Joker: Folie a Deux continues to break the worst kinds of records. The sequel suffered an 81% drop at the domestic box office in its second weekend of wide release. The film needed to make $450 million to break even and the film is a HUGE bomb. [Just Jared]
Bowen Yang is so charming. [OMG Blog]
Baseball players “crotch-bumped” to celebrate a home run. [Socialite Life]
Fan Bingbing looks so goth to me. [RCFA]
Jamie Lee Curtis & Lindsay Lohan promote Freakier Friday. [Seriously OMG]
Review of The Apprentice (the movie). [LaineyGossip]
Anna Kendrick’s smart ensemble. [Go Fug Yourself]
Review & analysis of Terrifier 3. [Pajiba]
An interesting immigration story on 90 Day Fiance. [Starcasm]
Photos of Hurricane Milton’s damage. [Hollywood Life]
Nicole Kidman really deserves better wigs. [Buzzfeed]

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At the end of August, brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher announced that Oasis would be getting back together for the first time in 15 years. The reunion tour begins in the UK and Ireland in the summer of 2025 and will move over to North America for five shows between late August through mid-September 2025. Oasis fans, myself included, are skeptical yet cautiously optimistic that the two brothers, famous for their fisticuffs, will be able to get along long enough to make it to all of their current tour stops, and beyond. For their part, Liam and Noel are doing their part in behaving. Liam told a fan on Twitter that in order to avoid being goaded by the media into fighting, they’ve decided to forgo all interviews and press all together.

If you’ve noticed that since announcing their Live ’25 world reunion tour Oasis have not done a single interview, well, get used to it. According to singer Liam Gallagher, he and older brother Noel Gallagher are not interested into being baited by reporters into re-igniting the sibling rivalry that broke up the band and led to a 16-year lay-off, so they’re keeping mum.

“We don’t want to do interviews coz we’re scared of the media asking us intrusive questions and trying to pick holes in our relationship,” wrote Liam early Thursday morning (Oct. 10). When a fan cheekily responded with some Liam-boosting flattery, the “Wonderwall” vocalist was totally there for it.

“I think Noel doesn’t want to do interviews with you because you’re funnier,” the fan wrote, with Liam responding, “RESPEK.” He had a cheekier response to another X user to asked about a potential joint interview. “Can’t be arsed,” Liam explained, adding “we’re not doing any” and “they ain’t getting 1” as fans persisted with the same line of questioning.

Liam’s cheeky X persona has been wholly in evidence since the brothers reunited, including last month when a fan asked if he was going to stop “tweeting s–t about Noel” now that they’ve made up. “Nope it’s all done, peace has prevailed, he’s the man,” Liam wrote. “I can’t wait to be on stage with him blowing him kisses in between each song.”

Oasis, who split in 2009, recently expanded their 2025 reunion tour, announcing two stadium dates in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. “People of the land down under. You better run – you better take cover… We are coming. You are most welcome. Oasis will tour Australia in 2025!” the band announced earlier this week.

[From Billboard]

“I can’t wait to be on stage with him blowing him kisses in between each song.” LOL. Do I think it’s silly/funny that a couple of grown-ass men need to avoid media interviews so they won’t get triggered into throwing punches or calling each other profanities? Yes. Do I also give it a pass because it’s the Gallaghers? Also…yes (I think). I know both brothers have reportedly chilled out over the past decade, but sometimes old habits die hard and all that. Also, they’ve probably also got their eyes on that million(s)-pound prize, so that’s not a bad motivator to behave, either. It’s a shame, though, because I think that when done properly, an interview with the two of them could be really, really fun.

The media’s “intrusive questions” aren’t the only thing that Liam is bitchy about. Over the weekend, SNL did a parody sketch of the Gallaghers on Weekend Update that basically spoofed on everyone’s skepticism that they’ll be able to stop fighting long enough for this tour to actually happen. It wasn’t the funniest thing (by a long shot), but cast members James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman did look a lot like them. When asked by a fan if he’d seen the bit, Liam responded, “Are they meant to be comedians” and called it “excruciating.” I can’t tell if he’s doing his best Roy Kent impression or if he’s genuinely annoyed at the attention they’re getting, but publicly sniping at SNL is only going to encourage them to keep doing sketches like this to troll him.

Are they meant to be comedians

— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) October 13, 2024

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Photos credit: PacificCoastNews.com / Avalon, Getty

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In the final weeks of the election cycle, everything is going a bit haywire, especially everything in and around the Trump campaign. This has been made worse by Donald Trump’s decision to campaign in “blue states” which has no chance of winning. On Saturday, Trump was in California’s Coachella Valley. Trump had a rally in which he was once again placed inside a bulletproof, plexiglass cage, much like the late, great Hannibal Lector. After his speech, Trump made a swift exit, leaving hundreds of his cult members stranded in the desert with no transportation. He was also heckled at one point during his speech and he encouraged his supporters to violently attack the female heckler. But I digress… before the Coachella rally even began, a man was arrested outside the rally. The man had an SUV full of loaded weapons and lots of fake IDs. The sheriff thinks they thwarted another assassination attempt:

A man with a loaded weapon was arrested on Saturday, Oct. 12, outside of Donald Trump’s rally in California’s Coachella Valley, with officials believing they thwarted another assassination attempt on him. During a press conference on Sunday, Oct. 13, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco addressed the incident in Coachella, telling reporters, “I truly do believe we prevented another assassination attempt.”

According to a police report from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office obtained by PEOPLE, 49-year-old Las Vegas resident Vem Miller was contacted after his black SUV was found by deputies onsite at a checkpoint at the intersection of Avenue 52 and Celebration Drive.

As he entered the outside perimeter of the rally, Miller had credentials that indicated he belonged at the rally with a VIP pass and claimed to be a member of the press. However, “irregularities” popped up as he made his way into the inside perimeter. Miller was “found to be illegally in possession of a shotgun, a loaded handgun, and a high-capacity magazine.” Multiple passports and multiple IDs with different names were also found in his vehicle, which was “in disarray,” Bianco detailed. Additionally, his vehicle was unregistered.

Miller was taken into custody without incident and was booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio for possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a high-capacity magazine. The sheriff’s office noted that the incident “did not impact the safety of former President Trump or attendees of the event” and the incident occurred an hour before the rally was set to begin.

[From People]

A guy showing up to a MAGA rally with an SUV full of weapons and fake IDs sounds like a case of “fork found in kitchen” to me – like, those are his supporters. The guy who got arrested told local outlets that this wasn’t an assassination attempt, he was just attending the rally, like everybody else.

A Las Vegas man was arrested with guns and fake I.D.s about a quarter mile from former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Coachella Valley, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said Sunday. But while the sheriff called the arrest a thwarted assassination attempt, the man told a reporter he is a Trump supporter who bought the guns for his own safety and notified police at a checkpoint that they were in the trunk of his car.

Deputies assigned to Trump’s rally said the driver, Vem Miller, rolled up in a black SUV to a checkpoint at the intersection of Avenue 52 and Celebration Drive around 5 p.m. on Saturday. He was found to be in illegal possession of a shotgun, loaded handgun, and a high-capacity magazine, Bianco said. He added that Miller’s car had a fake license plate and was unregistered.

Miller, in an interview with Southern California News Group on Sunday, said he was “shocked” that he was arrested and accused of trying to harm Trump, who he supports.

“These accusations are complete bull—t,” Miller said. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

A Trump caucus captain, Miller said he received a special invitation to the Coachella Valley rally from the head of Clark County’s Republican Party. Donning a Trump shirt and hat, the 49-year-old said he reached a checkpoint prior to entering the event parking lot and told a deputy he was lawfully carrying firearms in his trunk – as a courtesy. He was asked to pull over and step out of the car before he was handcuffed and had his vehicle “ransacked” after a deputy said he wanted to retrieve the gun’s serial numbers to confirm they were lawfully purchased.

Miller said he bought the firearms in 2022 for protection after he started receiving death threats. He had never fired them and said he was unfamiliar with the difference between Nevada and California’s gun laws. He also denied presenting a press pass at the checkpoint and said he only had a ‘special entry pass.’

[From Press Enterprise]

If you scratch the surface of all of these “assassination attempts,” it absolutely appears as if all of the would-be shooters are registered Republicans with a history of supporting Donald Trump and a history of being armed to the teeth. Anyway…

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Cover Images.

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Can you believe that those people are STILL talking about the Duchess of Sussex’s red dress at the LA Children’s Hospital gala two weekends ago? For real. To be fair, this Mail piece which we’re about to discuss came out on the one-week anniversary of The Dress Which Brought Down a Nation. Hopefully, they spent one full week screaming, crying and throwing up about Meghan looking hot and now they can move on? What am I saying, of course they won’t move on. They’re still going to be talking about Meghan in this dress years from now. Meghan’s red dress has now acquired the kind of iconic status reserved for Princess Diana’s “revenge dress.”

She famously idolised Diana when she was growing up, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that when the moment came for Meghan to relaunch herself last week, she seemingly turned to her late mother-in-law’s playbook, and chose a dress that spoke a thousand words. Namely, a flesh-flashing red number, with a distinctly unregal thigh-high split.

After a stream of disobliging headlines – Meghan was recently accused of being a martinet of a boss who ‘reduced grown men to tears’, as well as enduring the status of her marriage to Harry being questioned in several, varying US publications – Meghan has apparently decided to hit back against the haters.

According to one Californian source, she’s done so with a spectacular ‘revenge dress’, rather like that figure-hugging black number Diana famously wore to London’s Serpentine Gallery after Charles confessed to adultery on television, and she launched her own new independent public life. Wearing a revamped version of a Carolina Herrera dress she had previously worn with Harry to a red-carpet event, Meghan held all eyes – certainly the audacious split hadn’t been so obvious when the dress had a train.

That Californian source told me: ‘The belief is that this red dress is Meghan’s version of Diana’s revenge dress. Physically this looks like a new Meghan, as if she is moving on towards a new chapter. Some feel it’s no accident.’

Indeed, Meghan’s whole look was different: her hallmark teetering shoes were open-toed, and her hair – usually in a tight and polished bun for such events – was in loose waves. She seems to have been leaning hard into a ‘funky young mom’ vibe, thus moving away from the ‘Duchess Difficult’ allegations about her management style, which had dominated the headlines the previous week. This gorgeous creature, with her freckled shoulders and cute curls could not, surely, be a mean boss? (Indeed, employees of hers then went out of their way to publicly praise her ‘kindness’ in an article for People magazine that was seen as an attempt to redress the unfavourable article in the Hollywood Reporter.)

This, then, is Meghan at a pivotal point in her life outside the Royal Family: as she posed alone for the cameras at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles 2024 Gala on Saturday night, she looked more like the Hollywood star she’s always wanted to be, rather than a member of The Firm. Job done, one might say.

[From The Daily Mail]

The thing about Diana’s revenge dress is that she timed everything perfectly and the message was perfectly clear: Diana looked sexy and vivacious on the same night her husband confessed to his long-standing affair with Camilla, a woman Diana called “the Rottweiler.” The comparison with Meghan is that… she’s getting revenge on the Windsors? Revenge on the courtiers who smeared her as “duchess difficult?” Who is the target of Meghan’s revenge? This reminds me of something I’ve mentioned before – British commentators have zero imagination and their inability to place Harry and Meghan within a historical framework has caused a lot of malfunctioning royalists. They’re out here comparing Harry to King Edward VIII and Meghan is being compared to Diana.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.

There’s been such a shift in the past decade, where there are all of these family-friendly food shows and cooking competition shows which are easy for kids to watch and follow. Here in America, there are several TV cooking competitions with kid chefs. I loathe most cooking-competition shows, but I’ll always watch the kids’ shows, because everyone makes such a wonderful effort to treat the kids gently and really not stress them out too much. Well, I would be willing to bet that Prince George loves cooking shows, because he was apparently really jazzed to see a wood-fired pizza oven at a 17th century manor home.

Prince George will not be expected to serve in the Armed Forces before becoming King, breaking centuries of tradition, The Mail on Sunday reported last year. You may, however, bump into him at your local pizza parlour, if the young royal has his way.

For a Norfolk landowner tells me that the Prince and Princess of Wales’s son was so excited to visit the restaurant at his 17th century manor home that he declared he saw his future working in the kitchen.

Desmond MacCarthy, who owns Wiveton Hall Cafe, near Blakeney, says that when George was shown the wood-fired pizza oven, the 11-year-old exclaimed: ‘That’s what I want to do when I grow up!’

MacCarthy, who featured in the 2016 BBC Two fly-on-the-wall documentary series Normal For Norfolk, about his struggles to maintain his estate, says of George: ‘He was a sweet boy – they start to become less appealing as they grow up.’

George visited the restaurant with his mother, Catherine, and others. ‘They came here with their friends, because Sandringham isn’t that far away,’ MacCarthy says, referring to King Charles’s rural retreat, where Prince William and Catherine have a holiday home, Anmer Hall.

[From The Daily Mail]

Does George want to run a pizza parlor? Or does he want to be a chef, or does he just want to make pizzas for himself? It feels like such a new thing too, where there are so many kids (boys and girls) who are getting really into cooking and baking. They see it on social media too, all of the cooking videos. Anyway, it sounds like a perfectly normal interest for George. More normal than giving him flying lessons and scuba diving lessons.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Isn’t this a match made in hell? This IG photo is of Kansas City Chiefs’ kicker Harrison Butker, alongside Senator Josh Hawley. Hawley is the flaccid MAGA coward who helped incite the January 6th insurrection and then ran away from the violent mob like a chickensh-t. Hawley has also tried to make a name for himself by crying about how men need to return to “traditional masculinity.” Which is also Butker’s thing – Butker made a name for himself this year by trashing young women who want careers and lives outside of being wives and mothers. As you can imagine, they’re united behind a whiny orange fascist bitch.

Harrison Butker is once again making headlines for his strong beliefs, and this time, Donald Trump is involved. The Kansas City Chiefs kicker recently endorsed the Republican presidential candidate based on his support for a cause close to his heart — the Pro-life movement.

According to Harrison Butker, Americans should vote for the “most Pro-life” leader, and Donald Trump fits the bill in his book. His support for the former president comes months after he went viral for his controversial graduation speech.

Butker announced his endorsement of Trump during a campaign event in Missouri for his pal U.S. Senator Josh Hawley. “I’m supporting the president that’s going to be the most pro-life president,” he proudly declared.

The NFL star doubled down on his decision while appearing on FOX News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” saying: “The [Pro-life] topic is the most crucial topic for me. I want us to be fighting for the most vulnerable. Fighting for the unborn, and that’s what we should prioritize,” Butker stressed, per TMZ, noting that people should choose a leader who embodied these beliefs and prioritized religion. His statement continued: “I think you have to vote for whoever is gonna be the most pro-life, and we have to be prayerful men that put God first. I think that’s what’s going to be best for our country.”

[From Yahoo]

These kinds of weak, stunted men always talk about the importance of “life”… except when they can see the results of their anti-choice misogyny in real time. The pro “life” people have caused the deaths of countless women through abortion bans in more than a dozen states. There’s been a dramatic rise in the deaths of pregnant women in Texas. Women are dying in Georgia because of the state’s abortion ban. Miscarrying women are bleeding out in hospital parking lots because doctors can’t and won’t treat them. That’s a “pro-life” issue too, right? Oh, I guess not.

Butker also spoke about how beautiful it is for women to “step aside and prioritize their family.” He should step aside and prioritize his family, instead of going on homoerotic MAGA adventures with Josh Hawley.

Submitted without comment… pic.twitter.com/ZGO9zoef44

— Jess Piper (@piper4missouri) October 12, 2024

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Hawley’s IG.

Kamala Harris covers the November digital cover of Vogue Magazine, with the cover photo and editorial taken by none other than Annie Leibovitz. I saw the cover pop up on my social media feed early on Friday, and I honestly thought it was some fan-made cover. I did not realize it was real until I saw it for the sixth time – “oh, Vogue seriously did that?” A lot of people think the cover is beautiful and powerful. I think Kamala Harris is beautiful and powerful. But the cover itself is not great, in my opinion, and this is what you get when you hire Annie Leibovitz to photograph a woman of color. Without analyzing every single little thing wrong here, I’ll just say that it’s giving Princess Kate’s Mother’s Day frankenphoto. If the palace had released a photo this heavily manipulated, there would be widespread outrage. But when it’s Vogue, people shrug, I guess. The biggest issue is what they did to her head, but the angle of the shot makes it look like she has giant hands and a broken arm. The proportions are a mess.

The Vogue cover story is really well-done – you can read the full piece here. There’s a lot about Harris’s background, her beloved mother, her close friends and her inclusive political and personal life. One quote from VP Harris sums up everything in her life: “People, at this point, have memes about my love of Venn diagrams. You’re never going to have a complete agreement on all the issues. But you can find common ground—and expand that.” Vogue also retells the classic story of Doug Emhoff being stranded in LA that weekend when President Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed his VP. Emhoff was in SoulCycle with a friend, having left his phone in the car. When he finally got back to his phone, there were hundreds of messages, including one from his wife saying “where the f–k are you??” It’s a great story. They also retell the story about what VP Harris did right after Biden’s endorsement – she was on the phone for hours that day, putting together the Harris coalition and calling in every IOU chip she had gathered over eight years as a senator and vice president.

The Vogue piece also highlights something interesting which has been spoken about on the edge of this campaign cycle, but will be analyzed more heavily once all of the votes are tallied. Harris is not running as a wide-eyed idealist or a generational political unicorn – she’s running as a pragmatist from the middle class, a worker who will put her head down and get sh-t done. It’s also notable that she’s not really leading with “I could be the first female president” or any kind of identity politics. Also: Nancy Pelosi is still backtracking in this Vogue piece – she’s now insisting that even if she had gotten her wish for an open primary in July and August, she had every confidence that VP Harris would have won! Sure.

Cover courtesy of Vogue, additional photos courtesy of Cover Images.

JD Vance stupidly agreed to “the New York Times interview.” One of my big questions is: why? Did the Trump campaign not know about it? Did Vance think that his awkward sociopathy would somehow translate to a grilling from the Times? Donald Trump obviously can’t handle anything like this, so they gave it to Vance? As you can imagine, the interview didn’t go well, as Vance hemmed and hawed and tried to lie smoothly about his creepy obsession with women’s reproduction. He also tried to sleaze his way out of answering the “who won the 2020 election” question. Some highlights (you can read the full piece here):

Converting to Catholicism & being married to a Hindu: “Usha was raised in a Hindu household, but not an especially religious household. And she was, like, really into it. Meaning, she thought that thinking about the question of converting and getting baptized and becoming a Christian, she thought that they were good for me, in sort of a good-for-your-soul kind of way. And I don’t think I would have ever done it without her support, because I felt kind of bad about it, right? Like, you didn’t sign up for a weekly churchgoer. I feel terrible for my wife because we go to church almost every Sunday, unless we’re on the road. She does [go to church with me but] No she hasn’t [converted]. That’s why I feel bad about it. She’s got three kids. Obviously I help with the kids, but because I’m kind of the one going to church, she feels more responsibility to keep the kids quiet in the church. And I just felt kind of bad. Like, oh, you didn’t sign up to marry a weekly churchgoer. Are you OK with this? And she was more than OK with it, and that was a big part of the confirmation that this was the right thing for me.

On calling childless women sociopathic, psychotic, deranged. “Well, as I said when I made those comments — and look, they were dumb comments. I think most people probably have said something dumb, have said something that they wish they had put differently. [NYT: You said it in several different venues.] In a very, very short period of time. It was sort of a thing that I picked up on. I said it a couple of times in a couple of interviews, and look, I certainly wish that I had said it differently. What I was trying to get at is that — I’m not talking about people who it just didn’t work out for, for medical reasons, for social reasons, like set that to the side, we’re not talking about folks like that. What I was definitely trying to illustrate ultimately in a very inarticulate way is that I do think that our country has become almost pathologically anti-child.”

He does think it’s sociopathic to not have kids because of climate change: “You know, when I’ve used this word sociopathic? Like, that, I think, is a very deranged idea: the idea that you shouldn’t have a family because of concerns over climate change. Doesn’t mean you can’t worry about climate change, but in the focus on childless cat ladies, we missed the substance of what I said…. I think that is a bizarre way of thinking about the future. Not to have kids because of concerns over climate change? I think the more bizarre thing is our leadership, who encourages young women, and frankly young men, to think about it that way…And if your political philosophy is saying, don’t do that because of concerns over climate change? Yeah, I think that’s a really, really crazy way to think about the world.

He lies about referring to Kamala Harris as a childless cat lady: “Everything that I know about Kamala Harris, that I’ve learned about Kamala Harris, is that she’s got a stepfamily, she’s got an extended family, she’s a very good stepmother to her stepchildren. I would never accuse Kamala Harris along these lines. What I would say is that sometimes Kamala Harris, she hasn’t quite jumped over the “You shouldn’t have kids because of climate change.” But I think in some of her interviews, she’s suggested there’s a reasonableness to that perspective. But again, I don’t think that’s a reasonable perspective. I think that if your political ideas motivate you to not have children, then that is a bizarre way of looking at the world. Now, again, sometimes it doesn’t work out. Sometimes people choose not to have children. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the political sensibility that’s very anti-child.”

Whether he will support the election results this time and commit to a peaceful transfer of power: “Well, first of all, of course we commit to a peaceful transfer of power. We are going to have a peaceful transfer of power. I of course believe that a peaceful transfer of power is going to make Donald Trump the next president of the United States. But if there are problems, of course, in the same way that Democrats protested in 2004 and Donald Trump raised issues in 2020, we’re going to make sure that this election counts, that every legal ballot is counted. We’ve filed almost 100 lawsuits at the R.N.C. to try to ensure that every legal ballot has counted. I think you would maybe criticize that. We see that as an important effort to ensure election integrity. But certainly we’re going to respect the results in 2024, and I feel very confident they’re going to make Donald Trump the next president.”

[From The NY Times]

I’m also including his back-and-forth over the election denialism in the video below. He literally cannot admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. He cannot admit that he’s said wildly crazy sh-t about a national abortion ban and states creating laws to keep women from traveling out of state to seek abortions. He cannot admit that he spent years bashing “childless cat ladies” as inferior and sociopathic. And the stuff about his conversion to Catholicism and “She’s got three kids.” They’re your kids too, you f–king psycho. Vance stays in all women’s business except his wife’s, it’s the strangest f–king thing.

Asked 5 times by @LuluGNavarro whether Trump lost the 2020 election, JD Vance declines to say yes or no. pic.twitter.com/n2Ssm7s66J

— bryan metzger (@metzgov) October 11, 2024

JD Vance doubles down on calling women without children “sociopathic,” “bizarre,” and “deranged” pic.twitter.com/boVghJBWdy

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 12, 2024

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

It’s been well-known for decades, if not centuries, that the British monarch gets to keep all of the gifts they receive from friends, world leaders, despots and everyone else. Many of the jewels in the Royal Collection were “gifted” to the Windsors, and the Windsors obviously never pay taxes on any of those gifts, no matter how lavish. Something shifted when then-Prince Charles married Camilla, and Camilla received and accepted millions in jewelry from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern kingdoms and emirates. Suddenly, people had concerns and the Windsors were supposed to disclose the gifts they received annually. For the past four years, no disclosures have been made, according to Richard Palmer writing for the Guardian.

King Charles and his family have failed to reveal their official gifts for the past four years, despite previously promising to publish an annual list. Palace officials have blamed the pandemic, the change of reign, and then planning for last year’s coronation for their inability to publish details of the gifts received by members of the royal family.

The royal family’s reticence follows controversy over a cash-for-honours scandal involving the king’s main charitable foundation, which led to a police investigation that was dropped last year without a full explanation from either Scotland Yard or the Crown Prosecution Service. It also comes after revelations that Charles, when he was Prince of Wales, accepted £2.6m in cash in bags from a Qatari politician for another of his charities, the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.

But unlike MPs, who have to register gifts, donations and hospitality, there is no public register of interests for members of the royal family. Instead, they act on the advice of their private secretaries in deciding what to declare. Annual gift lists were introduced after media criticism of attempts by the royal household to conceal the origin of lavish jewellery given to Queen Camilla by a Saudi royal in 2006 and worn by her on an official visit to the US in 2007.

The last annual list, detailing official gifts received by all working members of the royal family in 2019, was published in April 2020 but since then there has been nothing, apart from the occasional description of an exchange of presents during a state visit or pictures when they are given gifts during an engagement.

Over the years, the annual list has led to controversy, such as in 2012 when it emerged that the king of Bahrain and his country’s prime minister had given a “suite of jewels” to Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, while facing criticism over human rights abuses. But many presents, including sensitive ones, were often concealed, even though official gifts are not the personal property of the royals and are in effect accepted on behalf of the nation.

Saudi Arabia’s controversial crown prince Mohammed bin Salman gave the Duchess of Sussex a £500,000 pair of diamond chandelier earrings as a wedding present in 2018. In October that year Meghan wore them at a state banquet in Fiji only a few days after the crown prince was accused of ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But when journalists asked where she got them, palace officials said they were “borrowed”. She wore them again that November at a Buckingham Palace dinner to celebrate the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday. It was only in March 2021, shortly before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave a controversial television interview to Oprah Winfrey, that their true provenance was leaked.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, chose not to release a list of any gifts they had received at their wedding in 2011. Only a handful of official gifts received by Queen Elizabeth for her platinum jubilee in 2022 were disclosed and it is not clear what, if any, were given to King Charles and Queen Camilla to mark their coronation.

[From The Guardian]

Re: the earrings from MBS – once again, the earrings were given to the royal family. Then-Prince Charles and Prince William met with MBS just a couple of months before the Sussexes’ wedding in 2018. When Meghan said they were “borrowed,” she was telling the truth. The earrings were borrowed from the Royal Collection. They were “given” to her by Angela Kelly, QEII’s dresser, as a set-up. Ask the palace where the earrings are now and whether MBS’s “gift” is sitting in some palace vault. Throw in the fact that no one knows whether William and Kate are also accepting suitcases full of cash, bags of jewelry or tons of free sh-t from Apple, everyone’s being pretty selective in their outrage.

Top 10 stories about Charles’s Cash for Access scandal

King Charles accepted literal suitcases full of cash from shady despots. Get the Top 10 stories about Charles’s Cash for Access scandal when you sign up for our mailing list. I only send one email a day on weekdays!

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Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red, Instar.

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce out together in New York. He’s been working, she’s been working, but he came to NYC for the weekend (?) and they stepped out on Friday night. They had a double-date with Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, and the two couples had dinner at The Corner Store in Soho. You can see the menu here – their steaks sound amazing, the “lobster frites” sound like a dream and they do hand-cut fries.

Fashion notes for Taylor… real talk, this outfit looked straight out of a ‘90s mall TO ME, but I’m shocked to discover that these are really high-end designer pieces. Her coat is from Ralph Lauren, her corset is from Gucci ($1650) and her boots are Louis Vuitton. She’s carrying a $4400 Dior saddle bag and she’s blinged out in jewelry pieces from LV and other brands. Meanwhile, Travis wore a Jacquemus Simon printed shirt. Thoughts on Travis’s ‘stache? He’s had it for more than a month and I’m not feeling it, nor am I feeling his overall hairstyle. He looks very… Blue Lives Matter.

Meanwhile, Taylor notably missed Travis’s birthday on October 5. She was in Kansas City on the 7th, in time to watch the Chiefs win another game. Page Six claims that on the 6th, Taylor was in town and she hosted a small dinner party for Travis at Noka in Kansas City. They say her dad was there, and Patrick and Brittany Mahomes were there too. What do you think? Did Tay do something special for his birthday, one day late? Her birthday is coming up soon enough… I wonder what he’ll get her for her 35th?

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.