Madonna: Making Howard Hughes sound careless

Although it has all the hallmarks of a story based on half-understood rumour and fact inflation, and as such is almost certainly untrue, you can see why people might want to believe that Madonna is having her dressing room wiped clean of DNA:

The Winnipeg Free Press reports that, with the Queen Of Pop set to arrive in Portugal's Coimbra City tomorrow evening (June 24), [concert promoter Alvaro] Ramos confided: "We have to take extreme care, like I have never seen for any other artist. We cannot even look at the dressing room, after it is ready, or even open the door."

He added: "We can only enter after her sterilisation team has left the room. There will not be any of Madonna's DNA, any hair, or anything. They will clean up everything. In the end it is all to protect her and make her feel comfortable. I do understand it, but it is taken to extremes."

A source close to the singer, meanwhile, added: "She is a perfectionist, and expects the best. But then, at her age and with her status, why shouldn't she?"

None of these quotes really make any sense at all, do they? If we imagine that Madonna really is somehow having a room "sterilized", in what wat would it follow that an older woman who has had number one records would be having skinflakes scrubbed out of the room? Presumably, there's some sort of scale, whereby Cheryl Cole would insist on making sure the toilet seat had a bit of a wipe round; Adele could expect the carpets to be steam-cleaned and Shirley Bassey's demands would include scrubbing of all door handles.

And Ramos seems to simultaneously understand it, and not. Because if it was an understandable desire, why would you mention it to the papers? Nobody would ring up the Winnipeg Free Press to say that Kasabian have called for lagers and a bag of chips?

Still, Madonna: if you're really worried about people getting hold of your DNA, be careful using the toilets - there could be someone lurking round the ubend with a net, you know.