The showbiz quiz of the year! How did Justin Bieber describe sex and who had a dig at Taylor Swift?

(Clockwise from bottom left) 50 Cent, Holly Willoughby, Phillip Schofield, Kourtney Kardashian, Travis Barker and Chris Rock. Composite: Guardian Design; Burak Çıngı/Redferns; Ray Burmiston/Save The Children/PA; REX/Shutterstock; Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

1. Which Britpop artist did Taylor Swift end up in an unlikely back-and-forth beef with in January and why?

   1. Jarvis Cocker said her cats’ names were “pretentious”

   2. Geri Halliwell said something long and rambling about “not respecting” F1

   3. Damon Albarn said “she doesn’t write her own songs”

   4. Liam Gallagher said All Too Well (Taylor’s Version) was “20 minutes too short”

2. In February, we were just coming to the end of Ye and Julia Fox’s ultra-visible, extremely short-lived romance. How did Julia Fox describe herself in a Cut profile that came out the day they broke up?

   1. “The best thing to happen to mascara since Cleopatra”

   2. “New York Classic”

   3. “Sort of like Kanye’s babysitter, but in a sexy way”

   4. “Fulia Jox”

3. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars and we all had to talk about it for weeks afterwards. But what did Rock say to inspire the slap?

   1. “Carlton deserved to be the break-out star of Fresh Prince and we all know it”

   2. “Remember Bright (2017)? Does anyone want to talk about Bright (2017)?”

   3. “Jada, can’t wait for GI Jane 2”

   4. “Jada, can’t wait for Bright 2”

4. In an interview in April, Justin Bieber referred to sex with the words:

   1. “Yummy Time”

   2. “Splish Splosh”

   3. “God’s Will”

   4. “Just (getting it) In”

5. The Kardashians returned this year for a new Disney+ series where we see their lives play out a couple of months after we’ve already seen the headlines about them. In the first series, newly loved-up Kourtney Kardashian said a doctor recommended her what to help on her fertility journey with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker?

   1. To stop making out in front of everyone at dinner – you’re 43 years old

   2. Wake up at dawn every day and sunbathe your crotch for an hour

   3. Drink a shot of Travis’s semen four times a week

   4. Refer to a hypnotherapist to deal with an underlying fear of getting pregnant

6. How was Seth Green negatively affected by the crypto space this year?

   1. Mark Zuckerberg preemptively blocked him from the metaverse because he didn’t like his portrayal in Robot Chicken

   2. Elon Musk simply tweeted the word $Greencoin, which tanked the value of the actor’s burgeoning cryptocurrency

   3. A viral TikTok captured the moment he tried and failed to pay for an In-N-Out burger using Ethereum

   4. His Bored Ape, which was slated to appear in a cartoon series alongside other NFTs (non-fungible tokens) owned by the actor, was stolen from his cryptowallet

7. Which Hackney restaurant was former prime minister Boris Johnson booed out of this year?

   1. Mare Street Market, where he was just trying to get a big sourdough and a can of Deya

   2. Morito Hackney Road, where he ate £100+ worth of tapas but still had to get chips on the way home

   3. Sonora Taqueria, where he used his police escort to help jump the Saturday lunchtime queue

   4. Tramshed Shoreditch, where a waiter attempted a citizen’s arrest on him

8. Hey – what is a “Try Guy”?

   1. A normal man who comments with the heart-eyes or fire emoji on Dua Lipa’s Instagram posts as if she’s ever going to see them

   2. A derogatory Hollywood shorthand for Pete Davidson

   3. A term used to describe a former professional rugby player who goes on to appear on reality TV

   4. A BuzzFeed-adjacent YouTube channel where they eat everything on the Taco Bell menu, or something

9. Lawyers representing rapper 50 Cent had to refute which bizarre insinuation made against him by a surgeon?

   1. That he had undertaken penis enlargement surgery in Miami

   2. That he had received a “gentleman’s BBL” in Mexico

   3. That he'd had all his teeth replaced with slightly bigger ones in Geneva

   4. That he'd had his bottom two ribs removed in LA

10. What finally turned public opinion against This Morning’s Phil and Holly?

    1. Phillip Schofield appeared in too many bloody adverts

    2. They both pretended to be hosting while “still drunk!” after the National Television Awards one time too many

    3. Everyone realised that Rylan and Alison Hammond are better anyway

    4. The queue thing

Solutions

1:C - In an interview with the LA Times, Albarn – who for the past 20 years has produced music for a band of cartoon monkeys – said Swift’s “co-writing” system was at odds with his “traditionalist” songwriting approach. Swifties absolutely demolished him on Twitter, Taylor Swift (who writes all her own songs) directly called him out for misinformation, and Robbie Williams later called him a “twat”., 2:B - It seems like a thousand lifetimes since the Ye/Fox romance, but it actually started last New Year’s Eve. In the intervening time, Fox has gone viral for the way she drawls the words “unka jahms”, bleached her eyebrows, and become really, really good on TikTok. It is culturally imperative that her Spotify podcast comes back in 2023., 3:C - Not going to start discourse about it again but Rock made a clunky reference to Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia and then Will Smith shouted: “Keep my wife’s name out your mouth”, got up and slapped him, then won an Oscar a few minutes later, then got banned from the Academy Awards for 10 years. Dunno how Brendan Fraser’s going to top that next year., 4:A - For some reason, in a very brief interview with ET Canada, Bieber – a dedicated wife-guy married to model Hailey Bieber – said the following: “I don’t know if I’ve spoken French during our yummy time, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind it! That’s a good call, maybe I’ll try that.”, 5:C - During an on-screen discussion with an Ayurvedic practitioner, Kourtney said a previous doctor had advised she drink the results of Travis’s “yummy time” to help with her thyroid levels. The couple instead embarked on a sex, exercise and caffeine-abstinence program., 6:D - Green’s Bored Ape, Fred Simian (#8398), was stolen from his wallet in a phishing attack. The actor later bought the NFT back from a user who claimed they had bought the stolen ape in good faith. Fred, along with other apes owned by Green, was set to star in a TV series called White Horse Tavern, and for obvious reasons there’s not really a precedent set around NFT assets starring in TV shows without the appropriate IP copyright in place. It’s estimated that Fred Simian cost $300,000 to buy back. How’s the future going? Yeah, well, thanks., 7:B - In June it was reported that Johnson had been booed out of Morito, where one of his many, many children, Theo, worked. A fellow diner took him to task for being really crap at being prime minister, Johnson finished up abruptly and left. He was booed on the way out (which a source told the Mail he responded to with a “dismissive hand gesture”). Downing Street refused to comment and so did Morito. It was Tony Blair who was unsuccessfully citizen’s arrested at Tramshed in 2014, by the way., 8:D - In September it turned out there is a 7 million-follower YouTube channel called The Try Guys, where these nerds who used to work for BuzzFeed try things out, mainly eating food or singing in public or something, and one of the Try Guys had to stop being a Try Guy because he cheated on the wife he always talked about with one of The Food Babies, which is a spin-off show of the Try Guy empire. This was all happening without you, can you believe it?, 9:A - A suit filed by the lawyer’s rappers claimed he’d “graciously agreed” to take a photo with Miami-based spa owner Angela Kogan, thinking it was a normal fan interaction. In August, the photo was used in an article on popular gossip blog The Shade Room, representing her as an expert in penile enlargement and insinuating celebrity client 50 Cent – real name Curtis Jackson – was a recipient of the surgery. “Jackson never had such a sexual enhancement procedure,” his lawyers stated. It is legally on the record that 50 Cent has a real penis., 10:D - Yeah, it was The Queue. After hundreds of thousands of people waited in line for hours to view the Queen lying in state before her funeral – including Peaky Blinders cosplayer David Beckham – Holly and Phil were criticised after being spotted receiving “VIP treatment” that allowed them to skip most of the line and took them close to the front of The Queue. The presenters were both accredited, and filmed a piece for the morning magazine show interviewing queuers inside and outside the chapel, and were defended by the channel, but the public outcry lasted for weeks. And somehow after all that we still have to see those adverts for Craft Gin Club.

Scores

1. 10 and above.

   You are ready to launch your own skincare line, kill someone in a car accident but somehow get away with it, and have a Facebook-only talkshow that millions of people watch but absolutely no one ever talks about.

2. 7 and above.

   You’re famous enough to get booked on Strictly but you are not famous enough to win it.

3. 0 and above.

   Your Instagram blue tick has been taken away for violating community guidelines.

4. 4 and above.

   You just about qualify for Raya but it still takes a couple of months to get you verified on the platform and by then you’ve already met someone in the photobooth at Shoreditch House.