Gordon in the morning: Beats as it sweeps as it cleans

Chris Martin out of Coldplay bought three Henry Hoovers in John Lewis the other day.

Yes, it might not seem much, but it's Gordon's big lead today:

IF you are a close pal of CHRIS MARTIN brace yourself for disappointment when you open your pressies tomorrow.

[...]

Explaining his buys as he left the homeware section of the department store on London’s Oxford Street on Friday, Chris said: “Some of them are gifts and one’s for me.

“I love to do the housework. I don’t really see the point of getting someone else to do all your day-to-day chores.”

Apart from disappointment, it's also somewhat ruined the surprise, hasn't it? The headline suggests that there's something tight about Martin's gifts:

£30m Martin's presents suck!

But Gordon doesn't know who Martin is buying for - it could be that these are gifts for vague friends-of-friends, for whom a fairly pricey electrical item could be considered almost over-generous. Or it could be an extra gift. Or it could be someone has asked him for a vacuum cleaner. And since when did the value of gift reside in how much it cost?

Gordon has also gone through the cuttings:

Henry is fast becoming the biggest name in the world of celeb vacuuming.

The jolly red appliance, which costs £100, is a favourite of sex-mad comedian RUSSELL BRAND. He used to pleasure himself with a Henry when he was a confused teenager.

Or, at least, he said he did as a joke.

Still, Gordon has other things to fill his page with, such as calling Girls Aloud "tarts", and having a go at the "ginger one".

Who's the sucker?

Strange tales from The Sun's Bizarre this morning, where they report that Russell Brand has done it with Henry the Hoover. They know because, erm, he said so on "his BBC Radio 6 podcast". Which means it's taken them from Sunday to Friday to download the audio and play it. Let's be generous and assume Victoria Newton was having trouble installing the iTunes update, shall we?

Even so, it seems to have escaped the paper's notice that Brand is a comedian, and as such perhaps not everything he says should be taken quite at face value. Even if that face is the cheery little squint-box of Henry the Hoover.

The way the creaky story is written up is quite eye-opening in itself:

But the outrageous comedian’s latest love confession will really blow you away.

We think this is meant to be a pun, although it doesn't quite work, what with Henry being a sucking device. It's not totally the paper's fault, though, as the erroneous use of "blow" in blow job doesn't help.

Deviant Brand has admitted he once enjoyed a sexual liaison with a HE — and his name was HENRY.

But it gets worse.

Sorry? The "it gets worse" suggests that you might think there's something "wrong" about men having sex with men - an impression not entirely dissipated by the use of the word "deviant" in the first sentence. Is the Sun being sub-edited from 1954?

I should probably leave the specifics to your own imagination. But put it this way, Russell was the plug to the hoover’s socket.

That doesn't even make sense - you could have said "Russell found a whole new use for the hose attachment" or "Henry found himself cleaning some crevices which vacuum cleaners shouldn't see" or something.

Is there no end to Brand’s depravity? He’s previously boasted about doing it with a woman 30 years older than him (he’s now 31). And he claims to have bedded five women in just one day.

Sorry... did she just suggest that having sex with someone older than you is in some way "depraved"? That would make Catherine Zeta-Jones the most kinky beast on earth, wouldn't it?

It’s just a shame vacuum cleaners can’t come forward to kiss and tell.

You could just make something up. It's what you'd normally do.

The paper missed the really big story, though: when Russell's then-partner Dusty Bin found out, he was furious.

[Plug: You can have your own Henry. But please don't get carried away trying out the "robust construction" and "Hi/Low control on brush head"]