No Rock And Roll Fun

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Ooh! John Lydon likes to swear!

Buttocks! Haircrack! Enormous, um, breasts or something!

Hello, we're swearing.

Tiggywinkles! Wee wee!

We've been inspired by John Lydon, who thinks that saying 'fuck' on stage is so shocking, it's worth warning newspapers well in advance when you're going to do it.

Pants! TenaLady! Alisha's Attic!

Glen Matlock - allegedly - asked him to tone it down a bit, but Lydon stamped his pretty little foot, said "snot" and refused:

"He's been saying that all this swearing should stop. I understand he's a father and doesn't want his son to have to hear foul language.

"I wrote in 'Bodies', ' Fuck this and fuck that / Fuck it all, and fuck the fuckin brat', and I don't think there's a clearer song about the pain of abortion.

"The juxtaposition of all those different psychic things in your head and all the confusion, the anger, the frustration, you have to capture in those words."

Bodies might be a strong song, although its adoption by both pro- and anti-choice campaigners suggests it's a little unclear in its message, and, yes, the language is justified by the context - but does Lydon really believe that there is no "clearer song about the pain of abortion"? What about, for example, Ani DiFranco's Lost Woman Song or Michelle Shocked's Prodigal Daughter?

Still, never mind about that: let's just focus on the swearing instead:

cooties! bulb-sachets! green-tabs!

More Verve

Apparently, when he insisted there be more Verve dates as part of their comeback tour, Richard Ashcroft spat "or Shed Seven will win" before pulling on a balaclava and yelling "an' I ain't gonna let Shed Seven win."

You can see the shows:
London Millennium Dome - December 13
Glasgow SECC - 15
Belfast Odyssey Arena - 17
Manchester Central - 20
although, in venues that size, you won't be able to tell if Rick Witter's head is sat on the amps.

Trapped in the closet

It's the scenario every woman (supposedly) dreams of: being locked in a confined space with Justin Timberlake.

It's also, unfortunately, the scenario every man dreads: being trapped in a box with Tara Palmer-Tomkinson.

This all happened backstage at the Brits, explains TPT:

"I was interviewing Justin but because it was noisy, I told him to move into a quieter area. "Then I discovered I'd pulled him into a cupboard and locked us in. We were panicking actually. Someone eventually let us out and he couldn't get away from me fast enough."

...which, we presume, was the real reason he had to be locked in a cupboard in the first place.

Placebo split, carry on

Placebo have announced they're parting ways with Steve Hewitt, who's been sat on a stool behind Brian Molko for eleven years. Statement:

Placebo have parted company with drummer of 11 years, Steve Hewitt, due to personal and musical differences.

Brian Molko commented "Being in a band is very much like being in a marriage, and in couples - in this case a triple - people can grow apart over the years. To say that you don't love your partner anymore is inaccurate, considering all that you've been through and achieved together. There simply comes a point when you realize that you want different things from your relationship and that you can no longer live under the same roof, so to speak."

The split is amicable and a sad time for both parties. Steve Hewitt replaced Robert Schultzberg behind the drum kit in 1996 whilst the band were promoting Placebo’s eponymous debut album and went on to record the following 4 studio albums ‘Without You I’m Nothing’, ‘Black Market Music’, ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’ and most recently ‘Meds’.

Placebo have just returned from the USA where they were part of the high profile ‘Projekt Revolution Tour’ alongside Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance. The band are now taking a well earned break.

Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal will begin work on Placebo’s 6th studio album next Spring and are in no rush to find an immediate replacement for Steve.

Of course, when Steve joined the band he was still under contract to a different label, which is why the first video he appeared in he had to have his face obscured like he was teenage hoodlum on the Ten O'Clock News.

Now, it seems, the attraction of being paid to look at Brian Molko's buttocks all evening has worn off.

[Thanks to Dora for the tip]

Hung up on the Spice Girls

It was only a matter of time before the "mobile phone company customers get tickets first" marketing campaigns ran into some backlash grief, and it's arrived this morning as many of the million who registered for, but didn't get, Spice Girls tickets discover that O2 customers were able to pick up half-a-dozen without having to register. Many of which have found their way on to eBay.

The Spice Girls people are rushing to try and move themselves away from the gathering smell of a PR dungheap:

A source close to the Spice Girls camp said that the girls had not been aware of the 02 deal.

The source said: "We had no idea the system could be bypassed in this way and fans who had registered let down."

Oh, really? Now, while we can well believe that Victoria and Geri have no intimate details of the ticket allocation mechanism, but are we really supposed to believe that nobody in the Spice's team had any idea that they'd done a deal which allowed O2 customers to get access to tickets?

Either they're telling the truth - which would suggest that Fuller's management of the comeback is in total disarray, which seems unlikely - or they're, you know, doing that thing where you say something that isn't actually true.

Here's good news for Googlers

Those people who tirelessly type Edit Bowman topless into Google will be exploding with joy this morning, as Edith has shed all her clothes to promote Breast Cancer Awareness month.

It's slightly disappointing that the default creative idea nowadays when an attractive woman offers support for an charity awareness camapaign is to get them to take their clothes off. We don't mind looking at pictures of people with no clothes on, but it's uninspired and also sends a worrying message that all that women have to bring to social change and medical research is a bit of breast jiggling and the hint of thigh.

It's also a bit of a shame that having got pictures of Edith Bowman naked in the name of charity, The Sun then manages to get the URL of the campaign she's supporting wrong. It's breastcancercare.org.uk.

Brand awareness

So, a group called Lavender Productions have named a bunch of men that, they claim, are "Lez Daddys", the equivalent of gay men's icons. The idea, it seems, is to:

increase gay awareness across Europe.

Radio 2's Russell Brand is on the list, which is topped by David Walliams. Yes, him off Attachments:

A Lavender spokeswoman said: “David is a very open-minded individual and has been very supportive and accepting towards lesbian women in his work. He has even played a few lesbians himself.

“He is the one who makes lesbians doubt themselves – not surprising when you consider how beautiful his legs look in a skirt.”

No matter how many times you refresh the page, yes, it does appear that Lavender are "increasing awareness across Europe" by suggesting that lesbians "doubt themselves" when they come across Walliams. Which seems to be "you think you're gay, but you'll think differently when you meet the right bloke" wrapped up in a celebrity awards ceremony from where we're sitting. We're going to go and sob quietly in a corner for a minute or two.

Winehouse: Jagger helps out

In an interview for BBC News, Mick Jagger breathes a sigh of relief that Amy Winehouse is getting space to work through her problems:

What a worry, eh? It seems to have gone a bit quiet now hasn't it, the Amy Winehouse story. Everyone goes through these things when they get very famous so hopefully Amy will come out the other side with equanimity and a new lease of life.

Everyone goes through these things? Really? David Dimbleby and Tim Henman and that bloke with the umbrella who does Coast all disappeared into a drug-fuelled tube, did they?

Still, like Jagger says, the story has gone a little quiet now, giving Winehouse the chance to get better in... oh, hang on a minute, what's this splashed all over The Sun?:

Jagger: I fear for Amy

MICK JAGGER fears AMY WINEHOUSE is heading for an early grave.

The troubled star sang on stage with the ROLLING STONES at the Isle of Wight Festival this summer.

But she pulled out of her support slot on part of the rockers’ Bigger Bang world tour after her drug meltdown in August.

Now singer Mick has opened his heart on the industry’s flawed new queen. Speaking in Germany, Jagger said: “Amy is a brilliant artist who makes fantastic music. She has class.

“But I’m worried she might die if she goes down the road that she has taken.”

But, if she does die, she'll be "coming through it with equanimity", right, Mick?

Monday, October 01, 2007

Days like these

KateModern, Bebo's interactive drama (don't you love the way that soap opera on the net is still spoken of as if it's a new idea, about a decade after The Spot?) has done a deal which will see Atlantic Records' second division hoofers The Days pop up in the story:

"Traditional means such as gigging and press interviews work alongside truly groundbreaking, inventive ideas such as this one." Joanna Shields, president, international, at Bebo, says the characters in the drama had already met actor Jamie Bell and "now, for the first time, they have befriended a real band - blurring fiction and reality in an interesting and interactive experience".

It's not actually blurring fiction and reality any more than those bits of The Archers where they drop in a rapidly-recorded scene featuring whichever actors were available discussing the latest agricultural disaster from the headlines does. Much as we love those moments - like the bit where Lilian Bellamy had to pretend to be interested in some cow-threatening plague because, presumably, they couldn't find an actor who played an actual farmer to get to the studios at short notice - they don't actual make us think "it's so realistic", but, because you start to ruminate on the process which made a bit on bluetongue or hoof-and-mouth appear at such short notice, they underline the unreality.

Now, if The Days didn't know they were appearing as a paid-for advertisement in a made-up story... now, that might blur the boundaries a bit.

Sharon Osbourne: It was daytime TV's fault

The double-flopping of Sharon Osbourne chat shows on both sides of the Atlantic turns out to not be because Osbourne as a presenter is about as effective as a colander for cooking soup in. Oh, no - it was daytime TV's fault:

"My ITV (British channel) chat show was a gigantic mistake. I'd had a hard lesson when I did a chat show in America but I hadn't learnt. It was my ego getting the better of me, thinking I could be queen of daytime TV. Wrong!

"I had to be so careful what I said and how I said it. No swearing, nothing too provocative. I couldn't be confrontational or probing - two things I might claim to be good at. The questions I wanted to ask, I couldn't.

"The truth is, daytime TV is not for me. I just don't fit it. I know that now."

It was television which got smaller, was it, Sharon?

The trouble is, this just doesn't add up. After all, if "I couldn't swear" is one of the excuses for producing dreary programming, that seems less like a problem with the rules of daytime TV, more like a failure of imagination on the part of the host. Likewise, if you can't frame a difficult question in a way that will work for a family audience, then you probably have no claim to be a television presenter.

And as for the suggestion that you can't be provocative on daytime TV, that's just not true. Richard and Judy managed to get away with full-frontal male nudity and road-testing viagra - the difference being, of course, that the producers were able to trust their presenters with the material.

Spears loses the kids

Not in the sense of "forgets which bar stool she left them on" - on this occasion; rather, a judge has granted Kevin Federline custody of his children by Britney Spears "until the further order of the court." You know there's something gone seriously awry when the kids are better off with Federline than with you.

Kerry Katona: The books what "I" wrote

Kerry, you are in danger of spreading your talents way, way too thin. Coming this month, there's her first novel - if you assume that (a) she wrote it and (b) that her previous books weren't equally made up - called Tough Love: Everyone Knows You But Nobody Knows the Truth. Can you guess what it's about?

Besides making more money from the Katona-obsessed?

Amazon offers a precis:

Leanne Crompton had it all - beauty, fame, money. But when Leanne is sacked by her modelling agency, she soon finds herself penniless. With her seven-year-old daughter Kia to support, she has no option but to head north to her home town... back to her wayward family. With a brother just released from prison, another being taken for a mug by his wannabe-WAG girlfriend, and two sisters trying to escape her shadow, life with the Cromptons is a harsh reminder of how far she's fallen. Now, starting over and with an explosive secret to hold on to - the identity of Kia's dad - things start to get tough. Can she trust her ruthless mother Tracy not to sell her out to the papers? Or will Kia's dad catch up with her and silence her for good? "Tough Love" is the startling debut novel from former pop star and tabloid favourite Kerry Katona. Her memoir, "Too Much Too Young", was a "Sunday Times" top ten bestseller.

Goodness. A briefly rich-and-famous person who loses it all and winds up having to head back to a grim family in a Northern town, eh? Where does she get her ideas from?

And, yes, they're making much of her Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller status, flashing it all across the cover. But where did the vast majority of those books end up, rather quickly?

Still, someone's got faith in her, as the follow-up is already on the schedule for an April publication (where does she find the time to sign-off on these books, eh?). This one is a little different:

Charly Metcalfe has a new boyfriend - Premiership footballer Joel Baldy - and a new WAG lifestyle. But when rumours start circulating about Joel's sordid nights out without her, Charly is not happy and neither is her father, ex-villain Len Metcalfe. When Joel is found murdered in his hotel suite in Manchester, all eyes are on Len. He has the motive and the dangerous temperament. But what about Charly's disgruntled ex, Scott Crompton, or his criminal brother Markie, who has a debt to settle with Len. Behind the scenes there is someone who wants Len back inside and Charly back in her council house more than anything. And that person is keeping uncharacteristically quiet. They're willing to do anything to make sure that someone else is framed for the murder; even if that person turns out to be their own flesh and blood...Rough Justice is the second novel from former pop star and tabloid favourite, Kerry Katona.

A person from a Northern town who's dragged herself up from nothing and is set to lose it all... it's like she's a plot-creating machine...

Yoko seeks to bring peace

It's a crazy old mixed-up world, with guns and bombs and tanks and all the other panoply of war that Dolores listed in the Cranberries' Zombie. Yoko Ono, though, is prepared to do something about it, and is building a tower of light to extend the lucrative John Lennon brand ("to provide a focus for world peace").

She's building this tower in Reykjavik, a city well-known for being at the heart of so-much world conflict.

It's a bit like building a monument to gay tolerance in central Brighton: sure, it's a lovely sentiment, but it's not in the place where attitudes most urgently need changing.

Heads up

After all that bloody codery and winks and nods, it all boils down to "new Radiohead album in ten days":

Posting on Radiohead's official site Jonny Greenwood's message simply says:

"Hello everyone.
Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days;
We've called it In Rainbows.
Love from us all.
Jonny"

However, MI5 believe this might, in itself, be a code for 'rise up, rise up, and put the ruling class to the sword' and so have impounded Thom Yorke.

McGee gives Tim for free

The Charlatans might be wondering about the direction Alan McGee (professor of Pop at the University of Gloucestershire) is taking them in, with the news that he's decided they're going to give away their new material. For free:

McGee said he decided to give the Charlatans' music away after they were offered a deal he considered less than satisfactory by their record company, Sanctuary. "I thought, 'well nobody buys CDs anyway'. If you talk to a 19-year-old kid, they don't buy CDs. In eastern Europe, nobody buys a CD – everything is digitally downloaded from the internet for nothing. I came to the conclusion, 'Why don't we just give it away for nothing'."

So, having identified The Charlatans' target market as, erm, nineteen year old boys in Bratislava rather than the slightly pudgy thirtysomething Madchester survivors you or I might have pictured as being at their heart, McGee is electing to make it all available for nothing.

McGee said the band "could not lose" from the revolutionary approach. "We looked at the deal we were being offered by Sanctuary and said, 'Let's just do it ourselves'. We increase our fan base, we sell more merchandise, more fans talk about the band and we get more advertising and more films (soundtracks). More people will get into the the Charlatans and will probably pay the money to see the show. I presume it will double the gig traffic, maybe even treble it."

Except, of course, McGee's nineteen year old who'd be getting the album for free now would have been getting it for free anyway, so there's no loss there, but a large number of people would have paid for the record who now will be getting it for nothing. Sure, under the Sanctuary deal, they'd have been getting buttons for their share of the cake, but a small pile of buttons will keep you warm better than a large bunch of nothing. And will the extra tshirts and extra tickets make up that pile? Especially since the band usually sell out their tour dates anyway.

In addition, making the tracks totally free strips them out of chart contention - and pulls them away from Amazon and it's recommendation system - reducing the band's visibility as much as they giveaway will raise it.

We love that McGee has shifted to try something new, but it does bother us that simply giving away the tracks is as unworkable an idea as trying to keep them locked-up. Could McGee not have had effect he hoped for, without costing the band a small fortune, by making the singles available for nothing but keeping an album package back? Just because some people will always find a way to avoid paying doesn't mean it's a compelling business argument to turn away people who want to pay.

Still, should Tim Burgess find himself on his uppers and need a place to kip, we're more than willing to offer him a duvet and a can of soup.

The Enemy realise they might need friends

We know you'll have been unable to settle all weekend, wondering if The Enemy and Alex Zane are still at war.

The good news is that The Enemy have been thinking - probably about the combined marketing push offered by Channel 4 and XFM to their target audience of not-too-fussy boys in skintight jeans - and have offered a truce:

"I'm willing to play an acoustic set on his show. We've got to move on."

Not only have they got to move on, they've also got a large pile of unsold copies of We'll Live And Die In These Towns they've got to move on out of warehouses.

We love the idea that coming onto Zane's show and playing an acoustic session is some sort of concession, though - it's like if Galtieri had offered to turn up in Plymouth and translate all the street signs into Spanish to end the Falklands War.

Spice Girls sell out in seconds

The big switch-on for Spice Girls tickets happened earlier today, with the London date selling-out in 38 seconds, almost certainly a record for selling anything to do with Mel B.

We're presuming the story in today's claiming that Bono is writing a song for the band was a last-minute attempt to dampen demand to a point where the phones could cope.

Bono? Really? Writing a pop song?

Of course, it doesn't matter overmuch, as the Best Of will sell on the backs of the good songs from the first two albums rather than anything from the point where more time was spent styling the video than writing the lyrics, but Bono.

The Spice Girls are - okay, were - a burst of over-coloured pop frenzy. Has nobody noticed that when Bono attempts to be pop, and carefree, it comes across like a headmaster joining in an end-of-term revue in a bid to be thought of as a good egg? What motivation can there be for asking someone who wrote his last decent song before the Spice Girls were formed - indeed, before they were teenagers - to provide a song for a pop band?

Or is it an RDF life-swap series, and somewhere they've got Alison 'Betty Boo' Clarkson trying to knock up a song for Rage Against The Machine?

Drink to the Mobos

Gabrielle's recent criticisms of the Mobos - she complained that they're US-centric and lack any recognition of soul - have been considered by Mutya out of the Sugababes (very out of the Sugababes), and she doesn't agree:

"I don't think any awards should be stopped.

"It's great to get drunk and have fun and not have any hate. We're all in the same industry."

Aha. So, it's not a celebration of the achievements of artists working primarily in genres with a black heritage; it's a piss-up. Although if you really just wanted to have a gathering where people got drunk and have fun, you could just put in a bus shelter and not worry about trying to create a shortlist without Dizzee Rascal's name on it.

Just fancy that

"I've never been the kind of girl who has to have the latest Chloé handbag," she insisted. "If I see a nice bag for £30, I'll get it."

- Cheryl Cole tells the News of the World how down-to-earth she is, 30th September

SEXY CHERYL COLE earns her stripes as a WAG — on a shopping binge in a zebra-patterned hat.

The Something Kinda Ooooh singer, 24 — wife of Chelsea ace ASHLEY COLE, 26 — also donned huge sunglasses as she spent big in Beverly Hills at the weekend.

- The Sun, 1st October ...presumably, she was at the Beverly Hills Target.

Gary Barlow moans about British music

Talking like a man who has already bought an extra can of Brasso to buff up the award, Gary Barlow is predicting great success for Gary Barlow at the Brits, because everything else is dull:

“I’m not sure what the Brits is going to be like this year because there haven’t been any massive British records.

“If you think about it, last year in the Best British Single category, there were loads of really strong pop records, but this year there haven’t really been any. The biggest song has probably been RIHANNA's Umbrella but she’s not British.”

How a man can say that with a straight face in the year when Ting Tings released That's Not My Name is beyond us, but we guess Barlow is just assuming that the Brits aren't going to bother themselves with anything beyond the Top Ten.

And if the major label-top 40 sector has been less than glittery this year, could that be because of the obsession with resurrecting bands instead of discovering them, with Blue and Spice Girls and god knows who else being measured up to see if they can fit in their old stage pants? And which band would have been responsible for kicking off that obsession, Mr. Gary Barlow out of Take That?

Ozzy Osbourne: will die "just like that"

David Arden is worried about Ozzy Osbourne.

Who he? He's Sharon Osbourne's younger brother. And his concern is that Sharon is working Oz so hard, he's going to die on stage:

“I have known Ozzy since 1970. He is going to do 40 shows on the bounce, starting in mid-October and he’s talking about a Black Sabbath tour after that.

“I think he’s worn out. When the cameras are off he just sits there quietly.

“Sharon will keep Ozzy on the road until, like Tommy Cooper, he dies on stage.

“Sharon needs him to work because of her exorbitant spending — although, in fairness to her, Ozzy wouldn’t know what to do if he ever retired.”

To be honest, it doesn't seem like Ozzy knows what he's doing with himself at the moment. But the vision of a man who only comes alive when the spotlight is on him sounds more like late-period Ronald Reagan than Tommy Cooper.

Arden then canters through Sharon's tales of childhood poverty and suggests that she might be disembellishing her childhood like a character in a Monty Python sketch:

“She claimed she came up from nothing but there was no way we were impoverished.

“She said she could remember bailiffs coming round every week and taking the furniture out and then having it brought back. Absolute codswallop.

“There were times electricity and phone bills weren’t paid on time.

“My dad would make sure the best steak was on the table and cashmere coats were on his children and then worry about the bills.

“We had hand-made clothes. At the age of six she had her shoes hand-made at Freed’s of St Martin’s Lane.

“We also went to private schools. My dad had a twinkle in his eye for Sharon. She could do no wrong.

“She over-sensationalises her life. When she says her father used to pull her hair ... he would never do that. She was his little Jewish Princess.

It should be pointed out that Arden and his sister have had a falling out in the summer, over their Dad's funeral, and oddly, he never seemed that bothered about how hard Sharon was working Ozzy before.

Further, Arden produced Sharon's chatshow on daytime in America which was every bit as big a success as her one for ITV, the Moribund Teatime Audience Drop-Off Hour or whatever it was called.

He seems to have suddenly noticed, though, that Osbourne isn't very nice:

David claims further evidence of Sharon’s hypocrisy emerged in her reaction to an overweight contestant on the new series of X-Factor.

Sharon and fellow judge Louis Walsh exploded with laughter when Dawn Gerrard said she used to be a jockey.

David said: “Sharon is one of the biggest hypocrites around.

“She has talked about her own struggles with weight problems.”

Even if it wasn't hypocritical, that's still just bloody nasty - and although going on the X Factor is like tattooing Kick Me on your face-parts, there's really no excuse for it.

There is, of course, no response from Sharon in the Sun's report, but somehow, this doesn't read like a feature that will heal the family rift.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

No ongoing NIN

Trent Reznor has cogitated, and the upshot is: he ain't pushing on with Nine Inch Nails:

"At this point, I want to switch things around a bit. I see other ways I can present Nine Inch Nails' material in concert. Something more challenging, something new. I don't want it to go stale.

"The idea of five guys making music for two hours, while it's the culmination of fine-tuning over a lot of years, has got to change. I want to whittle things down."

He really can't think of other ways to present NIN's music in concert? What about by having clowns play the instruments? Or wearing a Bernie Clifton style ostrich costume? Or simply smiling a bit? Come on Trent, there must be loads of things you could try...

Promoterobit: Mitch Karczewski

Longtime promoter and Cleveland club-owner Mitch Karczewski has died. The 58 year-old suffered a fatal heart attack at his home on Friday. Over two decades. Karczewski played his part in developing a strong rock scene for Ohio-based acts; most notably during his time working with Mushroomhead.

Cancellations run riot at NME tour

There can't be many people who've used the excuse of "being stick on the M4" to pull out of a gig, but it's worked for Letha Bizzle who's joined a sicklisted Wombats in quitting tonight's NME tour bill for Cardiff.

The Wombats' Matthew Murphy is without a voice; ominously, Bizzle is being replaced by "friends" of The Enemy who even the NME can't quite put a name on.

Bushwacker

After four years without an album, and much, much longer since they last played in the UK, And Also The Trees are on the road this October and November:

06/10/07 - Cafe Atlantik - FREIBURG
13/10/07 - Bush Hall LONDON
21/11/07 - K17 - BERLIN
22/11/07 - Kuz - MAINZ
23/11/07 - Zeche - BOCHUM
24/11/07 - La Maroquinerie - PARIS
25/11/07 - Le Botanique BRUSSELS

Shakira shares with shaken and soaked

As charitable donations go, forty million dollars is pretty hefty. That's how much Shakira (described by the Times of India as "the kind-hearted pop star") is handing to South America to help after the Peruvian earthquake and the Nicaraguan hurricane.

Gordon Brown hates golden brown

It's a refreshing break from election speculation: who could Gordon Brown be thinking about?:

Mr Brown declared: "We have got celebrities who take a very casual attitude to drugs, who think their standing in the community makes them above the law on these matters.

"We have to send a very clear message not only that we will not decriminalise drugs, but that this is unacceptable behaviour and the vast majority of our young people will never fall for this.

"We have to make it clear that we as a community stand up against those who would sell drugs, those who would be casual in their attitude to drugs and those who think that they are above the law when it comes to drugs."

So, if there is a winter eleection, Labour will include the abolition of Pete Doherty in its manifesto, then.

I'll Stand By You

Cheryl Cole has been tattling with the News of the World (actually, GQ), revealing that she put the kibosh on Ashley's move to Real Madrid because she was worried about her career:

"I've worked just as hard as he has to get where I am and we spoke about it at length," Cheryl told GQ Magazine.

"Either I'd have had to move out there with him and commute, or give up my career at a time when we'd finally been accepted as a band and it was almost cool to like Girls Aloud."

Which is touchingly supportive.

Of course, it never harmed Victoria Beckham's career having to relocate to Madrid, although, to be honest, we've not been quite clear what her career involves.

Instead, to keep Tweedy happy, Cole went to Chelsea. Cheryl was "surprised" that this was received like a Satanist in a cathedral:

I almost begged Ashley to sign for Chelsea not really knowing what that would mean," she confessed.

"I know a bit about football, growing up in Newcastle, and I know it would be difficult for a player to go from Newcastle to Sunderland, for instance.

"But I didn't realise the extent to which moving from Arsenal to Chelsea would cause so much hurt between the two of us, and to Arsenal fans."

You might think that if you know so little about football that you don't realise an Arsenal to Chelsea move is going to upset fans, you probably shouldn't be advising your husband on the direction his career should take.

It is a difficult problem, and one that a lot of couples face at some point in their life - whose career should be the one that has to satellite around the others - but would it have been so difficult for Tweedy to be based in Madrid and still be in Girls Aloud? Sure, it would mean that the couple would spend a slew of time apart, but with band responsibilities and away matches and training camps and tours, surely they must be spending as many nights in Travelodges and Hampton Suites alone as they do together anyway?

Cheryl is aware that her move - besides getting Ashley branded a lion Judas and hated by a quarter of all Londoners - cost him a lot of money. But she's got an answer for that - he's overpaid anyway:

"I find what all footballers get paid obscene anyway, I can never get my head around it," she said. "But that's the market, it's not Ashley's fault. It's unfair to brand Ashley greedy because he has never been like that.

"Both me and him are from lower-class backgrounds. We were brought up on a council estate and in a high-rise flat without two pennies to rub together."

Hang about a moment - Cole isn't greedy because "it's what the market pays"? But isn't he part of the mechanism which sets the market price? Nobody forces him to take home £90,000 a week. He could quite easily say "that's a ridiculously obscene sum of money for kicking a ball about; please reduce it to a more sensible figure. Or at least something that's just slightly obscene."

Or he could give ninety percent of his wages to good causes. Or Cheryl could get her mate Nicola, the one what loves politics, to write an article calling for higher taxes for people earning those obscene sums. Let's be generous and assume all this is going on behind the scenes, and the couple don't just sit in their knickers in a hot-tub full of cash crying about those cruel market forces which force them to bank such large sums every week.

Because Cheryl is down to earth:

"I've never been the kind of girl who has to have the latest Chloé handbag," she insisted. "If I see a nice bag for £30, I'll get it."

This is, of course, the problem with being rich - it totally twists your value system. To Mrs Cole, buying a thirty quid handbag is a cheapo purchase. To people scraping by on part-time work and the minimum wage - like, for example, that toilet attendant she beat the crap out of - a thirty pound handbag would still represent a significant purchase, forcing a choice between the bag and other purchases, or a period of saving, or a slide into debt.

Thinking it shows she's got her well-clad feet on the ground, Cole's bag actually demonstrates the size of the understanding gap.

Still, back to the transfer hassle. Everything must be all settled, now, if she's able to talk about it?

"He has always told me never to talk about this, but I think people should know."

Ah. So having crushed his dreams, left him with what Cheryl calls "dead" eyes, and held up as a hate figure in the eyes of his former fans, she couldn't even respect his request to not make it all public.

And why should "people know"? She surely doesn't think that it's going to make Ashley's life any easier to know that he sold out the Gunners fans because his wife didn't fancy the move? Or does she just want the public to know that she's the alpha male in the relationship?

Kylie: Warts and all - but only the cute warts

To be honest, "star edits fly-on-the-wall documentary to flattering effect" isn't really much of a story, so it's hard to see why the News of the World is quite so exercised that Kylie has chopped bits out of her In Bed With Madonna clone White Diamond. But exercised it is:

Our source said: "In one of the cut scenes Kylie's boobs are on display as she gets undressed.

"No scarring is visible because she had clever reconstructive surgery after the partial mastectomy to remove her cancer. But she was extremely unhappy about its inclusion in the final edit so it got chopped."

When the Screws was making up this quote for its source, you would have thought they'd have at least had the grace to not use the phrase "so it got chopped" in a sentence about the after-effects of a mastectomy. Not that we think the reconstructive surgery is the real motivation for Kylie axing this scene - isn't it more likely that she didn't want her breasts in the film and a constant stream of "Kylie Minogue naked" websites.

This bit, though, is an eye-opener:

Kylie also ordered interviews with her old Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan, 39, to be cut from the White Diamond documentary — because she can't stand him.

To us, this sounds like exactly the sort of claim which results in a small apology of the "we now accept this isn't the case and apologise for any embarrassment caused" buried on page 64.