It's like the day the music died

First, it's Ray Quinn down the dumper; now, we discover, Rik Waller's quitting music because - surprisingly - it won't support him and Kelly Bliss, his wife-to-be:

“I’m tired of singing and I can’t rely on it for 100 per cent of my income,” Waller continued. “I’ve got two people to think about now and talent doesn’t always pay the bills.”

"Talent doesn't always pay the bills." Especially when the bills are large and the talent... well, not so.

Super Voice Girls are silenced

There's not much to be said for the current Chinese regime, but you have to grudgingly admit that banning most elements of Pop Idol from programmes like Super Voice Girls might be a good idea:

The curbs include a ban on public voting via the internet, telephone or by text messages.

The rules also say participants must be healthy and mature, while hosts of the reality TV programmes should not flirt with each other or be nasty.

There's also a blanket ban on Sharon Osbourne, which was introduced in the late 1990s.

Lights, Cowell, Action

Amongst any working list of things we could do without would surely be Pop Idol the Movie:

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cowell said: "We want it to be the musical version of Rocky - an underdog story, a feel-good film."

So, not an accurate one, then, where an underdog would fight for their big chance only to discover the public have, instead, blown their dinnermoney on buying some beastly opera thing by a bloke who sells mobile phones for a living, who happened to appear on the telly the night before.

The only reason we're not heading for the set with a flaming torch and a chant of "purge, purge" is the involvement of Jonathan Harvey, who has at least managed to inject some of the old-school sparkle back into his Coronation Street scripts. On the other hand, let's not forget he also did Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie, so we'll keep these torches and a box of Swan Vesta on hand.

We wouldn't want to piss off her publicity machine, but

It's all very interesting that Victoria Beckham is going to be a judge on season 2 of Pop Idol, but we'd been led to believe that because the public are bored shitless of scrubbed youngsters singing covers of BeeGees tunes, Pop Idol 2 wasn't going to happen next year?