HALL OF FAME LIST: The nineteenth annual induction ceremony, which will take place on March 15th at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, will honor late Beatle George Harrison, pop legend Prince, singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, Texas blues rockers ZZ Top, psychedelic pop band Traffic, Detroit rocker Bob Seger and vocal group the Dells.

Tickets are going to be changing hands for a fortune on Ebay, aren't they? Baseball tickets, theatre tickets, tickets to have your head massaged - people will be clamouring to find a prior engagement they can use to cry off going to see that Brewsters Restaurant of a celebrity roast.

ROBERT SMITH WILL BE TURNING IN HIS GRAVE. WE KNOW HE'S NOT DEAD, BUT HE'S A GOTH, SO HE PROBABLY SLEEPS IN ONE: BBC Four's jazz-take trailer using Friday I'm In Love [RealPlayer] is available online at the moment. Be warned, it features jazz's Jamie Oliver, Jamie Cullum. Cullum clearly has desires to break down the barriers between jazz and rock, and open jazz to a new audience, and he's certainly worked with us. Since his commercials started appearing on television every five minutes, he's become the first jazz musician we've ever added to our list of 'pop people who will be made to pay for their crimes when we become president.' If it ever gets made, we bet he has a cameo in the Girls Aloud movie.

AND NOW, A QUICK WORD ABOUT US: Later this evening, we're heading off Texas to spend thanksgiving with No Rock's in-laws, and so service might be erratic to say the least over the next seven days or so. However, we can certainly guarantee that there will be new stuff to read here every day next week from Monday to Friday as we've prepared a small holiday feature, What The Pop Papers Said, dragging a magazine from the archives for a good working over. So, we can promise two surprise guest appearances by Pete Burns, Louise Who Used To Be In Eternal naked, Tim Burgess discovering that they have Pizza Hut in America, the birth of MTV, the death of the Melody Maker and the chance to win a Commodore 64 game. If the Blogger technology doesn't let us down, there should be a fresh edition every day at midday.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: A MINI, BITE SIZE EDITION: So, this one will be brief as well as delayed... the NME comes with a choice of CDs this week, which a cynic might suggest is a way of bolstering sales to help the average figures kepp nicely ahead of rivals Keranng - and since the CDs are both pretty good, it'd be churlish to suggest that anyone who shells out the GBP1.80 for both editions is being jibbed in any way; but as a way of marketing, this isn't selling either the sausage or the sizzle, but flogging the mustards and ketchup in two different packages.

The cover is some horrible montage leading on it being Poll Time - which is in itself odd; in the past it might get mentioned on the cover, but to suggest "There is a form to fill out inside" is the best thing in the paper doesn't give you much hope for the rest of the issue.

The posters are also poll-themed, featuring past winners - which means you get a Rolling Stones poster again (what is this, Uncut?). They print a Robbie Williams poster, but are clearly so embarrassed about this new low, they draw horns and a satan beard on him, which is so unsatisfactory - either do a poster for his fans, or don't - lets not have this half-arsed compromise solution going on.

Talking of compromises, if you can't or won't print Selfish Cunt's name, then don't make them the Radar Band for the week, okay? Unless the reason why you didn't print the word in full was because you thought they might be ashamed in years to come that they'd chosen such a pathetic, supposedly shocking banner under which to sell their wares. Selfish Cunt. It's not even as bad as Anal Cunt, is it? At least they'd made an effort to get everyone all in a tizzy. Still a rubbish name, though.

THANK YOU KINDLY, EMI: What's that whistling sound? It's EMI stock tanking - down 12% this morning - as they get gazumped on the Warner deal. Time Warner have got a better offer from Edgar Bronfman Jr, the clown who sold Seagram (and with it, Universal) to Vivendi a few years back. Since the merger with Warners was pretty much EMI's best surviving plan for the future, it has a bit of tough time deciding what it plans to do next. It could offer more for Warners, but after years of poor management decisions the company is in no state to up the offer much further. It could just walk away, but their company line has been that the merger is vital to the company's future.

HEY, JOE, WHY ARE YOU CLAWING YOUR OWN EYES OUT?: Girls Aloud are writing their own movie, apparently - curious that a band which doesn't manage to write their own songs would suddenly decide to attempt to produce something even more complex and demanding. And it's going to be a "Scary Movie-style spoof" - so, something totally original then. They can't make a real horror movie, apparently, because if it was gory it would have an 18 certificate and then "most of our fans wouldn't be able to get in to see it."

Nicola Roberts said: "The script is still in the early stages but one of the most important ideas is that Girls Aloud are not portrayed as mindless bimbos. In our film the girls will come out on top but there will be a twist."

We'd say it's quite enough of a twist for Girls Aloud not being protrayed as mindless bimbos, which marks a sudden departure from every other public appearance so far.

Not wanting to imply that the whole project has a clammy air of being a rush job before their star finally burns out once and for all, but Nicola says the script is in the early stages, and yet they're planning to start shooting "early in the new year." Which all implies a hustle to get it into the cinemas for Easter; which we can then extrapolate one step further to their management concluding they're going to be gone by Summer Holidays.

THIS IS NOT NEWS, ANANOVA: Struggling desperately to find something interesting to say about a Robbie Williams gig, Ananova settled on Robbie Williams stops smoking. 'Robbie Williams stops smoking' is not, however, a news story; it's a signal that it's time to pour some more petrol on him.

HE'LL NEVER REPLACE FRED: Queen sample Nelson Mandela on a new Aids-special track - well, at least it's better than getting Robbie Williams in to do the vocals, I suppose. Or Anita Dobson.

BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THE STREET OUT THE GIRL...: We're not outraged or surprised that Nicola from Girls Aloud swore on air - even seasoned old sea dogs like Mark Radcliffe sometimes let slip a "fucking" or two - but what we do find incredible is that she has never before stayed in a hotel with a bell on the desk. Yeah, they don't have them at Reception in Haven but...

GETTING AWAY WITH IT? OH...: Interesting that both Fox News and the BBC were confidently predicting "this will be the picture on the front page of the papers around the world tomorrow" - Fox thinking of Jackson's back, handcuffed and disappearing into the police station; the BBC guessing it would be the Jacko mugshot. Who knew that most editors would still think the deaths of twenty-odd people in massive suicide bombs in Turkey might be a little more crucial for their readers to know about, eh? (That's except for readers of the Daily Mirror, whose front page is dominated by a picture of one of their journalists with a sock superimposed over his mouth - new seriousness, eh, Piers Morgan?)

Another fan, Howard Cox, said: "MJ is the kindest person in the world. He's done more than anyone to try to change the world and make the world a better place". Which must come as bit of a blow to Bob Geldof.

GETTING AWAY WITH IT?: Phil Spector pleads not guilty to the murder of what the BBC call "b-movie actress Lana Clarkson." B-movies? When did BBC News Online last go to the cinema? They'd probably be surprised to discover that they do colour now. But, really, it's one law for Michael Jackson and another for everybody else, isn't it?

GETTING AWAY WITH IT: Australian police drop charges against Chris Martin because "it would be like kicking a puppy" ("there was an element of provocation"), apparently. Sheesh... one law for Michael Jackson, one law for everybody else.

COOLIO: Time magazine has declared iTunes Music Store to be the 'Invention of the Year' (although, to be honest, we're not sure what the inventy-bit is - persuading the labels to hand over their tracks was a leap forward, but it wasn't inventive as such. Charging a flat rate could be described as inspired, but not to the point of being a Truly Great Invention. Which leaves you with selling downloads over the internet, which they do well, but isn't new, either.

More concern for all sides in this quote from Apple's Steve Jobs: Jobs has one more reason not to be concerned about the competition. "The dirty little secret of all this is there's no way to make money on these stores," he says. For every 99¢ Apple gets from your credit card, 65¢ goes straight to the music label. Another quarter or so gets eaten up by distribution costs. At most, Jobs is left with a dime per track, so even $500 million in annual sales would add up to a paltry $50 million profit. Why even bother? "Because we're selling iPods," Jobs says, grinning.

Which is fine, and dandy, but there will come a point when everybody who is likely to purchase an iPod has bought one. Sure, there will still be upgrades and replacement purchases, but - like those awfully nice Sony people found with the Walkman - there comes a moment when everyone has the must have gadget and sales slump. Either Apple have something even better lined up (maybe the iPod will morph into something more PC-like?), or else the hardware will stop being so lucrative that iTunes will be allowed to continue returning so little to turnover. (Although having said that, a company with Apple's wobbly bottom line is unlikely to be quite so sniffy about an extra fifty mill every year.) What will happen then? Will Apple renegotiate the royalty rate downwards from a position of strength as market leader of downloads? Will the price edge upwards as consumers find they're locked into the iTunes format and have to swallow USD1.49, 2.99 a track? Or will Apple start to up its profits by dealing direct with artists? We're in for another interesting and queasy eighteen months...

YOU WEAR IT HELL: Did you know the Siemens are currently sponsoring a competition to find the most stylish student in the country?

These are the Liverpool heat winners:



The one on the right claims that her fashion sense is "inspired by Gwen Steffani", so we assume she must know an colourblind old lady who cherrypicks at jumble sales with the same name as the singer out of No Doubt. Simon Robinson of Siemens seems to suggest that they're hoping to raise the game a bit with other Universities: "Judging by the poor-style calibre of Liverpool universities' alumni, who have included Steve Coppell and the Pet Shop Boys' Chris Lowe, Laura and Charla may have a tough task ahead to be crowned the national champion." The jibe at Chris Lowe is odd, since the competition claims to be seeking "the student that dares to be different in creating his or her own individual sense of style, whether it be through their clothes, music choice or clubbing preferences and even if it's on a shoestring." - which surely is the very essence of a man wearing diving gear on stage, isn't it?

WHEN ALBUMS LEAK: Various music execs blub about having to bring release dates forward when tracks leak onto the interminter - "oh, you have to spend more on advertising to promote the new date" they sniff. Well, yes, but since this sort of thing is happening all the time, here's a clue to the labels: why not cut the gap between the album being completed and the thing hitting the shops?

Steve Bermann of A&M tells MTV "we're at a point where we can't control this" - which makes you wonder what the whole deal with the prosecution of music consumers is all about; the record industry is saying that it can't stop its own employees from leaking music out there, so if it can't even put a bolt on its own door, why put so much effort into trying to catch people taking advantages of its own weaknesses? The dam (to hop across metaphors) has burst, but rather than try and fix the dam, the music industry is sticking 'No Swimming' Signs downstream.

COBAIN REMIXED: New stuff is being added into the paperback edition of the Kurt Cobain journals. The new material - something to do with a serial killer, and how much Kurt hates himself, we'd imagine - wasn't in the original because, says editorial director Julie Garu "we thought we might be able to boost sales and sucker some hard line fans into buying the book twice over by releasing a revised edition later on" ("I think the first time, we thought it would skew the appreciation of all the material that was in here. Now that the hardcover has come out and the journals have been judged and read, we thought people could handle it.")

MAKES EXCUSES AND LEAVES: Robbie Williams quits his own launch party after six minutes - everyone else turns to each other and mutters "I thought he was never going to leave."

Robbie says that flash music industry parties aren't his style. What a pity self-serving publicity stunts are, eh?

THAT'S GOTTA HURT: "CBS continues to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, announcing late yesterday that it had yanked its Michael Jackson special after California police issued a warrant for the pop singer's arrest..." - Isn't yanking Michael Jackson exactly what caused the problem, Washington Post?

Conor McNicholas has just been on Today talking about the troubles of Michael Jackson - the poor lamb seemed to have inherited Iain Duncan Smith's cough, although we can understand why - it's very tempting to rush to judgement on Jackson, but you still need to have a mental lawyer vetting everything you say; it's just slightly more obvious when you're doing this on live radio. Conor thinks that this could be the "the end game begining", and we think he could be right. In the interests of balance, Jane Dexter was on to speak for Jacko - she'd been to the Neverland ranch and she was having none of it (but then, she's not a small boy.) Challenged that his creative impulse had more or less died, she stuttered that the new album was a collection of number ones, so we'd have to wait to see what the new material was like - blissfully unaware that the last three slabs of new material were pisspoor - and then suggested that Michael is "a different type of person to us; he lives in a different environment; his heart is pure." Unfortunately for Jane and the other blinkered Michaelettes, he lives in California and his heart is going to be examined live on Court TV as soon as he turns up.

YOU'RE A CELEBRITY? GET THEE OUT OF HERE: As if rock stars haven't had it bad enough from the property market, what with Brian Jones being unsuitable as a street name, they're now being barred from buying the estate of Ron Stewart - careful with that 'n', typesetter - whose Stately Scottish pile is up for grabs but on the strict understanding that it doesn't go to the likes of Heather Mills, Cilla Black, Rod Stewart, Mick Hucknall or Simon Cowell. Ah, but let's see him actually put that into the contract to prevent the new owners selling on to the Beckhams...

FULL PAGE PUZZLERS: Two full page adverts in yesterday's Guardian - one was an open letter from Kazaa, appealing over the heads of the music industry direct to the people with a (basically true) message: The only reason why people can't pay the music industry for the stuff they download over our network is because the music industry won't create a way for them to do so. True, but we'd imagine the BPI will be rushing forward to list a number of objections. The argument isn't new, but arena is.

And what on earth possessed Oxfam to take a full page - in colour, no less - to declare its love for the Glastonbury Festival and the lot of good work that the event does for charity? We'd imagine it must be the time of year when the licence comes up for debate down in the Mendips, but we're not entirely convinced that it represents the best value for money for a charity to be buying ads like this.

THIS IS A STORY/ A VERY SPECIAL STORY/ IT'S ABOUT BRIAN JONES/ THE ONE IN THE ROLLING STONES: Trouble in Cheltenham, where residents of a snooty new Bryant Homes housing estate have objected to their street being named after Brian Jones, what with his drug use and bad end and general hell-raising (presumably they think that it'll have a negative effect on house values, although the attractiveness to Rolling Stones fan of a standard, thrown-up semi on a street named after Jones would suggest a premium effect to us). The developer is now attempting to get the street name changed to glorify John Moore. The local writer, not the musician, although we do hope it'll end up called John Moore Expressway.

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR POP PAPERS: We're a little worried in case the NME took our "we'll cancel our subscription" gag seriously last week, as our copy of the world's biggest selling rock weekly hasn't turned up yet. Hopefully, Pop Papers this evening...

THIS JUST IN: Stone Temple Pilots split - we're a bit surprised they thought they were still going, to be frank...

MISLEADING HEADLINES OF OUR TIME: Music Sales 'To Keep Falling' - actually, what they're predicting is not that the sales will fall, but the value of those sales will fall - a subtle but important difference. Equally odd is this bit:

Vinyl album sales are also set to plummet over the same period, according to the report, from £4.3m to £1.8m.

Since when was dropping from 'virtually nothing' to 'almost nothing at all' constitute a plummet?

FOR ONCE, WE'RE SIDING WITH THE ROYALS: Ooh, isn't that Robbie Williams a card, eh? He's told Norway he thinks the British Royal family look like bulldogs. A-ha-ha-ha. Except, of course, they don't look anything like bulldogs, which are pudgy and beady-eyed, whereas the British Royal family have round faces, balding pates and sharp little features. Anne looks a bit like a horse, Charles like a really sad hatchet, Andrew as if Edward Heath had drunk a rejuvenating potion and Edward... well, Edward looks like someone who's perpetually forgotten where he left his umbrella. But leaving all that aside...



... you look as if you might have a bit of Phil Windsor's blood in you, if you know what we mean, Robert.

SO, THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN: Michael Jackson's lawyer aserts that Jackson will not 'flee the scene.' Erm... he doesn't actually need to, does he, since he's not actually at the scene at the moment, is he? We're not quite sure how the whole allegations stack up, though - it's claimed that the abuse came out during the kid's therapy sessions "which started some months ago", and yet the LA Times reckons the incidents for which the arrest warrant has been issued only happened two months ago. Hmmm. A kid in therapy and attending the Jackson mansion, eh? Do the US not do child protection?

"IF I RAN FOR PRESIDENT/ AND ONCE WAS A MEMBER OF THE KLAN/ WOULDN'T YOU CALL ME ON IT/ THE WAY I CALL YOU ON FARRAKHAN"?: Almost as unlikely sounding as 'Tony Benn meets Saddam Hussein' and 'Patrick Kielty being allowed to interview anyone at all', Ja Rule and Louis Farrakhan have done their own little chat show. Rule claims it's all part of his desire to put an end to his tiff with 50 Cent (although Mr. Cent has already dismissed it as a 'stunt' - no fooling ole fifty, is there?). It's not exactly what you'd call a hard hitting interview; even Nigel Williamson's Blur piece looks ballsy compared to Farrakhan's line of questioning, but - if you could leave aside the queasy nature of some of Farrakhan's public statements - it's arguable that he is actually, genuinely trying to help here. We wonder if this means we can look forward to Richard Caborn wading in to try and settle the fued between Busted and Britney?

TIMBALAND MAY HAVE HAD ONE TOO MANY PIPES: The only artist Timbaland wants to work with is Coldplay, he's told MTV. We read and re-read the piece to make sure he said "work with" and not "work over", but it seems to be true. The prospect could be quite compelling, producing something quite extraordinary and it'd make a nice change for Coldplay to be in the studio while their records were being made, but overall, we're hoping friends will be taking Timbaland to one side and playing him the Wu Tang - Texas collaboration. Or at least giving him Noddy's number.

Maybe he just wants a shot at Paltrow?

WE'VE SUSPECTED THAT, TOO: Britney says Justin's got a tiny cock. Not so much with the Timberlake, then.

CAPITAL CHOICE: In what might be the first ever ironic-gag media takeover, Capital extend their grip on the ears of London by buying Choice to add to their portofolio in the city of X-FM, Capital FM, and Capital Gold.

There was an interesting piece in media guardian by Capital Gold's Lyn Long a couple of week back in which she bemoaned the lack of an FM frequency in London for Capital Gold. At the time, it seemed to be a strange whine - the whole point of the station was it was created to provide an alternative service to Capital Radio on FM; this was when the Thatcher beast had threatened to remove any frequencies from stations who were simulcasting on both FM and AM because it was a waste of opportunities to sell the licences onto other people ("a finite national resource"). It was the sudden, panicked response of the station owners - to split into (usually) oldies on the medium wave band and Top 40 on FM - which buggered the radio industry in this country for good. Suddenly, running costs more or less doubled, while advertising rates plummeted (because advertisers were suddenly being offered half the size of the audience per ad they were before.) The end result was all the small players - the truly local services, like Radio City and Aire FM and Southern Sound - couldn't carry on and wound up being subsumed into the few big players we have today. It's the end of Long's article that's most telling - despite running stations covering every square inch of England, Scotland and Wales, Capital haven't been awarded a single new franchise since 1973. Its skill is not in providing radio programming, but in acquiring radio stations.

Which brings us back to Choice - could this purchase be made in the expectation that those awfully nice people at Ofcom might not be quite so strict about transfering Capital Gold to FM as the outgoing Radio Authority had been?