HAPPY, HAPPY DAY: We're now looking forward slightly more to the Brits next year, as Robbie Williams doesn't qualify for nominations as he hasn't actually put anything new out since November 2002. The Sun seems to think this is some sort of a scandal, but... erm, it's just the rules, guv. I mean, even if it was someone with a grudge exercising a technicality it'd still be incredibly amusing and totally welcome, but it's not. He's got away with getting with getting prizes despite having no talent; does The Sun really want him to get prizes for not doing anything at all as well?

ROCK GO-AWAY BEACH: Nothing sends a shudder up a genteel town like the threat of a rock band moving in, which is why Southwold is gripped with fear at suggestions by Justin Hawkins that the Darkness might move in. We're guessing the real worry of Southwold residents isn't that they're a rock band, but that they come from Lowestoft.

And is it just us, or is Justin becoming more and more like the rock star portrayed by Richard E Grant in the Argos adverts?

THE NAPPY WAS ALL YELLOW: Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow are to have a baby. Which means we're in for an even worse album from Coldplay sometime around 2005, given that only Loudon Wainwright III has managed to write music about his children in a consistently interesting way. The last thing Chris Martin needs is even more mellowness, more 'wow, trees are made with leaves'.

... IN THE NAME OF THE LORD: Boyzone's Shane Lynch has announced that he's now big chums with God, who he claims "pulled me through my badness." He's not mucking about, either: "I now go to church on Sundays and things like that" he claims, a bit vaguely. Things like that being what? Taking communium? Going to church midweek? Giving tins of pineapple chunks to harvest festival?

Anyway, it's great for Shane that he's found someone - God - to fill the gap left in his life by the absence of someone else - Ronan. God can be a great comfort during rough times, and we're guessing that Shane will be having lots of those coming up.

BAMBOO MEETS THE DARKNESS: A second slice of Becky Bamboo, as she tussles with The Darkness in So Cal:

You know, it feels like we've all been with The Darkness from their humble beginnings playing to our own Robertshaw and a few other fans. It's like they're an honorary BSN band or something. So I don't know what I was expecting exactly, but it wasn't a sold out and extremely packed venue, scalpers outside, or a group (a fan club?!?) with handmade The Darkness t-shirts with each person's name lettered in gothic script on the back. (Seriously! They were too funny.) It wasn't the usual hipster crowd though - I overheard more than the usual number of British accents in the crowd (fairly typical at a show by a band who is big in the UK and virtually unknown over here), and the heavy metal fans seemed to be out in force.

The opening band was just finishing while I was waiting in line to pick up my ticket. There was no need to worry though, because it took The Darkness 45 fucking minutes to take the stage. That's pretty much unheard of at the smaller venues, where the turnaround time is usually a scant 15. Not cool. The only other band that's taken that long was The Libertines. It wasn't like people could go to the bar or anything either because everyone was squished together in a solid mass. Anyway. All was forgiven as soon as the band came out. After that it was balls-out rock (very nearly literally, given how low Justin's pants were) for the next hour. He ditched his shirt halfway through the second song to squeals of joy from the audience and subsequently changed into two different barechested jumpsuits (one silver and one pink and white striped) over the course of the show.

I've had the album for a few weeks now and it honestly didn't grab me like I thought it would, given my junior high love of all things hair metal.. White Lion, Def Leppard, Bon fucking Jovi, etc. But the songs worked so well live that I think when I go back and listen to it now I'll enjoy it a lot more. Justin is a fantastic front man who definitely knows how to work a crowd. He had the audience hanging on his every word, able to start a round of clapping with just a look and a gesture. Everyone was caught up and sang along from the first song. Hell, he even got me (ME!) to clap along and I never do that.

And I'm proud to say that the BSN tradition of groping Justin is alive and well. When he hopped on the bouncer's shoulders and started making his way through the crowd, I managed a quick squeeze quite high up his thigh. Of course, I nearly got run over by the bouncer in the process. Rock & roll, baby. Rock. And. Roll.

IF YOU LIKED WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAID LAST WEEK: ... it seems The Original Soundtrack also has a bedroom knee-deep in old magazines, too... See? Hoarding does pay off.

THE BAMBOO REVIEW: We're slowly sifting through a pile of email you wouldn't believe, and highlights will be coming in the next few days. First out the box is Becky Bamboo at the Sleepy Jackson and the Polyphonic Spree:

The last time I saw an accordion player at a rock show was Jump, Little Children. Until last night. The first opener was Corn Mo, a stoner-looking dude with long frizzy blond hair, the biggest sideburns I've seen and an accordion. He also had a drumstick stuck into the laces of his shoe so he could hit the cymbal on the floor. Yeah. Surprisingly, he was pretty entertaining, in a novelty act sort of way. It's impossible to make an accordion sound anything but jaunty and the songs reflected that sound, with lots of pop culture references and humor. I could totally see him opening for Tenacious D in the future.

The next band was The Sleepy Jackson, the real reason I went to the show. A few minutes before they came out I spotted a friend and went over to stand with him and preach the glory of the band. After their first song he turned to me and said, "Wow, they're really good!" Oh my, yes. Live, they add Sonic Youth style soundscapes that suddenly resolve into these amazing songs that are part Flaming Lips, part George Harrison, part Tom Petty, yet all their own. Looking like an odd amalgam of Herve Villechaize and an extra from Velvet Goldmine (shimmery scarf, Transformer cover Lou Reed t-shirt, black suit jacket), Luke Steele was on fire. He said next to nothing, just letting the songs blend into each other, momentum keeping the audience engaged. So, *so* good. And I say that even though they didn't play my two favorite songs off Lovers.

Despite having most of their instruments already set up, The Polyphonic Spree took forever to take the stage. You know the drill.. white choir robes, every instrument under the sun, choir, blah, blah. It was like a revival by way of a community theater production of Hair. Again, pretty entertaining in a novelty act way. The songs are pretty simplistic though, and virtually indistiguishable from each other so I don't really see myself getting too involved with them. I took off after about 45 minutes because 6 AM comes awfully early in the morning.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: English edition

So, it came a couple of weeks ago but the late appearance of the NME stopped us from giving the last Observer Music Monthly its full dues. They'd done Pop's 10 Strangest Duets, which ranged from the genuinely strange (Pavarotti & Skunk Anansie or Bing & Bowie) to the obvious attempts to go "hey, never saw that coming, did you?" such as Elton & Eminem, but also finds space for a lot less surprising pairings - Madonna & Missy was a matter of time, Prince & Sheena Easton oddly apt (and, actually, Sheena was not "the product of a BBC star search", as any pedant kno - she was the subject of The Big Time, a totally different format). Weakest of all is the inclusion of The Smiths & Sandie Shaw, a pairing that had the inevitability of Kelly & Ozzy.

But we're not alone in having problems with these charts, although we're not sure we want to be in the company of Jonathan King, who writes from the nonce wing at HMP Elmley in a huff at being left out of the Pops Greatest Eccentrics run down the month before. Maybe it's time to focus on getting parole, King?

The Secret Life of Chris Martin does manage to raise an interesting question about coldplay boy - how can you have sex with a Hollywood a-lister like Gwyneth Paltrow (okay, mid b-lister) and yet still be so dull?

Michelle Ryan, who plays Zoe Slater in Eastenders, listens to Phil Collins and Tracy Chapman in the car. And yet its mobile phone using drivers who get fined. Where's the justice, eh?

Dr Music prescribes Ruth Rogers from the River Cafe Tindersticks and the Handsome Family. They both go down well, and the River Cafe menu will now consist of broken hearted wine and heartbreak soup.

Understatement: "in the last few weeks" Courtney Love's life has threatened to spin out of control. And after she'd held it together so well for the last ten, eh?

Razorlight - the new band - seem to have been constructed, like the last half of the Bible - almost totally out of visions and madness.

The guts of the magazine were a celebration of 100 years of the Blues - that's a damn lot of women done us wrong, in a collective sense - and Pop Star Mums and their bairns, which veers slightly towards Hello-town with Cerys Matthews showing off Glenys Pearl - great for dressing up in shoes - and Skye from Morcheeba, who tells an amusing and telling story about playing Lillith fair and being made to leave her kids back in the hotel. Lisa Maffia, meanwhile, claims she took Chelsea out of the nursery because "everyone kept getting her to sing 21 seconds over and over again." Even if true, surely got to be better than The Wheels on the Bus?

Tom Cox, curiously, became a fanzine editor when his Plan A - to become a golfer - failed. Just think, Tiger - you could be pursuing a lucrative evening hauling a Tescos bag with copies of a poorly photocopied stapled A5 mag from gig to gig instead of wasting your life with playing pitch and putt. Cox concludes that Popbitch is the new fanzine, which sort of suggests that everyone who posts on ver Bitch is a paranoid virgin incapable of stringing together two words unless they get the safety barrier of letraset and a keyboard between them and their audience. Which isn't true, is it?

Simon LeBon takes a trip down memory lane to the day he stared into the eyes of the Big D, when Drum rolled.

"Dr Fox is extremely faithful to the DJ's Savillocratic Oath," observes Paul Morley in monthly highlight Music on TV, "which enshrines the DJ's right to use music as an excuse to get as close as possible to members of the opposite sex."

Writing in the New Statesman diary, Boy George tries to take the bad reviews of the Broadway debut for Taboo on the (badly inked in) chin. Well, not quite. He tries to pretend "la la la, I'm not listening" but clearly he is; then he tries to write them all off to being inspired by the critics hatred of exec producer Rosie O'Donnell. Maybe, George, but then why would they be tearing the book, and your acting, and the whole damn lot up too? Eventually, Boy attempts to push off the bad reviews as being proof that critics know nothing - it's selling out, isn't it? - but, as the packed houses for Ben Elton's Rod Stewart show (surely the first plot ever to have left space on the back of the envelope for a shopping list and a doodle as well) and - yikes - even Kid Creole's Oh What A Night show, the number of greenbacks in the till has very little to do with the quality of what's on the handbill.

Mojo comes with a free Best of 2003 CD (so does Uncut) - being Mojo, of course, the cream of the year has been Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer and Diana Ross. There's a big feature on 1969, an unquestionably pivotal year in pop history, Hawksley Worksman album gets just two stars and there's a strange little news report of a riot in Montreal. Eight cars were trashed and burned because of the cancellation of... an Exploited gig.

Another reason to love Pink: she knocked back playing William's 21st birthday, she tells Elle Girl, because he ignored her letter asking him why he got off on hunting. Of course, she could have also knocked him back because he's the new face (albeit chinless) of an unacceptable political system, but nobody's perfect.

Also in Elle Girl, Dannii Minogue is invited to list her favourite websites. One is her own - presumably she checks in regularly to see if her management are trying to dig her out of any 'foreign people are bad' shaped holes - and another is BT Yahoo Broadband, which reads scarily like she's lifted it from a press release. Maybe she's planning for her next job, trying to interest callers in an upgrade to Broadband?

Peter Brame, the indie one off Fame Academy, likes: The Libertines, The Darkness, Dolly Parton, erm, Aled Jones and "a new band" called Mew. Surely older than both the Libs and the ness?

Oh, and Justin Timberlake loves Coldplay...

... which is why last week's NME was such a travesty. It was the Cool Issue, and it got it wrong on so many counts. What it did get right was the list being almost totally different to last years - which we think also reflects a noticeable shift in what the paper values, actually, and that's welcome - but what it gets wrong... like choosing Mutya as the cool Sugababe - no, she's just pissy. Or having Christina Aguilera in the list because of her "call me a slag if that means being a strong woman" quote - which they seem to think is "reclaiming the word 'slag' for women who enjoy sex." Ahem. Women who enjoy sex have been having a pretty good three decades of it (at the very least, but we're arbitrarily dating it from the launch of British Cosmopolitan.) Here we are again: what comes from Christina is not the air of a woman who loves fucking and is in control, but a woman so desperate to be liked she'll do stuff she doesn't really feel comfortable. It's telling that Britney's new album is all about the hump and grind, while Christina is usually to be found warbling about the real her inside.

Wayne Coyne should be far higher than 42.

But the biggest question mark hangs over the choice of Justin Timberlake as the Coolest Person in music. Timberlake? Really? If only you'd been around ten years ago and seen his Daddy, Evan Dando, in action. Timberlake hangs around other, hipper acts, begging to be allowed to dress up as a dolphin for them with all the self-respect of a chess team geek hoping if he huddled by the Mini Bus Garage the smell of the bad boy's fags might rub off on him. We had the misfortune to catch his Saturday Night Live show last week, along with a couple of other live performances, and, frankly, we wish our stepfather-in-law had kept his 24-Hour Golfing Network on. Every time he did Cry Me A River - which kind of suggests he's a bit of a one-song wanda; worse, it's a song which he needs to have at least four backing singers to make it through. And every time he danced. And boy, how he danced. Like a lemur trying to edge a banana out of tree. Is this what you call cool?

A further puzzlement: Trying to find someone to speak up for Michael Jackson, the paper troops off to HMV. They can't find a person to say a nice word about him. "All of which suggests that while Michael Jackson still has his fans, he can't inspire them enough to speak up for him." Hmmm. Even supposing that the international outbreaks of "Jacko is innocent" placard waving hadn't managed to break into the consciousness of Kings Reach Tower, hadn't anyone heard the paper's boss on 'Today' over a week before where he shared the microphone with... erm, a stridently pro-Jackson fan rubbishing the whole thrust of the State of California's claims?

This week's NME comes laden with stuff - stickers (a Chain With No Name festive promotion, not quite as cool as last year's advent calendar); a radiohead tour pullout souvenier thingy and a calendar, which is a very nice thing indeed (we're not sure if this comes with the newsstand edition, though, as it isn't mentioned on the cover of the magazine.)

The Big Picture is some stuff from Kurt's journal, really just a massive trailer for another slew of new material from the dead guy's cupboard next week - although we could have sworn that we've seen the list of the top 50 albums somewhere before.

Anthony Minghella believes Jack White is a "tremendous actor." Maybe that's why he had the stupid moustache.

Coldplay are bringing their deathly cold feet to trample over The Streets second album.

Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand chooses CD tracks - The Fall, Sparks and - oh, my, you're throwing us for a loop here, Mr. Alex - Outkast.

"If you write anything horrible I'll come and kick your face in" threatens Will Young, settling down for a bout with Peter Robinson. Sadly, Young's flat, I'm-a-pretty-straight-guy refusal to say anything interesting makes the meeting a bit less exciting than that would make it seem.

Radar band is My Chemical Romance, a post September 11th 2001 band from, of course, New York.

"The way Thom shakes his ass... or Jonny spends the night humping a series of demented squeaks out of his guitar... it's not just filthy, it's X-Rated" reports Tim Jonze, breathless from the Manchester and Newcastle dates.

The Thrills are interviewed one-by-one, as if acknowledging that a lot of the current slew of acts don't really stand out as a bunch of guys but become more of an amorphous blob. The attempt to project spice girl style personalities on the Thrills won't take, we fear, but in case it does, meet Prankster, Scatty, Lothario, Bladdered and Daydreaming Thrill - Daniel, Conor, Kevin, Padraic and Ben in that order.

There's some sort of horrible mish-mash monster of cool rock star pieces. The cock comes from Jack White which, if he keeps on the way he's going, won't be a problem as he won't need it much longer.

reviews
live
my morning jacket - mean fiddler - "our hearts tell us to grow our hair", 9
mars volta - glasgow barrowlands - "even bepermed, cosmic, space-prog journeymen have to return to earth occassionally", 7

rufus wainwright, new york - "he charms when his music can't."

albums
johnny cash - unearthed - "in his hands, You'll never Walk Alone's funeral majesty carries it well beyond a hammy terrace anthem", 10
korn - "the medium is bloated, played out and steeped in self-parody", 3
ja rule - blood in my eye - "dark ghetto hip-hop and old soul beats", 8

singles
sotw - selfish cunt - britain is shit/ fuck the poor - "they're going to disappoint you, eventually, but for now..."
nelly furtardo - powerless - "shania twain meets Riverdance"

and finally, Stuart Murdoch loves the Cocteau Twins - not least because they were "the closest I came to sex for a long time."

BITTER OLD MEN: Keef is miffed at Mick's acceptance of a Knighthood, because getting honours from the establishment isn't what the Rolling Stones is all about, apparently. (We're not quite sure what the Stones are meant to be about, to be honest - frankly, if we're meant to choose between a Stones with Mick sucking up to the queen and, say, a Stones with Bill Wyman fucking a thirteen year old girl and being treated like a superstudmuffin as a result, we'd have to plump for the former, albeit through gritted teeth. What is Keith afraid of? Afraid its going to put off the corporate sponsors for the Stones tour? Afraid it will stop the luxury boxes at the Stones gigs from selling out to the toffs? I don't think so. Yeah, Mick should have stopped short of agreeing to go down on one knee before the queen if he wanted to preserve those rock credentials. But also, he should never have made the solo album. And he should never have toured with the band once it got past the point where they got reduced rates on their tour bus because of their passes. And they should never have traded indoor venues for playing football stadiums. Keith, baby, it's another nail in a coffin that's already been welded shut and had a sixteen tonne elephant sat upon it. We know you're just pissed off because you've not got a little gong yourself.

IT'S THE RETURN OF THE RACHEL STEVENS NON-STORY: Ananova reports that Rachel Stevens had her whips confiscated at Heathrow - not much of a story, but a great excuse to run another picture of her. "What did they imagine?" asked a puzzled Rachel, after being told the whips could be used as weapons, and she has a point - you might be able to do some damage with the plastic fork that you get with the meals, but is it entirelty likely that anyone is going to be able to hijack a plane using whips? "Fly me to Cuba, or I'll give you forty lashes, captain... or at least I will once we're out of the plane, only there isn't the room here to bring a whip back properly..."

JUST-INCH? NOT ACCORDING TO HIS GRAN: We really, really don't want to know how Justin Timberlake's gran can be sure that Britney's lying about the size of Timbo's todger, but we're just delighted she felt the need to share it with us. Can you imagine how Justin will be feeling? It's bad enough when your nan claims to her mates down the bingo you've got lots of GCSEs when you only passed Pottery and Sports Theory, but that's got to be nothing compared with the shame of seeing your silver-haired granmama pop up on MTV boasting about your penis size. Especially when the only person who is speaking up is your gran, rather than a bunch of satisified lovers saying "We still walk bandy-legged". Until such times as we get an indepenent witness, we're carrying on thinking of him as the Inch High Private Guy.

EUGGGHS AND BAKER: Look at this picture:



This is Cheryl Baker getting her arse hosed out on live TV earlier this week. The scariest thing about this, though, is that we know somewhere, there's going to be an internet mailing list who now believe they have a fairy godmother making all their dreams come true, tappity-tapping away on keyboards to send thousands of messages along the lines of "okay, so now let's all pray that Jay Aston gets fisted on Blue Peter..."

YOU'RE A CELEBRITY? GET OUT OF HERE: We're not sure we believe it, but there must have been some basis for the leak that John Lydon is in the frame for the next season of I'm A Celebrity. Its not like he's actually got much in the way of admirable punky ethics left to piss away against a wall, we guess, but even so the whole thing gives us uncontrollable shudders, the desire to cry and a need for hugs. We're guessing that he's being pencilled in as the "gobby one who puts everyone down", which would seem to require for him to have some degree of dignity left to stand upon. Sid Vicious, we imagine, is pissing himself. Not with laughter, just because he was such a screw-up we doubt if even his ghost is continent.

KYLIE PRAISED: Charlotte has reminded us of something that had been bothering us while we were in the States watching the dumping of EMI by Warners. When Robbie had been re-shackled to EMI, hadn't there been much talk that what had attracted him was the canny skills the label had shown in making Kylie such a big force in the US? And, at the time, we'd all sort-of-nodded and gone "Oh, yeah, they did it for Kylie."

So why is it the US seemed oddly Kylie-less? The whole of the UK seems to have accepted that she's cracked America, and yet... she hasn't, really, has she? If you check the MTV America Kylie Minogue news archive, and ignore the stories in which she appears only fleetingly (most she doesn't even crack the headline), they've written about her three times - twice in 1999 when she recorded a Duran Duran cover with Ben Lee, and once - most recently - on April Fool's Day in 2002. Hardly gives the impression of a massive breakthrough, does it? And if you seek out Kylie on Google News, the only American-published story about her in the last couple of weeks was in the gay press, mentioning her in a list of tracks on the Queer Eye For The Straight Guy soundtrack album. And, in this age where the panicky fear of evil interwebbers sharing their files has record companies rushing their prime beef to the market as soon as the final 'STOP' button is pressed on the studio tape recorder, Capitol don't seem that arsed about getting Body Language into WalMart - it's not even due out until February 10th, and the promotional push seems to consist of little more than a half-assed street team. Maybe she's about to crack America, but at the moment, she'd be lucky to get confused with Holly Vallance there.

LOW CHURCH: Talking exclusively to the Oxford Student (we're guessing that they couldn't find a PR for Zippy, George and Bungle), Charlotte Church has Charlotte Church has dangled the tantalising prospect that she might shut up and have babies instead of making more records and such. The icWales report of the interview is wonderfully demented - it suggests she shows her "fun side" by saying she'd quite like an i-Pod, and, says the Welsh site "she proved she has strong opinions when it comes to other people's music." Erm... really?: "I saw Christina Aguilera at Wembley Arena, though I was pretty ill that night so I only got to hear a couple of tracks. Before that I saw Prince and Craig David in Hong Kong and Robbie Williams, Bon Jovi, and the Manics." Strong, insightful criticism there, certainly. She does say she thinks Victoria Beckham has got a weak voice, but that's hardly being very strident, is it?

But hang on, icWales hasn't finished yet: "When asked who she most admired Charlotte gave what might seem like typical answers for a girl of her age, though clearly she has more insight into her heroine's lives than most people. Ah, such insight... and what does she teach us? Britney is a "really strong chick", Nicole Kidman is "just really cool" and Kylie "has proved her talent by becoming big in the US." (oh, yeah?).

Most perplexing of all, having given perhaps one of the dullest drudgery-filled interviews since Radio Times axed A day In The Life ("ooh, I like a bacon sandwich, me... I shop at Asda... I eat take-away"), Church claims she'd been "too open" with the media and wishes she'd kept a "bit of herself" back. Here's a hint, Charlie - you could start by not spending an interview droning on about what time you get up and whether you use butter, marge or I Can't Believe Its Not Butter.

UNPAID MELODY: Robson Green - the porter from Casualty who went on to do other acting, we believe - has stated the bleeding obvious ("hit out at Simon Cowell saying that nearly everyone involved in Pop Idol won't make a bean because they'll get stuffed on their contracts" - so, they are like proper pop stars after all, then.) He concedes that Gates and Young might make a few hundred thousand out of it, as if this is somehow scandalous. But not especially talented people singing not entirely original songs tolerably well and taking home hundreds of thousands- isn't that the real scandal?

NOT THAT ROCK AND ROLL, THEN: Limp Bizkit pull their entire Asian tour because they're scared. Hmmm. Now, surely these dates were only announced about three weeks or so back - in other words, a year or so after the Bali bomb. So how come they've only just twigged there might be a risk of Fred Durst getting blown up? Could it be not so much the fear of a terrorist attack, but the fear of playing to empty rooms that has lead to the sudden decision that it's just too risky to go there?

NEW TAN LINES: Things to look forward to in 2004: Apparently, a new proper Charlatans album.

GOOD GOD, PEOPLE, CAN'T YOU SEE THAT'S WHAT HE WANTS?: Some bonkers Christians in Zurich have made a formal complaint about Marilyn Manson claiming that his face-powdered circus sideshow is, somehow, a breach of the law against incitement to violence. Apart from probably giving Brian a stiffy - we can picture him grinning into a mirror smirking "Yeah, I'm still a menace to society" - it's a tremendous waste of police time, isn't it? The only people who Marilyn Manson is a threat to is the Insane Clown Policy as the two acts struggle for the dwindling share of the Easily-Impressed Crayoning Teenager market. Christianity managed to make it through two thousand years of Inquisitions, False Popes, Schisms, Wars, the offer 'convert to Islam and get a free WH Smiths voucher', three Omen movies, Harry Secombe's Highway and those large-print bibles with Jesus' words printed in red - to what extent is a half-way to cabaret act a real threat? Shouldn't you be out praying about Iraq or something?

BIGGER THAN ANYTHING: That the US Networks chose to run the limited information they had as not just the main story the day of the HSBC and British Consulate bombing, but the only story, is perhaps unsurprising, if a little disappointing - adding to the feeling that only terrorism against American targets actually 'counts'. But with the family under seige, you'd have to question the wisdom of Jermaine 'father of Jermajesty' Jackson popping up at the UN to try and promote an Aids awareness event. In terms of bringing attention to the matter, Ashanti (the other celeb at the launch) would have been more than capable of bringing in the cameras by herself, and it was surely obvious that the presence of one of the Jackson siblings would have only taken the focus away from the World health crisis. That Jermaine ran off mid-conference really made things far worse - a less egocentric man would have just sat there and waited until the press got bored. An ego-free man would have had the good taste not to turn up at all. Once again, the sense is that the real cause was about the aggrandisement of the promoters rather than the promotion of the cause.

WHY BRITNEY IS PUSHING IT IN WAYS CHRISTINA CAN'T COMPETE WITH: Yeah, Christina might wear chaps with no knickers. Big deal. Britney persuaded Ford to underwrite her (albeit mildly) sapphic video. The key bit isn't the near-kiss at the end, it's the car at the start that's yer cultural therometer right there.

TOP OF THE FIZZY POPS: One of the most curious aspects over the hoo-hah over the sponsorship of the "official" chart by Coca-Cola is the way that some critics, like EMAP's Mark Storey, seem to think there's something new about the chart being sponsored - there isn't, of course, it's just the previous sponsor Worldpop threw its money away on a sponsorship nobody knew of. But it has to be the novelty that's upset EMAP rather than the sugar-sweet nature of the sponsor - because it's only a few months since EMAP's stations ceased carrying the, um, Pepsi Chart.

So, should the BBC be letting the nation's all-important list of best (feebly) selling singles be whored out to the fizzy pop maker? Sure, the BBC are in a tricky position here - they don't make the chart, so don't have a direct input into what happens on the headed notepaper, and, as they fairly point out, they mention sponsorship deals in the case of, say, the Coca-Cola Cup or the Barclaycard Premiership. On the other hand, the BBC is one of the biggest paymasters of the Chart Company, and it's pretty apparent that the Officialness of the Official chart resides not in the fact it appears in a pull-out in the middle of Music Week, but in its use by the BBC. If the BBC elected not to use the Chart With Added Sugar, but to go elsewhere for its listing (hell, we'd even make up a list of bestselling singles for you, if you'd like) it's unlikely Coke would be topping up the Chart Company's coffers to the tune of a million quid. (Perhaps what's really the big pisser about this is that Radio One and Top of the Pops are going to be used as a billboard, but the BBC don't get a silver dollar of the cash). The BBC don't currently underwrite the costs of, say, the Lancia Classic and then find themselves having to bend to the whims of a sponsor as well, and really, the Corporation should have used that moral authority to say "you want a sponsor? Fine, they can pay for the entire chart, then."

Of course, there's a connected argument about if Coca-Cola is a fit sponsor for anything that kids are interested in at all - it might encourage them to drink pop, which they otherwise wouldn't do - but that's perhaps for another time.

IT TAKES TWO, BABY...: Following on from the Korn/limpbizkit smithkleinebeecham tour, now it's POD and Linkin Park hooking up for a joint jaunt. We'd really like to think that the habit of two rock bands coming together before they set foot out on tour is because they're too wimpish to face up to going to Texas alone, but we're happy to accept that it's because of the dwindling hard rock market forcing the promoters to double-up on the offer in a bid to make the numbers add up in a positive fashion.

"DIDN'T HURT A BIT. DIDN'T CRY. I'M A BIG BRAVE BOY: Of course, having spent the last year desperate to get any headlines he could - "I fucked Britney! No, honest! Over here! Me!", the first time something happens to Fred Durst that people might actually want to know about, he trys to come across all coy and pretend he don't want no kind of attention like that. Durst proclaims being hit in the face with something sharp "a very rock and roll moment", and so we really hope that he continues to experience an awful lot of rock and roll moments in the weeks to come. We notice that the Limp Bizkit site has been redesigned to match the band's Consignia-style rebranding as limpbizkit - note that in the band shot, Fred is wearing a black hat. You might also note they seem ever less like a teen rock band and give off the air of a bunch of guys who've persuaded their wives to let them go fishing this weekend providing they fix up the shed when they get back.

SMALL STOPPAGE AT STROKES GIG; NONE INJURED: 6Music have been very sniffy indeed about nme.com's coverage of the Strokes Gig - yeah, said Andrew Purcell, 6's man on the spot, there was a little break in the music to persuade the crowd to move backwards, but... it's not quite the near-disaster the nme would try to have you believe.

WITHDEAN WON'T DO: Norman Cook has gone to Downing Street with a petition calling for Brighton and Hove Albion to be allowed to build a new stadium in Falmer. Since the buttheaded crooks who ran the club into the ground sold the Goldstone Ground, the team have been lumbered with first a Gillingham groundshare and, currently, a residency at Withdean Stadium. Withdean was originally built by Brighton Council as a rival to Wimbledon (by which they meant 'a venue for world class tennis', which they never achieved, rather than 'a home for a football team struggling to live up to their 1980s glory days', which oddly they did manage.)

YOU'LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN LIE: Teeny-tiny Timberlake says he turned down the chance to play Superman with the words "Whatever you're smoking, dude, I don't want any of it. It's just not me." We don't know what the person he was with was smoking, but we're more interested to know what Timberlake was on to hallucinate an entire Hollywood studio offering him a plum role like that.

SEE THE TRAPEZIOD SHAPE THERE? THAT'S BABY'S HEAD: Janet Ellis is to be a grandmother, 'cause Sophie's got knocked up. Sophie says she wants to have lots more children, too, although we should point out she's only three months pregnant and so hasn't yet had to buy anything resembling Maternity Wear, nor spend thirty-two hours straining to push the little blighter out, nor not slept for three weeks solid. In fact, so far all she's had is getting a licence to eat gherkins with ice cream, so we'll see if she's still keen this time next year. But for now: congratulations and good luck.

YOU DON'T QUITE GET IT, DO YOU?: Alicia Keys doesn't wear skimpy outfits on stage, she says, because she's afraid people might see her breasts or her knickers. Hmmm. Bet Christina hadn't thought of that danger before she started to wear her skimpies.

FIRTH TENDS TO BE RIGHT: So, the cast of Love, Actually are split over the wisdom of releasing Bill Nighy's song from the movie as a single - Emma Thompson thinks its a great idea, Colin Firth thinks its terrible, and we presume Hugh's just pissed off he didn't get a crack at the charts with About A Boy's Santa's magic Sleigh. Oddly, they don't ask Martine McCutcheon what she thinks about an actor who can't sing for toffee releasing a record.