SPEND AN EVENING WITH A SELF-PITYING SADSACK

It might just work, if the love interest, in the style of an Elizabethan play, is a boy dressed as a girl; or perhaps a Pantomimic girl playing the part of Prince Charming, but otherwise... what would be the attraction of a musical based on the life and songs of Robbie Williams?

After all, Robbie is surely not keen to get involved with musical theatre, not with his strictly heterosexual lifestyle, you'd have thought.

Contact Music is quite keen:

The former boyband star is convinced the show will be a hit and emulate the success of similar musicals about ABBA, QUEEN and ROD STEWART.

Hmm... well, while Abba and Queen have done well, Stewart's Tonight The Night barely made it to its anniversary before the large number of unsold seats made it feel less Tonight's the Night as That's Yer Lot, if we remember rightly. And the Madness one put most of its backers on permanent suicide watch. And that one had better tunes to work with than Williams does.

A source tells British newspaper the Daily Star, "A musical based on Robbie's colourful career would be dynamite. It's got all the elements of a classic.

Well, all the elements, except for a hero who people could warm to. And since Williams is at his most popular when his songs are at their most dirgey, it's going to be hard to stitch together a story that doesn't feel like you're plodding through treacle. Basing it on the life of Mr. Pie won't help, either:

"There's fame, fortune, heartbreak, breakdowns, exile and salvation. You couldn't make it up."

Well, you could, actually. People do, all the time. They're called novelists, young Robbie, and they write books. We're not entirely sure where the salvation comes from in the Williams story - an increasingly self-parodic character reduced to pretending to want to hump every woman he's introduced to because he's paranoid everyone thinks he's gay, rebuffed by the largest market in the world on several occasions, tied into a contract which makes him little more than EMI's puppy and reliant on songwriters to keep him supplied with material - we're a little lost as to the salvatory element there. Unless the big ending is "well, he did sell more Knebworth tickets than Oasis, which makes him the most popular act that nobody really likes..."

We'll not even start on why half-assed tourist-mops like this sort of thing are killing London theatre while making it seem like it's vibrant, shall we?

music robbie williams abba london rod stewart

RINGO BEING REWORKED IN THE COUNCIL'S FAVOUR

You're probably not surprised to hear that we haven't yet heard back from Flo Clucas to explain the curious case of Ringo Starr's house. You might remember that there was a council investigation into plans to knock down Starr's birthplace, which concluded with Clucas telling the world that the international tourist attraction "wasn't historically significant"; then, a couple of weeks later, she decided that although the building wasn't of any importance, the council would take it down brick-by-brick and store it somewhere, for some reason.

Now, the tale has got even more twisted, as Ringo has dismissed this idea as being valueless. Curiously, the slavishly council-supporting Liverpool Echo has decided that this means Ringo wants the Welsh streets bulldozed:

RINGO Starr has a message for campaigners fighting to save his old home from the bulldozers: "Don't bother."

The Beatles drummer says he "does not see the sense" in preserving his former home in Liverpool's Welsh Streets. Liverpool council plans to take down the property brick by brick to keep it for future generations.

But Ringo has dismissed the idea. He said in a TV interview: "Now they are knocking it down brick by brick because they are going to build flats there or high-rise or something, I don't know.

"They are going to put it somewhere else and I do not see the sense of putting it anywhere else, because you are going to have to put a plaque on whatever they build saying 'Ringo Starr was born here'. Well, not really."

Which actually has twisted Starr's position through 180 degrees - Starr hasn't told people campaigning the streets not to bother, what he's saying is there's bugger all point in knocking the house down and building it somewhere else. He's already on record as saying he doesn't see why perfectly serviceable houses are being destroyed to let developers build new properties on the same land.

But while Starr's words are being radically reinterpreted, our friend Flo Clucas has also decided to have a go at reworking things, taking a liberty or two with history:

"We have not been able to conserve the birthplaces of John Lennon or Paul McCartney either, but retained the homes in which they spent the most time following the guidelines of the English Heritage Trust."

When she says "spent most time", she doesn't actually mean Macca's Sussex home or the Dakota Building; she means the houses they lived in in Liverpool for the most time. And when she says "we have not been able to conserve", she means "we allowed developers to knock down", and when she says "we... retained the homes they spent most time in" she seems to have become a little confused, as neither of those properties have anything to do with Liverpool City Council but have been saved for the nation by the National Trust - in effect, the Trust is subsidising the Liverpool Beatle Tourist Industry. But other than that, she's spot on.

Flo, Flo, we'd love to hear your explanation for how a two month investigation could describe something as being without value only for you to decide it's worth preserving brick by brick a few days later.

music the beatles ringo starr flo clucas liverpool liverpool city council john lennon paul mccartney

KELLY JONES TOP ADVICE

We totally agree with Kelly Jones that the new Stereophonics album isn't good for listening to while smoking dope. You don't want to lsoe some of your reactions when you, clearly, need to be posied to leap across the room, punch the 'STOP' and 'EJECT' buttons and then toss the disc out the window like a unwelcome frisbee, do you?

Listen while on dope, and you might find yourself so mellowed you sit through the whole thing. It might even lodge in your subconscious.

music kelly jones stereophonics

PRETTY SOON, YOU MIGHT NOT EVEN NEED TO EVER LOOK AT THE STAGE

Proving that large gigs these days barely has anything to do with music, the people behind recent Avril Lavigne and Green Day gigs have hooked up a big monitor to display text messages above the stage while the band is on.

The people who've cooked up the technology are thrilled with their own brilliance:

"We've done this at bars with 30 people and at shows with 40,000 people, and the dynamics are totally different," said Alex Campbell, CEO of Chicago's Vibes Media, one of a growing number of companies that supply venues with the software to do in-house text messaging. "At a House of Blues show with 2,000 people, it's more of a back-and-forth conversation and interaction between people, like at a Las Vegas [show] with Hoobastank where we had a guy dump his girlfriend via texting and then all these other guys were trying to pick her up. But at a show with 30,000 people, it's just about getting your name up there and giving a shout-out and getting noticed."

We're not sure if this merely an admission that megagigs now are so huge it's virtually impossible to even spot the artist miles and miles away from you, so you actually need to have something to keep your interest; or else it's merely accepting that there's bugger all happening on the stage at a Hoobastank gig and people would rather read some barely-literate SMS messages from people they don't know than actually listen to the band.

Of course, a lot of it is merely about opening up the crowd for being shaken down by commercial companies - although they deny there's any money in it for them. Yet:

Sprint, one of many major carriers that offer the service, coordinated the texting at a recent Avril Lavigne show and has signed on to provide the service for Bon Jovi's upcoming tour in support of their new album, Have a Nice Day. "It's not a moneymaker for us, but we're hoping that as it becomes more popular it will become a standard part of what the tour manager thinks about when he's putting together the lighting, pyro and other equipment he needs for a tour," said John Styers, director of data communications services for Sprint.

"This really extends what is typically a two-hour event into a longer experience," he continued. "An hour after the show you can ping the phones of the people who sent messages and let them know about a special Web site with exclusive behind-the-scenes material and more information on the band."

... or, presumably, an exciting new telephony service from Sprint telecom.

We like the idea of concerts being interactive. But the best way, surely, is to play your arse off and make everyone leap about like they're crazy?

music avril lavigne sprint hoobastank

RECORD LABELS UNVEIL DREAM OF MONEY FOR NOTHING; WORKING ON CHICKS FOR FREE

Obviously, we're a little too young to recall the collapse of either the Roman or Ottoman Empires, but we're starting to scent that we'll be around to see the end of the RIAA Empire, as they make stupid decision after stupid decision. In an overview of how, exactly, the big labels want to charge people for providing free publicity for their products, Newsweek provides an example or two of just how crazily greedy the music industry is becoming - in recent talks with Yahoo, Warners insisted that not only did they demand a fee everytime someone watched one of their adverts ("pop videos") through Yahoo, they also wanted a slice of the ad revenue on the pages as well.

Ridiculously, and disastorously, Yahoo capitulated - even although this is on a par with a Baked Beans supplier insisting that Tescos not only pays them for the beans, but also gives a share of the profits from the coffee shop on the grounds that without their beans, nobody would be coming to the shop in the first place.

music newsweek warners yahoo

MICHAEL JACKSON INVITES YOUNG BOYS TO HIS HOTEL ROOM

It really does get better and better, doesn't it? If Michael Jackson had decided that he was going to play up to the sinister, dodgy, dirty uncle he's become in the popular imagination, he couldn't do it better than his current brilliant ideas are: after going to see young boys dancing play Billy Elliot, he then invited the cast back to his hotel room. For "drinks."

Jesus juice, we presume.

music michael jackson billy elliot

LESS OF A SANCTUARY

The poor performance of Sanctuary's management and label business has led to the inevitable: the company is to dump 175 members of staff around the world. The news that a load of people will have trouble feeding their families and keeping a roof over their heads caused a ripple of pleasure to spread through the stock exchange, lifting their shares by a fraction of a penny.

music sanctuary

JENNY ON THE BLOCK

What with her being virtually geriatric - mid-thirties, you know - Jennifer Lopez is fretting about getting older.

You know, Jennifer, if you do really worry so much about getting older, there is another option. Not that we'd recommend that, mind.

She's thinking she might need to have her face re-arranged at some point:

'I don't do it (plastic surgery), but I don't want to judge because I don't know how I'll feel when I'm 40 or 50, and if that is something I would do.

Amongst work J-Lo is expected to have is the attachment of a full, working elephant's trunk and a flashing neon sign permanently attached to her forehead advertising soft drinks.

music jennifer lopez j-lo

LEE RYAN IS BEING BRAVE

Lee Ryan isn't fretting about the possibility of a Blue reunion - he's hardly missing his old bandmates at all:

"I don't miss working with them. You could say we got sick of each other, though not friendship-wise.

"We all had different things we wanted to do and were sick of what we were doing.

"I can't go back. We said we'd come back but I never believed it."

Yeah, you split up all of three days ago or whatever it was. How surprising you're not missing your mates yet.

music lee ryan blue

WHEN CULTS COLLIDE WITH RELIGIONS

Say what you like about the Scientologists - actually, don't, those guys love to send legal letters - but at least when L Ron Hubbard invented his religion from scratch, he made up everything. Not so the Kabbalah squad, who have created a cult based on a genuine wing of Jewish religious teaching - kind of as if we decided to launch a fashion and water industry based on John the Baptist, but without worrying about all that tiresome Jesus business.

Sooner or later, there was going to be a clash, and it looks like Madonna's new album is going to be the point where Kabbalah Centre acolytes push it too far:

The album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," is to be released on Nov. 15 and features a track entitled "Isaac" about Yitzhak Luria, a 16th century Jewish mystic and Kabbalah scholar.

Rabbis who oversee Luria's tomb and a seminary in the northern town of Safed are unimpressed with Madonna's musical tribute and see the inclusion of the song about Luria on the album as an attempt by the pop star to profit from his name.

Rabbi Rafael Cohen, head of a seminary named after Luria, suggested Madonna's actions could lead to divine retribution.

"Jewish law forbids the use of the name of the holy rabbi for profit. Her act is just simply unacceptable and I can only sympathize for her because of the punishment that she is going to receive from the heavens," Cohen told the newspaper.

Another rabbi called for Madonna to be thrown out of the community.

"Such a woman brings great sin on kabbalah," Rabbi Israel Deri told Maariv. "I hope that we will have the strength to prevent her from bringing sin upon the holiness of the rabbi (Yitzhak Luria)."

To be fair, of course, Madonna isn't directly profiting from namechecking the rabbi, as she seems to be pouring more and more of her cash into the Kabbalah Centre, a clearing house for overpriced string and feel-good babble - there were reports she'd bought a second central London property for the group a couple of weeks ago.

Interestingly, Madonna still hasn't quite found the time to respond to the claims of that high-ranking member of the Kabbalah Centre staff who told the BBC that, pretty much, the Jews murdered in the holocaust could have avoided their fate if they'd embraced Kabbalah. When the story first broke, Madonna's publicist explained she was too busy rehearsing for the tsunami benefit to respond at that point - nearly a year on, and it seems she's still finding it tricky to make room in her diary for any sort of response.

Thanks to Lee T for the link.

music madonna kabbalah

DAILY MIRROR CONVINCES ITSELF IT WAS RIGHT

We wonder if a newspaper, or collectively its staff, ever wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks 'did we do the right thing?' It's interesting to see the lengths that the paper is going to convince itself that shopping Kate Moss was the right thing to do: they've even wheeled up born again clean guy Elton John to say that it's a good thing, what they did:

Speaking for the first time about the 31-year-old model's fall from grace, he revealed: "I'm just glad Kate is there, I am happy she is doing something."

He explained: "I think Kate has made a really positive move. The Meadows is a great place. It is where two close friends of mine went. Kate is in very good hands."

Of course, Kate didn't actually appear to have much a problem before the story, whereas now she's having all sorts of trouble. We're not sure as she's marched through a stupid regime designed to placate the moral majority that she'll be quite as thrilled at having her privacy invaded as Elt seems to think she should be.

music elton john kate moss

YOUNG MAN, TURN THAT NOISE DOWN

You'd have thought that Robbie Williams would have been thrilled to have been sharing his hotel in Berlin with 50 Cent, who's quite well built and takes to wandering around without a shirt on rather a lot. But, no, neither man was happy that they checked into the Ritz-Carlton at the same time. Williams even "had his people" make a complaint about all the noise. Which is a fair point - nobody wants to be subjected to horrible waves of sound when they're trying to relax. Indeed, we fully intend to insist that any Robbie Williams tracks we hear in restuarants, shops and even leisure centres be switched off. It's what Robbie would have wanted.

music robbie williams 50 cent

WORLD OF CHRIS MARTIN

We suspect that The Sun might have got a little over-excited when it tells visitors to its website this morning that Chris Martin is going to record a single with the Krankies - what actually appears to have happened is Martin has been pondering about interesting and "surprising" things Coldplay might do. (In other words, even his PR handlers have noticed just how boring and predictable Coldplay have become and are trying to counter the impression.)

What's more telling than the Krankies suggestion, though, is that Chris also talks about recording a duet with Celine Dion:

"We shouldn’t restrict our options. To me, the most bizarre things at the moment are the most exciting."

Bless... Chris thinks that two dull, middle-class acts recording their slow, fake-emoting ballad styles together would be like putting two very different things together. We bet he sometimes mixes tangerine and mandarin slices together at home, too.

On the same day that Chris Martin talks about working with Wee Jimmy Krankie, he's going to come face-to-face with another comedy double act where a grown adult behaves like a naughty kid, as both Chris and Liam Gallagher are due to turn up at the Q awards. The Sun scents blood, and can barely contain its CAPS LOCK:

WILD man LIAM GALLAGHER is set for an explosive meeting with CHRIS MARTIN at the Q Awards today.

Yeah, Chris Martin has spent all weekend making a stanley knife with a double blade for this meeting of minds. We really can't wai... oh, hang on, Animal Planet has got Koala Crisis on tonight. Now, that's exciting.

music liam gallagher oasis chris martin coldplay the krankees

AND IF YOU DO DRUGS A GIANT BABY DOES CRAWL ACROSS YOUR CEILING AND YOU POO THE BED AND IT IS TRUE

We're fascinated to hear Sinead O'Connor's explanation of how she managed to avoid the drugs that swash round the music industry the same way grease hangs in the air at McDonalds. Watching Trainspotting put her off drugs:

"Thank God when I was young I saw that movie Trainspotting.

"The bit when they forget about the baby, that totally freaked me out - I think that's a good thing. The temptation could have been to go completely wild on everything."

Hang about, didn't that film come out years and years after she'd started recording and touring?

music sinead o'connor

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Peel Day Approaches

Of course, we know little more of the man that what we've read and chosen to believe, but we can't help feeling that the current hullabaloo around John Peel day is the sort of thing that would have made him feel genuinely uncomfortable - doubtless, like his This Is Your Life appearance or his MBE, he'd have gone along with it all out a sense of not wanting to let people down.

It's also a bit of an interesting lesson in how you lose control of your life when you start to share it. Take, for example, the tale of sexual abuse at his public school. In the autobiography, of course, it's an event that happened but isn't seen as being keen. The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, having paid for the serialisation rights, falls on the story and blow it up, onto the news pages, although with some sort of context left in: "This man - and although it is tempting to name him, I'm not going to - was, I think, the only genuinely amoral person I've ever met. Towards the end of our time together, he compelled me to agree to meet him in a public toilet in the cemetery on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, where he raped me. Oddly enough, much as I hated the experience, I think I had become so accustomed to systematic sexual abuse that I wasn't especially traumatised by the experience." They then seek out some friends to prod the story some more. By this morning, the tale has washed up into the tabloids, with the People luridly yelling "PEEL TELLS OF SCHOOL RAPE HELL." In capitals, and everything.

A fascinating life, so many tales, and it boils down to being forced in a Shropshire bog.

The Telegraph does redeem itself somewhat with an excellent interview with Sheila, if you can get through it without tearing up: "One does not have to spend long in Sheila Ravenscroft's company to realise that whatever else John Peel might have achieved in his life, in marriage he was deeply blessed. She is a handsome woman in her fifties, immensely hospitable, forthright, quick to laugh, and, it is immediately apparent, the family's pillar of strength." [...]

"When Sheila suffered a brain haemorrhage in 1996, John was in the Isle of Man with his friend and fellow DJ Andy Kershaw, watching the TT races. When he was told the news over the phone by their daughter Danda his first response was: "If your mum goes, I go too. I don't want to go on living without her." [...] In the book she writes: "One of the reasons we lasted so long and so well was that we spent half the week apart, but never stopped longing for one another."

Oddly, the interview has been left in the hands of Mick Brown, but he carries it off well - much better than the starting point of "at least it's not Neil McCormack" would lead you to believe. And it's not all designed to send you looking for a Kleenex up your cardigan sleeve - there's some great Peel tales in there, too:

"His disdain for Simon Bates was such that, on one occasion, Peel, Sheila and Kershaw were moved to take a 250-mile round-trip to High Wycombe simply to boo Bates's appearance as Abunazzar in Aladdin."

At the end, though, there's that still nagging doubt that perhaps part of the reason why Radio One is throwing itself so wholeheartedly into Peel Day this week might be, perhaps, just because it feels a little bit guilty:

"In the last years of his life, Sheila says, John was "happier and more contented" than she had ever seen him. Her only concern was over his health. A year before his death, his Radio 1 programme was shifted, yet again, to a later time - 11pm-1am. "He was very tired, and I was worried about him. I said: 'I can't believe you're not going to complain.' But he said he'd be fine. He was just relieved he was still on the radio.""

Another deceased semi-scouser takes pride of place in the Independent - on this weekend, when Lennon would have been turning 65, had we not been spared from any further Double Fantasies or Womans, Hunter 'how much of a career can one man shake out of writing about a single band' Davies speculates on what Lennon would have been like had he lived. Some sort of secular saint, of course, is what Hunter decides - he'd have put things right by Cynthia and Julian (elsewhere, in the Guardian Review, Michel Faber suggests that the one decent line in Cynthia's latest 'I was married to John Lennon, you know' book was when Julian asked "Dad's always telling people to love each other, but how come he doesn't love me?"); probably would have split up with Yoko. And would have stood for - and won - a parliamentary seat, while curiously still living in the Dakota Building. Most alarming of all, the art department run up a photo of how he would look today - Hunter S Thompson, apparently. Of course, we know the truth: had Lennon survived, we'd have had an ever increasing pile of poorly thought out records; more and more books of poetry; the guest appearances onstage with Oasis and, naturally, the ongoing feud with McCartney. Of course, nobody would wish him dead. But if we could have encouraged him to retire at that point, everyone would have been happy.

It seems that the monthly Sound Nation is turning up about every three days, which we're certainly not complaining about. There's news of gigs returning to Bangor Hendre Hall - with reggae nights, mainly to allow a Jamaican-Welsh pun, we think: Reggae Fi Wan; and a resurrected gig building in Cardiff's Buffalo Bar. If the Welsh music scene isn't going through a golden age right now, Soundnation should probably get some sort of spin doctoring award.

There's a great bit on the legalities of podcasting - Adrian Crookes from the MCPS-PRS alliance tuts and fusses and panics: "without DRM, podcasts can be made into digital copy after digital copy after digital copy." Of course, he recommends making sure your podcast is legal, but as the magazine points out, it's not that easy. "The application for the JOL [Joint Online Licence] includes questions about your company's status, its auditors, accountatnts and professional affiliations. You'll need to supply a copy of your certificate of incorporation, your audited accounts and a Status Enquiry Form that enables MCPS-PRS to ask your bank if they think you're a good credit risk. You'll also need to give revenue and listener predictions." In other words, to knock together a show that would take you an hour to make on your Mac, you're expected to spend a couple of weeks setting up a company and filing forms and filling boxes. The idea of the JOL was to make it easy and simple to use music legitimately online; clearly, it's failed. And the reason why unlicensed podcasts will proliferate is because the only way of doing it legally is so long-winded, people will ignore the law.

Crookes mutters that they might come to some sort of limited, trial-basis license for zero-revenue podcasts, but still seems to be thinking in terms of charges in the hundreds of pounds. And so people will still carry on by-passing the rules.

The sound of tills ringing you'll have heard this week would have been the increased sales of the NME. Yes, Babyshambles on the cover again, flogging the new tour and talking up the "three act rock opera" (no, they're not joking, unfortunately). The increasingly shabby act rolls around - demanding money for the interview (they get forty quid out of Alex Needham; apparently, the News of the World have been offering £35k for a phone interview; £70k for a face-to-face and a £15k bung for the Babyshambles PR); moaning about Alan McGee still - "I'm not speaking ill of people, bit Alan McGee's still charging me for Anthony Rossamando's air fare... what a piss take"; being totally uninterested in questions about music; and making vague threats against whoever it was who sold Kate Moss up to the Mirror (NME: "So what's going to happen?" "Something nasty" he whispers.) In short, Pete is every inch the drug bore, pity-meing about having to sell "one" of the Playstations off the tour bus (what for, eh?). He also attempts to explain why he headbutted Johnny Borrell, which is a long and confusing story in which The Libertines lived with Borrell's mum and Borrell introduced Doherty to the Clash and the New York Dolls. We think, therefore, that Doherty's kind of scared that Borrell actually invented him. It's an Oedipus thing.

Elsewhere in the NME, Thom Yorke has been invited to meet Tony Blair and is worrying about it - more curiously, though, is the discovery that Chris Martin sent Tony a letter telling him "all the stuff you're doing to sort the whole place out is brilliant." This was last Christmas, then, after Iraq and Hutton.

Oasis are going to work with Kasabian, which at least means that we'll be able to ignore both of them at once.

Bloc Party have announced they're taking a live break - until 2006. Which is, what, all of seventy-odd days away now.

Radar focuses its beady sweat-eyes on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (great to listen to, shit to have to type out); Sam Champion and We Are Scientists ("epic versions of everyone's favourite 80s bands.")

Editors attempt to deny that they're nuts - "I'm not singing about unhinged things... I'm singing about love or lack of love or whatever. They affect everyone, not just depressed people."

Sid and Nancy come spewing up out of the archives, at least timely in light of the Muppets Christmas Carol reworking of the myth being played out by Pete and Kate. "She was a bad influence on my Sid" moaned Sid's Mum, amusing words in a week when Old Mother Doherty turned up to berate Pete at a Bristol gig.

reviews
live
red organ serpent sound - nottingham rescue rooms - "so in your face you can't even see the costumes"
the rakes - portsmouth wedgewood rooms - "play fast, die young, leave a hideously hungover corpse"
the chalets - dublin dun laoghaire art college - "sexy, sassy and smart"

albums
john peel tribute album - "Would Napalm Death not have flagged up more of what peel was really about than the cripplingly awful Belle and Sebastian?", 8
Sugababes - taller in more ways - "a mini potted pop history", 6
little brother - the minstrel show - "a sharp sense of humour; warm, supple beats", 8

tracks
totw - white rose movement - alsatian - "robots have a sense of humour too"
the kooks - sofa song - "made for the sofa of your lethargy"
battle - demons - "far from your average wrist slashing ditty"

And finally, Peter Robinson meets up with Miquita Oliver, off of PopWorld and Radio One. Is she, asks Peter, John Peel reincarnated? "Oh God, no, they don't trust me to play music I like."

[EDIT: We forgot to thank Aaron S for the tip on the Telegraph interview.]

music music magazines john peel john lennon cynthia lennon pete doherty babyshambles the editors kate moss podcasting

ROCKOBIT: Mike Gibbins

The death has been announced of Mike Gibbins, drummer with Badfinger.

Formed in Swansea in 1968, the band took their name from Bad Finger Boogie, which had been the working title for With A Little Help From My Friends; it was far from their only connection with the loveable moptops. Indeed, John Lennon had even suggested an alternate name - The Prix, which says much about Lennon's dead ear - when they'd been casting around to dump their original band name, The Iveys. Their debut single, Come and Get It, was a Paul McCartney compostion and released on Apple.

Ironically, considering their first hit was a bitter rant about The Beatle's money problems, it was finances which would wreck the band and lead to their reputation as a tragedy-magnets. A 1973 deal to take them to Warner Bros screwed their relations with Apple, and with money mysteriously disappearing from the band's accounts, threw them into an unsymapthetic environment which moved quickly from uncomfortable to unworkable. Stricken by personal debt and animosity, their third Warners Album, Head First, never made it out the studios. On April 23rd 1975, Peter Ham was found, having hanged himself while bottoming out in depression. A reunited band formed itself in 1978; history repeated itself in 1993, however, when Tom Evans also hanged himself after financial problems.

After the original Badfinger split, Gibbins continued to work in music - it was his drumming on Bonnie Tyler's It's A Heartache. He eventually relocated to the US; towards the end of the 1990s he tried his hand as a solo artist with a couple of albums, A Place In Time and More Annoying Songs.

Badfinger's biographer, Dan Matovina, told BBC News Online that his time in Badfinger was the highlight of a life in music:

"Badfinger was the highlight of his life, coming out of Wales, having success, touring America. But the tragedy of the loss of two of his bandmates to suicides weighed heavily on that. A lot of things happened that were difficult for him to deal with, the loss of Pete Ham especially, his close friend from Wales - I don't think he ever got over that."

Thanks to Eleanor G for the prod on this one.

music obit obituary badfinger mike gibbins

THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND

There's a not-especially-fascinating story in today's Sunday Mirror where Evelina Roos flogs her story to the paper ("tells all about the Pet Doherty she knew.") It seems she knew Pete when he was gawky, insecure nobody, and actually got briefly engaged to him for a short while. If she's recalling his proposal accurately, the NME should retropsectively strip him of his Cool Icon award from last year:

"Pete was charming and incredibly innocent. He looked like a choirboy. I was over the moon when Pete asked me to marry him. He couldn't control his excitement when I accepted his proposal. He was shouting, 'You are going to cook my dinners and have my babies. You are going to be a good wife. We will be happy ever after'."

Presumably, though, Pete wouldn't object if his wife got a little part-time job once the kids were in school to keep her in chocolates and gin.

It's also hilarious that they met outside the Wag Club. In fact, this interview is probably far more damaging to Doherty's image than any number of shaky videos of him shoving cocaine up his bum:

He told me he lived in Mile End because he loved living with the working classes. (Pete's father is an Army major and the former choirboy was offered a place at Oxford University). He romanticised about them a lot, and I admired him because he was so passionate about it."

Never mind all this Albion malarkey - Pete turns out to be more like the Toynbee Hall Settlement Movement.

You might be wondering how it is that Pete never ended up marrying Evelina, and buying a former council house where he could watch the fascinating working classes going about their business while she made currant buns for tea, in between bouts of labour and morning sickness.

It was that Carl Barat - he came between them, the swine:

Pete had set up home with guitarist Carl Barat, whom he was to form the Libertines with, in Camden, North London. The boys shared a bedsit and Carl hated it when the lovers got intimate late at night. Evelina said: "Pete started kissing me once in the middle of the night and Carl shouted, 'Be quiet'. He then stormed out and made himself a cup of tea. Pete told me Carl didn't like the effect I had on him and somehow our relationship seemed to change. Pete started playing games and saying stuff like, 'Oh I mustn't spoil you', or, 'Don't fall in love with me'. Once I called him and asked whether I could come around. He replied, 'Why don't you just go home?' Sometimes he laughed at me and called me a foreign exchange student. He said he detested them and mimicked the way we spoke. I tried not to act upset, but I was. He had become wild, a bit crazy and totally untrustworthy."

So untrustworthy, actually, he apparently stole her coat to buy drugs. She finally dumped him when she went round to his house and he pretended to not be in. (Although, actually, we'd say technically, that meant that he dumped her.) You're probably best off out of it, Eve. Winter's coming, and you'll need your coat.

music pete doherty carl barat babyshambles libertines

GEORGE CLUELESS OVER COKE

Apparently flying back to Britain this weekend, Boy George isn't taking the latest twist in his life that well. Even although it would make a smashing amusing anecdote for his next autobiography. Perhaps not so amusing, come to think of it, if he gets fifteen years prison in New York State.

George claims he's got no idea how the thirteen packets of cocaine came to be strewn across his flat - we're betting its going to be those cockroaches that plague the city. It's well known how much they like their drugs.

Or perhaps they were left by a former owner...


-When buying a house, Kirstie, it's important to check for drugs left behind by the people there before...
- ... or at least the number of their dealer, Phil

music boy george drugs

THIS WEEK, WE PLUGGED...

As you might have noticed, Franz Ferdinand's new album is now in the shops


Is it just us, or do career-spanning retrospectives turn up much earlier these days? This is the Beta Band's


Sadly, the new Fall album features no work for Tim Gudgeon

Now available for pre-order: Kate Bush's Aerial

OH GOOD GRIEF... IT'S AN OPEN GOAL, INNIT?

It's not so much the news that Michael Jackson fell over in a crowd outside a London theatre. It's what he was going to see. With the whole of the West End at his disposal what does he choose? Billy Elliot, that's what.

Now, when Elton John originally wrote the musical version of Billy Elliot, Have I Got News For You got themselves into a load of homophobic hot water by making an "Elton John said he could imagine a bit of himself in Billy" joke. If only they'd kept their powder dry for Michael...

music michael jackson billy elliot elton john

CAN YOU MAKE PORN COME ON THE TELLY?

One day before the cinema hook-up launch of the new album (already tipped to be this year's most-returned gift following Christmas Day), Robbie Williams has hurt his wrist. The official line is that he injured it playing football, which, you know... we totally believe.

Rumours that Williams took delivery of a large mirror yesterday cannot be confirmed as we upload this.

music robbie williams

BUBLE GETS BLOWN OFF

The 10,000 people who turned up to see Michael Buble this evening at the Sydney Opera House would have been mildly disappointed to be told the gig had been cancelled due to high winds. Then, we guess, they would have decided to go for pizza instead, as they'd paid for the babysitter and come up to town anyway.

music michael buble sydney

WILLIAMS COMES OUT FOR MOSS

We're sure everyone from Kate Moss down to T-Mobile - whose expensive press launch he unbalanced - will be delighted that Robbie Williams has expressed his support for the dusty-nosed model.

Now, we've not got a lot of time for Williams, which makes it especially galling that we found ourselves nodding along to much of his pronouncement - although his reasons for supporting her seem to include that she's usually nice to him. Luckily, though, he managed to blow it:

Williams said: “She’s done nothing wrong. What she does in her private life should be her own private affair. We are talking about a woman who has never hurt anybody and never pretended to be somebody she isn’t.” Williams, 31, had met Moss on several occasions and described her as “an absolute icon, beautiful. Every time I met her she’s been lovely to me.” The singer accused the media of conducting a witch-hunt, which could ultimately result in her death. He said: “It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d tried to commit suicide the week everything hit the papers. As a public figure it’s scary because sometimes it’ll be your mum these people get the knives out for.”

Hang about a moment there - a "public figure", you say, Robbie? Aren't you getting carried away a little there? We know you might think you contribute to the communal good by gurning a lot and pretending to have lots of girlfriends, but to describe yourself (and Moss, come to that) as public figures is just a nonesense. You're a celebrity - or, more accurately, a performing monkey - and to try and bolster your place in society from song-and-dance man to being on a par with a civil servant or elected representative may be an indication of how shit our politicians are these days, but it's going too far.

Public figure? Oh, don't you wish, Robbie.

music robbie williams kate moss cocaine

FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE GUITARIST

Prior to their UK tour, the Mystery Jets have sold their guitarist online. They got £92, which is a bit poor - they'd have been better off splitting him and selling the bits in individual lots. You make more for a pig that's in chops and joints than one with the head still on.

music mystery jets ebay

THE MET POLICE: LONDON'S FINEST

You have to take your hat off to the Met Police - they've come up with a theory that the drug dealers who supplied Moss and Doherty with coke may also have supplied the Mirror with pictures of the drugs being used. See, detective training gives you insights like that.

Although we're not entirely sure why they're bothered who sold the pictures anyway - are they investigating an invasion of privacy? On the other hand, this is all coming from the Babyshambles camp, so who knows how reliable it is anyway:

The two men haven’t been seen among the Babyshambles singer’s entourage of hangers-on since the pictures were made public last month.

The pair were understood to have been invited along by Doherty to see the new Babyshambles album recorded at the Metropolis.

Our source said: "The two under suspicion are the drug dealers. I can’t be sure there isn’t somebody else involved.
"I don’t like pointing the finger at those people, but they are obviously under suspicion. Everybody else is accounted for. The men in question are both from east London. I hadn’t seen them down there before.

"If they did do it, they have probably left the country by now."
He believes the two drug dealers were not directly involved in selling the pictures of Kate.

He reckons a third person may have brokered the six-figure deal with a newspaper that first published the story. A Metropolis studio spokeswoman refused to confirm that the drug binge involving Kate happened there.

There's something every-so-slightly threatening about the "probably left the country by now" and it's unspoken "if they know what's good for them..."

music pete doherty kate moss babyshambles

A NORMAL CHILDHOOD

Good on Britney Spears, who has insisted that she doesn't want her kid to live a childhood in the full glare of publicity, like what she did.

Once she's got the couple of million for the baby photos, of course.

music britney spears

A LITTLE MORE WHITE

Good news if you're a keen knitter with too much white or red wool - you can get knitting booties for Jakc White and Karen Elson, who are going to have a baby.

Bad news, of course, for music fans, who are now about twenty-four months from an album all about the wonders of little fingers and how children are our futures.

music white stripes jack white karen elson

OH GOD, HE'S ACTUALLY TURNED UP

Well, there you are - Michael Jackson did slip into Britain (not exactly "slip", more showboat) late last night - so it's possible that he might even record some sort of version of his Can I Touch Your Bottom With My Heart song in aid of Katrina. Unless he's turned up to do his now four year-delayed 9/11 benefit single, of course.

The Sun - who usually are happy to encourage their readership to burn down the houses of anyone who might even look a little bit like a paedophile - seem uncharacteristically thrilled by the appearance of a man who, at best, doesn't understand the need for boundaries:

The crowd of around 100 went wild when Jacko climbed on the roof of his blacked-out people carrier and sang a few lines from one of his new songs.

He then knelt down and prayed before repeating “Thank you” to the crowd in Chiswick.

Chiswick? Chiswick?

music michael jackson

IS KARMA ABOUT TO HIT THE CHAMELEON?

Strange story breaking this evening from New York, where the wires are just reporting the arrest of Boy George. The charges, apparently, are possessing cocaine and making a false police report:

The singer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, called police from a Little Italy apartment around 3:14 a.m. and reported a burglary, said Detective Kevin Czartoryski, a police spokesman.

Officers arrived on the scene and discovered a small amount of cocaine next to a computer, police said. A woman in the apartment said there was more cocaine around and police were continuing to investigate.

A former spokesman for O'Dowd's autobiographical musical "Taboo," which closed last year, said he did not know whether the singer had a spokesman or lawyer.

That last line seems the oddest of all, really.

music boy george

FROM 17TH OCTOBER, IT'S FISH AND CHIPS

Possibly the sweetest news for anybody caught in an office with an internet connection - Danny Baker is returing to BBC London:

"People are unaware that I was actually born and raised at 35 Marylebone High Street in the old Studio Two to be precise, back when it was still known as The Lord Reith Umbrella for Unwanted Cockney Orphans," Danny says.

"My new life of indolence was going wonderfully well until I was offered a new show back at the old place that both intrigued and stimulated me," states Danny.

"'How about coming back and doing what you do - but this time in a way that would NOT require you to get up at 4.44am?' they said.

"I must say the boldness and risk inherent in the scheme both fascinated and, yes, intimidated me. NOT getting up while it was still dark eh? Why those crafty, crazy mad BBC London so-and-so's…"

Danny's wife was over the moon with his new position. "You're driving me up the wall, shuffling about the house all day," she said.

The hours suited her too as, "You can bring fish and chips home on Fridays!"

"From 17 October, it's fish and chips - put it in your diaries!" says Danny.

"As far as I am concerned it'll be fish and chips every night of the week. My people, my kingdom – I'm coming home."

That's the press release talking. One of the few saving graces of living in Britain - alongside those long, balmy Tory Party leadership battles, where you get Bobby Robson, some chap who looks like a midland Estate Agents mortgage advisor, and your great uncle Ken fighting it out in a bid to lose the next election - is radio stations which employ Danny Baker. My mom, my flag, my 94.9.

music radio bbc danny baker