Matt Cardle: It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?

Clearly, the slow career progression being enjoyed by Matt Cardle means he's got too much time on his hands: He appears to spend his time reading long tracts on the internet:

He said: "Well, there's a lot of conspiracy. I've gotta be careful what I say. The whole 9/11 thing, something's not quite right there. I think the way it was portrayed on TV and who was responsible and the way it happened was not the way it happened."

You've got to love the "I've gotta be careful what I say", like he's a Julian Assange figure.

Then asked whether he believed the US government led by then-president George W.Bush was behind the attacks, Cardle reportedly responded by nodding vigorously.

Asked to elaborate, he said: "It's just not what they say it is. Other conspiracies might be true and the one I believe might also be bullshit. But all I do know is what they're saying is bullshit. From the things I've seen, I don't care what anyone says. To not question it is silly."

It turns out that Cardle will believe anything - that the X Factor is a way to shortcut the process to musical credibility; that there was a million dollar contract at the end of it; that George Bush was competent enough to organise 9/11 and a good enough actor to look so gormless when he was told about the planes.

Still, be careful Matt: we wouldn't want you disappearing totally from public view. I mean, obviously, you more-or-less did almost as soon as you won the X Factor.

Matt Cardle's 2012 tour will start in Guantanamo Bay, before concluding in the tunnels underneath Denver Airport THAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT

If ever an event didn't need celebrities...

Sure, the 9/11 "What will you do to remember" campaign has its heart in the right place, but if ever an event didn't need Lady GaGa bouncing about to draw attention to it, surely the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks are it?

Beginning on Tuesday (September 6) through Sunday, Viacom's networks will air specially produced "I Will" public service announcements featuring artists and actors, including Gaga, Fran Drescher, Pauly D, Nas, Hough and Bell, along with Viacom employees.

"We were in disbelief," Lady Gaga says in the promo, remembering how she as a New Yorker witnessed the attacks. "We all watched the second tower fall together."

I'm not sure that actually answers the 'what will you do to remember' question, come to that.

Gordon in the morning: Kasabian have some thinkings about 9/11

I suppose a band who cheerily use a killer's name as their brand will always have a different approach to death than other people, but Kasabian's use of September 11th as a promotional tool is a bit sickening, even by their standards. To be fair, the link is as much down to Gordon Smart as the band, as their Sun interview hammers home some sort of link to explain why the band might be playing a rooftop gig in New York on September 11th this year:

KASABIAN will play a poignant gig in New York — on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. And the timing of the show has made the Leicester lads think about how their lives have changed since that horrendous day in 2001.

Yes, Gordon and the boys are really just using the murder of 3,000 people as a staging post on their journey from unknown plod-rockers to fairly well known plod-rockers:

At the time the Twin Towers came down Tom and chief songwriter Serge Pizzorno were "grafting" for a living in Leicester. Serge helped out in his dad's garage and Tom drilled holes at a metalwork factory. Guitarist Serge says: "I was just helping out my old man, collecting parts and doing MOTs. Tom was working in fabrications, drilling. He used to come home black, man. He was so dirty. It used to take him 20 minutes to have a wash. blahblahblah hard work blahblahblah sweat of honest toil blahblah

Ah, yes. Tom was doing manual labour at the time. That kind of puts the collapse of the Twin Towers into some sort of perspective, right. But what about the attacks themselves? Surely the band must have something to say about those? If only to justify Gordon using them as background colour for yet another Kasabian interview?

Tom Meighan says: "It will be strange for us playing in the city on such a big weekend for New York people. It will be emotional. "I was at work and remember hearing 9/11 unfold on the radio. I remember going home and being in absolute shock. My mum had it on the news. It was f***ing awful."

"My mum had it on the news" doesn't really suggest much of an interest from Tom, does it? Still, "fucking awful" at least comes closer to capturing the horror than his colleague's reaction:

Serge adds: "Looking back to 9/11, I was at work. I went round Tom's on my way home. I'd always go in for a tea and I was sat watching it with his mum when Tom came home from work. "We were watching it in his front room. We were like everyone, thinking it was just mental."

"It was just mental". Why isn't this man regularly invited onto Newsnight to share his insights? "We watched it on the news. I remember, because the news was on and we looked at the pictures and listened to the words and that was what was happening", the pair continued. "Ten years on, it certainly remains something we saw happen on the news.

Public Enemy: They do look the type, though

The Washington Post accuses Public Enemy of laughing at terrorism, and then has to say sorry:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

The secret diary of Mark Frith

The Daily Mail is running extracts from Mark Frith's diaries this week. Frith was the editor of Heat - which we think means he tossed the coin every issue to decide if it was going to be a "Look - they're fat" issue, or a "Scary thin celebs" edition.

Of course, "got up, went in, drew a circle around a sweat patch on Lindsay Lohan's shirt, suggested 'ewwww' caption" isn't going to keep the Mail readers interested, so instead we get Mark's response to September 11th. People hurling themselves to certain death? The largest attack on US soil? The prospect of a generation of fear and war? Why, it makes you think:

Our critics are saying that everything's changed - that there's a new seriousness in the air and that celebrity culture is dead. Perhaps they're right.

But then I watch as female customers come and go. Without exception, they walk past the papers and pick up Heat or OK or Now.

Not much about these women seems to have changed. Although I'm sure they're shocked by what has happened, their concerns are clearly still the same: Will they get to work on time? Will their money last until their next pay packet?

And now more than ever they need entertainment, a diversion from the horrors of the latest news bulletin. They want something frivolous, something to lose themselves in, something glamorous.

What do they want, Mark?

They want celebrities.

The celebrities will save us! They'll make everything all right! If only Bush had thought of that, eh - instead of eventually coming out of hiding to announce war on Osama Bin Laden, he should have just got Paris Hilton to snog Britney Spears. America would have been back on an even keel by teatime.

Note, too, that Frith insists every single woman was buying a celeb magazine - he doesn't recall what men were buying; probably something about locomotives or woodworking. Maybe they were buying the newspapers. But the little ladies, love them, they needed some shots of Rod Stewart, to save their pretty little heads from all the big thoughts in the news.

Jadakiss This

Interesting times in America, of course, with George W starting to drop hints about how, you know, holding elections could be a cause of terrorism and, really, if we want to sleep safe in our beds maybe we should stop doing them. Launching himself right in the middle of the political storming is Jadakiss, last seen driving with a car stashed full of, well, stash, now accusing Bush of knocking down the Twin Towers. (That's a hell of a conspiracy theory - how strong was the stuff he was on?). What's interesting about this, though, is that some radio stations are saying that both the clean and adult versions of the songs they were given had had the line taken out entirely. Other stations are playing the song in full, to, erm, no reaction at all - which means one of three things:

- Americans pretty much accept that Bush was involved up to his little eyeballs and aren't even surprised that anyone says so;

- They think that Jadakiss may be spewing some odd nonesense, but fully embrace his right to do so under the Constitution or;

- As soon as a DJ says "coming up, Jadakiss", most people retune.

We're going with option three.

I've left that great page blank

You won't need us to tell you that today, there's a slight overload of memory. Amongst the things we could probably do without are Yoko Ono's world peace film, Mary J Blige's special insights ("I was supposed to go to Europe...") and Traa from POD's confused "when something like that happens it puts a lot of things into perspective. Living in America you have that feeling of being untouchable. Not only being untouchable but you never think something like that would happen. We are spoilt in our country because there are other countries like Israel in the world that deal with stuff like this all the time … terrorists.
I think for us, there is a pride where we come from and it definitely makes you re-evaluate life, the things that are important to you and the things that aren't important to us. It makes you have a love and zest for being grateful for what you have and just being here. A lot of people lost their lives on that day for no reason. It is a sad situation." Um... yeah, thanks for that, mate. If nothing else, it shows the value of silent contemplation.