TO BE FAIR: We'd picked up the piece in Private Eye about Braham Parish Council being given tickets for the Leeds Festival, which they were going to sell on, and wondered how this would square with the rules about re-selling. One of the council has had a letter published in the current edition saying that they were only going to sell to people with proof of residence in the village, and that the money would be ring fenced for 'good causes'. Which is reassuring. Mind you, Pilton people get to go to Glasto free...

SINGING CRISPS... THAT IS NEW: Anyone in the UK visiting websites that carry proper adverts rather than 'You are the 1,000,000th visitor' scam pop-ups will probably have seen (along with the bloody Rolling Stones one) the banner trying to flog cheap DVDs of Lord of the Rings to you. There are similar press adverts running at the moment too: Picture of that pugbox from the three-part Elf flick, a headline with two tick boxes saying '[] I'd give anything to own the Lord of the Rings on DVD [] Actually, I'd like change from a tenner'. While it makes for a change getting a rest from the otherwise wall to wall 118 adverts around at the moment, what's this all about? According to the smaller print, it's all to launch "The new way to buy Music & movies - Channel, from Universal Group." So, mail order is new, is it? The GBP9.99 price for LOTR is, of course, an introductory loss leader - the usual price of DVDs is a less-enticing GBP14.99 plus Postage and Packing; and to get that 'great' price (or nine quid for a CD - Universal promise "thousands" to choose from, which doesn't sound like that wide a range to us) you discover you're pledging to buy "three or more DVDs or CDs a year for the first two years - that's all." Ah, so Universal's 'new' way is, erm, actually Britannia's Old Way to buy movies and music. But at least with, say, those WH Smith book clubs you get some sort of saving - at 14.99 you're paying roughly the same price as at Amazon for your DVDs, but you're locked into a commitment with Channel. Also slightly dubious is that the advert doesn't tell you what version of the Lord of the Rings DVD you're getting - we're guessing you get the slightly less glitzy of the two, but the advert doesn't actually tell you or point out that another, better (if you like Tolkein) version is also available. Not breaking any law, but certainly sharp practice.

More disturbingly is the way this new way to buy music treats your personal information - the small print on the advert says "Universal Group Direct [...] may pass your name and address to other companies who offer products or services we believe you may be interested in. If you would prefer not to receive these, please write to us at..." - in other words, rather than providing a simple tick box to allow you to opt out of them passing on your details to anyone with a few quid to buy their mailing list, they put the onus on you to write a totally separate letter, to a different address. Unlike the 'send me video' coupon, this isn't a freepost address, either. Now, while they might not be breaking the letter of the Data Protection Act, the fact that any proper company can create a system which is apparently designed to make it too much of an effort to get off their Junk Mail List certainly runs against the spirit of the law, don't you think?

SPEEDWAY CRASH: This email bravely made its way through the SoBig virus, spam emails making puns about how the SoBig virus reminded them they wanted big cocks, pancky emails from people who might have passed the SoBig virus on, and so on:

I hear on the grapevine that the reason the Strokes aren't credited is because they were approached for their blessing but told the plucky Scottish foursome to fuck off in no uncertain terms!

Which makes us wonder: do the Noo Yawkers get a writer's credit on the CD? Anyone know?

MAKING FRIENDSTER LOOK EVER SO SLIGHTLY PASSE: This is something to get onto before it appears in the Barometer Column of Sunday newspapers. It's PopMates and it does what Friendster does, but rather than just fling people together on the basis of Who You Know, it attempts to suggest people you might get on with by the sorts of records you like, films you enjoy and books you read. It's still in its early stages but it's already got some interesting people signed up. Maybe a few too many Mariah Carey options, but it's a start...

CALIFORNIA UBER MY DEAD BODY: The Dead Kenendys decided that, what with their silver anniversary coming up, they should bury the hatchet with Jello and invited him to join them for the silver concert. Jello has graciously accepted, chcukling "we've been through too much to let those stupid rows obliterate our achievements and love..." Okay, he hasn't. His response was: "To put it mildly, this reeks of false advertising. They obviously aren't serious or they would have called me on the phone. Instead, their message came through their lawyers and their publicist. What's the matter, not enough Hot Topic bozo teens flocking to stuff cash in their bikinis? Are they having that much trouble selling tickets to a bar that holds less than 600 people? If they really want to, 'bury the hatchet,' why won't they stop suing me? They have been dragging me through court for almost six years now, and have refused attempts to compromise and settle. I feel sorry for anyone duped into paying top dollar for a ticket because they heard, 'I might be there'. But I hardly think I'm 'letting fans down' by refusing to be part of a nostalgia scam." (Erm... except at the moment it's Biafra suing the rump Kennedys, isn't it?)

CONOR OBERST'S ENORMOUS BOX: Now, don't get us wrong, there's nobody round here who could touch us in our admiration for the work of Conor Oberst, but a seven album box set might be pushing it ever so slightly. It's a little bit like when This Is Your Life has someone in their early thirties on; it's not that it's inappropriate, it just seems almost jinxing to offer that sort of accolade when there's supposedly so much more career to come.

WE HATE TO BE PICKY: But why does none of the coverage of Speedway's version of Genie In A Bottle mention that the pairing of Aguilera and The Strokes is just a Sugababes style cover of one those mash-ups (which was doing the rounds Easter 2002), rather than an act of enormous inspiration. We're also not entirely sure it says about The Strokes as a brand that their input into the track warrants no mention at all. Doubtless some stage-school blonde/pug ugly drummer is hoping to sneak out Smells Like Booty and pass it off as their own work even as we speak...

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Dave Gahan, in the latest press call on his increasingly not-bitter-about-Martin-Gore-at-all tour, displays his weak grasp of the basics of Christian theology: "if God was handing out hedonism, partying, drugs and alcohol, I've had my quota"

RIGHT UP THERE WITH THE BRAMBER PIPE MUSEUM: Jackson County Visitor Center has been so weighed down with (mysteriously unwanted) John 'Cougar' Mellencamp stuff they've had to open a whole separate 'display' dedicated to him. "When people stop to get information on Jackson County and see the display, hopefully they will also shop at some of our stores" says Staci Akemon, who is helping oversee the building of this shrine, this latter-day Lourdes. We're not quite sure the thought process "Oh, look, there is a bandana worn by the bloke who did Jack and Diane. I shall nip into this store and buy a hammer and some glue" is ever likely to form in anyone's minds, but we wish them luck.

Meanwhile, grumpy letter to last night's Liverpool Echo complains about the presence of a 'Fingerprints of Elvis' attraction on the city's Albert Dock, ruminating that maybe the presence of 'The King' under the very noses of the Beatles industry is part of a plot to try and undermine the "Fabulous Four". Erm... maybe, except Fingerprints is run by the people who also run The Beatles Story Experience Visitor Attraction Museum round the corner.

UH-OH! PEABO'S NO-SHOW AT OWE-OWE SIDESHOW: Peabo Bryson wasn't at home when the tax man came calling, as the latest twist in a fourteen year struggle between Bryson and the IRS saw a van draw up at a house in Buckhead to seize stuff. We're not sure if even their "large moving truck" could have got back the USD1.2 million they reckon he still owes. Maybe he can borrow a few quid off Celine Dion.

QUALITY ANGER MANAGEMENT: so, the chances are that Eminem's Girls Gone Wild side-project might never see the insides of any DVD player. The video series, which combines live footage with desperately sad girls flashing their unattractive tits like they're British Holidaymakers in Faliraki, has already got itself muddled up in a lawsuit with four of the breasts claiming they never gave their consent, or something, to appearing in the Snoop Dogg version. We're guessing the whole thing has just been shelved as being too tacky for Eminem to associate with - appearing in a video of drunk teens whipping off their training bras might distract from his central messages of raping lesbians, shutting your pregnant girlfriend in a car and driving her off a bridge, and so on.

MAYBE WITHOUT HIS VIAGRA, HE JUST COULDN'T GET UP: Irv Gotti didn't show up for his court appearance on charges of possessing [snicker] one E. Nor did his attorney. That can't be good, can it?

THE FEATURES TABLOIDS REJECT: NME.com is seeking out people who look like Jack and/or Meg White and are going to Reading, who "would like to see your face in the nme" (If they look that much like one of the Whites, surely their face would be in the paper every week?). Clearly this is for some 'amusing' photo story they've got planned. What larks, eh?

We note that the purse strings at Kings Reach Tower seem to be getting drawn ever tighter, mind: it's no good if your own mother couldn't pick you out a line-up with you and Meg in it unless you've already forked out for your own ticket - the IPC massive isn't going to give up one of its freebie passes, is it?

Rather hearteningly, the paper makes it clear "this offer is on a first come, first served basis," suggesting they believe Berkshire is going to be knee deep in White Stripe lookalikes with nothing better to do than fill some space in the title. We wonder if the faux Meg will have to take her bra off?

THEY KISSED US AND IT FELT LIKE A SLAP: Sure, the news that Placebo are preparing to release an album of their cover versions is great, and tantalising, and makes us all moist - Molko doing Running Up That Hill? It couldn't be any better if he wore a leotard and did Wuthering Heights. Except... the disc is only being made available as a double pack with a re-released Sleeping With Ghosts. Since the people who'd be most likely crying with joy (and sod the mascara) at the rarity party would be the staunch Placebo fans, and they're the people who most likely would have bought the album on day of release, instead of seeming like a gift from the ladyboy gods, this comes across as little more than a cynical attempt to get them to buy the album all over again to get the "freebie."

Record companies wonder why people don't feel any guilt at downloading songs off the internet, you know.

DARKNESS BRINGS ITS OWN REWARD: The Darkness have won some Kerrang awards, scooping up Best Album and Best Live Act titles. Funeral For A Friend were judged to be the Best New Act. Feeder took Bravest Soldiers, Bless Them ("Best British Act") and Metallica were given some sort of prize for still being around at a time when most people have actually turned from rock to music that someone might want to listen to. Chilli Peppers got classic songwriters and in a desperate bid to try and shore up interest in a declining market, the magazine invented a category so they could give Jackass a prize ("the spirit of rock" award, apparently.)

YOU WON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR HANDS: NME brings you that Kate Moss poledance in full. That burning smell is frying servers.

WHAT THE NEW YORK MUSIC BLOGS SAY: Catherine's Pita has long been one of our favourite dropping off points on the web, and in common with most of the rest of the city last week's powercut provides the backbone for current entries - luckily, or maybe not, the crumbling of America's infrastructure didn't stop the Polyphonic Spree's gig in Central Park. Hmmm, a slightly odd and ill-defined cult in Central Park, eh? Whatever next?

It was Catherine who brought New York Press' guide to the NY bloggers to our attention, and to fill a dull few minutes and/or to make us feel like Clive James on his old Saturday Night show, we're going to do a quick scamper round the NY Blogs to test out if you really can get the measure of a place from what it (self-)publishes.

The Modern Age was also at that Polyphonic Spree date (so much for the city that never sleeps - if they can pull such a crowd we'd have to assume the competing attractions in New York ain't up to much), but also has an interesting chat with Bruce Brand about the cover he produced for The White Stripe's Elephant, complete with an 'are they related' side-by-side with the 1927 album Jack White asked him to 'borrow' the design from.

It's easy to forget that while Pete Doherty is jemmying open the gas meter here, The Rest of the Libertines are touring round the States. Divestar was there for their Irving Plaza gig, and nearly got thrown out. Jo, frustratingly, withholds the details - although she clearly managed to be allowed to stay, as the photos prove.

More great live photos on New York Doll - is it just that New York indie-giggers have superior technology and better views of the stage than the rest of the world? Guilia also offers up a piece of advice that you should all write in the front of your filofaxes or whatever young people use these days: "If someone tells you there is an open bar from nine to eleven at a show you are going to, don’t arrive at eleven. Everyone around you will be completely drunk already, and you’ll be standing there trying to have a decent conversation with someone, trying to tell him about all the different ways your day kind of sucked, but he will only see your mouth moving, as my very tipsy friend was nice enough to point out to me when I tried to explain why I arrived so late. Then you’ll go up to the bar and order your regular gin and tonic, and when you give the bartender a ten dollar bill for your eight dollar drink (which happens to come in a glass about the size of your grandmother’s pincushion), he’ll take the remaining two dollars and give them to himself as a tip, even when you’re holding your hand out for the change (no, that was not your little gift to yourself, that was my money). And the worst part is, you’ll still be sober enough to realize you were robbed. Eight dollars for a Gin and Tonic?

Back to the blackout for Hard Glitter - yeah, having no power and no microwave is bad, but having to put up with your local drug dealer's taste in music is probably worse. Reading this makes us wonder if dealing/pimping is the new djing - since any record, no matter how awful, that mentioned 'dj' or 'radio' was guaranteed several thousand plays by radio presenters self-obsessed beyond the point of critical judgement (how many times was Rex Bob Lowenstein given a trot out on Simon Mayo's breakfast show?); nowadays, regardless of how poor quality the track is, anything about running hos, shooting cops or selling pills gets seized upon by every single gangster-wannabe across the world. In the same way that adding 'Mr. Radio Man' would give you a cast-iron PPL payment, throwing in a couple of references to 'your bitches' will translate into sales galore.

Bidi (the Jean Genie) brings the news of a Hedwig and the Angry Inch tribute album featuring Bob Mould, Sleater Kinney and, erm, Cyndi Lauper; Hey, Mike from I'm Losing My Edge, if you're prepared to go see Pete's new band, we'll gladly hold your coat or something; and we love the description of Interpol fans as being 'better looking, less nerdy' than you expected. JT of Garage Dream admits he's probably going to be talking about the Strokes every day from now until the new album (and then probably beyond), which does seem to be something of a default setting for New Yorkers of an indie persuasion. Not that there's anything wrong with that - we'd doubtless be getting excited if Liverpool had something as big about to happen, but somehow the Coral's second album didn't quite work us up to fever pitch and we've given up wishing for a new Waste album to give a kickin... erm, critically evaluate. There's also speculation on Garage Dream that the second Stroke's album might be history repeating The Knack, this time with slightly better clothes (in this theory, Last Nite becomes their My Sharona; album number turns the tide of critical goodwill into violent, mocking spleen overnight).

Of course, we've probably managed to miss some great NY Blogs here (feel free to get in touch if you think we've slighted you by oversight) but the impression is of a place where stuff is happening (pace my Polyphonic Spree jibe) and of a scene that actually works like a scene rather than a group of people thrown together by geography hoping their mutual self-loathing and two-faced back-biting won't show itself in public like some places I could mention. Next week: The Dover Blogs.

THE AUTUMN AXE MASSACRE CONTINUES: MediaGuardian describes critical reaction to the freshly dumped Johnny Vaughan Tonight show as 'mixed' - see, Tony Allen, that's how you mark a death, with positive spin. I mean, they're not lying, there was a mix of reactions - from 'Bloody hell, that's rubbish' to 'well, at least it's not the [also axed] Dom Joly thing'. We're kind of sad, though, as it did give a regular slot to Lauren Laverne, who was head of the houseband. Maybe they should get her to host a replacement? Or move the band to a re-activated RDA, which should have been allowed to stay in the slot all along, anyway. To be fair to Vaughan, and to risk sounding like Parkinson, his problem with the chat show was he's a presenter rather than an interviewer, and so putting him in a role where he was expected to play second fiddle to a guest was always a bit of a duff idea. We're not looking forward to his position now, though, where he'll be blowing through the BBC looking for a format to carry his salary. You know what? Maybe Top of the Pops might work.

SM FEELS THE PAIN: The now-rather-unfashionable SM:TV is to be axed although it will limp on showing repeats until Christmas ("classic compilations of the show's greatest moments called SM:TV Gold will be shown throughout the autumn"). CD:UK, once an integrated part of the programme, will be spared; Cat Deeley is booked on to carry on yelling between live performances of Busted and Kelly Rowlands until the end of next year. "After five fantastic years of SM:TV, we all recognised it was time for a change on Saturday mornings. We've gone for a show that is all about fun with a team with bags of fresh ideas" promises Steven Andrew, ITV's controller of the few children's programmes it still makes until Ofcom decides to let them off the hook at some point in the future. "ITV1's new Saturday children's show will feature a broad range of content including games, sketches, music and acquired programmes, as well as interactive elements. So, the bags of 'fresh' ideas sounds oddly like The Saturday Banana and Motormouth. And Get Fresh, Number 73 and The Mersey Pirate. Fun Factory, Ghost Train. The (ITV) Saturday Show, the (BBC) Saturday Show, Saturday Superstore, Saturday Starship, Saturday Morning Picture Show and, erm, SM:TV. Might we suggest puppet sheep and snot-dribbling aliens? And from somewhere in the distance, we can hear a little voice calling ITV Network Centre pitching a revival of Buzzfax...

But, seriously, how desperately poor must ITV think the current incarnation of SM:TV be doing if a bunch of offcuts of Ant & Dec is perceived as being a better risk than letting the current team plough on? We're not suggesting Brian Dowling's fifteen minutes are up, but we'd like a Diet Coke and an extra pillow, please.

DISINGENUOUS, n: "People thought that they [The Beckhams] went to the States to try and launch themselves there, and it wasn't that. We had a ridiculous amount of requests from shows like Jay Leno and Letterman. And they did one interview with Barbara Walters; they did American Vogue, because Anna Wintour is a friend of Victoria's, and they did the MTV movie awards. There was never a big, 'Let's launch ourselves in America'" - Pish and Buck's publicist, Caroline McAteer, in today's G2.

Isn't it a bit Alanis that Victoria's even such a crap self-publicist she needs someone else to do it for her?

Still, lucky that it wasn't about launching themselves in the States, isn't it? What with them apparently being edited out of the US showings of the MTV awards and all.

Talking of Alanis-version irony, despite the success of Bend it Like Beckham there, people in the States still have little idea who he is. Indeed, the film has probably done more to make a star of its cameoed Gary Lineker than it has of Becks.

START ME UP... A FEW YEARS TOO LATE: More on the decision of the Rolling Stones to put their stuff online (or, rather, try and make some cash by putting their own copies online) in the Guardian. First, in the news report Conor McNicholas, editor of the music weekly NME, said: "For the first time, consumers are dictating how they want music. They read one of our articles, or hear a song, then download immediately. People are innovating and using the technology that's out there faster than the record companies are." That would be 'for the first time', then - the success of cassettes and the introduction of cassingles (and the dumping of DCC, MiniDisc as a consumer format and [insert rubbish format here] weren't examples of the same consumer demand leading the labels, then; and since people have been sucking music downloads off the web since - what, '97? - and it's only now that the majors are actually doing something about it makes a bit of a nonesense of Conor's thesis here - what we think he means is "for the twenty-ninth time, record companies are belatedly realising what their customers want and are desperately trying to catch up." We're also a little puzzled by the words of Dr Leonardo Chiariglione, who for sake of argument is described as the father of the format: "Technology advances offer a convergence point between the goals of all multimedia actors: creators, intermediaries and users. It is high time that technology be used to keep the unfulfilled promises." Now, we might not have invented a major file format, but we can't quite work out if creators and users have a convergence point, what the function of an intermediary would be? It's like saying 'Now you can fly direct from Heathrow to Sydney, it's great news for the stopover airports in the Far East."

Then, in this week's Online Supplement Neil McIntosh considers exactly what the Stones move means (the actual conclusion - they've suddenly realised they stood to lose a fuckload of money if they didn't do it - is somehow missed.) There are some interesting words from Peter Jamieson, executive chairman of the BPI. He waves around the latest single sales figures and says "I don't think anybody would turn around and say that music was less popular than it was before" [no, not while album sales are booming] " so the industry has to try and get round to making music legitimately [sic] in ways that the public will put money toward..." 'Put money toward' is a really interesting choice of words, isn't it? Rather than the slightly more mucky sounding 'buy.' We wonder if the BPI is trying to soften us all up - away from consumers towards being patrons?

Meanwhile, Ed Averdieck from OD2 (he's the one who actually runs it, although the usual press coverage might lead you to assume that Peter Gabriel is the only man with a key to the offices) is looking forward to the birth of a download chart: "There definitely was a thing, in the old days, that you wanted your band to get to number one," he says. "We think that as soon as downloads start becoming eligible for the chart, people will think 'if I download this from KaZaA it's not going to push my band to number one. If I download it from MSN or HMV, it is'. That's going to be a big additional push to encourage the kids to start using these services" We're not sure he's right that a download chart is really going to make The Kids change their habits like that - we're guessing but in the early days of the charts, the people thinking 'I want my band to be at number one' will be more likely to be forty-somethings in the higher-floor offices of record labels. Frankly, we suspect the download chart will be about as significant as the 'Amazon Top Sellers' list - something that makes people go "oh, really?" but has no effect on their behaviour. When did you last think "I'm determined to push Pink/Phish/Bryan Ferry to number one at Amazon?"

The 'sometime soon' status of a download chart is less a glowing crown showing how the Majors are embracing the technology, but another example of just how crap they are at adapting to the new environment. It's taking so long to get into place that - compared with the massive speed of take-up of the opportunities afforded by MP3 - it's as if the NME hadn't actually got round to creating the first singles chart until 1978.

Finally, Steve Johnstone, from Musicindie, frets that legitmate downloading just doesn't have the glitter-factor yet to make it a sticky experience in whatever sense of the word you wish to take it: "If you look at things that have done particularly well on the internet as a whole, such as Amazon, very few people have tapped nearly as well the peer recommendation element," says Johnston. "If you could trawl for ages and hear about people's favourite albums of the year, and get a choice of eight different recommendations every time you type in anything [and] then wed those kind of peer recommendation features and chat forums with the ability to acquire music, you'd have the dream service." While we agree with him that you need something more than just a 'click here' to make the paid-for services have an edge over the free ones, we're not sure that the peer recommendation route is the one to go with. When we're shopping amazon for equipment, we do browse through what other people have made of the items. But with music? Never bother with them, simply because while a digital camera has attractions and pitfalls that can be explored dispassionately, a CD either 'works' or doesn't according to a personal sliding scale of prejudices, loves and quirks and so how are we to tell if Bigloob Tampott of Alberta's opinion on the new Britney Spears album is based on his love of Britney, his disappointment that she doesn't wear a school uniform anymore, a deep-seated hatred of women, or membership of the presbyterian church? We have a sneaking suspicion that the reason why there are so many reviews on the Amazon site isn't because people find them usefull, but because it provides an outlet for frustrated wannabe music journalists to vent their spleen to what they imagine is a worldwide audience [ouch, those bloody beams hurt when they get in your eye, don't they?] - that it's the recommending, rather than the recommendations - that pull people in. The thing is, if I want to know if an artist is any good, I'd check with the people online whose opinion I trust - friends, the communities I'm a member of, the reliable blogs - rather than a to-all-effects anonymous poster on the site trying to sell me the bloody thing in the first place.

I'LL BET ITS REALLY HIS TRAINER-LOVE THAT DID IT: According to The Sun, Craig David and his girlfriend Sofia Vergera have split up because she's sick of him mooning about over Beyonce. Now, we know that The Sun has the most impeccable journalistic standards - anything less, and how would they be able to keep up their skriking against the BBC's? - and so when that paper tells us that "Craig has known Beyonce since she started out in Destiny’s Child and they have stayed close friends" that this must be a True Fact that they have checked with more than one source. It's incredible, though, because Beyonce started out in Destiny's Child in 1990, when Craig would have been a nine year old kid living in Southampton. Maybe she bumped into him outside the Joiner's Arms?

POPOBIT: Tony Jackson, the original voice of The Searchers, has died of liver disease in Nottingham. Jackson was the vocalist at the time of the band's first hit, Sweets for my Sweet, which was number one for three weeks back when these things mattered more (in 1963, in other words). He left the band shortly after due to illness (apparently the others were sick of him), and formed his own group, Tony Jackson and the Vibrations who... um... didn't have a number one hit. Years of heavy drinking left him unable to play and in 1996 he was jailed for 18 months after threatening to kill a woman with an airpistol. Before he died, he'd cleared the air with his former Searcher colleagues - who were amongst the first to record their memories of the man - and attended a Searchers fan convention with them last year. He turned down the opportunity to reprise his role as vocalist on 'Sweets...', pleading "the spirit is willing but the body is knackered." A brief stint in a revival Searchers band with other ex-Searchers Mike Pender crumbled when Jackson discovered he was going to be paid on a par with the session drummer.

The band took their name from the John Wayne film, and started out on the then-embryonic Merseybeat scene in a uniform of red shirts, black trousers and white shoes (not unlike the Man United home strip, then) before a fatal shopping trip to C&A saw them transmute for the Hives into the Spinners - all polo necks and slacks. The band came within an ace of being signed by Epstein, except Jackson hit the sauce a little too heavily when he attended a Cavern Club performance and fell off the stage. With his habit of falling over a lot, investing two hundred quid on a nose job must have been a bit of a risk, but one which he nevertheless undertook. He'd previously had to have psychiatric help, such was his hatred of his nose. The band usually chose to play The Iron Door over the Cavern; the Iron Door had the reputation as the rougher of the two clubs (since the Cavern attracted Edwina Currie, Peter Sissons and Cilla Black, we can well believe this). Tony Allen, the man who took over the singing when Jackson quit, writes a few words on the Searcher's official website in which he doesn't quite manage to strike the right note: "His final years could not have been pleasant. I'm sure that, quite naturally, he was envious, and probably even resentful, of the way we had carried our earlier success into the revival years of the '80s and onwards." So, his life was shit, then. Thanks, mate.

THIS MIGHT COME AS A SHOCK: Eminem's uncle announces that Eminem "often got a thrill" when Kim brought home another woman. We know we're supposed to assume from this that Eminem is a virile, two-chicks-at-once type of guy. We're just wondering if the thrill was more along the lines of "good, she's got someone in to do that for her, I can concentrate on my magazines with chessmen in them tonight."

Uncle continues: "Why would you not want a wife that has other women waiting for you? It's every man's dream, right?"

Erm... Eminem and Kim divorced in 2001. So there must have been some reason, then. In a week when it turns out he didn't even manage to get beyond the simpering stage with Mariah, he's not looking the stud, is he?

While we're at it: why is it impossible to be in a bed with two other people without 'romping'? It's always a three-in-a-bed romp, isn't it?

AS EVER, THE READERS ARE SMARTER THAN WE ARE: Aaron s writes:

Travis - did the NME really report that. Even the most cursory Travis-watcher (raises own hand in air) surely knows that the best track on The Man Who was 'Flashing Blue Light' (or maybe 'Blue Flashing Light'), the hidden track at the end devoted to the subject of.. domestic violence!

It's not like it was hidden under a bushel either - they played it at every sodding gig they did for about two years when pushing that album. NME, first with the news, yet again...

Maybe a less craven NME would have picked the band up on this. On the other hand, it's rather a New Labour sort of move on the part of Travis, isn't it - announcing a major new policy that they've actually launched one before? Every age gets the bands it deserves, I suppose. We await their next new direction - singing songs about how even the weather seems to have it in for them, perhaps as a punishment for teenage transgressions - with interest.

HE REALLY ISN'T EXPECTING TO SELL MANY, IS HE?: Andrew WK is offering to sign CDs for anyone who pre-orders the new album from his website and - get this - is going to phone up the first 250 people to buy. (Which we imagine will take him round until about next July, if it sells at the same rate as the last one.) It's almost worth it for the joy of speaking to the twoog, isn't it? If only to ask him about the refunds policy... But if ever you wanted an example of what a flare looks like when it's being shot from a sinking career, I think that would be it there, wouldn't it?

Andrew, since the death of Don Estelle, the British Music scene lacks a 'character' to stand outside the Doncaster branch of Woolworths singing and flogging CDs from a dog-eared cardboard box. We may have found a role for you.

AMAZING HOW CHEAP FATAL MUSIC IS: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined Great White and the Rhode Island club which burned down almost USD100,000. The club was found to have installed a fire door which swung the wrong way, had insufficient safety plans and used highly flammable foam in the clun, especially around the doorway. The band's touring company are being fined USD7,000 for failing to protect its employees from fire hazards.

100,000 dollars works out at roughly one thousand bucks for each person they killed.

VOICES HAVING FLOWN: In a music-related twist to the 'lottery winner yet to come forward' type story, London Live and Direct are desperately trying to track down Alex Sewyer who recorded a demo tape over two years ago which has recently been 'discovered' and become the subject of one of those bidding frenzies you hear about on the telly. It's one of those stories which really does give hope to everyone; she must have not heard anything in the three years since she did the work on the track, deciding that perhaps fame wasn't to be hers... but she's been fished out of the back of fate's sofa. They know she's about 24, has a kid, and was living in Croydon when she made the tape. We hope that she gets found.

CHAMBER MUSIC OF HORRORS: Madame Tussauds, the clearing house for lost and bemused foreign package tourists, has just unveiled it's newest 'attraction'. Last time, you'll recall, they drifted onto our turf it was to unveil Kylie's arse. Now, they've gone one better and come up with a total arse. It's a model of Simon Cowell and, since even madame tussauds these days accepts that 'looking a bit like the person its meant to be' isn't enough to tempt visitors to come see a model, it's got a unique interactive element: you can sing at it, and it'll tell you if you're in tune. Hmmm, a strange, waxy-skinned figure that shoots out pre-scripted retorts at singers in the belief that the 'insults' are more entertaining than the singers themselves? We have to admit, that is incredibly lifelike.

JAGGER CROAKS: Mick jagger's voice needs a bit of a rest and so the Stone's Amsterdam date has been pulled. What we love about the Ananova report is the mention that he's sung to "more than 180,000 fans" in the Netherlands, as if it's any more strain to sing to thousands through an amplified system than it is to sing to one.