WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Double issues and treble egos

You've got to love Time magazine's sense of humour, haven't you? They've mocked up a crazy front page pretending Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are the 2005 Persons of the Year. They can't be serious, can they? After all, while Bill and Melinda have given a fairly small proportion of their income to worthy causes - all tagged heavily with their names, of course - that money has been made by exploiting a near-monopoly status in the computer software operating market and the use of legal and economic pressure to force schools, hospitals, economic development organisations and charities to become locked into a constant upgrade cycle. While Gates has given loads to immunise children and so on, remember how much of that money has been taken from organisations around the world in IT budget and software licensing that could have been spent more directly on good works. True, had Microsoft not acted as middleman for that cash, the good works wouldn't have come with a photo-op for Bill.

With any philanthropist, the question you need to ask is not what they're doing, but how they came to be in a position to be generous in the first place. And there's a similar question with the The Gates as there is with Bono: who the hell has appointed these people to determine the terms on which the world should deal with developing nations anyway?

Time portrays these three as something between latter-day saints and glasses-wearing superheroes; and there's the circle-jerk you'd expect to find: ""He's changing the world twice," says Bono of Bill. "And the second act for Bill Gates may be the one that history regards more." [...] Bill and his wife Melinda, another computer nerd turned poverty warrior, love facts and data with a tenderness most people reserve for their children, and Bono was hurling metrics across the table as fast as they could keep up. "He was every bit the geek that we are," says Gates Foundation chief Patty Stonesifer, who helped broker that first summit. "He just happens to be a geek who is a fantastic musician."

Time believes that the trio are doing something quite different from the normal charity route: "In ordinary times, we give when it's easy: a gesture, a reflex, a salve to conscience. The entreaties come on late-night TV from well-meaning but long-discarded celebrities who cuddle with big-eyed children and appeal to pity and guilt. Maybe we send off a check, hope it will help someone somewhere stay alive for another day. That is not the model for the current crusaders or the message for these extraordinary times." Curiously, this issue of the magazine features, erm, pictures of Gatesand Gates with big-eyed children being given medicines.

Bono, meanwhile, attempts to justify why he's happy to let politicians off the hook time and time again: "Bono grasps that politicians don't much like being yelled at by activists who tell them no matter what they do, it's not enough. Bono knows it's never enough, but he also knows how to say so in a way that doesn't leave his audience feeling helpless." In other words, he's the perfect guy to be sent by the powerful to tell the rest of us why they can't find the money to solve the most simple of problems - no wonder the establishment love him. Bono and Bob Geldof kept the people in London watching pop music instead of kicking down the doors of the Gleneagles Hotel and demanding change this summer. You start to see why Time - house magazine of the status quo - loves him so much.

What makes less sense (thanks here to Jim McCabe) is how the usually discerning Paul Morley comes to effuse over Bono in this week's Observer Music monthly. Yes, that Paul Morley - whose name once was the international SI unit they used for measuring ironic detachment. His report from his meeting with Bono Vox has you fumbling for the number of your local cult deprogramming centre: "He's just out of bed where he's been on the phone, to his wife, or the prime minister of a large nation, or Bob Dylan, or Bill Gates, or Paul Allen, or, somehow, himself, some other version of himself he has left in some part of the world at some time that might not yet have happened. He's hurriedly zipped up a black hoodie over a black T-shirt and a largely destroyed pair of jeans. The first thing on his schedule this morning is an interview. Before a question can even be asked, he's talking, answering questions he's heard a million times before, or questions he would like to be asked, or questions he's asked himself in his dreams as he puts off that moment when he wakes up and finds that, in fact, he is still boy Bono in Dublin in 1978, and this penthouse suite, this view of a shining city in the grand middle of everywhere that could make anyone think they can see for miles, doesn't exist, this voluptuous pop star fame, evangelical strangeness and political influence has not happened."

Theres more, much more - indeed, the only thing that stops Morley from filling the entire magazine with effusions is that then he wouldn't be able to give any space to the thoughts of the only person who loves Bono more - that, of course, would be Bono:

"We succeeded, and they hated us for that - can't you do anything right? Get a fat arse for fuck's sake ... and there we are, it's 2001, and you start to think, what are the possibilities of a combo who have made music together for 20 years but who are now more able intellectually, artistically, musically than they've ever been. Oh boy! This could be very interesting. The four-piece combo if it stays true to itself can still be a very efficient organisation. After doing this kind of thing for so long, it becomes a grudge match ... against your opponent, which is of course your lazy self, or the other self, which fancies the fish farm in Wales, or in my case, in Kenya - go and live on the beach, you've earned it, and for us it becomes a fight against that temptation. But because we formed in the punk Seventies, the smithy of our soul, to quote Joyce, was the British music press, and the intellectual ideas of the time, some of which were preposterous, and people grew out of them, but they were great thoughts, and the memory of not wanting to be in a crap band, not wanting to turn into the pointless two-headed Seventies rock monster, to not become a roaring cliche, that's what makes us resist the temptation to grow fat."

Did you spot Bono doing what it is that makes Bono so popular with the rich? Did you notice the way he suggested that what made him strong was the attentions of the NME right at the time when Morley was writing for them? We'll say this for the man, he knows how to flatter and stroke; he knows how to get results.

Elsewhere in the OMM, Noel Fielding undergoes the Record Doctor's attentions. He takes to Annie and !!!; and The Chameleons left him wanting to know "what kind of clothes they wore." Which, at least, is some sort of reaction.

Katie Melua - who we're starting to think might not be quite as bad as her dreadful music would lead you to expect - interviews Shane McGowan. McGowan bristles slightly when Melua suggests she's been invited to do Kirsty's bits on Fairytale of New York: "Nobody's expecting you to fill Kirsty's shoes, although I'm sure you could if you hung around us long enough to get pissed off with me!"

There's a fairly substantial collection of albums of the year, and an interesting collection of 'how was it for you' pieces - a Jackson fan on watching the trial, a perspective from the editor of the Nigeria Guardian on Live8 ("here was some scepticism over the fact that Youssou N'Dour - from French-speaking Senegal - was the only African artist to appear at the London concert. There's still a huge gulf between anglophone and francophone Africa, and it often seems to us in the English-speaking countries - Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya - that more things go to francophone countries.") and so on.

Another viewpoint from another country came in the Boston Globe a couple of weeks back, when on behalf of America, Renee Graham considered her nation's failure to take to Robbie Williams - it wasn't them, she decided, that was found wanting: "He's done with America, content to make enormous amounts of money in countries that appreciate pop music that's too smug, too clever by half, too delighted by its own cheeky smirk.[...] So now Williams will have to satisfy himself by pretending that he's not interested in American success, and doesn't have time to woo fans on this side of the pond. Of course, he's entitled to tell himself whatever he desires to stave off the hurt feelings. After all the dashed expectations, Williams may have needed America, but he could never convince us that we needed him."

Uncut comes with a rather fine Festive 15 CD in honour of Peel - and, with the Field Mice, Bhundu Boys and Felt, it feels a lot more like a Peelesque selection than the commercial album released in his name earlier the year. There's also a neat Smiths feature, which while not actually adding anything to the sum of knowledge avoids the more obvious ends of Smiths factage. Uncut now retails at over four quid, by the way, which makes it less of a overpriced magazine with a free CD and more a competitively priced midmarket CD with an outsize booklet.

Of course, this is the most magical time of the year - the double pop paper (and, of course, the anniversary of the death of the Melody Maker), but having a Christmas on a Sunday makes the double NME feel out of place - indeed, the next issue is actually due out this coming this Friday, which means the Christmas issue doesn't actually even cover Christmas. Which is all wrong.

There's also a spot of looking forward, with the bands being named for the NME Awards Shows 2006 - Goldie Lookin' Chain are on the bill, which is surely taking a joke that little bit too far - but much festive fair as well. Like Father Christmas complaining about Christmas records - but that's just sour grapes, isn't it, what with his track having disappeared in a pile of songs about JCBs and singing sheep.

Sam Endicott of the Bravery tells Peter Robinson - apparently with a straight face - that "a lot of people" see the band as a metaphor for what the rest of the world hates about the US - "an invading force." Really, Sam? Only if an American invasion was as effective as the Bravery are, right now Saddam would be sat in one of his Baghdad Palaces wondering whatever happened to all the shock and awe, surely?

Radar celebrates its talent-spotting victories: Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Magic Numbers, Antony and the Johnsons, and, erm, the Kaiser Chiefs. To be honest, we'd also liked to have seen some fessing up of the things that didn't take - after all, why spend time telling us again about the Kaisers when there could be a second chance for some of the bands who could need a bit of extra help? Plus, we'd much rather see a picture of Forward Russia than Anthony and the Johnsons any day.

The paid-for advert for Silent Alarm mentions that its "NME album of the year"; we imagine the Londonist offices will be buzzing about that.

Jack and Meg White are invited to give a "King and Queen's Speech" - although these days Jack is less a king, more the indie Duke of Windsor. Oddly, though, this isn't the actual alternative Christmas message, which is given by Noel Gallagher. Who talks about how great Oasis is. He does promise to take 2006 off, though, so it's not all bad.

The front cover feature harks back to the old style of the Radio Times double - they used to always use a nostalgic image, and here the NME has gone with The Strokes. Apparently the band do an internal secret santa, although whoever gets the used pair of Amanda DeCadenet's knickers always guesses who their Santa is.

Is there? There is... pub golf. If you're planning to watch the coverage, look away now. The Mitchell Brothers win, although that seems a bit unfair as they have twice as many livers as everyone else.

"We're the only band who've ever scored coke in Osaka. Does that make me a rock & roll star?" desperates out Dominic Masters from The Others. No, it makes you a gullible bore. What's worse, Masters seems to be getting caught in a battle of wits with Danny Tourette. Hardly a great recommendation that, is it?

How are the Gorillaz spending Christmas? Being cartoons, of course.

The coverline promsing a Green Day nativity doesn't mention that it's a rerun of a 1991 archive piece. Green Day are far too cool to do nativity now, of course.

There's The Mighty Boosh here, too, which is making us feel like we missed a meeting; and, of course, Ricky "podcasting" Gervais, claiming to go from door to door trying to score turkey dinners.

Charlotte Church, Ian Brown, Alan Donohoe and the Tourettes work through the year's singles - Charlotte announces that she can't stand Pete Doherty and he can't sing; Brown suggests that James Blunt's voice sounds like he got his "bottom tickled" all the time he was in the forces; and Dirk Tourette calls oasis "geezers."

And, finally, the live pages reveal Anthony and the Johnsons ask the audience at their gigs to not smoke during their set - which is fair enough; but they also put up little notices requesting "silence" on behalf of "the artist." You know, if you want the audience to pay rapt attention to you, perhaps you should be compelling rather than sticking up nobbish notices.

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