RECORD COMPANIES FOUND GUILTY OF PRICE-FIXING AGAIN: This time, the US labels have been caught coming to agreements to artificially inflate the price of Three Tenors records.

We're not going to bother cranking up our own outrage, so we're just going to adapt some stuff we found on the internet about how bad downloading is, and do a quick find and replace:

Based on Online Piracy and Electronic Theft - RIAA:
Because of the nature of the theft, the damage is difficult to calculate but not hard to envision. Millions of dollars are at stake. Many record companies see nothing wrong with fixing an occasional album price or even an entire catalogue through a cartel, despite the fact it is illegal under recently enacted federal legislation.

After Britney's anti-downloading advert:
"Would you go into someone's house and steal cash from their wallet? It’s the same thing, people deliberately setting prices and inflating charges and stealing our money. It’s the exact same thing, so why do it?"

After Hilary Rosen's little fireside chat:
"Too many people don't realise that when you artificially inflate a price by collusion or some other price-fixing method, what you're doing is stealing money"

And so on. The rest of this writes itself.

FYI: One of the stars who signed up to the Music United campaign for fair copyright downloads or whatever it was called (interestingly, the site - which had quotes from pop people about how they'd bloody well starve if you so much as downloaded a single Spearmint MP3) was Luciano Pavarotti. Who would, of course, have been one of The Three Tenors; which we guess would make him an expert on unfairness, no?

... WHILE WE CAN STILL SAY 'THIS IS THE WORST': Come on Eileen, reworked as Come On England, and apparently Kevin Rowland "approves" ("badly, badly needs the money"). We are going to cut our ears off before the European Championships, we have decided.

HATE TO SAY 'I TOLD YOU SO': That lack of standards in what your seventy-nine cents buys on buymusic.com not only confuses the consumer, but confuses the hell out of people's MP3 players, as new download service launches to a pile of glitches. How very Titanic.

TALKING OF OLDFIELD: You can study him at Oxford University - although it's not a degree course, it's a night course. And it's about all prog rock, not just Oldfield. We'll bet the exams go on for what seems like hours, though... [We did see this on Popbitch, of course].

MOONLIGHT SHADOWS: Mike Oldfield - a man whose first records were funded by a bloke who'd made his initial cash by selling 'pirated' music (Branson was flogging records intended for the continent in the UK and saving on the taxes) - is interviewed by Guardian Online as yet another re-release re-formatting of Tubular Bells looms into view, and he comes across as amazingly out of touch:

Is the internet a threat to the music industry?
You only have to look at the front of Music Week to realise the music industry is in crisis. People aren't buying records because it is so easy to copy them. They download all their tracks and listen to them for nothing.

Well, if you look at the cover of Music Week, it tells you that the Major Labels are in crisis, which isn't quite the same thing - just because Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal don't win matches in the same week doesn't mean that all the teams in Division Three have lost as well. But have you noticed that Mike Oldfield has already got confused between 'copying' records and 'downloading' them?

What if people could pay for music online using services such as Apple's iTunes?
You can already buy albums from Amazon. Ahem... 'you can already buy albums from Amazon'

Yes, Mike. You can do that. Perhaps you haven't quite grasped that some people actually wake up and think "I'd like to hear 'Wild Thing' right now" and so want something a bit more immedeate than waiting three days for the postman to arrive? And that that's a possibility that technology has given us? And that it's that ability to deliver music now, and the failiure to seize the advantages of that, which has lead to the Big Labels falling behind?

Does Oldfield really mean what his reply implies - that he doesn't agree with downloading at all, and that he thinks all music should be delivered, encoded in plastic? Apparently not:

But if people want to buy tracks online I don't see a problem. It's just the piracy - it's massive in Europe. That's why record sales are down 50%.

Excuse me? Down fifty percent? Even the dying VHS Music format only dropped by 42% last year - and that was more than offset by a swelling in DVD sales. Argentina had a very bad year, but there the fall was only a quarter, not a half. Fifty percent is just an absolute nonesense. [source: BBC/IPFI]

Why were so many fans outraged when Tubular Bells was released recently with digital copyright protection?

If people are used to buying one copy and then making 50 copies on their PC, they are going to be a bit fed up, aren't they? They can still copy it with analogue. It just won't copy digitally. It has only caused a couple of comments on the fan websites because someone can't copy it and pirate it.

You're flattering yourself if you think anyone is going to burn fifty copies of an album that Everyone Who Wants Already Has. And you're missing the point - digital copyright protection doesn't just piss off people who are trying to pirate your music; it pisses off legitimate users - your fans - who suddenly discover that they've paid fifteen bucks for a record they can't play. According to the Campaign for Digital Rights, Tubular Bells 2003 won't play properly on a lot of CDs; managed to screw up one person's uninstall facility (so that now he can't get rid of any software on his PC at all); appears to have been responsible for a burning smell on a hitherto perfect DVD-ROM drive on more than one occasion. This is leaving aside the whole question of If I buy a CD, why shouldn't I be allowed to copy it to my Rio player?

Oh, and by the way:
I'm a born-again biker. I've just bought a 600cc Yamaha Fazer and have joined the Fazer owners club online. The sites www.runryder.com and www.modelhelicopters.co.uk are great for getting tips from other model helicopter enthusiasts and buying the kit.
... let us know how that midlife crisis works out, pal.

OH GOD... FIRST SAVILLE: Now we're agreeing with Julie Burchill - You can't blame Britney is parents let their kids turn up for school dressed like Mata Hari. There's another piece which addresses the same subject - that teacher's union bloke who said Kylie is leading us to moral ruin - written by a sixteen year old girl who says that her boob tube didn't do her any harm.

RELAUNCHING TOP OF THE POPS IS LIKE SHAGGING A CORPSE: Jimmy Saville writes about ver Pops in today's Guardian - he's now decided he's going to claim credit for the whole thing (why not? the old boy long since claimed to have invented the disco as well. Doubtless if he lives much longer we'll discover he invented both the marathon and television itself), although the input of Johnnie Stewart who came up with name and the format might be slightly more important in the sense of creating the show. It's also interesting that Saville says "I presented it once a month", thereby skating over that there were three episodes a month that he wasn't involved with at all.

Frustratingly, though, we do admit he's got a sort of point - the show does need to get back to doing what it always did well (viz. the charts) and stop doing badly what other shows are doing (yakking). It's funny that the musing of Lorraine Heggesey that the show needs to sharpen up was translated by several papers yesterday as a death knell for the Pops. If BBC 1 was going to axe every show which 'only' pulled about three million on a Friday night - never mind being buried against Corrie - then they wouldn't have very much left of their schedule - that'd be the Ten O'clock News gone for a start. We wouldn't be surprised, though, if they don't give the BBC1 showing a later slot, and used BBC 3 as a home for an premiere outing.

DRUMMER NEWS: McCluskey have got a new drummer. That is all the drummer news.

NOW YOU CAN VOTE PUNK: John Grisham - not that one, the singer out of TSOL - has announced he intends to run for the governership of California, lining up a Punks v Terminator glitzy battle. We say: Vote Punk. It makes sense, actually - California has got No Money; who's going to be best in that sort of economy? Someone from a multi-million-bucks movie background, or someone whose world thrives on the DIY ethic?

MY, THEY'RE A LUCKY FAMILY, AIN'T THEY?: imdb is reporting more than a few teething troubles with Sharon Osbourne's new chat show:

The Sharon Osbourne Show is set to debut on September 15, but celebrity guests have proved difficult to book - and two producers are so stressed they ended up leaving the studio in an ambulance. A studio source reveals, "We're six weeks from debuting and we really don't have a formula that works. Sharon is lovely. She's smart. Everybody loves Sharon and no one wants to do a show that will embarrass her. But the executives have changed their minds 10,000 times and it's like we're starting from scratch." Some staff have been working on the show for two months, but stress has proved so great two producers were admitted to hospital - one suffering a seizure and the other an asthma attack. The source adds, "The whole staff feels beaten down and exhausted. Everybody wants to leave. There's a sense of mutiny." Jim Paratore, president of Telepictures Productions, said on Monday, "This show won't be like any other show on TV. The Sharon Osbourne Show will combine celebrity segments a la Live With Regis And Kelly, human interest stories a la Oprah, plus musical guests and pre-taped mini-reality segments. It's really three shows in one, and that's why it's been such a difficult start-up. It's always been a very ambitious show. It takes a while to get everybody on the same page." So far the only celebrities lined-up by bookers are David Spade and Bow Wow, and Paratore admits, "Morale is mixed. The people doing good are feeling good, the people who are not, are not."

I'm sure they'd be able to drag Kelly and Jack on as guests. Ozzy would probably be too much to handle. Blimey, even Jeremy Spake managed to handle the transition from reality TV to proper telly with more grace than this bunch.

SPECTOR-SPECTRE DELAYED: The cops investigating the death of Lana Clarkson have announced that they're not quite ready to proceed with the prosecution against Phil Spector yet; the whole thing will be put back while they do whatever it is they're trying to do.

NO READING, NO LEEDS: Jack White's hand not going to be strong enough for the Beer-sponsored Festival weekend - he's terrible sorry an' all, but they won't be there. Although we'd be quite happy if just Meg turned up, to be frank.

ROCK AND ROLLBIT: No less an authroity than the A&E Channel called him the Man Who Invented Rock & Roll. Sam Phillips, the man who founded Sun Records, died on Wednesday. He was 80 years old. Besides his famous discovery of Elvis, Phillips was instrumental in kickstarting the careers of Carl Perkins, Joe Hill Lewis, Ike Turner, BB King and Johnny Cash - the only artist to release an album on his label.

In the sixties, he swapped from music to investments (in those days, two separate industries) and hit gold by pumping cash into the chain which went on to become Holiday Inn. Quite sweetly, and probably accurately, his son Knox reckons no other Mephian influended the world as much as his Dad.

I always hated (the term) rockabilly. I hated country-and-western (too) because it was two different things. Hillbilly I didn't mind too much, but when you stuck rock in front of billy . . . to me it was rock and roll. Whether it was black rock and roll or white rock and roll, it was rock and roll - Sam Phillips on genre-naming.

SOME BIZZARE: Shirley Manson, Avril and Gwen Steffani fakes are ten-a-dime on the web, right? Not like these, they're not - someone's taken the time to splice Riot Grrl Redux Tank Girl with various celebs. Confusing, but not wrong. Oh, and office safe, too, in case you're wondering.

BIG IN AMERICA: Look very closely at this picture of Posh Spice on stage in America:



Yes, that's right. It's actually Christina. Scary, no?

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: The ghost of Paul Weller edition

It's taken us a while to get round to the current edition of Word, because of Paul Weller being on the cover. There's a place for Paul Weller, a place where he fits and is right and proper; it's the 1980's. Ever since then he's had the air of a crossbencher in the House of Lords - still hanging about in the corridors of power, but without a real role; existing purely on the victories of the past. There is not a Jam or Style Council track that isn't worth a barroom fight to defend the honour of; there isn't a solo release that wouldn't have been put to better use had the plastic been turned into a bottle.

The rest of Word is larded with gems, though: Kristanna Loken is asked if she recognises herself on the cover of Maxim - the terminator three star is pretty fine with undoing her shirt and whacking her tits out, she knows that it's all part of the marketing game. Although she does seem to think it makes a difference that she's on the Movie spin-off of Maxim and not the ordinary edition; maybe it might have a little more about itself, but it's hardly Cahiers Du Cinema, is it?

Shaun Ryder pins down an important difference between Old Pop and New Pop - without realising it - when he says "we never wanted to be famous, we wanted to be in a band" - the precise opposite, you just know, of Cheryl Tweedy.

Clare Grogan tells of why she wasn't in the later seasons of Red Dwarf - after series six, the producers sent her a note suggesting that they felt "kochanski should remain forever young" - it's interesting that this wasn't felt necessary for Craig Charles, or indeed the scripts, which aged quite terribly from that point.

It turns out that buskers on London Underground are now "official" and "sponsored by Carling." While it's kind of nice that the Underground has at least stopped trying to hound them off the network, there's something depressing about corporate sponsorship reaching down into the sounds of the street.

Candace Bushnell believes that what makes Sex & The City so popular is that it tells stories which could only happen in New York; a rare case of a writer not having any idea what she's tapping into. If her tales resonated only within the area covered by JFK, then her series would only hit ratings gold in New York. We wonder if she simply doesn't realise that people fuck in other places, too; and that even in Boise, Idaho, men behave like shits.

"The biggest trap of bands from Nashville" sigh Venus Hum "is the pressure to pretend they're not from here." Contrast with Gillian Welch, who's not from Nashville, but moved there because it "held this romantic appeal for me... never mind that [I arrived] forty years too late."

Word knows why its important that Holly Golightly really is called that. This is why we like Word.

Marina Topley-Bird reads His Dark Materials; Emilia Fox loves Cake (the band); and Michelle Heaton from Liberty X thinks "2 Fast 2 Furious is fantastic. the last thing she read was Sweet Valley High. When she was fifteen. You just sob.

Barry Manilow's rider stipulates that, on the day of a gig, his fan club will be allowed to come in at eleven in the morning to decorate the dressing room. We've often thought that being a Manilow-maniac is on a par with being in a church; it now turns out they have a flower rota too, then.

On a similar note, Destiny's Child actually have an official preacher. Blimey. In his appreciation of Beyonce, Ross Jones suggests that those who call Beyonce a diva are wrong; he invokes Harold ayes description for her: an unknowable.

Over in the New Statesman, there's that walking example of the difference between diva and unknowable; Boy George files the diary. "I always find the most interesting programmes are on very late" he trills "when most civilised people are sleeping. Does Channel 4 know that insomniacs are mostly homosexual?" George has been watching repeats, apparently totally unaware of the fact. His entire diary - what I watched on telly, oooh, I'm so gay, I am - read like the sort of popbitch post that deserves to get the 'wanker' backing slapped on him for all eternity.

The NME has The Darkness on the cover. For the second time in a handful of months, it turns out that there isn't actually an interview to go with this - the Darkness weren't impressed with Mr. Conor begging forgiveness in Glastonbury and are refusing to speak to them. So it is that the issue is lead with a bunch of bits knocked up from the cuttings and a shit - no, actually, that's being too kind - 'how to dress like Justin' feature. It's a pity, isn't it? They can swan in and get access to Andrew WK or Har Mar, and nobody gives a shit. The kids want to read about The Darkness, and there they have a problem.

Mind you, it's not obvious that the paper would want an interview anyway - the main news this week is apparently "Jack White Goes Out With His Girlfriend Rennee Zwelleger"; there's an equally sub-Heat full page given to Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow, dressed up as an investigation into whether Chris is "cracking up" (clue: No, no he isn't). The craparazi overtones are augmented by a piece on Kate Moss. Now, we love Kate Moss, but 'Kate hangs out with indie stars" isn't much of a story, you know - now, the one about her, one indie rock star and a nearly-star and the bottom, that would be a story. Otherwise? It's Kate Likes Indie. Pretty much Select circa 1993, then. Except they're not calling them "indie stars" any more; the obsession with nme branding has lead to the ridiculous phrase "rising NME stars" making an appearance in the reportage, as if bands are there because of the NME, and not vice-versa; any week this would be laughable, in the week of the No Exclusive Darkness Interview, it's wearing-a-novelty-jersey pathetic.

The absolute nadir of the 'news' this week is a report which is, basically, this:

Chris Cester had sex!!!! With a lady!!!!!!!!!!! In an aeroplane!!!!!!!!!!!

... oh, and we're supposed to believe that people thought that Ell and Bow, the Elbow-promoting statues, were aliens. No, we rather think they were taken down from the side of the motorway because they were distracting drivers, not because passers-by thought the good people of Mars had come to town.

There are a couple saving graces: a preview of the soon-come Cooper Temple Clause album, and a fascinating interview with a (probably pissed) Fran Healy as he turns thirty. He starts off plain wrong - "if New York was a character in a TV show, it'd be the Fonz" and then talks about Travis' exciting new political direction. He believes that "if you're an artist, all you can be is the coal miner's canary; you're the early warning system." So, what is Fran giving us an early warning about? That Bush is bad. Thanks for the heads-up, Fran - good job someone brought that to our attention before he did something bad. "The people who've not understood Travis seem to be pretenders; pretending they're cool" claims Healy. This is a wonderful piece of solipsism: note how it's not people who don't like Travis; they are merely people who don't understand. Splendidly, Fran still bears a massiv egrudge against mark beaumont, for a review he wrote of the Man Who three thousand years ago. Healy still goes online to read it from time to time, to stoke his ire anew. That's Healy at thirty: a man divorced of reality; building up a little stockpot of bitterness and totally out of his depth. Smashing.

Please, nme, if you do nothing else, stop the Bing Crosby/David Bowie "comic strip". I've been hoping that if I ignore it, it'll go away. Clearly it won't. It's not even misfiring; it's just devoid of any element of humour at all. Make it stop.

NME readers "claim the Mercury Prize is the new Brits" says a splash. This is apparently because, erm, 80s Matchbox B-Line disaster weren't nominated. The suggestion that the award is like the Brits - an obvious and safe way of slapping the backs of the cash-successful - would make a little more sense if the same page didn't also have a piece complaining about the inclusion of acts nobody's ever heard of. So what is it: too mainstream, or not mainstream enough?

The Futureheads do the CD - Loudon Wainwright III, the Velvet Underground and Kate Bush.

The Bumblebeez piece is little more than a list of famous people they know, but Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba is given a bit more consideration - "I live life to the fullest, butI also relive life to the fullest" he claims. He's read 1984 and Brave New Word a dozen times teach, which suggests its time someone bought him a copy of Farenheit 451.

The Hiss article has got a fascinating story at its heart - how the strain of producing the debut album and being the only girl in a boy's band led to Mahjula having a breakdown (in Gatwick's HMV of all places), but beyond the details, the humanity is lost; the headline '£800 a week on coke, a psycho bassist and Oasis' producer' sums up how the human interest has been thrown out to make way for the 'phew, rock and roll' angle.

reviews
lps
soledad brothers - voice of treason - "forget jack white and his sore finger", 8
various - gone fishing (the wichita birthday compilation) -"all for under three quid", 7
the faint - danse macarbe remixes - "mostly, it's a success", 7
martina topley-bird - quixotic - "dinner parties", 5
the clientele - the violet hour - "music to take drugs to make music to take drugs to", 8

singles
sotw - the raveonettes - that great love sound - "the art of attaining an erection"

supergrass - rush hour soul - "still very 1974"
ten speed racer - fifteen - "wasted potential, like a man with a ten inch penis suffering from impotence"

live
duran duran - LA Roxy - "still the coolest band on Planet Earth - Duran the way god intended"
holly golightly - oxford bullingdon arms - "people actualy dancing and smiling"

the stupid picture of a slack-jawed reader and a micro celeb feature is still running, even although Vodaphone has got bored with sponsoring it and given up.

And finally: the London Centre of Contemporary Music (who we shall call "the shadowy" LCCM until such time as we are told different) is looking for a band to use as the heart of its projects for the coming year - they'll get studio time, promotion and many support slots. Hey, it worked for Belle and Sebastian.

OFFICIAL: EMINEM IS A MUPPET: Muppet, puppet, whatever. This time last year, people who should have known better were muttering that he could be in line for an Oscar for Best Actor. Now, he hustling to get voiceover work as a sock puppet.

SWORN PAUL: Sean Paul gets hit with a summons for 'profanity' during a Jamican date. Apparently he's looking at a twenty bucks fine, which really makes the whole thing little more than a swearbox with a legal framework, surely?

NO, IT ISN'T A JOKE: The Police who investigated the Milly Dowler murder really have recorded a version of Build Me Up Buttercup, which suggests that perhaps Chris Morris has infiltrated their ranks somehow. Are we to suppose that a pop cover is to be spun off of all major murder investigations in future? Jesus.

KEITH SKUES RUMOURED TO BE EXPECTING AN APPROACH SOON: While you can't fault Capital for desperately trying to lure Jonathan Ross to its sliding London station, coming in the same week that BamBam rebuffed them you have to wonder if this is the closest they've got to a plan for replacing Chris Tarrant when he goes at Christmas - running up to anyone with a radio show and offering them money? Is there no talent for them to grow in Capital itself?

CLEAR CHANNEL REFUSE TO ACCEPT MATHS, DEMAND RECOUNT: We know we shouldn't be happy that Clear Channel's Radio Revenues have fallen, because the chances are it'll make them behave in an even worse fashion than they already do, but we do have a little smirk nonetheless. Clear Channel say its because of the economy, we're hoping that there will be just a smidgin of that drop down to advertisers thinking that the stale radio product offered by Clear isn't the right environment for their products.

What's equally amusing is that Clear Channel say they "refuse to accept negative growth", which is a double mathematical nonesense - saying you don't accept something doesn't make it go away; equally, pretending that shrinking is the more upbeat sounding 'negative growth' is meaningless, too.

ANY MORE REASONS TO HATE ROBBIE WILLIAMS?: Here's another one: he's meant to be a big Port Vale fan - indeed, he's often made much of how he loves the team, and dreamed of playing for it and blee blee blee blah blah blah. So, then, why has he spent ten million on taking an executive box at Chelsea?. (This, of course, is without even touching on the fact that anyone who really loves football would no more want to watch a match from a box than an angling fan would elect to pursue their passion by visiting those fairground stalls where you use rods with magnets to catch plastic ducks). Port Vale nearly went out of business last year, and a successful fans consortium bought the club out - I'd imagine that if their supposed biggest fan had ten million to burn on a football team, they could have put it to slightly better use.

THIS IS WHY EVEN ROCKERS NEED TO WEAR A STRAP: Chino Moreno of the Deftones managed to injure his groin while on stage (not, of course, in the same way Fred Durst sustained injuries down there, when he got hit by a lemon) and the band have had to cancel dates as a result. That's dates as in gigs, of course, but we suspect that Chino won't be available for the other sort for a little while yet, either.

MEET THE NEW FACE OF THE US RECORD INDUSTRY Face not shown: The replacement for Hilary Rosen has been named; from September first, the RIAA will be headed up by Mitch Bainwol. Mitch's connection with the music industry is, um, totally non-existent. He was Bill Frist's chief of staff, which will obviously mean he has great understanding and insight into the ways of the music world.

Its his political connections that have got him the job - the Washington Post observes that Rosen's Democratic ties were of limited use in the current US political climate; in Wired, Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Fred Von Lohman expresses hope that Bainwol will lead the music industry in a 'productive' direction, but wonders a little at the choice; his old boss Frist wasn't a major character in the copyright struggles playing out right now which suggests that Bainwol has little to bring to the table other than the telephone numbers of some senators and skills in shaking hands.

It's interesting that Bainwol wasn't even interviewed in the first round of Rosen-replacement-seeking; more interesting still that part of the trouble the RIAA had was that nobody really wanted to do the job, despite the handy million bucks a year that goes with the office. That few wanted to wield the sledgehammer of power suggests that there isn't very much support throughout the industry for the RIAA's tactics at the moment, especially amongst those who actually understand music, and music fans in particular.

We're sure that the many gays, lesbians and bisexuals working in the music industry will be delighted that the top job has gone to a man whose previous major role in public life was supporting Frist, especially when good ole' Bill has worked so tirelessly to try and make gay marriages unconstitutional. You can find a list of the organisations that have hired Bainwol here; mostly insurance companies looking to weasel out of industrial injuries compensation claims as far as we can see.

If you Google on "Mitch Bainwol" music, you don't get any results that actually show Bainwol taking an interest in music at all. Which we guess shouldn't surprise us in the head of the Record Company Cartel. We're guessing his secretary is currently off buying him some of those CDs, so that he can give an interview to the New York Times saying how much he loved the Paul and Simon when he was in college, and, hey, his kids love Raidingohead.

There's more - much, much more - over on Slashdot.

HONEYPUNKCURIOSITY: Okay, so maybe we're developing an obsession, but how come when you go to honeypunks.com and choose 'our pictures', you always get told there "are too many users on the image server right now"? The question is rhetorical, of course.

IDOL THREATS: The return of Pop Idol is being trailed heavily right now on ITV. The set-up is that there'll be something singing - one of those yammering fishes, or a tortoise with the voice of Vic Reeves. Then, there is an explosion, or a wall knocked down, and the camera pulls back to reveal Simon Cowell. The voiceover is something along the lines of "some say he's a bit too harsh" or something like that. So, at least they're being honest this time: the show isn't a chance to see talented young persons embarking on a journey to fame and fortune; it's a chance to see a rich, badly dressed boor being stamping on the dreams of kids forever.

WE CONCEDE: Duncan R., you are right - the Dogs Die In Hot Cars story should have been headlined 'Dogs fry in hot bars'. If we gave out prizes, we'd give you a big one. But we don't, so we'll just flash you a grin.

NICE GUY NICO: Don't be fooled by the tame 'Iron Maiden drummer accused of hitting a man with car' style headlines - the allegation is that Nico McBrain took the 'don't you know who I am' strop to a new level by driving the car into a man who didn't recognise him. Of course, it's all allegations at the moment, so we'll just alledge that McBrain is a puffed-up tosser.

THAT'S ABOUT IT'S MONEY, I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT: Gullible, rich Japanese fail to appear in London auction room ("Stuart Sutcliffe tat ("memorobilia") fails to sell as well as expected").

Although we'd have bid on the GCE certificates, which would have some sort of value if used for the basics of a fraud, we'd imagine.

ANOTHER OVERHAUL, THEN: So, Andy Peters is going to have another overhaul of TOTP this autumn, the second in about two years and the ninety-fifth since the show first abandoned its basic, chart-hugging format. The Guardian's ratings figures in this piece should be taken with caution, mind: the relaunch edition did pull in 1.5 million more than were watching last week, but it was an hour-long special, was heavily promoted and as such would have expected to pick up a few extra viewers - especially as half of it wasn't up against Corrie.

But Andy, here's a clue: You play the number one. You then go down the chart, playing anything that's doing better than, or as good as, last week, unless they were on the show the week before. And so on, until the show is filled up. That's the format. No download charts, no new releases; no chats with the Fame Academy rejects in the Star Bar. I would also suggest presenters being drawn from Radio One djs, but that would mean Chris Moyles would be in on it, so let's not.