Headline carries too much information all on its own

NME:

Meat Loaf invites Robbie Williams on Charlie Chaplin ghost hunt

Meat Loaf still at war with his double

Four years ago, Meat Loaf impersonator Dean Torkington was targeted by Meat Loaf himself. Back then, it was mainly down to the painting on the side of Dean's motor home.

They're still at war, though:

A Meat Loaf tribute artist from Lancashire is fighting a $100,000 (£64,000) writ from the US rock star, who accuses him of being a “cybersquatter and online imposter”.

Dean Torkington, 49, from Burnley, Lancashire, has used the MeatLoaf.org domain name since 2000. Torkington, who has performed his show To Hell And Back: (A Tribute to Meatloaf) for 16 years, argues that since he has shed 11 stone in the last two years, he could no longer be considered a “dead ringer” for the well-upholstered rocker.

Yes, that's right - the man who made his name pretending to be Meat Loaf is now too grand to be Meat Loaf. Or not grande enough:

“To be honest, losing all the weight wasn’t good for a Meat Loaf tribute act anyway. His pursuit of me through the courts has left me thinking differently about him. I do include some of his music in the show but I see it more as a tribute to the songs rather than the man.”

Dean suggests that, perhaps, his original material has sparked jealousy:

Torkington believes that his own original album, The Bat Strikes Back, angered Meat Loaf and provoked the writ . He asks: “Could the reason be it got a better review than Bat Out Of Hell 3 in Classic Rock Magazine?”

I don't think anyone of us can claim to know what goes on in Meat Loaf's mind, but I'm prepared to guess that, no, that couldn't be the reason.

According to The Independent:

Torkington met Meat Loaf backstage after a Liverpool concert in 2003 and claims the star asked him to hand over the domain name for £1,300. He declined.

.

Hmm. Let's look back at the Lancashire Evening Post in 2008:

He said the problem first surfaced last year when he was sat in the front row of a Meat Loaf concert in Liverpool when a man dressed in black handed him a note saying that the American singer wanted to meet him backstage.
[...]
"Then Meat Loaf's manager questioned me about using the website domain that I have. I told him that I would change the van but there was no way they were taking my website as I have had it for 15 years and it is really popular.

So either this happened "last year" from 2008, which would be 2007, or else in 2003. The story is all a bit confused, isn't it?

Meat Loaf off at Grand Final

He may or may not have been paid half a million Australian dollars for the performance, but Meat Loaf's appearance before kick-off at the Australian Football League's grand final hasn't exactly been a success.

Guess what, though?

Meat Loaf says it's not his fault:

"I'm sorry, they're jerks. I do not like them," he said of the AFL, according to News Ltd reports.

"And I'll tell you what, anybody that I hear announces that they're going to play for them I'm going to write to that particular artist a letter and tell them not to.

"And I hope the AFL hears this and I want this everywhere. Because I will go out of my way to tell any artist do not play for them."

The rocker said it was impossible to put on a good show in the allocated area.

I suspect if you're paying out half a million dollars, you'd be expecting you're getting an artist whose talents would allow him to put on a decent show in a back alley.

Mr. Loaf complains that there was no soundcheck, the earpiece didn't give him any guidance and there was no live piano.

It's almost as if he was warming-up for a sports event rather than playing a Meat Loaf gig. Oh... hang about...

The AFL have said that his show was "disappointing" but other than that have kept quiet.

Gordon in the morning: Gordon goes to the Q awards

Gordon doesn't want us to get the wrong impression: He's quite the man about town:

I’VE been to some pretty lively awards ceremonies...

Oh yes, he's seen people supping Asti Martini from dirty glasses, seen Johnny Borrell perform with a shirt on. Gordon thought he was unshockable. But:

but none as weird as yesterday’s Q Awards.

Oooh! Did Bauer decide to spring for a full-on black mass? Did strange half-human, half-shrimp like creatures swim through the air, distributing advertising material for the Kings of Leon album? Was Noel Gallagher talking backwards?

Worse than that, apparently:

Q Awards freak show

A freak show! Really? It's not just that Grace Jones turned up, is it?

Eighties dance diva GRACE JONES came close to stealing his crown as the biggest headcase of the night.

She was dressed like the Emperor from Star Wars and made about as much sense as Chewbacca on Class A drugs.

"dressed like the emperor" seems to mean "wore a face mask" - crazy, crazy times. And is Gordon suggesting that he could actually understand a Wookie who wasn't on drugs? "Come on Chewie, you're making no sense; I never should have let you have that tab..."

She compared herself to Lazarus in a speech so odd it had the crowd hiding behind their chairs.

I'm not quite sure why someone who has had some time away from the spotlight suggesting that she's been resurrected is quite so confusing to Gordon. Maybe he was sat there nudging his companions and whispering "she thinks she's a Boo Radleys song."

So, a woman in a mask who makes a bible reference - it's not that freaky. Hardly on a par with the days when Bedlam would be a tourist stop-off.

But there's more.

Ageing star MEAT LOAF’s truly cringe-worthy acceptance speech at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel left the crowd utterly bewildered.

Goodness, the audience spent a lot of time being confused and bewildered. It must have been like watching a spy movie with your grandparents - "what are they doing now? why are the saying that? which one is that?"

Meat’s people put the curious behaviour down to an eye injury and vertigo and whisked him off to hospital. He was still there last night.

So, he spent the night in hospital, which suggests that he was unwell. Is it entirely fair to call a bloke who needs hospital treatment a freak?

Apparently so. But Gordon's got more:

Eighties legend ADAM ANT,who has previously been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, said: “It’s good to be standing here. In fact, it’s just good to be standing anywhere.

“I can’t wait for the COLDPLAY royalties to come pouring in for the inspiration my outfits gave them.”

So Adam Ant is considered part of a freak show because he's had a mental illness? Gordon sounds slightly disappointed that Ant didn't run around in his underpants putting fruit on his head:

The man I thought most likely to be off the rails actually made the most coherent speech.

But it's not just the, erm, freaks that Gordon was bothered about:

What qualifies KIMBERLY STEWART to present an award to Coldplay

Yeah, where's her certificate from the University Of Making A Mumbling Speech? Has she even been to 'reading the word Coldplay off an envelope' summer school?

Perhaps, Gordon, the organisers thought she was qualified because she is known; perhaps she is known because your column reports on her doings as if she was famous. It's a bit like Frankenstein complaining about all these re-animated corpse monsters running about.

"Watch out for the cycle path? I thought you said beware of the psychopath"

Another email from James P:

You may remember a story a few months back about a Meat
Loaf impersonator getting threats from Meat Loaf himself, over his tourbus's similarity to Meat Loaf's own.

It gets worse for the poor chap.

He's currently in a legal battle with a working men's club where he was due to play. He refused to go onstage after his tribute bus got stuck up a cycle track where staff had directed him. According to the article, "Club staff also demolished a fence and took down a bollard in a bid to get him to the venue, but to no avail". It's not clear whether that's referring to the bus or the Meat Loaf.

Anyhow, he's now taking the club to court for his £800 fee. Unfortunately they in return have successfully counter-sued for £1950 in lost ticket sales. This is on top of the £1000 he was forced to spend on respraying the tourbus to keep Meatloaf happy.

Is there an unluckier tribute artist out there (besides the Gary Glitter acts, obviously)? I don't know of any. Surely this is PR gold for the real Meatloaf though, who can now claim that he's put some sort of demonic curse on the bus? I reckon a simple statement to the press saying "Meatloaf wishes him the best of luck with the next MOT, as it'd be terrible if it failed..." would do wonders for his image.

James ends up suggesting they never had this trouble with Vengabus, although to be fair, the Venga Boys never got the lucrative Thirsk and Sowerby Institute gig.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping aspect of this is that the club stood to make about a thousand quid on the deal in the first place - no wonder they were ripping up bollards and pulling down fences to try and get the fake Meat Loaf (Quorn Loaf?) into the building.

It turns out there had been a simple solution all along:

Kevin Andrew, secretary of the Thirsk and Sowerby Institute, said: "A lot of people were very disappointed. We had to tell people on the door it was not going ahead.

"He could have parked on a doctor's car park and we would have helped him with his equipment, but he sped off and didn't give us a chance to offer him alternative access.

"He was bang out of order."

Come on, Mr. Andrew - you can't really complain if you hire a Meat Loaf tribute who leaves like a Bat of Hell, can you?

And they're my bloody umlauts, too

James P also reports on the latest copyright clash, too. Meat Loaf is demanding return of a font:

Satan-incarnate rock-monster Meatloaf is engaged in a furious battle over a font. Which might sound exciting until you realise he isn't fighting over some sort of religious item for use in a demonic ritual. He's cross that a Meatloaf tribute act from Lancashire has got a tourbus with lettering which looks a bit like Meatloaf's own lettering.

To be fair, Meatloaf also claims the act is encroaching on the real Meatloaf's domain, which presumably means he's throwing his weight around in the pits of Hell.

*checks story*

Oh. He wants him to stop using 'meatloaf.org' too.

The story is actually quite sinister. Dean Torkington appears to have been singled out at a Liverpool Loaf gig:

He said the problem first surfaced last year when he was sat in the front row of a Meat Loaf concert in Liverpool when a man dressed in black handed him a note saying that the American singer wanted to meet him backstage.

"I had met him on two previous occasions, which were absolutely fantastic, but when I went backstage his manager ushered me into a room," he said.

"He said that he had seen our motorhome, that we use as a tour bus, parked on the car park, and Meat Loaf wasn't happy that we had used his lettering to decorate the side of the van and he told me that we had to remove it."

Since Torkington does look like Meat Loaf - albeit in a Jon Culshaw sort of way - it's probably unsurprising that they were able to spot him in the front row at the gig. Torkington has agreed to change the lettering on the side of the bus, but refuses to drop the domain name.

Missing logo costs Sony BMG five million dollars

Having been ordered by a court in a previous settlement to properly credit Cleveland International on Bat Out Of Hell, Sony "forgot" to pop the smaller company's logo onto the CDs.

An expensive oversight: having had to pay the label $6.7million in the original lawsuit, they've now been forced to hand over a further five million.

Meat Loaf's retirement by stealth

When Meat Loaf left the stage claiming he'd retired, his promoter Andrew Miller gamely insisted it was a 24-hour type-thing and angrily denied that Loaf had decided showbiz had gone stale.

He'd have been better off admitting that Meat is in trouble - "acute laryngitis" is now the official line - instead of subjecting his tour to a daily pitter-patter of cancellations. Another one has gone tonight.

Rock and roll and... oh, soddit

Meat Loaf seems to have grown tired of himself, leaving the stage in Newcastle halfway through a song last night. The audience insist he said he was quitting, by the man who's booked him on his current tour is desperately denying that:

"I've spoken to his doctor, and it's clear it's just exhaustion and stress," said Andrew Miller. "It's not his last ever gig, that's for sure."

"He'll be fine," he said. "We hope that 24 hours rest will get him better."

He added that claims the singer had told the audience it would be his "last ever gig" were "totally unfounded".

"I was backstage with him last night and he apologised, saying 'I'm just exhausted.'"

We know he's got to remain upbeat, but if Loaf is so "just" exhausted he's walking off stage half-way through a song, is it entirely fair to expect him to complete the rest of his dates on this tour? Won't that increase his levels of "just" exhaustion and "just" stress?

It's the (second) most glittering event of the year

Although now somewhat eclipsed by Al Gore and his anti-Exxon Communist Music Event, the party being arranged by Princes William and Harry to mark something (25 years since the Falklands, isn't it?) is still going to try and glitter.

The line-up for The Concert For Diana, marking 300 years of the Act of Union, has been announced. It's an odd mix of fox-hunters, lords, faded glories and a couple of contemporary US acts in order to try and get an American network interested ("US acts Diana would have appreciated"):

Take That

Kanye West

Pharrell Williams

Elton John

Bryan Adams

James Blunt

Keane

Orson

Rod Stewart

Meatloaf (sic)

James Morrison

Duran Duran

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Bryan Ferry

Joss Stone

The English National Ballet

Here, then, is the most compelling argument for wearing a seatbelt and not getting into cars with drunk drivers: if you perish in a road accident, look at what will be done in your name.

That wasn't Meat Loaf's hands, that was an instrument

Apparently - and we'll take their word for it - there's been quite a controversy over Aspen Miller's bruises. She's currently singing with Meat Loaf on his current, seemingly never-ending tour and fans have been worried when he play-gropes her on stage, he's been leaving marks:

"They all thought he was grabbing me too hard. I didn't want to tell them it was from a tambourine.

"I had banged up my hand, so I switched to banging the tambourine on my leg.
Then my whole thigh was covered in bruises."

So, erm, that's okay, then.