Gordon in the morning: Back to reporting Amy Winehouse's movements in intricate detail

How can you make "Amy Winehouse is going to Miami" into a lead story? You can't, but Gordon will give it a go, nevertheless.

Let's just look at the glorious URL in full:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/2592680/Amy-Winehouse-is-heading-back-to-Miami-two-years-a-few-tears-and-a-divorce-since-her-last-explosive-visit-when-she-married-Blake-Fielder-Civil.html

That's quite a web address.

In a bid to try and stretch the thin detail into something that will fill a hole, a "source" is conjured up to give Amy the possibility of a phantom pregnancy:

"All her friends are worried though. She has mentioned she might meet Blake when he leaves rehab in Sheffield.

"Even more worrying is the fact that she has been feeling broody. That would be the ultimate disaster - the spawn of Fielder-Civil."

The Sun is famously cold and unloving, but I think Gordon's made-up quote hits a new low even for that paper: it's condemning a child as an "ultimate disaster" not just before it's been born, not just before it's been conceived, but at the stage of it being a vague conceptual-but-unlikely possibility. I'm confused - what do you want the people of the village to actually burn, Gordon?

Meanwhile, Iceland have dumped Kerry Katona from their adverts, "fearing a backlash" from customers. Which would be understandable, had they not had her fronting commercials for the last four years of one drug-and-addling revelation after another. Iceland have issued a statement:

"We have been working with Kerry for four years.

"She has been a successful part of our advertising campaigns, but has also been through some tough times in her personal life.

"We have always stood by her. However, following the most recent allegations, we feel it is impossible for Kerry to continue to work with us.

"We will continue to try to ensure she gets the most appropriate support, should she require our assistance."

I wonder if that's a legally binding promise, and what sort of "appropriate support" Iceland would offer, given that their expertise is in freezing mini pizzas and discounting Arctic Rolls?

It's impossible to confirm that Iceland dropped Katona this time because they felt her use of a twenty pound note to sniff the cocaine was a distraction from their value message.

A bad investment coming from Iceland

Kerry Katona has been rehired by Iceland after "turning her life around". (In other words, after a couple of weeks in which she's not been photographed upside-down in a doorway and a handful of pictures in Reveal of her out jogging.)

I suppose - having stuck with her through the last few years - it would be odd to let her go during a relatively rare period when she's not on the front pages snuffling out an apology for something or other. And it's not like there's any commercial logic to having her and a pretend family pushing frozen gizzards in gravy-style sauce coating in the first place.

Still, Iceland must be delighted to have Kerry fit and healthy to act as a spokesperson for their wonderful range of frozen foods, right? After all, she went to Iceland and got herself in shape, right?

While Kerry admits she allows herself her favourite fatty treats at the weekend, she lives on a diet of Bran Flakes, salad and protein shakes during the week.

She also drinks a pint of water with every meal as well as green tea to speed up her metabolism.

Oh. But perhaps she freezes the Bran Flakes.

When Beckham acts

So, there was something quite triumphant about Victoria Beckham's cameo in Ugly Betty after all. Watching it straight after Anne Widdecombe's marshalling of Have I Got News For You, it made Widdy look like the greatest comedy talent in the world.

The Betty team went wrong giving her lines: it's perhaps heartbreaking that Beckham is incapable of playing herself convincingly, but at least if all she had to do was wave and stand up, she'd have got away with it.

You do wonder if the 'Beckham locked in a cupboard' part of the episode was the result of a quick rewrite having seen her mangle her lines in earlier scenes. "Oh, bugger, just lock her in a cupboard..."

It says a lot about stage schools that, despite not having gone to one, Vera Wang out-performed Beckham, who had.

Fans of Beckham's acting will also have had the pleasure of the Tesco advert appearing. We're not quite sure we understand this: the five Spices independently turn up at the same branch of Tesco at the same time, and try to hid from each other. But why? Are they ashamed of being seen in Tesco? And if that's the point, why would Tesco have spent a fortune creating an advert suggesting that its stores are the sort of place where even Mel C would be embarrassed to be shopping in? Is their big Christmas message really supposed to be "Go on, try the Co-Op; you can hold your head up in there"?

The underwhelming nature of the Tescos ad has, at least, allowed me to find some rare common ground with Kerry Katona. She's not impressed, either:

"I know it's competition for my Iceland adverts, but it's not as good as mine, so it's fine."

Well, that's going a little far, Kerry. It's not that rotten.

Ah... so THAT'S why Mum's gone to Iceland

Kerry Katona is probably hoping that something terrible happens to her in the next couple of weeks, because she could do with flogging another "My [insert cause of misery here] misery" story to a mag pretty sharpish.

The News of the World has done some number crunching and reckons that, with the Inland Revenue chasing her for a couple of hundred thousand in back taxes, she could be out on the street by Christmas.

The Screws quotes an OK insider who claims that she's now only being paid two grand a week for her column - only! - and another who reckons that Iceland have cut the cash they give her for flogging batter to the hapless. Keeping the Iceland contract has had a bonus, though: apparently she's able to get all the frozen food she wants for free. An Iceland freeloader. Classy.

That's why Mum's gone to the smoking shelter

Having miscarried and then demiscarried the baby, you'd understand that Kerry Katona would be careful about the health of the foetus she's carrying. That's why she's only having the odd fag during trips to the boozer:

: "I was smoking 20 a day before I was pregnant and I've cut down to one. In the morning, I like a little puff on a fag."

She said of those who criticise her for continuing to smoke in defiance of medical guidelines: "Yeah, they're dead bloody right. But I honestly don't think a couple of puffs are going to do that much damage.

"I had a nicotine patch but it left a mark. I think I've done really well cutting down from 20 to one a day. I think the only times I really smoke is when I've had a drink."

So she only has one a day, in the morning, when she's had a drink?

Katona is still being used as the face of Iceland, although the company seems to have given up on the unlikely scenario of Kerry being a kind of Delia-Smith-on-milk-tokens welcoming grinning visitors by opening up her prawn ring. The new commercials feature Kerry as a newsreader detailing the latest bargains from the eyelids-and-batter merchants - which does, unfortunately, recall the Woolworths ads where a fluffy sheep struggled to deliver low-price headlines from a barely moving autocue.

Elsewhere, Katona has cheerfully told a magazine that she's going to get sterilized as soon as this latest kid is out. Presumably, it's easier than worrying about trying to sort out nicotine patches.

Katona: that's why Mum's gone to Coventry

The board of Baugur must be delighted with their ongoing Kerry Katona fronted advertising campaigns - who better to stress the vital and important beyond mothers and children reflected in the adverts than Kerry Katona.

Hey, for Christmas, why don't they shoot an advert with Kerry's own mum in?

Eh, Kerry?

"I want nothing more to do with her.

"It's sad but it's taken me all this time to realise she's a nasty piece of work.

"She took me for a ride. She doesn't like Mark because he could see through her.

"It's awful to say but the only time I'll get peace from that woman is when she's dead.

"She isn't even mentally ill, she's just sick in the head."

Isn't illness being sick, and mental pertaining to the head, and thus "mentally ill" and "sick in the head" the same thing expressed with differing levels of delicacy?

Still, plenty there for Iceland's creatives to work with - they could run with a fireside scene of a table groaning under the weight of turkey-nose nuggets and breaded gristle-sticks, with Kerry and a screen husband (for some reason, they seem reluctant to cast Mark in these things) enjoying a stolen kiss over the seven-for-a-quid pizza bites, while Old Mother Katona stands outside in a howling snowstorm, face pressed to the window. Heartwarming, isn't it?