Gordon in the morning: Diplocarpon rosae

So far, the Stone Roses reunion has benefited from attendees having turned up convinced they'd be seeing something historic and important. How did it go when they moved into the festival circuit, where the audience are coming in treating them as just one band amongst many?

Didn't go that well:

THE Stone Roses’ incredible run of amazing live shows hit some dodgy ground at V Stafford.

Ian Brown was getting all Bruce Lee with the crowd after a pint of lager clocked him early on.

Then they started Love Spreads four times before they got it right.

John Squire broke a string during a guitar solo and Ian started moaning about the sound.

It's a lot harder when you're not being kept aloft on a sea of goodwill, isn't it?

In other news:

I suspect we're only a couple of years away from the OED adding "not now in polite use" into the entry for boffin. There are many ways you can describe a pretty good mathematician; telling the Sun chose two words which sound - at best - double-edged.

"I don't need to sell my soul..."

So, by the time it became official there was no surprise left: The Stone Roses are coming back.

There's two sorts of reunions; the ones where the band who returns is picking up where it left off; a split which left things hanging, a sense of unfinished business.

And there's the other sort. The sort where the band hope we forget that they'd given up flogging the dead horse.

New material? Really, John? Are you telling us you had songs that were just so good they were beyond Chris Helme's vocal range?

In all the time since the Roses split up, there's been an ongoing debate between people who would have quite liked to hear the band play the songs again, and people who knew what that meant. Nowhere have you come across people who wondered what sort of third album the band would have made.

Maybe it'll be amazing; maybe the magic didn't vanish around the time they flung the last can of paint round the Silvertone offices.

But for now, the future seems to be little more than a man in a beanie hat bellowing "Manchester Vibes In The Area" in a human face, forever.

Gordon in the morning: I never promised you a Roses garden

Gordon returns to his story from last week where he announced we were more-or-less a signature away from a Stone Roses reunion.

The story has been roundly kicked to pieces by Mani since, so Gordon might feel he has some sort of explaining to do.

He sort-of explains:

After Bizarre broke the story last week Mani denied a reunion would take place - after being bombarded with calls in LA by everyone he had ever met asking if it was going to happen.

He was getting his head together after losing his mum and that was the last thing he needed.

The story was only ever written with genuine excitement about old wounds healing.

Aw, Gordon was only trying to help. But his story wasn't about "old wounds healing"; it was claiming there was going to be gigs. He even speculated about how difficult buying tickets would be.

And Mani didn't just "deny a reunion". His exact words were:

"I'm disgusted that my personal grief has been invaded and hijacked by these nonsensical stories," he told the NME, referring to the meeting of Brown and Squire at his mother's funeral.

"Two old friends meeting up after 15 years to pay their respects to my mother does not constitute the reformation of the Stone Roses. Please fuck off and leave it alone. It isn't true and isn't happening."

That's pretty blunt. Mani was angry that Smart had used his mother's funeral to create a fake reunion story.

And so what is the hook upon which Gordon hangs his "explanation"?

HERE'S the picture every music fan has wanted to see for over ten years - THE STONE ROSES reunited.

This is the moment in The Nelson Tavern, Failsworth, Manchester, shortly after IAN BROWN and JOHN SQUIRE finally buried the hatchet.

The shot was taken by pub staff, who couldn't believe their eyes as the band got together to pay their respects at bass player GARY "MANI" MOUNFIELD's mum's funeral.

Yes, he's run a photo taken at Mani's mum's funeral to explain why he ran a story exploiting Mani's mum funeral. Classy.

Gordon in the morning: Monkey and Seahorse reunion

One of the certainties about music is that the deep, deep animosity between Ian Brown and John Squire meant that The Stone Roses, at least, would never grub back together for a reunion. A reunion which would, inevitably, cancel out the warm feelings a generation have towards the Roses. Or at least those feelings which had survived the awful live performances and Coming Second or whatever that other record was called.

Until now. Squire and Brown have buried the past, and talk has turned, inevitability, to another part of your youth being exhumed and made disappointing.

Gordon Smart does warn, though:

The only stumbling block they now face is pinning down former drummer RENI, which is about as easy as trapping mercury, according to my Manc pals.

As we discovered with Mel C, though, putting your faith in one person to spare us all doesn't work outside of Bruce Willis movies.

Smart, of course, can't see any reason why this shouldn't be treated as great news:

A Roses reunion will be something very special indeed. Getting tickets for the gig will be another problem altogether.

Fair dealing to Gordon Smart, though, this is an actual, interesting scoop he has here. Assuming it's true and it happens, of course.

On the bright side, at this rate there's going to be Daphne And Celeste reunion sometime around Autumn.

In related news, the bloke who played Bez in 24 Hour Party People is currently casting for a movie about Spike Island:

[Director] Tom Green said: “This is a raw and truly authentic rites-of-passage story.

“It’s full of the humour, heartache, dreams and fears of being part of a brotherhood of mates, and set to the greatest record ever written.

“The Roses died in ’95. This is the resurrection.”

There is, I suspect, someone wishing even harder than most of us that Brown and Squire talking again doesn't lead to the Roses playing again.

Gordon in the morning: Death and drink

Much of the online version of Bizarre is given over to Natasha Richardson this morning - for the third day running, though, the coverage is built on the "wife of the more famous Liam Neeson" platform, although the paper has also remembered there's a crucial Lindsay Lohan angle. If you relied on The Sun, you'd come away thinking "it's terrible about Liam Neeson's wife - and did you know she used to make the occasional light comedy in her own right back in the day?"

There's also room found for yet more coverage of the last days of Jade Goody. Indeed, with all this real death around, John Squire's artwork referring to descerating the grave of the Stone Roses isn't appearing in the happiest of contexts.

Elsewhere, it's business as usual. Apparently Lily Allen hasn't really given up drinking. And Amy Winehouse hasn't really given up drinking again. Last summer the Sun's leader column was insisting that parents should teach kids about responsible drinking, wasn't it? How would 'getting drunk and falling over makes you famous' fit in with that education aim, exactly?

Still, it's not all death and hangovers. Cristiano Ronaldo (who apparently plays football for a job) has decided he'd like to become a pop singer when he has to get a proper job.

Hang about - has he really, Gordon?

Ronaldo says: “Somebody mentioned to me a few years ago that it would be a great idea if myself, the Brazilian Ronaldo and Ronaldinho made a band called The Three Rs."

He went on: “I loved the idea, it was so funny. I’ll mention it to them when I retire, we might even have a No1.”

Ah - so it would be a joke, then. He's joking, Gordon.

He adds: “I don’t know what the other two would like to do but it would be brilliant if I was lead singer.

“You never know, I will have to do something after football.”

He's joking, Gordon. It's a... oh, what's the point?

Stone Roses: No tour, probably

There is to be no Stone Roses tour. Ian Brown and John Squire say so.

Given they've not agreed on anything in two decades, that's got to be significant.

"I guess the 20th anniversary of the album has got folk speculating," said a spokeswoman for the former guitarist.

The statement added: "John Squire has just completed another exhibition in London and has plans to take it to Japan in July. Right now this is his priority. "

The people of Japan would never forgive him if he put that on hold, even for a couple of months.

And Ian Brown? What's he too busy doing?

A spokeswoman at Brown's label Fiction/Polydor said: "We know nothing about this. Ian is working on his new studio album which is due out later this year."

So, at this rate, it looks like Mani will be doing the tour on his own. Which he seems to be up for.

I, alone, could reunite the Roses

Not me, you understand. And even if by some accident - presumably involving pulling a magic letter from a jacket on a train in town or something - I did have the power to bring The Stone Roses back together, I'd probably choose not to use that. It'd only end in tears.

Mani, though, reckons he - and he alone - has the power. He doesn't think it's that compelling an idea, either:

"I'm the only person who could bring it back together again," he told Uncut magazine. "John Squire knows how to craft a tune, Ian Brown knows how to craft a tune. I don't know if any of us are powerful without each other. The magic was the power of four.

"At the end of the day I'm not going to lose any sleep over a reunion, because those days are gone."

We love the idea that The Stone Roses are kind of akin to WITCH - could there be some sort of magic amulet lost in Affleck's Palace which contains their power?

Still, we're taking this as the first step to their reunion on day one of Coachella 2009.