Frank Sidebottom: There are good, good people

No sooner had the news about Chris Sievey's finances been made public, than people started rallying round. There's now enough money for a proper, fitting send-off, and hopefully some left over to help out his family.

Chris Sievey's family say there's no money for a funeral

More heartbreaking news from Manchester, as Frank Sidebottom's children say they haven't got the money to bury their father properly. The Manchester Evening News reports:

Chris leaves sons Stirling, 31, and Harry, 18, and daughter Asher, 30. Stirling said the family have been in discussion with hospital bereavement officers and a funeral director.

He said: “My father has not left any money behind and we are struggling to try and sort his funeral out. He spent money as it came in and was always a man for the moment. He never planned ahead. We have spoken to a funeral director and the sort of figures that they are talking about are too high.

“We would not know how to go about getting that sort of money at the moment. They said that applying for a pauper's funeral would be an option.

“He would not want us worrying about trying to sort it all out. We would not want our dad to have a pauper's funeral but we would not want something over the top for him too. Just something simple and dignified.”

Radio 2 DJ Mark Radcliffe, who played alongside Chris in the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band in the 1980s, said a pauper's funeral would be a tragedy. He said: “Something needs to be organised to give Chris the send-off that he deserves. It would be tragic for a man who brought so much enjoyment and laughter to the region to have a pauper's funeral.”

After the MEN published the original report, it updated the story to suggest that a campaign is already under way to raise the money needed for a fitting send-off.

Fundamentalists plan to spread a bit more misery

The fuddled-headed hate-splodges of the Westboro Baptist Church have decided to take time out from pissing on the funerals of dead soldiers to make Christians look terrible at Ronnie James Dio's funeral. Their beef is down to him being, you know, a Satanist. Probably:

“WBC to picket this public memorial to remind you who worship that old Serpent, Satan, that your time is very short.

“You know 67 year old, Satan-worshiping (or at least one of their enablers) Ronnie James Dio (of showing his devil horns to the world each time he goes in public) Black Sabbath fame is dead, right? We’ll be there!

“Just because the chances of any of God’s elect being amongst this group of heavy metal sycophants is slim to none does not mean they should not get some good words.

“Yes, it is true that Ozzy Osbourne did “accidentally” bite off the head of a bat, but THAT is the least of their sins (little nasties!), they currently do not do that, but they throw raw meat to the audience and encourage violence of EVERY FORM!

“Here you have the list of admitted sins of this now dead and in hell pervert:

“1) He hates his neighbor(s) starting with Ozzy Osbourne, and continuing down to his pornography star niece Gen Padova!

“2) He hates God. Pay especial attention to the fact that he changed his original sir name from Padova to Dio, which means God in Italian.

“3)Ronnie the simpleton enabled, and encouraged Sorceries: everything he was about including the little finger horn thing (he got this from his mother which is an incantation to ward off the “evil eye”) to the drugs, bloody raw meat and his fellowship with those pentagon necklace wearing freakish band members.

“Yes, Ronnie James Padova (NOT DIO) is currently residing in hell. When all those who worship him and his false gods meet him in hell it will be just like this: Isaiah 2:12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: Isaiah 14:11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.

“Praise God all ye, His people. The Great Day of the Lord draws nigh. AMEN!"

If the greatest day of God makes these befuddled gospites keep quiet for ten minutes, let's hope it turns up soon.

It's confusing that their first point of dissent with Dio is that he hated his neighbours - presumably in direct contradiction of the Commandments - while announcing plans to go and funnel hate at their neighbours.

It's what he would have wanted

This may well be the height of good taste, and we're just not realising it:

Dannii Minogue Tweets about how she cried during Ronan Keating's eulogy

AEG miss the point a little while LaToya cries moider

The city of LA has suggested that AEG might like to pay some of the costs associated with the Michael Jackson farewell promotional event.

AEG aren't rushing forward to help:

But AEG president Tim Leiweke said that AEG did pay for the memorial itself.

Leiweke seems to have been breathing too deeply from the fumes of Jackson overstatement, as he seems to feel that putting on an event is, somehow, an act of public generosity in its own right. In summary, AEG's position seems to be 'why should we pay for the crowd control? We already paid out to bring the crowds there in the first place'.

Meanwhile, LaToya Jacksons talks to the News Of The World (or possibly has a private conversation which the News Of The World paid money to get transcribed):

I will nail Michael Jackson's killers

Blimey. That's got to be up there with the death penalty as a cruel and unusual punishment, hasn't it?

Oh. As in "capture". I see.

Yes, "killers" - for LaToya believes that someone went out their way to kill Jackson. Presumably someone who couldn't wait another ten minutes or so for natural causes to do the work.

Jackson says she knows who did it - and yet, surprisingly, doesn't seem quick to share that vital piece of information:

"Michael WAS murdered," declared La Toya, 53. "And we don't think just one person was involved. Rather, it was a conspiracy of people. I feel it was all about money. Michael was worth well over a billion in music publishing assets and somebody killed him for that. He was worth more dead than alive."

Yes. Somebody - or bodies - who couldn't wait to get their hand on all that lovely, lovely debt that outweighed the value of his assets.

The Hooded Claw, speaking to the Sunday Mirror on condition of anonymity, explained that there wasn't a criminal mastermind alive who wouldn't kill to seize control of a complex of networks of companies that owned rights that had been used as collateral against unsustainable debts. "I mean, who wouldn't, right? And personally, I'd have made sure I killed him right before he did all those gigs to clear large chunks of the debt, rather than wait a few months, see the debt mountain reduced, and kill him when it would seem even more plausible that he just conked out from a year's worth of efforts in Greenwich."

Still, LaToya knows the names of people who were happy enough to conduct what would have been one of the most high-profile murders in history, despite the financial trail making them obvious suspects. And yet, rather than name them, she's just let them know she knows who they are, but isn't going to tell people yet. Has LaToya ever seen an episode of Columbo? Does she not realise that that sort of behaviour usually gets you wrapped in a carpet and dumped over the side of a boat bobbing about on Lake Michigan?

But to be fair, Columbo is a made-up story about murders. Which is totally different from this one. Because it doesn't have Peter Falk in it.

Mariah Carey explains why she was a bit ropey

Mariah Carey has felt the need to apologise for her performance at the Michael Jackson On Ice Memorial Show:

"Trying to sing today was basically impossible for me," writes Carey. "I could barely keep myself from crying. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to pull it together and really do it right, but I was literally choked up when I saw him there in front of me."

Well, that's Tuesday explained. Has she been crying solidly for the two decades prior to that?

People of LA less than thrilled at paying for Jackson DVD shoot

I'm sure that when the Jackson memorial winds up on sell-through DVD, it'll be through "public demand" and not, in any way, part of a long-term plan on anyone's part to turn a profit from the event.

Meanwhile, the people of Los Angeles are starting to ask why their cash-strapped city underwrote a large chunk of the costs of staging the event:

“I admit I shed a tear with Mariah, Queen and Paris,” said Jody Greenblatt, a pharmaceutical executive who lives in Los Angeles. “But I cry more at the thought of teachers’ pink slips, forced furloughed days, unemployment rates sky high and a state bankrupt.”

And it's not just voters:

On Tuesday, the city attorney, Carmen Trutanich, took the highly unusual step of appearing during the public comment period of a City Council hearing to announce that his office was investigating how Los Angeles taxpayers came to foot a bill for police protection and other city functions at the service, at a time when the city and state are running out of money.

To make matters worse, it turns out the money that was spent wasn't actually used all that wisely:

On Wednesday, the city controller, Wendy Greuel, sent a stern letter to the Los Angeles emergency management department demanding to know why it had spent $48,826 on sandwiches from a deli 80 miles from Los Angeles to feed police officers. (Sandwiches from Subway would have cost $17,491.25, she pointed out.)

I know "busing-in officers" isn't unheard of; but busing-in sandwiches?

Jackson: There's a pleasing image to carry with you

You remember yesterday? That big funeral? You know the casket? The guy in it? He didn't have his brains with him.

Not, apparently, in case a bunch of Zombie tribute acts tried to eat them, but because the LA coroner is keeping it in a glass jar for the time being. Apparently there won't be any funeral until Jackson gets his brains back.

There is no way this is a made-up number

The First Post makes a bold claim for Michael Jackson's funeral audience:

Sixteen American TV networks carried the memorial live. In Britain BBC2 cleared its schedule to show the service in its entirety, and around the world it is estimated to have been watched by one billion TV viewers.

"Cleared its schedule" sounds so much more exciting than "held over an episode of Eggheads", doesn't it?

But what about the "billion" viewers? The First Post calls this an estimate, which is fine - but who has estimated it? On what basis?

Or is it merely a clicking of the tongue, extrapolating that it was shown in a few countries, and picking a large sounding number out of the air?

Fifth Beatle only Beatle at own funeral

Given that he was so central to guiding their business for so many years, how touching that, erm, neither Ringo nor Macca appear to have gone to Neil Aspinall's funeral.

Yoko and, erm, Stella McCartney managed to make it to Twickenham.

Love, death and the whole damn thing

Despite the strenuous denials by Courtney Love's manager, the World Entertainment News Network (who they?) are still carrying their claim that Love caused a scene at Joe Strummer's funeral by "throwing herself on the coffin" and having to be pulled off by Mark Lamarr and Chrissie Hynde.

Their certainty in this story doesn't appear to be shaken despite the fact that none of the news organisations there seemed to have noticed, and, more significantly, that nobody in the congregation saw this event, either. Still, facts are often the death of a good story, aren't they?