Gordon in the morning: Jagger japes

Gordon Smart reports that Mick Jagger and David Bowie are working on a comedy movie.

Oddly, the only mention of David Bowie in the entire report is this:

The ROLLING STONES legend penned a script with the help of old pal DAVID BOWIE about a couple of hellraising rock'n'roll managers set in the mid-Sixties.

And then, despite a massive photo of Bowie, he's never mentioned again.

Perhaps he realised how awful the project sounded and bailed before the third paragraph.

Why, you might wonder, is Mick doing this? Gordon has an answer:

After watching old chart rivals SIR PAUL McCARTNEY and GEORGE MICHAEL send themselves up for Comic Relief, he thought it was finally time to get his Ha Ha's out.

Presumably if he'd tuned in for a different bit of Comic Relief, we'd be reading some half-formed mutterings about his plans to cook for the Prime Minister.

Apart from the Comic Relief thing being totally made up, when, exactly, were George Michael and Mick Jagger chart rivals?

There's an unnamed source, of course:

"He's well up for a cameo role, to show he's not the serious businessman a lot of people think he is all the time."

Yes, that's right. The first thing people think of when they hear the name "Mick Jagger" is "serious businessman". If only he could be a bit more like Victor Kiam.

Gordon ends with some advice:

I reckon he should put himself up for a SMITHY sketch for Sport Relief with JAMES CORDEN.

Even better if they throw in a few gags about his little fella.

Yes. There's nothing the world needs more than watching James Corden making jokes about Mick Jagger's wrinkly old friend. And then after doing the Keith Richards jokes, doing some about his cock.

A bit of a Relief

So, not only did last night's Comic Relief raise the sort of sums that only Fred Goodwin could dream of, but actually managed to be consistently entertaining throughout. Normally, by pub-chucking-out-time, they're scrabbling about to give you "another chance to see" stuff that had already played out earlier; this year, they had so much stuff they hadn't even got round to The Apprentice firing by midnight. Even the French and Saunders bit was funny, and that's something you've not been able to say for the best part of a decade and a half.

There was the puzzle of Patrick Kielty - did they call him up and offer him the chance to do a single link while David Tennant and Davina McCall were busy doing Mastermind, or did he just show up and they reckoned that "since you're here, you might as well..."?

What really detains us, though, is that strange edition of Top Of The Pops which filled the gap that normally would have had an episode of QI in. Incidentally, how do they think poor Huw Edwards feels, getting ready to read the news, hearing everyone on BBC One telling the massive audience to turn over and not watch him. I bet he has to wipe a little tear each time it happens.

Now, although it was coming from the Comic Relief studio and there were a couple of extra nods to the event - superimposing red noses on the chart rundown, for example - this was, to all intents and purposes, like Top Of The Pops had never been canceled. Even down to that Top Ten and having the number one act live in the studio. Sure, there was a bit of smudging the boundaries, but even the shoe-horning of Oasis and U2 was for their latest singles rather than, say, something that people might actually want to hear. It was all a little bizarre having, in the midst of 'very special episodes of', to get 'more or less a bog-standard edition of' a programme that doesn't even exist any more. If nothing else, it showed there's still an enormous amount of affection for the old warhorse both amongst bands and at the BBC.

Perhaps if someone could come up with a chart that actually reflected the new music scene, there might be a second life for the programme...

Gordon in the morning: Starsailor delighted to avoid Glastonbury

Phew, that was lucky, eh, James Walsh? Starsailor have effectively swerved the risk of playing Glastonbury:

STARSAILOR’s JAMES WALSH is pleased his band won’t be playing.

The singer says the huge stars the festival attracts makes it harder for smaller acts to get noticed.

James says: “Glasto is about headliners. Smaller acts often don’t even get a mention.”

Yes, with the three BBC TV channels, two radio networks, about six online music services and acres of pop press coverage, year-in, year-out, it's almost impossible for anyone other than the headline acts to pick up any mention at all.

Meanwhile, the charity celebrity mountain climbers have made it to the top of Kilimanjaro for charity. Even Cheryl Cole:

Cheryl said: “It has been, without question, the single most mentally and physically challenging experience of my life.”

And you know what? I believe her.

Gordon in the morning: Gary in the morning

Gordon, of course, should be half-way up a mountain with Gary Barlow and a couple of Girls Aloud right now, but he's had to pull out because of family illness. Which, genuinely, you have to respect him for: there are too many journalists who would have put the ultimate in social climbing ahead of family.

It's worked out well for The Sun, too, as it means they've got Gary Barlow doing the coverage instead, which has to be a better box office draw.

The question, of course, is if Gary can turn out the sort of observation that Gordon would have come up with:

We are all suffering from altitude sickness and everyone is emotional, especially the girls.

It turns out: yes.

Back at base camp Wapping, apparently the 'Amy cannot escape Blake's evil tentacles' story has now turned in to 'Blake cannot escape Amy's evil tentacles':

IT’S the oldest trick in the book – AMY WINEHOUSE is trying to win back estranged hubby BLAKE FIELDER-CIVIL with a sprinkling of FRANK SINATRA.

Is that the oldest trick in the book? Does that mean there were absolutely no tricks in the book whatsoever in the 1940s?

Still, given that Blake - if I remember the story so far correctly - was a terrible drug-addiction generating, cash-sucking, untrustworthy cur. So, this is a bad thing, right?

Apparently, maybe not:

Will she win Blake's heart again? ... Amy and her estranged hubby in happier times

Those were happier times? Wasn't he busily getting her hooked on the drugs? It's all very confusing.

Gary Barlow's back out, doesn't back out

That Comic Relief big mountain climb is getting closer, and out-of-condition celebrities are stepping up their preparations. So much so that Gary Barlow has managed to hurt his back:

A statement on the band's website says that, due to a "hectic training schedule... the muscles in Gary Barlow's back have gone into spasm".

It adds that the singer has been "treated appropriately" and should be able to complete the charity climb.

"It was funny" said a witness, "he was clambering up a wall and doing great, and then someone just shouted 'bet you can't wait until you're sharing a small tent with Gordon Smart' and he just started twitching..."

Gordon in the morning: Gordon in the mountain

So, in aid of charity, Gordon Smart is about to go up Kilimanjaro. And come back down again, unfortunately, although I'm sure if enough people put in a tenner to help the kiddies, he might be persuaded to stay there.

So far, we've only had the launch but judging by how that's been milked to fill out Bizarre, we're in for blanket coverage. And quite right too - this is, after all, for charity. And nothing to do with Gordon hoping to follow the Piers Morgan career path:

On February 27, Gary [Barlow], RONAN KEATING, CHRIS MOYLES,BEN SHEPHARD,CHERYL COLE, KIMBERLEY WALSH,DENISE VAN OUTEN, FEARNE COTTON, and ALESHA DIXON will be setting off to Tanzania to tackle Mount Kilimanjaro.

If he was actually up the mountain, we'd be able to put that dodgy spacing down to altitude sickness.

It is quite an impressive line-up - at least three of those people have actual lives to put on hold to do the climb. And how nice for Cheryl Cole and Gordon to be clambering up the side of a slippery, hard, rocky thing after all the work Gordon did to try and wreck her marriage last year.

Still, everyone was nice to each other at the launch event:

But at the launch on Thursday, the team were in determined spirits to do summit worthwhile to raise a mountain of cash for an absolutely brilliant cause.

Hang about... on Thursday? Even for an event that Gordon takes part it, in takes him four bloody days to get it in the paper.

Gordon in the morning: Leave it Gary, he's not worth it

The continuing stream of Robbie-and-That stories coming from Wapping suggests that we're being softened up for some sort of unpleasant announcement in the New Year. Today, Gary Barlow makes encouraging noises:

He said: “Robbie will not be coming on tour with us next year because he’s got his own things to do.

“But we are not ruling out getting together with him beyond that.”

It's clear that in these difficult times, we must look to Gordon Smart for leadership. Faced with a Sun readership who are split between hating the very idea of Williams arriving late and spoiling the party with his trademark gurning, and people who have the sense of a petrol-doused reveller going to fireworks display, Smart tries to fudge his opinion piece:

ROBBIE’S return to Take That has split the nation.
[...]
For all the problems I have had with Robbie, I would love to see him do one big gig with the band again, for old times’ sake.

A one-off, televised concert is the answer. It would draw a line under the past and give everyone a nostalgia packed high.

Can something simultaneously draw a line under the past and make everyone remember the past?

And this isn't even a compromise: doing one gig? Even Smart admits it would be unlikely to be just the one:

Reading in to the mutual love-in between all the members going on now, one gig would probably open the floodgates to many more.

Of course it bloody will. Still, given that the Take That reunion has now run out of steam (you're in trouble when your Marks and Spencers adverts are more lively than your new records) it's not like Williams' return will actually spoil anything.

Elsewhere, Gordon runs a photo of Alesha Dixon getting out a cab. And what time would that be, Gordon?

Alesha parties 'til phwoar a.m

Yes. Phwoar am. Very good.

This is surprising, though:

She will have to be careful with the late nights and champers – I’ll be joining her for a trek up Kilimanjaro in February for Comic Relief

Hang about... you're going to be on the side of a mountain with a woman in two months, and you think it's a good idea to run upskirt/downshirts of her? I'd keep a careful eye on who you're relying on hold your ropes, Gordon.

Liz Kershaw sinks the bloody ship

We're presuming the first inkling that there might have been something fishy about competition entrants on Liz Kershaw's 6Music programme - surely there weren't that many people listening in the first place? Now, as part of Mark Thompson's wobbly rolecall of dishonour, everybody knows that she managed to get callers to a pre-recorded programme by, erm, getting the production team and their mates to ring in.

Danny Baker used to manage to get around the problem of needing callers for a pre-recorded show by telling people when he'd be recording, and getting them to ring in then. But it sounds like Liz was doing the prerecords a lot more frequently.

You have to have some sympathy for WhiteLabel, the World Service's music show - sure, making up names of winners in weeks where nobody sent in a winning entry isn't strictly speaking honest, but it comes across more as a face-saving measure than a deliberate intention to mislead.

And what of the Comic Relief scandal:

In a section of the appeal programme, viewers were invited to donate money to Comic Relief and were informed that by calling in, they could win prizes that belonged to a famous couple.

The first two callers taken on air gave incorrect answers. The other waiting callers were lost and a third caller was heard on air successfully answering the question. This caller was in fact not a viewer but a member of the production team.

The "famous couple", of course, was Buttery Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Were the calls really lost, or was it simply that nobody who knew whose things they were wanted to try winning them?