Gordon in the morning: Gone West-life

There's a sizeable story on Bizarre this morning, as Aaron Tinney and Blanaid Murphy turn up with grim news from the Westlife camp:

WESTLIFE star Shane Filan has started a court battle over massive debts.

A property company set up by the Irish boyband singer, 32, ran into trouble owing £4million.

He applied for a legal agreement in London this week to pay back creditors over a period of time.

This may be a prime example of sticking to what you do best. Although having heard Westlife's music, it's quite possible that being a property tycoon still is what Shane Filan does best.

Michael Jackson almost fills debt hole from the grave

Earlier this week, some news places were reporting that Michael Jackson was afraid he'd end up working in McDonalds if his London comeback shows didn't work. We have this, by the way, on the highest of authorities:

"He was scared to death because AEG was funding everything. He said he would have to work at McDonalds if he didn't do these shows," Michael’s hairstylist Karen Faye reportedly told LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) detectives just days after the pop icon passed away.

That seems quite a lot for a barber to know about - if she was claiming he'd intended to go somewhere nice for his holidays, or had been planning to have sex on Saturday or Sunday and had taken something for the weekend, maybe this would be credible.

Can you imagine Jackson working in McDonalds? As if having Ronald McDonald in there isn't alarming enough for the kids. To say nothing of how the last place a man whose face kept dropping off should be working is in the catering industry - although, to be fair, his face contained about as much flesh as Taco Bell beef.

Still, it turned out that Jackson shouldn't have worried. All he had to do, it turns out, was drop down dead. He's been doing nicely since then:

The pop superstar passed away with massive debts amounting to a mammoth $400 million (£266 million), boosted by a huge number of creditors demanding alleged unpaid monies after his demise.

But papers filed in a Los Angeles court on Thursday (17Feb11) show the Thriller star's estate is heading back in to the black thanks to a huge surge in posthumous record, film and merchandising sales.

The estate administrators have now paid off $159 million (£106 million) of the pop star's debts.

To be fair, though, the paying back of debt is as much about not having to fund a man who would buy a pottery leopard with jade eyes at the drop of a hat.

If only the deficit was as easy to fix, eh, George?

EMI extend long, slow death a few more months

It's looking likely that Guy Hands has managed to just about scrape together the cash to keep hold of EMI for a little while longer. USD105million, all of which will go into the debt pit that Terra Firma has dug, and all of which just keeps the beast limping on until March next year.

Meanwhile, with the cash they can get going on feeding the debt, no word on what EMI intends to do for actual money. I'm sure there's a plan, though, right?

EMI nervously casts about for cash

Hey, there's no problem at EMI, right? It's just that Terra Firma are desperately trying to find a billion quid to prop the company up.

But, hey, right now it's able to cope with being £2.6billion in debt, it's just worried that if something bad happens, it might have to hand the whole thing over to Citibank.

Citibank - can you imagine them trying to run a record label? They can barely cope with running a bank.

EMI are trying to sound upbeat, but the disappointing performance of the Beatles remasters and the general yawn which met the return of Robbie Williams can't be helping steal nerves at Terra Firma.

The real question, though, is if you had a billion quid, why would you throw it in the debt hole? Wouldn't you wait for the collapse and use it to buy the decent bits of EMI in a fire sale?

EMI gets the chance to burn through more cash

The FT is reporting that investors in EMI have agreed to Guy Hands' injection of £300million into the group:

Mr Hands is understood to be working with Barclays, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley on a plan to raise £200m-£280m from a high-yield bond issue that could repay some of the debt EMI owes to Citigroup.

Repaying debt with more debt. All very inventive.

Perhaps they should just stick to mucking about with financial instruments and forget the whole making records thing? They seem much better at the one than the other.