Do you ever wonder if you're the only human and everyone else is an alien robot?

Katie Melua doesn't. She thinks she's actually an alien or something or other or something:

She said: "I don't even know if I'm human sometimes. I know that sounds mental, but I do believe we are all a bit like aliens."

But if we're all a bit like aliens, then aren't all humans a bit like alien, and so feeling like that is human?

The United Nations have issued a statement in the last ten minutes, stressing that if it can be proven that Katie Melua has been sent to this planet by an alien intelligence, that will be viewed as a declaration of galactic war. "Unless they take her back, and James Blunt and Duffy as well as reparations" concluded the UN.

Amy Winehouse asks for Amy Lame's job - if ET lets her

The NME is dutifully reporting that Amy Winehouse is going to be a "radio agony aunt", something it has extrapolated from the Daily Star, which claims she's "asked" to go on when Mitch co-hosts the Danny Baker show with Gary Crowley.

The NME might want to approach the story with a little more caution, given that the last big Winehouse story the Star broke was this one:

Amy's demise could have inadvertently sparked a link between the human race and life on other planets after new research suggests aliens have been desperately trying to contact the star.

As sightings of UFO'S soared in recent months - with nearly one being reported every week - betting analysts Blue Square have been working out the odds on where the next alien-bod could be spotted.

But researchers were amazed to discover that when the E.T sightings were plotted on a map of Britain they formed the shape of Amy Winehouse's bee-hived head.

Alien watchers everywhere are now convinced that life on other planets is desperate to contact the skinny limbed Rehab singer and help her to change her destructive ways.

"Alien watchers everywhere" are convinced of this, are they? They wouldn't be saying 'why would you try to contact someone by making a massive join-the-dots picture that, if you're half drunk and squint, might look a little bit like you?' Obviously, I'm not expert with matters alien - I did some work experience once summer helping out with their probing, but mostly it was just making coffee for Tharrrg The Mighty Crusher Of Galaxies - but it does seem they'd be better off hovering over house, wouldn't they?

Robbie Williams is not on the shortlist for presenting Today

This should be interesting: Robbie Williams and Jon Ronson have teamed up to make a programme about UFOs for Radio 4. Robbie Williams is known for a long-standing interest in extra-terrestrial life; Jon Ronson has carved a niche of making programmes about eccentric obsessives, gently unpicking their fascinations. There's a preview in this week's Guardian Weekend - because Ronson knows how to use his material to best effect. Or maximum earning potential, anyway.

Gordon in the morning: Robbie Williams is not lost in space

Gordon returns to the Robbie Williams and the aliens story this morning:

ROBBIE WILLIAMS’ obsession with extra-terrestrials has just jumped to lightspeed.

Does an obsession travel at lightspeed?

The beardy pop nob has been spending his free time — which is about 18 hours, seven days a week — visiting observatories in the Arizona desert.

Gordon then goes on to have a bit of a laugh at the idea of Williams going to an observatory, of all places, to look at space. Can you imagine?

Now, while it's true that his obsession with aliens and chumming up with David Icke looks a little flaky, is hiking out to an array of telescopes to explore the possibility of life in other parts of the universe such an eccentric thing to do? After all, NASA was pumping out Beatles songs into space the other week, in the hope that some other worldly intelligence might hear them and thus create some demand for digital downloads of the back catalogue, and nobody started to suggest that NASA had lost its mind. And if Williams is interested in aliens, isn't it actually quite intelligent of him to head out to a place where serious scientific research is taking place to see what they're up rather than asking David Icke which members of the cabinet are shape-shifting aliens?

I know. This does constitute cutting Robbie some slack. I don't like it any more than you do.

Gordon, though, is showing exactly the same sort of grasp of science that makes mainstream journalism what it is today:

Rob has been peering through telescopes looking into space for signs of life on other planets.

Yes. He's squinting through a small tube telescope, Gordon. That's the way it works in Arizona.

Surely writing a new album is more important than staring at the heavens like eccentric, xylophone-playing Sky At Night TV host PATRICK MOORE?

Hmm. There's a slim possibility that Williams might - just might - discover something which suggests that humanity is not alone in the universe, with profound implications for our future as a species, politics, religion and ethics. On the other hand, he could make another record of eartosh. Do you want to check that you're ordering his priorities correctly, Gordon?

There's a strong argument that if other worlds send emissaries to Earth, you wouldn't perhaps want the gurning half-wit to be the one to meet them, but that's another question.

It's not clear why Gordon would be keen for Robbie to get back in the studio anyway:

He added: “I was lying on my sun lounger outside at night. Above me was a square thing that passed over my head silently and shot off.”

That was me, Robbie. I was launching copies of Rudebox at your gaff after 12 pints of Guinness...

If you're wondering why Smart might have lots of copies of Rudebox lying around in the first place, it's probably because his boss Victoria Newton gave the album such glowing reviews before she got into trouble with the lyrics of that one track and the column appeared to declare war on Williams.

Forget rehab: Maybe Brit and Robbie need ET?

With so many stars, former stars and social irritants checking into the white uniforms and regulated regimes of rehab these days, and then crashing out a few days later, it's becoming clear that simply "going to rehab" isn't even part of a solution. So, what to do when your addiction becomes too big to handle (and by "handle", of course, we mean "keep out the tabloids.")

Shaun Ryder could provide a way forward: he's quit methadone. And, you'd have to say, something which could separate Ryder from his methadone must be quite a good cure. So, how did you do it, Shaun? Miranda Sawyer suggests it was a slightly unorthodox approach:

He tells me, with glee, about the event that caused him to quit methadone. Shaun was, he announces, 'kidnapped by aliens'. He isn't joking. Shaun saw a UFO when he was 15 ('And once they see you, they do keep a check on you'), and it was after a Happy Mondays gig in Denmark last year that he and two other band members, Kav and Johnny, had out-of-body experiences.

I spend quite some time insisting to Shaun that he, Kav and Johnny must have been out of it, that someone must have spiked their drink, until Shaun just shouts: 'Or we was visited by aliens! I've had all sorts, I've had stuff from the Amazonian rain forest, but that doesn't explain the telepathy!' So I stop. Anyway, they asked the aliens some questions - 'they was a bit shady about [his kid] Jael' - and the whole experience got him off methadone, so well done to the ETs.

So, Shaun Ryder is, finally, apparently, straight, and setting to sorting his life out - and there's a lot of sorting to be done. Sawyer explains the way he's got stuck into having to send every penny he earns to his former manager to pay off a legally unenforceable contract - the courts said that even though it was unenforceable, he had to honour it because he'd previously managed to allow to be enforced; he's trying to do right by his kids, but he's got a lot of bad to undo there.

If Ryder can be sorted out, then there's hope for us all. It might just be a slower process than some newspaper reports of celebrity cures likes to suggest.

[Thanks to Jim McCabe for the link]