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Six musicians that are better if you don't scroll all the way down their Wikipedia page

SOMETIMES it’s better to enjoy music without idly scrolling down to ‘Controversies’ on their Wikipedia page and reading it with widening eyes:

Michael Jackson

A wall of silence surrounds Michael Jackson. Everybody has a vague idea, even if they didn’t watch that documentary. But rather than think about it too much, we rush to the dancefloor when the DJ drops Smooth Criminal as if it never happened. Check out Uncle Steve’s moonwalk! He’s been practising.

Morrissey

The Smiths were central to your moody, sexless adolescence, and you can’t go back and change that. Always something of an opinionated dickhead, it was fine when Morrissey was on about meat being murder and the Royals. Now he’s an avid follower of UKIP splinter groups? You listen to him indoors and alone for a whole different reason.

Elvis

The King of Rock and Roll’s place in music history is assured, even if he did dally with girls that even Leonardo DiCaprio would leave to age a few years. And threatened girls with firearms, and offered his services to Nixon to fight communism and drug abuse, and ripped off black artists, and yeah. Probably all that was fine in the 60s.

Kanye West

It’s been a rough few years for the committed Kanye fan, from Taylor Swift beef to MAGA hats to becoming a committed anti-Semite. His music’s declined in perfect sync and his last album only came out on a proprietory Walkman, so maintain the personal fiction that he winked out of existence in 2016 and you can still enjoy Gold Digger.

Phil Spector

The only surprise when Phil Spector committed murder was that it took him so long. He’d been waving guns around in the studio for decades, threatening everyone from Leonard Cohen to Ronnie Ronette, his former wife who he kept a gold coffin for in the basement. But he was behind the producer’s desk so we don’t have to think about him.

Gary Glitter

Rock and Roll Part 2 was a serious banger in Joker and Glitter’s before your time. What did he do? What did it even take to get cancelled in the 90s? Give it a quick Google. Ah. Right. That’s really bad. Let’s never hum that tune again.

A Big Mac in the car: Six pathetic secrets men keep from their girlfriends

MEN are basic creatures with odd little secrets. Here are six of the weird things they like to keep hidden from their partners.

A Big Mac in the car

The average man can easily fit a covert meal into any trip out of the house, shamefully scoffing down a Maccy D or KFC and then disposing of every crumb of evidence with the furtive skills of an MI5 agent. If your partner insists on taking a romantic stroll to the local shops when you normally drive, it isn’t because they’ve turned over a new leaf, it’s because the car stinks of Greggs steak bakes.

Having a sly pint on the way home

He tells you he’s ‘just leaving work’ when actually he’s already at the Crown and Sceptre sinking a pint. If he’d asked, you’d have happily joined him, but for some reason he feels the need to lie about it. And it’s not like you won’t find out, because he stinks of pork scratchings and Moretti when he gets back, and he had to leave the car in town and walk home, the prick.

His weekend gambling habit

Sold to you as a ‘£1 bet on an accumulator’, the reality of his betting habit is actually quite different. He blows ever-increasing amounts on ludicrous gambles that are little more than hunches, with the size of your grocery budget now depending on the outcome of softball fixtures in Taipei. Just a bit of a flutter, he says, wincing as you put a tub of Lurpak in the shopping trolley.

The first album they bought

When you’ve known each other long enough – say a decade – your husband might finally tell you the truth about a few things, for example that the amount of women he’s slept with is seven, rather than ‘about 50’. However, what he will never reveal is that the first album he bought wasn’t Definitely Maybe by Oasis. It was actually PJ & Duncan’s Psyche.

How tall they really are

Despite being right there in plain sight, your partner will never admit how tall he is. When pressed, he will say ‘about six foot’ despite obviously being no more than 5’7. He will build on this lie by pretending he’s a size 11 shoe, even though as a result he flaps around in his trainers like a circus clown. Ultimately he just wants you to think he has a large penis, which is stupid because you see it every day and know it is distinctly average.

They still think they’d make a pretty good James Bond

On the rare occasion that they need to wear a suit, most men look in the mirror and think ‘Yeah, I could play 007’ and then shoot an imaginary gun. Replacing Daniel Craig won’t be easy, but the franchise needs a reboot, and who better than a portly, balding man in his late 40s? Roger Moore was old in A View To A Kill, right? And he still shagged Grace Jones. Not that your partner would shag Grace Jones. He’d be far too scared.

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