Gordon in the morning: Nixon gets a grip on power

Someone called Tim Nixon has seized control of Bizarre today, filling the featured slot with news that Jordan has bought a necklace with a giant P on it. Confusing 'a national daily newspaper' with Jordan's personal newsletter, Nixon runs something that sounds like it had been dictated by the Price PR team:

The sight of the couple arm-in-arm in a cab following their TV stint on This Morning earlier in the day will only help their bid to end the speculation.

When his wife’s looking this hot, who can blame Peter for holding on tight?

Still, it's not like Gordon has anything better - he's reduced to a stream of weak puns based on crappy pappy snaps.

A picture of Russell Brand and a woman with frizzy hair?

Model is Brand's new curlfriend

A long-lens shot of a child dressed as a superhero sidekick being carried by his former Spice Girl mother?

Victoria goes Robin with Cruz

- although, to be fair, that's Tim Nixon again. Nixon, we can only assume, has never met a child, as he doesn't seem to understand that kids like to wear their dress-up clothes:

DESPITE all their money, one must assume the BECKHAM kids have only a limited stock of normal clothes.

Mum VICTORIA’s penchant for dressing her boys up as wacky characters continues – this time heading out with CRUZ in the guise of Batman’s sidekick Robin.

Isn't letting her kid muck about pretending to be a cartoon character refreshingly normal rather than somehow odd? And in what way does the "goes Robin" pun make any sense?

With Nixon so busy, though, Gordon must be up to something important? Perhaps he wrote the Timmy Mallet piece. Mallet is given a chunk of space to appeal for the return of his large rubber hammer:

THE Jules Rimet Trophy, an Oscar, a Brit Award and Mallett’s Mallet – four cash-can’t-buy items I dreamed of owning as a nipper.

Yes, that's Gordon, isn't it?

So when Eighties telly hero TIMMY MALLETT asked for help recovering his iconic foam hammer, I was delighted to assist.

Given that Tim Nixon is filling up the rest of your space with donkey-shoot puns and news about what plastic necklace Jordan is wearing, you might think Gordon would have been better off spending his time focusing on someone whose moment hadn't passed during the Thatcher government, but still: Mallet is clearly missing his big foam tool. When did it go missing, Timmy? Last week? Last month?

The original was nicked from the Wacaday show host at one of his spin-off Wacagigs.

He was on stage entertaining smashed students at Evolution club in Leeds in September 2002 when the mallet was snatched by a nostalgia-crazed thief who fled into the night.

2002? So he's managed to get through six years without it?

Mallet is appealing for the return of the thing now because - inevitably - it's turned up in Facebook. Or, rather, there's a photo of it with some people on Facebook.

I don't mean to be cynical but this sounds a little more like a promotional stunt to me. There isn't even any indication that the picture of the hammer is a recent one - it looks like it's a scanned-in version of one of those pictures that had a date and time burned in to the actual picture, which would suggest it comes from the 1990s rather than the 2000s. Still, Gordon appeals to those few readers who have fought their way through his column to this point for help. And the equivalent of the Crimestoppers reward?

If you can help, the man himself has agreed to come and shake hands in a Wacaday handover at Bizarre HQ.

A trip to Wapping and a meeting with a man you can hire to play your local pub? It's compelling. Perhaps the appeal should have simply been to civic duty.