No Rock And Roll Fun

MONEY FOR NOTHING...: Thanks to Heat magazine, we now know who the top ten earning music acts were last year - "know" in the sense of 'can take their estimates at their word as probably being at least somewhere near the true figures, or something'. Dido is a new entrant to the list, supposedly raking in GBP15 million for last year - that's an average of seven and a half per album, or sixty million per emotion. The Rolling Stones' creaking old tour has engorged their banks by a collective GBP55 million, and how the hell Phil Collins made 25 mill is beyond us - does he still have a flower stall? Coldplay's income - curiously, roughly the same as Phil's, for roughly the same sort of sleeves-up, self-pity, background rock-u-lite - is probably the best argument we've ever come across for reintroducing a 95 per cent top rate of income tax, if only for them.

The top ten:
1 Rolling Stones (£55.3 million)
2 Sir Paul McCartney (£40 million)
3 Sir Elton John (£34 million)
4 Robbie Williams (£30 million)
5 Coldplay (£25.3 million)
6 Sting (£25.1 million)
7 Phil Collins (£25.1 million)
8 Fleetwood Mac (£23.5 million)
9 Iron Maiden (£17.9 million)
10 Dido (£15.8 million)