You have to feel sorry for Kerry Katona

She can't even get married without being upstaged by one of the others from Atomic Kitten:

FORMER Atomic Kitten pop star Natasha Hamilton has thanked Bristol’s Southmead Hospital after she went into suspected labour at bandmate Kerry Katona’s wedding.

That's a way to upstage the bride.

Her baby’s dad is Ritchie Neville, 35, from boyband 5ive, so the baby, who they have already decided to call Ella, will be 90s pop royalty.

90s pop royalty being approximately equal to a pre-unification Germanic duchy, really, and even on that scale the baby is one of those royals a long way from the throne. Kind of King Ralph distance.

“It was a late wedding, so the speeches were going on at 9pm when Natasha started feeling a bit sick."

We can only imagine.

Everyone ended up alright, thanks to the NHS. Although Katona might be slightly less than thrilled at the stealing of thunder.

Oversharing

Sorry, what was that, ContactMusic?

Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey renewed their vows in Disneyland because they like to ''dress up''.

Let's just raise an eyebrow and move on, shall we?

The Osmonds: A house divided

It's not just the increasingly brittle Tory party who are split in two over the idea of gay people having basic civil rights. That other battered, storied institution, The Osmonds, are also having a tough time of it.

Over in Utah, many of The Osmonds are actively campaigning against gay marriage, holding an event:

You'll note it starts with a "gather and mingle", although I'm assuming the mingling was tightly controlled to go girl, boy, girl, boy.

But you know who doesn't have time to listen to a teenager playing the piano in a bid to try and stop people they'll never meet getting married?

Marie Osmond, that's who. Marie's got something to say:

"The God that I believe in is a god of love, not fear. I don't tell my children if you're not good you're going to Hell. I tell my children that God will be there for them when they struggle. That's the God I believe in...I believe in [my daughter's] civil rights, as a mother. I think my daughter deserves everything that she desires in life. She's a good girl. She's a wonderful child. I don't think God made one color flower. I think he made many..."

You know, it might be churlish to point out here that there's not really any doubt that there are many flowers. Although the God making them bit isn't exactly factual.

So let's just applaud Marie Osmond's warmth, and remember that Not All Osmonds Think The Same.

Soulobit: Cecil Womack

Cecil Womack has died.

He married Sam Cooke's daughter, Linda - although he proposed to her first when she was just twelve. He explained this to The Independent back in 1994:

By the time her father died in 1964 I felt very close to her. I decided to get my nerve together and propose to her. Either way I wanted to know how she felt about me. One evening, just before I was about to go on tour, I told her, 'I know this may sound strange to you, but I really want to marry you.' She said we were both too young. She wasn't shocked by my confession, but just thought the timing was wrong. She had plans to go to college. Sometimes I wish we had got together then.

Perhaps even more uncomfortably, he told the paper he'd thought about her "romantically" from the time she was eight; although he also describes his feelings for her as "like brother and sister".

It's clearly something of complicated relationship. Especially as he was her step-uncle as well.

Perhaps it's better to focus on the music together - and working together was something Cecil had to fight for:

When we married we started working together all the time. I think that upset some people. A lot of the guys I worked with were very anti-women. They knew I was all for promoting women who could do the job well. I've had good relationships with women and kind of looked after them.

Perhaps the best-known fruits of their collaboration is Teardrops. And that's had a healthy second life, being picked up by the XX:

Cecil Womack died on February 1st. He was 65.

Moore and Gordon split

Never nice to hear of the end of a marriage, especially one that's lasted 27 years, but Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore have announced their separation. Besides the personal sadness, there's also a bit of a cloud over the long-term future of Sonic Youth between the lines of the statement from Matador:

"Musicians Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, married in 1984, are announcing they have separated. Sonic Youth, with both Kim and Thurston involved, will proceed with its South American tour dates in November. Plans beyond that tour are uncertain. The couple has requested respect for their personal privacy and does not wish to issue further comment."

I suspect those South American dates will give an indication of if this is a 'still friends, still working together' split, or 'contractually obligations can't stop us throwing guitars at each others' heads' one.

Gordon in the morning: The second Mrs Gallagher

Vanished from Bizarre like a Russian general who had laughed at Stalin's moustache is Carl Stroud, the "Digital editor", and his piece on Amy Winehouse's Belgrade meltdown. It's been replaced - at least in front page orthodoxy - by a bit saying similar things written by Richard White. Gordon's two stories predicting a sober Winehouse have returned to the 'related stories' box (though no others, and certainly not Stroud's piece), as a line has been developed which tries to explain why Smart could believe things would be fine, and they weren't:

[I]t is thought she had a secret stash of booze on the set in Belgrade, Serbia. A source said: "In the run up to the show she was disappearing. By the time she got on stage she was on another planet."

In the run-up to the gig, it looked a little like Winehouse's management had been planting an "it's alright" narrative in the column; this morning, it appears the "it wasn't our *ahem* their fault, ooh she's wily" tale has been dropped off.

I don't normally wade into the comments section of Bizarre, but it's worth remembering the audience Gordon is writing for. Pinkstone offered this up:

Don't know about back to back IT SHOULD BE MONEY BACK TO BACK

Um... the song is called Back To Black. But otherwise... um... well done on being able to use the caps lock.

Gordon, it appears, was more bothered by Noel Gallagher's wedding to Sara MacDonald, providing a warm write-up of the affair.

In fact, it's so warm, it misses out entirely the only real noteworthy aspect of the day: the non-appearance of Liam Gallagher.

To be fair, not pointing that out is a small kindness, focusing on the positives of the day and not jumping on a grim fact and blowing it up. If only Smart treated all the people he wrote about like that, and not just his mates.

Gordon in the morning: It's the annual Kate Moss wedding story

Gordon Smart seems to know an awful lot about Kate Moss' planned wedding to Jamie Hince.

The original plan was to have the ceremony in a church in nearby Burford, but it wasn't big enough to hold all their friends and family.

And the newlyweds won't be joining their loved ones for a sing-song on the coach. They will travel to the reception in an MG sports car with balloons tied to the back.

Clearly, The Sun's regular reporting of Moss wedding plans, whether genuine or made-up (didn't she marry Pete Doherty on a beach, Gordon?) has merely been a rehearsal for this moment.

Elton John successfully contrasts two events

I'm not sure if NME.com have cut off half his quote, or if their story about Elton John is as complete as it could be:

Elton John has had his say on the Royal Wedding after attending Prince William and Kate Middleton's nuptials in London this morning (April 29).

The Rocket Man attended the ceremony at Westminster Abbey with his partner David Furnish as the happy couple tied the knot in front of 1,900 guests.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5Live on his way out of the venue, John said: "It's not the Oscars."

Really? Saying - somewhat bemusingly - that a wedding is not like a prize giving was "having his say", was it?

Was he angry at it not being like the Oscars? Because there were no goody bags and only one person got a kiss out of it?

Or was he delighted it wasn't like the Oscars - no awkward chit-chat with Joan Rivers on the way in?

Perhaps he was trying to send a coded warning - "Victoria Beckham, if you hear this, please, for god's sake remember: IT'S NOT THE OSCARS"?

Really, he didn't "have his say". A more accurate lead-in would have been "Elton John has said a thing".

Gordon in the morning: Wedding announcement

This morning, Gordon Smart announces an extra wedding in a busy schedule:

If you were thinking PRINCE WILLIAM's nuptials were shaping up to be the booziest...

Eh? Who would be thinking "you know what, I bet the bloody King Of Tonga is going to get bladdered at William's wedding. I can't wait to see how shitfaced the Archbishop Of York is that day. The Mall is just going to be a river of privileged vomit"?

...or ED MILIBAND's the "must-have" invite - you'd be wrong.

Well, yes, if you really thought that, I think you'd be very, very wrong indeed.

But what is this wedding that is going to be more desirable than - yes - even the chance to stand around awkwardly while David Miliband fields questions about how he's been this last few months?

Former OASIS star NOEL GALLAGHER and fiancée SARA MacDONALD are tying the knot in the most rock 'n' roll ceremony of 2011.

Gordon has a "source" who stresses how low key this ceremony will be:

"Noel secretly asked Sara to marry him on her birthday last October. He's not one for making a big scene. This is the man who kept his leather jacket on when his lad Donovan was born."

That's not actually 'not making a fuss', that's 'behaving like some sort of cock in a midlife crisis'.

Smart doesn't seem to have spotted that his "source" contradicts his claim that this will be the most boisterous wedding of the year; presumably if he had he'd have simply made up a totally different source.

But do continue, "a source":

"They have been living like they are married for years anyway, but now they have a family together Noel thought it was the right time to do the romantic thing."

Their first child was born in 2007, but apparently this didn't constitute 'being a family', then.

Gordon finishes with a little anecdote:

I hear he bumped into MARK WAHLBERG in Toys R Us in Hollywood the other day.

That's something that doesn't happen very often when he's getting the milk in Waitrose in north London.

Yes, I suspect he doesn't ever bump into anyone in the Hollywood branch of Toys R Us when he's in a Waitrose in a totally different country. Or did you just forget to have a sub look at that paragraph?

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Wedding preparations

Back when Charles and Diana got married - whatever happened to her, by the way? - the ceremony was released on records by both ITN and BBC. Scientists say that most of the discs actually rolled themselves direct from Woolworths to the nearest branch of Oxfam.

Still, it was 1981, and if you wanted to enjoy the ceremony over and over again, you pretty much had only a record as a way of doing it.

Quite why they're bothering to stick out a record of the forthcoming wedding between William and Koo Stark isn't clear, but they are. Chief regal nuptial expert at HMV, Gennaro Castaldo, is excited:

Gennaro Castaldo, of HMV, which will be among the online and high street stores selling the album, said: “We’re expecting huge demand for what, no doubt, will prove a highly collectible recording and piece of royal memorabilia.

“We could well be looking at the first ever number one royal album, and you could even have a situation where the Royal couple find themselves at the top of the singles chart as well.”

Really? The download version isn't really a souvenir, being a digital file - tricky to take to Antiques Roadshow - and are there really enough people interested in specific parts to push bits up the singles chart?

I do like the possibility that Kate and William might be invited to mime to bits of their wedding on the Christmas Top Of The Pops, though.

Wouldn't you just tape it on your Sky+ if you were that bothered, though?

Elton's friends: Playing for Rush

It comes to something when even the Daily Mail can smell that there's something badly wrong with Elton John playing Rush Limbaugh's wedding.

Furnish later revealed to People magazine that John justified his appearance by telling him: 'Life is about building bridges, not walls.'

Is it, though? Sure, it's good to be generous, and perhaps make a pointed point about how you're playing the wedding of a man who believes you shouldn't have the right to get married; even taking a fee from someone who uses his platform to rail against AIDS charities, to give to an AIDS charity.

But on the other hand: that's just self-justifying rubbish, isn't it? Limbaugh believes that money can buy anything - even a gay man's conscience - and you've proved him right. The "build bridges not walls" argument could cover any sort of dealing with the enemies.

It's true that both Limbaugh and John support civil unions but not gay marriage, so on that they're not so very far apart - Limbaugh has a "they can't help it" attitude, and John fears that the idea of marriage is a demand too far. He's keen to stress that he isn't Mr Furnish: "We're not married. Let's get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage."

Yes, Elton, god forbid you should be treated equally if it might upset some people.

Perhaps it's this pissweak spirit of worrying more about upsetting rich bigots than fighting for civil liberties that makes John tinkling over Limbaugh's big keyboard not so surprising.

But only a fool would believe that a right-wing friend of Rush would be sat listening to Crocodile Rock thinking "you know what, maybe we should be helping fight the AIDS crisis..."

[Thanks to Michael M]

Gordon in the morning: An overlooked guest

Poor Gordon Smart. Given how The Sun has fawned over Robbie Williams for years, it must hurt that Hello got the plum seat at the wedding, and it's there, in all the photos, grinning alongside the Happy Couple.

No wonder Gordon couldn't bring himself to write about the event, instead handing his copy of Hello over to Tom Wells to do the copying from.

Just a point, though: how shabby is it for a man making as much as Williams does to sell his wedding for a few extra quid?

Gordon in the morning: Allen the family

It only encourages him:

PREGNANT singer LILY ALLEN beamed yesterday "It's a Sun."

The thrilled mum-to-be took to Twitter to show off my exclusive front page story that she is expecting for the first time.

Seriously. I suspect that Allen was as much rolling her eyes as welcoming The Sun's decision to splash her womb across the paper, but that doesn't seem to have bothered Gordon.

Lily posed with a copy of Britain's favourite paper and posted it up for her two million plus followers to see.

This could turn into a recursive loop, so let's hope Lily doesn't post a copy of this story, otherwise Gordon will have to report on that, which she'll have to post, and so on and so on, until we can't remember why it wasn't really any of our business in the first place.

In other stuff that we can't quite bring ourselves to call news, Robbie Williams is apparently getting married in a secret ceremony tomorrow. Not entirely sure who it's a secret from - perhaps Gordon's using the word "secret" to mean "not yet posted to Lily Allen's Twitter for her two million followers to see":

Secretive Robbie and his bride-to-be told family and close friends of the date only last week.

Perhaps he was trying to keep it out of the papers.

Unbelievably, Gordon decides this event requires him to offer an opinion:

myVIEW
By GORDON SMART
Bizarre Editor

That bit would have been the easy bit. But... what then, Gordon? What could you possibly have to say?

ROBBIE Williams has been tamed.

Really? That's it?

Do you have anything to actually say, or is this just an excuse for a bit of name-dropping?

But his best girlfriend to date is Ayda. It's no coincidence she might just happen to be the least famous of them all. I met her when I interviewed Robbie in his mum's London flat last year. She's seriously fit.

Wow. That manages to combine being shallow with being a bit creepy.

I wonder if Gordon told Ayda she was Williams' "best girlfriend to date"?

She's good for Robbie and he's finally realised it's what he needs to keep him sane. Now he really is rich beyond his wildest dreams.

Actually, that's quite a sweet little line to end on. Pity it came after a couple of hundred words of poking the future Mrs Williams like she was a prize cow - and absolutely no suggestion that Ayda is also getting married; it's almost as if marrying Robbie Williams is something that is being done at her.

Gordon in the morning: Morrisey says no

It's not often Gordon Smart brings news of Morrisey to his readers, but today there's news of the man:

But RUSSELL BRAND and KATY PERRY have asked the miserable Manc to do the honours - even though he's told them not to tie the knot.

He was meeting Katy Perry for the first time. Mozzer went to tea with her, which is hardly on-brand for him, with his disdain for fluff pop, but he's mates with Russell Brand, apparently:

"He's Russell's mate and he is fascinating but he was giving us a hard time about getting married.

"He swooned and sighed, 'Oh, left hand third finger, don't do it.' It was just so eloquent and poetic and like one of his songs."

Clearly, Perry doesn't meet literate people very often.

However, eloquent though the advice was, it will go unheeded. And Morrisey will still be invited, but must consider himself warned:

I told him, 'We can't have a Mr Misery like you messing things up.'

Childish, treating the listener like they have no cortex and embarrassingly clunky. Just like one of her songs.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Def Leppard

A shower of glorious love to David Hepworth and The Word for pointing the world in the direction of the New York Times wedding section. Always a haven for the unexpected - it should be subtitled "if I'm compromising, at least I'm going to do it as publicly and expensively as possible" - this week, they recorded the nuptials of Def Leppard's Phil Collen and Helen Simmons:

Ms. Simmons, too, felt a spark. “But emotionally, there were a lot of other things going on with us,” she said.

The other things included a wife from whom he was separated, a girlfriend from whom he wasn’t, and Ms. Simmons’s boyfriend.

Two days later, he asked her for seven minutes of her time.

Not 5 or 10? “I knew I needed more than 5 and I figured 10 would be too long,” Mr. Collen said matter-of-factly.

There's a lot of that sort of thing.

Wedding Car For Cutie

Congratulations to Death Cabbie Ben Gibbard and Zoey Deschanel out of She & Him (for our purposes, anyway): They had a Saturday night wedding.

Peaches Geldof: ... plus, we get to keep the linens and crockery we got as gifts

Peaches Geldof has no regrets about her surprisingly already finished marriage to some bloke from some band:

“Max and I are really good friends. We were just too young. That’s all it was. I still love the idea that we did it. I love the idea I can tell my kids one day about it and I know he does too.”

There's not much point in adding anything to that. Let's all just pretend it never happened, shall we?

Peaches Geldof is tired of something

Peaches Geldof's marriage really is the gift that keeps on giving - since nobody is very interested in her pet magazine ("I Am Peaches Geldof, Hear Me Churn" - available wherever magazine retailers enjoy filling out return forms), at least she can constantly complain about reports on the state of her marriage to that bloke from that band:

She says, "It was a complete lie (that we are getting divorced). But a lot of newspaper stories are lies. They (rumours) just came out of the blue like a lot of tabloid stories. Just because I got married, they wrote that I was getting divorced. It didn't really (affect me), because I knew it wasn't true, so did my husband and my friends. So who else matters?"

A very good point, Peaches. So... erm, why are you issuing statements about it?

Elton John shares his views on Proposition 8

Elton John seems to be a little confused by the question of Proposition 8, which he seems to think is somehow about him. Apparently gays "only have themselves to blame":

"I don't want to be married," he says. "David and I are not married. Let's get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off. It's the word marriage."

The 61-year-old pop star believes that same-sex couples should be happy with a civil partnership as it gives them the same legal rights and protection as straight couples. "I'm very happy with a civil partnership," he adds. "If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership."

Yes, of course you don't want to be married, do you Elton? Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and his recording engineer, and not to be entered into lightly.

Now, if Elton doesn't want to get married to David Furnish, great. Nobody should force him to. But just because that's right for him doesn't mean he should support a nasty attempt to stop gay people for whom a civil partnership isn't the statement they choose to make.

And, to be blunt, John is deluded if the thinks the homophobes who funded Proposition 8 were doing so simply because they object to the idea of gay people being 'married'. The Mormon Church, whose members lavishly funded the campaign to withdraw rights from gay people [Google Doc] in California, are pretty clear that homosexuality is immoral:

The Church has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are proper only between a husband and a wife united in the bonds of matrimony.

Is Elton really so stupid he thinks that a group so committed to pouring cash into removing marriage rights simply because it's the word they object to? Does he really think that a group who are so busily organising themselves, driven by a belief that they should be arbiters of sexual morality for world, are going to meet each other at Temple and say "so long as they only have a civil partnership when they shag each other, that'll be alright"?

Elton John has always seemed a little selfish, and a little self-obsessed, but to not fight for a right simply because you yourself are happy without it is a step beyond. John didn't really do that much to help with the struggle for gay equality; you would have thought the least he could do was try and be a bit more careful with the gifts others bled for.

Gordon in the morning: Has Madonna kidnapped Gordon?

Today - oh, there's going to be a lot of this, isn't there? - the desperate bid to try and make 'couple fall out of love, split' into a never-ending story sees Wheeler and Cox file another story knocking Ritchie, making him sound like a paranoid obsessive:

ANGRY GUY RITCHIE believes MADONNA is SPYING on him during their break-up.

Guy, 40, was furious that details of a private divorce “war summit” were leaked to his wife, The Sun can reveal.

He believes the pop queen is using her huge staff to report his every move.

Or, maybe, she's just buying The Sun every day. That could be it.

A close family friend said yesterday: “Any hopes Guy had of their divorce being private and dignified are out the window."

How lucky there was a close friend willing to tell a newspaper how sad it is the divorce is not being kept private any more.

Meanwhile, Alex Peake (Gordon must be having a lie-down somewhere with a Hollyoaks calendar) talks to Peaches Geldof - or rather, reads a quote by Peaches Geldof about her marriage in Heat:

“I didn’t go into it with Max thinking, ‘This is going to last forever’.

“But I did go into it thinking, ‘I love him right now and I know that I will continue to love him for a long while’.”

Heartwarming, huh? Peaches will remain married at least until she's able to divorce without the Madonna split taking the shine off it.

The piece ends with a credit, and a plea:

See the interview in Heat on sale now.

GOT a story on a celeb? CALL The Sun on 020 7782 4104, EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk or TEXT 63000.

Presumably they'd be delighted if you just read this week's Hello! down the phone to them.