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Out There: Pizza the action, a Biggs blag, Lionel Stitchie and Milton Keynes carolling

Simmy Richman
Sunday 22 December 2013 01:00 GMT
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Mac and cheese

Macaulay Culkin must be feeling a little lactose intolerant right now … After making his stage debut with his pizza-themed Velvet Underground tribute band The Pizza Underground (sample song: "I'm Beginning to Eat the Slice"), he came under attack for treading on the (toma)toes of a San Francisco-based pizza-punk act called Personal and the Pizzas, whose lead singer threatened: "First we're gonna kill 'em, then we're gonna sue 'em." To top it all (top it all? Oh, forget it), Culkin's film Home Alone has just been voted second in a poll of the "Cheesiest Christmas Films of All Time", conducted by Port Salut. That's got to grate.

Still hazy after all these years

He turns 90 today, so no one could deny former Sunday Telegraph editor Sir Peregrine Worsthorne the occasional "senior moment". But while Harry Mount was quick to point out in his Spectator profile last week that Perry's brain was still "highly functional", no one (least of all the magazine's fact-checkers) seemed to notice that his anecdote about Lord Reith being sacked as director-general of the BBC in 1938 contained a glaring error: "He was at dinner when we turned on the radio to find Churchill had sacked him," Worsthorne recalled. "He was absolutely furious, beside himself with rage. Churchill hated Reith because …" blah blah blah, and so on. The ugly fact that ruins the beautiful story? It wasn't Churchill, but Neville Chamberlain who sacked Reith. Churchill would, as everyone with a passing interest in history knows, not be in a position to do so until 1940.

Hairy encounter

"David Burns is a first-class communicator and hustler. I would not hesitate to use him again." So says the actor and writer Steven Berkoff on the website of said entertainment publicist. And it turns out Berkoff's not wrong – with Burns using last week's death of Ronnie Biggs as the perfect opportunity to tout his client's 1991 book A Prisoner in Rio around again. The book, Berkoff's diary of the making of the 1988 film Prisoner of Rio, gives this account of the actor and train robber's dinner together: "He gives me a brilliant description of his escape from the Scrubs which ended with 'paying two mates £500 each to hold the two screws down while I nipped over'. He tells me about the plastic surgery which not only altered his features but at the same time seems as a bonus to have rendered him more youthful. Now he's quite a ladies' man, even if he does have to shave behind the ears."

Endless love

The web is often perceived as a place for all the worst traits of human nature, with trolls and "haterz" running amok. So it is with some pleasure that I might turn your attention to The Best Thing on the Internet Ever. It's an ongoing project by Milwaukee's answer to Banksy, a young artist and blogger called Molly Evans, whose stated aim is to create "unusual, temporary public art designed to make folks stop and appreciate the good thing they have going". Evans's work-in-progress involves embroidering random lyrics from Lionel Ritchie songs on to discarded furniture left out on the streets of her home town. A recliner chair emblazoned with "That's why I'm easy". A mattress bearing the immortal words "All night long". And, best of all, a sofa with a missing seat that reads "Hello?" and the cushion carefully positioned nearby with "Is it me you're looking for?" lovingly crafted into its weft. The project's name? Lionel Stitchie, of course. Find it at mollyeeeee.com

Be careful what you tweet for

Spare a thought for the Tottenham and England footballer Andros Townsend. The speedy winger found himself trending on Twitter last Wednesday night. The reason? After his club had lost to West Ham in the League, they had drawn them in the quarter finals of the Capital One Cup and Townsend had tweeted: "The perfect draw #revenge". Sadly, that didn't turn out to be the case, as West Ham came back from a goal down to win the tie. To add injury to insult, Townsend limped off the field before the end of the game after pulling a hamstring. His Twitter account has stayed strangely silent since. But let Townsend's experience be a warning to all of us who use social media – especially now that Facebook allows your "friends" to see original versions of "edited" status updates.

Keeping it real

It pays to be discreet if you are dating a member of the Middleton family, so it's no surprise that TV presenter and actress Donna Air – who has had an agent since she was 10 years old – knows how to play the game. Asked recently about her alleged new beau, Kate and Pippa's brother James, she told our man that she was reluctant to discuss royal matters. Had she seen the new addition to the family? "Well," she said with wink, "I did DJ at the George and Dragon in east London the other day."

Life in plastic, it's fantastic

A 21st-century reworking of a popular Christmas carol:

There's a rink, made of plastic

And the Santa, is sarcastic

For such wintery scenes

Come to Milton Keynes

Day out at the Winter Wonderland

Gone away, is the public

Here to stay, is a sludge pit

The whole thing's a dud

Unless you love mud

Day out at the Winter Wonderland

(Quick, let's scarper before readers ask for their money back.)

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