Gordon in the morning: Swines and stripping

More on swine flu, then, as Oasis turn up in the wrong place at the wrong time - no, not the music scene anytime after 1998 in this case, but Venezuela in a time of mild crisis. (And it is only a mild concern there at the moment; most of the country's response to swine flu is about trying to cope with flights redirected from Mexico.)

Gordon, though, has the Mancunians in the very pit of health hell:

LIAM and NOEL GALLAGHER have been stuck indoors for a couple of days, only venturing out wearing surgical masks to protect their prized lungs from the potentially fatal virus.

Actually, since you ask, the team at The Sun have photoshopped face masks on to pictures of the Gallagher brothers wearing face masks.

On a more serious note, Oasis haven’t had much luck across the Pond over the years.

Noel said in a Q magazine interview that the band could have been bigger than THE BEATLES in America, but Liam threw their big chance away by being a yob.

Uh-oh. Noel's already suffering from delusions and hallucinations. Someone needs to get the Tamiflu to him.

Gordon seems unsure of how to play this story. Is it knockabout fun - with facemask photoshopping, or is it a serious threat to this nation's most precious lungs?

In the end, the punning wins out:

Just make sure you survive the virus floating about South America first, Liam.

Get some oinkment for your chest.

Oinkment? Because it's called swine flu? But why would putting ointment on your chest help you "survive a virus"?

Still, that's not the worst pun in the piece. Oh no.

Aye up mask kid ... Liam Gallagher gets the Biz mock-up treatment

No. Eye watering though that might be, even that isn't the worst one.

Prepare yourself:

Champagne pork-anova ... Noel as he might look in mask

Champagne porkanova?

Elsewhere, there's perhaps the least surprising celebrity statement ever:

JENNIFER ELLISON couldn’t care less if men get turned on by her sexy mag shoots – because she’s only in it for the money.

The busty pin-up admits she strips off for the pay cheques – and will continue to while she’s in demand.

Tim Nixon has filed this for Bizarre, apparently thinking we might have thought that Ellison was removing her bra for Nuts out of some sort of artistic impulse.

Jennifer Ellison offers the benefits of her experience

Don't put your daughter in the Jennifer Ellison stage school, Mrs Worthington.

Yes, Ellison is bringing her showbiz know how to the good people of Liverpool:

The theatre star hopes to have The Jennifer Ellison Fame Academy, “where stars are born”, up and running in 2009.

Modules taught at the school are expected to include "Loaded or Zoo - which one's for you?", "Knowing when it's right to take your bra off - and when to keep it on" and "how to turn a role in Brookside into some sort of career".

Ellison is filling a gap in the market:

"There are not many academies for people like me who do everything – dancing, acting, singing and modelling – and I do not believe there is anywhere catering for young people who want to do it all in the north west."

Perhaps there's a reason why not many academies - sorry, stage schools - are designed to turn out jack-of-all-trades; it could be the same reason that there isn't a school in Manchester which is dedicated to training the softball-playing botanist tuba stars of the future.

Capital of Culture update: Liverpool's Got Talent

If only Liverpool had a pier rather than the Pier Head, for Phil Redmond's stewardship of the Capital of Culture year seems to be an end-of-the-pier show in search of a venue.

Just announced is a talent show with a prize money can't buy. If the workings of the Liverpool Culture Company so far are anything to go by, being close to organisers might help, but money? Money won't buy the prizes:

The winner, or winners, will play a starring role in the closing ceremony of Capital of Culture, make a guest appearance in Hollyoaks and win £1,000.

Curiously, given that this is supposed to be an open talent contest, two of the prizes seem to suggest that specific talents would at least be an advantage of some sort.

So, who are the judges?

The star judge is Jennifer Ellison - music fans will recall the extent to which her estimation of her talents diverged from those of the general population; there's also Emma Rigby, who is in Hollyoaks, apparently. And:

Liverpool comedienne Pauline Daniels, ex-Brooksider Philip Olivier, celebrity hairdresser Herbert Howe, Sir Paul’s brother Mike McCartney and The Farm guitarist Keith Mullin will also be judges.

Keith Mullin is a lovely bloke, and Macca's brother at least has a track record. But, really, Herbert Howe? He's going to bring his way with a styling brush as a way of judging stars?

It's fine for a bit of fun; a bank holiday bit of nonesense. But when you're trying to show the depth of talent a city has, it undermines you a little if the best judge you can find is the man who styles the hair of the woman who does the books for the man who wrote the cheques for the now-defunct Brookside.

Birthday special

The Liverpool Nativity, then: the greatest story ever mistold?

BBC Three's retelling of the birth of Jesus last night (and for the next seven days on iPlayer) was a bit of a botch. Of course, there's a built-in problem with a nativity story, in that you know how its going to end, but you'd have thought the intertwining of Great Scouse Pop moments would have at least offered something fresh for the tale.

Trouble was - like the host city - the Liverpool Nativity got too fixated on the Beatles. The idea was to set the scene for the Capital of Culture year, and on this evidence, Merseysiders can expect twelve months of not thinking much further than 'what would John Lennon do now'? So the hackneyed end is a singalong to All You Need Is Love, rather than the slightly more fitting Power Of Love, for example, although it was interesting to see Get Back given to the racists, what with the unfortunate alternative version of the song.

There were some non-Beatles track allowed in, some working (Wah Heat's Seven Minutes To Midnight and the Bunnymen's Breaking The Back of Love), most feeling just badly wedged in. There She Goes doesn't have to be a song about heroin, but I'm not convinced it can be a song about how it feels when your virgin girlfriend tells you she's been knocked up by God. And Bouncing Babies and You Spin Me Right Round Like A Record for the slaughter of the innocents felt ill-judged.

The plot - or at least the updating of it - didn't make any sense. The drama was set in a 'fictional state', which was fair enough, but then how could it be that Joseph was coming to register as an asylum seeker in Liverpool? And why did Cathy Tyson - the "minister of the interior" of the fictional state - tell the Magi she was "in town for Capital of Culture year"? You don't get the culture secretary of the actual nation turning up to live in Liverpool for twelve months, much less the minister of the interior of a different state.

Even more confusingly, despite having been told that Mary was a "Liverpool girl", she and Joseph were wandering the streets of the city because they couldn't afford a hotel room. Why not go to your house, then?

And how come Cathy Tyson's Herodia was slaughtering innocents before Mary's waters had broken? (Presumably because the three wise men - or rather, Mick from Brookside, Michael from Brookside, and the bloke who was Jaah-whey in Bread when Peter Howitt had quit - turned up too early.)

Tyson, surprisingly, was terrible - playing her part like a stage performance, and a Saturday Pantomime Matinee at that. To pull off the idea of a psychopath at the Home Office - sorry, Ministry of the Interior - called for understatement rather than gurning and spinning eyes.

Equally surprising was Jennifer Ellison wasn't all that bad - perhaps because her role as Guiding Star angel was somewhat brief.

It wasn't a bad try, all told, but the ending - the crowd parting to allow Mary and Joseph to hide - fell a little short of triumphant; Hughes' "I don't have to ask in this town" a little too self-congratulatory for an ending about a character who was meant to live humbly.

[Similar, but different: The Manchester Passion]

Showbiz Zoe: the biggest of scoops

This could be the smallest lead story every to run in a proper newspaper column, from today's Sunday Mirror Showbiz Zoe column:

I'm worried about Jennifer Ellison, who lost it with Big Brother's Charley Uchea after she caught her chatting to her ex Tony Richardson in Embassy.

Now, fair dos to Zoe for not just making something interesting up, but... Jennifer Ellison and reality TV's Brian Blessed? As your big story? Couldn't they have found a CarpetRite advert or something to fill the space?

Jennifer Ellison: My shit life

We can see why Jennifer Ellison would be happy to flog the "I was an abused fiancee" story to the News of the World - having seen how Kerry Katona has managed to spin so much gold from a crap life, who wouldn't attempt to make a little cash while humiliating the thuggish bloke who last week got caught with Shalimar Wimble by telling the world he's a violent bastard?

What we can't see is why the News of the World would run this as their front-page splash.. Sure, it's a bit of a thin summer - which is why The Sun is reduced to running day after day of "exclusives" about sharks, an obsession which suggests that Rebekah Wade has gone on holiday and left an autistic nine year-old in charge of the paper - but even the NOTW can't quite recall why Jennifer Ellison is famous:

During all her secret turmoil with Richardson, brave Jennifer's career continued to soar. She won Celebrity's Hell's Kitchen, toured to rave reviews in the musical Chicago and had TV roles in ITV's legal drama The Brief and the BBC sitcom Hotel Babylon.

In other words: after she left a now-defunct soap-opera, she's had a couple of bit parts in TV shows and tramped round the country in a musical. In fact, she's mostly been famous for telling unconvincing stories about how she's been injured.

The saddest aspect of the story, though, is that if it hadn't been for the intervention of Shalamar Womble, she'd probably still be covering up for Richardson now.

You thought Atomic Kitten was scary?

Live Magazine let the cat out of the bag, so we suppose everyone knows now - having been spurned by AK, Andy McCluskey is now priming this for pop action:

Jennifer Ellison from Brookside. Presumably he's chosen a solo artist as they can't conspire against him.