Re: our gig at Deptford Abyss - who the hell does Matt Groening think it is?

Amusingly, in amidst the first wave of Simpsons movie promotion comes the gem that Danny Elfman nearly refused to write the theme tune for the series because - in his rock critic past - Matt Groening had taken the piss out of Oingo Boingo:

"I used to be a rock critic many years ago. I once saw Oingo Boingo and I gave them a bad review. I outraged Danny Elfman so much that he actually wrote a letter to the editor of the paper.

"But when I did The Simpsons I wanted Elfman to do the score. And I thought 'He will never remember' - and he remembered. He has forgiven me now."

To be fair, if Elfman turned down work from everyone who had snickered at Oingo Boingo, he'd be left with a very small pool of potential employment.

Prince driven off The Simpsons

It had all been set up - the sketches drawn, the script prepared, the publicity machine ready to roll. The Prince turned up to record his cameo in The Simpsons and said 'actually, I've got a better script here. And it's written by my chauffeur.'

So Prince won't be appearing in The Simpsons now:

[Matt] Groening tells the New York Daily News, "Prince wanted to do the show, so we wrote him a script. It didn't work out, because his chauffeur had written a script, too, and Prince wanted to use that one."

So, luckily, they never had to have the "how come my character is shorter than Lisa?" talk, either.

The Simpsons are going to All Tomorrow's Parties

Or, at least, Matt Groening is.