especially when the vast majority of people suggested you read a comments section, it who do turn up to talk are fractious old gobshites? rooms, boards and mailing lists. Everything else has been built around that. With every Is it a question of user engagement? development of web technology since, and Content generation? Brand loyalty? Some with every advancement made in online other largely meaningless euphemism that news provision, the capability for chat or essentially boils down to mean ‘clicks and comment continues to be grandfathered money’? in.

Weirdly, for once, it doesn’t seem to be. Why? Because when these sorts of communities work they are the envy of What’s it all about then? the internet. An interested, invested group of readers who engage with one another, with writers and contributors, offering up //////////////////////// new and thought-provoking perspectives. It’s what every news outlet dreams of. Conversation Starter News outlets’ motivations in cultivating You may have taken issue with our geological such communities are not exclusively analogy above – where we suggested that ideological though, and if there was ever a comments are at the core of the internet. way to successfully monetise such a thing, We stand by it though, and this is why. then it might provide the key to running a profitable online news service. The internet has changed so radically in the last twenty years that it’s easy to forget But is that even possible? Can you turn a where it all started. But back in the mid- profit on a comments section? to-late-90s – back when you couldn’t open up a magazine without a CompuServe //////////////////////// CD falling out, and you would scream at anyone who picked up the phone while you were connected on dial-up – the internet The Cost Of Free Speech was predominantly chat rooms, forums and usenet newsgroups. The idea that ‘comment is free’ is not quite accurate. Yes, including a below the line Long before your newspaper of choice comments section on your article template had its own properly functioning website is an easy and effortless way of generating (and that happened a lot later than you masses of content (content that will remember) millions of regular internet users hopefully encourage your readers to return were used to having their voices heard. For to your site time and time again, thereby a long time, that was all the internet was. bumping your traffic stats and increasing People talking to each other, and people your worth) but it isn’t actually free. being heard. Conversations. Discussions. Opinions. Let’s look at some back-of-the-envelope numbers. People announced their areas of interest, and were then left to form their own On September 6th, the Daily Mail’s website published 629 articles. The first fifty of It’s an impressive machine. Millions of those amassed a total of 3,620 comments words a week, all whipped up for free by between them. volunteers, aiding discussion and encourage visitors to return. Surely that’s a good thing? One article inspired 509 comments (a What’s the problem there? story about Ola Jordan’s boobs nearly popping out during Strictly Come Assuming an average speeding read of Dancing) but the mean average was 72 250wpm (with no breaks), that equates comments per article. Extrapolating that to roughly 48 full person-hours of reading out across the mailonline’s entire daily material each and every day. It would take output gives you a ballpark figure of 45,288 six full-time members of staff, working a comments a day. regular 9-5 shift (with no lunch break), just to read and monitor the comments alone. Even if all of those comments were just two words long (‘drive-bys’ they’re called Even if you got recent graduates and first- in moderator circles), it would amount to a jobbers to do it all, you’re looking at a full-sized novel being published below the six-figure sum in salaries before you even line each and every day. But not everyone is get started. When you factor in the costs as succinct as those commenters who post to your business that having employees “yawn. boring.” underneath every article. incurs (contributions to pensions, national Some like to expand upon their views. insurance, desk space, HR and IT support departments) even with a bare bones So we counted up all of the words in the operation you are looking at a minimum bill comments boxes underneath that 450-word of £200,000p/a. And probably significantly article about Ola’s boobs nearly popping more. out. 7,928 words. The sort of word count you’d expect to see from a particularly That’s quite an investment just to allow pretentious New Yorker profile. members of the public to come and scrawl whatever they want over your website. The average number of words per comment is 16. If that average holds The Mail is not an outlier either. It’s the across the site (and it actually seems to same sort of thing across other sites. The be quite a conservative estimate, given Guardian hosts between 50,000 and 60,000 how opinionated certain commenters get new comments a day – most of which are when more contentious issues are under at least a couple of lines long. The New discussion) it means that the mailonline’s York Times reportedly has seven people comment section is churning out about working full-time on comments screening, 724,608 words a day. and they only allow comments on a very select number of their articles each day. To put that figure into some sort of context, The Huffington Post claims it used to deal the complete works of Shakespeare weighs with 70 million comments a year (more in at 884,647 words. The infinite monkeys than 190,000 a day) back when it was below the line of the mailonline pump that an anonymous free-for-all, requiring the out in 29 hours. services of 30 moderators. So this isn’t the sort of task you can fob off people without retribution (the idea being on to a dutiful member of staff in exchange that it might provide juicy tips for stories). for a hamper at Christmas and a couple In practice though, it also let trolls post of after-work pints. It’s a serious job. It whatever they liked without obstacle. involves serious cash. The second was giving commenters rich- It would be one thing if the financial cost text capabilities – allowing for .jpg and .gif was the only one to bear – but it isn’t images to be embedded. always. There’s also the emotional cost. How did this cause problems? //////////////////////// One of the sites under the Gawker banner is Jezebel, which bills itself as providing A Picture Paints A “Gossip, culture, fashion, and sex for the Thousand Words contemporary woman”. As you can imagine, a site like that is catnip to a certain breed Of all the internet news outlets, no-one of commenter. has put as much stock in the supposed value of comments sections than Gawker. Rather than just being confined to writing They have spent a long time and a lot of ‘LOL shut up cunt’ at the bottom of articles money developing their comments system (the traditional calling card of the internet (a custom, purpose-built platform called troll), the more disagreeable Kinja users Kinja) to harvest any potential value out started to illustrate their comments. Their if it. regular rape and death threats sat side by side with some of the most gruesome One ex-editor of Gawker estimated that images that the internet has to offer. the cost of developing and implementing Kinja cost somewhere between $10-20m. Your classic hardcore pornography was a constant staple, punctuated frequently Whether they’ve been successful in with pictures of torture, kidnap, mutilation recouping anything like that amount in and – on occasion – actual corpses. All of return is a discussion for another time (and which was hugely distressing for the one that many, many Gawker users have journalists, the moderators and other opinions on). But in attempting to cultivate sensible Kinja users to have to deal with. the most vibrant and useful community of commenters possible, they implemented a Obviously posting such content was a very couple of capabilities which recently caused clear breach of Gawker Media’s terms of them to run headlong into a rather severe use, so the pictures were able to be pulled problem. without question or query. And who was pulling those pictures down? Jezebel’s staff. The first capability was allowing people People who were employed to write gossip to open anonymous, untraceable ‘burner’ for a pop culture website were now being accounts. Nominally, this was supposed to exposed – on a daily basis – to the sorts allow whistleblowers to post to the Kinja of horrifying imagery that is used in other platform securely and dish the dirt on contexts to terrorise and torture people. Because of the ease of setting up a burner is starting to show a serious fault in the account on Gawker’s comment platform primary argument for dropping comments (and because Gawker made it clear that sections. they wouldn’t track/monitor IPs to ensure the anonymity of any potential moles) there Something which shows that, maybe, all this was no way to effectively block people from time, we’ve been looking at the situation starting up another account and finding the wrong way round. something even more disturbing to post.

In the words of Jezebel staff, the whole //////////////////////// ordeal was “like playing whack-a-mole with a sociopathic Hydra.” You’d cut off one The Comeback head, only to watch another sprout back in its place – even more pissed off than the The reason given by a number of the sites one that went before it. which dropped their comments sections was this: “We find that the most constructive The Gawker/Jezebel example is one of conversation surrounding our pieces is the more extreme examples of comments conducted on social media”. sections falling dangerously out of control, but it is by no means an isolated incident. If nothing else, this is a nifty excuse. You One of the moderators we spoke to in shut down your comments section, but you researching this article requested she don’t shut up your commenters. You merely remain anonymous, not because she was invite them to take their opinions to social afraid of being identified by her employer, media. That way any hate speech is hosted but in case she was identified by trolls. by Facebook or Twitter and is therefore not your responsibility to moderate – and you In the face of such things, it’s easy to see save £200K almost immediately. why so many people are calling for an end to comments sections. If they’re not cheap The perfect solution, right? to run, and they can be actively harmful to moderate, surely that’s reason enough to Erm, no. Not really – and journalists shitcan them? What possible worth could who covered the referendum on Scottish they have to justify all of the potential Independence last year have already had a pitfalls? pretty vicious preview of the problem.

Certainly sites like Popular Science, Re/ The trouble is that there are some stories Code, the Daily Dot, the Verge, the Chicago with which a reporter just cannot win. The Sun-Times and others all decided that they BBC is a classic. For every person who weren’t worth the trouble, and ditched thinks that the BBC is displaying a right them. Others, while keeping theirs for wing bias (by deliberately refusing to report the time being, are now publishing op-ed on anti-austerity marches, or asking Nigel pieces on why it might be time to call time. Farage to appear on The Great British Bake Off) you have another person with equal But something very interesting has been and opposite vigour calling it the ‘British happening this week; something which Bolshevik Corporation’ and complaining that the license fee is tantamount to full voicing their opinions. That’s one genie that communism. won’t ever go back in the bottle. Instead those displaced commenters will simply Israel is another. Write anything vaguely take up an alternative platform, and the balanced about the highly-charged most obvious one of those is social media. situation in that part of the Middle East and you become, at once, a typical anti-Zionist They can do that anyway, of course – the anti-Semite and another clear example option has been open to them for as long of the Jew-run media advancing its own as Facebook and Twitter have been around agenda. – but it’s no coincidence that the current trend for editors wanting to direct the This week has brought another: Jeremy conversation away from comments sections Corbyn. People have lost their goddamned and onto social media correlates exactly minds over Jeremy Corbyn. Cover a story with journalists’ growing dissatisfaction at that paints him in a slightly negative the level of discourse on social media. light and you summon forth a swarm of Corbynites vehemently defending him. Comments sections are easy to avoid when Cover a story that paints him in a slightly you know where they are. But when anyone positive light and you are branded a threat can actively approach you on Facebook to our national security, our economic or Twitter to tell you that your review of security and your family’s security. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet was a fucking disgrace and that you wouldn’t Even as a bystander watching such activity know good acting if it sat on your face you is tiring, but for the journalists involved in miserable feminazi, then suddenly it seems putting their bylines to those stories, it’s desperately unwise to have ever wanted to exhausting. encourage people to take that conversation out onto the unregulated wilds of social A number of journalists from across the media. political spectrum have spent these last few months voicing their displeasure at To be in control of the conversation that Twitter, talking about how unpleasant it’s all is being had about your content – in the become. It used to be fun and productive way you are to a certain extent with your and helpful, they say, but the conversation own native comments section – then, nowadays is just vicious fighting. suddenly, £200,000 seems like quite the snip. Because as unpleasant as a comments Those reporting on the Scottish referendum section can be to a person who disagrees last year complained of the same thing with whatever comments they contain, too; many threatening to quit social media a well-moderated comments section is at in the face of brutal Cybernat campaigns. least that. Moderated. Contained. The sheer volume of vitriol leveled at them became unbearable, unmanageable. When the cruel commenters are cast out into the cold though, disgruntled and shunned, Sadly, this will be the inevitable result of there’s no real telling what they might do. shutting down comments sections. People And as long as there is a free platform on aren’t going to suddenly want to stop offer which provides the capability to set multiple anonymous accounts without verification, and the capability to post distressing images and videos freely (the exact same ingredients that made Kinja so terrible) then Twitter could become a whole lot worse.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll choose to organise their own comments sections – like off-guardian.org (an independently established refuge for those kicked off the Guardian’s comments section for persistently disobeying the comment guidelines).

Or maybe we’ll get unlucky.

And that really doesn’t bear thinking about. Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

22/50 Deep Milk June In June, Simon Cowell announced the funky new judging panel for what proved to be a disastrous season of The X Factor: Nick Grimshaw and Rita Ora. Why did Cowell feel the need to bring fresh, young blood into the fold? Maybe they gave him a sort of energy? The type he just didn’t get from anybody else... Who nose? //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Shagged Little Pill << ______A good look back at Alanis “If God exists, there’s no way he’s French” Twenty years ago a largely unknown artist – Andrea Pirlo came to the UK to launch her album. The ______label held a big party for it, and one of the label guys dined out for a few weeks on >> Sexy Safari << the story that he’d taken the singer home RIP Christopher Lee that night and done her up the tradesman’s JH writes: entrance. “In the early 90s I worked for Hammer Films and was asked to organise a voiceover The album’s 20th anniversary re-issue hit recording for a Hammer Films documentary. the shelves in June – as that little-known Both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee singer, Alanis Morissette, went on to shift had agreed to work together one last time. 33 million copies of it. ______“Christopher Lee had asked me to organise one thing: a television and a VHS player Prince Charles was given Anna Karenina to in a private room and to have some alone read at university by a friend. When asked time with Peter. if he liked it, he replied yes, but that he never wanted to read another novel. ______“After the recording, I cleared the studio and left Peter and Christopher alone with the TV. They hadn’t noticed that I was >> Dairy Queen << How to make Perry roar still at the mixing desk so I waited to see what they were going to be watching. I Katy Perry might have kissed a girl and liked saw Count Dooku and Grand Moff Tarkin it but when it comes to sex she seems to sit watching Looney Tunes cartoons – each prefer boys. doing perfect impersonations of Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Pie – all line perfect!” And what does Katy like to say to her conquests to get them in the mood? “I can’t remember exactly – but I think Christopher Lee was Tweety Pie and Peter “I want your milk deep...” Cushing was Sylvester.” Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

23/50 Change Of Gear Fists Full Of Dollars There was a lot of talk about Mayweather V Pacquiao being ‘The Fight of The Century’. But once we saw the details of Jeremy Clarkson’s new Amazon deal – noting that he had managed to wangle an annual pay rise of £8.5m after being let go from the BBC after punching a colleague – maybe Clarkson V Tymon was where the smart money was?

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

26/50 Sandy’s Fur Purse July After their tepidly-received tour, S Club 7 drummed up a bit of extra cash flogging off their own memorabilia on eBay. Everything was up for sale. Paul’s guitar, Jo’s backstage pass and Hannah’s tour itinerary, which also contained all the names and numbers of those who worked on that tour. Bargain! //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Starr Witness << meeting for his book at Hodder and Freddie’s judgment day Stoughton, he decided to ask the literary experts around him a question that had Freddie Starr’s libel couldn’t really have been bugging him for ages. gone much worse for him. The judge didn’t appear to believe a word that Starr said “What is fiction?” Bless. and delivered a pretty damning judgment. ______There was one silver lining though. The “People think that I have this huge grudge judge did allow him to publicly correct an against Cheryl. And granted, I do.” inaccuracy that Starr somehow managed to – Katie Waissel ______put into his own autobiography.

The book states that when he first met one >> Biting Back << of his wives he said, “Hello, Sandy. Can I Jedward shows his teeth play with your fur purse?” But what Starr When they were doing the promo rounds says he actually asked if he could play with for Sharknado 3, Jedward popped in to her “fur clitoris”. Which is much sexier. the London Live studio for an interview. ______Predictably, mayhem ensured. Somehow either John or Edward (no-one could tell Masterchef’s production crew includes the difference) managed to sneak into the Damian Eggs on lighting and Matt Bacon newsroom. on sound. ______John/Edward started working the room, >> A Reem Job << thanking all the people there for their hard Essex education work and telling them to ‘enjoy London’ like some sort of demented royal. But when Everyone likes to scoff at Joey Essex (and the news editor told him to get out of his we’re really no exception) but there’s no newsroom, John/Edward did not react well. denying that he tries his very best to treat At all. every experience as a learning opportunity. He marched out, screaming “YOU’RE ALL For example, when he was in the pitch REPLACEABLE. YOU’RE ALL REPLACEABLE.” Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

27/50 Cubi-Culled Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

28/50 Fry On The Rings Of Love August We were reporting on the developments regarding Chris Moyles’ return to radio all year, but August is when things got really serious. For not only did we break news that Moyles was definitely coming back – but that he was bringing Johnny Vaughan, Ricky Wilson and Vernon fucking Kay with him too... //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Family Jewels << Celebrity’ on it.) He accosted two unwitting Diamonds are a boy’s bellend customers and accused them of trying to take his picture. When they denied it, he Maybe you saw Lenny Kravitz’s penis when launched into full “Do you know who I am?” his trousers split on stage? If you did, you’ll mode. When the coffee shop’s owner got have no doubt noticed that Lenny has got involved, Joly stormed out. himself some downstairs decoration. Sixty seconds later, a runner came in to His penis is pierced with a gold hoop that is announce that it was all just a big joke and inset with a diamond. A diamond that was gave them release forms to sign. taken from a pair of his mum’s old earrings. ______They refused. Miss Teen Suffolk was announced as the ______official face of Framlingham Sausage Fest. “The biggest problem we have is not ebola. Full story here. ______It’s not AIDS. It’s electrosmog.” – Noel Edmonds ______>> Trigger Warning << A Joly damned nuisance >> Medium to XXL << Things are not looking promising for the new Fry on the rings of love series of Trigger Happy TV. Dom Joly was pestering people all through the summer Most tributes offered to Colin Fry seemed with his hidden camera pranks but, rather to focus on his work as a celebrity medium. than being amusingly baffled, people are Understandable, but we wouldn’t be doing just sick of him. our job properly if we didn’t point out Colin was also a serious businessman. First he was cycling through the Pavillion Gardens in Brighton in August, screaming He was the company secretary for “THIS IS A CYCLE PATH! I’M ON A BICYCLE!” Crackstuffers, a dildo manfacturer at a packed field of pedestrians. specialising in hoop-widening plugs and depth trainers which sports the But his finest hour was when he dressed in fantastic strapline” “Designed by men with a ‘disguise’ a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Local greedy arses, for men with greedy arses.” Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

29/50 In Memoriam Black: Out Cilla Black always claimed she wanted to remembered first and foremost as a singer, not as a TV presenter. But to reduce her career to just those two options is to do the woman a great disservice. She was a true polymath, and it is our honour and privilege to recount some of her other great achievements.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// The Frequent Flyer Golf Course Designer Known – and feared – throughout the Many years ago, Cilla bought a house cabin crew community, Cilla Black’s in-flight bordering the fancy Denham Golf Club attitude is the stuff of legend. in Buckinghamshire. Despite her garden obviously bordering one of the club’s Not only would she insist upon travelling fairways when she purchased it, for years first class, she’d demand seat 1A. That was after moving in Cilla would frequently only the first of many demands too – all of complain to the club and harangue golfers which were made through her PA, as Cilla if they accidentally shanked a ball over the didn’t want to speak to any staff herself. fence into her massive garden. The full nine yards too, not so much as a please or thank you. She even went as far as demanding that the club restructure the fairway to steer it One flight attendant eventually grew so away from her property. Needless to say, tired of her behaviour, that he leaned over after a while, regulars at the club would to speak directly to her and uttered the intentionally hit a mulligan into her garden immortal line: “I knew you couldn’t sing, to spite her. but I didn’t know you couldn’t fucking speak”. After many years of living there, realising she was onto a losing thing, she gave up //////////////////////// complaining and submitted an application for membership to the club for her and her do is tip off a weekly gossip newsletter. long-suffering husband. It happened at Wimbledon a few years It was met with a very prompt “fuck off” back. A gentleman in a wheelchair from the typically polite club secretary at found himself waiting patiently to use the time. the disabled facilities (not knowing that it was a non-disabled occupant was in //////////////////////// there) finishing her business.

You can imagine his shock when the lock The Tough Boss clicked back and – surprise, surprise – You may have wondered – what with all the out stepped the entirely able-bodied… glowing tributes to her immediately after Cilla Black! her death – how it could be that someone apparently so cherished and loved could //////////////////////// get so little telly work in her later years. The Kleptomaniac Ageism? Possibly. Changing tastes in light entertainment? Quite probably. But the As far as celebrity riders go, Cilla Black had main reason was that one of the top bods one of the most consistent. Wherever she at ITV very determinedly blackballed each went, she demanded champagne and two and every attempt that Cilla made to get glasses. She never left the glasses behind on screen. though, she always took them home. A thrifty move, as when she hosted a big Why the personal vendetta? Because the party at home she didn’t need to hire exec in question started out as a runner. On glasses because she had a collection of Blind Date. around 300 Granada flutes.

One early task was to fetch Cilla some //////////////////////// salmon sandwiches for her and some guests. The runner got the nicest smoked The Shopper salmon sarnies they could find. But all they got for their efforts was a bollocking from Cilla would do most of her weekly shopping Cilla in front of her guests as she only liked at a small grocery store called Fishers in tinned salmon, not smoked. Gerrards Cross. Despite there only being three check-out counters in the tiny store, //////////////////////// when Cilla had finished her weekly shop she would, without fail, refuse to line up at an open counter even if there was only one Disabled Toilet User person in front of her.

One of the unspoken perks of being a Instead, she would go and stand in front celebrity is that you get to use the disabled of one of the unmanned counters until toilets, and the very worst that anyone will someone opened it up especially for her. The Astronomer but they are the real-life brothers of the Chuckle Brothers. They have a reputation The moon landing was the first time in the business for being consummate ITV officially beat the BBC’s ratings ona professionals. Unanimously described as joint broadcast. One of ITV’s expert co- being hard-working, mild-mannered and presenter? Cilla Black. excellently disciplined, they are never anything less than gentlemen and they //////////////////////// famously refuse to tell tales on anyone or say anything snide about any of the people they’ve ever worked with. The Intercity Commuter Except for Cilla Black, that is – for whom When ITV’s flagship daytime programme they make a special exception. They This Morning was based out of Liverpool, described her, simply, as being “a cunt”. Cilla would make appearances on the show to plug Blind Date or Surprise Surprise.

And why not? It would be easy to get a local girl on, wouldn’t it? Erm, not quite… She would always demand a chauffeur- driven car to bring her up from London on the morning of the show as she didn’t want to be in Liverpool the night before.

Which is fine for a one-off – but a very similar thing happened when she did a panto season in Liverpool.

//////////////////////// Showbiz Royalty First off, in the interests of balance, we should say that Cilla did have a couple of friends from the world of old-school showbusiness. (She referred to Christopher Biggins and Paul O’Grady as her ‘good fairy’ and ‘bad fairy’, respectively. Lionel Blair also had a metric ton of eulogy to deliver on the Sunday that news broke.)

However.

You may not know the Patton Brothers, Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

32/50 Pigfucking September Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. Pigfucking. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Hot Scoop << What could have been causing Les such Fatman and wife stress? Well, just before the Dennis family moved up north, his neighbour thought it It was nice to see Fatman Scoop on our might be funny, as a joke, to change the televisions in Celebrity Big Brother. We’ve name of their household WiFi network... had our fingers crossed for years that he’d get the chance to shine on TV – as his sex ...to ‘OPERATION YEWTREE’. advice web series Man And Wife is some of the internet’s greatest viewing. ______“Great Britain needs great banter” Whether he’s giving advice on how to – Johnny Vaughan finger your wife, using a melon as a prop; ______whether it’s drawing out a sixty-nine like it’s an American football playbook; or >> Commoner Salt << whether he’s giving advice to women who Fish and tips get chewing gum stuck in their pubic hair, Scoop is a sex guru second to none. LC writes: ______“I was in Edinburgh for the festival and me and my mates were in a chipper. As I like A puffin weighs about the same as a full a lot of vinegar, I asked if I could put the can of Coke. ______seasonings on myself. The bored attendant duly obliged and I put the salt on, followed >> Dennis, Menaced << by the vinegar. Time for Yew to move “Someone behind me said to me: Less Dennis has enjoyed a bit of a well- deserved resurgence in Coronation Street “You ought to put the vinegar on first and this year. He’s also enjoyed having moved to then the salt. That way the salt won’t all Chesire from his previous home in Highgate run off the chips.” because it’s a more relaxed lifestyle than in London. “I’m looking forward to less stress,” “In fairness, he was right. Thank you Ricky he said at the time. Gervis for changing my life.” Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

33/50 Porkie Pies Smear Tactics Got a vague, spurious and largely unsubstantiated rumour you need to make stick? Want to spread some dirt on someone without getting sued through the arse? Then you, my friend, need to take a lesson from Lord Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott’s seminal work Call Me Dave: Gossip For Beginners And Improvers

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// Lord Ashcroft might have deep pockets, but even he knows that you don’t want to The Scattergun get yourself willingly wrapped up in a libel Approach case. That’s a very real danger when you They say if you come for the king, you best want to publicly accuse your former buddy not miss. The best way not to miss? Take of fucking a dead pig in the mouth; and it’s out absolutely everyone in a three-mile an even realer danger when that buddy is radius. Show no quarter. the prime minister of your country (even if you don’t technically live there for tax When it comes to making rumours stick, purposes). there simply is no tarbrush wide enough.

What can you do then to ensure that Take, for example, the heavy insinuation people understand what you’re driving at, that the Camerons once enjoyed a bit of without you actually saying the words? coke at a party. For that is precisely what What can you say to make your meaning Ashcroft and Oakeshott are implying in clear, without being in breach of the law? their first chapter – which deals with the star-studded New Year’s Eve party in There’s a few ways to do it – and Lord Chipping Norton, frequented by the rich Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott try them all. and infamous.

Obviously they can’t out-and-out say it, as //////////////////////// there is no good way to prove it, but what you can do is this: refreshed” are all code for “drunk out of their tiny minds” – or that “fruit and flowers” 1) Single Out A Large Number Of is celebrity accountant speak for “cocaine Individuals and prostitutes” – there are certain polite, euphemistic phrases you can use to imply that someone is mashed on drugs.

////////////////////////

There’s no telling what could cause a person to feel “euphoric”. Drugs, yoga, dance music, the sight of the Grand Canyon as the sun comes up. Euphoria can come from anywhere.

Still, it is pretty helpful that “euphoric” is always the word that gets used on drug 2) Be Very Non-specific About The pamphlets and biology textbooks – so Particular Drugs In Question you can be sure that everyone, from the squarest swot to the most raucous drug pig, knows what you mean.

The added bonus is that they give a sense of innocence and naiveté to your unfounded claims, as if you personally don’t know what could cause a person to act that way.

3) Don’t Attribute Any Of The Non- //////////////////////// specific Drugs To Any Individual

Et voila! The parameters of your accusation The Rhetorical are now so huge as to encompass a massive Question coke-and-pills fuelled bacchanal; a quiet get-together where some smacked-up twat turns up – and anything in between. You leave it to the reader to make the distinction. Because ‘possession’ and ‘intent to supply’ //////////////////////// are actual, letter-of-the-law crimes you need to make sure that you don’t inadvertently suggest that any of the people at the party The Euphemism you’re describing were responsible for Much in the same way that “tired and providing them. There’s no quicker way to emotional”, “well-oiled” and “very say, “Listen, we’re just saying there were definitely drugs there. You make your own Why? Because ‘bump’ is also a word conclusion,” than by using a rhetorical associated with cocaine. You take a bump question. of coke.

Possibly you think this is just a coincidence //////////////////////// – and maybe we are reading too much into this particular example – but to shift Setting The Scene from the cocaine rumours to the pigfucking allegations, look at this… You have stated that there are unexplained narcotics in circulation and you have stated that the guests are all in various states of intoxication. So how do you now pin it on someone? Aside from saying they looked euphoric – which might just happen to Does “pink and perky” remind you of anyone sensitive to a party atmosphere – anything? Say, a couple of very popular pig how do you subtly imply that the man you puppets from the 50s and 60s? On its own, want to nail has been hoovering up coke perhaps an unfortunate coincidence – and like a Henry? not everyone is so purile that the phrase “not yet the size he grew to” makes them immediately think of a burgeoning erection in David Cameron’s pants.

But then, not two pages later, we reach this quote… (It also doesn’t harm your cause to make it clear that your target is a condescending pillock either…)

//////////////////////// Charitably, you could read that Deen is Subliminal Suggestions suggesting that private school boys were all so socially stunted that they hadn’t even You may have noticed the word ‘bumped’ made the acquaintance of a six-year-old highlighted in the excerpt above. girl yet (the traditional pigtail wearer) but this is a very peculiar quote. At best, it has ‘Bumped’ is, of course, a perfectly echoes of Yewtree nonciness; at worst, it natural verb to use when describing the confirms the suggestion that everyone at act of running into someone outside of Eton would develop an erotic fascination a toilet. It does connote a certain level with pigs’ arses. of discombobulation – the way that the equally valid verbs ‘met’, ‘greeted’ or ‘saw’ What’s strangest of all though is that this do – but it’s probably no coincidence that quote isn’t even about Cameron. The they picked the word ‘bump’ in particular. lothario in question is his Eton contemporary, Max Wigram. Cameron is one of the ones who hadn’t (yet) had a sniff of pigtail. So why include the quote? Because, like a cryptic crossword clue, it subtly lays the foundations for the pigfucking story, which crops up later.

Still, once is accident. Twice is coincidence. But three times?

Four times?

All of this is without even touching on any of the actual, specific pigfucking allegations. This is just added flavour, seasoning up the long sections of porkless waffle.

And heaven knows it needs all the seasoning it can get. As Ashcroft claims he is saving the explosive details of his personal relationship with David Cameron for his forthcoming memoirs (in a sort of Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One/Part Two attempt to spread limited material as far as is possible) it means the rest of Call Me Dave is a largely limp affair.

If you’re craving proper scandal though, it’s only a few weeks until the tell-all book about the crack-smoking ex-mayor of Toronto Rob Ford comes out. So we’ll resume our class again then.

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

38/50 Amazing Grace October Fresh from co-writing his worst song to date with Ed Sheeran, Jamie Oliver launched a crusade against sugar; Peter Andre was lambasted in court by a judge for fabricating evidence and being an ‘unreliable witness’; and Zooey Deschanel gave birth to a daughter – the fabulously named Elsie Otter. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> Amazing Grace << In between atempts to rewire the car Have you met Ms Jones? correctly, the mechanics are currently amusing themselves by trying to add a Grace Jones was making a visit to an actress brake light that never goes out. friend who lived in Brighton. On the way ______she stopped off at a Co-op to buy a packet of fags, whereupon she was approached by “If you can make pickled onion in your a fan. garage, rather than be a garage band, you’re in business.” – Alex James “Excuse me,” the fan asked, “but aren’t you ______Grace Jones?” >> A Tory Party << “Darling,” Ms Jones replied, “if I was, do Andrew and the maid you think I would be shopping here?” Andrew Lloyd Webber didn’t make any new Somehow, despite that being The Most friends flying back from New York to vote Grace Jones Answer Imaginable, it worked. in the House Of Lords for some particularly The fan sloped off, agreeing that it did seem unpopular tax credit cuts – but that doesn’t a bit strange. bother a man like Lord Lloyd Webber. So ______long as he keeps enough friends upon whom to play his usual pranks... Kristen Stewart was overheard telling a friend that one of the reasons things didn’t At his castle in Ireland a few years back, work out with R-Patz was because he was ALW hosted a rather fancy dinner party. “so big it hurt”. ______Once dinner was over, His Lordship excused himself only to return moments later >> Bulb Out Salutations << dressed in a full maid’s outfit. That choke isn’t funny anymore His guests found the costume change pretty Morrissy’s old Porsche 911 Targa is curently funny, but Lloyd Webber wasn’t laughing. sat in garage in Heaton Mersey. It is being In fact, he didn’t break character at all, restored to its former glory after being in insisting to everyone that “Andrew” had left storage for two years, getting nibbled at by and “The Maid” needed people to leave so mice. that she could clean up. Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

39/50 I Got Tugs For You... Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

40/50 YES, IT IS ME November ITV bought the rights to The Voice – which could spell the end for The X Factor; Made In Chelsea’s Mark Francis-Vandelli got unexpectedly passionate about sausages; and Justin Bieber and Adele both decided to make absolute mincemeat out of the UK Top 40.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> High-Flutin’ << likes Snoopy”. A very pale ale So they took the 40 quid or so they’d A barman who served David Cameron at a collected to John Lewis. And bought him members’ club recently mentioned that the some Snoopy fridge magnets. PM requested his fancy drink be served in a standard pint glass – so that he didn’t look ______too snooty in front of the other patrons. “My friends from Doncaster are not Hollywood in any way” Though quite what he thought the casual – Louis Tomlinson, One Direction observer was going to mistake champagne ______for is unclear. Pear cider, perhaps? ______>> Streets Of Rage << Yes, it really is her A racing trainer told us that AP McCoy’s wife Chanelle is so high-maintenance that Janet Street Porter has been trying out a even the Queen jokingly refers to her as novel variation on the classic “Don’t you “The Duchess”. know who I am?” routine. ______The building she’s working in is undergoing >> Cohen, Going, Gone << Danny gets Peanuts... maintenance work. The drilling has been driving her a little crazy, as Janet has been Even our stony old hearts broke a little when rampaging round the building, ranting we heard about Danny Cohen’s BBC office at the completely unrelated companies leaving do. who also happen to rent floor space there demanding to know when they are going to One of Danny’s team organised a whip- be finished. round to buy a farewell present, but very few people actually contributed to the kitty And if anyone doesn’t answer quickly – and even fewer had any idea what to get enough, she shouts the words “YES, IT IS him. ME” at them.

Eventually someone piped up “Danny quite Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

41/50 Are You Being Served? Gagged And Rebound After a brief spell in the legal wilderness, it looks like the trusty old injunction is enjoying a moment in the sun again. A couple of big names have taken out gagging orders recently – but whatever happened to all those old ones from a few years back? Weren’t we supposed to tidy that all up?

//////////////////////////////////////////////////// Incredible though it may seem, it’s been Funny how time flies when your industry nearly five years since superinjunction finds itself at the centre of multiple police mania swept the nation. investigations, criminal court proceedings and public inquiries, isn’t it? Why, it seems like only yesterday that Ryan Giggs’ brother was chasing him around town with a claw-hammer in all the fall- //////////////////////// out surrounding his prolific hushed-up shagging. History Repeating The memory of someone slipping a sex toy Back in early 2011, it seemed that public up the arse of your granny’s favourite actor opinion was really getting behind the is still green in our mind; and talk of Fred idea that rich and famous men shouldn’t ‘The Shred’ Goodwin’s sexual shenanigans be able to take out a gagging order each has only just stopped echoing around the and every time they get caught with their House of Commons. pants down.

Can it really be half a decade since Giles Once the allegations of phone-hacking Coren faced the threat of prison for joking surfaced a little later in 2011 though, the about Gareth Barry? Or that Jemima Khan national mood changed somewhat. had to make a horrified public denial of a non-existent affair with Jeremy Clarkson? It was entirely right that the conversation surrounding the ethics of superinjunctions Convention on Human Rights into UK law, was put on hold while our focus switched to which lead to the development of modern the investigations into alleged institutional privacy law here. Article 8 of that act sets criminality taking place on Fleet Street. But out the right to a private home and family now that Lord Leveson has held his inquiry, life, while Article 10 enshrines the right to News International has been up in the dock free expression. at the Old Bailey, and various guilty parties have served time inside, we have yet to As you can probably work out, there’s a bit pick up where we left off with the privacy of a tension between those two principles. injunction discussion. A tension that is frequently argued over by Britain’s robust and rambunctious tabloid If you think that Twitter had already blown press and London’s highly paid and ever- that whole thing sky-high, then you’d better innovative legal brains every time somebody brace yourself. After social media went into wants to take out an injunction. overdrive trying to bust superinjunctions when the whole Giggs debacle kicked off, Last time around the word ‘superinjunction’ actually, not much has changed since then. got batted about without much thought or Despite the internet’s best efforts, more than accuracy. It is a pretty sexy sounding name 50 of those old injunctions are still standing for what is otherwise a very tedious piece – and 2015 has seen the slow, steady return of paperwork, but ‘superinjunction’ actually of more. refers to a something very specific – and the phrase is often misused. Now that the dust is starting to settle after a tumultuous few years in media land, the So, to be absolutely clear what we’re talking old wheels are beginning to turn once more. about, briefly, these are the main types of Red-tops are sniffing around footballers injunction. and unfaithful TV actors again. Kiss-n-tell girls are starting to see their way towards Standard Injunction: A court-issued a Christmas bonus. And, as sure as night legal order which permanently prevents follows day, London’s top law firms are private or otherwise sensitive information pressing their clients’ case under Article 8 of being made public. Usually they are taken the Human Rights Act. out against a named individual or company – either the person threatening to leak the So where exactly do we stand now? story (the spurned ex-lover; the disgruntled associate); or the publication which is As the proud owners of an injunction that is planning to run it (Associated Newspapers; still, stupidly, in force – we’ll tell you. Mirror Group Newspapers etc).

There are occasions when you can take out //////////////////////// an injunction against Persons Unknown – say, for example, when burglars steal a laptop with ‘sensitive information’ on it (a.k.a. sex Terms And Conditions pics) which may then get shopped around The Human Rights Act of 1998 brought to publications. about the incorporation of the European Interim Injunction: Taking out an interim in a motel bathroom on a bank holiday injunction is the first step in the injunction weekend. These sorts of injunctions are proceedings. It is, essentially, a sticky plaster almost technically impossible to know about – an immediate but (supposedly) temporary unless you apply for one yourself or are solution, applied for in an emergency and the judge granting it. The clauses of the granted short-term to prevent publication injunction make it illegal to even mention it of private information while the details of a to a third party, journalists included. Sort of case for a proper, permanent injunction are a superinjunction squared. built. Though the superinjunction did become These interim injunctions are circulated popular with the celebrity set, many of the to newspapers and any other related most famous injunctions taken out in the publications to make sure that their editors Glory Years (2008-2011) were actually just and journalists are also aware that an toughly-worded anonymised injunctions. injunction is in place so they don’t publish the story either. It can be reported that a person Many of them weren’t even fully fledged has taken out an injunction, but the content injunctions either, just interim injunctions of that injunction is legally protected. that were supposedly acting as placeholders while the applicants started official (read: Anonymised Injunction: This is a type expensive) proceedings, but never actually of interim injunction where the names did. of the individuals are switched out for a three-letter code (Zac Goldsmith had an And this is what sits at the heart of the anonymous injunction upon which the problem. So few of these cases have been anonymity was abandoned, so we can tell revisited by the applicants or defendants you he used to go by the code ‘QRS’). As that they’re all just sort of sitting there. with a standard injunction you can still report that an injunction exists but, because We’re still bound by one – despite the story there is no name to put to it, you have to that the injunction concerns having been resort to those classically vague “a man reported publicly a number of times across working in the entertainment industry” style a number of different publications. Yet of descriptors. because of the deeply ramshackle nature of privacy law in this country, technically, we’ve Superinjunction: This is where things start been stopped from telling you this. to get a little meta. A superinjunction is an injunction (usually anonymised, but not Even though you probably already know it. necessarily) which has an added bonus clause that prevents journalists and other //////////////////////// publishers from reporting the existence of the injunction itself. It’s like a magician making a rabbit disappear, then making WER v REW himself disappear. In January 2009 we ran a story that Hyperinjunction: This one will have you clearly touched a nerve with someone as, gagged tighter than a Conservative MP the following day, we received a phone call from the infamous law firm Schillings If you get the most junior of lawyers to telling us that their client had applied for represent you, already you are looking at a an injunction, forbidding us from publishing couple of grand minimum. But when you only anything further on the matter. get a few hours to set out your whole case, an interim injunction is not the easiest thing (As is traditional when lawyers want to throw to successfully defend. The documents that their weight around a bit, Schillings decided land on your desk threaten imprisonment, to wait until late on Friday afternoon before fines and the seizing of assets, so you want placing that call; a favoured tactic of the to make absolutely certain you aren’t putting more aggressive firms, so they can spoil as a foot wrong. Especially if you’re going up much of your weekend as possible.) against muti-millionaires.

Consequently, on the following Monday Responding sensibly and responsibly to afternoon we were pulled into court. the issuing of one of these injunctions can therefore push your costs up into the five- The full hearing is available to read and is a figure bracket. Costs like that can be fairly matter of public record. The case was WER easily absorbed by a national newsgroup, v REW. We are REW and WER is the code but to an independent publisher it’s a fair that was given to Chris Hutcheson. bit of cash. Just to be told you can’t run a story you know for a fact to be true. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Chris Hutcheson was the CEO of Gordon Ramsay’s Hutcheson was granted his injunction, which company Ramsay Holdings Ltd. He also just prevented us (and everyone else that his happened to be Gordon Ramsay’s father- legal team had requested it be sent out to – in-law – the father of Gordon’s wife, Tana which was every national daily and Sunday Ramsay. paper, plus other selected media outlets) from reporting the story. The reason Chris Hutcheson was of interest was because he had a secret second family The only reason we can tell you about this (he still does, of course – though they’re now is that – thanks to Ramsay family and no longer secret). He had been keeping a company politics – the full story ended up mistress with whom he had two children, winging its way to the Sun newspaper in 2011 and his first family – Tana’s lot – had no (a couple of years later) and they applied to idea. the court to overturn the injunction.

Now, it might be worth pointing out that When the Sun brought this to court, the at this juncture that this is not a cost-free judge first awarded Hutcheson another exercise. Injunctions are not cheap – not injunction and another set of initials (KGM v for the appellant, not for the defendant. News Group Newspapers) but then quickly Even though we hadn’t done anything overturned it and awarded in favour of the illegal and even though we hadn’t said newspaper, who were free to publish the anything defamatory we had to go to court. story. And to turn up to court with proper legal representation costs money. In 2011 it was agreed that Hutcheson had no legal right to an anonymised injunction, preventing the story from being discussed. The story came out and the fall-out was Truce And Lies extremely far-reaching. For some years virtually no-one was applying for injunctions, nor was anyone granting One of the many and varied legal tussles them. The Giggs case had had a bit of a between Gordon Ramsay and Chris scorched earth effect. That particular strain Hutcheson in the years that followed of business had dried up almost completely involved allegations that Hutcheson was for most law firms and, as the poster boys also taking money from the company for his for privacy, Schillings’ future looked pretty own personal use. There were claims that rocky until it pretty much got rid of everyone he had “systematically defrauded” Gordon involved in the superinjunction business and Ramsay’s company to the tune of £1.5 fairly successfully turned itself into a wide- million, money he had allegedly been using ranging reputation management firm. to fund his secret second lifestyle. But this year, we’ve noticed a few interesting Suddenly it’s not just a case of one man’s injunctions being awarded again. Essentially private indiscretions. It’s a case of alleged there’s been about a three year truce in serious financial misconduct. the world of celebrity-tabloid injunction interactions – but only a truce. Not lasting The weird thing is, we are still technically peace. Shots are being fired again from bound by the injunction WER v REW. Even both sides to see where the public and the though it is known Chris Hutcheson has two court’s opinion lies. different families – because it was reported in the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and The tabloids opened up with a couple of PG others – our original injunction still hasn’t rated exposés: Yaya Toure making late-night been overturned. visits to a “mystery brunette”; Luke Shaw sexting someone – neither of which really The only thing that changed for us was that merited much in the way of court action. it could be reported that WER and REW were Hutcheson and Popbitch (Popdog Ltd). But then in August – wham! – the anonymised injunction was back: ”A prominent sports And, in a nice little twist of the blade, after star wins injunction gagging revelations having had to pay a five-figure sum just for about him cheating on his wife-to-be with the privilege of being injuncted, if we ever female celebrity.” do want it overturned, the onus is on us to arrange that with the courts. And pay for it. Unlike Giggs’ attempt, this time the injunction has held. But the press doesn’t appear to Why bring any of this up now? Because be taking the threats as seriously. It doesn’t injunctions have been making a bit of a take a sleuth to join the dots between the comeback. media stories and the internet chatter to figure out who the two people are. //////////////////////// Also casting a chill around the VIP bars of exclusive nightspots is the fact that famous with a wandering cock haven’t had it all their or other should leave” – which, given that own way in their courts this time out, even he was the star of the show and she only with their millions of pounds behind them. joined in a much later series, was only ever going to end one way). Manchester United footballer Marcus Rojo had his attempt at a gagging order rebutted Sure enough, she was promptly let go. And in the High Court in April. His legal team had no-one can report her side of this story accused the woman he’d been shagging of because he took out an injunction to stop trying to blackmail him (a tried and trusted all of this from coming out. tactic from the Golden Years which seemed to work without fail back then, even though The stupidest part of the whole thing is that there was little or no evidence to support the names have been reported elsewhere in their case.) the world. The injunction only holds for the British courts so the story is out there – not This time though it was thrown out least in the female co-star’s home country. by the judge who said that, far from Anyone can find out the names with three being a blackmail case, the footballer’s clicks of a mouse and yet the press is still representatives had been the ones trying to forbidden, by law, to mention them by name buy his mistress’s silence. because he has used some of his multi- million net worth to take out an anonymised But let’s not forget that the interim interim injunction. One that just keeps on injunctions on file aren’t always just a case rolling in perpetuity until a newspaper pays of salacious footballer kiss-n-tells, or actors to tackle it, or the courts finally re-evaluate getting pegged off prostitutes. Some of the these cases. injunctions still effectively in force cover up some pretty inglorious stuff that the courts Injunctions undoubtedly have a place. have no real reason to keep quiet. People get blackmailed. Personal property gets stolen. Paparazzi take intrusive photos For example, the injunction ETK v News of people where they have a reasonable Group Newspapers Ltd. Their names have expectation of privacy. There is information been published in the press elsewhere in that could be seriously damaging to the world, but still – by letter of the law – individuals were it to be published – and no-one is supposed to mention the names the British press doesn’t exactly have an of the two people (one male, one female) entirely glowing track record when it comes who are wrapped up in this case. to responsible reporting.

The basic details are that the two stars had We are not saying that injunctions shouldn’t an off-screen affair which ended when the exist, but the privacy law that effectively male actor’s wife found out about it. The came into force in the late noughties has male actor then used his not-insignificant never been properly appraised. influence with the producers to have his female co-star kicked off the show (or, as Until it is, those interim injunctions, which the documents put it, “the appellant told were granted to give both sides (and the them that he would prefer in an ideal world courts) time to work out what should and not to have to see her at all and that one should not be reported, are still just sitting there. A blanket ban on anything in those 50+ cases, including all the stuff that should be properly reportable.

Sure, a few committees have talked a good talk, and put out a paper that sounds good in theory. Everyone loves to voice the fact they believe in open justice, but there’s been very little appetite to re-fight these battles from either the press, the lawyers or the philanderers.

And, really, what reason do they have?

Well, here’s one.

Part of the Tory policy at the last election was to unshackle Britain from the European Human Rights Convention. If the hard right of the party gets their wish and the Human Rights Act 1998 is scrapped then it’s possible that could spell serious trouble for those wanting the protection of the courts.

Because no Human Rights Act means no Article 8.

And no Article 8 means no enshrined right to a private life.

So maybe they want to start thinking about getting their affairs in order, and get the finer details of these cases hammered out while the going’s still good. Because there’s no telling what might happen next.

It’s not as if the anti-Europe Murdoch and Associated Papers have anything to gain from getting rid of Article 8 now, have they…? Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Jul-Sep Oct-Dec

48/50 Yummy Yentob December And so we close out the year with Bieber and Adele comprehensively demolishing the chart, breaking all known records between them; “Dr” Neil Fox being acquitted of all his sex charge; and – two years after the runaway success of Gangnam Style – Psy releases another catchy, batshit video. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// >> X-Factory Settings << and a fairly recent audit showed that Yentob Some love for Louisa had three extra BlackBerries and two extra iPhones to his name. It was a smart move by early favourite (and eventual winner) of The X Factor, Louisa It turned out that every time Yentob lost Johnson, to drop her unwieldly Twitter his phone (which was often) he never got handle @louisajohnson0 in favour of the round to telling anyone, or cancelling them snappier and much more professional- himself. He just ordered another. looking @louisa. ______Even smarter was making the switch way One of Alan Yentob’s many nicknames is back in October – a couple of weeks after Yummy. At dinner parties he’s known for she’d got a bit of traction, but eight weeks eating the leftovers off other plates while before anyone could have possibly known murmuring ‘yummy’. ______she was going to win the whole thing. ______>> Legal Bullocks << “You know what happens when dope Invading her own privacy motherfuckers from LA hook up with cool people from China? Dope shit happens.” A letter from Sandra Bullock’s legal team was sent out to British media outlets, ______– will.i.am sternly saying that the actress didn’t >> Bye Bye, Botney << consent to any stories about her private Hanging on the telephone life being published, that she wasn’t to be photographed (even in a public place) Alan Yentob finally stepped down as and – most importantly – that Ms Bullock’s Creative Director of the BBC following his family “were not a story”. involvement in the Kids Company debacle. He maybe wouldn’t have got himself into So imagine our surprise when, the following such a mess if stories of his organisational weekend, People magazine ran a huge cluelessness were publicised earlier though. cover story – replete with intimate photos at her home, with the family and newly The BBC undertakes regular audits of adopted daughter of... Sandra Bullock! company phones (cancelling unused handsets, querying outrageous bills etc) It’s one way to protect an exclusive.

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

Issue Information Credits Thanks to the huge army or contributors who have sent us hundreds, if not thousands, of stories this year.

Particular thanks to: deep_stoat, thebestnameshavegone, ulysses, bad_horsey, GO, monstris, whatever_yeah?, soapy_handerton, bobbi_ fleckmann, ourmaninkabul, SG, JS, JH, quickgag, D, CT, manikman, mrmrr, sharon_tate_modern, rayondmarble, plasticflamingo, roger_ moore, ccbaxter, rogermycock, others and all those who’d rather we didn’t name them... //////////////////////////////////////////////////// Pictures David Cameron dpp USA/Rex Shutterstock Rebekah Brooks REX/Shutterstock Pig Daily Mail/REX/Shutterstock Paul Danan REX/Shutterstock Hedgehog Daily Mail/REX/Shutterstock Britney Spears Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Panda Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images Cilla ITV/Rex/Shutterstock Katy Perry BDG/Rec Shutterstock Dog dpp USA/Rex Shutterstock

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