Please say it'll be a one-way trip

The thought of McFly being blasted into space is one to cheer the sould on a cold winter's morning, although the apparent plans to bring them back as well takes the edge off slightly.

They're supposedly going to do something linked to Richard Branson's supposed holiday-in=space company.

Even if the technology exists, and Branson's underwriters let him go ahead, this won't be until 2009 at the earliest, so it's quite a leap of faith to assume that McFly will still be a going concern by then. It's always dodgy planning to put musicians on spaceflights too far ahead of time - NASA had a terrible time explaining to Eddie Fisher why he lost his seat on the manned trips to the moon - but even if Branson was blasting idiots off into space tomorrow, would the very rich really want to be entertained by a band aimed at nine year-old girls?

Still, at least in space, nobody can hear you scream "they're a bit like a poor man's Busted, aren't they?"