Feargal Sharkey has something to say

Apparently Feargal wrote an article about copyright today. Unfortunately, he published it The Times, snug behind a paywall, so we have no idea what he said. Still, at least he can be sure nobody's copying it. [Thanks to Michael M for the tip.]

Let's look at something else curious, shall we? There's the story of songwriter Russ Courtenay. He'd written a song recorded by Tina Turner, but somehow, the music industry's commitment to making sure artists get paid had gone awry. Courtenay had gone unpaid for a while, but he's got some cash now.

BBC News reports:

Morecambe MP David Morris, who used to work in the music industry, then stepped in.

Mr Morris was part of Stock, Aitken and Waterman's team of songwriters, and played keyboards for Rick Astley.

He utilised his connections in the music business to deal with the royalty claim.

A happy ending. What's funny, though, is that there was an earlier version of this story that is still sitting in Google News search results:

This version read:

He utilised his connections with 1980s pop star Feargal Sharkey, who is now head of UK Music, to deal with the royalty claim. UK Music represents the interests of people in the music industry from composers, songwriters, artists, musicians and record ...

How strange that a positive, specific reference to Sharkey and UKMusic should vanish. It seems unlikely that the BBC would have decided to make up Feargal's involvement, so you have to wonder why it disappeared.