They've been torn since Bros was cool

Your first instinct on hearing that Bros are reforming for a ten million quid tour is "ten million? Is it buggery going to be a ten million tour."

They've not even got Ken on board, right? (Craig Logan isn't coming back.)

But it's more an indication of how fucked the economy is - there's not going to be much profit in a Bros tour, but with interest rates now so low, they don't have to make much of a profit to make it worthwhile. Or at least a better investment than letting money sit in an account.

And, with the pound having been sunk by the Brexit vote, and much of the tour is in Europe, which ratchets up the relative costs in pounds.

So, the ten million pound comeback isn't suggesting that Bros are more popular than you thought. Just that ten million pounds is less than you'd hope.

Bookmarks: Protest songs

Oh, Edwyn Collins, you might believe there's not enough protest songs, but Tim Worthington is disproving you all over town with his guide to ten of most ineffectual protest songs of all time. It somehow misses off Back To The Planet's Please Don't Fight, but does corral everyone from Bill Oddie to Bros:

Matt and Luke attempt to reverse their Dumper-wards trajectory with an impassioned gospel-inflected ecological plea delivered to some bloke eating crisps, warning that there will be no birds up in the sky unless 'we' stop 'it' now. Presumably the minor landslide of vinyl, cassettes, 'Postermags', badges, t-shirts, leather jackets, pilfered bottle tops and Summer Specials containing bizarre text stories about kidnappers plotting to hold Matt to ransom in 'our 'oliday 'ome' that they had left in their wake did not constitute part of the 'it'.

Matt Goss hopes sounding kinda stalkery will help the comeback

With that much-promised Bros reunion still very much an unwanted puppy left in the window of a pet shop on Christmas Eve, Matt Goss is trying to keep things moving by sharing a tale about the time his life briefly intersected with that of someone famous:

He told BANG Showbiz: "We had a lunch with her back in the day and it was an extraordinary experience.

"You had a sense that she knew she had a beautiful presence. When you looked into her blue eyes it was very hard not to blush.

"She had that intensity that a woman should have.

"I'm a hopeless romantic, I was flirting with her, of course I was, I tried my best. I like grace and femininity in a woman."

Where do you even begin? If Diana had flirted with you, that might be an anecdote. "I flirted with someone at a dinner thirty years ago" just sounds a bit creepy. Especially when you say you "tried [your] best", like you were attempting to win a goldfish in a fairground.

But I wouldn't worry about coming across a bit creepy, Matt, as the "intensity a woman should have" and "I like grace and femininity" stuff is more than quease-making enough in its own right.

Gordon in the morning: Ken's waiting for the call

Tucked away behind the solid paywall of The Sun this morning comes the news that Matt 'Not Luke' Goss is dropping heavy hints that, you know, if you were looking for a 1980s band for any purposes, he'd be happy to get in touch with Luke 'Not Matt' Goss and get Bros back together.

This year, of course, marks the fifth anniversary of Matt going on Radio One to try and drum up interest in a Bros reunion, which was quietly dropped when nobody seemed that interested.

The illustrated Hello: Brian Hayes

Brian Hayes is the man who was edged out of Radio 2 to make way for the return of Terry Wogan, when Wogan returned from TV. Oddly, they didn't invite him to pick up where he left off when Wogan quit again last year.

His phone-in show was quite popular with Snipe fanzine - his no-nonsense "well, you obviously haven't thought through your point, so I'm going to cut you off" approach was unusual back in the 1980s, in a world yet to have been touched by the joy of Talk Radio UK and James Whale being given a show.

There's not much Brian Hayes stuff around the internet - but, had Hayes not been busy keeping the seat at Radio 2 warm, Wogan would never have been free to run around the TV doing Historic Interviews like this, with Ken out of Bros:



And, likewise, without Hayes softening up British ears, James Whale would never have got to take his radio show to late-night TV, and we would have been denied this meeting with Wayne Hussey:



[Part of The Illustrated Hello]

Embed and breakfast man: Bros

Two posts about Bros in a day, and the fact it's Christmas Eve...

Go on, then:



However do we go on without them?

Telegraph takes Sun too seriously

So, Gordon's column this morning announced Bros had plans to reform, and straight-facedly reported Luke's batty desire to do it somewhere "like the O2".

By the time this has been filtered whoever's left standing at the Telegraph this Christmas Eve, it had become...

Bros planning one-off concert at O2 Arena

Gordon in the morning: 2010 is going to be alright

It's not Gordon who has today's big scoop - I suspect he'll already be down Morrisons with Danny Dyer and Guy Ritchie, arguing over if it should be two bottles of Baileys or one each of Baileys and Tia Maira. So it falls to Virgina Wheeler and Nadia Brooks to dish out the big news:

EIGHTIES chart heart-throbs BROS are preparing for a reunion next year, The Sun can reveal.

Yes, two people to cover a Bros reunion. On that basis, if McCartney and Starr ever got the band back together, how many people would that need?

It's not just Matt and Luke, though. The great news is that Ken's on board, too:

LUKE and MATT GOSS, 41 - pop's most famous twins before JEDWARD - are planning a one-off comeback with bass player CRAIG LOGAN, 40.

Pop's most famous twins before Jedward? Really? Okay, Kim and Kelley Deal might not have been more famous - but what of The Proclaimers? And Robin and Maurice Gibb?

Still, quite exciting for Brosettes, right? I'll bet the twins are ringing round venues right now, trying to find if somewhere can accommodate a couple of hundred people next s... hang on? What's that? Their ambitions are a little grander, you say?

Bros, whose hits include I Owe You Nothing and When Will I Be Famous?, want to play London's 02 Arena.

Perhaps they've not seen how large it is.

[Luke] said Bros would not be back for good, but added: "We'd do a show that was amazing. I want it to stand up today.

"I don't want it to be a nostalgia-only driven thing."

So, it's a one-off show, but you don't want it to just be driven by nostalgia? How does that work?

Gordon in the morning: Hot Bros gossip

Gordon really has outdone himself this morning, with a large splash about a pair out on a date. In much the same way that Nigel Dempster's column used to fill itself up with features about people nobody much cared about, Gordon is excited about, erm, Ken from Bros and Cat Deeley being seen together.

Oddly, there isn't even a photo of the pair of them together, which means that Gordon is able to fill a lot of space reminding everyone who they were, and why we should care. Even that, though, isn't enough to stop a very slight story floating away, so he tries to hold it down by listing some of the couple's previous dating history.

Still space to roam? In a move which might be unprecedented for a make-it-up gossip column, Gordon makes up a denial for his own story on the subject's behalf, and then knocks down his own fictional denial:

I reckon that in Craig she could have found her match.

The former model could duck out of it by claiming she wasn’t on a date for romantic reasons.

But unless she is planning to launch a career as a pop star, I suspect she would be telling porkies.

So, yes, Cat might be lying if she says the words that you've made up for it. Well done, Gordon. Gordon could be telling people he's going to win next What The Papers Say award for biggest scoop, but unless he's got something better up his sleeve, I suspec he would be fibbing.