Bad times for H

It's not just the Ian Watkins whose Twitter name is an underscore away from the Lostprophets' child-raping singer. Ian H Watkins out of pantomime, mostly, has also been targeted by people who can't tell the difference between Lostprophets and Steps.

Still, at least there are proper entertainment journalists who won't make that mistake, right?

Yes, that's the entertainment experts over at E!Online confusing the two Watkins.

The Mirror says that H is considering legal action over the error, although their actual quote:

When asked if the Steps singer was considering taking legal action, a spokesperson replied: "We're not sure at this point."

... doesn't quite say that so forcibly.

Still on the Steps

Wasn't Ian Watkins trying to move away from the curse of having been H a while back?

How is that going?

Yes, not only are the producers worried that "Ian Watkins" and his face don't have much brand recognition, but even after putting "H" into his name, they're still so nervous that they have to call him

Ian H Watkins H FROM STEPS

Let's hope ticket sales go well, otherwise they're going to have to add "You know, they did that Bee Gees cover, and he was on Big Brother" onto the posters.

Gordon in the morning: First discs

Lucky for Gordon, his copy of Q has turned up, giving him the chance to "report" on its contents. To mark 25 years of the magazine, they've asked people about their first single. Alex Turner attempted to make some sort of point:

"I think it was a cassette single and if it wasn't Let's Get Ready To Rhumble it might have been Edwyn Collins' A Girl Like You.

"The new generation have got it easy now. You'll ask some kid and because of downloading it will be Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures.

"I'd like to be able to say that but it probably was Let's Get Ready To Rhumble. Actually, it might have been Zig and Zag... "

It's an interesting reaction - in fact, you might ask with downloading and streaming, will Q be able to ask the same question in 25 years time in any meaningful way - but Gordon can't get past PJ And Duncan:

NEXT time Arctic Monkeys are asked to do a cover, they should go for one of the first songs frontman Alex Turner ever bought –

Alex confessed the song that saw Geordies Ant & Dec "wreck the mic" was an early feature in his music collection.

There's even a clunking headline:

Alex Turner, are you Geordie sure?

To which the answer is, er, no: clearly he's saying he isn't sure what his first single was, if you mean 'are you sure this was your first single'; or, yes, he's sure he bought it, if you meant that.

But then, writing a scoffing article about how embarrassing an early single purchase was when the subject was trying to illustrate that very idea seems confused enough without the headline.

Elsewhere, Gordon takes one for the team, writing a piece plugging his bosses' Sky Living Steps Reunion series:

STEPS have revealed one of the reasons for their bitter split ten years ago — BRITNEY SPEARS.

The band's Ian "H" Watkins hit it off with the singer when they supported her Baby One More Time tour in the US during 1999.

He began flying to venues in the star's private jet while his bandmates slummed it on a bus.

That doesn't really sound like Britney Spears was the "reason" for the split, but to be fair, if Gordon didn't stick Spears into the headline, the story would probably have got as many readers as the Steps series will have viewers.

Steps back, in amazement

Last month, Lisa Scott-Lee announced her plans to Wales On Sunday:

FORMER Steps star Lisa Scott-Lee has revealed she’s moved to Dubai and is writing a children’s novel.

Apparently this is what writing a novel looks like.

Yes, Steps have come back together to do a series for Sky Living - way to strike while the iron's hot, Sky Living; there are few cultural forces which resonate more strongly in 2011 than Steps.

Rumours that Sky execs looked at that comeback picture, asked 'which one is Rachel Stevens?' and then looked a bit queasy as they realised they'd made a terrible mistake, could not be confirmed at time of writing.

Funnily enough, it's only a month since Scott-Lee insisted that she had standards about what crappy reality TV project she'd get involved in:

Lisa, who starred in Dancing On Ice, said she’s also like to give Strictly Come Dancing a go. She said: “ It’s the best one. “I wouldn’t go into the jungle or do Big Brother.”

I'm not sure if a show about your old band sits at the Strictly end of the scale, but you have to wonder if she's only prepared to work on the quality end of the market, what was she doing on ITV's pretend-to-be-an-air-steward CelebAir?

Gordon in the morning: Taking the biscuit

Why on earth would Gordon be running a photo of Claire Richards from Steps? Because she's put on a tiny bit of weight, and has given Gordon a chance to poke fun at someone for the way they look.

Yes, with a face like his.

He's also not very good at it:

She has admitted in the past that her weight does YoYo and I know how she feels – I love those little beauties with the green foil wrappers too.

The fairly obscure chocolate biscuit joke was actually the build to the punchline - which Gordon had set up earlier on with this piece of obtuse logic:

CLAIRE RICHARDS from STEPS used to sing 5, 6, 7, 8.

But I reckon she’s been singing 5-4-3-2-1, tucking into the old school lunchbox chocolate biccie favourite.

Now, we're as fond as the next man of obscure and defunct products, and would - given the slightest opportunity - churn out half a page on Banjos ("Banjo/banjo/Banjo is brand-new/light and crispy wafers and thick milk chocolate too") but we wouldn't have thought that the typical Sun reader would remember the old Manfred Mann-themed biscuit. Still, don't let that get in the way of an excuse for running a picture of a not-even-overweight person, eh?

Elsewhere, Gordon gets a little too excited about the new Coldplay album. Actually, way too excited:

[T]he innocuous sleeve with an obscure codename was in fact holding the biggest album of the year — possibly the decade.

After some fawning, and then some more fawning, Smart delivers his uber-fawning conclusion:

They set out to make a musical equivalent of a work of art — and succeeded. They’ve come a long way since singing about the colour yellow.

Steady on, Gordon. Keep something in reserve for the next Kasabian album.

There was a time when your life did briefly intersect with that of someone quite famous, wasn't there?

We don't know what's more heartbreaking in this headline from the Glenrothes Gazette:

Pop star in Glenrothes

The implication that a pop star - any pop star - coming to Glenrothes is, of itself, an event; or the realisation that Faye Tozer is now so obscure her job title is considered more of a pull than her name.

It gets even more heartbreaking: Tozer is playing Eva Cassidy in a musical. Yes, that would be a rotating sound coming from that graveyard.

This band called Steps/ they all look like they're holiday reps

We like to think it's the Verve comeback which has finally placed a full-blown Steps reunion back on the pop agenda, although in our hearts we know the "offer" Lee from Steps (but not H from Steps) have had to get back together is probably down to a magician spraining his wrist and leaving a gap on a Pontins show this summer.

Even Victoria Newton can't work up much interest in the story:

Lee confirmed he keeps in touch with his former bandmates — except IAN ‘H’ WATKINS — and that they’ve been approached with an offer.

To join my campaign to stop this possible atrocity to eardrums, email your thoughts to the following address, with the subject “Stop Steps”.

She couldn't even be arsed to get her "computer boffins" to produce a "how they might look" photoshopage, or even have a special logo put together. Even although it would only have been a picture of H with a line through it. And "email your thoughts"? Not so much as a direction to at least shape those thoughts in any direction. It's like she started writing the article and the paperclip popped up saying "it looks like you're writing a brief piece on the reunion of a pop group..."

Stepback

Plans to reunite Steps have been put on ice after the organiser woke up in the middle of the night and realised the horror they were about to cause.

Oh, and because Ian 'H' Watkins got a better offer. While Not Being In A Steps Reunion actually constitutes a better offer than Being In A Steps Reunion, in this case its some sort of stage play.