Adele beat up Gareth Gates fans

We're usually pretty dismissive of the Sunday Mirror's Showbiz with Zoe column, but we have to applaud her this week for the glimpse into life at the Brits school.

She does describe it as "the trendy Brits school", which is both a really archaic word (why not go the whole hog and call it 'groovy'?) and wrong, anyway, as it's a kind of vacuum-packed stage school nightmare, which has never been the in thing. Unless you have fantasies which revolve around The Swish Of The Curtain. And if you do, that's wrong.

Still, Adele - a recent graduate, of course - reveals that this supposed cauldron of talent, the place where the next generation of British music drones are trained up, were so in thrall to Simon Cowell, the playground fights were over Will Young:

"Will Young was my first proper love. I was obsessed.

"The Gareth Gates fans were horrible to me and I wasn't having any of it.

"We had a fight and I was called into the head teacher's office and sent home. It was serious.

"It was so embarrassing when I met Will. I've loved him since I was 14, and the first thing that came out my mouth was, 'I voted for you 5,000 times!"

Zoe is proud to be talking to Adele:

I had the first interview with the rising star, who is being given the Critics' Choice statue at the Brit Awards next month.

First interview. Quite a scoop - although you have to ignore the Channel 4. And the one with Orange Music. Oh, and Time Out and Simon Mayo. And This Is Fake DIY, The Observer, Virgin Radio and BBC News Online. But if you ignore all of those, it's a hell of a scoop.