That Franz Ferdinand story, then...

Gigwise - who do say they heard it on Newsbeat - have more detail about the Franz's abandonment of their sessions with Brian 'Girls Aloud producer' Higgins:

"We learned a little bit from his methods. We wrote with him for a while and initially we thought we'd work more with him on the album but it didn't really work out.

"We just realised that we're not really a pop group. We're just a band that happens to cross over into the whole pop sphere."

The new album remains on course for October - or earlier, if it looks like leeking onto peer-to-peer.

Franz Aloud

Franz Ferdinand are about to be in the studio, with Girls Aloud producer Brian Higgins doing what, apparently, we're obliged to describe as "twiddling the knobs". As if the reason wasn't obviously "because we'd like to see what happens and pop is bloody lovely", NME asks Alex Kapranos what they think they're playing at:

“We could easily make a ‘Franz Ferdinand by numbers’ record, but there’s no point, no enjoyment in making a record like that. If we wanted to make a record like that we would have released it last year, that’s why we’ve been taking our time to push ourselves.”

And, of course, that pop is bloody lovely.