THAT'S WHY MUM'S GONE TO ICELAND

The most lurid thing in the News of the World, though, are some staged pretendarazzi shots of Lerry Katona topless on a beach. Again, the NOTW seems to be vaguely surprised that a young woman might remove her bikini top on a beach, thinking they have somehow "busted" her and chiding her for being "a bared, bared girl" (it's meant to be a pun on bad, we think.)

More alarming is the possibility that the breasts - so recently the subject of a clunking Iceland advert skit - may well actually have been bought in a giant bag of frozen meats. We don't encourage you to look for yourself, but... if you feel you want to look, you'll see what we mean. [Not safe for work, or, indeed, anyone with eyes.]

music kerry katona atomic kitten

PETE DOHERTY "LESS THAN RELIABLE" SHOCKER

According to the second-most lurid thing in today's News of the World, Pete Doherty might have managed to get over Kate Moss slightly more quickly than he was able to get over the drucks. He's got himself a new girlfriend reckons the paper, and it's disgusted:

Babyshambles singer Doherty romanced fan Nuha Razik as Kate battled her cocaine addiction.

Doherty was in London with art student Nuha, 23. Our revelations will plunge 31-year-old Kate into new despair.

... or they can only hope. We're not quite sure why the red top thinks Pete finding someone else is a bad thing - hasn't Fleet Street spent the last seven days telling Kate she should get rid anyway? Isn't this what they wanted?

We can reveal how Doherty, 26:
# POUNCED on pretty Nuha during a booze-up on his tour bus, serenading her with a drunken rendition of her favourite Babyshambles track, Fuck Forever.

Lucky her favourite wasn't What Katy Did, I guess...

# BEGGED her to stay with him for the rest of his tour - even as his girlfriend's world was collapsing around her in London

Really? But the paper's account seems to suggest that all that happened on their first meeting was a bit of a drunken snog; they only got together on October 2nd, by which time Kate was well into her "rehab" - indeed, it's likely she was heading off to rehab by the time Babyshambles had finished their Rock City gig. (If the London tabs reported her as checking in on their 29th September editions, they'd have had to have known by teatime in the UK on the 28th, which makes it seem certain Moss would have had to have actually entered rehab sometime in the 24 hours previously and so would probably have set out for the states sometime on the 26th - so, far from collapsing around her in London, she'd already have been in the PR fightback by then.)

# HIRED besotted Nuha as his PA once Kate was out of the country, getting her to help design his next album cover as the pair became inseparable,

Or, rather Nuha's "pal" says that she told them that Pete was going to pay her to be a PA, which doesn't quite constitute a legal hiring in our book.

# BRAZENLY paraded the young beauty in front of a group of Kate's shocked close friends at a party... The final insult to Kate came last week when Doherty paraded Nuha in front of the model's friends at a dinner party thrown by Pogues front man Shane MacGowan.

The only real eyebrow raising element of the whole incident is the mental image of this dinner party - Shane McGowan inviting Pete Doherty round for a dinner party? Wouldn't you love to be the thirteenth guest there?

"Profiteroles! How lovely!"
"They are M&S, I cheated a little..."
"You'd never tell, they're like home made... and the punch?"
"Oh, that is home-made - family recipe; the knack is in when you add the lighter fluid, not in how much. Can I help you to more coke?"
"This really is very good..."
"Oh, yes... even the washing powder it's been cut with is ecological friendly..."

music pete doherty babyshambles kate moss shane mcgowan

SHE'S NEVER MET ANYONE BETTER THAN HER

For its sheer mote-and-beamability, it's hard to top Sharon Osbourne's bad tempered rant against everyone who is a bit like her:

[She] said of Jagger: “He seems to be a bit of a social climber. Wants to be part of the aristocracy.

“Like that twat out of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry. Him and Jagger are always up some lord or lady’s arsehole on a fucking Persian rug. They make me sick.”

Sharon Osbourne lives in a massive country house in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

Speaking of Madonna, she told GQ magazine: “She’s a twat. I would like to punch her. She is so full of shit.

“She’s in Kabbalah one minute, she’s a Catholic the next — she’ll be a Hindu soon no doubt. Fuck off you twat.”

Well, you could certainly say it's more than time that madonna made a dignified exit from the public eye, as it's clear any work she's had to offer has now got beyond embarrassing. Remind you of anyone, Sharon?

Then, just for good measure, she throws this in:

“Who else? Oh yes, Bono. What a twat. And Diana Ross. Awful woman.”

Diana Ross? Diana Ross?

music sharon osbourne bono madonna mick jagger diana ross

NO WORD FROM FLO CLUCAS YET... BUT WE'RE HOPING

Oddly, we've not had a response to either of our two previous emails to Liverpool City Council's Flo Clucas, the council member who has been given the job of announcing the we'll pull it down/no, we'll save it somewhere policy for Ringo Starr's house.

We're starting to wonder if, maybe, she's treating us with contempt. It could be, though, that she's just lost our email. We thought we'd give her another go at explaining that whole "it's of no significance... oh, actually, it is..." business, so we sent her one last email. It ran something like this:

Flo,

It's been a month now - well, longer, actually - since I sent you a short email asking a couple of questions about Ringo Starr's house. And not a word - not a 'mind your own beeswax'; not a 'of course, as an elected representative I'm happy to answer any questions that may help you understand the bizarre twists of the story'. Not even so much as an out-of-office reply. (That's an Outlook thing, by the way, it's not a reference to political office.)

Maybe you just don't check your email very often; maybe you deleted it by mistake. I do that from time to time. Just in case, I thought I'd freshen up my questions and see if you can't help me understand this whole story a little better.

Now, if I've got it right, there was an investigation into preserving Ringo's house, which the Associated Press and the Liverpool Echo report you as saying discovered the house had no historical significance, as Starr only lived there for three months.

What form did this investigation take, how much public money was spent on it, and how did such an investigation manage to leave you telling the world that Ringo resided in a place for three months when he lived there twelve times as long?

Then, a couple of weeks later, you announced that the house was to be saved after all.

Why did you suddenly do a u-turn? What new information came to light showing this house was of historical signifance after all?

The plan now seems to be to take the house down brick-by-brick, and store it somewhere?

How much will this cost, who will be paying, and what is the long-term plan for the bricks?

And finally - and really, this is just out of curiosity - are the council making any cash out of the destruction of the neighbourhood is in?

I do hope you can at least find some time to acknowledge receipt of this email, and perhaps to share some of the answers. The assumption from such silence is that there's absolutely no policy at play here at all, and it's all being made up as things career along, out of control. But that's not the case, is it?

Yours,

Simon HB, at No Rock & Roll Fun

As ever, we'll let you know the minute we get a response. If we do.

music the beatles flo clucas ringo starr

LIVE 8 A NICE LITTLE EARNER

Well, at least you can't complain that Live 8 hasn't done some good - so many merchandising deals were done to create the VIP areas and so on that even after the costs of putting the musical events on were dealt with, and the Princes Trust paid off, there was a USD12 million profit, which has gone to Africa through the Band Aid charity.

Of course, it could have been much more. The mobile phone companies who supplied the texting infrastructure made their usual fees off every text sent, which from two million messages soon mounts up into a splendid pile of slush. EMI is paying "a royalty" from every DVD sold, sure, but after all that fuss Geldof made about people making money from selling tickets on at a profit, why isn't he slapping the table and complaining about EMI making a profit from flogging the DVD? Or people making a profit from the book? Yes, we know that the main aim of Live8 wasnn't to raise money, but we're still not sure why its okay for companies to use it to boost their profits when those Ebay sales were meant to have been so very, very bad?

music band+aid live 8 live8 bob geldof

MAYBE WE SHOULD ALLOW THE DEAD TO SUE

Even having strong mob connections cannot help you once you're dead, and relatives and other members of the estate can start to wank your corpse until it leaks coins. Frank Sinatra might be comfortably dead, and is probably sat in one of the leafier parts of purgatory hoping to watch his reputation grow and gather in the way it does after death. Unfortunately, his family have otherudeas:

A virtual Frank Sinatra will star in a show in London's West End, seven years after the singer's death, producers announced Wednesday.

Dancers and a live orchestra will accompany a video projection of the singer. The show uses home movies of Sinatra from the 1950s — restored, colorized and projected onto screens in the theater.

"It's as if you are watching the concert because you are seeing footage of him in his prime, heard as if he is performing in front of you," said the singer's granddaughter, A.J. Azzarto.

"It's not at all ghostly in any way," she added. "Even if it's in an arena it's as if he's singing to you personally."

We think AJ must have misheard a question there, or else confused "ghostly" with "ghoulish." Obviously, at it's heart its little more than a jazzed up piece of cinema, but the promotional push that it's like a proper Sinatra live event is where it starts to stink. We wonder if they looked into seeing how much it would cost to digitally insert Geri Halliwell into the movies to really dump on the old guy's grave?

music frank sinatra

£517 PER GIG

The usually ill-advised mixing of public funds and music seems to have gone awry again; the problems often happen because politicians think the best way to encourage people to create music is to pay a bunch of "experts" to work on think-tanks, pathfinder schemes and enterprise bodies which have a far better track record of burning through cash than actually encouraging people to learn how to play the guitar.

Grief this time comes from Enterprise Music Scotland, a body into which has been pumped "hundreds of thousands of pounds" from the Scottish Arts Council and more cash from Aberdeen's City Council. (Alarmingly, a City Council spokesperson seemd to be unable to say how much). It seems a "five-figure sum" is alleged to have been pinched from this money; Chief Executive Ronnie Rae has resigned from, well, being chief executive, and EMS has been redirecting media enquiries to the Grampian Police media office:

A spokeswoman for Grampian Police said: "We can confirm that we are making inquiries into allegations of fraud, involving the alleged theft of a five-figure sum from a city centre company."

She added that no-one had been charged and inquiries were continuing.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Arts Council in Edinburgh confirmed Mr Rae had resigned from Enterprise Music Scotland.

She said the Scottish Arts Council had given the organisation £207,000 for the period 2003/04 to 2005/06, but much of the money would be filtered down to promoters and performers.

Or at least some of it that hasn't gone missing would have done. If you're a Scottish musician, you might want to ponder just how many gigs you would have been prepared to perform for a fifth of a million quid.

The Enterprise Music Scotland webpage is a bit of a quiet affair - as is so often the case with these sorts of quango groups.

The news page is empty, save for a pleading "If you have any news relating to promoters and performers or agents, let us know"; the forum proudly announces that its busiest time ever was when three people were on simultaneously, and allows you to read all three messages posted during its lifetime (they've yet to edit the page properly so it claims it comes from 'yourdomain.com').

The concert diary - surely a wonderful way to promote live music in the region - is another apologetic "Sorry - this page is being updated. " On a Saturday night, at 7.45? Good god, with that sort of dedicated staff, maybe it is money well spent. Unless they're fibbing of course. Google last crawled the page on October 19th, when they found a blank page promising "Below is a listing of all concerts being organised with Enterprise Music Scotland in the next four weeks." Delve a little back further, and you discover there's only one snapshot of the site on the internet archive, from over a year ago: October 2004, in fact. Another blank page, and the promise "Below is a listing of all concerts being organised with Enterprise Music Scotland in the next four weeks." Perhaps October is just a bad month for them, although since they claim to be promoting 400 live events a year in Scotland, you'd think one October or other there'd have been something.

music enterprise music scotland aberdeen

R KELLY WILL HAVE TO FACE TRIAL: "LIKE, DUH" SAYS JUDGE

You've got to love the R Kelly defence team - they tried to get the whole shagging a kid and filming it charges thrown out on the grounds that the prosecution weren't entirely sure when the video was made.

The Judge was unimpressed with their arguments.

music r+kelly

THEY CALL IT MARKET SEGMENTATION

It's a marketing move, sure, but it's probably a shrewd one: the British and Americans are getting different Franz Ferdinand singles.

In America, USA, the next single will be The Fallen, while British buyers will be given the chance to take Walk Away back to their chintz-decorated living rooms to enjoy while they have a cup of tea and plot their next football hooliganism trip.

Alex Kapranos explains: "In the States they're more up for a bit of rock 'n' roll."

Plus, of course, the import singles market is quite a lucrative business to be in, we hear.

music franz ferdinand alex kapranos

GORDON BROWN LOVES LADY SOVEREIGN

An unlikely headline, but apparently it's true. And how do we know Gordo loves Lady Sov? Erm, because she says that he spoke to her:

"I only spoke to him quickly, as he's a busy guy, but he commented on my music and said he's a fan.

"He said he's paying attention to what I'm up to, which is weird coming from Gordon Brown.

"He did all the talking - I could hardly get a word out! He's alright."

Politician says he likes what the person he's talking to does, then. Let's hope the Sov never plays the Royal Variety Performance, otherwise she'll come away convinced the Queen is a big fan, too.

music lady sovereign gordon brown

THE TWILIGHT OF THE CLODS

Even by the Gallagher brother's standards, the claim recently that there'd been nothing in music to challenge them in a decade was a puzzling one, coming at such a great time for music. But it turns out that we forgot to take into account Noel's cloth ear for music, as revealed to the Australian Daily Telegraph:

As a pop veteran, Gallagher has little time for the new generation of skinny-trouser and tie-clad guitar-driven bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs, dismissing them as "indie shit".

"Within that realm of indie shit, Franz Ferdinand is about as good as it gets. Take Me Out is a tune that wins hands down but, really, it's fucking indie rubbish," Gallagher said.

"We were at the NME awards last year and we were the only ones not sat there with shirts and ties on. Everyone else was there in school uniforms, it was like being at a school disco."

Mmm. That effect can't have helped that everyone else at the NME awards were a decade and a half younger than you and didn't look as if they sleep in hedges. But hush a moment, for Noel is shifting his gaze onto Robbie Williams:

"I feel sorry for Robbie Williams because nobody once ever mentions his music," laughs Gallagher cheekily.

"I wouldn't walk a mile in his shoes because he seems to be a very lonely and unhappy, very confused young man. He doesn't know whether he's straight or gay. He's forever going on about wanting a girlfriend and seems to be a lonely, sad man."

Oh... it's coming... I can feel it...


But hang on, let's fight the lemur of distraction. Because there is a band Noel loves. It's Oasis. Or Oasis-lite, anyway:

"When I first saw Jet it was too rock for me, but they're four of the coolest guys I ever met," Gallagher said backstage in Paris, halfway through a world tour.

"You can't argue with Are You Gonna Be My Girl. I never listened to any of their singles and stuff but I'm a fan now."

Well, you could argue with it - pisspoor reworking of something a Hendrix covers band might produce, or the sort of rock twattery Lenny Kravitz deals in - but since Noel appears to genuinely believe the new Oasis album is any good, it'd be a waste of time.

Noel, you know, is just an ordinary bloke. He even goes to shops:

"Can you imagine George Michael buying toothpaste and a toothbrush and a newspaper or some lemons?

Ordinary people are determined to make you feel bad, though. You'll be in the queue at the supermarket with a pint of milk, some bread and a newspaper and someone will say, 'what you doing here?'

"I turn around and say, fuck off, I'm doing my fucking shopping like you are."

Ah... so you think you're so brilliant it's astonishing you should go to tesco for yourself, but think it's awful that people recognise you when you do? How does that... no, can't fight anymore...

music noel gallagher robbie williams jet george michael kaiser chiefs franz ferdinand

GET THEE BEHIND ME STRYPER/ I'VE PLAYED YOUR RECORDS BACKWARDS

Turns out that Half Man Half Biscuit's Trernoc Kcor Naitsirhc with its accusations that "I've seen your antics in the Green Room" might not have been too far from the truth all along. Yes, even Stryper have had their time spent eating pretzels and falling over, just like George W:

"We had many temptations along the road and many opportunities we could have grabbed on to," said Michael Sweet, lead singer for the Platinum selling band which has regrouped after a decade and is back on tour.

He said there was one stumbling point at the band’s peak.

"We went through a period in "Against the Law" when we started drinking, we started getting a little out of control," Sweet said. "The bad part in that is the fact that it was somewhat hypocritical because we were standing on stage telling people you don’t need alcohol and then we’d go to the bus and drink."

Of course, now that the band are back together, this time supping with the devil provides them with an extra little force: they can self-flagellate, empathise with us sinners even more warmly, and bask in the smuggity warmth of those who have locked horns with Satan. Of course, their idea of heavy drinking probably means they had a sip of a wine mixer a couple of times, but that doesn't mean they're not able to announce that its g-l-o-r-y to know their s-a-v-e-d:

"Thank God we didn’t completely disintegrate and have a meltdown and go the opposite — and continue on the opposite — path. We woke one morning and said, ‘What are we doing?’ and we halted and put a stop to everything and got back on path."

Sweet said the band wants to be an example to others.

"We try to speak less and let our actions be the example of Christ in our lives — who we are, how we treat people, what we say to people. Do we smile or growl to people? Are we pleasant and nice? Do we give grace? That’s what’s going to have an effect on people more than words. We try to live as examples and let that light shine through."

Well, we're going to take their example. We're off to get pissed on a bus parked up outside a church.

music stryper

THE PROBLEM HE JUST CAN'T FLUSH

After Lenny Kravitz somehow managed to block up his toilet, destroy the apartment downstairs and get sued as a result, he's now facing another legal action - his number two, you might say. His downstair neighbour says the insurance money sought from the first lawsuit wasn't enough to cope with the reapirs. That one sought a thrid of a million dollars, which is quite a lot for even a big morning explosion.

music lenny kravitz

CHESNEY'S BEARING UP

Apart from worrying if Omarion has narrowly escaped any nasty incidents recently, most of sympathy will have been directed towards Kenny Chesney, waiting for his fraudulent marriage to Renee Zellweger to be annulled; over even before he'd removed his big country hat. Chesney's bearing up to the loss of his wife of a few weeks with the help of - yes - music. It's like a drug, see. But a legal one:

"It's like medicine — and obviously I need that now," the 37-year-old country singer tells Life magazine in an upcoming issue.

Asked about his brief time as Mr. Zellwegger, and he offers a gnomic response:

"What was that old song: 'We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout,'" Chesney replies.

That song was called Jackson, wasn't it? Is this some hint? Was Michael involved? Or is it simply that, since the next line refers to a fire going out, a wry acknowledgement that Renee was disappointed that she only got embers when she was expecting a big, licking flame?

music renee zellweger kenny chesney

MATT CRAWFORD TO CONSIDER BUYING NEVERLAND

We're starting to get a little lost with the Michael Jackson story, to be honest, and tried to straighten it out by writing the keywords on post-it notes and sticking them all over our walls. But whenever we did that, they kept spelling out 'likessmallpps', meaningless gibberish which got us no further. When he knocked back jury duty, he said he was never going to be in America. Then he went to LA to record his charity single.

Apparently. According to Fox News, Jackson fears the jury summons is all a ruse to try and get him back into the US so he can be hit with another child-fidgeting case - although why the prosecutors would try and misuse the jury system in that way but not bother to do anything when he turned up at the recording studio is beyond us.

Meanwhile, Fox sniffily reports that he's put Neverland on the market "as in now, and not six months ago as falsely reported in tabloids." Yeah, Fox - start a global campaign to ensure tabloids don't print false stories and see how long it takes for Rupert to get on the phone...

Some of Jackson's staff at Neverland appear to keep turning up for work despite not being paid:

"Everyone is pissed," says a staffer. "It was one thing when this happened during the trial, but now is a different story."

In May and June, Jackson missed payroll several times, and staffers conducted a work stoppage.

More importantly, Violet Silva, head of security at Neverland and a Jackson loyalist for more than 15 years, quit her job last week. She is now working for former Jackson attorney Robert Sanger.

You wonder how they manage to keep the wolf from the door when they're not being paid. We don't want to raise the spectre of a large barbecue kettle being rolled into the Neverland zoo compound here, but... have you got any other ideas?

And finally, back briefly to that charity single. The Prince of Bahrain's support for the project might have seemed slightly odd to begin with, but... now, we think we see why he happily coughed up for Jacko to record it. It's his:

By the way, “From the Bottom of My Heart” — which is also the title of an excellent Stevie Wonder track on his own new album — was written by the prince of Bahrain. I’m told the prince has had the song for some time and tried to get Jackson to record it back around 9/11.

Jackson, however, opted for his “What More Can I Give,” which was a rewrite of his old hit, “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.”

We just bet he hasn't told the prince of the switch yet - let's hope that Jacko resurrecting his dumped 9/11 song instead of his sponsor's doesn't spoil his chances of settling permanently in Bahrain, the place beyond nasty American prosecutors ("the jewel of the Emirates".)

music michael jackson rupert murdoch neverland fox news

BENSON'S NAME IS MUDD

Extraordinary goings-on at Brendan Benson's Berlin Mudd Club date this week: it was raided by police who, wielding batons, forced him to turn the set acoustic.

The cops thought the electric gig was too loud; it's probably lucky they weren't at the Free Trade Hall back in 1966.

music brendan benson

SHARON OSBOURNE WANTS TO GIVE SMACK TO DOHERTY*

Former Asda salesperson Sharon Osbourne has lurched into a bit of a rant against Pete Doherty. A bit of a rant here, of course, means a screeching unconsidered diatribe:

"Pete Doherty? Well he needs a bleedin' good slap, that's what. He needs locking down in rehab for a couple of months. And the truth needs to be told to his face.

"There's nothing harder to take than the truth. It's not hip to be in that state he's in. It's not cool, it's pathetic. I wouldn't take him on though - I helped Ozzy but that's because I loved him - I don't love Pete Doherty. But he does need someone who loves him who really gives him some love. He needs to be knocked out a couple of times and, get the shit kicked out of him and thrown into rehab.

"With Ozzy, there would be a few hours in the morning when he was straight and you would see the sweetest, nicest, most generous man in the world. He was funny, and lovely. Then as soon as he had a drink it would deteriorate slowly through the day. But those moments of passion and caring were enough. I thought, 'I can change it, I can change this situation'. It's a hell of a battle.

"Pete Doherty needs to ditch the hangers-on and find someone who really loves him enough to tell him the truth. He needs to go through some hardcore rehab. That will strip him of any notion of celebrity, they should be telling him, 'you're the same as everybody else. You're a fucking addict'.

"It's his only chance of survival because I'm terrified the poor little thing's gonna OD. Now he thinks this is a part he has to play, it's become like a character to play out. People want to see that. It's obvious he's very insecure. He's not confident because he wouldn't do it if he was."

This is Sharon Osbourne, telling Pete Doherty he should lose any notion that he's a celebrity. Sharon "I can do a chatting show" Osbourne? Sharon "Go on, put us on the telly" Osbourne?

However, we're sure that Sharon's advice on how to get somebody drug free will be welcome to the Babyshambles team - after all, she must be doing something right, as with her husband's drug use, there would have been a risk of the children following suit. Sharon clearly was able to ensure that her kids didn't fall into that same trap, so we should listen carefully to what she has to say.

And let's just look at that last line:

"It's obvious he's very insecure. He's not confident because he wouldn't do it if he was."

Sharon Osbourne is a bulimic who undergoes plastic surgery operations on a regular basis.

* - If only the 11 O'clock Show was still on the air, eh?

music pete doherty babyshambles sharon osbourne

WHAT A PITY ROBSON GREEN HAS NABBED ROCKET MAN AS A TITLE

The looming threat of being forced to share Elton John's sense of humour has darkened the skies a little more, as ABC have green-lighted the plans to make a pilot of Him and Us. Elton's involvement is as executive producer, so he probably won't have any input into the programme in any meaningful sense, beyond choosing the flowers for the set and getting David Furnish a cameo role.

music elton john tv

CAUSING TROUBLE

Finding a quiet moment in his busy schedule, 50 Cent has decided to start some sort of meaningless row with Dr Dre.

What over? Nothing:

Game is continuing to work on his follow-up to The Documentary with producers like Just Blaze and Cool and Dre, but 50 Cent says to the best of his knowledge Dr. Dre will not be working on it. In fact, 50 says Dre better not work on the Game

"If I'm not messing with him, how is Dre going to mess with him?" 50 recently asked on-air personality Tim Westwood during a BBC Radio interview in Europe. "Then that means me and Dre got beef. I think everybody sees my pattern."

Yeah, I can see how you'd have no choice. Probably shooting someone would sort it out, though?

music 50 cent the game dr dre

TIGER IN YOUR TANKS

What do you give someone who's got everything but talent? A tiger, apparently. That's what Georgina, wife of Westlife's Nicky Byrne has given him for his 27th birthday. Sadly, he's not going to have to unwrap it:

"I'll probably never meet him but you pay money to a charity and they send you updates on how he's doing."

"I haven't named him yet."

When he's tired of his tiger, perhaps he'll go looking for my leopard?

music nicky byrne westlife

MORGAN INSIDE; MEGAMAN FACES RETRIAL

The jury has delivered its verdict in the So-Solid Crew murder case. Almost.

Carl Morgan, the band's producer, has been convicted of murder and will spend at least 30 years inside. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on Dwayne Vincent, co-accused Megaman, who will now face a retrial in March next year.

Passing sentence, the Common Serjeant of London, Judge Brian Barker, told Morgan: "Gun use is the scourge of our streets and causes misery and distress.

"The message must be all one way - that it will not be tolerated.

"You expected eye witnesses would be cowed into silence and that ploy very nearly succeeded."

Morgan was found guilty of murdering Colin Scarlett, the partner of his former girlfriend. Vincent had been accused of encouraging Morgan to pull the trigger, a charge which he denied.

music so solid crew dwayne vincent megaman

WHAT HAS BOB WON?

Great news for Bob Geldof - he's won the prestigious Man Of Peace award, conveniently enough at the same time as he's pushing the Live8 DVD. (Live8 was an event designed to raise awareness of this Christmas stocking-stuffer, in case you forgot.) The what? Yes, the Man of Peace award. It's voted for by Nobel Laureates at an annual gathering paid for by the Gorbachev foundation, so it's, well, astonishing, isn't it? Bob says yes:

“It’s almost too big — all the Nobel Peace Prize winners voting for you as their Man of Peace. I feel weird.

“It reaffirms the progress made by Live 8 and the Make Poverty History campaign."

Well, certainly the progress towards garnishing Geldof with awards, prizes, and an all-important profile to help get those public speaking engagements can't be denied, can it?

But you might be asking yourself: if this is such a big deal, how come the Man of Peace prize is something I've never heard of, but also has a name that makes it sound like one of those books they include you in and then charge you £250 to buy a copy of ("Men of Destiny, 2005")?

Well, it's not "all the Nobel peace prize winners", for a start - apart from anything, quite often the prize goes to an organisation rather than a person, and not everyone bothers with the foundation anyway. But it is some Nobel winners.

More curiously, though, are the previous winners. In 2003, Roberto Benigni won the prize - coincidentally, the meeting was held in Rome. Last year's winner? Cat Stevens. You might notice there's something of a showbiz theme emerging here. We would suggest that the prize is little more than a cheap way of getting a celeb to attend the Laureate Bash, rather than a real award for hard work, but we're sure Nobel Prize Winners would never be so cyncial.

music live8 live 8 bob geldof man of peace gorbachev

SHE COULD HAVE JUST DENIED THE BODY WAS HERS

Janet Jackson naked? Surely not - the usually demure Jackson never appears in public with less than a bloke's hand covering her up. Turns out, though, that a video of her sunbathing nude has turned up online.

The Associated Press helpfully reports "the 40-second clip was shot from bushes near Jackson", and the rest just writes itself, really, doesn't it?

The video has been taken down under the threat of legal action - although the webmaster doesn't say if that came from Janet or the FCC.

music janet jackson

JACKSON BENEFIT ACTUALLY HAPPENING SHOCK

Rather happily, Michael Jackson discovered that he wouldn't need quite so many people to appear on his Katrina benefit after he spent some time reworking it and apparently it's being recorded as we speak. It's lucky that he turned out not to need lots of people - because although his people say that there are big names involved, nobody seems to want to go on the record and say who they might be. But certainly the big hitters promised at first - the James Browns and Mary Blige seem to have been replaced with, erm, Ciara and, perhaps, Shirley Caeser.

Probably not ex-Busted bloke James, though. He reports that since it came out he's been having sleepovers with Micko, he's been having a bad time of it:

"I have been spat at and pelted with bottles at gigs. It would seem people think there is something wrong with being Michael's friend."

"Some of the band think it's bad for our image, but I think he's a hugely influential man in music."

And it never did Paul McCartney any harm, working with him. Except for, um, him releasing a couple of stinking singles and taking nearly a decade to find his way back to any sort of form.

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EVEN BRITNEY CAN'T KEEP A STRAIGHT FACE ANYMORE

Good god, it turns out that not even Britney is taking Kevin Federline's singing career seriously - if you needed a sign the magic was fading there, that would be it:

[In Touch] magazine quotes an insider who claims Federline's songs were "greeted with hurtful laughter from his superstar wife, who was unimpressed".

The insider adds, "She said his debut CD might sell 'a hundred, maybe a thousand' copies if he was lucky... Kevin looked really hurt."

... especially since he'd hoped he could put his wife down for 5,000 for a start.

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REMIND US: MOTE AND BEAM MEANS WHAT?

Justin Hawkins is in a bit of a bad mood - he thinks we're not getting the proper respeck from overseas. In fact, he thinks British music is in a bad way. A very bad way indeed:

"British music is the laughing stock of the world. It's such fucking dreary bullshit. It's such a cliche to say, 'We were so bored of the industry around us that we started our own band!' But it's no coincidence that all our influences are from a long time ago."

We're not sure there's quite the pattern of logic there that he thinks there is - it could be, couldn't it, that Hawkins is just out of touch with modern times? And did The Darkness really form because people are laughing at Coldplay? And isn't the British depress-o-rama unfortunately somewhat popular around the globe?

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BECOMING LESS LIKE ALFIE

After a fairly short journey from Badly Drawn Boy's backline to indie band of some distinction ("not much" is still "some", remember), Alfie are calling it a day. Lee Gorton, the singer, announced it:

"So this dream is finally over! Some people think we've been milking it too long anyway but (and call me a fool all you like, many have before), I thought there was good reason to stick it out. Mostly 'cause i thought we were just on the edge of maturing into the really great band i always thought we could one day become...Things may well have worked out differently in other circumstances but there's no blame necessary."

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RUFUS BRINGS TWO INTO ONE

After all this time (and just in time for Christmas), Rufus Wainwright is releasing a "special edition" of his Want One and Want Two in a single package, called Want. (We'd have gone with Still Wanting, ourselves.) Just in case simply putting the two albums into one volume doesn't work to tempt people to buy again, there's going to be a couple of extra tracks - a live cover of Chelsea Hotel No. 2 and Propellerhead-collaboration In With The Ladies.

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YAHOO RAMPS ITS MUSIC PRICES

Possibly a first sign of internet music distributors buckling under the weight of major labels pushing for a price hike, Yahoo is almost doubling the costs of its monthly subscriptions - the US monthly rate is rocketing from $6.99 to $11.99.

So now it's more expensive to buy music you don't actually get to keep.

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JACKSON GETS TANGLED IN MORE LEGAL MESS

Now, how are things going? Some of the court cases featuring Michael Jackson have been cleared up - antiques, which were somehow never paid for, returned; jury happy that he never actually touched those children in that way on those occasions; jury service ducked. In fact, with things getting slightly clearer, it seems Jackson got bored and has launched a new lawsuit, countersuing Marc Shaffel; Schaffel is suing Jackson for unpaid loans and the costs of producing two TV sepcials.

Interestingly, Jackson's counterclaim suggests that Schaffel was supposed to pay the costs for the production of What More Can I Give, Jackson's never-seen-the-light fundraiser after September 11th. (Talking of which, how goes the Katrina benefit, Micko?) Meanwhile, Jacko also reckons Schaffel kept a quarter of a millions worth of sculptures and painting that belonged to him. Although we don't know if that's "belonged" in the real sense of the word, or the sense where he's just taken them from a shop and put them in his house.

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