Christmas lights left to carry season alone after Brian McFadden is a no-show

Heartbreaking times at the Trafford Centre in Trafford, as Brian McFadden gets stuck in traffic on the motorway and fails to turn up to do a couple of songs at the Christmas lights switch-on:

He was due to take the stage at 6:20pm bosses said but didn't arrive at the centre until shortly after 7pm by which time the lights had been switched on and bosses said it was too late for him to perform.

He has now apologised and pledged to return in the near future.

He tweeted: "Sorry to everyone at the trafford lights. Took 6 1/2 hours from london. Arrived 3 minutes late but trafford centre wouldnt wait. Sorry"

It's almost as if the management of the mall didn't really want McFadden to play - presumably if he'd turned up on time, a caretaker would have been sent down to suck teeth and say 'no, sorry, mate, not in those shoes on this surface'.

Still, the evening wasn't a total washout:

The lights were switched on by Coronation Street Natalie Gumede who is currently appearing in the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing.

She was joined at the event by her dance partner in the show Artem Chigvintsev.

Earlier there were performances from bands The Hoosiers and The Overtones as well as Richard and Adam from Britain's Got Talent.

You can imagine once you've sat through The Hoosiers and The Overtones you might start to be cooling on the idea of hearing anyone else sing again, ever.

Gordon in the morning: I bet you look good on the dancefloor

Nothing is an indicator that gravity's tractor beam has got your career firmly locked in its pull than calls from the reality TV researchers, like buzzards sniffing trouble and hoping to get you while there's still some fresh flesh to feast on.

Still, Noel Gallagher is trying to put a brave face on the call from Strictly:

Last night High Flying Birds frontman Noel said: “I’m flattered. I’d have done it an’ all as I’ve recently mastered the sticky task of c***** while dancing.

“Sadly though, I’m a bit busy. Maybe next time... ”

Very wise to not slam the phone down too quickly, Noel. The next offer will be bug-eating in the jungles...

Gordon in the morning: It's complicated

Really, Gordon? 2012, and you still think there's mileage in giggling about Facebook's use of 'poke'?

Your chance to poke Wayne Rooney’s face

Elsewhere in The Sun, a large swathe of the paper is handed over to Simon Cowell to try and relaunch his leaky World Of New Faces.

It has all the grace and attraction of those panicked Tesco full-page adverts that popped up in the press this week - and has the same sense of an organisation that never expected to fail flapping about trying to cope with suddenly slamming into reverse.

Speaking to The Sun prior to today's start of BGT auditions in Manchester, Cowell also confessed he had poached Alesha Dixon to join BGT from Strictly Come Dancing to wound the hit BBC1 show.

Given that Strictly doesn't go head-to-head with X Factor, never mind Britain's Got Talent, it's hard to see why Cowell needs to bother about wounding Strictly.

In effect, he's saying he took Dixon on not because he thought he she'd be great at telling people doing dog-and-pony-ventriloquism how great they were, but simply because he thought it'd make a different programme less watchable. It's like those slimy blokes who break up relationships not because they're in love with someone else, but just for the joy of ruining lives.

Dixon must be thrilled to discover that what attracted Cowell to her judging was, erm, the thought of an empty seat next to Len Goodman.

The trouble is, it suggests that Cowell is even further out of things than 2011 showed. Nobody comes away from Strictly talking about Alesha's judging; she's pretty much always been panel-paddage. Perhaps Cowell should concentrate more on trying to raise the standards of his clapped-out shows rather than trying to spoil something everyone else quite enjoys.

Amy Winehouse: More unlikey television news

Amy Winehouse is going to start her road back by, erm, standing in the background behind Bruce Forsyth, according to The First Post:

Singer Amy Winehouse, who is said finally to have kicked her drugs habit, is making a surprising comeback: as a backing singer on Strictly Come Dancing. The beehive-sporting, tattooed singer has agreed to sing back-up for her 13-year-old goddaughter Dionne Bromfield during a performance on the BBC reality TV show.

Let's assume for just a moment that this is a true story: would it really be fair to Dionne Bromfield to overshadow her big break by having Godmama crashing about in the background?

Bromfield is being groomed as a future star (Amy without the demons, if there can be an Amy without the demons); having her on Saturday night TV doing a turn with Winehouse wouldn't project that image - it'd just make her look like she'd had her letter picked out by Jimmy Saville.

Mind you, that's if there is any value in the story in the first place. The First Post isn't exactly well-sourced on this one:

An unidentified source told a tabloid newspaper that: "Everybody's extremely nervous about the appearance but the team are confident Amy could make it work and really do some good for Dionne. She’s promised to not mess it up on the night."

Presumably the tabloid newspaper was running the story on condition of anonymity?

And away we go. A-bloody-gain.

It's hard to believe there's a media outlet - with the possible exception of The Tablet - that hasn't run some quasi-exclusive based on the slight Alesha-Harvey-Javine love-muddle, but the Mail reckons there's still more revelation to be had. It's MC Harvey who's walked off with a big cheque this morning.

Of course, with Alesha now one Strictly from being an official National Treasure, Harvey's in an awkward position. He doesn't want to look too bad, but he did dump her:

'Why I walked out on Strictly's Alesha,' by her unfaithful husband

The reason, of course, was that at the time she was pop-dumper's Alesha rather than Strictly's Alesha, and Harvey had wedding vows that ended "...as long as we both shall appear in Heat."

Harvey tries to act like he's abashed:

"What I did was 100 per cent wrong," Harvey says. "But I'm not perfect - no one is.

"Before I met Javine, no matter how many beautiful girls there were, not one of them meant anything to me as much as Alesha did."

As working definitions of "not being perfect" go, being "100% wrong" would be a useful one. But who couldn't fail to warm to Harvey's solid commitment to his wife, refusing to look at anyone else besides his wife. Apart from Javine. Who he dumped his wife for, of course.

"Our wedding was fantastic. I've still got a DVD that I watch by myself.

"Alesha looks amazing. When I saw her walking down the aisle I was gone. I cried my eyes out and my best man, Premiership footballer Sean Davis, was crying too.

"It hurts when I watch it. I'm not going to lie to you. Naturally it hurts, because I've got a lot of feelings."

One of them being: Alesha is now more famous than Javine again.

We imagine, by the way, that it must delight the seven-months gone Javine that Harvey sits watching his marriage to another woman over, and over, and over, and over.

"Last time I watched it I was looking at the DVD going: 'Flipping hell, from that to me now going to be a father with another woman.'

"I didn't see my life going that way."

Funny that - at the wedding ceremony, Harvey didn't expect to be dumping the woman he was marrying and run off with someone else.

Harvey is eager - desperate, even - to set the ever-increasing record straight:

Javine and Alesha were never friends and I never got caught in bed by Javine's boyfriend.

"It's utter bullshit. That's the thing that's got to me, all these lies."

Yes. Let's get totally clear why Harvey is a self-serving, hounding shitbag. There's plenty of reasons without the need to make stuff up.

"Javine's ex decided to make a quick buck and he never loved her because you don't make money against your girlfriend."

Your ex-wife, she's fair game to sell stories about for cash. But selling your girlfriend? Why, could a man drop any lower?

It's true our relationship was physical before I discussed it with Alesha and that's where I was wrong.

"It was physical once - not three times or five times. It wasn't an on-going affair.

It must be terrible for Harvey to be thought of as someone who shags another woman behind his wife's back repeatedly.

"I thought: 'What have I done?' The real story is that Javine's ex saw my car outside the house and told Alesha I was seeing Javine.

"Alesha asked me when I got home.

"I could have lied, but I didn't want to be in the marriage anymore."

We love the way that Harvey can't quite decide if the marriage was dead and his heart was with Javine - his wife, presumably, not understanding him - or if it was a one-off with Javine that he couldn't do any more.

Not to mention the bold claim that he "could have lied" - although, what with Javine's recently ex-boyfriend having told his wife what was going on, it's not entirely clear how.

Harvey, though, didn't find it easy, bless him:

"I knew I loved someone else and my heart was gone from my home. So I told her the truth. It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

"I've performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people, presented national television, I've done films with Hollywood actors, but this was ten times worse, telling her I'd slept with another woman."

There's a handy rule of thumb: it's ten-times more difficult to confess to adultery than it is to be a guest panelist on The Wright Stuff, or to play "King" in the 2003 movie Out For A Kill (a role that got star billing, or at least billing one slot above "DEA Agent".)

After running through the "life in a Ghetto in Battersea" stuff, and the wedding - he knows a lot about it, what with the having watched the DVD repeatedly and all - Harvey stresses to the Mail readership how important his relationship was:

At the end of the day, with celebrity comes responsibility.

"Our relationship was iconic. Black people had never had somebody they could call their own."

Yes. That's what did it for Harvey - being the Queen and Philip and Posh and Becks for the black community all rolled into one. How could mere humans cope with so much pressure?

Harvey - like the Rabbi Lionel Blue - ends with a story to illustrate his point:

"I was standing outside a nightclub and two 16-year-old boys came up to me and said: 'You're so lucky. You've gone out with the two most beautiful girls in the industry.'

"Then one said: 'I think Alesha's fitter.' The other one goes: 'I like Javine.' They're 16. They don't get it. They just see beauty. They don't see the person."

Sixteen year old boys saying "the most beautiful girls in the industry"? Even without the self-aggrandising angle, there's something there that doesn't ring true. Like the whole of Harvey's proud grandstanding, come to think of it.

So Solid spills

MC Harvey must be feeling at least slightly ashamed this morning - when he was in the So Solid Crew, he probably expected to have a lifetime of glittery fame. Now, he's reduced to grubbing out kiss and tell stories to the News of the World because his ex-wife is on a celebrity dancing show.

The charmer doesn't just moan on about Alesha Dixon, though, finding time to complain about having got Javine pregnant, too:

"It's hard having sex with a pregnant woman," he said.

"It's challenging but interesting. You have to try lots of new positions. I go to the gym so much now because I've got to get the frustration out somehow."

Apparently he's never heard of masturbation, then. Which would explain how he got himself into so much trouble in the first place.

And so, what exactly is he kissing and telling? Very little, it turns out:

"It was fantastic with Alesha, wild and interesting. As she has said in the past we used to explore different places and take many risks. I won't deny that. I remember we had sex in a car and a ladies' room of a posh London bar."

Sex in a car? Harvey, everyone who's ever borrowed an Allegro Coupe has had sex in a car. And a toilet, come to that. This is almost akin to saying "we had an interesting sex life; we once did it in a double bed. In a bedroom."

Still, Harvey's not really here to talk about women. Because there's only one love of Harvey's life. And that's Harvey:

"I'm not going to lie. I attract a lot of attention off women. The older you get the worse I find it.

"I have to be mature about the situation. I've got to say, ‘As good-looking as you are, that can't happen'.

"I'm a strong guy—even the fans that said, ‘You are so out of order', I'm killing them with excellence. You can judge me but you can't take my talent away from me."

Not unless you have a very, very fine net in which to catch it, no.

This is what we've waited for, this is it boys, this is war

The Sun is very excited about the return of Strict Dancing to the Saturday night tv tussle, calling Strictly versus X:

the biggest TV clash of all time

Oh, yes:

BITTER rivals X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing will go head-to-head next week in the biggest TV clash of all time, we can reveal.

We love that "we can reveal", as if they've been sifting secret documents and talking - under strict deniability - to some sort of schedule deep throat, rather than just typing 'strictly' and 'factor' into the search box at RadioTimes.com.

But while this is a fairly large battle, is it really "the biggest TV clash of all time"? Surely that time Corrie stuck two episodes together to try and spoil the launch of EastEnders on Monday night was bigger?