Gordon in the morning: Naming rights

Come with us for a quick peek over the Sun's paywall, to see what fresh meat Gordon is laying out to tempt you in the new marketplace.

Today, he's got a story about MKS, in which Keisha Buchanan reveals they could have grabbed the Sugababes name had they wanted to [don't bother following the link, there's a paywall].

That's worth the price of entry, right?

Although you could have read pretty much the same story on the NME a week ago. And they'd lifted it from BBC News the day before.

Still, who wouldn't want to pay Rupert Murdoch to read stuff the BBC had so long ago they might have forgotten reading it in the first place?

Gordon in the morning: The first rule of Sugababes...

Keisha out of The Band Comprising All The Former Sugababes can't, apparently, talk about her experiences in the Sugababes:

“Legally, I’ve been told I can’t go into detail. I can speak for England and I’d enjoy telling the world exactly what happened but I can’t. I pretty much found out when everyone else did. We had a really good relationship.”

Yes, nothing screams "great relationship" like not even being able to talk about it for fear of being sued.

Sugababes struggle with the concept of quitting

I'm not sure I quite follow Amelle's explanation of how Keisha came to be out of The Sugababes:

"We did not sack Keisha.

"Me and Heidi actually left the band and left her on her own.

"She didn't walk out or anything like that. We ditched her."

But then how come you're still trading under the name? If you quit the band? How would that work, exactly?

Sugababes: Made-up futures of the rest of the band

Good god, the papers are struggling to find anything to say about the X Factor this morning. The Sunday Mirror is reduced to running a story claiming Simon Cowell is eating a lot of Angel Delight.

The People has something which sounds more interesting, and is only weakened by being almost certainly totally made-up:

Former Sugababes KEISHA BUCHANAN and SIOBHAN DONAGHY are set to shock The X Factor judges - by teaming up with the show's reject RACHEL ADEDEJI to form a new girlband.

I can reveal the stars, who were two of the original members of the charttopping band, believe Rachel, 17, is the perfect third member to rival the current Sugababes line-up.

Really, Katie Hind? Oh, yes, you have a source, anonymous as a white cat that doesn't really exist in a snowstorm:

"They'll have to wait a bit because Rachel is signed up to X Factor duties for a few months but after that she will be a free agent."

That's convenient - so, nothing will happen until everyone's forgotten the story. It's like predicting that the Mercury will crash into Mars in 2048 - sure, it's made up, but it's not like anyone will be able to call you on it, right?

Sugababes: Google, you've got to let go

Matt W emails to point out that, if you Google the Sugababes, the official site's metadata seems to be coming from some other, happier, time and place:

As Matt points out:

"The official website of the female pop group (consisting of Keisha, Mutya and Heidi)"

So, not only is it out of date in terms of Keisha, but also, Mutya's in there too. Four years after she left, no less!

You'd have to bet on Mutya being the only one who could do decent HTML coding.

Sugababes: Now comprising entirely of third Sugababes

It's confusing times trying to work out exactly what's going on over at the Sugababes, and in confusing pop times we look to Popjustice for clarification.

And there, you find a statement even Popjustice has trouble explaining:

Monday 21st September

The current line-up of the Sugababes has disbanded.

Heidi Range and Amelle Berrabah will continue as the Sugababes and will be joined by new member Jade Ewen. They release their album ‘Sweet 7’ on November 23rd through Island Records.

Keisha Buchanan will continue to record for Island Records as a solo artist.

So Heidi, Amelle and her off of Eurovision are now going to pretend to be the Sugababes, somehow, despite none of them having been around when... well, when this happened:

Sugarbabes - Overload
by FabCure

There comes a point when you might take a look at the name above the shop, and wonder if it really fits anymore. Calling Amelle-Heidi-Jade the Sugababes makes about as much sense as the Carphone Warehouse sticking doggedly to its name rather than adopting the more honest Pay As You Go Hovel-Shed.

Woot-ton: Where does Dan get his stories?

Dan Wootton, the News of the World's virtually-impossible-to-find-online showbiz hound, rushes in with a story:

SUGABABE KEISHA BUCHANAN has revealed how a famous sportsman got a bit too sweet on her.

She grimaced: "Just had a message on my MySpace page from a very famous sports star offering me something sexual! What an ass and a pervert.

"I can't believe it. When I told him 'No' he got really mad.

"I've blocked him from my page now."

Wow - how great must Dan's contact book and trust network be if Keisha would reveal something like that exclusively to him. It's not the sort of thing you'd share on something like Twitter, is it?

Oh.

It might have been nice if Dan had at least mentioned he'd just copied it off Twitter, don't you think?

How did Dan know she was grimacing, rather than, say, giggling at how ridiculous the bloke was?

Gordon in the morning: Kanye believe it?

Ah, the loss of innocence: faced with Kanye West's suggestions that he and Britney Spears only won MTV awards because they agreed to schlep over to the ceremonies, Gordon Smart suddenly has his 'it's a small man behind a curtain' moment:

Hollywood actor Jared’s dismal band 30SECONDS TO MARS picked up the Rock Out and Video Star awards in Liverpool.

He was conveniently also co-hosting the show with KATY PERRY.

And, yes, the I Kissed A Girl star walked away with a gong too — for best New Act.

Still, he's handling the loss of innocence well, and Rebekah Wade is thinking Smart might be old enough that she won't have to dress up as Santa to leave the News International Christmas Bonus at the end of his bed this year.

Gordon doesn't point out that it's a bit rich for Kanye to complain that they give him an award for turning up when a couple of years ago he moaned that he wouldn't turn up any more as he kept going to MTV prizegivings and leaving empty-handed.

Meanwhile, tomorrow night's Children In Need concert is going to see some sort of Sugababe-Morrison mash-up. Keisha Buchanan has fears over her duet:

"He approached me specifically as he said he really liked my voice. I was shocked. I know I can sing but its weird coming from someone like that. I'm worried I'll make him look bad."

Come on, Keisha, you'd have to really stink to make things James Morrison seem worse than he actually is.

However shall we fill the time?

Steal yourselves, gentle people of Britain: We're unlikely to see a new Sugababes album this year. They're going to avoid being in a confined space with each other for as long as they possibly can ("they're going to take it slowly"):

"We were supposed to release an album this year and we decided against it," Keisha Buchanan told the Daily Star. "With each album we feel we've produced a better one when we have been given time to write about stuff - and we have been through so much this year alone.

"I think sometimes people forget we do write our own material. Even when we have a co-writer, there can be 12 people writing one sentence and we're writing the bulk of the song. We want to feel inspired."

It's an interesting glimpse into the songwriting process - you do find yourself wondering why, if the Babes are able to write 99% of a song, they feel it necessary to draft in a busload of people to help with the odd line. That would seem a little like Michaelangelo calling in someone to do the skirting boards, wouldn't it?

Pop will save the childrens

Sugababes have worries about our nation's soft-headed children. They grow up too fast, because pop doesn't save them:

Keisha told the Daily Star: "What I really want is to see more pop bands. I want it to go back to the days of Smash Hits, when we’d tour with Blazin’ Squad and Girls Aloud and have a blast.

"Even the Saturday shows where we dressed up and got gunked don’t exist.

"I know I’m sounding like a granny, but kids today are growing up way too fast because they don’t have those things to keep them young anymore."

Ah, yes. If we don't have the Sugababes singing about their sexy assess, and Girls Aloud making fetish videos singing "sexy no no no" and Blazin' Squad trilling "I just like tight butts on ladies who play rough 4 ages and nuff love comes in stages", children might just grow up way too fast.

Darkness at 3AM: Noel gets guns

Noel Gallagher's a working class lad, right, he's a man of the people, yeah?

Only, according to Tom Meighan (apparently Kasabian have become so successful at channeling Oasis they're now acting as the Gallagher's spokesmen) via 3AM, he's taken up country sports:

"He sent me a text about going shooting in America, and about how scared he was of shooting himself.

"I've not heard from Noel in a while, so as soon as he's finished recording in LA it would be nice to meet up and find out what happened. He was going to get some guns and rifles I think. It was supposed to be a leisurely day out or hobby to get stuck into."

Now, we know that getting hold of shooters isn't unknown in some of the suburbs of Manchester, but it'll be interesting to see if Noel attempts to balance his claims to be the same man he was when he was growing up with his new-found desire to bag a brace of grouse for fun.

Elsewhere, the 3AM Girls are puzzled at not being loved by the people whose lives they rifle:

Ok, we'll try to put it down to a bad case of PMT - but WTF is up with the Sugababes? Keisha Buchanan led her boyfriend Dean, along with bandmate Amelle Berrabah and her fella Freddie Fuller, in a chorus of childish hisses at us as we left the 27 Dresses premiere.

Fairly strange considering we've been nothing but supportive of the girls ... but we can go off people you know, Keisha.

You've got to love columnists whose job involves sniping at people calling other's behaviour "childish", and the little bit of threat.

As if to illustrate the point, the 3AMies then call Keisha fat:

Perhaps the girls were just tired after their gruelling work schedule - or perhaps Keisha's more annoyed about piling on the pounds.

Not that they'd ever be accused of being childish or anything.

Sugababes fight for interest

Apparently, Keisha Sugababe wasn't that bothered when Amelle got beaten up earlier in the year. And not becuase "we can just get another person in, if need be".

Oh, no: it's the edge:

"Things like that need to happen once in a while so things don't get boring."

Yes. What a shame the whole boyfriend-sister accusations thing couldn't have been better timed to coincide with a best of album, eh?

Doing the splits

Keisha Buchanan has - alongside some vague "oh, I was sucidial, sort of" chit-chat which sounds more like an attempt to pass off teenage angst as psychological depth - laughed off the latest round of Sugababes split stories:

"The band shouldn't be called Sugababes, it should be called Sugasplit. I've got used to it."

Yes, there are a lot of stories about splits in the ranks, Keisha. That could be something to do with, erm, the 66% of the band has quit and had to be replaced already, don't you think?

How long to Sugababes v4.0?

The rocky existence of the Sugababes is something of a wonder - you get the sense of a band never far from total implosion, which has somehow kept itself aloft by ruthless pruning and transplanting.

It might be not be long until the next transplant is due, by the looks of things, as Keisha and Amelle aren't getting on. It says so in the Sunday People, relishing Keisha's non-appearance at Amelle's birthday party:

HEIDI RANGE, 23, was at London's Silver nightclub but a source revealed: "It was a very pointed thing for Keisha to do and shows the widening gap between her and the other two girls.

"They come together in the recording studio when they need to work but they are not really friends outside of that.

"Keisha is very career driven because she was the founding member but the other girls see her as too bossy at times."

On the other hand, you don't have to hang out with the people you work with all the time, do you?