Cliff Richard fat-shames Elvis, Nickelodeon stars banged between shoots & internet boomers believed TikTok was turning Gen Z into Bin Laden sympathisers
The best cringe news of the past week according to yours truly.
Hello friend,
Hope you’re wrapped up in your cosiest sweats as you’re reading this. Only thing to report is that we’ll soon be recording another Cringecast episode! If you didn’t listen to the first one, you can do so for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or via Substack. <3
Now without further ado, let’s get into this week’s newsletter:
WYR be a professional singer getting booed during an on-flight performance or have your life's work ripped to shreds by a 10 year old?
Georjia: Somewhat divisive question. With the plane one, if I wasn’t booked or paid to perform, you won’t get me performing but as it was spontaneous, you have to accept the boos. I understand you want to celebrate and think people will enjoy it, but planes are a weird situation where you’re already surrounded by too many people as it is and all of those people don’t want to be bothered. Being booed is bad enough then having to sit on the plane for so many hours with everyone who booed me is rough! Having my life’s work ripped to shreds by an opinionated 10 year old is painful. I get ripped to shreds regularly by children in my job (just last week I got called a stupid head over a live chat) but my job isn’t my life’s work. I feel like if I snapped back at the kid then I’d look like the bad guy. I’d take a kid ripping me to shreds, what does a 10 year old really know?
Annika: I can’t imagine a single scenario where breaking out in song in front of plane passengers could be justified. When I take any form of transport, I’m mentally entering a competition with everyone else of being the best behaved traveller. I could sing like Beyoncé and still wouldn’t give an unsolicited performance. However, despite lethal levels of cringe, maybe I was really acting in good faith and just wanted to offer passengers some entertainment? At least an experience like this would be between myself, the passengers and a flight attendant I pissed off. If I was presenting my life’s work only to have it ripped to shreds by someone who’s not even reached puberty, I don’t think I could ever recover from that. Immediate existential crisis. Let me be cringe and secretly live with the memory of giving an on-flight performance instead.
Matt: This one is a bit divisive. It's one of the same thing; embarrassing if it happens to you, brilliant to witness when it happens to someone else. As a musician and ex-performer, I always aimed to please, but only in a show that people wanted, not one they are forced to listen to whilst possibly jet lagged, drunk, frustrated, or possibly all three. The booing wouldn't faze me, it's the embarrassment that I decided singing on a plane to a group of people that DO NOT want me to that would make me not choose this.
With a child tearing into my life's work, I would thank them, because if it is worthy of a child's criticism that affects me that bad, I've clearly wasted my life dedicating my time to whatever it is. If a child's opinion is the be all and end all of my life's work, it's time to move on to something different. I would appreciate the honesty. I would rather have a 10 year old trash my life's work, I don't respect their opinion enough to care.
WATERCOOLER CHATS
Are you sore from this year’s Black Friday shopping/deleting emails about Black Friday? Dusting off the Christmas decorations as we soon enter the last week of November? Need a little break from cleaning your home before the in-laws are coming to visit/inspect/judge? No worries friend, we got you.
Here are our favourite headlines you can bring up during conversations you’d rather not have:
This weeks’ Would You Rather refers to:
Gospel singer Bobbi Storm trying to offer an on-board performance with a tough crowd (tough crowd being a flight attendant who is definitely not enjoying it) on a Delta flight.
North Kardashian ripping into Schiaparelli’s creative director Daniel Roseberry, saying that the pearls on his design for Kim K’s Met Gala outfit ‘looked like they were from the Dollar Store’. On The Kardashians, Roseberry nervously takes a sip of water before saying:
“It's like I'm being 'Punk'd' the night before the Met. Getting read for filth by a nine-year-old."
2 weeks ago we talked about US restaurants fining guests with disruptive children - now you’ll get a £50 cleaning fine at a California restaurant if you vomit during one of their bottomless mimosas binges. Never thought we’d admit that the UK could learn a thing or two from our cousins overseas.
The internet’s latest moral panic revolved around teens allegedly sympathising with Bin Laden as a few hundred people on TikTok talked about his critiques of American imperialism (including US complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians) in Letter to America, which the Guardian published around 20 years ago and has now unpublished. Recommending Novara Media’s and Garbage Day’s breakdowns to make sense of it all.
Cliff Richard recently appeared on This Morning to promote his new memoir and album, where presenter Alison Hammond asked him if he ever met Elvis. Apparently, he had a chance to meet him once but put it off because Elvis "put on a lot of weight".
Half of Cringe has now seen Napoleon (hi). Safe to say that how Ridley Scott decided on casting Joaquin Phoenix is infinitely more entertaining than the film itself (sorry). In an interview with Vulture, he told the publication:
"Joaquin Phoenix really looks like Bonaparte. He has the nose and the eyes. Before I cast him, I took a photograph of him and stuck a hat on it, and I said, ‘There it is.’”
In case you didn’t see Cilla Black trending on Twitter this week, here’s a video of her performing Eye of the Tiger while beating up a child.
Ugh second fact check since we found out The Simpsons were not actually planning to stop Homer from choking Bart on the show. Now we also found out that Snoop Dogg lied to us about ‘giving up smoke’ – the announcement was for a stove ad…
This week’s palate cleanser: Martin Scorsese being adorable as always:
Rare W for a male celebrity: Dylan Sprouse refused to tell ‘fat jokes’ about Kim Rhodes on ‘Suite Life of Zack & Cody’. Rhodes explained on the 'Back to the Best’ podcast:
“I got pregnant when I was on the show, and of course the show dealt with it by making fat jokes.”
“One of my favorite memories is Dylan had a line that was a fat joke, and he just kept skipping over it. It was like in the middle of a chunk of dialogue, so he kept skipping this laugh line … And finally we get in front of the studio audience and he skips it, and the executive producer screams, ‘Cut! Dylan, say the line!’ And he goes, ‘I would not disrespect any woman that way, let alone this woman. You write something funny and I’ll say it.'”
Obsessed with Lana Del Rey finding out she lived her life as a Gemini before realising she’s actually a Cancer sign:
“I threw out all my 14 karat gold twin Gemini pendants”
Second palate cleanser of the week: Jamal Hinton has officially celebrated Thanksgiving with Grandma Wanda for an 8th year.
Ending with a revelation we wished we didn’t learn about so now you have to suffer too: Remember that TV show we all grew up with called Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide? On a recent podcast episode, co-stars Devon Werkheiser and Lindsey Shaw admitted to banging in-between breaks on the show. What podcasts are made for tbh.
CRINGE MEME
Don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving but here you go:
That’s it for this week! Feel free to let us know what cringe content, memes, and headlines you’ve been enjoying lately. Until then, we’ll see you in your inbox next Sunday!
Your Cringe Team x