Jagger's trees saved from the axe

Mick Jagger had come up with some scheme to build an underground swimming pool that would have required the chopping down of trees outside one of his homes. The residents of the sheltered housing complex next door took umbrage at this, and organised a petition. Now, he's been told that he can't take out the trees.

Jagger must have loved being told by sheltered housing residents what he can and can't do - bloody youngsters laying down the law to their elders and betters.

I'll Stand By You

Cheryl Cole has been tattling with the News of the World (actually, GQ), revealing that she put the kibosh on Ashley's move to Real Madrid because she was worried about her career:

"I've worked just as hard as he has to get where I am and we spoke about it at length," Cheryl told GQ Magazine.

"Either I'd have had to move out there with him and commute, or give up my career at a time when we'd finally been accepted as a band and it was almost cool to like Girls Aloud."

Which is touchingly supportive.

Of course, it never harmed Victoria Beckham's career having to relocate to Madrid, although, to be honest, we've not been quite clear what her career involves.

Instead, to keep Tweedy happy, Cole went to Chelsea. Cheryl was "surprised" that this was received like a Satanist in a cathedral:

I almost begged Ashley to sign for Chelsea not really knowing what that would mean," she confessed.

"I know a bit about football, growing up in Newcastle, and I know it would be difficult for a player to go from Newcastle to Sunderland, for instance.

"But I didn't realise the extent to which moving from Arsenal to Chelsea would cause so much hurt between the two of us, and to Arsenal fans."

You might think that if you know so little about football that you don't realise an Arsenal to Chelsea move is going to upset fans, you probably shouldn't be advising your husband on the direction his career should take.

It is a difficult problem, and one that a lot of couples face at some point in their life - whose career should be the one that has to satellite around the others - but would it have been so difficult for Tweedy to be based in Madrid and still be in Girls Aloud? Sure, it would mean that the couple would spend a slew of time apart, but with band responsibilities and away matches and training camps and tours, surely they must be spending as many nights in Travelodges and Hampton Suites alone as they do together anyway?

Cheryl is aware that her move - besides getting Ashley branded a lion Judas and hated by a quarter of all Londoners - cost him a lot of money. But she's got an answer for that - he's overpaid anyway:

"I find what all footballers get paid obscene anyway, I can never get my head around it," she said. "But that's the market, it's not Ashley's fault. It's unfair to brand Ashley greedy because he has never been like that.

"Both me and him are from lower-class backgrounds. We were brought up on a council estate and in a high-rise flat without two pennies to rub together."

Hang about a moment - Cole isn't greedy because "it's what the market pays"? But isn't he part of the mechanism which sets the market price? Nobody forces him to take home £90,000 a week. He could quite easily say "that's a ridiculously obscene sum of money for kicking a ball about; please reduce it to a more sensible figure. Or at least something that's just slightly obscene."

Or he could give ninety percent of his wages to good causes. Or Cheryl could get her mate Nicola, the one what loves politics, to write an article calling for higher taxes for people earning those obscene sums. Let's be generous and assume all this is going on behind the scenes, and the couple don't just sit in their knickers in a hot-tub full of cash crying about those cruel market forces which force them to bank such large sums every week.

Because Cheryl is down to earth:

"I've never been the kind of girl who has to have the latest Chloé handbag," she insisted. "If I see a nice bag for £30, I'll get it."

This is, of course, the problem with being rich - it totally twists your value system. To Mrs Cole, buying a thirty quid handbag is a cheapo purchase. To people scraping by on part-time work and the minimum wage - like, for example, that toilet attendant she beat the crap out of - a thirty pound handbag would still represent a significant purchase, forcing a choice between the bag and other purchases, or a period of saving, or a slide into debt.

Thinking it shows she's got her well-clad feet on the ground, Cole's bag actually demonstrates the size of the understanding gap.

Still, back to the transfer hassle. Everything must be all settled, now, if she's able to talk about it?

"He has always told me never to talk about this, but I think people should know."

Ah. So having crushed his dreams, left him with what Cheryl calls "dead" eyes, and held up as a hate figure in the eyes of his former fans, she couldn't even respect his request to not make it all public.

And why should "people know"? She surely doesn't think that it's going to make Ashley's life any easier to know that he sold out the Gunners fans because his wife didn't fancy the move? Or does she just want the public to know that she's the alpha male in the relationship?

Wiv a ladder and some glasses, you could see to 'Ackney Marshes, if it wasn't for the hipsters on the scene

Yes, yes, Jack, we get it: you're so into London it's not true. With the cockneys and their sparrows, the barrow boys, the red-top buses and the large piles of discarded free newspapers and all.

In his latest bid to cement his cockernee credentials, or possibly to just get a walk on in EastEnders, the White Stripes played a gig for Chelsea Pensioners last night. The pensioners were as polite as only those who have had a lifetime of service can be:

One Chelsea pensioner said: "I thought it was excellent. It's not my scene really because it's a different type of music altogether but I thought they were very very good."

Another admitted: "It was nice but I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to them."

The band later played a gig to raise funds for the Royal Chelsea Hospital revamp, which had a younger, more famous audience.

Gallagher at 40

More from this morning's Victoria Newton column. Apparently, Noel Gallagher has already had his 40th birthday party:

NOEL GALLAGHER marked his birthday with a good old-fashioned northern knees-up.

And whereabouts in Manchester did this old-fashioned knees-up take place?

Erm, Sloane Square:

The OASIS star, who turns 40 tomorrow, invited pals and family to posh club Kitts at London’s Sloane Square on Saturday.

As if that doesn't stretch the concept of a "good old-fashioned northern knees-up" far enough, the place is hardly a room above a pub on the corner:

Open from 10 p.m. ’til late, Kitts offers exotic cocktails like the chocolatey Hans Sloane and the fruity Colonial Breeze. Bar snacks are chips with caviar, Cajun chicken or foie gras croque monsieur.

Betty Turpin, it's fair to say, doesn't do the catering.

Oh good. Another musical footballer.

The hall of footballers turning to pop stars is a space which is so crammed with failure that it makes the Brighton and Hove Albion trophy room look like a branch of Tiffanys. The trouble is, of course, that as footballers get paid more and more, the temptation to spend some of that cash on making a disc must be overwhelming - all that saves us is that they're usually too busy having empty sex with whoever is next week's front page of Zoo, they never get round to it.

Didier Drogba has actually gone and completed an album, though. We haven't heard it, and he might be good. But the pseudonym he's chosen doesn't inspire confidence:

Drogbacite.

Tell us, Drogbacite, about your music:

Drogbacite is about me and my success. There’s even a Drogbacite compilation CD.

“I need my music, especially before a game. I use it in the dressing room.”

Is it just us, or is there something slightly creepy about listening to songs you've made about how great you are before you go out onto the pitch? It's a little bit like something you might read in one of those motivational books as good advice.