• On Oscars night, Elton John shaved off Evgeny Lebedev’s beard and eyebrows for Comic Relief, as Monkey reported last week. Two days later, Lebedev hosted Charles and Camilla when they visited one of his papers, the London Evening Standard. While it was noted at the time that he was clean-shaven, the fact that he had eyebrows naturally was not; but the release of a video of the shave turned that into a puzzle: could they really grow bushy again in two days? Sadly, no: Lebedev has admitted using falsies, preventing the royals from being greeted by a man with no facial hair at all.
• It was a good wheeze on the part of PR Week to request instances of the worst things said in interviews for a PR job, and they were rewarded with some fine tweeted examples. Some are gaffes (“The Today programme? That’s on Sky isn’t it?”), some are Apprentice-style bullshit (“My mind is like a parachute, always open”), some are people who did no prep (“So I asked him what PR was. He then gave a flawless, albeit stuttering definition of broadcast advertising”). And then there are the CVs, like the one from “someone who professed to be adept at: ‘word processing, desktop publishing and spreadshits’”; or the applicant whose CV included: “Social secretary of xxx rugby club. Snogged (and ONLY snogged) 11 men.”
• While Lebedev was getting his photo in his own papers again (and it might be an idea, ahem, to not run comments underneath in the Indy when he does), staff on his titles were getting briefed by their bosses – and banned from taking notes, even though farcically pens and paper were placed on every chair. Evening Standard editor Sarah Sands admitted that “five years ago we had to apologise for being absolute shits to our readers” (under the previous Veronica Wadley regime), while the official message on cash-draining London Live was determinedly upbeat: a presentation heroically suggested that, if you squint at the figures in the right way, the station is actually watched by more people than Sky News.
• For a giant of stage and screen for 50 years, Ian McKellen has done surprisingly little work on the BBC: barring an early David Copperfield and a noughties Doctor Who guest gig, his TV appearances have been on ITV and Channel 4. Could that be because they can’t be bothered to spell his name correctly? “Production commences on The Dresser starring Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellan” trumpeted the BBC Media Centre website in giant bold letters in announcing the remake of the 1983 movie, and three days later no drama executive or in-house Gandalf lover had corrected the error.
• Hardcore soap fans will have done a double take last week on seeing Leslee Udwin, the film-maker behind India’s Daughter, defending her documentary about rape; some couch potatoes may even have spent sleepless nights as they wrestled (“surely that’s ... I know that name! ... but can it be possible?”) with memories that somehow involved sangria and Andalucia. Happily, Monkey is in a position to assure them they’re not going gaga: the last time Udwin was high profile was as a leading actor in the BBC’s catastrophic Euro-soap Eldorado, in which she played the eponymous owner of Joy’s Bar in the Costa del Sol resort Los Barcos (sometimes said to be Spanish for “The Insane Ones”). The press rubbishing that Eldorado suffered will at least have prepared her for coming under attack, though perhaps not for becoming an enemy of the Indian government.
• After missed goals in football and restless, annoying presenter and pundit changes, ITV Sport’s reputation can’t be said to be glowing; and its critics were given further ammunition by the way it introduced highlights (edited from Sky’s coverage) of England’s World Cup defeat by Sri Lanka. “England are unchanged, resisting the temptation to introduce Alex Hales and James Tremlett” burbled a hapless presenter who’d clearly never seen or heard of either James Tredwell or (the much taller and faster) Chris Tremlett before.