Lily Allen quits the battle

"Cry God for England, Harry and... you know what? You lot are here now, I'm going to bugger off back to the tent and watch the football. Good luck."

Yes, almost to the second as we were saying that you had to at least admire Lily Allen for engaging with the process, no matter how wonkily, she was pulling out of the debate:

The singer posted messages on Twitter saying she was not going to attend an emergency meeting of music artists this evening to hammer out a unified position on illegal filesharing.

The star says: "Hello, there is a meeting today in London where artists are meeting to discuss Piracy. My job done.

"I wont be attending the meeting because it's going to be a press frenzy and I don't want to detract from the issues. I'm proud of the fact that I've been involved with this debate but I'm passing the baton on to other artists.

"And I've shut down the blog, the abuse was getting too much."

You've got to love the idea that the press might be able to cope with thedrummerfromBlur and Billy Bragg, but it would the very presence of Lily Allen so dazzling it would be unable to keep its mind on the details. And didn't the whole idea of the "Lily Allen Filesharing Battle Blog" kind of play on Lily Allen attracting interest?

Did Allen really see her "job" as having somebody else arrange a meeting? Because I don't remember there being a strapline on the blog saying "trying to get The Futureheads and Natasha Khan (if she's not on tour) in a pub talking"?

And even if the "abuse" (people disagreeing with her) is too hard to take, why has Allen taken down the site? All those musicians taking time to write down their perspectives on filesharing - only for Allen to put them online for two minutes and then whip them down. How does that help the debate at all?

The sense is that Allen suddenly realised she'd waded well out of her depth and has decided to bail before finding herself having to respond to questions rather than just angrily moaning when caught out.

Perhaps she realised that 'artists who want to get paid should get a fair market rate' is uncontroversial, and that the real question is what that fair market rate is.