Avril Lavigne is her generation's Paul McCartney

You know there are too many conspiracy theories when people are reduced to claiming that Avril Lavigne died and was replaced by an imposter in 2003:

A Brazilian blog post goes into an extreme amount of detail, looking at differences between 'old' Avril and 'new' Avril including height ("Avril was 1.58m in 2002 and now it's 1.55m - it's impossible!"), voice ("the double is soprano"), and even her nose and freckles.

"They are different physically, although they are almost identical," the conspiracy theorist wrote. "After all, they are lookalikes."

And apparently Avril changing autographs and fashion style is another piece of 'proof' that the Avril today is not the same as the one from more than 13 years ago.

You could just about see why The Beatles might have gone to the trouble of bringing in a ringer for Paul McCartney when he died at the age of 28, although nobody has ever explained why they'd have gone to all that subterfuge and then give the game away by effectively releasing an album sleeve with the words "THAT'S NOT THE REAL PAUL WE HAVE DONE A TRICK" all over it.

But had Avril needed to be replaced in 2003? Wouldn't you just have gone with someone else who could be a bit like Pink?

The passing of the days is captured in art

From the equally soon-to-be-gone Our Valued Customers:

Bookmarks: After Prince

The Open University's OpenLearn Live service has pulled together a collection of some of the more thoughtful responses to the sudden death of Prince.

Also worth your time: New York Mag on how Prince helped editors when he changed his name to the symbol:

Prince did the only thing you could do in that situation: He had a custom-designed font distributed to news outlets on a floppy disk.

The Prince font substituted his symbol for what would otherwise be a capital P. In addition, the font was also made available for download on CompuServe. It was accompanied by a stern letter featuring both usage and installation instructions.

You may have heard a lot of the tribute radio programmes that were broadcast on Friday night. But if you haven't caught Radio 4's The World Tonight, it's worth it for the interview with sound engineer Susan Rogers. You can listen to that here.

On the other hand... not everyone covered themselves in glory.

The Daily Mirror should be ashamed of its "Prince found dead in party mansion" headline on Thursday night online - nothing factually incorrect, but the inference was clear and unwelcome. Not as bad as Fox News, though, which spoke loudly about how the mansion was being treated "as a crime scene". The story, surely, was big enough to not need extra nudges and winks.

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.

Skiibii: The Reggie Perrin of pop

Social media deciding to inflate 'someone being a bit queasy' into 'you are with the angles now XXXRIP' isn't anything new, but I think the case of Skiibii is something of a first.

Skiibii had a blackout, and went to hospital for a check-up. The hospital thought he was fine; the internet decided he was dead.

So far, not so unusual. But part of the reason why the web was already rummaging through Skiibii's cupboards muttering "dead men don't need season tickets" was that his manager had confirmed the death.

It looks like there was an attempt to turn the death-that-wasn't into a marketing triumph. Instead, it ended badly. PR Week reports that Skiibii is trying to clear up the mess:

Speaking to Cool FM alongside Skiibii, fellow artist KCee said he blamed their manager Soso Soberekon for allowing the rumours to escalate. "My so-called manager confirmed it, I put the blame on him," said KCee, going on to say: "We are going to treat him according to his mistake, and right now as I speak he is fired."

Soberekon this morning released a statement via his Instagram page offering an "unreserved apology to everyone". He said: "With my wealth of experience in the entertainment business, I would like to state that events leading to the above misinformation through my channel was due to a breakdown in communication."

Sacking might seem a little harsh, but if you're not sure if you're representing a person or a corpse, maybe management isn't really for you.

The Times used to be a serious newspaper

The horrible death of a child in an accident can be difficult. What's the correct way to react? How do treat the parents.

Here's a clue: you don't treat the parents the way The Times has just treated Nick Cave following the death of his son.

The Times runs a second load of baseless, pointless, insinuating shit about Nick Cave. Well done, you fucking creeps pic.twitter.com/o8THd3RDo1

— Alexis Petridis (@alexispetridis) July 17, 2015

Family at GWAR

Some unpleasant business over at GWAR, where the surviving band members are being sued by Dave Brockie's family:

"Immediately after Dave Brockie's death, the remaining active members of GWAR, led by [drummer] Brad Roberts [a.k.a. Jizmak Da Gusha], set out on a course of action to capitalize on the death of Dave Brockie.

"Mr. Roberts and-his cohorts took certain steps to attempt to wrongfully secure Dave Brockie's property and legacy — items that rightfully belonged to his Estate."

The family claim that Brad Roberts tried to seize control of the estate; they suggest that much of Brockie's art and property has been kept by the band. Oh, and Brockie's ashes:

"To date, Mr. Roberts and Slave Pit, Inc. have retained the vast majority of Dave Brockie's remains and failed to return the ashes of Dave Brockie to his grieving father.

There's a further claim of an unauthorised memorial fund.

No official response yet, apparently.

Allman now co-defendant with film company he's suing

There's a new, grim twist to the ill-fated Greg Allman movie. You'll recall that cameraperson Sarah Jones was killed in an accident during filming by a railway line, leading Allman to launch a lawsuit to take back the rights to his life story.

Now, Sarah Jones' parents are launching a scattergun lawsuit which includes Allman amongst those being sued. (Somewhat oddly, they're also suing the railroad, while admitting that the railroad never gave permission for any filming to take place. The descendants of Robert Louis Stevenson should expect a writ soon, on that basis.)

In case you missed it...

Here's all of yesterday's famous-ish musicians writing about the deaths of more famous musicians in the Guardian boiled down:

Chas Spod on Superbly Fabulous:
I heard about Superbly's death on the news, although I was watching the news someplace incredible, like I was about to get on a flight to Marbella or possibly holed up in a hotel in Slough. I couldn't believe they'd died. I'd always thought that we'd have wound up working together, probably to the point where the pupil would have become the master. Their music is still available to listen to and hasn't changed since they died, really.

Michael Jackson: the never-ending battle for his money goes on

The latest person to pitch up to the Jackson estate, writ in hand, is Quincy 'you would have hoped that he was above this sort of thing' Jones, who reckons he's being diddled out of his due:

He says the singer's estate and Sony Music Entertainment improperly re-edited songs to deprive him of royalties and production fees.

Mr Jones says they also broke an agreement giving him the right to remix master recordings for albums released after Jackson's death in 2009.

The Jackson estate are trying to wave it away:

"To the best of its knowledge, Mr Jones has been appropriately compensated over approximately 35 years for his work with Michael," a statement said.

Interesting gambit. "He's been earning money for the work he actually did over three and a half decades; now it's time for us to earn money from something we weren't even involved in for the next four", in short.

Jones is looking for six million quid, or thereabouts. No lawyers at all could be reached for comment, as they were all out shopping for speedboats and gold-encrusted everythings.

Michael Jackson: Doing very nicely, thank you

Not only is the dead Michael Jackson making more money than any other dead celebrity, but he's making more cash than any living pop star, too, according to Forbes.

You know that somewhere, right now, a manager is pulling an anguished face and saying to a fading singer "well, if you really wanted to maximise your earnings potential..."

Michael Jackson: AEG cleared

The procession following the death of Michael Jackson continues to march grimly forward, yesterday reaching a key point where a jury decided that AEG weren't responsible for killing him by hiring Conrad Murray.

The New York Times reports:

A California jury decided on Wednesday that Michael Jackson’s final concert promoter, A.E.G. Live, was not responsible for the pop star’s death.

After a five-month trial filled with gruesome details of Jackson’s last days, the case came down to basic questions of contractual relationships and the professional competence of Dr. Conrad Murray, the cardiologist who gave Jackson a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol four years ago.

After deliberating for about 13 hours over four days, the jury of six men and six women agreed with lawyers for Jackson’s 83-year-old mother, Katherine, that A.E.G. Live had hired Dr. Murray. But they rejected arguments that the doctor was unfit to care for Jackson as he prepared for a series of comeback concerts.

It could have cost AEG USD1.5billion if they'd been found to be culpable. (That's roughly the annual GDP of Belize, if you'd like a meaningless but impressive comparison.)

Refreshingly, the jury decided to treat Michael Jackson as a grown-up who made his own poor decisions.

We're now in a curious place, where Murray is serving a sentence for the involuntary manslaughter of Jackson, but has been found fit to practice. The jury think they can make sense of that, though:

"We felt he was competent," [jury foreman Gregg] Barden said. "That doesn’t mean we felt he was ethical. If ethical was in the question, it might have been a different outcome. In the end, he was very unethical. He did something he shouldn’t have done. "

It's not entirely clear if someone who is unethical is fit to practice, but the jury seemed to think that wasokay.

Barden shakes his head sadly, though:

"There are really no winners in this ... Somebody had to die for us to be here.... It was really a tragic situation."

No winners? As the lawyers pack up and move on to Conrad Murray's appeal hearing, they might disagree, were they not struggling with suitcases packed with money.

Thatcher: Suddenly the Ding Dong row makes sense

Now, finally, the reason for the Ding Dong fuss has become clear, thanks to this BBC News report:

DJ Paul Gambaccini said Sunday's show had become "part of the BBC history of censorship".

In some religions of Northern Europe, the Gambaccini is a mythical creature whose appearance sharing an opinion on the deceased represents the start of that person's journey into the afterlife.

The argument over a song has obviously been crafted to tempt the wise counsel of the Gambaccini from the spirit world.

In related news, it seems that Rob Wilson, Tory MP for Reading East, doesn't know very much about recent history:

However, the Conservative MP for Reading East, Rob Wilson, said the track should be played in its entirety.

He said: "I think that Margaret Thatcher would be horrified having helped free millions of people in eastern Europe and been the symbol of freedom around the world that she could in any way have censorship in her own country."

That's right, Rob. The woman who spent our cash so lavishly trying to stop publication of Spycatcher, and who created the farce where Irish Republican statements had to be rendered like some form of badly-dubbed foreign movie would be horrified at that. Jesus, the woman even tried to redact British Airways plane liveries.

Thatcher: A rival campaign, as Cooper fluffs it

Whoever would have thought the legacy of Thatcher would turn out not to be a debate over the merits of Keynes against Alan Walters, but a silly spat over a song from The Wizard Of Oz.

It's telling that the big fans of Thatcher have, through their orchestrated attacks on the BBC, managed to turn what might have been a sombre week of reflection into a giggling morass of point and counterpoint over the Munchkin's signature tune.

It then gets funnier, because they cry "but you keep talking about it", thereby churning the story on and on. What would have been a Facebook campaign to control the commanding heights of the lower 20s of the chart has instead become the dominant theme of Thatcher coverage.

Clearly, now, more people are buying the record to make Charles Moore go even more vermillion in the face than to dance on Maggie's grave. Every column inch in the Mail turns what had been a bad taste kick of a corpse into a much more cheerful tweak of the establishment's nose.

But hey: why don't the Thatcher fans try and counter this protest by showing how much she was loved by a portion of the population?

Ooh, Louise Mensch. I understand you've got an idea?

HASHTAG OF THE WEEK for whoever came up with #GranthamStyle - to buy #ImInLoveWithMargaretThatcher here - itunes.apple.com/gb/album/im-in…

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) April 12, 2013

Uh... I was thinking more of that Thatcher single where she read the Gettysburg Address, or maybe Telstar, which was one of her favourites. But, er, yes, if you want to endorse The NotSensibles, a group who were self-identifying as being not sensible, clearly taking the very piss out of the idea of anyone being in love with Margaret Thatcher, go for it.

I'm expecting Nadine Dorries to be pushing Shipbuilding in the belief that all that talk about reopening the shipyards is an endorsement of Thatcher's industrial policies.

Meanwhile, after days of speculation over whether the BBC will or won't play Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead on Sunday, Radio One's uncomfortable-in-a-suit controller Ben Cooper has managed to concoct the most wonderful fudge by proclaiming that they'll play five seconds and talk about the song.

He was on BBC News a short while ago, trying to suggest that what might appear to be fudge is something else entirely - maybe butterscotch, or cinder toffee.

At one point he said something which will only prolong the agonies - that it was inappropriate to play an attack on a person "who hasn't yet been buried".

Which means that a week on Sunday, once the former Prime Minister is in the ground, he might have to drag through the decision again. Does the change in status from above to below the horizon suddenly make a difference?

There's no indication why five seconds is any worse or better than the full fifty-six seconds. Either the song is offensive - in which case, don't play it; or it isn't, in which case play it in full.

Cooper suggests when Rage Against The Machine was number one, they edited that record and this is the same thing. Except it isn't, is it? There's a difference between removing a "fuck" from a record going out on the radio, and removing fifty one seconds of a track not because of the content of the song but because of the imputed motivations of the people buying it.

Cooper wasn't going to please everyone; instead, he's created an illogical mess.

Thatcher: Charles Moore has questions

You'd think that, after his time spent as musical egg Ludwig on children's television, Charles Moore would understand the charts a bit better than he appeared to on last night's Question Time.

Actually, it was something of a surprise to see Moore on Question Time at all, given the fuss he made about not believing he should pay for a TV licence.

The convicted criminal Moore was appearing on a current affairs programme which, rapidly, had changed its location to Thatcher's Finchley and reformatted itself as a Thatcher special; on a channel which on Monday had cleared what felt like seventeen hours of prime time for a soft obituary which nobody watched, and is planning lavish coverage of her funeral. Naturally, then, Moore saw nothing but hate coming from the BBC.

As an example, he referred to the Ding Dong erm, ding dong, which - shortly after saying that vile people were being "bigged up every day" (really) he described this way:

I heard today a ludicrous thing on the PM programme. They're trying to get... basically the BBC is trying to get this Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead um, up to the top of the charts...

Hang about. The BBC are trying to do this? How, exactly?

... by going on and on and on about whether it should be banned and all this nonesense.

He then went into a strange sidebar on how Thatcher is Dorothy.

So, in Moore's view, merely having a debate about if the song should or shouldn't be played if it makes the Top 40 is "trying to get this up to the top of the charts."

On which basis, this will make him furious:

If only Charles Moore knew people at the Telegraph, he could remonstrate with them for trying to get Ding Dong to the top of the charts by going on and on and on about whether it should be banned.

Lil Wayne lil' better than TMZ claimed

Last night, TMZ was writing Lil Wayne off, finger hovering above the button to post the prepared obituary:

Wayne's mother is currently on a plane flying to Los Angeles -- and we're told all major decisions about Wayne's health (including the decision to discontinue life support) will not be made until she arrives.

What TMZ have quietly, and shamelessly, dropped from their story is their claim that Wayne had received the last rites. Because it simply wasn't true.

You'd think TMZ, of all people, would know that you can't do something like that without people noticing - they might have taken down the fact-that-wasn't, but all the gossip sites that leach off them had already copied the story and written 'TMZ say Wayne getting last rites' into the permanent record. And a gazillion tweets also caught the error:

BREAKING: TMZ reports that rapper Lil Wayne is in critical condition and has been read his last rites. wp.me/p2OIU3-7bj

— FOX17 (@FOX17) March 16, 2013

The reaction to TMZ's early dispatch on Lil'Wayne's final dispatch hasn't been warm, it's fair to say. The Huffington Post captured TI's response:

That shit surely got his mama hurtin,his kids hurtin,& he got true to da game patnas like me & Othas who ready to RIDE bout all da fuck shit

Which, funnily enough, is exactly the same thing Leveson said in his report in the section on the Express' coverage of The McCanns.

To be fair to TMZ, their crack team has realised that something is odd about the whole story:

Wayne is sleeping right now ... which is odd, because he just tweeted saying he's OK and thanking people for the prayers and love.

Yes, the attempt to try and pretend it hadn't killed him off is being built around an attempt to make something out of the idea that someone might be tweeting from his account.

You know what, TMZ - the really astonishing thing about Lil Wayne's official account saying he's OK isn't that it contradicts what you heard about him sleeping, but more that it contradicts the thing you published about him having the last rites.

Sure, everyone makes mistakes and - in a bid to outrun the hearses, you're going to be liable to make mistakes of this nature. But surely - as self-appointed guardians of showbiz behaviour - an admission and an apology is what's called for, not a silent deletion and a hope nobody noticed?

Bonus bogus: TMZ collect a bunch of reactions to Wayne's hospitalization, not one of which mentions last rites, nor the site's part in the exaggeration of his death.

Blanco death: CCTV suggests he was dropped from the balcony

You remember how Pete Doherty told the NME that the police had CCTV evidence which showed Mark Blanco fell "unassisted" from the balcony the night he died?

Newsnight have had forensic experts review the CCTV footage, and their opinion is that someone dropped Mark Blanco over the balcony:

Grant Fredericks, a leading US video forensics analyst who trains FBI agents, says the images of Blanco coming off the balcony are "very consistent with a person being carried and literally dropped over the edge of the balcony".

John Kennedy, who has given video forensics testimony in scores of cases in the UK and overseas, says of Mr Blanco's fall: "There's no defensive movement whatsoever. It's literally a drop from outside the rail.

"The only explanation I can think of is that somebody might have dropped him off the balcony. He doesn't climb over the railing himself. He doesn't jump. He just suddenly appears outside the railing and falls."

The suggestion of no defensive injuries - consistent with unconsciousness - is in line with a bio-mechanics investigation and a neurobiologist's report, both commissioned by Sheila Blanco, Mark Blanco's mother.

We're no closer knowing what really happened, of course.

Pete Doherty's blog still has this claim on it:

WHEN HE [Blanco] LEFT THE FLAT HE Was alone and when he fell or jumped he was alone. THAT is what happened. he either fell or was making an extreme point about the nature of life imitating art.

It doesn't seem to be a story that will simply go away.

I collect, I reject: Elvis' crypt

What do you get the Elvis fan who has everything? Here's perhaps the ultimate piece of memorabilia - assuming you'd draw the line at getting a spade and sneaking past security at Graceland: Elvis' crypt is up for sale:

This lot includes: permanent ownership of the crypt where Elvis was once entombed; opening and closing of the vault and crypt for burial; memorialization inscription; and use of a small chapel for a committal service. Transportation and funeral home charges are not included.

It wasn't just Elvis - his mother Gladys also was there for a while, while permission for burial at Graceland was being processed. But it's not been used since:

This original crypt has remained empty with a statue of Elvis commemorating his time there and as a visiting place for those coming to remember The King.

"Commerating his time there" - I suppose, to be fair, he did spend longer in the crypt than he ever did in the UK, although he didn't really do very much while he was there.

Starting bids are sought at one hundred thousand dollars. That sort of money would buy you a three bedroom house elsewhere in Memphis.

Freddie Mercury returns to the stage

Because we can't leave the dead alone anymore, of course Freddie Mercury is going to be dragged on stage for the 10th anniversary of We Will Rock You.

Speaking to the BBC, [Brian] May said the anniversary performance of the popular West End show, on May 14 at the Dominion Theatre, will be celebrated with an "an optical illusion of sorts" that will leave the audience saying "'did we actually see Freddie?'"

No, I don't think they will. If Freddie Mercury really was on the stage, I don't think anyone would be in any doubt, would they?

And, seriously, who'd go to all the trouble of reanimating a corpse unless people were going to notice?

May is quite clear what this won't be:

He added that the effect would be similar to the one created for the late rapper Tupac, who 'appeared' onstage at last month's Coachella Festival in California as a hologram. May explained: "It's a little unfortunate they did that thing with Tupac as we've been trying to make Freddie appear on the stage for quite a while."

May went on to say that they would not, however, be using the same technique to bring back Mercury, who passed away in 1991, saying the hologram technology "is something we've looked at ourselves but I think probably for a show that runs eight shows a week it's not really quite practical."

In other words it's too expensive, then.

Not clear exactly what the "optical illusion" will be, then: perhaps it'll be a drawing that's a duck when you look at it one way, but then is a still from Crazy Little Thing Called Love when you look at it another? Or maybe the programme will have a little flicker book of Mercury in the corner, and the audience will be told to thumb through their pages in tune to Radio GaGa?

Blanco family, CPS unimpressed by Doherty NME interview

In the NME last week, Pete Doherty made some large claims about the night that Mark Blanco died.

It was a bit odd that the paper didn't attempt to push him a bit - particularly, on the idea that the Met Police has a video which shows Blanco falling to his death which clears him.

It was even more surprising that, having gifted a large chunk of space for Pete to put his case, the NME didn't bother to contact either the Met or the Blanco family to put a counterpoint. You know, in the interests of not looking so desperate for a Doherty exclusive that they'd let him say anything - however incredible - with barely a mutter.

The second part, in this week's paper, doesn't get much better. Doherty sounds off on the various qualities of London against Parisian heroin while "smoking something". When he tells Jamie Fullerton that in Paris, when you score

"it's like China White"

the response is a weak

It's a better class of heroin in Paris?

as if this was a bit with Alex James banging on about cheese.

Once the interview is over, in the epilogue, Fullerton suggests that Doherty's ongoing drug use is "disappointing", which is an odd choice of word for a man who has been brain-twanging all the way through his talk with the paper. Rather an understatement.

Meanwhile, Jamie Doward for The Guardian has been doing the research the NME chose not to, following up Doherty's tale of the night Mark Blanco died.

First, there's a perspective from Blanco's mother:

Blanco's friends and family have attacked the claims as a desperate attempt to rewrite the past. "Mark was a pacifist who would never raise a hand to anyone," said Sheila Blanco, Mark's mother. "Pathetic, tawdry PR stunts such as these strengthen even further my resolve: to secure justice for my son and to expose anyone who has obstructed the protracted investigation into his tragic death."

And then a quick call to the Met about the video which puts Pete into the clear:

The Met has referred questions about Doherty's claims of video footage to the CPS. Last year the CPS said in a statement that "CCTV footage did show several individuals later leaving the same building that Mr Blanco had fallen from and passing his body, but this evidence does not shed any light on how Mr Blanco fell or who, if anyone, may have been responsible".

So, no film, then. Quite an important point for the NME to not mention, surely?