Gordon in the morning: Praise for Gordon

There's a big campaign - designed to promote the idea of newspapers' role in a digital era - which is keen for the people who make papers to come into the limelight. It's been put together by John Lloyd, who met some of those people as part of his research:

Gordon Smart, editor of The Sun’s showbiz column Bizarre, was “well-read, with a great personality”

Didn't John Lloyd used to promote a different view of Sun journalists when he was working on Spitting Image?

Back For Good Enough: Robbie Williams moves back in with Dad

I think it's fair to say that the reunionised Take That had reached a bit of a natural end, with the first bubbling of creativity from getting back together having long since flattened out, so the inevitable lumbering back in of Robbie Williams has come too late to spoil anything too much. 'Williams rejoins Cameron-endorsing Marks And Spencer models' is less of a shame than the 'Williams stamps over the fizzle' if he'd been back in in 2005 or 2006.

Still, the camera-hogging, gurning, 'look! I'm a character' of Robbie towards the end of the BBC News video is a hint of the mismatch between the two sides now. It's like the two little pigs running into the brick house and behaving like they were the expert housebuilders all along.

Still, nobody's really that bothered about whether it's a good idea or not. For the Mirror, it's a chance to feel vindicated:

The move confirms the Mirror’s exclusive story in a March 2009 ­interview with Robbie that the band were getting back together.

Daily Mirror, everyone's been saying 'sooner or later, Williams will turn up with a stupid grin on his face' since Take That first got back as one. I'm not sure that 'just sixteen months after we said it was happening, it happened' is quite the claim you think it is.

obbie said last night: “I get ­embarrassingly excited when the five of us are in a room. It feels like coming home.”

Yes, it's exactly like coming home. But there's no shame in that, Robbie - a surprising number of men in their thirties move back in with their parents after their careers go south.

The Mirror offers a verdict on the hooking-up, with their in-house Take That fan Beth Neil taking on the paper's music critic Gavin Martin. (Gavin Martin's the Mirror's music critic now? Really?)

Beth goes first:

I just hope Robbie doesn’t try to steal the limelight and overshadow the other four, who have grafted non-stop to become the nation’s biggest man band.

Oh, come on, Beth - what are the chances of that?

Still, I'm sure Gavin's got some sort of musical insight to share:

[E]xpect plenty of sold-out gigs, making it an astute move commercially for all five.

Is it, though, Gavin? Take That as foursome could sell out gigs at the largest venues in the country, so all they're really doing is splitting the take five ways instead of four. That looks like a crappy move, surely?

Over at The Sun, Gordon Smart is delighted:

[T]hank the lord for some good news after such a bleak few weeks of murder and misery dominating the headlines.

Oh, yes. I've totally forgotten we've got a bumbling Tory at the Treasury and the Prime Minister believes some people are just innately evil with the news that a band have brought back their worst member.

This reunion is HUGE. It doesn't get any bigger.

Scientists are currently attempting to calculate if this reunion that doesn't come any bigger is larger or smaller than the bigness of a Masterchef final.

Reunions don't come any bigger? Wouldn't Paul and Ringo getting out the mop-top wigs one last time trump it?

Hang about, though, Gordon's about to blow:

The tour will break records on pre-sales, as will the album. Then there'll be the sponsorship, the TV rights, a DVD, merchandising, royalties and publishing.

To say nothing of the acres and acres and acres of coverage churned out by the tabloids, eh, Gordo?

If you thought the boys were rich now, next Christmas is going to see them served up with a whole new level of wealth.

Is it just me, or is a reunion where the reaction is 'this is going to make a lot of money' rather than 'we're going to hear some great music' one which, fundamentally, is more in the interests of record labels and promoters than fans?

The only problem I can see is Robbie's crippling stage fright and his hatred of being on the road.

You don't think that the fifteen years of animosity and his inability to work as part of a team might be a bigger problem?

The Mail calls the reWilliamsing 'Take Two', although surely it's Take Four - the band, band without Williams, band reunited without Williams, Band reunited with Williams? Despite assigning two writers to the story, though, the Mail doesn't show very much interest in the band coming back together - mainly because there's no picture of a woman in a bikini they can run alongside it.

Kim Dawson provides 'analysis' for the Daily Star. She's already started the countdown clock. The countdown to the end:

Another split will only break the hearts of women round the country still reeling from Mark’s infidelity.

Nobody seems to have told Dawson that (a) the reunion is only a fixed-time deal so there will be a natural end and (b) there are precisely no women - apart maybe from Owen's wife - who are reeling from his infidelity. And even if there were: eh? What the hell does that mean?

The Daily Express more or less ignores the story entirely, although it does take care to take the sting out of the response to its short cut-and-paste brief:

Have your say is unavailable for this story

God, yes, you wouldn't want anyone saying anything nasty about Williams and Barlow hugging, would you?

The Telegraph inadvertently gets to the problem of the story. To justify the excitement, there's a desperate desire to present this as an unlikely surprise:

Bandmate Owen said: "Getting the five of us to be in a room together, although always a dream, never actually seemed like becoming a reality.

"Now the reality of the five of us making a record together feels like a dream. It's been an absolute delight spending time with Rob again. But I'm still a better footballer," he joked.

... but the entire world has just been waiting for this moment, and for the last two or three years it's been an inevitable 'when' rather than an 'if':

Despite Williams ridiculing Barlow during his early solo shows, the pair began to bury the hatchet in recent years and their friendship was renewed.

Williams said last year: "You carry around all this resentment and bitterness for such a long time."

[...]

Williams had already revealed he was working with Barlow. Last month he announced the pair were to release a duet Shame which will feature on his greatest hits collection.

Still, the Telegraph does focus in on some people who won't be celebrating:

The new album will be released on Take That's label Polydor, rather than Williams's company, EMI.

Ah, the cost of trying to drag their nosediving big name out the dumper is having to let Polydor get the most cake.

The Times - well, who knows or cares what The Times says these days?

Really, though, at times like this you need to turn to an expert. What have you got for us, Popjustice?

SOMEONE GET LULU ON THE PHONE.

Now, that would be a reunion which didn't come any bigger.

New owners of Waco tribune fire Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent, the unofficial spokesperson for things perhaps best just thought and forgotten, is less than thrilled to have been asked to stop contributing to the Waco Tribune.

The paper recently changed hands, and the new owners suggested they might welcome a more constructive line from Ted. Or "behaved like Nazis", as Ted puts it:

When the Nazis had the Americans surrounded in the town of Bastogne, they
demanded American General McAuliffe surrender or they would level the city. General McAuliffe’s reply: Nuts!

The new editor of the Waco Trib recently told me that I could only write nice things about people, that I could not be critical. Basically, that I need to tone it down. I can not, nor will not, comply with this Romper Room request. My reply: Nuts!

But, it's not just for Ted to call "Nazi" at an editor deciding that a contributor's tone doesn't sit well with his paper. Under the mistaken impression that a right to freedom of speech somehow means that anyone with a media outlet must subsidise everyone's opinions, Nugent then... well, he reaches for a comparison with himself:

I can’t envision Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or Ben Franklin
making a request of an anti-King George columnist to tone it down. I can’t imagine Martin Luther King toning down his message. It is impossible for me to fathom any American to tone down what is in his heart and soul.

Oh God, it's the Nazis versus Martin Luther King... and Nugent is King.

I criticize where I believe criticism is due. That’s what Thomas Paine
did when he published Common Sense prior to the Revolutionary War.

He did. He self-published, though, Ted.

I have criticized President Obama and liberals for what I consider to be
destructive, anti-American policies that will hurt our economy and harm your health. Not once have I criticized him personally because I have never met the man. As far as I know he is a decent enough guy, but in my opinion, is politically naive and very wrong, even dangerous for America. So do many
other Americans as indicated by the shrinking support for his takeover of the health care system and numerous other heavy handed, foolish moves.

I'm not going to personally criticise the dangerous, naive, wrongheaded man who will destroy everything we hold dear. I'm sure when he's not destroying everything he touches and killing you, somehow, he's a really nice chap.

When I have criticized President Obama, I have almost always countered
his dunderheaded, Marxist policies with a free market, more personal freedom alternative. More government control is not the answer to what ails America. Obama believes otherwise.

You see, Ted. This is probably the point, isn't it? The new owners of the Tribune are probably less worried by your trenchant views, and more that they're giving space to a man who can't tell the difference between Barack Obama and a Marxist. Sure, they might have told you it was because you were too mean, but I suspect they're really letting you go because you're a buffoon whose presence on their pages would make the Waco Tribune look like it offers a gathering for any soft-thinking whacko who cares to happen by with a closely-typed, ill-considered screed claiming to have evidence that Obama is a closet gay Muslim who will put all god-fearing Americans underground to live on bugs while he consorts with Satan and Nye Bevan on the streets of Washington. But - hey, don't take that personal, Ted, because I've never met you.

This newspaper and others should encourage spirited and lively debate
and criticism, especially when so many newspapers are losing
subscribers. I don’t support milquetoast journalism. It bores me.

Well, yes. Spirited and lively debate is a good thing. That's not quite the same thing as letting any blowhard roll up the paper and honk through it, though, is it, Ted?