Slightly confused...

... by what nature is this OK memorial cash-in "official"?

Melanie Phillips apparently works in an Arkansas supermarket

It must be. For why else would the Elton John, David Furnish and child copy of OK have been hidden behind a Family Shield "to protect young shoppers"?

Gordon in the morning: Elton John makes a few quid

While I'm sure Rupert and James Murdoch will be delighted to see Gordon giving masses of free advertising to Richard Desmond's print empire this morning, why on earth has Elton John flogged his kid to Ok!? I know a new father has things to buy, but is John really so short of a few quid that he needs to do this to keep the family in nappies and romper suits?

Doing well from Jackson's death

Obviously, people flogging off 'souvenir' issues of their magazines are doing nicely from the timely departure of Michael Jackson - in the sense of filling up the quiet summer lull. Leading the pack has been OK!, whose 'tribute' issue led with a photo of Jacko on a gurney, minutes from death, that Richard Desmond paid thousands and thousands for.

Scrabbling about throwing cash so you can reward photographers who imposed themselves on a dying man. That's quite a way of paying tribute, Desmond.

You'll recall that one of Desmond's other publications, the Daily Express, worked itself into quite a froth when Channel 4 ran a documentary which featured photographs taken during Diana's dying moments:

STOP THIS DISGUSTING INSULT TO DYING DIANA

Presumably it's somehow not disgusting when it's Jackson, for some reason.

Also doing rather nicely out of Jackson's death - British Airways. They're trilling delightedly to TMZ about how much cash they're making off the back of a dead man:

A rep from British Airways tells us there has been a "huge influx" of reservations in the last few days by people from England trying to make their way to the memorial. The rep says people are "flying as close to L.A. as they can and then taking connecting flights."

In addition to non-stop and direct flights to L.A., flights from Heathrow to San Francisco and from Heathrow to Denver are almost full.

The rep says they expect all flights -- direct and indirect -- to be sold out by the end of the day.

Not, of course, that they're rolling about in piles of cash and giggling, or anything.

Lily Allen is upset with the New York Times

In fact, she believes that:

The New York Time are cheap skanks

So cheap, there's only a single Time, it seems.

Lily is annoyed that the New York Times syndicated the photos it took of her for a piece in the magazine.

There's a lot of scene-setting in Allen's complaint. An awful lot. Here's a quick canter through what you have to wade past:

So, something has been really bugging me [...] Ambrosia my press agent and friend called me very excited [...] the cover of their Arts section. [...] goes without saying The New York Times is an incredibly prestigious publication [...] would fly in from New York, hang out at my house [...] feel more relaxed and then we’d go out for dinner after [...] she was called Milena and she [...] showed her round [...] an ISSA patterned all in one, louboutins, hoop earrings [...] got out her Dictaphone [...] interview for an hour, hour and a half [...] this restaurant called the Wolsley [...] a bottle of wine I wasn’t really drinking at the time [...] I decided to let my barriers down [...] Wiener Schnitzel [...] Duck [...] shared a pickled cucumber salad thing [...] left Milena with my friend Louis [...] she and Louis seemed to get along [...] my email address and contact details [...] all she need do is ask, and I bid them both farewell [...] a little awkward about her paying for dinner, but she insisted [...] a photographer whose name escapes me came round to the house to take a picture to accompany the NYT piece, [...] piece was so intimate and the biggest part of the interview had been conducted at my house [...] allow photographers into my home [...] special circumstances and after all TNYT is one of the most respected news publications in the world. [...] article came out [...] a really nice piece with a picture of me sat on my sofa, on the cover of the arts section. [...] I saw Milena was in New York [...] Bowery Ballroom and had an after party [...] I thanked her for the article as it was very complimentary ,it’s not often people write nice things about me.

So, with all that detail, you might be wondering what it is that Milena did to her. Did she make up a story that Lily doesn't have a plug and fresh in her bathroom? Did she double-dip the shared pickled cucumber?

Now I want to be clear, this has nothing to do with Milena she is a reporter and that is all. The reason what I’m about to tell you is so hurtful is because I had a really nice time with her and I feel that I will only ever feel badly about that day in London from now on .

Yes, after wading through a small novel about the interview, it turns out that the complaint is actually about the photographs. Still, I guess it's important for Lily to mention a couple of times that the New York Times is a prestigious newspaper which put her on the prestigious front page of its very, very prestigious arts supplement which is known around the world for its prestigiousness.

The problem is that New York Times syndicated the photos and they appeared in OK. Because Lily never signed a contract with the company to say they couldn't.

She seems to think that by selling photographs they had obtained openly and fairly, the New York Times has done something wrong - quoting their response:

I am sorry to say that we have no record or recollection of your client or her representatives ever requesting any restriction on our exploitation of the photographs. Indeed, it is not our general policy to accede to such restrictions, so it is certainly not something we would have agreed to without a written agreement confirming such arrangement.

As the copyright owner of thousands of photographs, a significant part of our business, like most news organizations, is the syndication of photos to third parties. This is very standard in the news business and I'm sorry that it comes as a surprise to your client. Under the circumstances, we are unable to provide you with the assurances you have requested.

I do hope, however, that our correspondence sheds some light on this issue for your client's future arrangements.

Nobody would want their photos to appear in OK unexpectedly, but Allen - or rather, her press agent - appears to not have understood the way things work. She also doesn't seem to have understood the response from the New York Times, either:

Uuuuurrggh , so patronizing, and gross. The world has become a dark place when The New York Times considers OK magazine to be “the news business”. Sorry if that made for tedious reading but, I think the NYT have behaved really badly and I wanted to vent .

The Times doesn't say OK is in the news business - it says that selling on photos is common in the news business. Which is true.

It's unfortunate that OK then used the pictures to imply that Allen had spoken to them - that is wrong (and actions for which OK have apparently apologised to Allen). But selling on of photos is usual (that's how picture libraries function, Lily) and if you don't want it to happen, you make that clear before the shoot. To try and imply some sort of unfairness after the fact is like complaining that someone stole your purse when you left it on the bar while you went to the toilet - however sympathetic an observer might be, you left yourself wide open.

But you know what really hurts Allen?

It’s one thing posing for a picture fro TNYT and wholly another letting OK into your house, and I didn’t even get paid ☹

You'd really think the Daily Telegraph had better things to do

But, apparently, not:

Katy Perry admits she has kissed a girl - and liked it

Katy Perry, the Californian chart-topping musician, has revealed she really did kiss a girl, at the age of 19 - and liked it.

Yes, they really did think it was worth mentioning both as a headline and a standfirst. And, indeed, at all. Teenage girl kisses another teenage girl? Is that really a news story in any sense of the word?

To make it worse, the story has been lifted from OK! No wonder the Barclay Brothers hide away on their Channel Islands fortress; wouldn't you be ashamed to mingle in public with people if you'd reduced a once proud newspaper to running stuff like this?

In an interview with OK! magazine, Perry was asked if she really had kissed a girl.

She replied: "Of course. I think I was 19. I kissed a girl and it was great."

She said it went no further and she did not write the song about that one experience or a particular person.

She said: "Growing up I had a friend who, looking back, I think I had an obsessive little crush on her.

"I never kissed her but she was very beautiful and she was like a ballerina and I wanted to copy everything she did. But I think that was kind of the extent of it."

So, Katy, you think you were 19, and you think "that was the extent of it"? Are you telling us you can't be certain that you didn't then get down to some mutual masturbation or indulge in a spot of oral? "I think I might only have kissed her, but this was nearly four years ago and so I can only remember it in just enough detail to pad out another article with coy references to lipstick lesbianism..."

Fancy not being able to remember. It's almost as if she wasn't even there when it happened. Oh... hang on....

News of the World mocks Kerry, readers

The News of the World relishes sticking the boot into Katona this morning. Noting that OK! decided to "pass" on paying for one of Katona's kids' christenings, the paper carries a spoof report.

The problem is, why they clearly see it as a joke at the expense of Katona's slide down the social scale, it looks more like Metropolitan sophisticates scoffing at the provincial poor:

Despite the absence of a fat OK! cheque, gorgeous Kerry and her handsome husband Mark Croft handpicked a charming location—the Warrington suburb of Padgate.

It's arguable whether anyone should shed any tears for Katona, who has lived her life in a way that effectively means this is her job; but if I was editing a paper which relied for customers on the sort of people who have their family gatherings in places like the Bayleaf Restaurant, I'd think twice before adopting a condescending tone:

This smart eaterie— possibly more familiar to the cognescenti under its onetime title Smithys bowling club — boasts half an acre of land, complete with upended fridge, oil drums and decorative bin bags.

The Sunday Telegraph might get away with this sort of thing, but for the News of the World, it's basically pissing on your own readers - a readership who are being courted with an expensive magazine relaunch this week. That's gone with Kelly Osbourne as cover girl; if you know your readers will accept the idea that Kelly is "Fabulous", how do you square that with suggesting that a pub in Padgate is somehow one of the lower circle of hell?

Mind you, the paper is also running the Heath Ledger cocaine video on its website, so perhaps it just doesn't care.

Britn€¥ $p£ar$

The charming world of the celebrity watcher: According to CNN, never mind the subprime collapse, if Britney sorts her head out, the economy is never going to recover.

Magazine newstand sales in the US increased 1% in the first half of 2007 - might not sound much, but since nobody is meant to be buying old media any more, a rise at all is quite something. And virtually the whole of the increase is down to the celeb rag titles:

"The increase is almost entirely attributable to the growth of the celebrity magazine," said John Harrington, who runs industry consulting agency Harrington Associates.

Any time a magazine can boost newsstand sales past its average, the revenue is booked nearly entirely as profit, Harrington said: "People prints 2.5 million copies and sells about an average of 1.5 million. If they have an issue that sells 2 million, the extra half million goes to the bottom line."

OK!, the sibling of our own OK, is especially excited at the prospects of making a few bob off the mental illness of a young woman:

"An editor's dream is to have a real-life soap opera unraveling in front of you, and Britney provides that every week," said Sarah Ivens, OK!'s U.S. editor. The magazine has a 10-person team in Los Angeles devoted to Spears coverage. "We're on constant Britney alert."

She wouldn't disclose the costs to the magazine, saying only that Spears has been "amazing" for OK!'s business. Publisher Tom Morrisy said Spears drives newsstand sales and helped the magazine's ad revenue more than double to $51 million in 2007. OK! expects to turn a profit in 2008, three years after breaking into the market.

Britney has been on the cover of OK! 54 times. It's published 103 issues so far.

Clearly, if all the attention pushes her over the edge, OK will be upset - but the three weeks of memorial issue sales will, doubtless, help.

Cerys, now is the time to worry

We understand that some of Cerys Matthews' friends and family are concerned - worried, indeed, enough to contact the tabloids - that she might be heading for some sort of disaster. They're waiting for a wake-up call.

Here it is: You know you're in trouble when Kerry Katona is offering advice on how to sort out your life.

We haven't seen the issue of OK where Kerry gives some pointers to Cerys, but we imagine it'll include fully briefing your press person on what drugs you're taking so he doesn't look a lemon when he tells the papers you've never taken cocaine, and getting a nice little job pushing stuff on the telly. But not Iceland, obviously - that's Kerry's gig, and she'll protect it with fighting, if need be.

We notice from the cover of OK, by the way, that it's landed the "world exclusive" on the sex of Katona's latest spawnage. Bet the Washington Post and Der Speigel are mad as hell at missing out on that one.

Desmond sues Heat over Spears

Richard Desmond's OK magazine is launching a legal against Heat over chunks of an interview with Jamie Lynn Spears they maintain was lifted from their publication. It's about pride, rather than money:

"OK! magazine has established its reputation in the UK, the USA and throughout the world by the relationship of trust it builds with celebrities," said OK!'s group editorial director, Paul Ashford.

"We take pride in handling their stories and pictures in a positive and responsible way. We go to all possible lengths within the law to protect these exclusives and safeguard the interests of the celebrities and of our own readers."

Ah, yes. OK should be justly proud of its positive and responsible handling of stories and photos.

This would be the same OIK Magazine whose "positive and responsible" outing of a person attending Alcoholics Anonymous was this described by the Press Complaints Commission:

It was clear that the magazine had published private information about the complainant. Taken together, the photograph, its caption, and the information in the article constituted intrusive material about her attendance at an AA meeting. The fact of her treatment was not in the public domain, and there was no public interest reason for publishing references to it without her consent.
The defence advanced by the magazine – that there was no breach of the Code because readers might think the complainant was at the meeting only to provide moral support – was clearly without merit. The fact was that the magazine had stated that she had attended the meeting and published a photograph of her outside it. It did not know whether she had been there for treatment herself, and took no care in its presentation of the material to avoid a possible intrusion into her privacy. This was reckless in the circumstances, as shown by the subsequent revelation that she had indeed been at the clinic for treatment. It was also regrettable that the magazine had not engaged with the complainant’s solicitor when a complaint was made directly to the publication.

Yes. Breaching someone's privacy when they're vulnerable, making up spurious justifications and ignoring their victim when they try to seek an apology. You can see why OK would be rushing to court to protect their reputation for "positive and responsible" handling of stories, can't you?

Woman's valiant struggle

At long last, someone has stepped forward to break the duopoly on celebrity weddings. Jackie Hatton, editor of Woman, pants to the UK Press Gazette of her vital blow for the freedom of the press:

“As far as I’m aware it’s a first for the mainstream woman’s market. Weddings have been the province of the Hellos and OKs of this world, and we relaunched last year to bring the title bang up-to-date and embrace the market trends. Once you start looking at celebrity and the ways that celebrity is covered across the media, the big attention grabbers are the big events – the births, the weddings, and the engagement parties.”

She's put her entire operation on standby to turnaround the vital story as quickly as is possible:

A team of 10 editorial staff worked to produce the coverage within 24 hours of the ceremony.

And who is the latter-day Princess Grace whose nuptials have been snatched from under the very nose of OK and Hello!?

Erm, Colleen Nolan.

Still, Hello must be annoyed at losing a perfectly serviceable story it could have used on a half-page somewhere near the back. And how, exactly, did Woman secure this scoop?

Erm, Colleen is a columnist for the magazine.

Oh.

Richard Desmond: all heart

Kerry Katona's desperate rush to share her life with the gossip rags has had a nasty bump this week, with OK! Magazine hitting the streets with a front page strapline that looks a little grim in light of her miscarriage:

Oh No! I'm pregnant again

Of course, the loss of the foetus between the issue going to press and reaching the newsagents is beyond anyone's control (although running a story of a pregnancy that has only just been confirmed, and only six weeks in, is always going to be a bit of a risk).

What's surprising, and incredibly tacky, is that Northern & Shell let the adverts for this issue to go ahead during tonight's Coronation Street. Not pulling the issue is understandable, but to trumpet a pregnancy that's failed in front of eight million people seems the height of poor taste.

Britney's vomit - 25p a heave

It's one thing to debase yourself so badly even a publication which would fawn over Pol Pot (in return for an exclusive) describes you a bit of a mess; how much worse that the record of your public meltdown is being sold at a loss-leading 25p. Truly, Britney Spears has hit the bottom.

Britney Spears: career fears

We're not entirely sure when people say "this whole puking over herself during a photoshoot could harm Britney's career" what they actually mean - surely the real problem for Britney's career is that she's not actually managed to release a proper album for nearly four years. Indeed, it's actually arguable that she doesn't have a career at the moment, and if she does, it would probably be "being photographed in a messed-up state".

This is, of course, the OK magazine shoot. Someone who was either there, or is a composite of people who were, tells The Sun, or a website they've read:

Britney appeared to be out of her mind. She went to the toilet and when she came back she couldn’t continue with the interview.

“Her eyes were rolling back, she was talking nonsense. She ate some food and vomited over her Gucci dress. She was a mess.

Still, pictures of Britney Spears being sick will be good news for aficionados of vomit fetish photos. But how screwed up would you have to be that even OK would notice you're talking useless rubbish?

“They paint a frightening picture and could kill her career. She looked like a young COURTNEY LOVE.”

Now, we don't think this could be right - the young Courtney Love was a brilliant force of nature; just ask Julian Cope. We think they mean she looks like an old Courtney Love.

The handbasket to hell is leaving platform one

Has it really come to this?

Wool Blend Single Breasted 2 Button Black Stripe iPod suit
£149.00

Timeless tailoring meets the latest innovations in fabric technology with our new iPod suit. A strategically placed iPod pocket houses the connector and prevents bulges, while control buttons on the inner lapel allow the wearer to operate the iPod without touching the main controls. Carefully placed loops along the lapel even help to conceal the earphone wires. So plug in, turn up your tunes and look your best, the iPod suit is the perfect choice for the modern man on the move

This, by the way, is Marks and Spencer.

And if clothes designed to save you the effort of having to press a button on an mp3 player isn't enough to suggest that evolution is now probably hurtling back towards the primordial soup, we also have to bring the OK Magazine's Most Influential list to your attention.

There's the surprising news that Katie Holmes has been nominated - since it's apparent that she doesn't even control her own toilet schedule, it's possible a harassed word-donkey on OK misheard the job as coming up with the most celebrity influenced of the year.

That interpretation is supported by the appearance of Simon Cowell - surely the only original thing he's done is to give Piers Morgan a job?

But the point at which a wretched idea really has us retching is this bit:

The 10-month-old daughter of the late Anna Nicole Smith, Dannielynn Hope, was also mentioned as a "survivor", due to being at the centre of "Hollywood's most controversial tragedies".

Since 10 month old children aren't especially influenced by events, and can't really do much more than suckle, puke and poop, we're genuinely at a loss to understand what it is that Dannielynn has done that counts as "influential". Unless OK is merely praising her dignified silence in the face of press speculation - and that, surely, is the last thing the magazine would want to encourage.