Bookmarks: After Prince

The Open University's OpenLearn Live service has pulled together a collection of some of the more thoughtful responses to the sudden death of Prince.

Also worth your time: New York Mag on how Prince helped editors when he changed his name to the symbol:

Prince did the only thing you could do in that situation: He had a custom-designed font distributed to news outlets on a floppy disk.

The Prince font substituted his symbol for what would otherwise be a capital P. In addition, the font was also made available for download on CompuServe. It was accompanied by a stern letter featuring both usage and installation instructions.

You may have heard a lot of the tribute radio programmes that were broadcast on Friday night. But if you haven't caught Radio 4's The World Tonight, it's worth it for the interview with sound engineer Susan Rogers. You can listen to that here.

On the other hand... not everyone covered themselves in glory.

The Daily Mirror should be ashamed of its "Prince found dead in party mansion" headline on Thursday night online - nothing factually incorrect, but the inference was clear and unwelcome. Not as bad as Fox News, though, which spoke loudly about how the mansion was being treated "as a crime scene". The story, surely, was big enough to not need extra nudges and winks.

Mirror struggles with naked pictures not of Liam Payne

The picture of a bloke who might look a bit like Liam Payne if you squint a bit has confused the poor Daily Mirror.

First, they struggled with the idea that the picture wasn't of him:

If the photo is genuine, Liam will not be the first celebrity to have images leaked of him against his will.

That's not, to be fair, untrue, but you might as well observe that if Liam Payne gave up music and became a vicar, he wouldn't be the first celebrity to shun fame in favour of holy orders. True, but pretty irrelevant, having ascertained that the photo, clearly, isn't genuine.

They're still confused now:

The photos did not appear on 4chan or Reddit and are thought to be unrelated to the recent hacking scandal sweeping Hollywood and Britain.

Let's just leave a second to process that the Mirror appears to suggest that appearing on 4Chan and Reddit somehow proves the veracity of a nude photo.

And, yes, it would be thought that the existence of a grainy lookalike shot had nothing to do with people's Apple accounts being hacked, because it's a totally different thing entirely, apart from being connected to photos and computers.

On which basis, tomorrow, the Mirror will be speculating that there's no evidence that this event is in any way connected to Lolcats.

Jessie J resigns her bisexuality

Obviously, people's sexuality can change over their lifetime - both in terms of what they find attractive, and in how they choose to define themselves.

Having said that, Jessie J's sudden announcement that she isn't bisexual any more gives the impression of someone trying to distance themselves from a marketing campaign for a brand which has moved on.

She wrote: “Remember the thing that you tried/did back in the day. The phase you had? That is so not YOU anymore?! And you look back and think wow how I’ve changed.

Jessie, the idea that bisexuality or pansexuality is a "phase" tends to be a concept used by people who aren't bisexual or pansexual.

“Something that you don’t even talk about or want to talk about anymore. Because you’ve moved on? That was just part of you growing up? Discovering yourself and working out what you liked and disliked…. Remember?

“I have those too. Yet I’ve noticed some people hold onto mine because they were blogged and put into the media."

It wasn't "blogged and put into the media" - you chose to talk about in Cosmopolitan, it was you who chose to take bisexuality and try it on for a bit.

“I have felt under pressure since being famous to be what some people want me to be for them! I have learnt that the hard way. It’s too much!

“[People] can change. As they should. And I have changed and grown up ALOT, and that’s allowed. And I feel more comfortable in my own skin now than ever before. We all are on a journey and I refuse to feel boxed and judged because of how I felt once!”

Let's accept that this isn't just someone trying to disown a bandwagon they once jumped upon, and do J the courtesy of taking at her word the idea that she was bisexual, once, for just long enough to issue a press release and then it went away.

Instead, let's just look at the way she's chosen to de-announce her bisexuality.

There's a general sense that she finds the idea of being bisexual something of a teenage embarrassment - which is a chilli in the eye for those of us who remain as bi as they were yesterday morning.

There's the use of the word "judged". Surely the reaction to someone judging you because you are, or were, bi - especially if you elbowed your way into the community in the first place, and that community were nothing but welcoming and supportive - is to question why people think that's something on which a person should be judged at all.

You'd hope if someone came up to Jessie J and said "ewwww, you're bisexual and that's disgusting", her reaction would be "no it isn't" rather than "no I'm not."

You would hope that someone who had chosen to share the identity of a group which suffers from high levels of mental illness and stress might, at the very least, withdraw from that group without making it look like she was recoiling in horror from a terrible youthful indiscretion.

In an attempt to try and clear things up, she spoke to the Mirror to try and throw a blanket of platitude over the mess:

Brilliantly, she also joked online that “vegetarians eat meat ­sometimes”. When asked about the comment yesterday, she said: “I thought that was quite funny.”

Actually, Jessie, no; vegetarians don't "eat meat sometimes". You're getting confused with people who claim to be vegetarian but actually aren't.

Also, you're comparing standing up, publicly and painfully distancing yourself from bisexuality with a person on a largely meat-free diet having a sausage roll?

She says of her past revelations: “I did talk about it, and I was open about it, and I do support being lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender - love who you want.

“That’s what I’m doing."

I think that's great news there for the bi community - I think we'd all had a nervous 48 hours over whether we'd all have to stop it for good now Jessie's thrown it in. How generous of her to not only licence our sexual identities, but to support us, too. Even if we've chosen the one that is horrible to have blogged.

“I don’t regret anything I ever said."

It's not clear here if J is not regretting saying she was bisexual, or regretting that long series of Tweets where she spoke about how she regretted saying she was bisexual.

"I’m just so bored of it"

Oh, goodness. It turns out being thought bisexual is boring. How lucky to be able to slew it off when it become tiresome.

"I want to stop talking about it completely now and find myself a husband."

It might come as a shock to Jessie, but being bisexual doesn't actually prevent you from finding a husband if you're a woman. Hell, these days it doesn't prevent you from finding a husband if you're a man.

You're in a national newspaper suggesting that bisexual people have to renounce their sexuality if they want to have a permanent relationship. Did you even think how that looks?

It's hard to see how anyone could make this worse, but then she manages it:

She adds: “It’s a true struggle. All the chick flicks that didn’t make sense to me, I now understand – Sex and the City is real!”

Bisexual people don't understand chick flicks. It's true; if you fill a cinema with bisexuals and show them When Harry Met Sally, they literally cannot see anything happening on the screen. There's something about our retinas which means the minute 27 Dresses comes on, we're rendered functionally blind.

That's how you can tell if you've been cured of bisexuality - you suddenly start seeing Richard Gere and Julia Roberts on the Pretty Woman DVD box.

Do you want to just pat us on the head before you leave, Jessie?

“For me, it was a phase,” she says. “But I’m not saying bisexuality is a phase for everybody."

Oh, how very, very generous of you. How very kind.

Amy Winehouse: the inquest

So, now we all know what has been known by the people who the never-less-than-bungling Met Police accidentally sent the details to : what killed Amy Winehouse.

Yesterday's inquest heard she'd drunk a lot; the coroner recorded a misadventure verdict.

A chance for the press to take a moment to show a spot of decorum?

Surprisingly, the Express almost manages to just report the inquest straight, only letting itself down by slapping in a crappy video which cuts from a jaunty neon parping bumper into footage of Winehouse's body being hauled out of the house.

Both the Mail and Mirror fixate on a line from Amy's doctor:

Amy Winehouse inquest: I don't want to die - what singer told doctor night before her death

says the Mirror;

I don't want to die: Amy's word hours before being found dead at five times drink-drive limit

trumpets the Mail.

The line was recounted to show that Winehouse wasn't feeling suicidal, but both papers attempt to wring some tragedy out it, more-or-less implying that it was famous last words. The Mail smudges it the most, as you'll spot from the headlines. When did Amy say this, Daily Mail?

GP Christina Romete, who saw the singer hours before her death, said she did not believe Miss Winehouse had deliberately drunk herself to death.

She said she had told her: ‘I do not want to die… I have not achieved a lot of the things I wanted.’

The Mirror is more honest about this:

She suffered alcohol poisoning but had told her doctor the night before: “I don’t want to die.”

The Daily Mail's "hours" appears to be "more than twenty-four", which most people would call "the previous day" unless they were trying to spice up a report of a young woman's death.

The most stridently ill-judged tone, naturally, comes from The Sun. For them it's a story so lurid, they have to tell it twice. First a staff reporter has a go:

Amy Winehouse was five times the drink-drive limit
Tragic star went on fatal booze binge, inquest finds

But in case that wasn't making enough out of it, Tom Wells had another try at the story:

3-day vodka binge killed frail Amy Winehouse
Star 5 times drive limit

A three day binge? But didn't she her doctor hours - sorry, a day - before? On day two of a binge? How was she? As Wells report admits:

She last saw Amy at 7pm the night before she died. Dr Romete said: "She was calm, she was coherent. She was tipsy I would say, but she didn't slur and was able to hold a full conversation."

Forty-eight hours into a bender.

That's the inquest system for you: the coroner establishes the facts, then the tabloids come round and muddy them again.

Darkness at 3AM: Billie Joe shows his pants

There's been a lot of stories amongst travellers recently of airlines suddenly imposing dress codes on top of the extra fees and crammed misery they already inflict on their passengers.

And now, suddenly, the fight against low-slung pants on tightly-loaded planes has pulled in a famous name.

Well, semi-famous. The 3AM Girls report Billie Joe-Armstrong has been kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight after refusing to pull his trousers up:

An ABC7 news producer who was on the same flight told the station that a flight attendant approached Armstrong as the plane was getting ready to take off and asked him to hike his trousers higher. The producer, Cindy Qiu, says Armstrong initially responded by asking the attendant if there weren't "better things to do than worry about that?"

But the attendant persisted and told Armstrong he could be ejected for his refusal to comply. When Armstrong insisted he was just trying to get to his seat, he and a travelling companion were taken off the plane.

I'm assuming that the Southwest staff had merely been suspicious why a thirty nine year-old man was dressed up like a fifteen year-old. Who wouldn't be?

Darkness at 3AM: Beyonce minus 1

The 3AM Girls report that Beyonce has flopped:

OUCH. Just 72 hours after releasing her second single, 1+1 – and even performing it on the American Idol finale – it appears Beyonce has had an embarrassing change of heart.

Following a barrage of less than positive comments from viewers, the track has been mysteriously binned and another has been released as the new single.

Obviously, when your reporting consists of little more than copying stuff off Perez Hilton, you might have little gaps in your story. Nowhere do the 3amies mention that 1+1 wasn't released in the UK at all; nor that it wasn't even a 'proper' release in America.

The US release was classified as a "promotional download" - in other words, it wasn't meant to be a full-fledged release. It looks like Beyonce's people just lobbed it up for download to capture the people wanting to buy the song after it was on a top-rated US TV programme. Rather a shrewd move, surely?

It's still available on the US Amazon site, and doing fairly well for a track not getting any marketing push.

But, still, if Perez says it's been somehow "ditched", that's probably more important to the Mirror than facts.

Shania Twain falls silent

The Mirror runs a piece about Shania Twain which we'll repeat here in its entirety:

The country-pop singer has turned to vocal coaches and friends, including Gladys Knight and Lionel Richie, to “re-find her voice”.

Canadian Shania, 45, longs to reignite her music career. Her 1997 album, Come On Over, sold 40 million copies while last album Up shifted 11 million.

In upcoming US TV documentary Why Not, she admits: “I have lost my ability to express myself and my ability to sing.

“I was slowly losing my voice and slowly losing my confidence.”

In her autobiography, out later this year, Shania will detail her “shockingly painful upbringing”, which included the death of her parents.

Is it just me, or is the Mirror being suprisingly uncurious at this news? "Oh, yes, Twain lost her voice and she'd like it back", like that's a thing that just happens. Did nobody read through that before publishing and wonder if they ought to explain this "loss of voice"?

It could have been through cancer of the larynx, or having been surprised by an enormous bear, or too much shouting during a bar-room fight between Dick Cheney and David Cassidy. It might even have been that voodoo had successfully been invoked by people who didn't appreciate the inability of a pub to host a hen night without Man I Feel Like A Woman popping onto the jukebox.

In reality, it was the pain of breaking up with her husband. Surely that's a significant factor worthy of a mention in the report?

Darkness at 3AM: Most of Sugababes turn to alcohol

That driving a car while drunk thing? 3AM reckons Amelle Berrabah can explain:

The Sugababes star, 26, who faces court after she was caught driving over the limit says: "I didn't know it was possible six hours later. The fact you can still be over the limit several hours later should be better known."

"I had no idea stabbing a man several times in the head could kill him. The fact you can stab someone nowhere near their heart and still kill them should be better known."

If anyone's going to get away with pretending they're so stupid they don't know that alcohol remains in your system, I guess it would be Berrabah.

Unfortunately for Amelle, it's actually in the Highway Code:

[Alcohol will] take time to leave your body; you may be unfit to drive in the evening after drinking at lunchtime, or in the morning after drinking the previous evening

So even if she had managed to never notice that you can still feel drunk hours after drinking, she should have at least heard the news before she took her driving test.

Instead of pointing this out, though, the 3AMies treat her like she's arrived bearing previously unknown news:

Don't say she didn't warn you...

No, 3AM. Our biology teacher warned us when we were about ten years old.

Darkness at 3AM: John Pilger used to write for the Mirror, you know

I really hope MTV have paid a lot of money for this non-story marketing message to be slipped in as "story" by 3AM:

Mtv news presenter Laura Whitmore has become obsessed with the new MTV urban workout.

She's been busting a groove to various hip-hop classics at her local Virgin Active gym.

We'll pass, thanks...

Is that last line a desperate bid to try and pretend there's a journalist involved here somewhere?

Mirror Maths

Here's something strange:

Order your copy of the Daily Mirror for £3.15 and get the new Prince album 20TEN for Free.

The Mirror costs, what? 40p. Postage can't costs more than a pound, even if it's in an envelope. And that envelope can't be more than 50 pence worth.

So how does paying £3.15 for a 40p newspaper make the Prince album "free"?

It looks rather as if the Mirror is selling the Prince album for £3.15 from where I'm sitting.

Back For Good Enough: Robbie Williams moves back in with Dad

I think it's fair to say that the reunionised Take That had reached a bit of a natural end, with the first bubbling of creativity from getting back together having long since flattened out, so the inevitable lumbering back in of Robbie Williams has come too late to spoil anything too much. 'Williams rejoins Cameron-endorsing Marks And Spencer models' is less of a shame than the 'Williams stamps over the fizzle' if he'd been back in in 2005 or 2006.

Still, the camera-hogging, gurning, 'look! I'm a character' of Robbie towards the end of the BBC News video is a hint of the mismatch between the two sides now. It's like the two little pigs running into the brick house and behaving like they were the expert housebuilders all along.

Still, nobody's really that bothered about whether it's a good idea or not. For the Mirror, it's a chance to feel vindicated:

The move confirms the Mirror’s exclusive story in a March 2009 ­interview with Robbie that the band were getting back together.

Daily Mirror, everyone's been saying 'sooner or later, Williams will turn up with a stupid grin on his face' since Take That first got back as one. I'm not sure that 'just sixteen months after we said it was happening, it happened' is quite the claim you think it is.

obbie said last night: “I get ­embarrassingly excited when the five of us are in a room. It feels like coming home.”

Yes, it's exactly like coming home. But there's no shame in that, Robbie - a surprising number of men in their thirties move back in with their parents after their careers go south.

The Mirror offers a verdict on the hooking-up, with their in-house Take That fan Beth Neil taking on the paper's music critic Gavin Martin. (Gavin Martin's the Mirror's music critic now? Really?)

Beth goes first:

I just hope Robbie doesn’t try to steal the limelight and overshadow the other four, who have grafted non-stop to become the nation’s biggest man band.

Oh, come on, Beth - what are the chances of that?

Still, I'm sure Gavin's got some sort of musical insight to share:

[E]xpect plenty of sold-out gigs, making it an astute move commercially for all five.

Is it, though, Gavin? Take That as foursome could sell out gigs at the largest venues in the country, so all they're really doing is splitting the take five ways instead of four. That looks like a crappy move, surely?

Over at The Sun, Gordon Smart is delighted:

[T]hank the lord for some good news after such a bleak few weeks of murder and misery dominating the headlines.

Oh, yes. I've totally forgotten we've got a bumbling Tory at the Treasury and the Prime Minister believes some people are just innately evil with the news that a band have brought back their worst member.

This reunion is HUGE. It doesn't get any bigger.

Scientists are currently attempting to calculate if this reunion that doesn't come any bigger is larger or smaller than the bigness of a Masterchef final.

Reunions don't come any bigger? Wouldn't Paul and Ringo getting out the mop-top wigs one last time trump it?

Hang about, though, Gordon's about to blow:

The tour will break records on pre-sales, as will the album. Then there'll be the sponsorship, the TV rights, a DVD, merchandising, royalties and publishing.

To say nothing of the acres and acres and acres of coverage churned out by the tabloids, eh, Gordo?

If you thought the boys were rich now, next Christmas is going to see them served up with a whole new level of wealth.

Is it just me, or is a reunion where the reaction is 'this is going to make a lot of money' rather than 'we're going to hear some great music' one which, fundamentally, is more in the interests of record labels and promoters than fans?

The only problem I can see is Robbie's crippling stage fright and his hatred of being on the road.

You don't think that the fifteen years of animosity and his inability to work as part of a team might be a bigger problem?

The Mail calls the reWilliamsing 'Take Two', although surely it's Take Four - the band, band without Williams, band reunited without Williams, Band reunited with Williams? Despite assigning two writers to the story, though, the Mail doesn't show very much interest in the band coming back together - mainly because there's no picture of a woman in a bikini they can run alongside it.

Kim Dawson provides 'analysis' for the Daily Star. She's already started the countdown clock. The countdown to the end:

Another split will only break the hearts of women round the country still reeling from Mark’s infidelity.

Nobody seems to have told Dawson that (a) the reunion is only a fixed-time deal so there will be a natural end and (b) there are precisely no women - apart maybe from Owen's wife - who are reeling from his infidelity. And even if there were: eh? What the hell does that mean?

The Daily Express more or less ignores the story entirely, although it does take care to take the sting out of the response to its short cut-and-paste brief:

Have your say is unavailable for this story

God, yes, you wouldn't want anyone saying anything nasty about Williams and Barlow hugging, would you?

The Telegraph inadvertently gets to the problem of the story. To justify the excitement, there's a desperate desire to present this as an unlikely surprise:

Bandmate Owen said: "Getting the five of us to be in a room together, although always a dream, never actually seemed like becoming a reality.

"Now the reality of the five of us making a record together feels like a dream. It's been an absolute delight spending time with Rob again. But I'm still a better footballer," he joked.

... but the entire world has just been waiting for this moment, and for the last two or three years it's been an inevitable 'when' rather than an 'if':

Despite Williams ridiculing Barlow during his early solo shows, the pair began to bury the hatchet in recent years and their friendship was renewed.

Williams said last year: "You carry around all this resentment and bitterness for such a long time."

[...]

Williams had already revealed he was working with Barlow. Last month he announced the pair were to release a duet Shame which will feature on his greatest hits collection.

Still, the Telegraph does focus in on some people who won't be celebrating:

The new album will be released on Take That's label Polydor, rather than Williams's company, EMI.

Ah, the cost of trying to drag their nosediving big name out the dumper is having to let Polydor get the most cake.

The Times - well, who knows or cares what The Times says these days?

Really, though, at times like this you need to turn to an expert. What have you got for us, Popjustice?

SOMEONE GET LULU ON THE PHONE.

Now, that would be a reunion which didn't come any bigger.

Prince helps out the Mirror

So, how did the Prince album giveaway do for the Mirror? Pretty well, from the paper's perspective:

Their sales increased by 334,000 and 45,000 [for sister paper the Daily Record] respectively when compared with sales on the previous Saturday.

The Mirror hopes that people will have been so thrilled with the paper that came with the record that they'll be back for more Andy Capp and 3AM. Good luck with that, Mirror.

They're also convinced they've created something collectable:

According to the Mirror, copies of its Saturday issue have "become an instant collector's item" and the CD itself has "sparked a global bidding war" with copies "being touted for $22 - £14.60 - last night on the internet...

Perhaps. But you can pick it up for 99p right now. Which, to be fair, is still a profit - although the large number of 'no bids' suggests it might not have been such a canny investment after all.

Darkness at 3AM: Thinking of the children

The Mirror's gossip team stick their fingers into Kerry Katona's misery again:

Brian McFadden is so furious with ex Kerry Katona for yelling at their kids in a C4 show he has demanded they spend the summer holidays in Oz, with him. Molly, eight, and Lilly-Sue, seven, will fly to Sydney today. Brian said: "It really upsets me when she uses the kids in her TV shows. I don't like them being pawns in a story."

Yes. That's the best way to stop the kids being pawns in a story, by telling the press that you want the kids with you, away from being used as a cheap way of generating headlines.

Darkness at 3AM: Vickers in a to-do

Diana Vickers 'accidentally' tells the Mirror she's going out with someone:

Blushing, Diana said: “I don’t know why I said that – I am dating someone. I just got really flustered. We’ve been casually dating for a little while.

“He’s just a regular Joe, so he’d kill me if I say his name and because it’s at such an early stage I don’t want to tell anyone yet. I’m so busy it’s hard to fit a boyfriend in, we’re just seeing how it goes.”

How delightful for Vicker's paramour to open the paper today and see himself described as "an ordinary joe." I wonder if she makes him dress up in a boiler suit?

What makes it even more bemusing is that it's Diana Vickers. You're not Lady GaGa. You can imagine Mr. Ordinary Joe telling his mates "yeah, I'm seeing this woman - it's nobody you know, though..."

Darkness at 3AM: Liam explains it all

The Mirror's gossip team whisks us back to the Brits:

Liam Gallagher has finally explained why he snubbed brother Noel in his Brits acceptance speech when Oasis walked off with Best Album.

There was a mystery about that? I thought we all knew he was a petulant, drunken cock?

The Oasis frontman turned fashion designer says: "I was fed up of it all being about me and Noel. I wanted to thank the other members of the band." And about time too.

Well, I suppose it's nice to see the grunts in the engine room sticking together.

Owen meanies: Mark Owen asks if he's being sorry enough

This morning's reports about Mark Owen's human failings leave a nasty taste in the mouth, with the "confession" in the Sun having all the hallmarks of a vaguely famous person reluctantly washing their dirty laundry in public to head off the paper from parading the skidded knickers for all to see.

"I have been living with the guilt. It has always been there - you carry it around with you," he said.

"It held me back in my relationship with Emma. I wouldn't have done any of this if I had my time again.

"I am halfway through my life now and this, in a way, is a lesson. You've got to learn and that's what I am going to do."

It's not entirely clear what the lesson is - although 'if you want to sound heartfelt, don't let your press office draft your apologies' might be a good one - but at least the story seeped out in a controlled way. You know, the way BNFL used to control the radioactive water they'd pump into the Irish Sea.

Over at the Mirror, without the actual apology to run with, the 3AMies fall back on listing

Mark Owen, Tiger Woods, Vanessa Hudgens and the top 10 not so squeaky clean stars

Top of the list is Britney Spears for, erm, being mentally ill. Classy, 3AM Girls. Classy.

Leona Lewis: Getting the story

Congratulations to the Daily Mirror - talk about being in the right place at the right time; they were down at Waterstone's signing where Leona Lewis got attacked by a man.

Here's the video:



Oh. Like Lizzie Archer that time the marrow exploded, it looks like the Mirror team decided that nothing interesting was going to happen, and left early. Imagine, Sly Bailey, how much cash footage of the incident might have generated...

Darkness at 3AM: It's the Google-eyes

Oh, the 3AM Girls are excited this morning:

We knew that U2 were big - but now they're visible from SPACE!

The amazing giant claw that is the centrepiece to their 360 tour party is so huge Google Earth can pick it up as it moves around the world with Bono and the boys.

I don't want to really blow their minds, but you can see the table on our patio on Google Earth, should you wish to.

3Am to take on TMZ

Oh, bless their little shoes. The Daily Mirror has decided that it wants some of that TMZ action and is spinning 3am out into a website.

Obviously, it already is a website, hosting the poorly-conceived ramblings of the current Mirror gossip team, but now it's going to go 24 hours a day.

Well, yes, it is already 24 hours a day. Because even Trinity Mirror haven't started switching off their servers when they go home for the night. But this is different, right?

The launch of the website marks the first time that 3am content has been spun-off as a standalone brand. Until now it has only been available on the Mirror.co.uk website under its "Celebs" section.

3am.co.uk, which has been six months in development, will provide 24-hour celebrity news, video and blogs.

I guess it'll be handy when James Murdoch walls up Gordon Smart behind a tollbooth.

Still, nice to hear that 3AM is going to save the Daily Mirror. Just like back in 2004 when it was a 3AM magazine that was the future:

The launch of 3am Magazine this week was the first salvo produced by a 50-strong magazines unit established by Trinity Mirror to help reverse the sales decline of its three national titles.

Journalists in the new "centre of excellence" have been encouraged to dress down, listen to the radio and "get out and about" in order to encourage a creative atmosphere.

The two-page 3am gossip column, launched in April 2001, has been identified by Trinity Mirror bosses as the newspaper's most identifiable brand and a major selling point.

Daily Mirror Circulation - January 2004 - 1,919,125
Daily Mirror Circulation - June 2009 - 1,330,301

Well, that worked well, then.

Phil Hall, who created the magazine division left in 2005; the division was closed in 2007 and I don't think anyone even noticed when the 3AM Magazine vanished.

Quite a powerbase to start taking down TMZ from, then. No word on if the 3AM ranks will be swollen to include people to actually file stories 24 hours a day, or if the UK really has enough celebrities to keep such a site going. Even TMZ is reduced to filling the longueurs between dead singers by running "you won't guess what a woman you've never heard of from a 70s sitcom you've forgotten looks like now... oh, older... oh, you did guess then".

Darkness at 3AM: Shiny things

They really did this:

Simon Cowell's clearly a big fan of the Daily Mirror. Why else would he send out invites to his 50th birthday bash in October - in mirrored envelopes? We can't think any of his beautiful guests need to check themselves out ...

Yes. His invites were inspired by the Daily Mirror. Because the outside was as eye-catching as possible, but the contents proved to be nothing more than a disappointing attempt to persuade people to spend some time marking the passing of time in unpleasant company.