Now, that's what we call a chart battle

Squaring up in the download booths and Asda CD racks: The Ting Tings, number one in the midweeks, and Madonna, whose single The Candyman Can is apparently still selling strongly enough to threaten to take back the honours.

Quick mention: The Ting Tings were on Janice Long's Radio 2 show this Tuesday just gone - and thus you can still enjoy their acoustic session through the magic of Listen Again.

Whitesnake deny Led Zep claims

David Coverdale is furiously denying he ever said anything about Whitesnake supporting Led Zeppelin and, you know, that the band are far too busy to have even considered joining such a tour:

"What fucking world tour, we ask ourselves? We're already out on our Good To Be Bad world tour, thank you very much," he wrote.

"I have no idea where this started, Geoffers. But, with the wildfire of the internet, my poor ol' German publicist is fighting them off with her rusty, but trusty, Luger.

"I assure you there is no… (of course there fucking isn't) …any foundation in this.”

The whole world, David, knew that it wasn't true. The question, of course, is who said it was in the first place.

Credit crunch claims new victims

Hah- you think you've had it hard, what with your house being repossessed, your job vanishing and your children being handed to the Inland Revenue in something to do with the 10p tax rate that you didn't quite catch.

Think again.

Duran Duran are really suffering. They'd lined up a job playing to senior executives from Deutsche Bank for an easy half-a-million pounds, only now that someone's found out the entire world banking system was based on a mortgage on a single trailer-park home in the middle of Texas and that's only worth half what it should be because it's going an unshakeable smell of wet dog in the bedroom, the bank have decided not to go ahead.

Duran have got the hump. Apparently. They're supposed to have re-routed their entire world tour in order to play the gig and everything. We've been trying to work up some sort of sympathy for the thought of people who were so willing to effectively dance as rich men threw coins, but we're finding it difficult.

Instead, here's Cate LeBon, doing Shoeing The Bones, on the grounds that she's got the same surname as Simon LeBon, but is more fun to listen to.

Stipe is haunted by Kurt

Michael Stipe has trouble shaking off the blues when he tries to listen to Nirvana records:

"He had reached a point where he was about to push through to something that was so phenomenal and so beautiful.

"It was all written, it was all right there and it was so obvious where he was going, and then he didn’t make it.

"I still have trouble - I can’t listen to an entire Nirvana record."

Similarly, these days most people have trouble making it all the way through an REM album.

Perhaps he's got some special floaty shoes

Mike Skinner has set himself a tricky challenge, according to NME:

The Streets' Mike Skinner has announced his intention to walk from Britain to the south of France.

Perhaps he's just very good at holding his breath.

Gordon in the morning: Down and out with Paris and someone

Gordon gloats this morning that his good buddy Victoria Beckham out-performed Paris Hilton:

AHHH diddums! Poor PARIS HILTON was baffled by a lack of snappers waiting for her at London’s Dorchester hotel yesterday.

Every man and his dog had gone to see VICTORIA BECKHAM launch her new denim range at Harrods.

Really, Gordon?

Or was it because the paparazzi had got all the photos they wanted at the Selfridges launch of her Paris' new perfume? The Evening Standard certainly saw things differently:

Paris Hilton upstages Posh..as she stops traffic in London's busiest street for her fragrance launch

Still, let's give Beckham her moment in the - ahem - sun. She's kind of like Janice Battersby now, heavily involved in making unconvincing clothes. Or, as she puts it:

“I’m getting a chance from really cool, credible people in a cool career. If you work really hard it happens.”

Harrods? Cool? Credible? Not unless you're selling there in 1974. It's mostly overpriced tourist tat these days, sold in a brand which has been flawed by its nasty little airport shops.

Still, it's probably not important that the piece is a bit idiotic - these days, Gordon's little more than a newsagent offering softcore jazz mags. Today, it's Agyness Dean's tits that are hung on a "story" which seems to be little more than "here is a photo of Agyness Dean's tits.

Jammie Thomas may get another day in court

The RIAA won the first file-sharing case that went to court - but now the judge involved is suggesting it might need to fight the case all over.

Jammie Thomas was convicted quite quickly - in law, she didn't have much reasonable doubt to call on - but even so, she might get another chance. Judge Michael Davis has admitted he wrongly told the jury that copyright infringement happened when the track was uploaded to networks; he's since realised it doesn't happen until the track is downloaded by someone else.

But, warns Wired:

One of the cases Judge Davis cited in his order Thursday is also something of a double-edged sword for the defense. In that April decision, Atlantic v. Howell, an Arizona judge said that merely making a copyrighted work available for downloading wasn't infringement. But the judge also held that the RIAA's own investigators can effectively turn it into an infringement just by downloading a copy from the share folder involved.

Can it, though? If the RIAA represents the copyright holders, how can they illegally download a copy of the copyrighted material? And what sort of law is it where the police can turn a suspect into a criminal by the act of observation? (Oh - sort of like when the pretty policemen go into toilets to solicit gay sex.)

They call them virals because you feel a bit queasy and probably shouldn't pass them on

We do like the XFM Scotland video for 'what happens when a song is played on XFM', but to be honest, it's because of the soundtrack - Black Kids I'm Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You, which could make a reel of footage from a tax office look like the greatest place in the world to be.



The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice the red 'on-air' light isn't on in the studio. It would have been cooler if they'd done it while the song was really playing.

Of course, if GCap had its way, when music is played on XFM Scotland, this is what would be happening in Scotland, while the track plays out from London:

Leave Amy alone, says "family member" again

If Sue - who called up Five Live and asked that the media leave Amy Winehouse alone - claims to be a family member, then we should take her at her word.

But if you want the press to stop talking about Winehouse, wouldn't it make more sense to have a word with Mitch Winehouse - who appears in the tabloids talking about her on a regular basis - rather than the Five Live audience? Or, perhaps, suggesting to Amy that she at least tries to stop wandering down public streets apparently smoking weed?

Whitehall Tax Disaster 2008

It stretched credibility when Gordon Brown claimed he woke up to the Arctic Monkeys. But not so much as the claim that Gordon Brown listens to the Bee Gees every day.

Mind you, we've only got a Bee Gee's word for that anyway:

“He listens to our music every day,” Robin Gibb tells The Times today. “He said, ‘Your music is absolutely timeless’. Gordon likes our music and I like Gordon.” Gibb, 58, in whose Miami home Tony Blair stayed last summer, said that Mr Brown liked the songs — which include Stayin’ Alive, Tragedy and How Deep Is Your Love? — “because they talk about human relationships and human experience, and reach out across the decades”.

Expect lame gags about the Prime Minister "Staying Alive" and facing a "Tragedy" and trying to find out how deep the electorate's love is and so on to be getting knocked out in Tory Central command's senior common room within the hour.

Of course, the idea that Brown likes songs about human relationships makes it all sound unlikely - perhaps Robin has re-recorded the songs to feature fewer lines about love and a bit more about the accelerator theory and non-endogenous growth.