Smoke and mirrors

A strong whiff of media beef wafted through Electric Goose Towers this morning, as we noticed that page 11 of the Daily Mirror featured a story (which isn't online and doesn't seem to have been picked up by any other papers or websites) about an allegedly sexist Ryanair advert which appeared in The Guardian at some unspecified moment in time.

According to the Mirror article, the ad, which was promoting cheap flights to Germany and featured "a large-breasted blonde clutching a huge beer glass" alongside the tagline "See The Frauleins With The Big Jugs", upset many of the "ailing" Guardian's "right-on" readers. It continues, in hilariously sarcastic vein:

Even their own staff were up in arms, some phoning in from their rustic Tuscan holidays to complain.

One said: 'I nearly choked on my gluten-free organic muesli when I saw it.

'We are keepers of the nation's morals, and we let the nation down.'

Of course, only a paranoid and crazy person would suggest the snarky tone of this piece had anything to do with articles like this, this or this…

Steven Wells: 1960 - 2009

I'm probably at least the 5,000th person today to write the words, "Steven Wells was the writer who made me want to become a journalist," but hell, it's true.

For the uninitiated, Swells, who died from Hodgkin's lymphoma on Tuesday aged 49, was a spitting, ranting genius of a scribe, and, when I started reading the NME back in 1995, easily the best writer they had on their books. His pieces were characterised by balls-out irreverence, extreme sweary imagery, a disgust for all things twee and tame (Belle and Sebastian usually got a pasting) and, most memorably, SHOUTY CAPITAL LETTERS (today's report on The Quietus, which he wrote for more recently, had the excellent headline "Swells Dies: Caps Lock Buttons Sigh in Relief").

His final piece is published here and you can see from the comments how well loved and respected he was in the industry (amongst others, Kitty Empire, Everett True, Steve Sutherland, Mark Beaumont, Dominik Diamond, John Robb, Barbara Ellen, David Quantick and Attila the Stockbroker all weigh in. And Brian Wilson, but that may be a nom de plume).

Anyway, all nostalgic, like, I had a root under my bed and found an NME from October 1996. Lo, behold and phew, there was a piece by Mr Wells waiting for me. An extract, for you, then. It's from a wonderfully snarky interview with Power Station, a so-called supergroup consisting of self-confessed love addict Robert Palmer, Chic drummer Tony Thompson, and Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor.

They've just finished only their second album in more than ten years and during its recording, John Taylor, also ex-Duran Duran, had to quit because of a bit of a problem with the old proboscis-rotting showbiz sherbert. Then producer Bernard Edwards, also ex-Chic, caught flu while on tour in Japan and died in his sleep. Are you listening Noel Gallagher? You whining WIMP!

Yes indeed, they're called The Power Station and they're here to show you mewling, puking, zitpit-cratered, baggy-trousered, snot-sleeved, scabby-kneed, dope-addled no-hoper teenage slacker scum the POWER of ROCK created by MEN whose bollocks have dropped so far that they hang down by their kneeds like saddlebags.

That's one way of looking at it. That's certainly the way The Power Station see it, as they and your correspondent munch our way through exquisite Japanese food in an exclusive west London restaurant like the jet-setting, royalty-shagging, racehorse-owning bourgeois bastards we are.

[…]

Is it better to be a pop star or a rock star… Hang on, for some strange reason all three of them have burst out laughing.

"I'm a singer," says Robert, suddenly very serious. "He's a guitarist. He's a drummer. I really don't know what you're talking about."

Andy, you have, without a doubt, been a pop star.

"Well someone chooses to call you that, to pigeonhole you and plan your life out for you blah blah blah blah blah…"

FUCKING HELL! What THE STINKING HELL IS going on?!!? The guitarist of DURAN DURAN will not admit to once having been a pop star?!? I mean how many exclamation marks can NME print in one issue?!?!!!???!?!?!!!!!!!! The Power Station are not rock stars or pop stars, they are 'musicians' Why? In God's name, WHY?!?! People worship rock stars! They adore them! They are desperate – in their panting, turgid and drippingly moist millions – to have savage, uncomplicated and utterly mindblowing SEX with rock stars and they want it NOW! I mean, 'musicians', for crying out loud! Do you know anybody in their right mind who would even piss on a 'musician'? But we digress.

So, yep, RIP.


More:
NME tribute: Rage in Peace
His Guardian Sport highlights
The Daphne and Celeste reunion campaign starts here

Is this the best typo ever?

Still live here at time of posting.

Pun of the week

This week’s winner comes from today's Sun, which has a story about drugs being smuggled into a Teesside jail stuck to the surface of paintings. The headline?

Sorted for easel whizz

Bravo!

Olympicballs

"There is just no drama here at the moment."
As the Beijing games finishes, Sky News sends a reporter to London's Olympic stadium building site.

Pun of the week

Well done to the Daily Mirror's sub-editors, whose headline for a story about an artist who has created a 17ft cardboard statue of Gandhi was...

Flatpack-ma Gandhi

Feeling Iley

Luvvie interviewer Chrissy Iley may churn out the most cringeworthy big name pieces you're likely to read ("When he's in a relationship does he like to observe but not really know himself, I ask?"), but you have to admit, no one can read a hug like she can...

"We hug goodbye and it's a warm and proper hug where I tell him he's lovely and he squeezes me tighter."
Interviewing Johnny Depp, Grauniad, 3 July 2006

"Sting arrives and by now it’s late afternoon. The room becomes a darker golden but the sunlight makes Sting’s hair impressively lemony. He hugs me hello; his cashmere zip-up is soft but his body is hard."
Interviewing Sting, Times, 4 March 2007

"There's a profound air of loneliness about Victoria that makes you want to first go up and give her a hug..."
Interviewing Victoria Beckham, Glamour

"When he hugged me goodbye I felt his bones. He felt frail, but at the same time intense. But still with a look of mischief in his eye..."
Interviewing Sam Rockwell, Grauniad, 11 November 2007

"I'm not sure if goodbye is going to be a smile or a handshake but it turns out to be a hug, a firm, all-embracing one. I feel a tingling going up and down my entire body."
Interviewing Harrison Ford, Observer, 27 April 2008

Court red-handed

After describing the Daily Mirror's 3am Girls showbiz column as "increasingly dismal" in a snooty tabloid round-up article today, The Guardian's Paul Macinnes goes on to lay into a piece by The Sun's celebrity hack Gordon Smart, in which the red-top writer praises an already hotly-tipped new band.

"More new-born celestial matter can be found today in the shape of the Courteneers (pronounced in a fashionably Gene Hunt-esque way as the Cortinas). Now despite a tidal wave of hype in the week past, the Manc band's debut album failed to reach No 1 yesterday, falling into the marginally less prestigious No 4 slot instead… It falls to Smart Gordon to introduce the band to his Bizarre readers this morning, just a few weeks after everybody else did."

Unbearable smugness aside, if The Grauniad really was as far ahead of the curve as they'd like to think, they'd know the reason the band's name is pronounced "Cortinas" is because it's spelt, er, "Courteeners". Duh.

Prize Lottery

Ha! Although I'm loathe to defend Orange (what with working for them and everything), novelist Tim Lott's description of the loveable communication giant's literary prize - awarded to women writers only - as "discriminatory, sexist and perverse" stinks of sour grapes of wrath.

The Lottster's clearly sore after Private Eye described the prize he chairs - the Prince "nope, me neither" Maurice prize - thus:

"The Prince Maurice prize for literary love stories... allows seeming chairman in perpetuity Tim Lott to invite chums and other clubbable novelists to conduct the judging in a five-star hotel in Mauritius - where the winner can stay for a fortnight. Among Lott's 2008 panel is Irvine Welsh, a connoisseur of luxury hotels and avid log-roller whose influence can perhaps be discerned in the shortlist's inclusion of his pal and Cape stablemate Ewan Morrison (whose 'love story' is about wife-swapping) and the fishy presence of three books - no other publisher has more than one - from the small Scottish indy Canongate, to whose collection Children of Albion Rovers Welsh and shortlistee James Meek were contributors."

What Goes On

More madness from the Daily Star. This just in:

LET IT BE: Playing Beatles in space could spark alien attack
BLASTING songs into space could put the Earth at risk of alien attack

Experts are fuming after Nasa played The Beatles song ‘Across The Universe’ into deep space.

They reckon loud music could attract extra-terrestrials’ attention and earmark the planet for invasion.

Astronomer Barrie Jones said there was an “unofficial embargo” on letting aliens know we are here.

“The chances are slight, but the consequences could be huge – the end of life on Earth,” he said.

Out of Grange

So, Grange Hill has been axed. I’ll pretend to care, but I never really watched it, so whatever, really. I did like this little nugget, though, from former child actor Lee MacDonald, who played poor heroin-addicted Zammo (yeah, even I’ve heard of Zammo) and who sang on the cast's anti-drugs single ‘Just Say No’.

"I remember ‘Just Say No’ was voted in the top 10 worst songs of all time, along with the Orville tune ‘I Wish I Could Fly’, which my brother sang on."

"My mum turned around to us both and said 'I can't believe I've got two sons who were part of two of the worst records ever'."

Raising the Barack

I've totally missed most of the Clinton-Obama coverage, but after the New Hampshire primary turnaround when women voters suddenly decided they were all about Hillary, did anyone go with the headline "The boys are backing the Barack"?

And if not, why not?

No Sun of mine

Wow, this is the most outrageously sexist bit of hokum I've read in quite some time.

In the wake of “outrage” over Holly Willoughby’s low-cut dress (viewers: 9.8 million, complaints: five), Britain's biggest selling newspaper The Sun has produced a “hilarious” breast-orientated TV listings feature. Here are two jawdroppingly awful extracts:

12.30pm Loose Women (ITV1)
More topical debate from these feisty female presenters... blah blah blah, whatever. Just hit the mute button, sit back and gawp at Coleen Nolan's marvellous hooters.

8.00pm Relocation, Relocation (C4)
While Phil is on the lookout for a family home in Felixstowe for ex-fireman Richard and his wife Laurie, Kirstie Allsopp is in Swindon showing off a cracking set of norks.

You can’t handle the Ruth

I never thought I’d hear Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly described as a “blonde-tressed lovely”. But hey, that's the Daily Mail for you - always full of surprises. From their website:

From ugly duckling to smouldering swan: Ruth Kelly's startingly chic new image
The ugly duckling of the Commons has gone from crop-haired stodge to blonde-tressed lovely in just a few, astonishing weeks

Pun of the week

This week’s winner comes from The Sun, from the headline of their piece about a British Airways steward suspended for theft after eating a leftover muffin from a passenger’s meal tray.

Much ado about muffin

Pun of the week

As actor Will Smith accepts the Hollywood honour of leaving his hand and footprints on the pavement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Wenn Entertainment News come up with:

Smith Puts Fresh Prints in Walk of Fame

Gall Mart

The Amis vs Bennett racism debate continues today, with Martin getting his knife out:

"What you say about something is never your last word on any subject. But what you write should aspire to be just that: your last word. To paraphrase and slightly adapt Vladimir Nabokov (Strong Opinions): I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished man of letters, I talk like an idiot.

"Ronan Bennett thinks like an idiot."

The rest is here. (The battle seems to have mainly taken place on the pages of The Guardian, with an occasional foray into The Independent.)

If you want to catch up, Terry Eagleton writes about the early days of the spat here - "a Sunday Times profile of me attributed my wrath to a visceral, punk-like obsession with clobbering others." Amis's subsequent response to Eagleton is here - "Can I ask him, in a collegial spirit, to shut up about it? " Bennett's scathing "shame on us" attack is here - "He got away with as odious an outburst of racist sentiment as any public figure has made in this country for a very long time". Christopher Hitchens' defense of Amis here - "I am not writing as Amis's worst enemy". Ian McEwan weighs in here - "inflated, hysterical pull-quotes". And Chris Morris has a go here - "Martin Amis is the new Abu Hamza". What fun!

Pun of the week

With the rumour that Sir Trevor McDonald wants to appear on The X Factor to do a Neil Diamond impression, The Sun goes for…

Diamonds are for Trevor

An imaginary conversation

"Hey, who's that girl? She looks really familiar."
"Which one?"
"That one, with the straight black hair and flowery dress."
"We don't know her, you idiot – everyone looks like that now."
"But, it's just…"
"You're so fucking out of touch I can't believe it. I bet you haven't even heard the new Kate Nash album."
"Er, actually I have, some of it."
"Well fucking done. And?"
"Well, I suppose it sounds a bit familiar, all that chatting nursery rhymes innit sort of stuff, but otherwise it's all right, I guess."
"You dick – everything sounds like that now. Anyway, you're wrong. It's shit. God, you really are a twat, aren't you?"
"Hold on, that's a bit harsh…"
"It doesn't matter anyway, shit's the new good."
"Isn't that a Nathan Barley quote?"
"No. I never quote fictional characters."
"You've quoted Kate Nash before."
"No: I just used the word 'foundations' in a sentence once. That so doesn't count. Wait, are you saying Kate Nash is fictional?"
"Good point, I'm not quite sure where that came from."
"Because you're right, she is."
"Erm, what?"
"'Kate Nash' is just a construct. It's obvious. Just look at this article, right: 'Nash slams Spice Girls'."
"Why'd's that make her…?"
"Shut up, I'm not finished. You know what she actually said about the Spice Girls? She said, 'They're all older now so to kind of still wanna be the Spice Girls is just, I dunno… just grow up.' That's a direct quote. It's the kind of stupid thing anyone could say – and they've kept the 'um' words in, so you can hear her rooting around for something vaguely interesting to say. They type up the quote, add some other paragraphs – I dunno, 'The 19-year-old, whose album is out today blah blah fucking whatever' – then they stick it next to a picture of the individual called Kate Nash, and hey presto, you've got a story."
"But surely that means it's the story that artificial, not Nash herself?"
"God, free your mind, man. I know a guy who works at her record label. They have to fucking get her out of a box every morning and put her together. There's actually a guy at the label whose job it is to assemble Kate Nash. He's signed a confidentiality agreement so he can't talk about it. But this shit gets out. Why dyou think her album's called Made of Bricks? Answer that one."
"What happens when the guy's ill? Who assembles Nash then?"
"God, what kind of dickhead question is that? The fucking work experience boy, I don't know. But it's the same for all of them, you have to do it with all that fucking lot."
"What? What do you mean, which lot?"
"Penate, Allen, T, Nash. What did you think Torn on the Platform was about? They're all in little fucking mannequin pieces when they arrive. Most of them are left over from the 1930s or whatever – that's why the birds have those fucking old-fashioned dresses and the blokes look like they've just stepped out of Les fucking Miserables."
"Arrive? Arrive from where?"
"They just get shat out the back tube of MySpace straight into the fucking Barfly. You think Westlife's manufactured? This lot make Westlife look like fucking Motörhead. Ever see Terminator 2?"
"Yeah. Classic."
"It's okay. But it got one thing right - that's exactly how the planet's gonna look in 2029, except instead of those wiry metallic robots, the place'll be overrun by fucking Kate Nash clones, shooting the shit out of everything with their big laser arms. Think that girl we just saw looks familiar? You ain't seen nothing yet, fuckwit."

Ooh-er

"Identify young men and then penetrate them."
PC Pat Mercer suggests the solution to the terrorism problem on Newsnight

Spotted by Jon T.