Gordon in the morning: Michael McIntyre asked to stop telling jokes

First, a warning: It looks like Gordon has undergone meiosis:

Editors?

Anyway, today, the Gordons report on a sense of humour failure:

OFFICE Christmas parties wouldn't be the same if staff were banned from singing Fairytale Of New York half cut.

Michael McIntyre has a similar problem, as he's claimed The Pogues have stopped him using the festive anthem in his stand-up routine.

Actually, it's a Michael McIntyre comedy routine, so that's two sense of humour failures for the price of one.

As ever, the story isn't quite as Smarts pitches it; there's a vague allusion to "their [The Pogue's] people", and presumably only the publishers, not the band, could issue an edict to stop the lyrics being used. And possibly they could only do that successfully for a broadcast or DVD recorded at a gig. But the facts are cloudy.

And there's a good reason why they're cloudy:

Speaking at a recent warm-up gig at London's Soho Theatre ahead of his arena tour, which starts in August, he said: "Last year I was here trying out material before my Christmas show where I did a joke about that Pogues song.

"After that show I got a call from their people and I've been banned from doing that joke."

Yes, you read that correctly: speaking at a recent warm-up gig. Gordon and Gordon have run a news story that's based on part of a stand-up comedy routine.

Hold the front page for tomorrow's big story: Ronnie Barker struggles to buy spare parts for gardening tools.

Every little helps

With everyone fixated on John Lewis' Christmas advert, this seems to have slipped by:



Really, Tesco? The Fairytale Of New York? I guess this means that the song has now melted so far in our national psyche that the lyrics have been replaced with just a chanting of "Christmassy Christmassy Christmassy" whenever we hear it?

You scumbag, you maggot...

Interesting piece just popped up on the 10 O'Clock News as it trailed the story about Radio One first banning, then unbanning the word "faggot" on Fairytale Of New York. Huw Edwards read something along the lines of "how the BBC failed to clean up this song" over an appearance by Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues on Top of the Pops.

Trouble is, they showed the performance where MacColl had been forced to sing "Merry Christmas you ass" instead of "arse".

They've actually just shown in again in the report itself, claiming it was the "classic" version rather than an bowlderised version, even though it, erm, was a version which had been edited on the instructions of the BBC. Albeit twenty years ago.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: It's Christmas

Poor Gennaro Castaldo - not only is HMV increasingly deciding to shift its business from making losses on CDs to making losses on computer games meaning he's going to have to struggle with the Wii versus PS3 battles, but his area of expertise isn't as simple as it used to be. Ireland Online asks him for a comment on the possibility that Fairytale of New York could be the Christmas number one. Because there's, you know, a Facebook campaign to make it happen.

What's Gennaro going to say? There's about sixteen thousand bloody online campaigns to get different songs to number one next Sunday. How the hell is he meant to predict which will win, or if they'll all cancel themselves out and wind up letting Leon X Factor winner bloke through? It's all on download sales, isn't it? He's not got a bloody batphone through to Apple to find out what's selling. He can only ring up HMV shops to find out what's selling, but the bloody X Factor single hasn't even been released yet, has it?

Wearily, he mumbles:

HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said: "It might well be close this Christmas. A lot of people are downloading old favourites for their Christmas parties.

"If the campaigning takes off Kirsty MacColl could be number one. 'Fairytale of New York' never made it the first time, so it would be amazing if it could do it 20 years on."

Leave the man alone. He doesn't know. Stop poking him, making him dance to your "fill a few columns with a bit about the Christmas number one" desires, people.

Pogues for Christmas

The Pogues have announced a mini-tour of big-venues for the Christmas season:

11 December - Glasgow Academy
12 - Newcastle Academy
14 - Nottingham Arena
15 - Manchester Central
16 - Birmingham Academy
18 & 19 - London Brixton Academy

Hmmm. Pogues doing Christmas shows. I wonder what the encore will be.

Chevron sidelined

The Pogues' Philip Chevron is taking a break from the band following the discovery of throat cancer. The band will continue to tour without him this autumn, but hope that he'll be well enough to rejoin them in 2008.