The pop star MIA has a request to make

MIA, the pop star, has taken a break from making her pop records to issue a plea:

"I'm not really a popstar. I don't think I'm popular enough to be a proper popstar. I prefer being called a rapper."

Yeah. I prefer being called Susan Sassypants, but we don't get what we want in life, do we?

MIA's worry is that she's just not popular enough to be called a pop star.

(Actually, that's kind-of true: it's interesting to remember that she's never had a top ten album anywhere except Norway and - with the exception of that one off the film with the bloke from Skins winning Millionaire - her singles performance is equally slow.)

Spektor at the feast: Regina acts like the Queen

It looks like Regina Spektor had a smaller band thrown off the Secret Garden bill at the weekend, which is a bit disappointing. Electric Banana reports:

Eddy Temple-Morris, the curator of the Temple of Boom for SGP, took to Twitter to slam the singer. He Tweeted: “I’m heartbroken. Regina Spektor has thrown her toys out of the pram and threatened to pull unless we cancel the wonderful @cleanbandit.”

The official reason was that the bass from Clean Bandit was reverberating through the entire site, but site rumours are suggesting Spektor's demands were motivated more by worry at the relative size of crowds at her stage and Clean Bandit's.

Whatever the motivation, Eddy Temple Morris (who curates the festival) is going to put things right:

Clean Bandit will headline Temple Of Boom next year l promise. In a slot that even Axl Rose couldn't pull. @cleanbandit

— Eddy Temple-Morris (@eddyTM) July 28, 2013

Spektor doesn't appear to have addressed the story anywhere, yet. Clean Bandit, however, are making out like bandits on the publicity. It could turn out to be the best thing that's ever happened to them, although it clearly didn't feel like that at the time.

[Thanks to @houmansadri for the tip.]

Lady GaGa: The warning sign

I like Lady GaGa. Who doesn't, eh?

This is worrying, though: the cover of today's Daily Record with GaGa proclaiming "I am the greatest performer, entertainer and singer of our age."

No you're not. And even if you were, the moment people start to believe that stuff is when they start the cultural slump. Like trying to pass off old Madonna records as their new material, for instance.

Gordon in the morning: Bono bonus

Ah, what could be better than Gordon nodding his way through some Bono justification?

Gordon has copied a piece Bono has written somewhere or other - he doesn't credit it, which is funny, what with Rupert Murdoch getting so cross when people "steal" News International "content" and pass it off as their own - and applauds quietly the Vox's bravery:

BONO understands why some folk "projectile vomit" when he preaches about humanitarian issues.

The U2 rocker - who's become as famous for his campaigning as he has for his music - admits he can sometimes be a "pain in the a***".

In a brutal scrutiny of his character, the One star also reveals he infuriates himself at times.

Oh, but surely you're being too hard on yourself, Mr. Bono? Cannot you find it in your heart to exonerate yourself? It is Christmas, after all.

"All I can say is that you can become traumatised as well as inspired by the lives you meet along the dirt road of extreme poverty.

"Sometimes I forget that I'm an artist - but I shouldn't, because that's what I am, a working pop artist in a big F-Off rock band."

That's alright then. So long as you never forget that you're an artist.

U2: Spiderman, Spiderman, does... what-evah

Bono and The Edge has been talking about the Spiderman musical like it isn't a financial nightmare.

Sorry, did I say musical? Oh, hush my mouth:

The guitarist was keen not to describe the production, directed by Julie Taymor, as a musical, but rather an "opera".

And what makes the musical not a musical but an opera?

Now, you or I might answer this question "generally, an opera will be sung throughout, while a musical has dialogue; and in a musical the characters will dance." But The Edge seems to use a separate distinction, which is "if I am involved, the show will be whatever is cooler":

"It is a new challenge. The thing is we don't really like musicals. Most musicals are really pants. They're really not very cool," said The Edge.

This is, of course, arrant wasp toss, to borrow David Quantick's phrase. Musicals are pants and not really cool? A man who is churning out eye-podge like the Zooropa tour and the current U2 "Oooh, look, we've got a big mechanical crab" effort is suggesting that the work of Oscar Hammerstein is "pants"? Seriously?

"It is much more like opera than a straight musical. We're actually not calling it a musical for that reason because we don't want to put people off."

Oh, yes - protect that all-important audience of Spiderman fans who are more likely to go to an opera than a musical.

"We just thought, 'Well if we're going to do this we should do something that knocks it out of the park and hits on every level with great tunes'."

Ah, yes. That's exactly making it sound like an opera and not a musical.

So, with The Edge tossing wasps left, right and centre, you'd have thought Bono would be able to take the day off. But, oh no - if there's a self-aggrandising bar being raised, Bono is going to be keen to be having a go at that target:

Bono explained the characters won't be the same which appeared in comic or the film adaptations of the original Marvel comic series.

"Our Peter Parker is much more…not Kurt Cobain, but a kind of slacker, a more kind of shy sort of guy," said Bono.

Now, I read The Amazing Spider-Man, in three panel chunks, when he replaced Modesty Blaize in the Evening Argus, and the one thing about Peter Parker in that was that - yes, he was nothing like Kurt Cobain, but he was quite shy and something of an under-achiever. I await Bono reinventing Batman as some sort of millionaire with a fetish for teenage kids, or Superman as - hey, how crazy - a bloke from another planet who's allergic to Gordon Burns' Krypton Factor.

But just when Bono has done one big reveal which turns out to be dud, he turns out to have another sleeve with nothing up it:

Bono said: "We've got a new villain, it's a girl. It's a very extraordinary role. We've taken it to a much more dizzy place than you'd expect."

Oh, you've got a female villain? What an extra-ordinary twist you have come up with, Mr. Bono. A bad female? Whoever else would have had the sheer gall to suggest a lowly female could be the bad guy? You certainly have shaken all my preconceptions, like a man shaking an Etch-A-Sketch so hard it will never show another drawing.

Katy Perry as the lights go out

What's happening here?



Yes, what this is the reaction of Katy Perry's manager to his charge being asked a difficult question in an interview. Panicking that Perry might not be able to handle the hard-hitting enquiry, the manager had pulled the plug on the interview.

Literally, he pulled the plug. Perhaps he didn't realise that it's meant to be a figurative phrase; perhaps it's lucky he went with "pull the plug" and not "knock the thing on the head" or "pull her out."

The challenging enquiry was "do you admire any Australian artists?", although to be fair - and by "to be fair" I mean "making him look even more like a chump" - he hadn't heard the question properly, and thought that Perry was being asked about the pointless dispute she'd been dragged in to where she tried to sue Australian Katie Perry for being in the fashion business.

That was a ridiculous idea in the first place - trying to use legal action to block someone who had been using her own name for years, in a business that isn't actually Katy Perry's focus. It's almost as if Perry is being managed by an intemperate buffoon or something.

Still, everything got smoothed out:

Hafner added: "[Katy] was just delightful and very keen to make amends. She calmed him down and, after several apologies, the interview resumed."

Wow, her manager is really lucky that his star is so good at calming situations down and keeping everyone on side when he's behaving like a prima dona. She's surely worth the 10% of his income she must charge him.

[Thanks to James P for the story]

Actor Billy Bob Thornton takes his self-importance to the public

Having made a holy show of himself on Canadian radio, actor-turned-don't-call-him-actor Billy Bob Thornton has now started to make himself look stupid in front of a paying audience, too.

Thornton kicked off by referencing the coverage of his tiresome interview:

"It seems as if when I say something it's in the news," Thornton told the crowd, according to the Toronto Star.

Actually, not in "the news", Bobby Bill, but it does seem when you say something it turns up on the self-importance round-up.

The fans weren't all that impressed, and started booing.

Thornton replied, "Boo all you want, but I want to say something — we're really happy to be here, but I need to say something. I talked to this asshole yesterday."

To? Or out of?

Thornton went on to explain that the radio show's producers had promised not to make any references to his acting career.

But why? In God's name, why? It's like having Socrates on and him insisting that no reference be made to his philosophy. Well, not Socrates. Who would be the philosophical equivalent of Bobby's acting? Pa Boswell from Bread, probably.

"I don't really like sensationalism," he told the crowd at Massey Hall. "If you look someone in the eyes and promise them something, and you don't do it, you don't get the interview. That's the way it goes."

It's not really "sensationalism" to mention that you're an actor, though. It's surely a known fact?

The audience - who were really there for Willie Nelson - were having none of it:

Thornton's explanation did not satisfy the audience, and they began jeering, "Here comes the gravy," a reference to Thornton's description of Canadian audiences during the CBC interview as "mashed potatoes with no gravy."

Billy Bob Thornton is an actor.

... and who has invaded whose privacy?

The story gets worse over at the News of the World, who not only manage to be EVEN MORE OUTRAGED than the Mail, but start to dig around to try and work out who the 80 year-old woman might be:

And last night as it emerged that the woman is a REAL PERSON with ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE there were mounting calls for Ross to be SACKED from his £6 million-a-year job.

But unless you're really suffering from an ability to process a joke, or intimate with the details of Ross sidekick's Andy Davies' private life, you wouldn't know the specific woman, and clearly the joke wasn't invading her privacy. Unlike, say, a British tabloid poking about to try and stir up some faux-outrage.

The News Of The World also drops in a fabrication:

The mega-bucks star’s crude joke about sex with an 80-year-old woman infuriated listeners.

Except nobody complained. So these are "listeners" who were infuriated but didn't do anything about it. How does the Screws know of this "infuriated" listener base?

Apparently it has one:

Regular Radio 2 listener Nigel Langstone, 43, from Leamington, Warwickshire, was furious over Ross’s comments and said: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“He gets kicked off air for three months for hounding an old man with disgusting comments about his grand-daughter.

“Then virtually the first thing he does after getting back is start telling a gag about sex with an 80-year-old woman. How insensitive can you be?

“It just shows he’s learned absolutely nothing and is a loose cannon who can’t be controlled.

“What’s worse is that the exchange happened with his own producer—the man who’s supposed to control him.

“The BBC is totally OUT of control. They’ve no idea how much offence they’re causing.

“Ross should be taken off air immediately. He’s a timebomb waiting to go off.”

You're a regular Radio 2 listener, and yet seem surprised by Jonathan Ross's show? It's like being a Radio 2 listener and saying "I can't believe that Terry Wogan waffles on with no consequence before playing a song off the Best Of Motown...", surely?

Anyone else want to clamber on the pretend outrage bandwagon?

Meanwhile former Home Secretary David Blunkett called for Ross’s pay to be docked as a result of this latest incident. He said: “It’s time for Ross to donate some of his salary to charity.”

Eh? How does that even make sense? I can understand - just about - people pretending to be shocked or horrified; you can even understand the News of the World and the Mail churning out acres of copy about it. But surely, Blunkett, either he's behaved badly and should quit, or he's edgy but doing what he's paid for. In what way is "it's okay to make jokes about sex with octogenarians providing you give your pay for that day to charity" even approaching an coherent response?

At the end, it's about understanding what your audience wants and what they feel happy with. After all, a lot of the stuff in the News of the World seems to a casual observer as too explicit for a publication which isn't on the top shelf, but it's about knowing your audience. Having said which, if the News Of The World really believes its buyers want to read non-stories attacking a few moments of radio they probably haven't heard, or would have enjoyed if they had, it presumably wouldn't be selling fewer copies than at any point in the last 50 years.

Jonathan Ross says something; the Daily Mail is upset

A mild joke - tasteless, tactless, but mild - about having sex with a woman in her 80s has been enough for the Mail On Sunday to roll out the Hazmat team and call, once again, for Jonathan Ross' head on a stick:

Jonathan Ross risked the wrath of BBC executives on his return to Radio 2 yesterday by making crude remarks about sleeping with an 80-year-old woman.

It's not clear if the Mail is upset at the idea of Ross having sex with anyone, or if they're so gerontophobic they believe that the very idea that you might have sex with anyone over the average age of their readership is, in itself, wrong. Or, perhaps, the Mail isn't really upset at all, but has to continue with its pathetic campaign.

Because was anyone upset?

No:

The BBC did not receive any complaints over the incident on Saturday.

The Mail had to shake its bag of perpetually outraged contributors. Who can you find, Mail? How about one of Mary Whitehouse's mob?

John Beyer, director of pressure group Mediawatch UK, said: ‘It’s ultimately for BBC director-general Mark Thompson to say whether this sort of innuendo and suggestion is what he had in mind when he gave Jonathan Ross his last chance back in October. The BBC has to establish boundaries of acceptability.’

Well, yes, to be honest, it probably is what Mark Thompson had in mind - Ross making the sort of joke his audience will find amusing, since you ask.

Have you got anyone else, Mail?

Conservative MP Philip Davies, who sits on the Commons Culture Select Committee, said of his remarks about the elderly woman: ‘Everyone knows what Jonathan Ross is like, particularly now. 'Certainly the BBC are well aware. If you employ Ross, this is what you can expect from him and this is what you’ll always get from him. My view is that he should have been sacked three months ago.’

Oddly enough, Davies' 'this is what you expect from Ross' comment echoes exactly what the BBC says:

A spokesman said: "Regular listeners will be familiar with Jonathan's irreverence and innuendo."

Exactly. As Davies says, you know this what Ross does. If you don't like it, why listen?

Not that Will Smith oversells it, or anything

Of course, you'd be excited to be going to the Obama inauguration. Even if you weren't playing. But Will Smith is attempting to turn 'not being asked to do Boom! Shake The Room' in Washington into a role in its own right:

"You know I thought about that, but I think I'm going to keep it a little more subdued than that. I'm just going to stand there and be an eyewitness to history."

You're going to watch, then, Will. Unless you're being invited in like a superannuated wedding guest to sign a register of some sort, you're watching. Unless there's a chance that after the event is over, and everyone has gone back home, the cops might swing through and say "hey - what happened here? Someone better call Will Smith to see if he saw anything...", you're in the audience.