The police don't listen to Lily Allen

Lily Allen's story about being stalked is enough to make anyone sit up and take notice:

“This guy came steaming in and I didn’t know who he was. I recoiled and he ripped the duvet off, calling me a ‘fucking bitch’ and yelling about where his dad is.”

The man had an object stuffed inside his jacket that Allen is convinced was a knife. She believes he was caught off-guard when he found she was not alone, and her friend was able to shove the man out of the house as she ran to check her children were safe. “There was this second outside my kids’ room when I was terrified to go in, in case of what I might find.”

I say make anyone sit up. The police - who were already aware that Allen was being stalked - were surprisingly relaxed:

The police told Allen the intruder was probably someone who had stumbled into the wrong flat after too much to drink. “For me, it was too much of a coincidence that the only night I had left the shutters up, this man came in. I believe he had been spending a lot of time out there in my garden, watching.”

Calling the police back the next day, Allen told them she thought the intruder could be the same man who had been threatening her. “But they were uncomfortable with the idea. Then I realised my handbag was missing and the change in atmosphere was palpable, it was like a sigh of relief: ‘now it’s burglary – we understand that’.”

Yeah. "The shutters". Lily Allen was living a life where she was having to lock herself in her own home behind metal shutters.

She'd had a bunch of letters that she'd previously passed to the police, which you might think would be useful evidence when prosecuting this sort of crime:

“I wrote to the police and asked why they weren’t using these letters going back to 2009, and then I got a short note saying they had been destroyed ‘according to police protocol’. No apology, no explanation.”

Allen - as she points out - is neither low-profile, not backwards at coming forwards. And she knows the man who tormented her needed help, not punishment. Eventually, the stalker was brought to trial. The uncomfortable question is: what would have happened if it hadn't been Lily Allen? Someone without the strength to push through a system which appears to just be confused by the nature of the crime it's being asked to investigate.

Ashanti gets cross-examined by her own stalker

In a 'oh, Justice, you have some explaining to do' event, somehow the New York courts allowed Ashanti to wind up being cross-examined by a man already convicted of stalking of her in a trial to see if he was violating the order of protection put in place after that conviction.

So: in order to get the courts to uphold the rules stopping another person from contacting you, the courts decide to give that person a chance to ask you questions under oath in an open court room.

Oh, Justice. You have some explaining to do.

If loving Madonna is wrong, then lock up the whole world

Ex-fireman Robert Linhart is obsessed to the point of arrest with Madonna:

According to the BBC, retired fireman Robert Linhart was arrested on Tuesday while spray-painting messages on the pavement to the singer asking to meet her.

One read: "M, the universe brought us together in 1992 and again this year in Prague. Meet me please."

It would be puzzlingly heartwarming were it not for the massive icepick he was carrying with him in the car.

His defence appears to be "she's Madonna" - which didn't work for Robbie Williams and probably won't work here:

His lawyer, Cheryl Bader, defended his actions telling the New York Daily News: "There was no threatening conduct. My understanding is it's not a crime to adore Madonna. If it were, the court would be a lot more crowded."

Probably not very crowded; like glue-sniffing, there was a lot of it about in the 1980s but most people now view those minor infractions as one of the silly things you do before you grow up, surely?

Gordon in the morning: Insulting your intelligence, even on the holidays

To be fair, it does feel credible to suggest that Madonna's response to any problem would be to buy houses until the problem goes away, but it's shameful that The Sun is running a story about her "plans" for a Malawi house without even the slightest suggestion that they're doing their bit as part of a propaganda war:

[T]he chart-topper has instructed her architects to draw up plans for a home in the African country, as she believes adopted son DAVID BANDA would benefit from a connection to his birthplace.

Do you think, Madonna?

Talking of irony, does Gordon really think the best way to illustrate a piece about Geri Halliwell's stalker and how they hang about outside her house all day, invading her privacy and straining to just get a glimpse of her, is by running a long-lens paparazzi snap of Halliwell?

3AM Girls: In no way part of an attempt to market a TV show

The story of Simon Cowell being bugged and followed is in no way an attempt to add drama to the X Factor, oh no:

The newly-single X Factor mogul was "completely freaked out" after a sophisticated tracking device was found attached magnetically to the undercarriage of his flash Bentley Continental.

That this story has turned up on the soft shores of 3AM rather than what remains of the Mirror's news pages makes it in no way any the less credible:

He gets easily bugged by out-of-tune warblings on the X Factor, but the tables have been turned on Simon Cowell - he is being bugged by a Secret Service-style stalker.

Does that actually make any sense?

Our source tells us: "Simon is completely freaked out by this. He can't believe someone has gone to so much trouble and expense to monitor his every movement. It's extremely sinister.

"He was aware that someone, dressed in motorbike leathers and a crash helmet, kept turning up a few minutes after he went every-where. He couldn't work out how that person knew his movements."

Hang about - a person in motorbike gear and a helmet turning up at inappropriate moments? I think I might be able to help you, Simon:



So, let's see: someone has managed to somehow attach an expensive, mysterious tracking device to Cowell's car, without him realising and then - having been so secretive - turns up everywhere that Cowell goes dressed in a B-movie outfit that makes them stand out so much that he keeps spotting them. That's in no way inconsistent at all.

Zutons otherwise engaged

Dave McCabe out the Zutons is setting his phone to vibrate:

"She's an older lady," McCabe told the Daily Star. "In her late 40s, I think - and she won't leave me alone.

"She’s got my mobile number and keeps sending me pictures of herself with her tits out."

Meanwhile, somewhere in the country, a couple are reunited after one of them has spent some time on a business trip. She is blanching.

-"o-nine-seven- three?"
-"Yes, three. Not eight. I thought it was funny I didn't hear from you while I was away. Did you send me any interesting texts?... Honey? Are you alright?"

Chester Bennington's stalker inside

The sad detail in reports of the Chester Bennington's stalker being sentenced is that she's being given mental health care rather than punishment. Devon Townsend has sixty days to surrender herself to a low-security prison (although we can't help wondering why someone with mental health issues is being told to leave them for a couple of months - perhaps they're hoping she'll wean herself off Linkin Park first?)

Missy Elliott apparently stalked by John Culshaw

We're read Missy Elliott's account of how she ended up being arrested because she had a stalker, but still don't quite get it:

"I've been put in handcuffs. I had a stalker who was impersonating me.

"He was making threats to people over the radio and they thought it was me.

"Somebody put a warrant out, so I had to turn myself in. They found out it was the stalker, but I still ended up getting in trouble."

But why would a stalker go on the radio to threaten people? And how good an impressionist would he have had to have been? And what show would allow someone - even if they thought it was a pop star - to issue threats on air? It's all very confusing.

We did wonder if "the stalker who made all the threats" was like the bad boys who did things and ran away when I was little?

Someone in need of a better hobby

Devon Townsend has pleaded guilty to charges relating to her stalking of Chester Bennington. Apparently, Townsend had access to US government computers and used that to monitor Bennington's movements. (Physical, rather than bowel, we think, although who knows what information the White House is gathering these days?)

Townsend claims:

"On at least one occasion, knowing that Chester Bennington was in Arizona, I travelled to Arizona solely for the purpose of trying to see him. While I was there, I monitored Chester Bennington's voicemails as a means of trying to locate where he might be eating dinner or lunch."

Townsend also used privileged information in order to threaten Bennington's wife Talinda.

Leaving aside the question of why on earth anyone would put effort into stalking Bennington, there's the wider question of what this shows about the state of US government information security. There's a massive slate of warnings on the website of Townsend's employers, Sandia National Labs, making all kinds of deathly threats about what would happen if anyone misuses their IT systems. That appears to be as much as they bother about in the way of security, though, if quite marginal employees can use their kit to gain access to ways into people's voicemail. You might wonder what a branch of the Department of Energy would need with access to such information. You might wonder what anyone needs with that level of access, and, if it is required, why more care isn't taken with it.

Branch weeds out stalker

Michelle Branch has had her own stalker arrested, after spotting him at her gig:

`Wait a second. There's a guy in the audience — striped shirt and glasses — can somebody check him out?'

Dominick Giordano was breaching a restraining order by attending the gig. The police quickly made themselves involved:

"He's been to her last several shows, but it caught her completely off-guard that he was in Sheboygan," said Lt. Jeff Johnston of the Sheboygan Police.

It probably threw everyone off-guard that anybody was in Sheboygan, to be honest.

What a terrible misunderstanding

It turns out that that bloke who's accused of stalking Britney wasn't. It was all a bit of a mix up. Indeed, why would he have been stalking - he's famous.