Victoria Newton tries a new acronym

Oh good lord. The Arctic Monkeys have decided they'd like to take their girlfriends off on tour of America, which is apparently enough to try and generate a class of musical hangers-on:

Scouse Katie [Downes, Jamie Cook's girlfriend] told me: “There is a big gang of us from Liverpool going over.

“We are like the WAGS of the band — but we get on well.

“I can’t wait to see Jamie, it feels like I don’t see him for ages when he’s away on tour.”

It would seem that way, Katie, because, erm, he's away for ages.

It's bad enough that soccer has generated this fascination with people who seem to have given up their own identity to be part of a circus of hangers-on; the last thing we need is for that to be shifted to music as well.

So, is Newton cracking down on it? Or encouraging it?

What do you think?

I’m now calling the girls the BAGS — Bands’ Attractive Girlfriends.

You do realise that actually made it into the final article, Victoria. Bags? Really?

If the Arctic Monkeys don't want to go the way of Noel Gallagher, they might want to suggest to their girlfriends they're better off remaining individuals rather than being subsumed into a meaningless Stepfordesque group.

I bet you look good with your pants on

For some reason, the Arctic Monkeys have been trying to keep Jamie Cook's relationship with Katie Downes quiet. Almost as if dating a glamour model didn't fit with the band's image or something.

According to her MySpace page, Katie likes the Arctic Monkeys (although they come as a second to The Kooks - Luke Pritchard, take note). But then seh also lists her interests as "fetish photography and anything artistic", and yet her catalogue shows she seems to only appear in those hand-across-tits teenage-boy porn churned out for lower shelf magazines, so who knows what to believe?

It all pays well, though: apparently, she's made seven figures out of it all.

Arctic Monkeys attack daytime Radio One

We're a little bit surprised that the Arctic Monkeys are even bothering to have a pop at Radio 1, to be honest; we thought they were a bit above that. Mind you, the Victoria Newton thinks it's more than that - why, it's practically career suicide:

Radio 1 — the station who gave them a huge helping hand when they were mere marmosets — are the latest victims of a tongue lashing from the Sheffield scamps.

And I reckon the criticism won’t go down to well with the likes of DJs CHRIS MOYLES, JO WHILEY, ZANE LOWE and SCOTT MILLS.

Erm... Victoria, do you remember all those articles about how the Arctic Monkeys use computers and stuff? And how their fanbase existed before they started getting network coverage? This is more on a par with, say, Duran in the 80s attacking something like Radio Humberside - a little odd that the band would bother, but hardly going to ruin their lives.

What's more interesting is Jamie Cook's decision to have a go at something he admits he knows nothing about:

“English radio is terrible, and Radio 1 plays a lot of crap music.

“I realised that the other morning when I had the radio going.

“Even music I don’t usually listen to, like hip-hop, is obviously bad at the moment.

“There is no real hip-hop anymore.”

Judging the state of hip-hop from listening to Chris Moyles is like trying to follow the news by watching Fox. Tomorrow, we expect he'll be offering an opinion on the state of Austrian choral music.