Bobby Gillespie pops in to TopShop to complain about the world

Here's the new Primal Scream single, 2013:

What's it all about, Bobby Gillespie?

The first single from the new album, entitled ‘2013’, Gillespie describes as “a critique of youth culture”, and it’s a theme he feels strongly about, the album is running live with anger. Talking to us at the bands tiny North London recording studio he explained further.

"We're living in very extreme times, but that doesn't seem to be reflected in the music that I hear or the art that I see. It seems that people are kind of asleep or they've anaesthetised or they just don't care. It just seems that there's no sense of revolt or resistance in art at the moment, whether it be music or the visual arts. Hollywood - it's like a propaganda machine for the USA, but the thing is; we're not writing albums against America or anything like that. Our country is heading towards being more right-wing and countries all around the world are getting more and more right-wing. There's less rationality, less liberalism, less love around. There was always a lot of love around, but it seems to be we're heading towards unenlightened times and nobody's talking about it or writing about it or even noticing it. It's like people are asleep or anaesthetised."

Two things here. First, Bobby Gillespie is fifty years old, so his idea of what happens in youth culture is on a par with my understanding of Boulogne municipal politics.

Secondly, where has Bobby Gillespie chosen to stand and wail about the harsh, right-wing, cultureless culture we live in?

TopMan Generation.

A web publication which describes itself thusly:

Topman GENERATION is a daily digital men’s magazine providing a unique cultural insight into the worlds of fashion, film, music and art.

Featuring exclusive editorial from writers and editors at the likes of NME, GQ, Blast, Undercurrent, AnOther Magazine, Art Review and Re-Bel, and headed up by editor Alistair Mulhall, Topman GENERATION is informed, irreverent and utterly irascible.

Welcome to Topman GENERATION, talking about your GENERATION…

Yeah, it's a spin-off of TopShop.

So Gillespie is wailing about how shit youth culture is in a publication which represents itself as creating, reflecting and celebrating that culture.

And that horrid right-wing world we live in? Remind me again who owns TopMan?

That's right, it's tax-avoiding Philip Green, a man to whom David Cameron has cosied up during his time in government; a man targeted by the 2011 anti-cuts movement (a movement which, by the way, suggests that Gillespie's take on youthful apathy is misplaced to begin with.)

So if Gillespie really does believe that the culture is bland and right-wing, what the hell is he doing taking part in a marketing campaign for the people making money out of that?

EDIT: In response to a comment below, I've added in the first paragraph of the first quote from Bobby Gillespie to make it clear that he was talking about youth culture.

The X Factor reaches 'mine, all mine' stage

We might not have to deploy R Kelly, it turns out. The X Factor - through the link-up with Philip Green - seems to be busily sowing the seeds of its final, helicopters on the roof stage.

Taking the thing to Vegas kind-of makes sense - a gaudy tribute to losers who think they're winning, only to discover they're going home hungry. But given the majority of visitors to Vegas are American, why would you build it under the British brand of X Factor rather than, say, American Idol?

And where will the constant stream of contestants wanting to be humiliated come from (humiliated, I'm guessing, by robot versions of Cowell and the others, like those automaton versions of Norm and Cliff in the old Cheers airport bars)? Surely part of the X Factor attraction is that some of the contestants are chosen because they can sing tolerably well - if Factor in Vegas is going to keep going round the calendar, won't it be relying on 'people who have lost all their money' as its contestant pool?

If finding enough people to be on stage is going to be a trial, you've got to wonder where they think the audience is going to come from:

"The home of the X Factor – live from Las Vegas!" enthuses Green. "We'll have a store. And it'll all be online. You have 20, 30, 40 million people tuning in twice a week. You bring two or three hundred million viewers to a venue – off we go! It's taking it up a peg. The rest of the world is Part Two."

300 million people streaming X Factor online twice a week. It's a bit more than taking it up a peg, isn't it? This is lifting it up like a field full of rotary driers.

You've got to admire Green's personal auction there - "we'll have a shop - no, and a webcam, watched by ten, no, twenty, no, a billion people. And NOBODY WILL EVER DIE." The most realistic outcome he should really expect, though, is a few hundred thousand for the first couple of cycles before interest gradually flows away.

And there's a comforting thought: the X Factor slowly melting in the Nevada desert, surrounded by people who have just emptied their 401ks on the craps table.

Gordon in the morning: Looking through the transfer window

Hadn't they put the lid on the idea of David Beckham joining AC Milan? Apparently, Gordon says, it's all back on again now, because, erm, Victoria says so:

DAVID BECKHAM has finally got wife VICTORIA to agree his dream move to AC Milan — despite their family being settled in Los Angeles.

Posh and Becks held crunch talks in London ten days ago after he insisted he wanted to end his career with the giants.

Ten days ago? So in other words, before the LA Galaxy negotiators decided that Beckham was staying in LA unless AC Milan put up some extra cash.

Oh.

Milan are supposedly still hopeful of a deal, and David's doing his best to help things:

The England star has been taking Italian lessons for weeks

Ah, Becks always tries to pick up a bit of the local language before any move, although he never got more than a few basic terms while with his current team.

Emily Smith - who is like Gordon Smart but with small rooms overlooking the Hudson - has been trying to get to the bottom of Kate Moss and her "pregnancy". Well, I say "bottom":

Kate: Babies? Just big boobies

Apparently Emily Smith discovered Kate's breasts had grown by following the ancient art of reading a magazine. Philip Green, owner of BHS, was interviewing Moss for a title that Smith doesn't bother to even name. Perhaps her research didn't extend as far as looking at the front page. It was New York magazine - god knows how bad things have got for them if they're reduced to getting the bloke who runs TopShop to file for them. Anyway, Smith dutifully types up the interesting bit:

Kate was joined by billionaire Topshop owner SIR PHILIP GREEN for an interview with a magazine.

He said: “They are a bit bigger than they were, aren’t they?”

Smith gives no indication if she finds this in any way creepy, or unsettling, or inappropriate.

Back with Gordon, and it's time to consider Pixie Geldof's psychic powers:

PIXIE GELDOF knew her sister PEACHES’ marriage wouldn’t last.

The 18-year-old model - daughter of charity campaigner SIRBOB GELDOF - always suspected Peaches’ whirlwind wedding to musician MAX DRUMMEY was destined to fail.

Sadly, Gordon is unable to put these astonishing powers of foretelling the bleedin' obvious to the test, as, erm, he just read an interview in Closer.