Twittergem: EmSquared

Perfect ragout from Natalie Imbruglia's BBC interview from @emalyse:

"Brian Eno is someone that you don't want to sound stupid in front of, & everything he said, I was just like, 'Wow'. "

Imbruglia campaigns against fistula

Natalie Imbruglia's call for the UN to do more about fistula is noteworthy in itself.

It's not enough for the Associated Press, though, which feels the need to somehow shunt one of her songs into the story:

In her most famous song, "Torn," Natalie Imbruglia sings of loneliness and shame.

They are feelings the Australian pop star is hoping to spare hundreds of thousands of women suffering with fistula.

If you had to make a weak link between a song and a medical condition, could there be any more ill-advised idea than to unite Torn and fistula?

Chris Martin regrets a gift

Chris Martin is kicking himself, as he's given Natalie Imbruglia 'the best Coldplay song ever'.

He doesn't say how he took it off Starsailor first.

Oh, hang about, he's serious:

"A bit annoyingly we've given her the best Coldplay song of all time," Martin joked to Heraldsun.com.au. "But because we're off-cycle we can't do it ourselves."

He added: "Half of me wishes we still had it. But she sounds brilliant on it. I think she has a very unique talent and an incredibly unique voice."

Has anyone explained to Chris that it's possible for there to be more than one interpretation of the same song? Perhaps somebody should. They might also mention that you can do more than one interpretation of lots of different songs, too.

Darkness at 3AM: Gayle blows on

The nation owes a huge apology to Michelle Gayle who was charm itself at the Eurovision heats, and somehow lost out to a right old clunker. The 3AM Girls aren't ones for compassion, though, laying into Gayle's plans for a best of:

A pal said: "She thinks everyone will go crazy for her album." Hmm, greatest hits? We can't remember any of her hits!

They might have a point about the over-optimistic hopes, but it's still a little unfair. What about Sweetness? And... um... all the others.

Elsewhere, a romance is barked up between Natalie Imbruglia and Sam Branson, who is described as a "model" because "being Richard Branson's son" is a difficult career category to capture on census data:

They were seen snogging at the Kensington Roof Gardens, venue for his exclusive £100,000 ski-themed bash to celebrate him leaving on an Arctic expedition. A reveller told us: "They are pretty besotted with each other and Nat is even talking about meeting him in the Arctic."

You throw a hundred grand party to celebrate going on holiday. Modelling must pay really well.

We love the idea that Nat is supposedly going to pop up and see him in the Arctic - presumably she's busily checking the EasyJet schedules right now to see if she can get a cheap flight there.

Pop stars campaign update

If you're running a campaign in the Thames Valley, you need all the support you can muster. And that would seem to suggest you need a 90s semi-credible popstar on board.

Hot on the heels of Natalie Imbruglia throwing her weight behind attempts to keep Windsor Fire Station open overnight comes Danny Goffey calling for Stanton St John Post Office to be kept open:

Mr Goffey, 34, who grew up in neighbouring Forest Hill, said: "I used to buy sweets and cigarettes there and I want my family to be able to continue that tradition.

"I think it is definitely very important for the Post Office to stay, so people can cycle or walk there without having to go into town."

It takes the special intervention of a popstar to make a strong case for a shop to remain in business so his kids can buy fags there, doesn't it?

Ditto strips again

Over on the Guardian Music Blog, she suggests that Beth Ditto is the Natalie Imbruglia of indie.

That's really unfair to Imbruglia.

Seriously, Sullivan suggests that The Gossip is, effectively, just Beth Ditto, and Beth Ditto is, pretty much, Standing In The Way Of Control and that's it, as Imbruglia's career might be summarised as "Torn... erm..."

The trouble is, this feels a lot truer than it would have done this time last year. The Gossip seemed an excellent band; Ditto a frontwoman bursting with promise. 2007 should have been great for them.

Instead, we got precious little music, and an awful lot of Ditto using the song that everyone likes as a platform for confused public pronouncements, most of which were, roughly translated, "look at me". It worked, but with rapidly diminishing returns. Indeed, the repeat of her NME cover - she stripped naked again for Harper's Bazaar's Christmas issue - barely even raised a murmur. God, even we forgot about our intention to mention it for three weeks. (Yes, once again, she was making a point that larger women can be sexual; once again, it appears, only if they get airbrushed to buggery.)

We'd love to believe that The Gossip have another couple of cracking albums in them. But instead of hearing them, we get Beth chatting with Jonathan Ross; Beth telling Guardian readers how to avoid fear of flying. What is she doing writing an advice column? No, seriously: in the piece she claims that:

As with most phobias, the fear of flying does make some sense

- despite a phobia, by its very nature, being irrational; to be offering advice to people while not understanding the difference between a fear and a phobia is, at best, reckless.

Added to which, of course, Beth has already told Guardian readers about her experiences of turbulence - which left her "freaked out" despite "not usually being afraid of flying". Which makes it odd that this week she was a large number of tried-and-tested ways of copying with being afraid of flying.

Misplaced advice, nude magazine shoots, chatshow appearances trotting out the same anecdotes. She's not the indie Natalie Imbruglia; she's the indie Andy Millman.

Imbruglia detached

Natalie Imbruglia and Daniel Johns out of Silverchair are no longer married, they say in a disjointing statement:

“While we are very sad that our marriage has ended we want to make it clear that our parting is amicable and we remain friends."

“This mutual decision has not been taken lightly or quickly.

“However, our career demands and our lives in different parts of the world have brought us to the point where unfortunately this difficult decision was necessary for both of us.

“We have simply grown apart through not being able to spend enough time together.”

You might have thought the solution to that would be, perhaps, spending more time together rather than simply divorcing - especially if you like each other so very, very much - but perhaps I'm just a soppy old romantic.

Imbruglia urges Winehouse to take care

Most of us can only imagine what it's like to suddenly zoom from being obscure to getting toasted on both side of the Atlantic, sought after by everyone from the South Bank Show to the Grammy judges.

Natalie Imbruglia, like us, can only imagine it, but she's having a crack at putting herself in Amy Winehouse's shoes:

Talking about Winehouse's situation, Imbruglia said that she doesn’t believe Winehouse is “very comfortable with this whole fame thing.”

That's the sort of insight you only pick up with a couple of years on Neighbours, isn't it?

“I think she's an incredibly raw performer and a very real person and I don't think she's very comfortable with this whole fame thing. It shows,” Imbruglia told yahoo music.

"She's just got this gift you know, often people who are that talented struggle with all the attention and everything.

"I hope she doesn't quit. I've read interviews where she's spoken about just wanting to be a mum and that's scary to think, that she won't make records.""

Although, really, wouldn't it better for everyone if she found a lifestyle which didn't turn her into a smackhead victim rather than one that does?

Imbroogyloogy

Popjustice are deservedly quite sharp with the new Natalie Imbruglia video, a clip so uninspired as to embarrass a Lambrini advert. However, they do forget to mention one key point: It seems that Imrbuglia is so ashamed of the whole thing she's persuaded Kym Marsh to turn up and do her bit in it instead:

Natalie! NO! What are you doing?

Having had to resort to flogging face goober in '01, Natalie Imbruglia is reduced to marrying the singer out of Silverchair (the perpetually "not pictured Daniel Johns") in the hope that those seasonal credit card bills can be offset by a cheque from Hello.

We'll be kissing her ass

Luckily, someone in Australia gives Pink her due, as we offer you Kyla's review of the festival:
um, i'm not very good at this kind of stuff, but i'll give it a go... she was only on for about 45mins. and she wasn't even the closing act! it was so annoying, because they put shaggy as the closing act, and fucking hate shaggy. but the only thing i had to throw at him was my fairy wand, so i had to restrain myself...

ANYWAY, pink was great. easily the best there. i never even liked her before, but i am very converted now. she was wearing these mid-length spike heel boots and pin-stripe 3/4 cargo pants things that hung down way below her waist so that you could see her undies, which had 'FUCK' written on the back of them. and a white spaghetti string top under a black spaghetti string top, and then a pleather jacket that she took off about half way through the performance. i don't really know any of her songs that well, so i don't know what she played except for "family portrait" (introduced it as being "time to get all depressed now"), "get this party started" (is that what it's called?), "just like a pill", and "there you go" (a song she said she did a couple of years ago when she "had pink roots and was very pissed off").

oh, and she did a cover of four non blondes' "what's going on?"... um, she was kinda funny, too. well, she certainly amused me, anyway. she kept swearing and then correcting herself, because there were kids as young as five in the crowd... she was very energetic. she jumped around a lot, and at one stage i thought she was going to do a bowie and go down on her bassist's guitar, but sadly, she just laid down and let her bassist walk over her.. during the last song, she got down off the stage and in with the crowd. but i was about a metre too far back to make any contact with her. dammit... i seriously suck at this re-telling business, but she was just ace. i loved her. i want to be pink. that's all there is about it.

natalie imbruglia was also good. but the rest of the festival was pretty poor. mostly people wearing baggy clothes and pumping out what they dare to call "r&b". selwyn basically got up on stage and went, "oh, ah. yo yo yo. say, selllll-wyyyyyn..." a lot. he was just terrible. but pink was definitely great...

The Holly and the why me?

We lift our hat to the good people at The [Australian] Age for the headline on their Ms Valance piece - Holly's semi-nude baptism of fire (would a flaming baptism be worsened by semi-nudity? would full nudity be better?), and since we've got our hat off, we'll bang our head a little bit, too. Holly wonders why - when there are a lot of female singers out there - she always gets compared to Kylie. The Age does its best to fill her in: "They both cut their teeth in Neighbours, and since Kiss Kiss, Valance is close behind (if you will) in the race for the most celebrated posterior in pop. Both are also Melbourne girls.

But the two Ramsay Street alumni also owe a debt of gratitude to the same songwriter: Rob Davis, who has penned Valance's sumptuous new single Down Boy, was also responsible for Can't Get You Out Of My Head, the number-one hit that reignited Kylie's career last year. (Davis also co-wrote Groovejet (If This Ain't Love), which propelled Sophie Ellis Bextor into pops upper echelons.) And if truth be told, Can't Get You Out Of My Head and Down Boy (the video which has Valance getting comfortable on a large bed with a variety of male and female chums) do share a certain robotic sensuality. Shall we go on? Apparently, that isn't similarity enough for Vallance. "You can't compare what we do" she fires back, getting tetchy. Okay, maybe

Dannii might be a more apt yardstick, but even so...
Interestingly, Holly would rather be comapred to Natalie Imbruglia, and yet at the same time, she claims she's "only" going to have an eight year career in pop (so, that's about sixteen times as long as Natalie, then).

"The previous day, [Valance tells the Age] she was cornered in a London restaurant by a gang of children screaming, "Show us your bum!" The singer says she found the experience "pretty upsetting, to tell the truth".

When the Sunday People asked pretty much the same thing, though, she was happy to oblige and readers of the Sunday Tabloid were treated to a glossy poster of the results over their breakfasts yesterday. You may now wonder idly why a bunch of kids could presume to think that Holly would want to flash them.