Stone fuming as Harpers change her head

We've got some sympathy with Joss Stone, who's apparently more than a little vexed that Harpers Bazaar have photoshopped her cover shoot - they've changed her hair colour from ill-advised pink strands to brown, and airbrushed her nose-ring out. It's not clear why: either the magazine thinks she's stylish enough to warrant a cover, or she isn't. If you're going to use a Mac man to turn your subject into your idea of perfection, you might as well stick anyone on the front.

It's totally dishonest - and even more shamingly, when the Mail asked about the alterations, the magazine still refused to fess up:

"All we can say is that we've had nothing but positive feedback from people," a spokesman for Harper's Bazaar tells me. "I can't confirm whether her nose ring and hair were digitally altered."

It might only be a photo of a declining minor celebrity, but any publication which dicks about with reality and doesn't alert its readers to the fact is on very dodgy ground indeed. It's especially insulting that one of the other stories in the current issue is about Anna Politkovskaya. How better to pay tribute to someone murdered for their journalistic pursuit of truth by sticking her in a magazine that can't even be honset about someone's hair colour?