Gordon in the morning: Silent Psy

There's a couple of odd moments in Gordon's bit on Psy this morning:

Psy — who hit No1 in the UK after his Gangnam Style video spread like a virus online — said: “The agency heard my raps and were picturing a 6ft tall, sharp-looking, trendy guy.

“But the CEO opened our meeting with the statement, ‘What are we going to do with this?’ Staff said, ‘How about we make him wear a cool mask?’

“Everyone was coming up with solutions to my ‘looks’ problem. They said, ‘How about a bit of plastic surgery here and there?’

“The CEO’s response to that was, ‘Just a bit?’

“In the end they reached no conclusions and just walked out of the room.”

The SPICE GIRLS would never have seen the light of day if that was the case over here.

What does that last line mean, exactly? It's not clear what the "case" is which Smart is referring to - executives not making a decision? Executives forcing pop stars to have plastic surgery? Is he suggesting the Spice Girls were only a success because they had their faces fixed? It sounds like a throwaway line that, perhaps, should have remained thrown away.

He’s a strange fruit this Psy boy, even by Korean standards.

Yes, Gordon did use the words "strange fruit" in a vaguely racist aren't-foreigners-funny sentence.

Psy tells a tale - to someone else, obviously, Gordon's just copied it down - about how a drugs arrest meant he was unable to carry his grandfather's coffin. Clearly, this is upsetting and something important to the man:

He revealed: “The person who got hurt the most was my grandfather. He passed away only three days later.

“I got arrested while he was suffering from late-stage cancer. I was not there at the funeral to lift his coffin. I will regret this for the rest of my life.”

That's heartbreaking, isn't it? How does Gordon deal with this?

Never mind Gangnam Style — he popped his clogs Grandad style.

Really, Gordon? Your reaction to a man sharing his regret at missing his grandfather's funeral is to snicker?

Winehouse: Whole new ways to cry for help

Dean Piper, writing in today's Sunday Mirror, seems to grasp that Amy Winehouse's newfound embrace of the scalpel is an extension of her previous love of the pipe:

Once an addict, always an addict. And now it seems Amy Winehouse is battling a new addiction – plastic surgery.

So, does Piper approach the story delicately, or like a set of new punchlines in waiting?

I can reveal that just weeks after she pumped up her boobies from a 32B to a 32D she’s booking herself to go back under the knife – this time to sort out her beak.

Ha ha ha; she's addicted.

Is it a good idea for a singer with a distinctive voice to have her nose hacked about?

David Van Day is not an animal, he is an 80s star

David Van Day, out of Dollar and Bucks Fizz but mainly Dollar, had to go into hiding because he was so hideous:

But the 52-year-old thought he looked so ugly after the facelift that he barred his two daughters from looking at his face.

Olivia, 16, and Amber, 12, had to wait eight weeks before they could see their father.

He said: "My head was the size of a TV and I don't want them to see what it was like."

The key word is "facelift", as this was after he went on Living TV's Pop Goes The Band, where acts for whom the nostalgia circuit work has dried up have their dignity removed on television. His normal face, and his post facelift face, was apparently acceptable viewing for his children.

You might have thought that a sixteen year old would be more than capable of understanding the after-effects of a facelift, and might be happier to see them than go two months without seeing their Dad, but all families are different.

I suppose it's just lucky Pete Burns never had kids, isn't it?

Burns gets a million

Pete Burns is going to be granted compensation for the botched lip job which turned his already surprising mouth into a source of pain and weeping. The Mail is confidently predicting it'll be a million quid, before, at the bottom of the story, admitting it's guessing:

[T]he exact value of Mr Burns’s claim, will be decided at a High Court hearing next March. A spokesman for Mr Burns’s solicitors Irwin Mitchell said: ‘We do not wish to comment at this stage.’

Burns is claiming that the botched operation harmed his career as well as his health, although that might be a bit of a stretch - how many series of Living TV fly-on-the-wall shows did it cost him, really?

[Recommended: Clive James on Pete Burns from Radio 4's A Point Of View]

Donda's doc: Sorry, but it wasn't my fault

The very-public death of Donda West continues, with Dr. Jan Adams, the cosmetic surgeon whose had been reducing breasts and tummy-tucking prior to her death issuing a statement:

"I first want to express my deepest condolences to the West family at a very difficult time," Adams said Tuesday in a statement read by Williams. "Out of respect for the West family and in the absence of other verifiable information, any comment from me without first discussing that information with the family would be unprofessional."

Happily, it appears that it's not unprofessional to chat with TMZ:

Adams, 53, told celebrity Web site TMZ.com that West's death was not caused by the surgery, but could have been caused by a heart attack, a pulmonary embolism or vomiting.

Adams has, so far, paid out nearly half a million dollars to settle malpractice lawsuits.

Now, at last, she can go on stage barefoot...

Sandie Shaw has had some cosmetic work done: on her feet.

No, we didn't know there was anything wrong with them:

"I have always wanted beautiful feet, the kind that step out encased in dainty, diamante, strappy extravaganzas, that tick-tack across sun dappled marble floors, and from which expensive champagne is drunk."

"My husband says that when I was being created the design team did a great job until they got down to my ankles when they were called off on another job and a clumsy apprentice was left to finish me off.

"It is ironic that I am so well known for singing barefoot."

To be honest, we'd have considered keeping the feet and having some heavy work done on the husband if we'd have been in Sandie's position.

Cheeky Girls: "We're Circus Freaks"

The most puzzling aspect of the Cheeky Girls' tearful "unnecessary surgery left us with odd breasts" revelations in the News of the World today is that both of them had surgery with the same surgeon - presumably, at the same time, because otherwise that would make even less sense. Unless you adopt the "that doctor can't botch a breast-job twice in a row" approach to choosing what invasive surgery you have done.

For the record, then:

Gabriela Irimia, 24, who has been dating flamboyant [Lembit] Opik for seven months, is left with LOPSIDED breasts and both nipples in the wrong place.

And tearful sis Monica has bosoms that feel like ROCKS with nipples pointing east and west.

Speaking for the first time of their secret agony Gabriela confessed: "It's been our worst nightmare. We feel like circus freaks. We're deformed and it's been awful to live with."

We're not quite sure how you can be so deformed you look like a "circus freak" and, simultaneously, for the deformity to be a secret - we presume Showbiz With Rav Singh is lining up an exclusive interview with the Elephant Man on this basis ("I'm not actually good looking, Rav"); but we do love the news that somehow Monica's nipples always point to cardinal points of the compass. Impractical when shopping at Mark One, perhaps, but really handy if you caught out on the Brecon Beacons.

Still, they do have a plan:

"Moni and I just feel we can't go on like this any more so our doctor father is going to sort this mess out for us in Romania."

Yes. If Harley Street has screwed you up, why not see if a mate of your father's can sort it out in a country not exactly famed for its medical services. What could possibly go wrong there?

What a difference a stiff letter of complaint to your plastic surgeon can make

Pete Burns on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, 2002

Pete Burns on Liquid News, last night.

True, his lips still make Leslie Ash look like she's pursing, but even so... you wouldn't stare at him in the street anymore. You'd give a second glance, but no rude staring.