Secret Celebrity Gossip #160

[Lyra1970]

Olly is tolerable in small doses, but he is irritating. I wanted to love It's A Sin, but RTD's misogyny just glared through the whole thing. Ritchie's mum was just a horrible caricature of an evil mother who Doesn't Understand and wants to punish him in some weird way. RTD made some comments about young gay men dying alone in childhood bedrooms which was just utter mother-blaming. A good proportion of these supposedly vile women were just trying to protect their precious and loved boys in horrific circumstances.

As I’ve mentioned before I was a specialist nurse in HIV/AIDS palliative care back in those early days .
Yes there were some lads who had no contact with their parents/ had run away as a teen etc .
But there were some whose parents came to see them daily and stayed in their rooms with them when the end was coming .
Part of my job was supporting their relatives and friends afterwards and mum’s would still come in weeks afterwards just for a coffee and a cry on my shoulders .
Yes there was a stigma in those days but for most it was still their much loved child they were losing …I was only in my 20’s then and single , now as a mum who lost one of my children I can really understand the depth of their pain .
---

I love Sparks as well though I jumped on very, very late on that bus (when 'When Do I Get To Sing My Way' was all over MTV Europe in the early 1990s) and they've had a much rougher time of career-wise - being white-hot famous for a year or two in the 70s to not being able to give their records away by the late 1980s.

I'm tempted to think there's a tinge of envy there, but who knows....

Not sure exactly of the situation with Pet Shop Boys but I think it's something along the lines of Sparks bearing a grudge about Neil and Chris not acknowledging them (?). I mean, that hardly sounds like crime of the century and not everyone is influenced by their most obvious comparison. Synth pop duos were not that unusual in the 1980s - think Eurythmics, Soft Cell, Yazoo (fucking love Vince Clarke - with an e, seeing as everyone misspells his name! - see also Erasure and The Assembly), Blancmange. Maybe even Tears For Fears but they were more teetering on the power pop side.

Perhaps it's about Neil and Chris (Chris particularly) not playing the pop game and being mysterious and seemingly 'cold' when on camera. Ron definitely did this, though he was a bit more weird and comical (tales abound of him terrifying kids into hiding behind the sofa in the 1970s, and then there was the Hitler moustache, which was quite a brave gimmick). Neil isn't exactly particularly animated on stage either, whereas Russell really is - he dances and bounds around and is much more physical than Neil will ever be.

I don't really think the two duos are that comparable - and Sparks only really did 'europop' for a brief phase in the late 1970s with Giorgio Moroder - and again 10 years later, but they've produced everything from classical-themed albums, to even a surf-rock album (which is quite good, actually, was a flop at the time - Introducing Sparks). I'd say they're far more experimental than PSB.

'Propaganda' was (maybe still is) Martin Gore's (Depeche Mode's main songwriter, after Vince left) favourite album and the first album I bought when I started becoming curious about them. Sparks also did some amazing album covers in the 1970s and 1980s (won't spoil it, but worth a Google). Ron Mael is a really witty and erudite person, and lyricist.

'The Sparks Brothers' is also highly recommended (watched it in a cinema on release at the Glasgow GFT, just after COVID panic was dying down!).

I adore Sparks ! So many amazing songs .

 

[dee_mc]

I clutched my pearls ever so gently when I read that her dancer fella was thrice divorced before the age of 40.

I'm not that shocked that he's thrice divorced but low-key surprised he managed to find three woman willing to marry him tbh!

 

[Fledgling Psycho]

Oh lordy. The Cheryl Barrymore book dropped this morning. It opens with MB having just come out of rehab. They are contacted by Princess Diana who sympathises with their predicament with the press and effect of their marriage.
She believes she can help them! So she arranges via Paul Burrell a visit to their home.
Prior to the meeting she emphasises that she only wishes to talk with MB alone and Cheryl is pushed out of the picture.
This goes on for several private meetings in which Cheryl sees a huge change in twat face .
Eventually she expressed her feelings of being shut out and he goes mad at her. He & Diana then start meeting at her gaff. WTF?
I definitely wasn't expecting that! Diana really was a strange & what sounds like, a man eating manipulator. Cheryl mentions MB had a habit of upping and disappearing if he didn't like confrontation. On one occasion had clearly taken something and ended up lying in the middle of the road. Claiming he was Jesus. She said he often claimed he was the big man's son!!
And that's just chaper 1 folks!!

 

[Clytemnestra]

Unpopular opinion (I've got quite a few) - I never got Gavin & Stacey. Anyone else or am I in a club of one?

 

[MissHavisham]

I can't stand Stacey Dooley. Some of her documentaries have been alright but ever since she was on Strictly she just comes across as quite smug. No idea what she has to be smug about. Has anyone got any gossip on her?

I clutched my pearls ever so gently when I read that her dancer fella was thrice divorced before the age of 40.

 

[Gym&Tonic]

Not sure where to post this but Michael Barrymore is all over my tik tok fyp and he seems so wholesome. I’m 25 and don’t remember the scandal but I’ve looked into it online. He seems such a nice guy. Was he really bad back in the day?

Michael Barrymore and wholesome are not something I ever thought I’d see in the same sentence

 

[shellie]

Tbf, I think she also did a lot of good work for charidee. I remember when she shook hands with that AIDS patient without gloves on for example, which at the time, when there was still loads of stigma around it, was actually quite a brave thing to do. But she was also a maneater who didn’t care whether the man was married or not. Once she’d set her sights on him, that was it (obvs the man was to blame too). Like there was all that weirdness around Will Carling and Diana watching that surgeon (I think) in the operating theatre making doe eyes over her mask. And as much as she complained about press intrusion, she also used it to her advantage.

I'm no huge fan of Charles but he stopped seeing Camilla when he and Diana got together, something many confirmed to be true. Their affair wasn't restarted until 1986...after she had stepped out with the police officer Barry Mannakee and he had to be transferred yet to many, Charles was and is seen as the one in the wrong who stepped out first. Moreover, Mannakee wasn't the only one whom she cheated with/got close to while married. There was also Hewitt, James Gilbey, and Oliver Hoare among others. That's why I think it's so funny she used the 'there were three of us in the marriage' regarding Camilla, more so when she was the other woman at least twice with Will Carling and Bryan Adams as his ex said he did admit to an affair with Diana which is why they split, which Paul Burrell confirmed seemingly to a few people. She also harassed the men and their wives during and after the affairs. One example was Oliver Hoare who got over 300 calls and when it was reported, the police found she was the culprit.

As you say, she did a lot for charity and she should get credit for that but her death caused many to wear rose-tinted glasses where she was concerned and it continues to this day.

 

[SamFoxStuckinaCloak]

Not sure where to post this but Michael Barrymore is all over my tik tok fyp and he seems so wholesome. I’m 25 and don’t remember the scandal but I’ve looked into it online. He seems such a nice guy. Was he really bad back in the day?

Stuart Lubbock was murdered at Barrymore’s house and no one was ever held responsible for it- whilst I suspect it wasn’t Barrymore, the fact that he ran from the scene, and REFUSED to answer any questions at Stuart’s inquest are unforgivable in my opinion. If you had nothing to hide, why not answer questions at the inquest? Channel 4 did a great documentary about it: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/barrymore-the-body-in-the-pool

 

[Miss Begotten]

It’s like saying you don’t like Beyoncé.

Err… I don’t like Beyonce. To be honest I actually can’t fucking stand her.
Should I expect to be struck by lightning or deported?

 

[Mark81]

 

[MissHavisham]

It must be so annoying for Louise Redknapp that she’s held up to middle aged women as a cautionary tale against having your flighty little head turned.

It’s common knowledge that Jamie Redknapp is/was a cheat. If the marriage had been happy, she wouldn’t have left. Now he’s married to a younger woman, has a baby and a load of young stepkids. If I was a woman whose kids were grown I wouldn’t be one tiny bit jealous of that.

 

[Kittens1988]

Wife of The Repair Shop star Jay Blades says she has left him

Fitness instructor Lisa Marie Zbozen, 43, announced in an emotional social media post she had left the TV star, 54, who she married in November 2022.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I can feel some bad press heading the way of Jay Blades. His marriage ending so soon and going in to therapy, which at some point can be used as an excuse to churn out I wasn't feeling myself, that person wasn't me etc.

Interesting that they’re not showing her full post which mentions that he’d laid his hands on her. I can’t imagine the BBC will want him to continue with accusations like that, but maybe it’ll depend if she goes to the police or not.

 

[Villanelly]

Talking of lookalikes…

 

[April Ludgate]

Was she on the flight or did it just come to him?



I nicked a Jackie Collins off my mum once. All I remember about it was a really unsexy description of oral. Something about "diving in" or the like

Hahaha I've never read a Jackie Collins but I was OBSESSED with Jilly Cooper books when I was a teenager, they're so ridiculous. Her descriptions of sex are mortifying and I love it. One of my favourites was something like 'she was so wet he slid into her like a cartridge into a twelve bore'. Amazing

 

[Harlot O'Scara]

I saw some really angry comments on his Twitter saying they wanted refunds, they were only going for him, why hadn’t he planned better/travelled earlier

If you've paid Take That arena show ticket prices just to see Olly Murs then you get what you deserve

 

[Jelly Bean]

what both he and eva mendes have done to their (genuinely attractive) faces is so sad - the CHEEKS 🫠

Ah Eva - why would you do this?

 

[Phil Anne Throw Pee]

Barrymore knows exactly what happened to Stuart Lubbock. The fact he refused to cooperate with police speaks volumes to me. Nobody deserves to be buried in obscurity much more than him.

 

[Lalla]

Like her husband Percy.

The older I get I think if I ever did get married there's probably a lot to be said for a gay husband. Bit of company/ companionship so I don't die alone and end up eaten by stray dogs, help around the house, and probably better with clothes/ interior design advice than a hetero man as well. I think Joanie's got it right

 

[Fannydevito]

I know someone who used to work in an upmarket hotel in the 90's. Story goes that they get a call that a guest is behaving strangely so they go to investigate. When they get there they find an extremely intoxicated Barrymore on the floor crawling along the hotel corridor. They help him up & try to guide him back to his room. He starts banging on a room door, begging to be let in. Room occupant finally answers & lets him in, none other than Nicholas Lyndhurst.

 

[lamaitresse]

I'm listening to the Germaine Greer episode of Louis Theroux' podcast.

At 43:40 Louis asks her if she minds if he mentions her age: ''I'm not worried at all'. Louis replies saying Joan Collins didn't want him to mention hers when he interviewed her.

'I wondered if you asked Joan if her husband was gay'.
'What makes you say that?'
'Just curiosity really'.

XD