Thatcher: Ding Dong results

So, if you were involved with the Ding Dong campaign, you might be thinking you'd succeeded pretty well: the push to get the song charting became a media obsession; front pages in the Mail, Express and Telegraph; BBC management thrown into panic; Charles Moore's confused egg-features caught in puzzled confusion on Question Time. There was even the spectacular contra-campaign which saw Maggie lovers either unwittingly or witlessly buying a punk song that was also an attack on their hero.

As a way of ensuring that the nation was reminded not everyone revered Thatcher, it worked like a charm.

And it even made number two in the charts.

It turns out, though, that the whole thing was a failure.

Luckily, Louise Mensch is on hand to explain why:

It's so good to see that #HopeNotHate triumphed and #DingDidnt flopped at the fence. Much like her opponents in life :) #Thatcher

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) April 14, 2013

Yes, she really did attempt to hijack the name of the anti-racism campaign to hashtag it. Classy.

Did it really matter that the song only got to number two? Probably not, but there's something very Thatcherite, very 'either you're a winner or you're nothing', about the way of viewing the chart position.

But what of the lowly 35 position for I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher? Was that hashtag hatenothope, then?

Guys: chart is WHOLE WEEK sales not final position. So awesome of #GranthamStyle to make it in in 1 day...

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) April 14, 2013

Louise doesn't understand much about the charts, it turns out. The Notsensibles campaign kicked off on Friday, which is two and a half days of chart-qualifying sales, not one.

And yet, oddly, while suggesting you had to make adjustments for the short time the Love campaign was running...

So there you go. A song they planned to be at No. 1 when Lady #Thatcher died - mobilised for in advance, bought all week - #DingDidnt #fail

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) April 14, 2013

Except Thatcher died on Monday and the Ding Song campaign didn't get underway until Tuesday, so, er, it didn't have a full week's sales, either.

This Tweet is even odder:

And despite weeks of planning I'm still betting ... #DingDidnt - fingers crossed!! #HopeNotHate

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) April 14, 2013

Weeks of planning? How would the Ding Dong campaign have had weeks to plan? Unless Thatcher had phoned up a couple of months back - "I've just seen a fortune teller who's advised me not to bother getting started on the Borgen box set..."

HA! #dingdidnt Planned since 2007 and couldn't manage what Ant and Dec did with no planning in a week. Victory for decency and respect!

— Nik Smith (@niksmith84) April 14, 2013

Except, again, Nik, Ant and Dec's sales ran for a full week. And I think they sold about 10,000 fewer copies.

So, there we have it: Tens of thousands of people buy a record specifically to show a lack of respect for their hero, and yet it's still a victory because Ant And Dec had got to number one with only the top-rated Saturday night TV show.

History is going to judge us all harshly, isn't it?

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: The medium wave goodbye

There's a nice piece about Thatcher's influence on the media by Maggie Brown over on MediaGuardian, although if focuses on TV so doesn't mention the damage she and her government wrought to commercial radio.

The delicate ecosystem which supported genuinely local radio - often doing interesting things - got disrupted in the late 80s when the Thatcher government issued an edict that simulcasting was a waste of scarce resources, and if stations continued to broadcast the same programmes on FM and AM, they would have to surrender one of the frequencies.

Spooked, the incumbents suddenly felt compelled to launch entirely new stations, at a stroke doubling their day-to-day costs while - generally - not increasing the size of the audience. With the economics of the industry trashed, the result was a series of takeovers and amalgamations which has led to the current situation where "local" radio is now anything but.

Thatcher's insistence that you shouldn't get the same breakfast programme on two wavebands in one place has resulted in people hundreds of miles apart getting the same breakfast programme and local news rapidly vanishing.

Thatcher: More on the Ding thing

In case you read No Rock away from the site, I just wanted to draw your attention to Rick's comments on Ding Dong, because you should read them.

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.

Thatcher: strange bedfellows

It's just a coincidence... it's just a coincidence... it's just a coincidence...

But the current front page of the BBC One website does make it look like Morrissey is trying to restrain himself from pouring tea over the former Prime Minister.

Send not to ask for whom the Ding Dong tolls...

There's a thoughtful piece from Dan Martin on the NME site right now which explains why he won't be buying Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, which is right... up to a point.

Martin's view is that it makes "us" as bad as "them":

On the most very basic level, Thatcher’s ideologies are repulsive, because their basis is mean-spirited and nasty.

And it’s according to those very basic principles that I would identify myself as a member of the left.

Cut through the rhetoric and the politics of the right are those of selfishness. Selfishness in turn is inherently mean.

I’ll tell you what else is mean: celebrating somebody’s death with a tedious chart-hyping Facebook campaign.

Well, yes. As I said on Twitter on Monday, there's nothing to celebrate in the death of a frail, lonely old lady; nor is there anything to celebrate in what she did to the nation.

But this doesn't make Martin totally right.

First of all, it doesn't make any attempt to understand why people may - all these years on - still be so angry as to do actually make good on those threats to tramp the dirt down.

Dan tries to suggest he gets it:

I was born three days before she came to power and grew up in a Merseyside community that she decimated. It was impossible not to be politicised; I remember singing ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ to myself on the day she was deposed. Nobody had died, and I was 11.

Dan, are you sure that you can compare being an eight year-old kid on the Wirral (a place which has so made its peace with the past that it often has a Tory council these days) with, say, the experience of people who were born into a mining village and now live in something that isn't even quite a village?

Aren't you falling into the trap of that other Tory PM, the one who wanted us to condemn a little more, and understand a little less?

More importantly, though, is the very premise of the piece:

Margaret Thatcher ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ Campaign Is An Embarrassment for the Left

Well, no. No it isn't, unless you believe that there are only two sides in politics; that there's a wobbly line down the middle of the world, somewhere off to the left of Nick Clegg, and that everybody on that side is one team - Thatcher, Cameron, Clegg, Williams, Hitler, Attila The Hun; and everybody on the other is the rest - hopefully Miliband, Benn, Stalin, people downloading Ding Dong and Attila The Stockbroker.

This 'you're either with us or against us', this 'them and us' - that's one of the brittle legacies of the Thatcher era. Billy Bragg had a song called 'Which Side Are You On', but that fell into a false dichotomy; that was Thatcher's trap.

You still see it today - The Sun's stock in trade is to suggest that everyone on the left is involved in some sort of group-think, that welcoming the renationalisation of the East Coast Line means you also want to liquidate the Kulaks.

Louise Mensch is so firmly convinced that there are only two options she made a fool of herself on Twitter claiming that because Tony Benn was able to say something positive about Maggie, he therefore "loved" her.

And this... well, this is the same. Some people are truly, truly happy that Thatcher is dead. Some people find it amusing to sing a song that celebrates that death, although they might feel ashamed of themselves if they realised they were glorying in death much as Thatcher gloried in slaughter. Some may even have a party while they watch the funeral.

These people may all be to the left of Thatcher. But they are not "The Left", and they are not even "the left".

Because politics that is just two choices isn't politics, it's screeching.

And that's part of the world Thatcher tried to create. You're fighting a battle in a playground she defined.

Be disgusted if you wish; condemn if you must. But don't suggest that anyone who opposes Thatcher represents everyone who opposes Thatcher. Because there are, actually, many alternatives.

Thatcher: The reckoning

Back in 2009, No Rock And Roll Fun put Thatcher to the ultimate test: Was pop music better when she started, or by the time she'd finished?

Morrissey unlikely to be asked to deliver Thatcher eulogy

Morrissey has offered a Thatcher obituary for The Daily Beast.

Given that Thatcher was probably the only person who could dig heels in more firmly than Mozzer, you won't be surprised to hear that Moz isn't exactly holding back the tears:

Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity.

After yesterday, when news outlets abandoned any attempt at balance or analysis - to have the television on was a glimpse into what it must be like to be in a Gove-approved history class - it's refreshing to have an alternative view.

And from one of David Cameron's favourites, too.

[Thanks to Michael M and @richstanton]

Gordon in the morning: Noel Gallagher's clarification

Here's some oddness: Gordon has got hold of both Noel's interview with the Mail On Sunday yesterday, and the blog entry where Noel tries to fix some of the damage.

Let's first see what Noel had to say:

There is a headline that implies that I am of the opinion that the years spent under the rule of that soon to be dead granny, Maggie Thatcher, was good for the soul. I've read the story and I must say it's very misleading; any great working class art, fashion, youth culture etc came to be IN SPITE of that woman and her warped right wing views and NOT BECAUSE of them. Also for the record, on the day that she dies we will party like it's 1989. Just so you know.

Funnily enough, a lot of people are already saying 'well, there you go, then, he was misquoted'.

Except, you'll note that Noel doesn't actually claim to be misquoted. Just disagrees with the way the story was presented by the Mail.

Certainly, while Gordon notes Noel's clarification, he still runs it under the headline:

Noel Gallagher: Kids had work ethic under Maggie
...but I'm no Margaret Thatcher fan

and fillets out the key quote:

Noel said: "We were brought up under Margaret Thatcher.

"There was a work ethic — if you were unemployed, the obsession was to find work.
[...]
He said: "Under Thatcher, who ruled us with an iron rod, great art was made. Amazing designers and musicians. Acid house was born. Very colourful and progressive."

Noel's blog entry doesn't even engage with the private school or work ethic stuff; in fact, the only thing he seeks to "clarify" is whether the creative boom was in spite of, or because of. Interestingly, he's actually withdrawing the only thing he got right - you can't have a creative reaction to a thing unless it's because of that thing.

Gallagher could have used his blog to engage with the political points of the piece; instead he just wishes an old woman with Alzheimer's dead. He's hoping he can segment his audience; segment his messages. It's no wonder he hates Twitter.

But why would you give an interview to the Mail On Sunday, and say those things, in the first place, Noel?

Noel Gallagher: People always drift to the right as they become richer. Sorry, older.

Noel Gallagher pops up in the Mail On Sunday today, giving an interview that will probably excite Mail On Sunday readers:

'It was all better under Thatcher': Noel Gallagher on Britain's glory days, turning his back on drugs and the end of Oasis

Mail readers - who probably believe that Gallagher is some sort of role model to young people - will dance with delight; they might even see this as some sort of rock capitulation. Instead, it's a very rich man sounding like a very rich man.

There was a slim hope that he was just making a misguided claim that rotten government is good for culture, and there is a bit of that:

‘Under Thatcher, who ruled us with an iron rod,’ he says, ‘great art was made. Amazing designers and musicians. Acid house was born. Very colourful and progressive.’

I can't quite remember which member of the Tory cabinet it was who represented the birthplace of acid house - was it David Waddington or Douglas Hurd who had the Chicago seat?

Now, it's inarguable that great art was made during the Thatcher era, but to suggest that that makes the Thatcher era great is just stupid. Everyone can agree that For The Good Of The Cause is a damn-near perfect short story, but it doesn't really make the Stalin era look good from a distance.

And Gallagher isn't just going for the 'it might have been shit, but Ghost Town was a tune' nostalgia. Oh, no; he's going for full-on blue rinse:

'We were brought up under Thatcher,’ Noel Gallagher is saying.
‘There was a work ethic – if you were unemployed, the obsession was to find work.'

No, I've double-checked; this hasn't fallen into the page due to a mix-up with Jeremy Clarkson's copy.

Where do you start? Do you start with the obvious fact that the "work ethic" was a employer/ruling class construct that attempted to use religious imagery in order to impose a rigid pattern on the workforce?

Or that while people want to work, any inherent desire to find labour tends to get crushed out of you when the places your family have relied on for work for generations are closed down as the political class undermines the nation's manufacturing base?

And if there was "the obsession to find work" why was there all the compulsion to take any job that was introduced under Thatcher?

Indeed, the idea that 'back in my day, people would go out and hunt down work' sounds almost exactly like Tebbit's 'on his bike' speech, which supposedly was aimed at the working class during the Thatcher era for not doing that.

But remind us, Noel, what were you doing when you were unemployed in Manchester during the Thatcher years?

"I used to play arcade games when I was on the dole in Manchester," Gallagher continued. "Playing Defender."

Presumably he thought that if you got to level 4 of Asteroids there was a guaranteed job in it?

And on his own blog, Noel paints a picture of his life in 1980s Manchester that doesn't quite sound like a man obsessed with finding work:

Woke up yesterday with a naughty hangover. Felt like a dead shit. It was still raining. What the fuck? Didn't do much. Stared out the window watching the rain. Reminded me of being on the dole back home in Manchester in the '80s.

Well, yes, apart from that obsession with finding work, eh, Noel?

Perhaps Noel should read what this chap has to say, for a slightly-less rose-tinted view of what Thatcher really meant for the working class:

"I remember the 70s constantly being winter in Manchester and the Irish community in Manchester closing ranks because of the IRA bombings in Birmingham and Manchester, and you know the bin-workers' strike, all wrapped up in it... They were violent times. Violence at home and violence at football matches."
[...]
One of his strongest memories is collecting the dole every week with his dad and seeing his friends there, too. "That was the Maggie Thatcher age - everyone was there with their dad."

That was Noel Gallagher talking to the Guardian in 2008.

To be fair, most of Noel's blether is fuelled by a clear total ignorance of what the world is like beyond his cocktail circuit. He defends sending his kids to private school by pointing to the local education system's problems:

There were riot police outside our local school the other morning. Turns out there’d been a stabbing. Rival gangs. We shouldn’t need riot police at schools. This is Maida Vale. This isn’t Handsworth or Tottenham, do you know what I mean?

Noel, sweetheart, have you heard of Philip Lawrence? Do you know where his school, the school he was stabbed outside, was? You moved to the site of one of the most horrible school stabbing incidents in recent British history, and are surprised that there is violence in local schools?

Gallagher's other defence for taking his children out the state system is also a bit alarming:

‘I don’t want them coming home speaking like Ali G.'

I'm not sure Noel is clever enough to come up with a coded way of saying 'I don't want my kids to come home speaking like they're black children', which means we could be generous and assume that he's really, really worried about correct grammar and received pronunciation. That would be it, right?

If one good thing can come out of this, perhaps it will be that the NME will finally stop pretending that Gallagher is any more relevant or interesting than Jagger, Collins or Lydon. Or any different to them.

Ed Vaizey: Never mind the words, listen to the tune

David Cameron, you'll recall, claims to have been a big fan of The Smiths. Nobody ever did get to the bottom of how he so enjoyed songs apparently at total odds with his worldview.

Now, shadow arts minister Ed Vaizey turns out to be a big fan of The Specials. The Guardian reports:

his pop tastes are rooted in the late 1970s and early 80s (he is a fan of the Specials).

A big fan of The Specials? And yet, also, a big fan of Thatcher:

What does Vaizey make of Thatcher's record on the arts? "She believed in greater involvement of private ­donors," he says. "And if you have frank conversations [behind] closed doors, a lot of people in arts organisations will say that a lot of what Thatcher did was actually quite good, in making them go out to the marketplace and raise money."

Who would those people be, exactly? Presumably the ones whose jobs are in the corporate sponsorship, which is a bit like people who make stab vests saying that knife crime isn't all bad.

Still: The Specials and Thatcher. How can you extract value from both?

Madonna off the rails

Back at the end of the 80s, the now-very-defunct Blitz magazine ran a picture where Madonna's head was cut in half and one side of Thatcher's stuck in its place.

It looks a little like this might have been an actual photograph rather than a photomanipulation, as Madonna really does seem to be turning into Thatcher. She even now shares a boogerman with Thatch, in the shape of Ken Livingstone:

"Will Ken Livingstone get my vote? No. The traffic in London is worse than ever now. All Red Ken wants is roadworks going on everywhere."

Yes. She called him Red Ken. Like it was 1983. I was half-expecting to hear some praise for the work of the London Residuary Body.

She doesn't say if she'd vote for the casually racist and homophobic human lampoon Boris Johnson, although we know she wouldn't. Nor would she vote for Red Ken, even if she agreed with him. What with being an American citizen and all.

The reason for all her ire at Red Ken? Besides Red Robbo and Scargill being off the scene when she needs some good socialist-kicking? Apparently it's London transport policy:

The singer, who has a London home, said traffic was worse than ever in an interview with Q magazine.

Ah. It's because transport is bad, and not because Madge has to fork out for the congestion charge, then. She also claims that the Tube isn't usable - as if she'd really love to be hopping on the underground but simply can't stand the delays. When did anyone ever see Madonna on the Tube? How would she know it's so bad?

Madonna then outlines her big idea:

"I would make it so that young musicians, aspiring musicians wouldn't have to pay the congestion charge or pay taxes."

Yes, that'd work. Never mind the fact that musicians at the start of their career will be broke, travelling by public transport and not earning and not paying taxes anyway, let's create a system where people claiming they're following one form of career path. Why should musicians be exempt and not, say, potential doctors, or nurses, or bus drivers?

And if aspiring musicians are to be left out of the taxation pot, would successful musicians therefore pay a higher rate of taxation to acknowledge the support the state has provided for them in helping them achieve success? Is Madonna happy to have her tax rate increased to pay for the plans?

Ed Balls hails The Spice Girls as the way ahead

Casting around for an example of great female role models, Ed Balls realises that Gordon Brown's cabinet offers not very much, so settles on The Spice Girls. Oh, and Thatcher.

We're not sure if we'd rather have our daughter turn out like Thatcher or Geri Halliwell. We really wouldn't want to have to make that choice.

Oh, really, John?

John Lydon doesn't like being accused of selling out by appearing on a video game:

"I have certainly, in 30 years, not once ever joined the establishment, or put out anything of inferior quality, just to part fools from their money," Lydon defended. "That's never been the way, and it never will be. We don't demand attention, we just do what we do. And oddly enough, that seems to be what everybody wants to copy."

This, of course, is the same Lydon who did Shark Attack for Channel 5, I'm A Celebrity for ITV and - of course - Judge Judy. Nothing of inferior quality there, then.

Lydon then bores on about how the band were politically obliged to ensure the quality of their work:

"One thing people got to understand is, the Sex Pistols started as a genuine band, from a working-class background, facing serious social and economic situations," he continued. "Massive unemployment, riots in the street, Margaret Thatcher in power — this was a serious time, so the songs relate directly to that."

Yes, that's right, John. The Sex Pistols songs relate directly to the horrors of Thatcher being in power.

Only you quit the band - "ever get the feeling you've been cheated" - onstage at the San Francisco Winterland on January 14th 1978. Thatcher didn't become prime minister until May 4th 1979. We've never bought the idea that the Pistols had a genuine political agenda, but if Lydon had been rattling at those in power, you think he'd be able to recall the name of the Prime Minister he was tilting at. The Sex Pistols formed under Harold Wilson; they split under Callaghan. Indeed, as the first reunion didn't come until the tail-end of the Major administration, the band never played a single note under Thatcher.

Robbie Williams is not dead, or from outside the UK

It's not often we'd find ourselves seriously thinking about supporting Robbie Williams in anything, but when he's up against Thatcher, you'd have to consider it.

This is The Sun's Greatest Living Briton thing (we're not sure 'competition' quite fits the event), which somehow has managed to come up with a shortlist of The Queen, Thatcher, Williams, McCartney and, erm, Julie Andrews. With that line-up, we should perhaps make it clear they're talking about Margaret Thatcher, and not Carol, or even Mark. It's interesting that the paper didn't feel comfortable about alienating the readers in the nations of the Kingdom by calling it 'Greatest Living Englishperson', but then went with an all-English shortlist anyway.

You might think that finding a way to justify a self-pitying, drug-and-drink sodden silly arse who prefers to hang out in LA than the UK being on the shortlist would prove a challenge. But the paper has managed to find a justification - he used to be patron of a charity. They even find a little boy to claim that he wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Williams:

“Robbie is the best because he’s helped to make me better and he’s helped lots of other children too — and his songs are great!”

So, did Williams meet with Rhys?

Erm, no:

“I’d like to meet Robbie and say hello."

You might ask why, if he's so great, he's the ex-patron of the charity.

On the other hand, Robbie Williams hasn't ever attempted to crush the right of working people to have collectively-bargained wage settlements, or flogged off the water companies. So he's not all bad.

Noel Gallagher has the lost faith

We seem to recall that, upon his election, Noel Gallagher rushed round for tea with Tony Blair. And didn't Noel once make a speech, tears in his eyes, about how Tony was the only hope for the country?

Noel's changed his mind a little bit:

"David Cameron is no different from Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown is no different from David Cameron.

"They're all cut from the cloth and it annoys me that the biggest political icon from the last 30 years has been Margaret Thatcher, someone who tried to destroy the working class...it freaks me out you know.

"So I don't really think there's anything left to vote for. That's why people don't vote.....why people would rather vote for celebrity talent show than would vote for politics."

Noel, everyone can change their mind - indeed, better to be flexible than locked into an entrenched position - but shouldn't you at least try and explain where you think Blair went wrong? It can't be the Iraq war, as - if memory serves - you were one of the loudest voices trying to shout down the anti-war movement, weren't you?

Gallagher criticised Mr Cameron for refusing to admit or deny using drugs while a schoolboy.

"To say no comment is typical of him and his party copping out.

"They wait to see what Tony Blair says...and then they move in behind and switch it and change a little bit."

"It's like a song writer who's eternally ripping off someone else's song and just changing the odd line a little."

You mean... like a band that... perhaps copies The Beatles, or throws John Lennon lyrics into their own... or whose... hang about... all going swirly...