Brown gets a tomb at last - but it won't last

After all this time, they've finally given James Brown a resting place. Not his final resting place, of course - even the months of legal wrangling since he died hasn't been long enough for a fittingly gaudy public mausoleum to be pulled together. No, this will be his temporary tomb until something a little more loud and, inevitably, proud can be found for him.

They tried to make me pay for rehab, I said no, no, no

Courtney Love, being Courtney Love, can't even get clean without making a mess - she's accused of not settling the bills from her 2005 rehab stay:

The action, filed at Orange County Superior Court, alleges Ms Love paid $10,000 (£5,177) up front to the Beau Monde before entering the facility but failed to pay the remaining fees.

"Although demanded multiple times by plaintiff, orally and in writing, none of the balance stated has been paid," it says.

Now, we don't want to be cruel, but the only other person we can think of whose famous for not paying their health farm bills is Bubbles DeVere - surely that's not company Courtney wants to be keeping, is it? Now we think of it, DeVere has a pretty open attitude to public nudity, though...

MORobit: Brad Delp

The lead singer of Boston, Brad Delp, has been found dead at New Hampshire home.

The Beatles were the galvanising force in Brad's life - he bought his first guitar after seeing the band on the Ed Sullivan Show; for the last thirteen years he'd been playing in a moptop tribute act called Beatlejuice

Delp joined the band after a period making the heating coils for Mr Coffee machines by day, and singing in Boston club bands by night. Winning the lead vocal role in an audition, Delp proved the crucial element in securing the band a record deal - previous attempts by Tom Scholz to gain interest in his band's demo tapes had come to nothing. Epic offered a deal, and although Scholz went along with a lot of the executive's demands - dumping original drummer Jim Masdea in favour of Sib Hashian; hiring bassist Fran Sheehan - he pulled the wool over their eyes where it mattered most to him. Ignoring their insistence that the debut be made in a proper studio, MIT grad-geek Scholz recorded almost all of 1976's Boston in his home studio.

Delp remained on board for 1978's Don't Look Back and - when founder member Barry Goudreau jumped ship to make a solo album - helped out there, too. Scholz was less than thrilled by CBS choosing to market the resulting album as "almost Boston". The bitterness and bad feeling dragged the band to the edge - Scholz claiming the label was trying to cut him out in a bid to up the band's workrate; CBS/Epic launching a lawsuit for breach of contract - but somehow Delp managed to remain onboard; keeping himself going by working on Keith Emerson's soundtrack for Best Revenge.

MCA bought the Boston contract and the third album, Third Stage, finally got an eventual official release in 1986. Some twenty years before it became a concept, Scholz took the decision to tour the record by playing it, track for track, in the order they appeared on vinyl; ahead of its time, the audience wasn't satisfied with an explanation that the songs formed a story that had to be told in a specific way. They just wanted the big numbers.

After the tour, Delp started to concentrate more on Goudreau's new band, RTZ (Return to Zero). Brad formally withdrew from Boston in 1991 when his tour commitments to RTZ would have made it hard for him to work with Scholz. The record company somehow forgot to mention during the promotional work that Delp wasn't on Walk On - fans only discovered that his voice (for most, the defintion of the band) was missing by peering at the credits on the inner sleeve after hearing the vocals of Fran Cosmo coming from their speakers.

Luckily for the band, Delp quit RTZ when their label, Giant let them down - rather than going through the hoops of signing for a new paymaster, Delp chose to stand down. This meant he was free to join the tour for Walk On, although space was also found for Cosmo. The dual-voice Boston that emerged would remain in place for 2002's Corporate America album.

The bivocaled band continued to tour - successfully - until last year when Fran Cosmo quit. Delp, once again, became the voice of Boston, working on a new album and planning for a tour later this year; appearing in Beatlejuice in between.

Police were called to Delp's home early yesterday afternoon by his fiancée Pamela Sullivan; he was dead when they arrived. Although the cops are describing the death as "untimely", their press statement rules out foul play:

On March 9, 2007 the Atkinson Police Department was requested to respond to Mr. Delp's residence for an untimely death.

Mr. Delp was apparently left alone in his home at his time of passing.

The cause of death is still under investigation at this time. There is no indication of foul play involved with the passing of Mr. Delp.

This case is still under investigation by the Atkinston Police Department and the New Hampshire Medical Examiners Office.

Delp had two children from a previous marriage; he was 55. Tributes in the first 24 hours after his death focused as much on the charitable works he performed in his community as on his musical career.

Drink yourself to death to Jimi Hendrix

The unapproved use of musicians names and likenesses always causes a bit of upsetment, but it takes a special kind of stupid for a drinks company to pick someone who killed themselves with booze and pills and to slap their name on a bottle of vodka. The Hendrix estate is now taking legal action to try and get Hendrix Electric Vodka taken off the market.

Indian Summer to be moved to, erm, summer

I think we're all familiar with the concept of an Indian Summer, being a period of warmth which comes after the end of summer proper, right? Throwing linguistic sense to the wind, though, are the organisers of Scotland's Indian Summer, which this year will be held in July, on account of how last time round no actual Indian Summer turned up for the event, and they figure there's more hope of getting some sun in Glasgow then.

... but they don't like to talk about it

Let's now spend a while considering the generosity of the super-rich, as the Sun opens the accounts of the Beckhams' children's charities:

DAVID and Victoria Beckham have given £600,000 to kids’ charities in four years, latest accounts show.

Now, any donation is better than none - but... over four years?

Figures for the 12 months ending April 2006 show they donated £140,000 that year.

And this, of course, isn't actually their own money - this is the money they make through The Victoria and David Beckham Children’s Charity, which flogs tickets to the parties and so on. So it's not even coming out of their own pockets. Even if it was - considering David is going to pick up around $10million a year in profit-sharing from his LA Galaxy deal, funnelling just over half a million in four years to children's charities starts to look a little mean. Especially since the publicity the charity events generates for brand Beckham is probably worth double that alone.

Ditto: Spears' mental illness "empowering"

We're not sure we quite follow Beth Ditto's delight at Britney's illness, but see if you can:

Beth also says she is proud of troubled pop pin-up BRITNEY SPEARS for shaving off all her hair.

She said: “I’m loving it. If you think what her hair meant to her and what it did to a generation of little girls — she did really turn out a generation of little Britneys.

“And for this to happen is one of the most radical things ever.

“It’s sad and she is sick, but it can also be amazing and empowering. I am going to post her a copy of Rebel Girl lyrics by US punk band BIKINI KILL.”

We suspect, to be fair to Ditto, that the "US punk band" was slipped in by Sun subs, anxious that casual readers might have seen the words Bikini Kill and thought there was a swimwear illness spreading through the nation.

Even, though, if you leave aside the worrying notion that Ditto says, in effect, "yeah, it's a shame you've got a serious mental problem which may result in you losing your family and have, apparently, tried to take your own life, but you're so rad, girlfriend" does she really believe that Britney shaving her own hair off is "one of the most radical things ever"? If only Trotsky had invested in a Remington Home Barber kit, eh? Martin Luther shouldn't have bothered with nailing his demands to the church door - he ought to have just cut out a picture from HairStyles Today and asked his salon to do it "a bit like that." Black Panthers? Chartists? Luddites? Stonewall? Knocked into a cocked hat by ten minutes with the clippers set to number one.

For an act to be radical, doesn't the revolutionary need to be aware of what they're doing? If the Luddites had stood next to a mashed-up Spinning Jenny muttering "well... I thought it was full of lice", wouldn't that somewhat undercut their radicalism?

Not going quietly

To be honest, the spat over the sacky-dumping of sacky-dumpling Louis Walsh from the X Factor looks like it might deliver more in the way of top entertainment than the show itself ever did. Louis is not happy:

I was really shocked, I have to admit that. I did feel like I had been stabbed in the back.

“With Simon, it’s all about work. He told me, ‘It’s nothing personal’.”

Cowell, of course, has denied he sacked Louis at all:

“Much like Coronation Street, we have to make changes to a long-running hit show — and sometimes, the most popular people have to go. Louis has been in discussions about the commitment he could offer, and he was so busy with his management career.

“It just worked out that it would be better if we got a new judge.

“So this didn’t come completely out of the blue.

“Louis is not unhappy, I spoke to him and he’ll be very much part of the X Factor as he’ll be managing all the new talent and the winner.”

Curious that Cowell - asked to react to how unhappy Louis is about being dumped - tries to insist that he's not unhappy at all.

It's also interesting that Cowell - who, we're lead to believe, is so good at telly - thinks that Coronation Street ever actively drops its most popular characters. Sure, the Hildas and Enas and Freds do depart, but I can't think of a single occasion where a popular character has been axed by Granada; it's always at the actor's request (or, at a push, because the actor has become impossible to work with, Len Fairclough.)

Walsh, though, seems to know little about TV, either, predicting that the removal of Kate Thornton (the Connie Clayton of the X-Factor) will have consequences akin to scaring rooks from the Tower of London:

“It was a bad move sacking Kate. She was like a mother figure for all the acts. She will be a big loss.

“It was made worse because Simon and ITV kept telling Kate she was safe, that she’d be staying. But it would seem Simon’s word is NOT his bond.”

Cowell, for his part, claims that he argued for the pair to stay, but ultimately it was ITV's decision. Although we can't think of the last time ITV made a decision that wasn't one the BBC had taken six months before.

The X-Factor may be graced with Chris Moyles as one of the judges next season - one of the "names in the ring", says Cowell. Surely it's incompatible for a Radio One dj to be choosing Magic FM friendly bands and singers, isn't it?

Of course, this exciting scuffle offscreen is a handy diversion from the questions about the premium-rate voting system used for the series? Who wants to look too closely into how that worked when you could watch Simon and Louis having a row, eh?