Diddy sees a culture laid waste; seeks blame

Hip hop has become a bit of a stinking beast over the last few years. Sure, there's still a lot of innovative stuff, but at the end with the sales, it's become a bit stagnant.

Indeed, so bad is the smell that it's hit the nostrils of Puff himself:

"People have figured out the formula when they make records for radio, and DJs ain't DJs no more. DJs don't break records no more. DJs don't play album cuts. DJs play what is going to move the crowd. DJs, they don't expose you to the newness. That was the DJs' thing. Hip-hop is in a recession also."

Ah, yes. It's the DJs fault. Not, as you might have thought, that hip-hop has now been around long enough to have the same problems as rock - that it's choked up with figures who have long since lost any interest in exciting music and who hang on, churning out substandard fare that gets over-promoted because of what they did, rather than what they're doing. People like... oooh, there's a name on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite... no... it's gone.

Darkness at 3AM: Words and Bonds

Oh, 3AM Girls, did you accidentally send a first draft?

P Diddy wants to Moonrake it in as the next James Bond and has already spent £500,000 on making an 007 audition tape.

Moonrake it in? Moonrake?

And they said Obama wasn't going to take victory for granted

Even although he's not president yet - not even president-elect yet - Barack Obama is dropping all his friends from before he was famous. MTV reports that Jay-Z, P Diddy, Ben Affleck, the AFLAC duck, Mary J Blige and - well, you can probably round this list out for yourself - have been asked to stay away from tonight's big Chicago victory bash*.

But then, if you were president, wouldn't your first move be to send an email to Puff Daddy telling him to keep at least a Federally-mandated five hundred feet away at all times?

* - not that it's a victory bash yet, as nobody is taking anything for granted, but they couldn't wait until the New York polls close before they start carving a sixty-foot ice sculpture depicting Obama riding Pegasus as the planets themselves bow down before him, could they? The ice sculptors do say they'll leave off doing the face until six-thirty Eastern time, though, so it could just be Joe The Plumber if the exit data looks gloomy. back

The artist formerly known as...

Yes, Puff Daddy has changed his name again: he now wants to be known as Sean John, thereby becoming the first person ever to name themselves after their brand of perfume, instead of the other way round.

Mark Ronson bumps into P Diddy in a surprising nightclub

No, it's not that sort of clubbing surprise - although that would be priceless ("Uh... hang about, is this a gay club? I didn't know that when I came in..." "No... me neither...") - instead, it's just a rather dull anecdote about how cool Diddy is, and, by implication, how cool Ronson is too:

"Diddy's a man of few words, but he's always up for parties. I once ran into him in this seedy part of Miami really far from all the big clubs. I could tell he was completely fucked.

"We were laughing about exactly what two New York hip-hop stars were doing on a Miami back-street.."

How cool the pair of you are, going to clubs where they probably only have the one sort of champagne. This tale of living on the edge might be slightly more impressive if Diddy didn't travel with a security entourage twice the size of the Dutch navy.

Like Costanza, he does take a sandwich and the sports network

P Diddy reckons he's a marathon man in between the sheets:

"I'm strong. I'm fit. My record is 30 hours... I enjoy it. I love making love to my woman."

Thirty hours. Poor woman - we couldn't stand be share a railway carriage with someone as dull and self-obsessed as Diddy; never mind being trapped with him in a bedroom for more than a day.

Of course, it's only thirty hours if you start the clock running as he removes his Elizabeth Duke jewellery and obsessively hangs up his pretty suits. And then tries to wake up his partner. The actual sex is a lot less drawn out, we guess.

P Diddy refrains from hurling missiles at John Reid

The sudden cancellation of the Snoop-Diddy tour isn't without consequences, of course: disappointment on fans who'd been persuaded to buy tickets before the gigs had completed their paperwork; and P Diddy being almost statesmanlike in the face of getting a few extra days off:

"Once his work permit was granted, everybody felt comfortable to go ahead and put the concert up," he said.

"It wasn't like this was the first time we were in discussions with the Home Office.

"You know there were discussions prior to this - they led us to believe that everything would be approved."

Nobody sat down and thought "what with Snoop having left under something of a cloud last time, we better not move until we've got everything sorted out with the visa", then?

"I know that Snoop is a great guy, a positive guy, and I'm not throwing any stones at the Home Office or at the government."

Probably just as well, Diddy. That sort of thing goes down quite badly. Oh, you were being metaphorical.

"Everybody has their own laws and their own rules in their own countries, and, you know, we're going to respect them."

...just in case you thought they were planning to land somewhere on the Welsh coast, sneak into the country and play a defiant tour of the UK.

Who's the Diddy?

The other-guy-known-as-Diddy is now twisting the knife in Sean Combs Puff P Diddy's side. Having won the right to be the only Diddy in the UK, Richard 'Diddy' Dearlove is now pushing for P Diddy to ensure that all mentions of him on the entire internet include the all-important P:

The 41-year-old wants Mr Combs to erase "Diddy" from sites including YouTube and MySpace.

[Dearlove's lawyer Mr.] Purvis said it could be difficult for Mr Combs to do this but that it was his responsibility.

"What we say is he has given these undertakings and it is up to him to make sure they are complied with."

It's not difficult, surely, but nigh on impossible. Especially since if having videos on YouTube where Sean Combs is credited as "Diddy" gives the chance that Combs might end up in Wormwood Scrubs for contempt, that encourages us to start uploading stuff to the site and having some fun. Not that we would, mind, but... you can see why people might, can't you?