In a piece of audaciously reductive phrase-making, The Daily Mail have attempted to top The Daily Express's now legendary "Hey Jude hitmakers" with a caption under a photo of the skin and bones supermodel (looking scarily like Amanda Holden) that reads "A country that reveres such junkies as Kate Moss has no right to lecture China on its drugs policy, argues Leo McKinstry" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1239051/LEO-McKINSTRY-Sorry-jo...

Putting aside the deeply unpleasent content of the Mail column for a moment, can the massive come up with similarly dismissive descriptions of the uber-famous? How about "Such jug-eared world leaders as Barack Obama" or "Chubby booze salesman Orson Welles" as your starter for 10. over to you.

"Staff Benda Bilili - Très Très Fort: The latest African sensation to break out of the Congotronics scene are a group of trike-riding polio victims..." Andy Gill gets seriously obscure in compiling his albums of the year list for the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/andy-gill...

I may be a bit behind the curve on this but I've just discovered internet prankster David Thorne. His site is hilarious and apparently came to international attention last year with this exhange of e mails where he attempts to pay a chiropractor's bill with a drawing of a spider http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html. But this more recent posting really had me in stitches http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html

Has anyone else been following the Grand Slam of Darts on ITV 4 and 1 this week? I'm an occasional and very casual follower of sport, but I've found the tournament absolutely riveting. The standard of play has been exceptionally high, with the best players from both the PDC and BDO hitting numerous 180's, achieving 100+ three dart averages and at least one maximum 170 check out.

What really make the sport so intruiging is watching how the players battle with their own self confidence, which (unless your name is Phil "The Power" Taylor) seems to wax and wane by the throw. Ted Hankey - now sadly out of the competition - is a beast of a bloke, but when on form has the most wonderful flowing dart action. But when he's out of sorts, rattled by the unruly Wolverhampton crowd, he couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo.

All it takes is a missed double or two and the players sink into the slough of despond; a moment or two later they're on top of the world, marching up to the board to triumphantly retrieve their arrows that are crowded into the treble 20 bed.

Its spooky the way you can see from the relaxed expression on Andy "The Hammer" Hamilton's face that he knows he's going to hit that all important double or treble before he's even released the dart.

Although the play is repetitive in the extreme, the race to check out each leg never fails to excite, doubly so when it's for the match. I think it's the perfect TV sport, with personality playing nearly as big a part as skill. I can't wait for tonight's installment of the best drama on TV.

Stuck on the M25 on Friday evening, I was listening to Chris Evans and was heared him play Candyman by Sammy Davis Jnr. He didn't just play it, but turned it into a "thing" by getting the entire presenting team to sing along. He's done it before so I imagine it a regular "here comes the weekend" sort of caper.

So what's the big deal? Well, as many Word readers know, Danny Baker is the Candyman. He can't stop other people playing the record of course, but its unquestionably his thing. I was so appalled at the lack of imagination shown by the Ginger One that I texted the show to remind them exactly who the Candyman is. I've yet to recieve a reply. Does anyone know what Danny thinks of this, after all,he was (is?) bezzie mates with Evans.

The first track from former New Order frontman Bernard Sumner's new outfit Bad Lieutenant has been posted on their mysapce site http://www.myspace.com/badlieutenantmusic.

Its reasonable enough with a polished production and a quite catchy tune. But its exactly what you'd expect of him. In fact, they needn't have bothered going to all the trouble of recording the song.

A press release saying "It's one of those medium paced, four chord, guitar based things with bloody awful lyrics as usual. You know, the sort of thing I've been churning out in my sleep for the last 20 years" would have done just as well.

With both Joy Division and New Order, Sumner has been responsible for some of the most innovative and influential post-punk music ever released, and I am a big admirer of both bands.

But judging by this effort, he no longer has anything to say (and don't you just hate bands that lift their names wholesale from films or books? How lazy is that). He's had a good run, sold a lot of records, but maybe its time to hang up the guitar.

The Young Marbled Giants got it right when they made one album and split up. I wish other musicians would have the guts to follow their example.

In his review of Walking on a Wire by Richard Thompson in the current issue, Andy Gill says that "Mirror Blue shifted some 150,000 copies while his most successful album, 1991's Rumour and Sigh sold around a quarter of a million."

Which made me wonder when the media/music and film industry first thought that sales figures were of any interest to the general public. The fact that a U2 or Coldplay record (who Gill says wouldn't get out of bed for Thompson's sales) has gone multi platinum doesn't make it any more of an attractive prospect to me. And I certianly don't give a stuff about a movie's opening weekend gross, (or how many people watched East Enders last Friday come to that).

I'm not criticising Gill at all, who uses the figures to make the point that Thompson is a "label mascot" used to attract other artists, but I think the assumption that what a record shifts or how many bums a film puts on seats has any bearing on its value, or is of interest to anyone but industry insiders is totally wrong and the sort of information that should stay on the press release.

Or am I wrong?

What's that whoosing sound I hear? Oh, its just Mr Curtis spinning like a drill bit in his grave.

http://citizeninsanemedia.com/Love%20Will%20Tear%20Us%20Apart.mp3

I wondered if anyone who is familiar with the work of author and journalist Jonathan Rendall knows what he's currently up to.

I'm re-reading his book This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own about his experiences managing boxer Colin McMillan and I'd really like read some more of his stuff. I've already got two of his other books Twelve Grand: the Gambler as Hero and Garden Hopping and would dearly love to read Scream: The Real Mike Tyson but I've no idea if it was ever actually published.

It has an ISBN number and depending on what site you look at was either published in Oct 2007 and is currently out of stock or is yet to be published. My local Borders reckon that an airport-only paperback edition existed at some point but only in Asia (!?) but the UK hardback was cancelled.

If anyone has the inside track on this I'd be very grateful to have this little mystery solved.

There seems to me to be a whole sub-genre of songs that get played fairly regularly on daytime Radio 2 that could classed as not-quite-novelty songs. They're quirky, but not in a comedic way. They avoid gimmickery, but still stand out from the pack. They're good or very good songs, but something prevents them from being great. They might be one hit wonders, but even if they're not the artists will be cult stars rather than superstars. As you might tell, I'm struggling to put my finger on it so here's a couple of examples:

Is this a thing or a flawed theory? Does anyone else have some similar examples?

Not really. This is C-Curve by Anish Kapoor which has been installed on the South Downs for the duration of the Brighton Festival this May. I've just been up with the family as we live quite near and was struck by its prog qualities and thought I'd share with the massive.

I seem to recall that someone once said of prolific Oliver's Army hitmaker Elvis Costello something along the lines of "Everytime he goes to the loo he comes out with a new song". I've got a feeling it might have been Nick Lowe in an NME interview but I'm not sure. Does anyone else remember this quote or have I imagined it?

Via the magic of Spotify I listened to Ian Hunter's You're Never Alone With a Schizophrenic for the first time in many years. Thirty years on, I think it stands up pretty well. But the one thing that really struck me is how similar this 1979 song

is to this 1983 release:

(this is the best video I could find - you can't embed the TOTP version for some reason).

Last night's gig did strange things to me. I remembered why I used to love live music and I also remember why I eventually stopped going altogether.

As soon as I walked into the Forum I was instantly transported back 25 years or so to the last time I was there for New Order's second ever London show. There is nothing like the atmosphere of a well attended London gig, and there was a genuine sense of anticipation in the air last night.

But equally, there is also nothing like queuing for an overpriced pint of lager served in a plastic glass. Or being constantly elbowed in the back by a man in a Chinese silk dress.

The band were thrilling; the setlist a mixture of the compulsory (Shot By Both Sides; A Song from Under The Floorboards) and the daringly obscure (the spoken word piece The Book delivered mid-set from a lectern, and a three quarter time medley of minor album tracks The Great Beautician in the Sky from Real Life and The Honeymoon Killers from Magic Murder and the Weather).

It made me understand the true value of nostalgia for the first time; for 90 minutes I felt fifteen years old again and it was wonderful.

The sound mix was a little disappointing. Noko's John McGeogh-alike guitar was REALLY FUCKING LOUD while Barry Adamson's liquid bass runs were reduced to a muddy rumble that swallowed much of the music's subtle complexities.

As an overall experience, it was utterly exhilerating and a little tiresome at the same time. Just as it always was and, no doubt, always will be.

Just out of interest - in light of several recent football related threads, am I alone among the Word faithful in loathing and despising nearly everything to do The Beautiful Game?

Its not that I don't appreciate the sport - I quite like watching the occasional international. It’s just everything that surrounds it from the moronic punditry to the way supporters say "we" when they mean 11 multi-millionaires, to the thuggish behaviour of premiership players and the relentless parade of clichés that constitute the obligatory after-match interviews that makes me feel ill. Does anyone share that view or should I fetch my overcoat?