And this is your Black Eyed Pea on drugs

One thing we'll say for Fergie: she doesn't believe in holding back, does she? Now she's admitted she's had a meth problem, she's unstoppable on her drug experiences:

One time she was so paranoid on the drug that she talked to her hamper for eight hours straight. "I remember thinking somebody was inside of it, going to come and get me, so I was talking to the person who was crawling in the hamper," she admits.

Although if you were that paranoid, why would you just not open the basket?

Brown "beaten and robbed" by sex workers

The facts are harder to tease out than the hair extensions in the story of Foxy Brown, the ex-boyfriend and the women he pimps.

It seems, from what the New York Daily News has been able to gather, that Brown discovered her boyfriend was a pimp on Saturday, promptly dumped him, causing him to turn round and set three of his women on her. In the ensuing ding-dong, Brown lost her hearing aid, chunks of her hair extensions, her credit cards and five hundred bucks.

The police were called, charges were laid, but, oddly, Brown seems to have realised that even though this time she was the victim of a crime, it might not actually be a good move, career-wise:

Brown, who stopped cooperating with cops soon after the incident, dispatched a bodyguard from her Brooklyn brownstone to tell reporters yesterday that "the story is falsified."

Some poor sod in a courtroom somewhere is going to have to try and sort that one out.

Broadsheet round-up: The last knockings

This is an emergency message: Christopher Howse, are you alright? The Telegraph's virgin-in-a-tie last posted just after lunch yesterday, and hasn't been heard of since. We fear he may have been sacrificed in a distant corner of Worthy Farm. Or, worse, succumbed to the spirit and is, even now, heading onto the next festival in a camper van, naked except for daubings. And his tie.

In the Telegraph proper, Tom Horan suggests that Babyshambles were "compelling" (perhaps you had to be there), the Klaxons "all outfits and no content was about the sum of it".

It's a measure of how much stuff goes on at Glastonbury that even with the breadth of the internet, you still miss stuff. Horan, for example, tells us that Lily Allen sprung a surprise:

Her bright and breezy ska sound and acerbic delivery were a treat, and to top it all she produced Terry Hall and Lynval Golding, two of the founder members of Coventry band the Specials, who had not played together since the 1980s. They did their timeless first single Gangsters and the hillside was transformed into a riot of silly dancing.

Good lord, bringing on the Specials? It's like Ronald McDonald giving a job in the kitchens to Mrs Beeton.

Is the spirit of the festival fighting back against the 2007 wheel-heeled attendees? The Times reports that the people who splashed over a thousand pounds to hire a teepee for the weekend ended up getting splashed themselves, as the teepees peed:

Unlike traditional tepees, which have a fire in the middle to keep the damp out, Glaston-bury’s tepee village is banned from lighting fires for safety reasons. The problem is usually overcome by placing a “rain cap” over the hole, but families who thought they had paid for a premium service were told that there were only a handful to go around the 300 tents.

Kevin Stockton, 49, a water maintenance consultant, also found that most tents were not fitted with waterproof groundsheets, so he was soaked not only from above but from the soggy ground beneath. “We’ve been flooded out every time it has rained,” he told The Times. “About 5 or 10 per cent of tepees have rain caps. When we asked reception why they couldn’t give us one, they said that they didn’t predict the weather was going to be so bad.”

It's hard to feel sympathy for someone who would pay so much for a posh tent. The irony is that a thirty quid job from Millets would probably have kept everyone nice and dry.

Over in the Guardian, Alexis Petridis weighs the weekend's peformances:

Saturday night's headliners offer an intriguing study in opposites. The Killers offer pyrotechnics, ruthlessly efficient mainstream indie rock hits and the steely, unwavering professionalism of a band abundantly aware of how a successful Glastonbury headlining slot can affect album sales in the next financial quarter.

Over on the Other Stage, meanwhile, havoc reigns. Whether or not Iggy And The Stooges really fit with the Glastonbury ethos is a matter of some debate. The reconstituted punk pioneers are rightly legendary, but the violence and glowering negativity of their music seems at odds with the Glastonbury vibe of bucolic togetherness and abundant good cheer.

Tabloid round-up: The last knockings

Someone - oddly, there's no byline - seems to have spent Glastonbury following Kate Moss and Pete Doherty around, detailing their doings - being blocked from going to watch the Arctic Monkeys at the side of the stage (the paper suggests this was 'keeping out the riff-raff', but they let The View get a good view); checking their faces were "straight"; locking Babyshambles out their bus so they could have what the paper is too coy to call sex; and having some sort of falling-out with the Klaxons.

Apparently, Jacqui Doherty was there to watch - the band, rather than the sex and fighting, we presume, and she was pressed for her views on her son:

“Pete’s not ready to give up yet. He will have to hit rock bottom before he can rise up again.”

Ooh, that's good news, Jacqui - it sounds like you might get a second book out of him.

Still, that's not the big news from Somerset, it seems. Oh no, it's apparently that it was the year of the catsuit. There were a whole two of them:

WHAT kind of idiot wears a catsuit to Glasto? Well, PIXIE GELDOF and LOVEFOXXX of CSS, it seems.

Pixie is young enough to get away with her skintight togs, but how she managed to go to the muddy loos in that thing is beyond me.

Meanwhile, trendy Brazilian singer Lovefoxxx’s get-up was even more complex.

We love that slightly sneery "trendy Brazilian singer", as if someone running a non-story as an excuse to run a photo of Bob Geldof's daughter in a one-piece is able to take moral high ground.

Trouble is, Geldof wasn't even wearing a catsuit - all catsuits are one-pieces, but not all one-pieces are catsuits.

Oddly, the Sun misses the biggest story of the weekend. As the Mirror reports, Shirley Bassey's appearance was nearly her last, as her helicopter home was forced to make an emergency landing in Surrey as it lost power:

It touched down at 8pm amid howling winds and rain in the grounds of Collingwood College in Camberley, Surrey.

The shaken pilot emerged to ask locals: "Where am I?"

"He apologised for scaring them before admitting: "That was terrifying.

"I was losing power and the mist was so thick I couldn't see where I was going.

"I've got a special passenger. We have had an almighty let off. Thank God."

Locals then watched gobsmacked as Dame Shirley Bassey clambered from the chopper in wellingtons.

She said: "We are so sorry to have bothered you. May I please use someone's toilet? And a cup of tea would go down a treat."

Can someone be double-dame'ed?

Less successfully, the 3AM Girls abandon gossip-hounding for reviewing:

KAISER Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson took the Glasto crowd to a whole new high with his energetic performance.

The loveable rocker karate kicked and strutted through hits including I Predict A Riot. The highlight was Oh My God when the crowd was jumping with him.

Top marks!

Bless them; this is the sort of thing you read in thank-you letters stuck on Tesco walls after they've hosted a school trip: "We saw the men making the bread. My favourite bit was when they sliced the loaf. It was exciting!"

There's a special section on the festival on the Mirror website, where you can still read their cast-iron prediction of a Libertines reunion:

We can exclusively reveal that the turbulent couple will be playing a momentous acoustic set on the Saturday.

Perhaps it was just very, very secret.

GlastOn TV

Sweeping The Nation has been watching Glastonbury on the BBC:

[A] lot of message boards seem to be bellyaching about the standard of the presenting but we see no real difference from any other year, and this afternoon Lauren was on rare form like we haven't seen her on prime-time telly for years.

We've also seen a lot of people suggesting that the event is "missing John Peel", but to be honest, we never felt comfortable watching Peel presenting Glastonbury in the past; as he himself would admit, live TV wasn't really his thing and most of his links have off the air of a man who'd much rather have been stood quietly at the back of a tent watching music than throwing to the Stereo MCs set on BBC2.

Back in the present, the Manics turn up and show a hint of what the future might hold for Pete Doherty; the fire in the belly long since replaced with something more showbizzy, working the crowd instead of rousing the rabble. On those terms, the band are right on form at the moment, although watching middle-aged men performing in front of a massive picture of teenage girls in hotpants is a bit of a queasy moment; like some of the reactions to Jonathan in Big Brother, although it's an innocent gesture, it has enough of a creepy air to it to make you wonder if they thought it through.

The Rakes are doing 22 Grand Job, but there's an air of a band whose moment has passed about them. Maybe if there'd been a festival last year, they'd have managed to keep some momentum to build upon; even they seem to have know this is probably a wake.

Oh, look... here come people dressed as animals. It's Mika's set, and alongside the contents of a badly stocked Fancy Dress Store and the inflatable ladies, Mika is bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. He's trying very, very hard. But all the effort is visible, like whatever the opposite of a swan paddling under the water would be - a fish struggling in a net? He's trying to sell a sizzle, but can't disguise there's no steak there.

The Kaiser Chiefs fans seem to perk up the wetter and wetter their heroes get, although that might be because they get wetter as the set goes on, and the longer they play, the closer they get to their decent songs.

Surprisingly, Mark Ronson turns out to be much more fun to watch being interviewed than playing music. As he's talking to Zane Lowe and Edith Bowman (who's wearing her Ermintrude hat right up to the last), you find yourself thinking "this guy is really funny, and charming, and warm. Why don't we like his music?" Then, you swap to a stream where he's murdering The Zutons' Valerie, and you remember.

Back in space and time: Glasto 97

Another slice from the field from 1997. The Prodigy doing Firestarter, admittedly five years or so after they were at their peak.



Full list of Glastonbury 97 clips

Blog round-up: Press red for disappointment

Good lord, it's a sprawling site this year, isn't it? In a bid to test the theory that there might be more to Glastonbury than any one person could see, the BBC's Ian Youngs attempted to visit every stage in a day:

It is a place to see up-and-coming indie starlets, while in the Chill 'n' Charge Tent there is yet another stage set up beside hundreds of people who are recharging their mobile phones.

In the end, he manages to trot past 44 venues, but admits that he might "have missed some" and only managed it by sticking to music sites.

Still, at least he could get around. Charlotte from Still Life With Plaster had planned on going, but then something snapped. Her leg:

I must admit to longing to be able to slip something of the sort on myself instead of this boring old plaster, & Alice can second that emotion - these things were designed by bloody sadists! Watching the festival coverage, & the prevailing conditions, we're both actually glad we didn't make the effort to attend after all - the plasters would have been disasters, I think, what with attempting to crutch up & down muddy hills , stand in sodden, muddy fields, slopping & sloshing around, etc, it would probably have all been too distressing & physically demanding if not impossible. I read yesterday that around 1000 people had been injured, slipping around, mostly minor but still: I dread to think how it might have been possible to cope with a full leg plaster, even in clement weather conditions (which, from experience, occasionally do prevail!).

Still, they're able to enjoy the BBC coverage. Baria's blog is impressed with the choice, if not all the presentation:

Four channels with interactive screens and choices of genres and bands and who knows what else. Totally stunning use of the new media that is unsurpassed anywhere on the globe. If you don't live in the UK you really should come for a visit just to see it.

But there are some elements that make me really tetchy. The main one being that once the presenters - like Phil Jupitous and Mark Radcliffe - get some mud on their Drizabones they suddenly end up doing crap imitations of John Peel.

There are lots of "errrms and right that was... ermmmm where are we?" and so on.

It is a bitter disappointment when their radio shows are so much better. Jupitus spent the last broadcast complaining about his back ache. Loose weight large person and all will be resolved say I.

But watching all this leads me to think that perhaps the revellers at Glastonbury are the same people I met in Camden a few months ago. A bunch of late boomers (sic) who will not give up the cause.

Rock n Roll isn't a youth movement anymore. It is a middle aged lifestyle and whilst it makes me sad it also frees the possibilities for the future.

Interestingly, Stuffem watches and also worries about the audience while enjoying the breadth of the coverage:

I think I’m all Glastonbury’d out from the massive Glastonbury coverage. With interweaving coverage on BBC2, BBC3,BBC4 and the Freeview interactive channels over the three days including today. It’s always hard to follow and filter it all. I think I had my ‘Tut tut , (rolls eyes)today’s generation’ moment last night whilst watching the Iggy and the Stooges footage after Iggy Pop encouraged the front rows onto the stage , causing self imposed anarchy to the proceedings and was watching a plethora of teenies and twenty somethings having to be coaxed into doing something faintly rebellious by a 60 year with more energy than all of them put together. So given their sudden stage sharing platform, what’s the most rebellious act I see? A banner held aloft by a small group keen to bring back the Cadbury Wispa chocolate bar!! Did I feel faintly superior that my own generation at their age would probably have seized the moment to proclaim ’say no to cruise’ (the missile, not the Scientology film celebrity).

Still, better that than Mika's stage dressing, as captured by Q. In tribute to his patronising song supposedly celebrating Big Girls, he had two big girls on stage. Giant, inflatable women. Do you see what he did there?

Some acts adapt to Glastonbury better than others - Ian McCulloch's fear of the mud is now legendary, for example - so it's a round of applause for Shirley Bassey, captured by a Guardian blogger as she strode fabulously across the site, with only mongrammed DSB wellies to protect her from the elements.

Music Every Single Day Of Lives remembers that last night's headliners were making a statement by taking the gig:

The Killers did not want to headline Glastonbury 2 years ago as they did not think having one album under their arm was enough to carry the weight of 170,000 people. This year they took the gamble. It paid off.

You could argue that by the middle of the festival, Archie's Educated Chickens could keep the pyramid stage happy - especially with some fireworks - and so it's not so much of a gamble. Has there ever been a headliner in the modern Glastonbury who hasn't been met by a positive response?

A sign that we're in the final stages...

The traditional signal that the home straight has been entered for the Glastonbury festival: Michael Eavis telling the BBC that the festival has been a success:

Festival-goers had complained of poor sound from the Pyramid Stage, with The Killers' set on Saturday being punctuated by cries of "turn it up" from some.

Mr Eavis said the speaker system had been changed for this year's festival.

"I'm sorry about the PA, it's not quite strong enough for us here, so I'm slightly disappointed by that. I think we're going to have to look at that again."

Mr Eavis also conceded that there were problems with the photo ID system used for festival tickets this year.

"The printing wasn't really good enough so we have to improve that," he said.

He revealed that 2008's headliners were already confirmed, but refused to reveal who they were.

"It's not Muse or U2," he added.

Well, at least that's a relief.

Apparently, Bjork went on for 20 minutes past the curfew time on Friday night/Saturday morning, but the council don't seem unduly bothered:

[T]he local council said that an over-run of Bjork's set on Friday night, breaking a 0030 curfew by 20 minutes, breached the festival's licence.

Mendip District Council's planning and environment manager Charles Uzzell said: "There could be a review of the licence, and the ultimate sanction is the removal of the licence but I don't see that as a possibility."

He added that the rest of the festival had been a "success".

And you have to praise Mendip's grown-up attitude - a lot of places would have sent the cops in to shut down the stage rather than adopting a "we'll talk about this later" approach.

Beck in space and time

Continuing our collection of Glasto from ten years back, here's Beck doing One Foot In The Grave. Not an Eric Idle cover, sadly:



Links to all the Glasto 97 stuff on the Ray Davies post

GlastOn TV: Cape, Killers, and a dodgy Cold War metaphor

Eventually, the BBC played out Babyshambles in full. With his busted voice, and ladyscarf dangling from his pocket, it was a bit like a 1970s Rod Stewart tribute act. We'd actually turned on to a different screen before Kate Moss turned up.

There was no Carl Barat on stage with Pete, and Pete didn't wander on during the Dirty Pretty Things set, either. It would be foolish to try and set the two performances up in some sort of competition with each other, but that's never stopped us. DPT were West Germany to Babyshamble's pre-unification East; you're always aware that, just as the West never lost the faith that one day Berlin would be restored at the seat of power, so Carl has a look in his eye that reunification might be a possibility, but for now, is reveling in the freedom, while Babysshambles feels like a grimmer place to be, where even the fun comes with a sense of predetermination. There is no negotiation; the party line is the only line.

Seriously: would you rather be bouncing up and down to You Fucking Love It, or hoping your smile looks genuine as Comrade Moss comes on to perform her part on La Belle?

Also, Pete: your penis looks horrible. Please, never go near TV cameras without putting underpants on, ever again. Thank you.

An even bigger fashion mistake was Patrick Wolf, who seemed to have come dressed like a Pinnochio doll from a pound shop.

And we're still not sure if the guy who was hanging round the front of the Get Cape Wear Cape Fly stage in a big red cape was a fan paying homage, a support crew member with a sense of humour, or simply enacting a Get Cape Wear Cape Steal Equipment plan. GCWCF was the highlight of yesterday evening, though - even incoporating a backdrop with a fairtrade message, which is the closest anyone's come to that much-touted "glastonbury radical spirit" we keep hearing so much about.

By contrast, The Killers had some sort of pile of dead antlers to balance their keyboards on. And, of course, they had fireworks at the end. Isn't it about time one of the headline acts could come up with a more interesting idea than just letting off a few small-scale explosions to mark the end of their set?

Iggy Pop's skin: it looks like it's made of the stuff that they used in the 1960s when fake leather technology had yet to advance to a point where it could manage to replicate the flexibility of cowhide.

Broadsheet round-up: Toilets and straw

With dispatches having been hitting the papers since Wednesday, the Sunday broadsheets are desperate to find something new to report from Glastonbury. The Sunday Telegraph finds inspiration with the bloke who runs the toilets, Ducan Wilbur:

At 8am I was stocktaking in our offices in Vauxhall, London. The list included 200 rubber gloves, 10 long-handled brooms, 20 buckets, 600 toilet rolls and 20 jerrycans for people to wash their hands in.

Last in the box was our giant Poo Suit. Each year a lucky volunteer walks around dressed as a poo, with a sign saying: "There's a million viruses in every gram".

Oddly, the same slogan was used by the last falafel store we visited back in 1998.

Meanwhile, The Observer reports that life is imitating Rumpelstiltskin, as people are spinning gold from straw:

'When the truck drove past this morning, I sent my colleague out three times in bare feet,' said Rachel Clements, 44, from Devizes, Wiltshire. 'If they leave it in a big pile there is bound to be a fight.'

Welcome to the Glastonbury straw-wars: eight lorries loaded with straw, 800 stall owners desperate to get hold of some. Rachel Clements was one of the lucky ones as she surveyed the Glastonbury scene yesterday. But many of her fellow stallholders were waiting nervously for the lorries to arrive with the next consignment. 'It gets political,' said Charlie, a 24-year-old lorry driver from Dorset. 'People pinch it. They come and fill their own boxes.'

Apparently, the police who will be overseeing security at the 2010 Ryder Cup are on site, picking up tips on how to manage the crowds there. If you see armed police guarding a haystack, while Tiger Woods gets his pants stolen, you'll know why.

Over in The Sunday Times, a brave, but not entirely successful attempt is made by David Cracknell, David Smith and Isabel Oakeshott (the 3AM Division Girls?) to hoik together the big political and cultural stories of the week:

Brown has promised a government of “all talents” and has already started to put up an even bigger “big tent” – to woo outsiders and opponents – than the one originally espoused by Blair.

The tent seems fitting on the weekend of the Glastonbury festival, and has already proved as muddy. Last week Brown invited Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, to join his government as Northern Ireland secretary. Though Ashdown rejected the offer, the move left David Cameron’s Tories, who have made their own approaches to the Lib Dems, reeling.

They've headlined this 'Welcome to Gordonbury'. Lets hope Gordon has got his chemical toilets in place.

Paris Hilton's revenge

It doesn't, of course, lessen Paris Hilton's offence any, but she might take a moment of pleasure from the discover that Rocky Delgadillo, Los Angeles' DA and the man responsible for her incarceration and re-incraceration, isn't any better a driver than she is:

We have watched with bemusement at first and now growing concern as early reports of Delgadillo's wife driving with a suspended license have deepened into a pattern of neglect, inattention and insincerity. Over the last two weeks, Times staff writers Patrick McGreevy and Matt Lait have reported that Delgadillo allowed his wife to misuse his city car, and that when she crashed it, he let the city pay $1,222 to repair the damage. He permitted his auto insurance to lapse, which he first denied and then admitted. And now comes the latest disclosure: He had subordinates baby-sit his children and do chores around his house. Throughout this gathering torrent of revelations, Delgadillo has alternately ducked questions, professed to coming clean and admitted to still more misstatements.

Of course, it's unlikely that any of this abuse of law would have come to light had Delgadillo not stepped so cleanly into the spotlight to pursue Hilton. In effect, it's a two-for-one deal.

Death comes to the festivals

The 26 year-old man who was taken to hospital in Yeovil after a suspected OD at Glastonbury has died, it has been reported.

Meanwhile, another 26 year-old man has died after collapsing at the Knowsley Hall festival on Merseyside.

Neither death is thought to be suspicious.

Meanwhile, police at Glastonbury are hailing the "slight drop" in crime this year:

The spokesman said this increase was due to the "proactive operation" of both police and security on site

By 0900 BST on Sunday there had been 236 reported crimes, down on the 267 incidents at this time in 2005.

Of these 158 were drug related, compared to 183 in 2005.

In other words, if you strip out the drug crimes - which, after all, tend to worry the police more than individual festival goers - the extra security measures have managed to reduce crime by five incidents.

Tabloid round-up: Rav's possibly gone to Glastonbury

What makes Rav Singh the "hottest showbusiness reporter" in Britain? Perhaps its because only he could come up with stuff like this:

IT was fitting that the sun popped out to shine brightly on a LILY who was blooming brilliant.

Looking pretty in pink, she used her magic to lift the crowd from out of the mud and get them all dancing and Smiling to her super ska tunes.

That's an exclusive the others won't have, then. Lily Allen wore a pink top and played Glastonbury.

To be fair, he also has a picture of Pete Doherty riding a bike, asking "who would ride a bike in the mud", for all the world like a man who hasn't heard of mountain biking.

Zoe, in the Sunday Mirror, actually seems to have taken the trouble to go to the festival, or at least sent someone who has reported back. She does make the surprising claim that Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil are treating the weekend 'like a honeymoon' because, erm, they're sleeping in a teepee. And she claims to have spotted a bust-up between Pete and Kate:

KATE Moss had a public row with boyfriend Pete Doherty in the backstage VIP bar.

I saw her drag him out of the bar at midnight on Friday, telling him to behave or he'd look stupid.

She took his drink, threw it over the floor and stormed to their trailer.

Warning Doherty he'll look stupid is a little like trying warning people not to go to Glastonbury because they'll get muddy, isn't it?

And, in something that actually approaches being interesting, Zoe reports on what big prima donnas the Killers are:

THE Killers had a strict no-photography rule during their Glasto appearance.

Snappers were left fuming when they were asked to leave the photo-pit but the crowd didn't seem to mind in the slightest.

Unusual that - the crowd normally only turn out to see the photographers.

Zoe really has won the Sunday tabloid war this year - over at the People, Debbie Manley and Alice Walker are, like Rav, reduced to talking about the colour of Lily Allen's clothes to fill the space:

LILY Allen looked a bit blue as she wandered around Glastonbury in mud-stained pink wellies.

The glum singer, 22, wearing a bright blue coat, should have taken her own advice to Smile before her performance on the main stage.

Although, as even Rav managed to work out (by listening to what she said on stage) Lily was understandably a bit nervous about such a huge gig. Which might make anyone frown a little.

That's why Mum might spend less in Iceland

The continued pressure on Kerry Katona from the News of the World - they're only worried about the kiddies, obviously - has led to the re-entry of Brian McFadden into Cheshire's most horrible soap opera.

The NOTW has got in contact with Leighton Ogden, who claims to be Kerry's dealer:

Ogden told us: "Kerry cares more about drugs than anything in her life — her children included.

"When she's on one of her benders nothing matters except the gear. I've seen it, believe me. She just packs the kids off to bed so she can get wasted. All that family image stuff about her is rubbish."

There then follows a string of accusations similar to last week's. But hang about a minute - this is a drug dealer, a man who sells shit for money, selling a story to a Sunday newspaper. Doesn't that mean that we should at least approach his testimony with a degree of caution? And isn't it unusual that the NOTW, whose simplistic worldview would normally have a drug dealer dangling from its redtop gallows as soon as he set foot through the door, is not only handing him cash, but even portraying him as an extension of social services, suggesting what might be best for the kids:

"After what I've seen I reckon the girls would be better off with Brian. He seems a much more stable person and can give them the love and support they need."

Perhaps this signals a new policy at the NOTW - maybe we can expect a "what would a drug dealer do?" advice column.

Aware that they're on shaky ground, they try to cast Ogden as someone who is taking a brave move, perhaps after some sort of final-reel conversion:

Ogden, 20—who was Kerry's friend as well as one of her dealers — knows the implications of outing himself as a drug peddler.

"I've taken a personal risk talking about this—but Kerry needs a wake-up call to her get herself clean for the sake of the kids and herself," he said.

So, Ogden's prepared to put his head on the block because of the kiddies. But is that his only motivation?

After her birthday in September, Ogden had had enough. "She was nipping in and out of her bathroom, snorting. She kept asking me if I could get her more coke. I told her I couldn't.

"I never heard from Kerry after that. It was clear she had just used me to help her out but once I was no use I was dropped."

It's interesting that, during this long period of giving Katona more and more drugs, Ogden was so worried about the kiddies, but never actually seemed to think of doing anything until he was no longer selling Katona drugs. Strange that, eh?

The NOTW scooped this new evidence up and took it to Brian McFadden, to see what he would do:

After being informed of our latest revelations, the star told us: "Yes, it's true — I am seeking custody. I want my daughters back."

He has requested legal affidavits from a string of witnesses who told us about Kerry's past and current drug addiction. And he wants social services to launch an investigation into Kerry's fitness as a mother.

The most shocking thing about all this, though, is the discovery that Iceland pay Katona £170,000 a year. Surely her endorsement can't be so valuable as to make that back?

Craig David finds a new meaning for "pimping MySpace"

We're a little surprised that the News of the World would run a story this morning which claims that Craig David uses his MySpace profile as a way to meet girls - after all, it's hardly going to promote a sister company to suggest that if you join them, there's a risk that Craig David might pop round with a bottle of Blue Nun and a packet of pickled-onion flavoured condoms, is it?

Model Karina Holmes revealed how she was taken in by the highly-sexed R&B warbler. And now she is Walking Away....

She said: "I thought he was too good to be true. How right I was."

She was devastated when she discovered he was seeing a host of MySpace girls.

Karina added: "He would be trawling MySpace while I was in bed with him! He said he was just checking on his profile. It's obvious to me now that he was looking to pick up other girls."

Inevitably, we're going to hear what David is like in the bedroom - allegedly, of course:

But she made him wait two weeks before giving in. She said: "It was amazing when we finally did it. Craig slipped off my jeans, then pulled my top over my head and stared longingly at my body like it was a precious ornament."

Then they made love for hours.

"I whispered to him that he was a steam engine in bed," said Karina. But his motor-mouth really got on her nerves.

Like a steam engine? Constantly demanding that his coal hole gets filled, making a hell of a lot of noise, and letting off massive piles of waste gasses? Or merely in the sense that he attracts a lot of men in anoraks who write his number down in their small books?

And was Craig really "staring longingly" at her body "like it was a precious ornament", or it had been so long since he'd seen a naked woman he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do?

This week just gone

Seven days on No Rock and Roll Fun

The ten most-read stories have been:

1. Beth Ditto strips for NME
2. Glastonbury 2007
3. Lily Allen swaps her clothes
4. R Kelly's sex video to be shown in court
5. Travelling Wilburys return to number one - has Britain got talent?
6. RIP Tony Thompson
7. Blake Fielder-Civil enjoys married life
8. Heather Mills was a porn star, you know
9. San Francisco Treasure Island festival announced
10. We're not sure why, but the 2003 NME Brat award nominations have been popular this week.

You can read all of this week's posts on one page
and skim the previous week in one post

Five years ago:
Chad Kroeger was voted ugliest man in rock, an award he's held ever since; R Kelly pleaded not guilty to charges arising from alleged underage sex, a plea he's held to ever since; the 2002 Glastonbury festival announced proudly that the new fence was all the security it needed and accused the V festival of being over-sponsored; Jon Entwistle of the Who was found dead; the Broadcasting Standards Council upbraided Neil Fox for calling Simon Cowell a "retard"; Mis-teeq planned to take a packed lunch down to Glasto; Moby suggested his records might be selling disappointingly because his fans were smart enough to file share them while lumbering Pearl Jam fans were too dull to manage and still had to buy them, and Trevor Dann announced a pay-per-view video channel for Sky. We don't think that's appeared, yet.

We mentioned these this week:


We love the way Simian Mobile Disco is a kind of rave Angel to Simian's indie Buffy


Jack White goes East End - it's more Pie and Mash than Hackney Marshes, but interesting


Catherine Fenny has moved from LA to Norfolk - and swapped pedalsteel for Britfolk


This week's Icelandic soundscapes comes from Amiina. The title, Kurr, means cooing.


Single of the week is Kate Nash's Foundations, which besides being great in its own right shows exactly what's missing from Lily Allen's work


A great start-here pack for newcomers to Julie Christy


Hoping to build a Screamo market in the UK: Virgin America's Red Jumpsuit Apparatus


Shortbus, or A lot of sex and the city: From the Hedwig stable with a Yo La Tengo score


Two Lane Blacktop, from 1971, in which Harry Dean Stanton discovers some things hurt more than cars and girls


While the TV World Of Pub never worked quite as well as the radio version, surely it shouldn't have taken six years to get a DVD release?

Back in space and time: Glasto 1997

Radiohead doing No Surprises from Glastonbury ten years ago

Glastobloggers: Mark Ronson's big surprise

So, then, who was Mark Ronson's big surprise guest?

Daniel Merriweather. The bloke who helped him murder the Smiths.

Oh.

Meanwhile, The Guardian asks Will Young questions and finds out he's got a Winnebago to sleep in. They neglect to ask him what he's doing there.

And Mrs Woman has turned in the best description of the BBC studio so far:

It's not the same since Peely died, but the BBC coverage is still excellent and gets cleverer over time. Interactive viewers can run their own video jukebox of earlier performances, while this year's studios are beautifully themed with a Biba-style motif of stylised berry twigs and huge blue and green sofas. Sounds gross, but not so.

Here, we think it might have been inspired, actually, by an Ikea coffee table we spotted earlier today.

Elsewhere, Words Department counts the number of Guardian blog posts and wonders who's reading them.

Busted RIAA litigants now sued for costs

At the risk of upsetting Paul Birch, the excellent Recording Industry Versus The People blog is reporting that Dawnell Leadbetter, who got a lawsuit from Interscope and others thrown out, is now pursuing the RIAA companies who sued her for the costs she incurred beating them.

Unsuccessful and expensive, then. Is there nobody in the big companies who is prepared to suggest abandoning this folly of legal action?

And they say the clowns are insane

The Insane Clown Posse are making a second film. Yes, a second one.

Presumably, the thinking is they might actually sell on DVD if they can be offered on a two-for-one deal.

Although it turns out the first movie has managed to gain platinum status for sales in the US. Which means, if you're one of our American readers, you might not own Big Money Hustlas. You might not know someone who owns it. But somebody you know certainly will know somebody who has it in their collection.

Is there a doctor in the tent?

We're not sure if it's just Sky being a little over the top, but they're reporting 1,200 injuries on site so far:

"... after torrential rain turned the site into a mud-soaked obstacle course.

As opposed, presumably, to a non-mud soaked obstacle course. Unless it was raining obstacles as well.

There's also one man "fighting for his life" (Sky again) after a drug overdose; he's been taken to hospital, along with thirty-two victims of the obstacle course.

That's the health news; in crime (and, of course, Somerset & Avon police boosting their figures by shooting proverbial fish in a biblical mud-pond) news, there have been 121 arrests onsite, and 163 reported offences. Interesting that with all the security that went in to protecting the event from ticket touts, the actual festival goers have been a bit more exposed to poor security this time round. There have been 28 tent thefts so far, despite the much-touted robocop honeytrap tents.

GlastOn TV: A glimpse of Pete Doherty

I'm not going to pretend that I'm television production material, but I'm struggling to understand the thought process which led BBC Three to show a sliver of Babyshambles - and I mean a sliver, I don't think Doherty actually sang a coherent word in the slice that made it to screen - before cutting away to The Kooks live.

Okay, it was absolutely live rather than taped, like the Babyshambles performance, but since they could join The Kooks at any point, wouldn't the fascinating experience of watching Doherty in front of a massive crowd, basking in having his words sung back to him, have been worth persevering with for a while longer? It would have been nice to see if he rose to the occasion; as if he really fitted in this sort of environment as much as the glimpse made it seem. This Glastonbury appearance could be the point where Babyshambles, where Doherty, finally loses his claim to be any sort of cultural outlaw and admits he's become a Fast Show character - well-loved, but poorly sketched. It could be a musical turning point. It might not be, too.

But you know that it's at least got to be more interesting than the bloody Kooks, live or not.

The Arctic Monkeys have just got round to doing Diamonds Are Forever on the press red service (a world where time runs differently, and last night is forever now) - it's nice to see what they can manage with a song that calls for a little bit more than their own compositions.

Bjork - besides inspiring someone to shout out "she's got scary lady trumpet players" - was notable for reprising her swan dress by wearing what appeared to be pigeon roadkill wings yesterday evening.

The most perfect experience so far - from a multiscreen point of view - has been CSS, although if we find out who stole Lovefoxx's headband, we'll kick their asses from here to Rio. It looks like security - in something of a first - have learned to not immediately treat a singer touching the audience as a code red this year. Although maybe if they had, she'd not have lost her headband.

Oh dear. Perhaps the Queens of Noize would have been better off if they hadn't scripted their links. The big question, though, from a presentation point of view is why they whipped the big sofa out from under Phil Jupitus and Lauren Laverne on BBC Two during the pre-Doctor Who portion of the evening. They threw to one of Colin Murray's "reports" (he is the one-man skateboarding duck of the festival) sitting on it; upon their return, it was gone. Perhaps it was banished because it gave the air of Jupitus having come up trumps on the mail-order bride deal.

See for yourself

The BBC has got piles of stuff online for you to watch and listen to at the moment. We're looking forward to curling up with Bobbt Friction's show later on, as we've not seen or heard a peep from the Asian Network stage anywhere else yet.

[Links will decay, we expect]

Blog round-updatey thingy: Catsuits within catsuits

Of course, if someone was going to sell us down the river, it'd be Sharon Osbourne, telling us to vote for The Master with a clunking spot of sexual euphemising. We bet he'd not even switched on the satellite at that point. Oh... hang about, it's back to Glastonbury, isn't it?

CSS seem to have been the best thing so far today, with the Guardian blog reporting on how to get around the problems of quick-changing when you're dressed skintight:

Simply appear in a glittery catsuit, then a few songs in (at the beginning of Meeting Paris Hilton, to be exact), take it off revealing... another catsuit, this time bright yellow. Though she was almost outdone by a sudden influx of people dressed as drum majorettes in the audience.

It's also the Guardian that has had its ears switched on, overhearing this:

What? You've just woken up? You're stuck in a tent? Your own tent? Someone else's tent! And you don't know how you got there? And you've got no clothes on! And there's no clothes in the tent? Whatsoever? And you want us to come pick you up and bring you some clothes? Would love to mate, but I'm watching Lily Allen...

Ah, Keith Allen's daughter. Worth leaving a friend naked and stranded for? Christina Nott thinks so:

Some people are a bit snobby about Lily, but I thought the gig was a great afternoon festival set. Bouncing around in luminous pink with a cigarette and a really strong ska reggae band, it was a real spirit lifter. Rain? What rain?

Hmm. We've not chased any of Allen's set up on the BBC yet, but we're betting that the "strng ska reggae band" is going to turn out to be more Musical Youth than Rico. We shall see.

Although we're still not sure what the hell Jack was doing during the first hundred years or so of Torchwood's operations - oh, sure, come along after the battle of Canary Wharf and remake Torchwood in the Doctor's image, but couldn't you have done that in 1901 and saved us all a lot of trouble? And how, exactly, did he get the job?

Tinyjo has been spending time in the caberet tent - apparently, Nicola Conti is still doing that act with the toy monkey. Simple Brainwaves is virtually at Glastonbury, i.e. watching on TV, and spotted something we'd missed:

Oh and the lead singer from Hot Chip looks a bit like Buster from the late, great sitcom Arrested Development, don't you think?

You know, it might have been nice to have something more in the way of explication for the absence of the rest of Torchwood at this key moment than a throwaway line about them going to the Himalayas. Couldn't they at least have been trapped in a temporal shift or something?
The Telegraph's Iain Gray had a crack at paparazzing last night, although actually he was taking photos in front of the stage, which isn't papping, is it? He did get a lovely shot of Bjork-being-snapped, though.

His colleague Christopher Howse has, meanwhile, discovered that he isn't the sole tie-wearer on Worthy Farm:

The drummer of Mumm-Ra was wearing one last night.

The Blood Arm skirt over their Glasto experience to get to the, frankly more important, business of amusing names for ice creams in continental Europe. Although why you'd pick a Girlie over a Bum Bum, I can't imagine.

Back at the Guardian blog, they've heard a rumour that David Cameron is thinking of turning up.

Hmm.. a plausible-looking politician with a pretty young wife, risen from nowhere, taking any chance of a televisual appearance, and a strange lack of policies. Why is that chiming with us this evening?

Kiss and tell on Kiss and Tell

Away from the field, there's a interesting piece in The Times today. Jessica Callan, one of the original line-up of the 3AM Girls, has written a book about her experiences on the column. Of course, it's not a well-written book (this is, after all, one of the women who set the standards of journalism for the 3AM column) but it feels like a staging post on the downward spiral: we now get a book about the behind-the-scenes gossip at a column dedicated to behind-the-scenes gossip.

The story Callan has to tell is fairly basic - they were chosen because they were pretty; stuff appeared under their bylines that they hadn't written; sometimes, they printed stuff that simply wasn't true. But if the time she spent at the Mirror taught her anything, it's clearly that the lack of a good story is no bar to publication:

Our orders are to talk to Tom Cruise and get our photograph taken with the A-list actor. Failure is not an option. Being dragged off by the police is fine, as long as I have got that shot.

We had left the office in Canary Wharf at 5.30pm to head to the cinema, the words of our showbusiness editor still ringing in our ears. “Get alongside Cruise, flirt, shove your arms round him, smile for the cameras, and bang, bang, bang – we’ve got him!” he’d barked. It sounded so easy and fun.

We’d planned our assault with military precision. It had been Tom Cruise’s birthday a few days before, so we’d bought him a card to wave in his direction while we were kept behind the rope with the rest of the media. This was our first chance to prove that three girls could work together rather than bitch behind each other’s backs.

And on, and on, it runs...

Broadsheet round-up:

Alexis Petridis was down the front (or, at least, perched comfortably in the VIP area) for the Arcade Fire and the Guardian:

Variety of end-of-days scenarios suggested in lyrics seem oddly more pertinent when you're listening to them up to your knees in slurry, stood next to a disconcerting man in a jester's hat, sniffing amyl nitrate. In addition, certain lyrics take on a curiously prophetic bent given inclement conditions: "Come out of the rain!" exhorts Butler at one juncture. "You can do it!" Minor mid-set lull blown away by cataclysmic finale, involving mass singalong to Wake Up.

It seems that the BBC had focused quite heavily on the mid-set lull, then.

Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello seized the Guardian blog to ruminate on festivals which have lost their soul:

As for festivals we haven't enjoyed playing: there was some horrible thing... I don't need to say which one, but I don't enjoy playing where all I see is fucking Miller Lite commercials in my face and tons of fucking cops.

I don't know whether Glastonbury is a travellers' festival still: that's not what I heard but I'm going to find out for myself after this. I heard that it's a land of rape and murder. Some experts, some reliable sources told me. But of course Glastonbury still has the ability to do change people's minds and alter their consciousness. You've just got to get the right bands and the right people will come, and they'll have the right reaction - liberation, catharsis, grabbing the tits of somebody else's girlfriend. You know - the usual!

The Telegraph has attempted to out-grump the Mail by sending Christopher Howse along to Worthy Farm. He's the "only festival goer with a tie", which means he can expect pete Doherty to seek him out to borrow it later on, then. Christoper hasn't fallen for the "traveller's festival" story any more than Eugene has:

Among the 30,000 cars in the car parks, there are plenty of Audis, Volvos and BMWs. Ten thousand, almost all young, came greenly by train and then chugged the last miles on dirty old buses.

"We're doing a dance degree at Greenwich," says my 20-year-old neighbour, pointing to her fair-haired friend. But now they're spending the weekend working in a vegan cafe, hoping to slip out to see Bjork. Bjork has been here before, she just can't remember.

If for some Glastonbury is joining the social season with Ascot and Henley, its style is still young and grungy. At Henley gentlemen must still wear ties. Here I spent 24 hours without seeing anyone else with one on. Ascot cocktail dresses and feather hats can look vulgar. Here the middle class come in muddy disguise.

Over in the The Times, Pete Paphides looks at what the bill tells us about the modern world:

Winehouse aside, it was a bill that rammed home the point that we are living in a postOasis age, where supersized indie bands trumpet the everyman values that allow their fans to live vicariously through them. Dundee’s bafflingly popular practitioners of indie dirges, The View, seemed to suit the worsening conditions. If only their fans’ chant – “The View are on fire!” – were true.

Blog round up: Parking cars and running figures

Although the state of the field has failed to provide Somme-meets-Armageddon schadenfreude thrills, it's still quite nasty down there. Aworan has a plan, though:

The Heavens opened and it was just mayham. Thankfully, based on experiences of 2005, I have learnt never to over-excert myself, so I decided to stay put on the Jazz World Stage.

I’ve been here since Thursday evening, and with the sun shining and in spite of the little mud, I honestly believed that the harbingers of doom (i.e. weather forecasters and those who didn’t have tickets!) predicting torrential rain and such were over enthusiastic. Boy, was I sorely mistaken. So, here I am, Day 2 into the mudfest that is Glastonbury. I couldn’t blog yesterday because it was really busy, hence me writing one day late. I can’t even put any pictures up just yet.

Melgro gallery is enjoying the festival without the mud, by watching at home:

Highlights round about 1:30 a.m. Arcade Fire - worth the wait. The Fratellis were much better live than they are recorded - skiffle is alive & kicking! Lonnie Donnigon is smiling in his casket!
Slomoh oh wow. Rufus Wainright - good & amazingly, some Amy Winehouse we missed - much better than the end of her set!

Christinanott is slapping photos up as fast as she can, but also revealed one of the many ways around the ticketing regulations:

Ben was supposed to have been included when we bought the tickets, but his pre-registration had not been accepted because his photo was so bad. Instead of fixing it, he left it so when we eventually got the tickets, we couldn't include him.

So back at the mad Sunday when all of the tickets sold out in two hours, we did eventually get through and get coach tickets (an extra £42 each). Despite the transport delays it was still better for the journey.

Ever resourceful, Ben then applied for car parking duties and actually has Friday night shot until Saturday morning. He's not allowed into the site though until after his duties have finished. At least he made it.

Best blog entry so far is Phil Coales, who posts a slew of adjusted diagrams from his physics text book, but labels it:

I'm watching Arctic Monkey's Glastonbury set but not through choice although it's not really that bad

Ivan Pope, meanwhile, asks a fair question: why, when Glasto is a business like any other, does it get such uncritical coverage. He crunches some numbers:

But the big question has to be - what value has it been to the corporate face of Glastonbury, the happy smiling hippy farmer, Michael Eavis? How much money has he and his family taken out of the festival over the years? After all, if he can give away 40% of the company that is worth millions in profit to a commercial organisation, then what happens to the other 60%, which also must be worth millions?

Glastonbury's accounts office insists the festival remains true to its non-corporate ideals and says the festival gives all its profits to charity. Last year, £1.1m was given away to local, national and international charities. [2005 number]

So Mean Fiddler earns millions but the other 60% earns 1.1 million, which is all given away? Somehow this doesn't add up. Remember, profits is something that is entirely controlled by the company that makes them. If there is spare cash, it can go in all sorts of directions before being declared a profit. For example, they could reduce ticket prices, or give away tents or maybe pay huge fees to the farm on which the festival is held. There are hundreds of ways of getting just the profit you want in the way you want it.

So back to my initial complaint. Why does the BBC treat this private commercial festival as if it is a national event of huge significance? And if the festival wants to be treated in this way, it should open up its accounts for public scrutiny and explain where all the money goes.

I'm not sure the implication that Eavis is perhaps less generous with his profits than the popular image would suggest is fair; I suspect the discrepancy lies more in the way the money is split between Glastonbury and LiveNation. But allowing us to look at the books seems to be a good idea.

Back in space and time: Glasto ten years ago - Placebo

Continuing our trail through the festival from a decade ago, Placebo battle the sinking stage to do Teenage Angst:

Tabloid round-up: Doherty in a dress

The Sun's coverage of Glastonbury is a little underpowered - Vicotria Newton's main contribution is that Pete Doherty put on a dress when he and Kate stopped at a petrol station on the way down. Yes! A Dress. A man in a dress! Truly, he is the lord of misrule.

He kept his trousers on though.

There's no credit on the Sun's review of Amy Winehouse. It observes that she's got two more gigs in the field this weekend (which throws the horrific possibility that by Sunday night, there could be Amy on all the press red channels on BBC TV).

[L]ater Amy was so smashed backstage she could barely speak.

Or maybe not, then.

The Mirror's coverage of the festival is more in-depth, sharing the news that the Kaiser Chiefs had their trailer stolen by the Arctic Monkeys:

"It was pouring with rain and for them to turn around and say there was nowhere for them to stay was a massive kick in the teeth.

"But the boys took it on the chin and set about trying to get their hands on a tent instead.

"Then they found out it was the Arctics who had claimed their trailer and it's fair to say they were not amused. Ricky had a face like thunder."

Hmm... a story which features the Kaiser Chiefs being upset. How on earth could you come up with a punchline for that one, eh, 3AM Girls?

We predict a riot...

Oh. Of course.
They also have news of Beth Ditto's rider ("20 bars of milk chocolate") and Peaches Geldof talking - talking - to Donny Tourette. Perhaps it wa Tourette's engrossing conversation which distracted Peaches from her Orange blog.

The Daily Mail's Jane Fryer isn't having a good time:

This is my first Glastonbury and, so far, it hasn't been much fun. Before me is a sea of steaming mud, teeming with tens of thousands of soaking wet festival-goers milling about and trying to remember where they pitched their tent.

But it gets worse. Of course, she's upset by the toilets, too:

It's also pretty smelly. The Eau-de-Glasto is a not very subtle blend of beer, body odour, fried food, smelly hair, and toilets.

The loos are something else. Already flowing with excrement and despite a plea on the official website not to bring loo roll, no loo roll.

Can anything cheer her up?

So we set off again. Finally, after another 40 minutes' tramping, we arrive soaking and caked in mud, just as Chas and Dave start up on the stage nearby.

Oh dear.

Finally, nature relents a little:

Suddenly, the rain stops and, for a very fleeting moment, the sun comes out. A huge cheer goes up and there's nothing for it but to dump our stuff and head for the cider tent and to find some decent music.

Considering Jane starts her piece crowing:

I am one of the lucky 177,500 people who managed to get tickets for the mother of British music festivals

... you have to wonder what she'd consider rotten luck.