The Daily Star deliberately misreports the Viola Beach crash

Friday morning, and an unequivocal front page from the Daily Star about the accident which killed the band Viola Beach:

It was, says the Star, deliberate. All over the front page.

Except... on the Star's website today, a very different story:

Swedish police now say they did not brake because they did not spot the barrier.

Crash footage has shown the car move to the left hand lane to overtake stationary traffic, before braking, then accelerating through a barrier.

Inspector Lars Berglund told the Mirror: "Maybe he had not discovered the barriers in front of those cars standing still.

"I have not suggested that [the driver] was doing this in order to kill himself or the band.

"I said he was making a move from the right lane to the left lane and that was not accidental."

In other words, the Swedish police said that the driver hadn't accidentally swerved, and the Daily Star chose to dress this up to make it sound like he'd chosen to drive off the bridge.

What a scummy thing to do.

The Star's website describes this new story in this way:

COPS have revealed why they believe tragic indie band Viola Beach's driver did not stop – clarifying reports the crash was deliberately caused.

Now, it's true that the policeman involved did use the word "deliberate", but if you're going to splash this on the front page, you might want to double-check your story. Especially since The Guardian's print edition - reporting on exactly the same press conference - managed to record the more lurid claim - "with some intent" - but still reported the story under a heading "Police blame 'inattention' for accident that killed Viola Beach members". Which is a fairer representation of what seems to have been said.

And does the Daily Star splash the correction over the front page this morning?

It does not.

On the streets with Bieber*

Apparently, Justin Bieber is to sleep rough to "raise awareness" of how badly his career is going. Although the claim started as a story in UKIP house rag the Daily Star, so probably isn't true.

According to the Daily Star, Biebs' manager Scotter Braun has persuaded him to spend the night outside in the California streets, in aid of homeless charities.

"[Scooter] has been trying to come up with a plan to give Justin's career some longevity," a source told the newspaper.

Aside from the toe-curling aspect of a rich person spending a few hours on a pavement knowing they have a soft, warm bed to return to in the morning - a stunt even pulled by Grant Shapps back when he was still sometimes called Michael Green - it's not entirely clear how 'doing some good work for charidee' is going to offset the erosion of Bieber's career. Unless seeing Bieber sleep under cardboard will somehow stop girls reaching puberty.

*

One Direction; two viewpoints

How "journalism" works.

Daily Star, first edition:

It's disgusting! Harry posting pictures of his cock (albeit in pants) to the internet! We're outraged on the public's behalf at Harry's behaviour!

Daily Star, final edition:

It's disgusting! Someone pretending to be Harry posting pictures of his cock (albeit in pants) to the internet! We're outraged on Harry's behalf!

(Side true story: Shortly after I took the second picture in Tesco, I rounded a corner to hear a girl complaining to her mother that there were no One Direction lunchboxes on display. She was looking for a sandwich box.)

Miley Cyrus has apparently done the impossible

The Daily Star makes quite a claim this morning:

Miley Cyrus shocks London's G-A-Y club with revealing outfit and raunchy show

Really, Daily Star? She "shocked" GAY, did she?

First, this is Miley Cyrus. You remember Miley Cyrus? She did the simulated anal sex with Robin Thicke on a televised awards show, and used that as the starting point for the sexualisation of her act.

Second, this is GAY. A place where the acts are seldom clothed, unless you count liquid latex and body paint. Seriously, if the archbishop of Canterbury turned up in stuffed Speedos backed by naked nuns with robo-dildo strap-ons, the audience would head to the bar muttering "well, he IS a man of the cloth so you'd expect something fairly tame, wouldn't you?"

Nobody hearing 'Miley Cyrus playing at GAY' would have turned up expecting a buttoned-up dress and an acoustic performance.

In fact, Cyrus' show is probably only just-about the most outrageous since, ooh, a fortnight back, when Lily Allen turned up as Beyonce-as-performed-by-a-drag-act. Which at least had a bit of thought put into it.

Kylie: Young woman had sex shock

The Daily Star is regurgitating already vomit-flecked stuff from The News Of The World ("The Sun On The Sunday") about Kylie.

It's shocking. Prepare to be shocked:

Kylie Minogue's girl-next-door image shattered by sex revelations in explosive new book

There was a period when Kylie was known as SexKylie, so this is the sort of shock right up there with discovering that cheese, for all its tasty solidity, was once milk.

The Star seems aware that this is a yawning chasm in their story, so try to rationalise why this might be a shock:

The pint-sized pop star, who is well-known for her innocent girl-next-door image, is said to have been naughty between the sheets long before her highly-publicised romance with Michael Hutchence, who is said to have "corrupted" her.

The "revelation" is simply that she had sex with someone, so the Star is hoping that 'woman had sex with someone before the boyfriend she met when she was 20' is some sort of surprise. (Apart from anything, surely this is going to generate another Jason Donovan lawsuit?)

It basically all boils down to a tatty book from a tatty little man, Sean Smith, who has got a tattier little man Paolo Marcolin to "tell-all". (It's a 'two teenagers having sex at a party' story - which, a quick search of Google will reveal, is a thing that has never happened anywhere else, at any point before or after.)

And how much weight should we give to Mr Macrolin's testimony?

"We lay on the floor. It was freezing but I had enough alcohol in me not to notice. I was really enjoying myself because Kylie was so nice," Paolo added.

So Marcolin was too drunk to notice it was freezing, and yet he noticed it was freezing.

Sean Smith - who, let's not rush to judge as some sort of grubby smut peddler, perhaps a man with stained trousers and smelly fingers - appears to have some sort of justification for trying to make money and headlines out of a fairly typical thing for a teenager to have done:

"For someone so careful about her private life, Kylie can be astonishingly indiscreet. It is as if, every so often, she gets the devil in her."

Even for a screaming moral vacuum, this is disingenuous. His own tale suggests that this isn't true - let's just look back at Paolo's quote:

"My hands were wandering a bit. Out of the blue, she said, 'Do you want to go somewhere even more private?' Of course I agreed. It sounded great to me.

"She had no idea where she was going but eventually took me to the opposite side of the house. There were a few people catching taxis, so we walked round the corner to be out of sight — or so I thought."
[...]
However, the pair soon realised that they were getting frisky in full view of the other party guests and headed to a small workshop underneath the house where they allegedly began having sex.

So, given that Kylie - without, at this stage, some sort of judging role on Saturday night TV to worry about - twice moved somewhere further out of public view hardly screams of indiscretion. Sean Smith seems to be saying that simply by having someone else present to have sex with Kylie's leaving herself open to having it discussed.

Perhaps Sean hasn't noticed, but it's Paolo who is being indiscreet. It might be a bit much to claim that Kylie had the devil in her, but she certainly seems to have made room for a bit of a Judas.

The Daily Star has something to say about Lily Allen

POP star Lily Allen says she could not work with Damon Albarn because she found him “too irritating”.

The 28-year-old singer spilled the beans on the pair’s doomed collaboration attempt in 2008.

Damon, 45, had said at the time: “She’s a talented kid but it was just a bad idea.”

Given that that's the entire Daily Star story, is it fair to describe two words as "spilling the beans"?

Also: if you're not expecting 2008-period Damon Albarn to be irritating, you've not really prepared, have you?

Can't catch Kanye

If we're to believe the Daily Star, Kanye West has spent a million dollars on kidnap-proof cars.

That makes no sense. Who would want to kidnap a car?

Oh. Apparently it's to protect the people in the cars. Surely the knowledge that if they kidnapped Kanye or Kim Kardashian, they'd have to spend time with them, is a better defence that any armoured car?

Harry Styles hopes to cast himself as frog in popular fairy tale

Except he doesn't, of course. The story in the Daily Star Sunday is so made-up it should be illustrated with woodcuts:

A source told us: “Harry is so bored of the showbiz set and thinks it’s time to move up in the world.

“Backstage before gigs he was even trawling the internet, asking his bandmates what they thought of each girl.

“He drew up a ‘hit list’ and the only rule was they couldn’t be ­married.

“Needless to say, Pippa Middleton is on his list – at number two – but he’s aware she has a serious boyfriend.

“He also has a thing for Princess Beatrice, even though he said she’s not his ‘typical type of girl’.

“But he’s totally fascinated with Princess Eugenie. He thinks she’s got the full package of class, looks and status.”

Because, for deffo, if I was trying to pull one of the princesses I'd be using the Daily Star Sunday as a way of flagging my intentions. That's what Jane Austen would be writing about if she was alive today.

If this was true, and Harry did wind up with Eugenie, this article is going to make for awkward Christmas Dinners at Sandringham in the future.

And tricky evenings alone, come to that:
- So, Harry, am I lacking the class, the looks, or the status?

It doesn't even make sense - if Harry really was such a heel as to be worried about status, surely he'd be choosing Beatrice anyway, given that she's the closest to a Monarch as he can currently get without having to have a civil partnership?

Viva not forever?

The Daily Star is predicting the closure of Viva Forever, the Spice Girls musical:

SPICE Girls show Viva Forever! may be axed if ticket sales don’t pick up.

Are ticket sales that bad, then?

Performances are reportedly often three-quarters full for the show based on songs by Posh Spice Victoria Beckham’s pals.

Even before you get to that tortuous "Posh Spice Victoria Beckham's pals" that sentence is twisting like a mountain snake after a groundhog. "Often three quarters full" sounds bad, but really feels like an attempt to throw the worst possible light on the size of the houses.

"Often", so not always, or regularly, but just sometimes; and the rest of the time, presumably, the theatre must be more than three-quarters full or else it would have been those figures which would have formed the heart of the claim.

So, that's 'West End Show doesn't always fill auditorium in January', then. Well done, Daily Star.

Glastonbuy 2011: Press round-up

The miserable weather made it hard for press photographers to find much to celebrate on site yesterday, so Gordon Smart in The Sun is reduced to running a blurry photo of Professor Green with a cardboard cup of beer:

The rapper - who is headlining the East Dance Tent tonight - intends to make the most of every minute at the festival.

He does, eh?

"But if it rains, I'm just going to stay in the Winnebago, drink rum, play cards and watch it all on TV."

Ah, yes. The classic festival experience of sitting in a caravan playing canasta.

Still, the Winnebago will at least help with time on site, right?

He said: "I've got on it on Thursday, then off Friday, then on it Saturday and on it again on Sunday."

Oh. So he's making the most of every moment, except Friday. Also, that suggests that although Gordon posted this today, and claimed he'd had the conversation with Green yesterday, he couldn't possibly have done. Is the photo really worth smudging the chronology?

The Mail has a tiresome report from "a middle-aged, middle-class mother". Yes, it runs through every bloody Glasto cliche you can think of:

The final tipping point? My wellington boot has literally been sucked off my foot by sticky mud, leaving me in my socks and up to my ankles in gelatinous brown goo.

Julie Lawrence is the Mail's woman crying "in the Portaloos" (did the Mail's legal team not get the regular missive from Portakabin insisting that their trademark not be used as a generic?).

It turns out she's not even a Glastonbury virgin:

Back then, still in my 20s, during the infamous mud bath of 1997, I laughed and trudged along with the best of them. Forget the mud and yucky toilets — sprirituality and music was what it was really all about, wasn’t it?

But now - why, she thinks she must have been as mad as Melanie Philips to enjoy it at all:

I want to shout: ‘Come on, ladies, what are we doing here in our dotage? This is NOT FUN!’ My back is protesting and every ounce of my being is screaming for a sit-down, a nice cup of tea and slice of fruit cake. What do these other middle-class mums have that I do not? Have I grown old before my time?

What do the other people there have that you don't? How about 'a genuine reason for being there other than filing an article that could have been knocked together in a Costa Coffee on Temple Meads station', Julie.

In the Mail tomorrow: Someone who doesn't really like tennis goes to Wimbledon and whines about how it's full of tennis.

The Express, meanwhile, builds its coverage around the cultural highlight of the day:

WAYNE Rooney and his wife Coleen waded into the mud of Glastonbury yesterday in wellies.

Hats off to the inept Express web operation, by the way, which still isn't convinced the U2 gig will happen:

Last night U2 were due to play a long-awaited headline gig at the event, attended by 170,000 revellers.

But, obviously, we won't find out if that happened until the Sunday Express goes to print.

In another part of the Richard Desmond empire - the only-slightly-porny part - the Daily Star is also fixated on Wayne and Colleen, but puts its sister title to shame by doing some Actual Journalism about their arrival:

A guard said: “Wayne seemed in good spirits even though he and Coleen had already got soaked.”

See? It's not a real story unless you talk to an eyewitness.

The Mirror seems to be struggling to make sense of it all:

IT seems Chipmunk’s dietary requirements at Glastonbury were no problem at all. After bringing the house down opening The Other Stage, he tweeted: “GLASTO was HAAAAM!!!!”

And cheese, I hope.

Sarah Tetteh got a byline for that.

The Telegraph had a secret weapon for the U2 set. Their man, Neil McCormick, knows Bono. Yes, he seldom mentions it, so it might be a bit of a surprise to discover that. But this once, he was prepared to use his connections:

Backstage insight from Neil McCormick:

Twitter: Nice to watch Bono signalling & encouraging band from behind the stage. They've got a sneaky keyboard player round back too.

Twitter: Road crew, gtr techs all on their toes for this one, problem solving, shouting at one another. Looks seamless out front. #U2 #glasto

It's not entirely clear how Neil could have been delivering "backstage insight" while also able to explain how it looked from the front.

I'll return to the Telegraph's coverage in a separate post, by the way.

The Guardian wryly reports a flop in the fields:

Mobile phone company, and Glastonbury music partner, Orange, had a cunning ruse to get punters interested in its wares. It sent a 6ft 8in "appy man" to Glastonbury to roam around the site. Festival-goers were challenged to find this man, with the prize potentially being tickets to the side of the Pyramid stage. Clues as to appy man's location were to be posted "on the official Glasto App and via Twitter", Orange wrote.

Alas, the punters the Guardian spoke to were unaware of appy man's existence, let alone whereabouts. This reporter did find appy man, mostly because his PR man was loudly alerting passersby to his presence.

A quick look at the @appy_man twitter feed revealed 500 people had signed up for clues as to his location – or 0.25% of expected Glastonbury attendees.

The idea that people have better things to do at Glastonbury is heartwarming.

Although the presence of a mobile phone company as "music partner" really does look odd given all those claims about Glastonbury isn't sponsored...

Back For Good Enough: Robbie Williams moves back in with Dad

I think it's fair to say that the reunionised Take That had reached a bit of a natural end, with the first bubbling of creativity from getting back together having long since flattened out, so the inevitable lumbering back in of Robbie Williams has come too late to spoil anything too much. 'Williams rejoins Cameron-endorsing Marks And Spencer models' is less of a shame than the 'Williams stamps over the fizzle' if he'd been back in in 2005 or 2006.

Still, the camera-hogging, gurning, 'look! I'm a character' of Robbie towards the end of the BBC News video is a hint of the mismatch between the two sides now. It's like the two little pigs running into the brick house and behaving like they were the expert housebuilders all along.

Still, nobody's really that bothered about whether it's a good idea or not. For the Mirror, it's a chance to feel vindicated:

The move confirms the Mirror’s exclusive story in a March 2009 ­interview with Robbie that the band were getting back together.

Daily Mirror, everyone's been saying 'sooner or later, Williams will turn up with a stupid grin on his face' since Take That first got back as one. I'm not sure that 'just sixteen months after we said it was happening, it happened' is quite the claim you think it is.

obbie said last night: “I get ­embarrassingly excited when the five of us are in a room. It feels like coming home.”

Yes, it's exactly like coming home. But there's no shame in that, Robbie - a surprising number of men in their thirties move back in with their parents after their careers go south.

The Mirror offers a verdict on the hooking-up, with their in-house Take That fan Beth Neil taking on the paper's music critic Gavin Martin. (Gavin Martin's the Mirror's music critic now? Really?)

Beth goes first:

I just hope Robbie doesn’t try to steal the limelight and overshadow the other four, who have grafted non-stop to become the nation’s biggest man band.

Oh, come on, Beth - what are the chances of that?

Still, I'm sure Gavin's got some sort of musical insight to share:

[E]xpect plenty of sold-out gigs, making it an astute move commercially for all five.

Is it, though, Gavin? Take That as foursome could sell out gigs at the largest venues in the country, so all they're really doing is splitting the take five ways instead of four. That looks like a crappy move, surely?

Over at The Sun, Gordon Smart is delighted:

[T]hank the lord for some good news after such a bleak few weeks of murder and misery dominating the headlines.

Oh, yes. I've totally forgotten we've got a bumbling Tory at the Treasury and the Prime Minister believes some people are just innately evil with the news that a band have brought back their worst member.

This reunion is HUGE. It doesn't get any bigger.

Scientists are currently attempting to calculate if this reunion that doesn't come any bigger is larger or smaller than the bigness of a Masterchef final.

Reunions don't come any bigger? Wouldn't Paul and Ringo getting out the mop-top wigs one last time trump it?

Hang about, though, Gordon's about to blow:

The tour will break records on pre-sales, as will the album. Then there'll be the sponsorship, the TV rights, a DVD, merchandising, royalties and publishing.

To say nothing of the acres and acres and acres of coverage churned out by the tabloids, eh, Gordo?

If you thought the boys were rich now, next Christmas is going to see them served up with a whole new level of wealth.

Is it just me, or is a reunion where the reaction is 'this is going to make a lot of money' rather than 'we're going to hear some great music' one which, fundamentally, is more in the interests of record labels and promoters than fans?

The only problem I can see is Robbie's crippling stage fright and his hatred of being on the road.

You don't think that the fifteen years of animosity and his inability to work as part of a team might be a bigger problem?

The Mail calls the reWilliamsing 'Take Two', although surely it's Take Four - the band, band without Williams, band reunited without Williams, Band reunited with Williams? Despite assigning two writers to the story, though, the Mail doesn't show very much interest in the band coming back together - mainly because there's no picture of a woman in a bikini they can run alongside it.

Kim Dawson provides 'analysis' for the Daily Star. She's already started the countdown clock. The countdown to the end:

Another split will only break the hearts of women round the country still reeling from Mark’s infidelity.

Nobody seems to have told Dawson that (a) the reunion is only a fixed-time deal so there will be a natural end and (b) there are precisely no women - apart maybe from Owen's wife - who are reeling from his infidelity. And even if there were: eh? What the hell does that mean?

The Daily Express more or less ignores the story entirely, although it does take care to take the sting out of the response to its short cut-and-paste brief:

Have your say is unavailable for this story

God, yes, you wouldn't want anyone saying anything nasty about Williams and Barlow hugging, would you?

The Telegraph inadvertently gets to the problem of the story. To justify the excitement, there's a desperate desire to present this as an unlikely surprise:

Bandmate Owen said: "Getting the five of us to be in a room together, although always a dream, never actually seemed like becoming a reality.

"Now the reality of the five of us making a record together feels like a dream. It's been an absolute delight spending time with Rob again. But I'm still a better footballer," he joked.

... but the entire world has just been waiting for this moment, and for the last two or three years it's been an inevitable 'when' rather than an 'if':

Despite Williams ridiculing Barlow during his early solo shows, the pair began to bury the hatchet in recent years and their friendship was renewed.

Williams said last year: "You carry around all this resentment and bitterness for such a long time."

[...]

Williams had already revealed he was working with Barlow. Last month he announced the pair were to release a duet Shame which will feature on his greatest hits collection.

Still, the Telegraph does focus in on some people who won't be celebrating:

The new album will be released on Take That's label Polydor, rather than Williams's company, EMI.

Ah, the cost of trying to drag their nosediving big name out the dumper is having to let Polydor get the most cake.

The Times - well, who knows or cares what The Times says these days?

Really, though, at times like this you need to turn to an expert. What have you got for us, Popjustice?

SOMEONE GET LULU ON THE PHONE.

Now, that would be a reunion which didn't come any bigger.

Mel C: You've made this pledge before

First time round, when Mel C pledged 'No Spice Girls reunion', we put our faith in her.

I'm not sure I'm buying her reassurances this time:

She tells Britain's Daily Star newspaper, "There's no chance of that happening. Don't believe what you've read elsewhere, because I'm telling Daily Star readers we have no plans to tour again.

"We all have our own projects going on and have families too so we couldn't find the time even if we wanted to."

I understand that "believe what you're reading in the Daily Star" is the exact, legal opposite of swearing to tell the truth on the Bible.

Peaches Geldof wins libel case

The BBC is reporting victory for Peaches Geldof in a libel case against the Daily Star:

Peaches Geldof, daughter of Bob Geldof, has accepted substantial, undisclosed libel damages over a newspaper claim that she had worked as a prostitute.

The claims by the paper were a terrible slur on Peaches' image. Imagine implying she's ever worked.

Seriously, though, there is more to this story than just the headline - whatever you think of Peaches (or sex workers, come to that), to make that sort of claim about a person without any proof is an awful way for any newspaper, even The Star, to behave. A retraction and apology - at the very least - were required; and with more prominence than the paper managed.

They'd splashed the made-up story on page one; they tucked the correction away inside on page two.

What's really interesting, though, is that a complaint from Geldof's people to the Press Complaints Commission about the handling of the correction decided there was no problem with this behaviour. Understandably, Geldof's team didn't accept this - hence the legal action today.

This isn't, then, so much a story about a nasty paper making an ugly allegation, as a further indication that the Press Complaints Commission is broken beyond repair. When the PCC is being dismantled and its remit handed to Ofcom, Peaches Geldof will have played her part in helping to make that happen. And the papers will only have themselves to blame.

Duffy: It depends what you mean by experimental

How much credence should we give to reports in the Daily Star that Duffy is going to swap Springfield-lite for Carey-cloning?.

None, obviously, because it was in the Daily Star; it's like pondering how far one should take Nostradamus to heart when planning for the summer. Even by the Star's own rotten standards, though, this one makes no sense:

A source tells the publication, "Duffy and the team around her are very aware at how successful she has been by channelling the '60s vibe, but they are already starting to think about album number two.

"She is keen to explore a Mariah (Carey) or Christina Aguilera style of album. On the next record Duffy can afford to be a bit more experimental now that she is assured her position as a singing force to be reckoned with."

Ye-e-s. "We've got this goose laying golden eggs - shall we have a poke about with it and see if we can get it to lay ordinary eggs as well?"

Experimenting with producing by-the-yard, mainstream-no-skirt pop? How is that experimenting? It's like going in to an Indian restaurant to have something different and ordering the chicken and chips, surely?

Bowie: I really really wanna Ziggy-Zig, ah

There is some hope in the original story is sourced to the Daily Star, and thus probably not entirely true, but even so: worrying that David Bowie is apparently thinking of bringing back Ziggy Stardust for Coachella.

Actually, how would he do that anyway? Would he try and squeeze back into his 1970s jumpsuit, or would he do an aged-in-real-time Ziggy? The first would be embarrassing; the second, if done correctly, would be unwatchable. Ziggy in 2009 would surely be occasionally popping up in Bizarre to complain about the way his Christmas Record got ignored by Radio One, and perhaps facing the ignominy of having Phil Jupitus fail to spot him in a Buzzcocks line-up ("... is it number two, Toomuch Angeldust?...")

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: You don't really care for music, do you?

I don't want to come across as too precious about this, but you know Hallelujah? Well, could someone point out to the Daily Star that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, "Alex's song". She's only borrowed it, and she isn't looking after it very well.

Still, with Buckley and Burke heading for the top ten with the same song, it's time for Popfressor Gennaro Castaldo of HMV to explain what's going on with it:

HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo said: “It’s now just behind Leona Lewis, at No 3, and we suddenly have the very real prospect of two different covers of the same song occupying the No 1 and No 2 slots in the Official UK charts.

“I don’t think this has ever happened in UK chart history, – and certainly not for Christmas.”

That "certainly not for Christmas" is only lacking a "this century" to really make the claim weak. I wonder if, as Gennaro was speaking, he had a grainy memory of the late 1950s and early 1960s when 'two versions of the same song' wasn't unusual in the UK charts and decided to hedge his bets a little?

I use the Daily Star

There had been quite a bit of excitement at the idea that John Lydon had been due to guest-edit the Daily Star today (a role which would be less about deciding between credit-cruch and environment and choosing which photo of Sylvia from Big Brother should be used, of course). Turns out, though, that his guest-editing duties extend only to the Playlist page.

And he's not edited so much as just written some things about what a visionary he was.

Like this bit:

I ALWAYS wanted the music business institution to fall apart – and now it is. Gloriously.

My advice to young musicians is: You can do it for yourself, you really can.

The Sex Pistols, of course, were signed to record labels and never did it themselves; Public Image Limited did their duty for Warners, Elektra and Virgin. Since when did Lydon press up his own seven inch singles and flog them round the streets?

Despite the shaping of his career break by Malcolm McClaren, Lydon warms to his theme of being your own man:

During the whole of my career I’ve never orchestrated a record with a tour and a publicity campaign. It’s never happened and yet I’m here today doing this page.

Part of the reason why the Pistols never had a record label led campaign was because they were being marketed to, not by labels. Even so, you have to wonder what that big signing outside Buckingham Palace was, and the Jubilee boat trip up the Thames if the idea wasn't to promote records.

More amusingly is the way that Lydon positions 'writing some stuff for the Daily Star' as if it is one of those honours, like a laureateship or an ITV 'An Audience With' programmes which are granted to our culture's elder statesfolk, rather than, erm, part of a promotional blitz to try and push a Sex Pistols DVD.

Why would you need to make things up?

Given that the Osbourne's performance on this year's Brit awards was one of the most cheek-squishingly awful TV hosting exercises since Harold Wilson tried his hand at chartshows, it's incredible that the Daily Star felt the need to publish made-up stories about it. Their inventiveness has landed them in libel courts, and writing cheques out to Ozzy. They're giving the money to charity.

Mind you:

[Osbourne's solicitor, John] Kelly told the court the allegations were serious given that Osbourne had just completed a concert tour and he had "suffered considerable embarrassment and distress as a result of it".

Perhaps it was embarrassing, but given the level of embarrassment the programme itself generated ("PAUL MCCARTNEY... oh, no yet") it's hard to see how it could have been made any more distressing.

It's a shame about Ray

DigitalSpy reheats a story from this morning's Daily Star which claims some poor kid somewhere is going to be named after a Hoosiers song.

Before you call social services, let's just look at the facts:

Lead singer Irwin Sparkes also received an offer to be godfather to the autograph-hunter's twins while holidaying in Mallorca, according to the Daily Star.

A source said: "Irwin was approached by a guy in Mallorca who asked for his autograph, they chatted for a bit then went their separate ways.

"An hour later he came back with his pregnant girlfriend. He asked Irwin to be godfather to his unborn twins and promised they'd name one Ray if they had a boy."

So, for a start, this is from a "source" - what possible grounds could there be for not revealing who fed this story to the papers? Is it such a terrible secret that the Star had to hear it at midnight in an underground car park? Did Dawn Neesom herself spot a plant pot on a balcony in town, alerting her to a potential leak of such magnitude?

But let's assume that this "source" exists and that the story is genuine: it hangs on the supposition that there was someone in Mallorca who recognised Irwin Sparkes, and was then so thrilled to get an autograph that - for some reason - an hour later he offered him the naming rights to one of his kids. And godfathership. And yet he said he'd name the kid Ray after one of the songs, and not Irwin, after Irwin?

We're not saying it didn't happen. But we're surprised that even the Daily Star felt that it was worth sharing. Filling the pages must be challenging now they're trying hard not to lie about the McCanns anymore.

Pete Wentz: The Ross-from-Friends of Emo

Not that he wants everyone to look at him, and how crazy he is or anything, but Pete Wentz is plotting to take a monkey to the Kerrang awards:

A report in the Daily Star claims that the bassist will bring a chimp named Kate along to the rock ceremony.

Kate will allegedly be escorted by her own security guard and was apparently in charge of the direction for the music video to the band's single 'Thnks Fr Th Mmrs'.

The Daily Star has, of course, confused the advert Thnks Fr Th Mmrs with a pop video - although so did Fall Out Boy, of course - but doesn't explain how "Kate" would get to the Kerrang Awards without having to go through six months' quarantine.