Lily Allen turned down Band Aid, says Lily Allen

John Peel used to say that he'd accepted the offer of an OBE because he didn't want to be the sort of person who spends their time talking about how they were offered an OBE, but turned it down.

Which is something to think about as we cross over to Lily Allen, talking about how she turned down the chance to be on Band Aid 30:

“It’s difficult to give an explanation why I didn’t do it without sounding like a complete cunt,” she told the Mail on Sunday.

“I prefer to do my charitable bit by donating actual money and not being lumped in with a bunch of people like that.

“It’s like the ‘success club’ and I’m not really in that club. I don’t think I’m above it all – I’m way below it. But there’s something a bit smug about it.

That's true enough. But considering the turn she did alongside Kate Moss and Dave Gilmour at Hoping's Got Talent or her appearance on War Child compilations, or popping up duetting with Robbie Williams at another charity event, or the work she did for Tarka & Friends, or the video with Chris Martin for dementia care, or the Royal Albert Hall Coram gig, you might wonder why this specific success club for charity is such a bad thing. Or why, on those half-dozen other occasions Lily didn't apply the 'I do my charity by giving money' rule.

Still, it's possible that the sudden hand-waving about Band Aid is less about charity, and more about distracting attention from the closure of her vanity label ITNO. With only two acts signed, and Allen apparently drawing down a £100k salary for her work for it, you can see why she might feel better placed to give to charity directly.

Chris Brown says company named after him isn't about him

Let's take a moment to look beyond the fact that Chris Brown is a thuggish perpetrator of domestic violence who a lot of people seem keen to give a free pass to, and spend some time examining another way he sucks, shall we?

He's got his own vanity label, you know. It's called CBE, which means Chris Brown Entertainment.

But, hey, don't focus on Chris Brown here. That would be wrong:

"I don't even like to say, 'Yo, they're my artists,' " Brown told [MTV] of Sevyn Streeter, pop singer Sabrina Antoinette and rock band U.G.L.Y. "Most of the time you get stuck in a box where people don't give them a shot because they're getting co-signed by another artist. For me all the artists that are signed under me — or that are working with me — are phenomenal."

These are just acts that he says he loves - which is bad news for them, as Brown has a track record of beating to a bloody pulp people he claims to love.

It's curious, isn't it, being worried about the artists on your label being pegged as pets of that artist, and yet naming the label they've been signed to with your own name.

It might be a mixed message.

Ah, but Chris Brown has thought about that. He suggests CBE could mean other things as well:

The label's acronym breaks down to Chris Brown Entertainment, but the multiplatinum singer doesn't want to make it all about him so he has come up with two other meanings behind his imprint: Culture Beyond Your Evolution and/or Culture Beyond Your Experience.

Hang on a moment, though. Unless I'm mistaken, don't both those come out as CBYE?

Brown seems to think his illiterate wordplay is part of a continuum related to his genius:

"I always use the metaphors and the different meanings. I like to be weird like that," he said.

There's nothing weird about using metaphors.

There might be something weird about not knowing the difference between reversing out a new meaning for an abbreviation and a metaphor, though.

Gary Barlow closes label so his money can spend more time with his family

Who even remembered that Gary Barlow had set up a record label?

He doesn't any more, as he's folded it.

He told The Sun it was just a time thing:

"It's been a very difficult decision but it came down to time. I've had a lot going on recently and I want to spend more time with my family."

It seems the four million quid he'd lost on the adventure had slipped his mind as easily as it had seeped out of Future's balance sheets.

It's hard to believe that a label featuring such delights as Aggro Santos and Emma's Imagination - winner of Sky's Must Be The Music, of course - could grind to a halt.

Let's just cast our mind back to how it was in the early days, when Gordon Smart predicted great things:

SIMON COWELL had better look out – a talented, younger and more popular music mogul is shaping up to steal his crown.

Industry insiders at the bash revealed GARY BARLOW has been given his own record label by his Universal bosses so he can snap up hot new acts.

He has already started work signing his first artist – a young male singer – and the lucky lad is now working with Gary and songwriting pal CATHY DENNIS.

The lucrative agreement is Gary’s reward from Universal’s head honcho LUCIAN GRAINGE for the amazing success of TAKE THAT’s comeback.

An industry source said last night: “It’s a masterstroke. With Gary’s incredible writing ability and contacts, the acts will be in the best possible hands.”

Oh, Lucian. How you must be wishing you'd just got him a really nice vase as a reward instead.

Kanye West wants us to be gentle

Kanye West revealed his ladies wear collection at Paris Fashion Week a couple of days ago, to snorts of derision. They were fair enough snorts, to be honest: some of the designs would have shamed a contestant on the first week of Project Runway.

What's amusing, though, is Kanye's apparent awareness that he was pushing substandard clobber:

"Thank you for anybody that didn't believe, because they motivated us to break our boundaries... We don't know what the reviews will be, we don't know what they will say... I gave you everything that I had.

"This is my first collection. Please be easy. Please give me a chance to grow. This is not some celebrity s**t. I don't f**k with celebrities... The amount of people that tried to get me a celebrity f**king deal. They said, 'You need to do boot-cut jeans, or you won't sell.' Shut the f**k up!...

"I thank anybody who came to this party, everybody who supported, everybody who believed, because people thought it was a joke, and maybe people still do, but I can only grow from this point."

Not some celebrity shit, Kanye? Really? How many other designers have their first fashion show at Paris Fashion Week? And if you know it's so bad you have to issue a plea to be "given a chance", maybe you should be doing what everyone else has to do, and take the "chance to grow" while at fashion school, showing your early work in the more gentle climate of a term-end show.

If you're going to shove actual designers out the way, waving your famous face as the shortcut pass, at least have the decency to take the bad reviews on the chin. Being to be given a chance because it's not something you've got experience of doing is really a roundabout admission that you shouldn't be there.

[Thanks to Michael M]

Gordon in the morning: Guy Ritchie's record label gets worse

Gordon should probably just put Guy Ritchie's name on the masthead, don't you think? Today, he returns to Ritchie's vanity record label and plans for his pub band to stick a record out.

A terrible idea, but one which Ritchie has managed to find a way to make even worse:

The landlord of the Punch Bowl in London has mastered the vocals to his fave song and is lining up for a guest appearance for himself on the next album by The Punchbowl Band, his first signing.

You have to feel sorry for people who use NewsNow as their starting point for internet news. With The Sun now missing from the NewsNow index, will they know to run hide?

Gordon in the morning: That's the week ruined already

Once again, Smart turns his column into a fawning-field for treating Guy Ritchie as if he was a genius. Ritchie has decided movies alone are not enough to provide his talents with stimulation and is now coming after us:

SHOOTING blockbuster films and running a pub isn't enough for GUY RITCHIE.

Now he's throwing all his efforts - lock, stock and barrel - into launching his own record label.

Running a record label? Isn't that going to be quite time consuming, what with the need to travel all over the nation, hanging out in small venues, listening to new acts and...

And he is keeping his first signing close to home - his pub's resident outfit, The Punchbowl Band.

Oh. So it's yet another vanity project, then?

But some pub band? Sure, they might be great in context, but who'd really want to start a collection of their music, eh, Gordon?

I've heard them in the bar and at the afterparty for Guy's latest movie, Sherlock Holmes, and I'd buy their CD.

But maybe I'm being too cynical. It sounds like they've managed to impress someone enough to land quite a major slot on a Hollywood Movie soundtrack. Can you guess which?

Guy has got his debut signing off to a flying start.

He had them perform on the Sherlock Holmes soundtrack with Oscar-winning composer HANS ZIMMER.

Wow. That must have been a difficult job for Ritchie, persuading the producer of that movie to take on such an unknown band. Must have called in a few favours.

Hang about, though, Gordon - have you done enough to please Guy? Is the article fawning enough?

I'll be raising a dram to their debut album, Journey, out on March 1.

That's better.

Amy Winehouse discovers nepotism

The News of the World is thrilled - thrilled - this morning to report that Amy Winehouse is launching her own record label:

MEET Amy Winehouse, (the ever so unlikely) Music Mogul.

The recovering drug addict is spending a whopping £1 million to launch her own record company.

Well, that makes sense. She's done so well at managing her own affairs, why wouldn't she take on some other, younger, less together artists under her wing? I'm picturing something like putting Anakin in charge of the Younglings.

The trouble with running a record label is that you have to spend time trudging about, watching bands, listening to mp3s. How is Amy going to make room in her busy minesweeping and trapeze schedule to find acts to sign?

She’s named the business Lioness and has already made her first signing — her uber-talented 12-year-old goddaughter Dionne Bromfield.

Amy Winehouse is somebody's godmother? Supposedly pledged to protecting this Dionne from Satan? Presumably by distracting him and keeping him busy?

Yes, by a fabulous stroke of good fortune, Amy has managed to find an "uber-talented" artist for her label simply by concentrating hard to remember some people she knows.

Naturally, what parent wouldn't be delighted at the thought of their preteen being taken under Amy's protective wing and being shown the route through the potential pitfalls of the music industry?

Amy is so confident that Dionne has what it takes to become Britain’s next pop sensation she’s teamed her up with US star Lady Gaga, soul singer Lemar and X Factor finalist Eoghan Quigg to record duets.

Lemar? Eggand Quim? Short of making the poor child dress up in a Mr Wimpy costume and record a song with Michael Barrymore, it's hard to see how the kid could be any more hobbled. Perhaps Amy is approaching it like when twelve year-olds get swimming certificates: everyone knows that in the real world you won't have to rescue someone clinging to brick while wearing pyjamas, but being able to overcome the extreme disadvantage is good training.

Perez Hilton: Starmaker?

Not that the major labels are running out of ideas or anything, but the New York Times reports Warners are seriously considering giving Perez Hilton a vanity label. It's not entirely clear why Mario Lavandeira would want to throw his lot in with Warners - couldn't he just come to a direct deal with the acts to release them online?