PROOF THAT LOCAL RADIO DJS DO HAVE VERY LITTLE BRAIN: You are presenting a live show on radio. One of your listeners texts in a joke, which you don't understand at all. Do you (a) read the joke out on air anyway or (b) delete the text and make a mental note to ask a grown-up about what it meant? If you answered (a), you qualify for a show on Belfast's Cool FM, where the idiot dj only discovered he'd just read out a sick gag relating to the deaths of twenty-three people in Morecambe Bay when the complaints started to come in. Meanwhile, a presenter on LBC just found the very mention of "cockles and mussels" so overpoweringly funny he started to guffaw his way through a guest talking about the same incident.

In other regulatory mishaps, a bemused T4 seems to be genuinely hurt that they've been carpeted for broadcasting Sharon Osbourne braying "fuck off" on her little lad's Sunday morning show and for Marilyn Manson talking about fucking - the Manson one really upset them, as they'd cut lots of the interview out already, trying to "strike a balance." We're not sure how deleting large chunks of an interview is going to head off someone complaining about the bits that get left in - "Dear Channel 4, well done for cutting out the fisting, cunt-flaps and tit-torture parts of the interview with Marilyn Manson. In light of this, I'm delighted to welcome the golden showers, dwarf-frottage and anal lick stripes you did broadcast"?

Good news for EMAP, though, who managed to get away with blaming the broadcast of the f-word on it being Christmas, somehow. Of course, nobody is losing jobs over any of this, which is as it should be - the point of regulation is there for guidance rather than vengance (we'd be happy to pop over to the FCC and explain this with some powerpoint slides and handouts) and certainly we're a lot better off with the 'learn from your mistakes' attitude than the Clear Channel style zero policy in the States. Having said which, if the BBC did use 'one strike and you're off the air', we'd be spared Colin Murray in the afternoons.

BLAME BUSBY: Having screwed up the ticket allocation process for Glastonbury 2004 so astonishingly well, the Glasto organisation is looking around for someone to take the heat. Luckily, they've found a handy Aunt Sally - the Glasto shambles is all BT's fault, claims Michael Eavis:

"I have to say I'm very sorry that so much trouble has been caused by the serious delays within the phone lines and the website. Clearly the engineering specification was well short of what was needed - particularly the BT exchange in Nottingham which was cutting back our calls to the call centre by as much as 60 per cent some of the time. We will make sure that this doesn't happen again at all cost."

Now, we're not quite sure how he knows this - unless he means that six out of every ten operators were sitting, staring at the phones, willing it to ring, like Geri Halliwell dreaming of a Spice Girl reunion. Even if BT was trying to stop the call centre from being deluged, to what extent would have allowing an overloaded system to be swamped with even more people on hold been in any way useful?

There's something else curious here, too. Because the website was buggered, some people have found themselves having bought six tickets when they thought they were buying two (the first four transactions appearing not to have gone through) - so, what checks were actually in place to stop people buying more than their fair share of tickets if some people were over-buying by accident? And, more seriously, other tickets have been cancelled because the organisers report insufficient funds available, even when people have had more than enough cash on hand.

So, what's going to happen to these tickets? Will they be made available again to the public? Erm... no: "Any further returned tickets and duplicate orders will be absorbed by the needs of traders, staff, and locals" say the organisers. Eh? Shouldn't those people have already been dealt with, enough tickets earmarked and set aside for them before they were put on sale to the public at large? How many tickets, exactly, are being withdrawn from circulaton in this arbitrary manner? And shouldn't there have been a warning when it was announced that 115,000 tickets were going to be sold that not all of these would, actually, be sold to the public in the end?

THEY'VE SUFFERED ENOUGH, SURELY?: Is it really fair to make so much of Courtney Love's admission to the police that she'd taken Hillbilly Heroin? Don't Hillbillies have enough to contend with without being linked with Courtney Love?

MTV PRESENTS THE 'ANTI-POP IDOL': Although, somehow, Breaking Point, the series which claims to follow "proper" bands (i.e. the sort of bands MTV shunts off to MTV2 and VH2) sounds just like Channel Four's The Next Big Thing from about ten years ago rather than an exciting new idea. And whatever did happen to FMB, eh?

SOMEONE REALLY SHOULD TELL HER ABOUT TENALADY: We know there are numerous YahooGroups for girls without much bladder control; we wonder if Paul Abdul could be the first celebrity to get their own piss porn Yahoo Group. But really: Arsenio Hall so funny you piss yourself? Woman, you'd better not go anywhere near the Daily Show.

THE RIAA GET SERIOUS: Lawsuits haven't helped. The very real fear of Lars Ulrich coming round your house and telling you off in front of your Ma hasn't helped. Now, to stop the curse of downloading, the RIAA is going nuclear: it's called in Mandy Moore. She's starring in a new advert aimed at making people feel guilty:

"I believe in getting quality music in a way that's fair. It takes so many people to produce a CD; illegal downloads deprive every one of those people. You get paid for the work you do, right?"

Some things we do, yes; other times, we produce stuff just because we like doing the work and we enjoy it. There's thousands of bloggers out there, for example, producing quality work for nothing (okay, they all dream of a book deal...)

PLEASE, DON'T HAVE NIGHTMARES: This is, apparently, what Alanis thinks nudity looks like:

VICTORIA BRINGS TELSTAR CRASHING DOWN: Telstar's big adventure - attempting to spin a 'proper' record label out of a Ronco-cum-KTel style compilation outfit - seems to be over, with the label going in to administration. The company made a loss of GBP8.5m in 2001, the last year for which accounts were available, and since then stuck out Victoria Beckham's clunking solo material, which has been expensive and often unreleasable. The label's other bright move - signing the Cheeky Girls and trying to desperately keep them going long after they'd passed the 'Best Before' date and had turned green and slightly runny - has outweighed their smarter actions, such as signing Mis-Teeq and The Hives.

Mr. Pickwick is rumoured to be reconsidering his plans to approach Kylie Minogue.

WHEN SUB HEADS ATTACK AND RUIN THE HEADLINE: From WMUR New Hampshire:
Britney Spears Tour Bus Driver Chased, Stopped By Police
Pop Star Not On Bus During Traffic Stop

ALL DOWN THE LOOS?: "A royal wedding we adore/ the pomp and pagentry of yore/ we'd just as soon headline, of course/ a scandalous royal divorce" - Leon Rosselson.

Of course, the press have been waiting for something like a schism in the Beckham's perfect world for years - happy couples sell papers, but unhappy couples sell far more. And so they've taken great care not to set their hares running too soon, waiting until something meaty enough to at least please the braver of their lawyers came along. And now, in Rebecca Loos, they've got security guards witnessing kisses between David and his PR girl, or so they say; dubiously obtained text messages which may or may not have been filthy and even more dubiously sourced quotes, apparently spoken in pure journalese. Beckham, of course, is denying it all; the Sun can barely contain itself: Victoria is 'ashen faced' and 'deep in thought' (well, that's a first) - but taking care to run the Beckham denial next to a picture of Posh Spice looking like she was caught mid-puke (at least let the lady finish her morning beauty routine, guys), producing a handy guide for choosing sides if, you know, the worst happens and getting way too excited that "Beck's Girl" is bisexual ("lusts after both men AND women", the paper explains for the benefit of its slower readers.)

It's difficult, though, to feel any sympathy for either Victoria or David in this whole mess - they ignored the advice about using long spoons to sup with the devil, virtually inviting belzebubb to a finger buffet by turning their love affair into a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. All couples choose their wedding colours to look good in the pictures; the Beckhams picked theirs to go well with the blue and red of the OK! masthead. And when the public appetite for happy, snuggly pictures starts to wane, it's only to be expected that the press will try to work their investment in some other way.

MORE BOLLOCKS FROM THE BPI: Why does a download cost more if you buy it from a legal British download site than an American one? Because the theiving shysters can get away with it, of course. It really is that simple. But, of course, they can't say that, so the BPI have worked up a new justification:

"The US benefit from a) Greater economies of scale b) Smaller sales tax (6% as opposed to 25% in some places in Europe) and c) Lower costs,” argues Matt Phillips from the BPI."

Greater economies of scale? Is this to be a new factor we should be using when we work out if a record is good value? Only at the moment, BPI members don't bother to reduce prices of the biggest selling singles - Kylie records enjoy far greater economies of scale than Victoria Beck... (sorry, it'll be Victoria Adams again, won't it) Adam's records, and yet the prices don't seem to reflect this.

Taxes? But records are cheaper in continental Europe where sales taxes do, indeed, rise as high as 25 per cent, whereas in Britain CDs cost more and the VAT rate isn't as high; likewise, sales tax in the US varies from State to State (the BPI's figure of six per cent is plucked at random - it varies from zero in Alaska to 7.25% in California) and yet the price of a download is uniform right across the country - because on ninety nine cents, we're talking piddling little differences.

And lower costs? But with downloads, the costs of additional sales are almost zero - a tiny bit of computer bandwidth, a sliver of storage. The main costs are in the production, and the cost of The Rolling Stones making a track that sells in the US are identical to those of making a track for the British market. And, the other beauty of downloads is the company can site itself wherever it chooses, wherever costs are lowest - are we expected to believe that MyCokeMusic has got all its servers in Britain?

No, we suspect the real difference between the British and American markets, the thing that really distorts the prices, is the huge mark-up. But when they try and sell it to us, they could at least try and come up with something a bit more convincing.

SIMPLY. DISGUSTING. IT WAS SIMPLY. DISGUSTING: We're wondering what the people who took small children to see Britney Spears in Tornoto told them as they strapped them into the car at the start of the evening? "We're going to go to a big room, with lots of music, and leave in a huff", presumably, as surely there's nobody on the face of the earth who would like Britney Spears enough to shell out for tickets for her gig, and yet wouldn't have been curious enough to either read a review or listen to the new music before turning up? So, we can only assume the parents marching children away from the "lewd" Toronto show must have planned to be outraged all along. One woman shuddered to the National Post that it "was a little too much for this age group", rushing to shield her five year old from Britney's bra. Hang about - what would a five year old be doing at a rock concert anyway? And what sort of person would be so concerned about her kid that she didn't think to check what Britney was likely to be doing on stage in the first place? Are we meant to believe that the toddler had insisted on going to see an artist who was already firmly in the 'adult themes, strong language, sexual references' zone before they were out of nappies?

INTO THE NEW THING: The Charlatans have announced two London gigs on May third and fourth, which will be given over to playing stuff from the new album, and almost exclusively so.

REPORTS SUGGEST JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE IS GOING INTO HIDING - "WHEREVER OSAMA IS": While we count down the hours until Todd finally gives in to his throbbing inner turmoil and kisses the gay nurse from Weatherfield General, George Michael is trying to line up another top celeb snog, dropping not very subtle hints that he'd like to rub his greying stubble against Justin Timberlake's bumfluff. But although Michael, 72, says he'd like to be the thrusting force behind a male answer to the Madonna-Britney kiss at the MTV awards, he's got more self respect than to try and, you know, go further with Timbo. He wouldn't want more than a snog; a full-on, manly collaboration would be wrong, somehow:

"I couldn't bear people saying there's this old guy clinging on to a young talent. Maybe I'm a little less worried that my star might fade than Madonna."

Well, yes. You wouldn't want to actually record some music, would you? That might make you look a little sad. Much better to sit around salivating about the possibility of getting a quick fumble off of Justin whenever an interview light comes on, eh? There's your actual dignity for you.

BY POPULAR DEMAND: The last time we tried this, we had server-falling-over problems, so we had to take down the images. So, as an Easter treat, here again is Pete Burns and Susan Somers. But which is which?

MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH: With his daughter safely off to rehab, Ozzy Osbourne has been taking time to fret about the way the internet is a threat to us all. The Prince of Darkness says that he's shocked by drugs being available on the internet, which is understandable - his vague grip on the modern world would mean that discovering that hooking a typewriter to the telly allows you to do shopping at all would probably give him cause to spend a few hours lying down in a darkened room; he then starts to sound just like someone's Dad: In this day and age, the availability of getting drugs is incredible. You can get it online. In my day, you couldn't get it online, and thank God. I would have been dead if I could have gotten it online" Okay, someone's alcoholic Dad, but a Dad nonetheless. Yeah, just imagine if Ozzy could have got drugs online - it might have left him permanently fucked, unable to string together a coherent sentence and in such a bad way that he could be lead like a puppy into making a twat of himself on television to help feed someone else's Godzilla-sized monster need to be famous in their own right. We must be thankful that the difficulties Ozzy faced in getting hold of drugs - sometimes, it could be as difficult for him as having to open a door and remembering how to ask for some drugs - ensured he survived into a fit and healthy old age.

TO THE BARRICADES... COULD YOU BRING MY MAKE-UP?: Pink has poked her fellow pop stars with a big stick, lambasting them for being lightweights without an ounce of political conviction in their souls. She feels she missed her time, believing her heavyweight political tracks like 'Get The Party Started' and 'I Had A Shit Childhood, Me' and 'They Didn't Like Me Much At School' would have gone down much better in the 1960s.

BETTER SOLVE THAT WORLD AIDS PROBLEM QUICK, MIKEY: Apparently, the judge overseeing the Michael Jackson molestation case has "no doubts" it'll proceed to trial.

BABES MOURNED BY MOZZER: For the bsides to his next single, Morrissey is exploring a subject usually only dealt with in graffiti on bridges across the M62. 'Munich Air Disaster 1958' is, of course, about the deaths of eight of the Manchester United team as their plane crashed on take-off at Munich airport in a blizzard. In all, twenty-three people died in the crash, which is still remembered with pain in Manchester and as a cheap, ghoulish taunt amognst football crowds on Merseyside.

I AM TRYING TO TAKE YOUR ART: If we'd just stuck up a band's album onto the internet several weeks before release, we doubt if we'd be sending the songwriter our transcribed lyrics for his yea or nay as to their accuracy. But Wilco fan Rone Givony is made of stronger stuff than us, and also he doesn't find himself in the unpleasant position of being a Metallica fan; so he sent Jeff Tweedy an email promising to buy the album when it eventually came out (we're sure he didn't mention 'just as soon as the guy outside the Frisco Burger has got them burned off and the artwork laser-printed out'). Tweedys response was to launch justafan.org, offering fans the chance to donate a few quid in compensation for the ill-gotten gains. In less than a day, it pulled in USD1,500 (the sort of cash-sign-up that would have had Glastonbury ticket servers falling over, in other words.) Not only has Tweedy and Wilco demonstrated that people who share illegal files would give money if only they could, but the bucks raised by Just A Fan will all be going to Medecins Sans Frontieres, the charity established to help Stuart Hall, stranded in Southern Italy since Its A Knockout was axed. Oh, alright, the International medical charity. Point proven; honours even and some cash in the back pocket of a well-deserving cause. If only Metallica had been half as smart, eh?

UN, HEADS OF WORLD RELIGIONS PLEAD WITH ALANIS NOT TO GIVE UP DAY JOB: Invited to host the Junos, Canada's answer to the Brits and Grammys (or, more often, the answer to 'You have a music industry in Canada, too?), Alanis couldn't wait to show her "funny side:"

"After I said yes to it, I immediately came up with about eight ideas of different bits.
I've been in improv comedy troupes since I was 14 years old. That's definitely a part of me that hasn't necessarily and understandably come out in some of my songs, which just didn't seem appropriate."

This shocks us - Alanis was doing those songs straight-faced? That video where she wanders about in the knack - she wasn't attempting to take the piss out of herself? Jesus Bloody Hairdo. Amongst the 'bits' Alanis did was appearing dressed in a "naked body suit" and ripping her nipples off - either this was a Janet Jackson gag or she was acting out online fanfiction, we're not sure.

Normally, we'd be quick to point out that one lame joke in a naked body suit had eclipsed the awards themselves, but the prizes went to Nickelback, Sam Roberts and Nelly Furtado, so... pretty much in the shadows to begin with.

BOB DYLAN IS PANTS: What product would you associate with Bob Dylan? Perhaps whiskey of some sort, or maybe even rugged outgarments. Saucy undies, perhaps not so much. Nevertheless, Bob Dylan is set to appear in an advert for Victoria's Secret. The ad sees Bob play a seedy old man in eyeliner leering at young, flighty things in their pants, which will call for a lot of acting on Bob's part as he doesn't usually wear eyeliner. As part of the deal, Victoria's Secret stores will sell a special album of Dylan tunes - because what could go better with a spot of hows yoru father in expensive knickers than Bob Dylan squeewailing his way through Maggie's Farm?

TURN iTUNES INTO YOUR TUNES: You know what would make Apple's iTunes store really great? If there was some sort of device which would rip out the rights management stuff and left you to use the music you've paid for in the way that you choose. appily, there is just such a tool, and it's called playfair - we've not tested it ourselves, but if it does what it claims to do, it could make those 99cents a track seem a whole lot more worth the cash.

PRESUMABLY COURT TV WOULD BE AT THE FRONT OF THE QUEUE: In happier times, fallen stars would turn to drugs and booze to make their problems go away. Nowadays, drugs and booze are suddenly part of the problem - whatever happened to a Hollywood where, so long as you turned up to do the Carson show and you had some whites of your eyes still visible, and didn't leave drool on the sofa, you were left alone? With the needle no longer an acceptable way to escape the miseries of being rich and able to shag your way through any cheerleader team you choose, stars are being forced to find a new way to cleanse themselves, and, unfortunately for us, it's the fly-on-the-wall series; the addiction which delivers a daily hit of Feeling Like A Big Star. Bobby Brown is reported to be currently attempting to turn his spectacular fuck-ups into a thirteen part series. It was better for the rest of us when they'd just retire to a penthouse with a dozen call girls and enough smack to becalm an angry elephant. At least they left the TV schedules alone.

WHY BRITNEY SHOULDN'T PLAY CHINA: (Not counting the chances are that it'd put some bad juju on her career.) Could Britney Spears really be comfortable playing in a country which arrested Namkha and Bakocha because of the content of their songs? The Chinese authorities claim the arrested Tibetans had recorded political songs, although the rabble-rousing value of their tracks such as King's Messenger and Courageous Amdo Man relies pretty much on how you choose to interpret them.

We'd be equally interested to hear from Brett Anderson, say, and Space, as to what they were doing playing Peking.

STITCHED UP LIKE A KIPPER?: If it's true that it was the doctor who filled Ozzy up with too much medication (rather than, ooh, somebody else close to him) thereby creating the human shambles at the centre of the Osbournes, is it right that Ozzy is making complaints about him? Shouldn't it be that Dr. Kipper sues Ozzy for unpaid royalties, having been co-creator of one of TV's best loved characters of a couple of years ago? After all, if Ozzy hadn't been staggering about like a man divorced from the realm, who would have been interested in their series - would a whining spoiled brat, an older whining spoiled brat, and a thousand yard stare under a bad haircut have held the attention?

BACKSTREET'S BACK... IT SEEMS: Sometimes, you have to accept that the tide of pop has turned and run away from you; face up that trying to restart a motor that's been idling too long is just going to end up in bitterness of defeat; take a look in the mirror and say "We've gotten too old for that schtick." Or, you could be like the Backstreet Boys, reunite three years after your last album and try to hope that those intervening years of legal struggle haven't seen all your fans grow pubic hair, get married, move out to the suburbs and take up a firm place on the local church flower rota.

I REMEMBER KURT: A round-up of some of the early coverage of the tenth anniversary:

Dominic Moron, sorry, Mohan (that never gets tired, does it?) calls Kurt the “last great Rock hero” in The Sun, a paper which somehow you can just picture Kurt sitting down to enjoy of a morning. He’s fighting, dammit, for Cobain’s legacy: ”Do you really think The White Stripes, Radiohead and Coldplay would exist if there hadn’t been a Nirvana? Not to mention Grohl’s Foo Fighters and the nu-metal movement, of course.” Erm... Dominic? Radiohead were contemporaries of Nirvana; Coldplay clearly draw on the influence of Oasis and Suede and Britpop, which was more of a ‘despite’ than ‘because of’ grunge movement, and The White Stripes? Would they have existed without Nirvana? Almost certainly; if you knew half as much about creativity as you claim to you’d see that Jack White is a man who would be producing music even if he’d been brought up in a small, soundproofed box for the first twenty years of his life. Dominic could have cited Dizzee Rascal, who's busily citing Kurt as an influence at the moment. But we’re sure Dominc really was a fan. We can picture him singing along and shooting his guns, right down the front row.

Writing in The Age, Helen Razer struggles to cope with the Cobain myth. Rather clunkily, she kicks off "In the first quarter of the past decade, any kid with their antennae trained to pop culture knew and understood an object called Kurt." An object? And surely, erm, part of the problem was that while everyone thought they knew Kurt he kind of pointedly revealed that nobody ever quite understood him. But nice to reduce the man to an object as his memorial. It gets worse: "To gauge Cobain's popularity is simple: he claimed enough airtime, ink and eyeballs to be a bona fide celeb." He may also have made a record or two, we hear. Tim Rogers, of You Am I, toured with Nirvana, and remembers the night his death was announced: "Our band was playing a gig in Perth and the club DJ made an announcement before playing a song from (Nirvana album) Nevermind. Something very cheesy and cynical like 'This one goes out to you, Kurt!'
(Former You Am I manager) Kate Stewart walks up to him and swings at this guy. I'm not sure if she made contact. She certainly managed to express how inappropriate it was to trivialise his suicide." Not entirely sure what a club DJ would be expected to say that wouldn't be seen as "trivialising" his suicide, and why it would be any worse to dedicate a song to the recently deceased than, say, take part in a Ten Years On background colour piece.

Of course, if he hadn't died, Kurt would have been able to clear exactly what did and didn't count as proper respect for us, but we're left to speculate. In the same way, the Tacoma News Tribune speculates on what might have happened if Kurt had survived that night - by now, he might have been recording with Michael Stipe. Or, on the other hand, he might been swept back into obscurity. Oddly, the don't bother to suggest other, equally plausible possibilities: he might have joined the church, or co-anchored the Daily Show alongside Jon Stewart, or moved to England and opened a pottery shop, but the News-Trib had already filled the space up and didn't need to.

nme.com has got a wider range of contacts and far stronger credentials to fall back on - after all, there's no doubt that the world's biggest selling rock weekly (and, more especially, the now-defunct Melody Maker folded into it) got Nirvana, and got Nirvana quickly. Although it could perhaps do a bit better on the website than pieces by Evan Dando and, um Lars Ulrich, but then much of the paper's powder is being kept dry for this week's special edition, we guess. And they have taken the trouble to remember the man through his music, compiling the 20 best Nirvana tracks.

The Associated Press’ standard drop-in to mark the anniversary reminds us all that we don’t actually know quite when we’re meant to be lighting the candles - although we all know when the body was discovered, the closest we actually have to a fixed point of death is a vague “within 24 hours" - so it could be that we've all missed the moment, or are all jumping the gun, in a kind of grim, literal way.

The timing of Cobain's death gave rise to another commonplace misconception, that we can remember trying to squish back in 1994 through the pages of an almost unread fanzine: that the mainstream papers chose to ignore Kurt's suicide. We were surprised to see the same complaints resurface this weekend in the Independent [subscription required] when David Lister tut-tutted over how few column inches Kurt received the morning after the electrician came a-calling: "The Times just had a short report on page three; the Guardian a mere 147 words... The Daily Telegraph also a short, page three report. The Independent did better, running the story at the foot of page one. Younger readers were bemused at this lack of coverage..." Maybe they were, David, but surely a person who works in the newspaper industry would not be so surprised that a death that by eight in the evening, British time, hadn't even been officially confirmed didn't pick up very much coverage in a Saturday paper? With very little time before the presses rolled - and certainly no time to get a reporter up to Seattle, and most of the obvious people to call for quotes already out drowning their sorrows (or preparing elaborate 'I remember where I was when I heard the news' myths), there was precious little for the papers to put into their reports; so little it would hardly have been judged worth massively overhauling the layout of the paper to make extra space to fit in what would have been little more than cuttings and puff. It's true, as Lister says, that no subsequent extinguishing of an icon has been quite so under-reported (least, not in proportion to their perceived cultural significance), but that's because the only icon who's died at such an awkward time for the UK press was that former Princess, and she was deemed worthy of a last-minute rejig or two.

PARTRIDGE SEASON AGAIN: We're a little surprised to read via the Rock and Roll Report that VH1 is planning on remaking the Partridge Family - we presume it would have to be made as a period piece, because to try and set the series in the present would mean the younger Partridges would spend their time being sent to rehab, only emerging for the inevitable legal battles when they discover mama and papa Partridge have been bleeding their trust accounts dry...

I THINK I TRIED THE NIGHT KURT COBAIN DIED: It was an odd night in lots of ways - for some reason I’d wandered halfway across town for no real reason to call in on some friends; for some reason, rather than the usual non-stop Byrdsfest that was their usual listening, they’d tuned into the Friday night dance show on Radio One, so when the story came through that a body had been found in Kurt’s garage, and it was probably him, everyone wondered if the odd choices we’d made that evening had somehow been driven by a subconscious force, bringing us together to be in front of the radio at that time. Then - and this is where my recollections start to come apart from the standard line that this was our Lennon, our Elvis - we all shrugged and went off to watch Coronation Street. After all, the news was a bit vague, and it wasn’t like we’d not been on the Cobain deathwatch before.

Of course, by the end of Corrie, they’d become pretty sure that it was Kurt’s head that police were trying to reassmble in evidence bags, but even then there wasn’t any great feeling of shock or loss. The shock was blunted because, honestly, you’d not have got great odds on Kurt making it through to Christmas 94, the ways things had been for the last couple of weeks. And loss takes a while to hit you.

It creeps up on you in strange ways, and for me it wasn’t until the following morning that I felt the dizzyness of the way Kurt had chosen to become fixed as the definitive voice of his generation, edging out Douglas Coupland and leaving Eddie Vedder desperately trying to claw back through the release of vinyl records and powerlifting. I was wandering down Liverpool’s busy Utting Avenue - the sheer amount of time provided by glorious unemployment made a daily trip to buy catfood part of my routine - and noticed the newsagents had got Kurt Cobain poster magazines, smiling (okay, scowling - this was Kurt, after all) from the window.

You know the sort of thing, not quite as commonplace now, but for a while you’d get a slightly out-of-focus poster version of a bog standard press shot on one side of a glossy A2 sheet, folded into four with usually poorly-written cuttings jobs and quotes pulled from other sources making up the editorial input. In the 80s they’d thrived on the back of Duran and Wham! and A-ha, but the 90s were proving harder times for the companies and they were being forced to try and sell to more tricky markets. It was a tribute to how well that Nirvana were doing that they’d been judged to be attractive to the teenage market; it was clear how ill-formed that judgement had been that the Nirvana poster magazines had spent quite a long time sitting on shelves in shops across the country: When Kurt had had a face, fan-sector teenagers had been less than keen on having it on their bedroom walls.

Suddenly seeing Kurt in the window made me catch my breath and hit me in a way the news reports hadn’t: Kurt, the stupid sod, had killed himself. It made me feel queasy. And here was a shop that had poster magazines in the window, waiting to leap out on other unsuspecting indie kids and making them dizzy in public, too. Obviously the shopkeeper hadn’t heard the news from Seattle. I decided to perform a public service, to help the other long haired, black jeans wearers of Anfield come to terms in their own time. It didn’t occur to me at this point that, had there been any other long haired, black jeans wearing indie kids in Anfield, the magazine would have sold out six months beforehand and I probably wouldn’t have had rocks thrown at me and the “Hippy hippy shake” sung at me when I ventured out during daylight, but this was a day without much in the way of clear thinking.

I strode into the shop, and the newsagent looked up, saying nothing.

“Erm... I just noticed you have Nirvana poster magazines in your window...”

The newsagent nodded, puzzled - where was this going?

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard, but he killed himself last night.”

By now, puzzlement had disappeared. He nodded, blank-faced. “You want one?”

“No... no, I just thought you might want to move them. You know, it might... upset people.”

“They’ll want to buy them” he replied, in a tone that appeared to be fusing boredom with hostility.

I looked at him. He looked at me. But he was looking at me in the more frightening way, so I turned and left, picking up my catfood mission.

It was only as I walked back past the shop carrying a tin of KatKins that it suddenly struck me: the day before, the newsagent hadn’t had the Nirvana magazines in the window. Far from being unaware of the suicide, he’d seen it as an opportunity. Of course, other people would go on to milk the corpse for all it was worth, but I like to think that newsagent was the first person to try and turn a profit out of the death.