Gordon in the morning: Man in a mansion

Apart from the unsurprised disappointment at The Wanted trooping off to soft porn theme park Playboy Mansion, what is to be said?

Jay McGuiness has gone a long way to shaking off that image after achieving every bloke’s dream — pulling a Playboy bunny.

Not "every bloke's dream", not by quite a distance.

The Wanted singer managed to snog one of the models when the group were invited round to Hugh Hefner’s famous Los Angeles mansion to celebrate bandmate Nathan Sykes’ birthday.

Proud Jay said: “I did actually manage to pull — I kissed a bunny — Katy Perry-style."

If I'm reading this correctly, Jay seems to think that Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl had the emphasis on the kissing rather than the girl, which is actually rather sweet when you think about it.

Although the rather sweetness doesn't really wash away the creaking image of The Wanted shuffling round the Playboy empire.

ContactMusic reveal something surprising about James Bond

Here's something I didn't know - Atmosphere and Octopussy share a common creator:

Ian Curtis wrote James Bond? Then how come there was no Bond girl called Joy Division?

(By the way, if you're interested in Hefner's claim, James Bond was created in 1953 and the first Playboy club opened in 1960. The clubs which Hefner stole the idea of "bunny girls" from, though, The Gaslight, opened in 1953, so it's possible Flemming and Hefner both stole the idea from the same place.)

The Saturdays try cheapening product to attract audience

Oh, dear. It turns out that there is something more dispiriting than a pop group doing a soft porn photoshoot to try and boost their career. A pop group desperately dropping hints that they'd love to drop their skirts:

The Saturdays have reportedly admitted that they would consider posing naked for Playboy.

"We always say, 'Never say never,'" said Rochelle Wiseman[...]

Una Healy added: "I would consider it if there was a way of sneakily covering your bits."

Yes. That might be missing the point a little. You're confusing 'being in a cheeky WI calendar' with 'appearing in a masturbatory aid'.

Frankie - who is probably the closest thing The Saturdays have to someone who could probably get a proper job doing something useful - appears to have missed the band meeting:

"Oh my God, no! I’d never do it. Definitely not nude. Never."

Not only did nobody seem to have told Frankie they were going to try and raunch up their image, but they forgot to fill her in on the band motto being 'never say never'.

She added: "I do think it can look nice if it’s done tastefully."

... when she realised that the rest of the band were giving her the look they usually wheel out during the 'who is this band's Jason Orange' game.

John Mayer: Suave

John Mayer has just done an interview with Playboy. As if that wasn't enough to turn your stomach, the magazine handed him enough rope to hang himself. To which he added a big bottle of pills, a knife and a gas oven that ran on the old town gas.

Still, at least let's give him credit for not having a publicist sitting in stopping him from talking.

"What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's"

Ah yes - who wouldn't see the immediate parallel between a two-hundred-year long struggle for rights and recognition and a middle class kid turning from clarinet lessons to dating Jennifer Aniston?

It does get worse, though. Playboy asked if black women liked him.

"My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a fuckin' David Duke cock. I'm going to start dating separately from my dick".

In a separate interview, John Mayer's dick denied being a white supremacist, but did express interest in the idea of being separated from John Mayer.

Shortly after the interview started to circulate, it looks like Mayer's publicist woke up and now Mayer and so the damage limitation starts. Mayer took to Twitter:

"I think it's time to stop trying to be so raw in interviews."

You see? He wasn't revealing himself to be a douche - he was being raw. It's not that he's a splashback - it's simply that we can't handle his very, very rawness.

But he'd got his explanation in first. He told Playboy:

"Maybe I’m so meta-aware that it’s off-putting to people."

You'd have to wonder just how meta-aware you can be while announcing that your cock is a bit like the National Front.

Gordon in the morning: Keeping it covered

Gordon Smart has heard - you suspect in a phonecall from N-Dubz management - that Tulisa has been made an offer she has refused:

N-DUBZ star TULISA CONTOSTAVLOS has turned down a £250,000 offer to appear starkers in Playboy.

Now, given that Gordon's job is underwritten from a newspaper that has built its position on printing photographs of women with no shirts on, and Gordon's daily cavalcade of nipslips and pap tit snaps, you might think this would outrage Smart. Fair exchange is no robbery, after all. But it turns out Gordon is the first on his feet, applauding:

What a refreshing change. Many women in showbiz will happily get their kit off just to stay in the spotlight.

Who would have thought? Thank god that's something that Gordo would never be part of. He's a man with strong, feminist pr... what was that, Gordon?

My exclusive pic of her in leopard print gear proves there's no need to strip.

Oh.

Dinosaur Jr prop up Playboy mansion

It's a bit disappointing that Dinosaur Jr have done their bit to prop up Playboy by doing something for Playboy.com. It's part of the site's bid to find something that it can charge for, what with so much porn being available for free on the net.

At least they're treating the whole procedure with only half an arse - the idea is for bands to cover other bands, and Dinosaur Jr are offering Just Like Heaven. In other words, the same bloody song they covered two decades ago.

In other words, it's like this exclusive:

Dinosaur Jr - Just Like Heaven
by jesus_lizard

Gordon in the morning: Heavy pants

At last, something to distract Gordon from Amy Winehouse's holidays: Victoria Beckham doing a bloke's underwear shoot:

Posh in kecks

That's actually quite good, although it's a pun that only really works in Scotland; come down too far into England and kecks move from being underwear to outerwear and the pun breaks.

But can Gordon keep it up?

She peeled off to briefs and a, er, Posh-up bra for shots inspired by 1950s cinema.

Posh-up bra?

Bust what I was after ... Victoria in Armani ad

Okay, stop now.

Is there very much for Gordon to do other than try to stop getting it on the photos?

Becks, nicknamed Goldenballs, was at the shoot near their LA home.

Clearly not - "nicknamed Goldenballs"? Even if anyone had called him that since, ooh, 1973, why on earth would you mention that? And isn't "Becks" a nickname itself?

A year ago, Leona Lewis insisted she was going to concentrate on music and not muck about with fashion or perfume or autobiographies. Gordon reports this morning that she's just signed up for the perfume, with the clothing line and book already in preparation:

Well, a year is a long time in the life of a superstar.

She obviously has loads of exciting new stories to share, and a more mature sense of style and smell.

That's the most sardonic thing I think I've ever seen in Bizarre. Well, written about someone they still need to be nice to.

Elsewhere, Holly Valance's career has stalled so badly she's now at the desperately begging Hugh Hefner for a Playboy spread stage:

I would definitely consider doing Playboy if it was tasteful. I’d consider topless too if it was perhaps in black and white.

Ah. So she's begging to go in the world's most famous skin magazine and... you know, providing it was slightly arty, she might even take her shirt off. What sort of magazine does she think Playboy is?

Aubrey O'Kane: Nothing left to hide

Danity Kane are, roughly, the closest thing America has to a Girls Aloud. Born on a reality game show, and destroyed by internal tensions. Okay, perhaps they're a bit closer to The Sugababes.

Anyway, Aubrey O'Day was judged to have been hogging the limelight, but if the hope of the remaining Danitys was that kicking her off the train would allow them to get some of the attention, it's backfired. O'Day is now running off to do Playboy:

"I've also done the cover of Playboyfor 2009," she said late in December. "For one of the months in 2009. I'm not gonna say it. ... It's gonna be a surprise. You know, I think that Playboy for me was one of the most liberating things that I've done as a woman."

For the record, shooting a moose with a stun-gun was the most liberating thing she did when she was a man.

I know what you're thinking: "It was so liberating" is a kind of stock, meaningless word-spurt that PR people usually tell women who've fallen on hard times to say. Perhaps, though, O'Day could explain a bit more clearly?

"You could never imagine how empowering it is to be nude in front of cameras and have people looking at you in that way and seeing you as beautiful."

Empowering. Liberating. Being in Playboy. Really.

Has anyone explained to O'Day exactly how people will be using her pictures?

Gordon in the morning: Standards and non-slipping dresses

With Dita Von Teese doing Playboy and Duffy's dress, Gordon doesn't know where to look this morning.

It's Duffy's dress which gets him panting most heavily, though:

Duffy nearly in the buffy

which would be a brilliant headline on a story about her getting drunk with Sarah Michelle Gellar and the pair hitting on each other, but rubbish on this one. As Gordon himself admits, this wasn't even a slipping dress - what looked like a bra peeking out was part of the outfit:

When I saw these pictures I thought she was suffering a wardrobe malfunction and her frock had slipped down.

But apparently it’s meant to look like that.

But he ran the photo anyway.

Had the dress actually been sliding down Duffy's body, the tiny bit of what-would-then-have-been-a-bra was so slight it's hard to see even then what would have been noteworthy, unless you're the sort of bloke who freeze-frames Corrie every time Becky chooses a top with straps narrower than her nethergarments.

Now, cast your minds back to when the storm was breaking over Russell Brand's Radio 2 programme and how disgusted Wade and The Sun leader team were:

THE BBC hoped a swift apology with flowers would douse public fury over Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.

But protests from 10,000 disgusted licence payers show they have misjudged the public mood.

Georgina Baillie, whose fling with Brand was betrayed in his obscene calls to her grandfather, Andrew Sachs, wants him sacked.

We now know this juvenile pair of overpaid twerps aimed even more unforgivable smut at the legendary Fawlty Towers star.

The Sun, then, is clear: tawdry public detailing the sexual conquests of Russell Brand is the sort of thing that is morally wrong, especially when the only reason the woman involved is famous is because of her grandfather.

Oddly, though, it's quite acceptable for Gordon Smart to run a long piece about Russell Brand having sex with Che Guevara's granddaughter, complete with computer-generated images and laddish back-slapping about bedposts and successful charm offensives.

If I was FIDEL CASTRO I’d get the grandkids kitted out with chastity belts pronto.

Thank god Castro never appeared in a sitcom, otherwise that would presumably require The Sun to run an editorial calling for its own management to sort itself out. Clearly, though, it's not juvenile smut to taunt a grandfather about his kids being shagged by Brand if he's left-wing.

Gordon in the morning: Strained relations

Even in the happiest of families, there are stresses and strains as everyone tries to rub along together. Perhaps Gordon's understanding of how difficult things are between The Sun and its Sunday sister News of the World that makes him understanding about the difficulty in Peaches Geldof's marriage. Or maybe it's just the joy in kicking down the splashy exclusive from yesterday's News Of The World:

PEACHES GELDOF and MAX DRUMMEY are battling to save their marriage at a secret location in America, The Sun can reveal.

A pal - presumably a different "a pal" from the "a pal" who spoke to the NOTW - tells how the pair, yes, have their difficulties but are fighting, fighting, fighting to at least make it to the 100 day mark.

Meanwhile, Simon Rothstein gets his paws on pictures of Jenny Frost modeling Playboy knickers:

JENNY FROST poses in two more sexy outfits from Playboy’s new lingerie line.

But there’s bad news lads – this is the furthest she’ll go for HUGH HEFNER

There is something curious about Frost's decision to promote Playboy while not embracing Playboy, something that Rothstein hints at, as much as he can in the cookie-cutter 'look - bras' world of Gordon's pages:

The ex-ATOMIC KITTEN star said: “Some of those Playboy magazine shots are beautiful, but I will be keeping my Bunny Bra firmly on!”

It's a pity that the paper doesn't take this further - there's a fascinating question of if flogging a brand which relies on softcore porn while considering that to be somehow beneath you is an entirely comfortable position to be in, and if all you're doing is providing a thin cover of respectability for a business that is really about exploiting women, but Rothstein doesn't seem to have the stomach for it. Pity. They could have run it on page three.

Gordon in the morning: Oh, Ricky, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind

It's hard to believe that Gordon Smart has found yet another story for his cutting edge gossipy story page involving Ricky Hatton - and this one involves a photo with Hatton's face covered in cold, dripping gunk and loving every minute of it.

Hatton is apparently being added to Louis Tussauds Hall of Fame in Blackpool, and was having his moulds made. Yes, yes, this is Gordon Smart running a story about a provincial waxworks adding a minor sports star to their uncannily wax-like models in 2008. Could Smart have found a non-story about an any more faded entertainment icon that would be of even less interest to his young audience?

PLAYBOY supremo HUGH HEFNER has lined up 19-year-old twin beauties to replace his “number one girlfriend”.

Oh, yes.

Debbie Gibson leads the new Electric Youth

Emboldened by her position as Cowell-like judge on an online talent show, Debbie - now Deborah, if you please - Gibson has established a camp for young people. The Electric Youth camp, of course.

Gibson believes her career means she's, like, Hannah Montana 1.0:

"I was like the Miley Cyrus of my generation and I have a lot of experience and knowledge to offer today's aspiring performers," says Deborah Gibson. "Working with young talent and helping cultivate their skills is extremely rewarding."

We're not entirely sure we'd choose Debbie - sorry, Deborah - Gibson - to guide our kid's career, as she drove into the ground quite quickly and wound up doing, well, this sort of thing:


Of course, when the Debbie Gibson pictures appeared in Playboy, they weren't quite so coy about her being nude.

Unlinkin park

Chester "Cheato" Bennington is desperate that nobody believes he was shagging a Playboy model behind his wife's back. Everything was above board, he insists:

"It sounds shady," said Chester, "but I wasn't having an affair. I literally met Talinda at a party, thought, 'Oh my God, I could actually be happy', and went home and separated from my wife."

It's not clear if he told Talinda to nip into the bedroom and warm herself up while he went off to dump his wife and kid, but let's believe Chester if that's what he wants, shall we? After all, if he thinks that "I took care to let my wife know i was dumping her for a glamour model" makes him look better, let him have that comfort.

Mariah Carey Playboy cover: Sun resurrects spirit of Kelly Monteith

The release of the Mariah Carey Playboy cover has got the Sun doing that strange faux-drooling they do from time to time. And using a very, very old joke:

The adult magazine - out in the US on February 9 - also contains of an [sic] interview with Mariah.

Although I’m not sure how many people really do buy Playboy for the articles.

Coming in The Sun tomorrow: The difficulty of sharing your bachelor flat with your live-in girlfriend.

Hugh Hefner lied

Hugh told Kelly Osbourne she wouldn't appear in Playboy because "we don't airbrush that much".

However, Mariah Carey is going to appear on the cover, so presumably they must.

Disappointingly, Carey appears in the magazine wearing a swimsuit. The disappointment being, of course, that she's not wearing a boiler suit and a balaclava.

Wayne Coyne and the wankers

Now, we've said before we don't have a problem with erotica. What we do find soul crushing, though, is the sort of pat-women-on-the-head/butt attitude of the Playboy-Hooters type of establishment, using nudity to demean and making money off the back (or, rather, front) of the women they pretend to be celebrating.

Which is why some of the bands who've joined in a Playboy stunt to try and flog extra issues of their magazine by designing some sort of t-shirt. Oh, yes, it's for charity, but if, say, The Flaming Lips wanted to help LIFEbeat, couldn't they find a way that didn't involve cosying up to Hugh Hefner's empire? Kasabian we expect no better of, but... come on, Wayne. Playboy?

The full list of bands who are contributing a tshirt is:

The Bronx
Dean & Britta
The Flaming Lips
Home Video
Illinois
Johnossi
Kasabian
Lil Jon
Metric
Monsters Are Waiting
Oh No! Oh My!
Rhymefest
Soulwax
stellastarr*
Tahiti 80
The Thievery Corporation
Trainwreck Riders
Whitestarr
Your Vegas