What now for McBusted?

Ah, the sweet joy of BBC News innocently exploring how Charlie Simpson decided to rejoin Busted without once including the phrase "it can be embarrassing to have all your credit cards declined while trying to buy a donut". But that's almost certainly closer to the answer than the "offical" explanation:

On all that Newsbeat interview where he said he would never get back with Busted, Simpson said: "I reckon I said it 20 more times than that, privately and publicly, and I meant it every single time.

"But as I say I have changed my mind and that has been down to the circumstances changing. I never thought we would get to a point where we were in a studio writing music we all got behind creatively and that was a huge shock to me.

"also, it was nice to be in a room where there was heating. I'd forgotten central heating."

I'm probably being unfair. I'm sure the desire to pick up artistically from where that Thunderbirds movie theme left off was the overwhelming desire.

The big question, though, is where does this leave McBusted? Because there was a project which had "we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't have to" scrawled all over it, and now they don't.

Someone is trying to sell a CD/Vinyl Fightstar release for £65 on ebay. It's signed, so that's probably knocked a few quid off the asking price, but still doesn't seem to be priced to move. (It claims it's the first ever vinyl/CD release, but I'm sure Peel played one of those in the 1990s).

Gordon in the morning: McFly attempt to break America

I suppose there's some sense in McFly having a crack at becoming as big in the US as they are in the UK right now, as... well, it's not like their UK popularity of 2012 is setting the target especially high, is it?

Gordon is being very supportive:

After a decade topping the UK charts, the four-piece are finally making a bid to crack the States.

The early signs are very good. Two nights at The Roxy, then two more at the famous Gramercy Theatre in New York this month all sold out in under a minute.

Finally making a bid to break the US, eh?

Have we forgotten 2006, when - buoyed by an appearance on the soundtrack to a Lindsay Lohan movie (oh, boys, you are so of your time) - the band, erm, made a huge push to break the states. Look, their website was very excited:

McFly are as we speak on a jet plane home after an 8 day promotional trip to the U.S. The boys have giving back to back interviews and performances from the East Coast in New York to the West Coast and Los Angeles ahead of the release of their U.S. album on May 9th and their movie debut in Just My Luck on May 12th. The boys will be back in the studio writing and recording in the UK before returning to the USA at the end of the month.

That album was the only one that got an American release.

And, despite Gordon's reportage, the band are pretty clear that this isn't really an attempt to build a massive new Romeny-voting fanbase, but merely a thank-you to their existing, small fanbase there - they don't even have a US label right now. They told Billboard about the dates, stressing what it was all about:

"We just want to go over and do some small shows for the fans that we know we have there," says McFly's co-lead singer and guitarist Tom Fletcher. "We've been wanting to do that for years and years and years and years. But we've just never had the opportunity, or something else has come up."

"We have some fans in America that have been fans for like eight or nine years -- right from the beginning -- so much so that they fly over to see us in the U.K. It's amazing that they are so dedicated. So I think we owe it to them to come over."

Doesn't really sound like a band seeing this as their big US break, does it?

Llangollen International Eisteddfod tries to get down with the kids

Organisers of the Llangollen International Eisteddfod want to attract a "younger audience".

So they've, erm, sent for Lulu.

Jesus, how old was the age group turning up if Lulu's audience is going to bring it down?

It's not just Lulu, though - they've gone for McFly:

Mr Cousins said: "Llangollen attracts a healthy and varied audience every year.

"With McFly joining our fantastic line up this year we expect a surge in our numbers of young audience members, taking our festival to new heights.

"This is a very exciting time for us."

He said organisers felt McFly were "just perfect" for the "coveted slot" to close the festival on Sunday, 10 July.

I would have thought the one thing you could have said with certainty about the Eisteddfod would have been it was one place where you were safe from aging boy bands. I think they've just dumped their unique selling point.

Gordon in the morning: Left out of the love-in

Poor McFly:

McFLY will be watching the Brits this month in a bit of a rage.

The lads - DANNY JONES, TOM FLETCHER, DOUGIE POYNTER and HARRY JUDD - are miffed they don't get invited to big award shows.

Harry said: "It's frustrating that we don't get included in those types of things."

It must be frustrating, Harry. But why just the Brits? There are loads of awards shows you don't stand a tinker's trumpet of winning but don't get invited to. Surely you'd be just as appropriate a guest for The eLearning Awards, or the Petrochemical Industry Heroes Of 2010. After all, you're not really working in the same business as the people there, either.

Gordon in the morning: My baby got the yips

Yes, since you ask, that would be Gordon Smart, stood clutching a golf club, stood alongside Vernon Kaye (TV's Les Dennis), Harry Judd (from mother and daughter country duo The Judds) and Danny Jones (one quarter of The Monkees).

Or, if the caption is to be believed, it's a:

Tee-mendous line-up ... Vernon Kay, Biz Ed Gordon Smart, Harry Judd and Danny Jones

And, you'll have noticed, they're holding golf clubs. That's why the caption says that tee thing.

This, it seems, was a golf event promoting something or other, and Gordon seems to think that we'll be interested in every moment of his corporate jolly with the sort of celebrity that even he would bump from the lead story if something about Beyonce Knowles came in.

Actually, given that Vernon Kaye was there, it's the sort of celebrity who would be bumped if a story about Solange Knowles came in.

Actually, one of the "celebrity" players was Chris Riley, who is a mate of The Enemy. This bunch would be bumped if a story about Nick Knowles came in.

Even Gordon knows that the event lacks a little glamour, but does his best to try and suggest that this isn't like a team bonding day for the Office Of Fading Stardom:

The competition was fierce at The Grove hotel in Hertfordshire - where the England footie team stay before home international matches.

When you're relying on the idea of Peter Crouch carrying an overnight bag to add glamour to your piece, you're in trouble.

But Gordon's smart, and knows that pro-celebrity (or rather no-celebrity) golf has an air clinging to it:

Forget JIMMY TARBUCK, BRUCE FORSYTH and RUSS ABBOTT - I'm joyriding their celeb golf buggy now.

Yeah, forget the time when celebs playing golf was all about the sort of people who spent their days presenting ITV game shows. Now, it's all about Vernon Kaye.

Oh, hang on.

Perhaps we could inject a little sex into the proceedings, Gordon?

The longest drive of the day belonged to Jamie. Or as he said: "I am a few inches bigger than you, Smarty."

That's not actually a double entendre, is it? In fact, Redkanpp might very well have been actually comparing his cock with Gordon's, as describing a distance as "bigger" makes no sense. Or maybe Jamie said "longer", and Gordon just can't read his notes because he was shaking with so much mirth.

Still, while nobody who wasn't there would be in any way interested in these events - good lucking pricing up the paywall for this, Messrs Murdoch - at least it's important to Gordon, right? I mean, there's no way he'd just leave the article hanging on a meaningless odd line, is there?

But his bandmate DANNY JONES landed Bizarre's Beginner gong and a swine flu boiler suit.

Gordon in the morning: Talking about Paris Hilton like she's real

Hold the front page - or, rather, replace the blocky top bit at the top of Bizarre with a single story: Gordon Smart has a world exclusive:

PARIS HILTON has dumped her rocker lover BENJI MADDEN after nine months, I can exclusively reveal.

Paris Hilton was going out with someone from a Blink 182 tribute band? Really? And now she isn't? Blimey.

You could understand Gordon poking this onto the page to pad it out, but treating it as such a major story makes it look like he's given up caring about Sun readers and is now merely running a column to try and catch Perez Hilton's eye.

Still, at least Gordon can take comfort in knowing that today, he doesn't have the worst celebrity-related featured: he's been out rubbished by Bella Battle on the Sun Woman pages:

Hair-larious new looks for Wino

When I tell you the rotten headline pun is the best thing about the feature, you'll know what we're dealing with here: a padding piece comprised of photos of Amy Winehouse with other people's hair poorly photoshopped onto her head. Perhaps the best-worst is the Jennifer Lopez one (because doesn't Lopez have a trademark hairstyle?) where they've not even bothered to try and take out Winehouse's real hair (or real fake hair) from the photo.

Back over at Bizarre, Gordon runs a McFly piece which smells a bit like a made-up story:

POP pups McFLY have been forced to cut a scene from their festive TV ad amid fears it would spark copycat behaviour from fans.

Pop pups? They're in their 20s, Gordon, it's not like they're S Club 8.

Gordon goes on to reveal that "advertising standards" have forced the cut:

No, they are worried crazed fans might start trying to give each other human heads for Christmas.

The offending promo featured people exchanging presents, only for one to open a box and find bassist DOUGIE POYNTER’s head in it.

Gordon slams - yes, slams - this as "ludicrous" and you'd have to agree with him. It's ludicrous expecting us to believe that a mysterious "ad chief" has somehow banned a lame joke from an advertisement and that this is anything other than a PR exercise trying to get us interested in McFly latest whatever it is they're trying to flog. It might be a record, or perhaps they've had their faces put on Pop Tarts.

Darkness at 3AM: McFly assault the Queen

The 3AM Girls nod excitedly as McFly get over-excited about their appearance at the credit card promotional event in London yesterday:

The band kicked off the London 2012 party outside Buckingham Palace yesterday and think their singing was rather too raucous for the Queen's eardrums.

They told us: "We were so loud we were sure she was going to reach out of her window and say 'Oi, keep it down'."

Well, yes, I'd imagine if she did find herself in a position where she had to listen to you, she would be annoyed. But the level of the sound? That probably matters less than the sound itself.

Gordon in the morning: Rod Stewart puts cocks in McFlys' faces

The lead story on Bizarre this morning is rich man buys expensive car, which has left Gordon time to work on a story about Rod Stewart defacing McFly's passport by drawing cocks on them.

Somewhat oddly, Gordon opens the piece with this:

I ALWAYS thought ROD STEWART was a lord — but he has cracked me up with some childish tomfoolery.

Let's not worry that Gordo probably meant to use "child-like", which would be carefree and humorous, rather than "childish", which is a disapproving word and clashes with the claims that he's been cracked-up, and look instead at the revelation that Smart thinks that Stewart is a lord. What does that mean? Why does he mention it?

Purely to allow the headline to be:

Rude Rod is lewd of the McFlies

But even when Gordon has taken the time to write a paragraph just to allow the lord/lewd not-quite-pun, it still doesn't work - unless Smart believes that drawing a cock on Danny McFly's passport was meant to be sexual? And why would that then make Rod of rather than at McFly?

McFly boost the Mail On Sunday

The McFly giveaway has worked some magic for the Mail On Sunday, which sold an extra 300,000 copies on the back of the free record this weekend. Although, oddly, not in London:

"That is probably indicative of people moving over the week with the school holidays," [Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen] Miron said.

Y-e-es. We did hear that last weekend London was virtually empty, save for one woman from Camden who had been asked to feed 798,000 cats and water somewhere over six million pot plants.

Of course, it's debatable if this extra audience are going to return to the Mail - if they didn't just discard the paper in the first place, but Miron is hopeful:

"We have brought in a whole audience that would have never talked about the Mail on Sunday," Miron said.

"I don't think there is a brand out there in the UK at the moment that wouldn't want to be talked about in the way that marks them as different and innovative," Miron said.

Or the sort of newspaper which is so rubbish it's relying on giving away kiddie's albums on its front page to artificially boost its ABC headline figures.

James P, by the way, emailed us to point out the Mail advert promoting the album included a big flashy caption:

"INCLUDING THE NUMBER ONE HIT 'ONE FOR THE RADIO'".

Although, erm, the track only got to number two. As James puts it:

... might be worth remembering next time the Mail runs a story accusing the BBC of fakery and deception after discovering that the experts on 'Dragons' Den' aren't real dragons.

McFly album: Now on a par with a catalogue of deck shoes

We could see the free Prince album giveaway - clearly, nobody much was going to pay for a Prince album, but might have been just curious enough to take a free copy with the Mail On Sunday.

But now, the Mail has done a deal to give away a free McFly album:

Tom Fletcher told the BBC: "We get to put [the album] into almost three million homes, which is an incredible opportunity for us. Hopefully the three million people will all enjoy the music and they'll decide to see us when we go on tour."

It's a lovely dream; we do like to picture three million people turning up eager to see McFly, like some sort of Jarrow March.

But we'd not picture there being much of a crossover between the McFly target audience (if such a thing still exists) and the sort of people who take the Mail On Sunday, and really the exciting opportunity is to put three million discs straight into landfill. At least if they did the giveaway through the Observer, the readers would recycle them.

Gordon in the morning: Girls Aloud v Atomic Kitten as McFly say goodbye

The ongoing ructions from the claims about what Ashley Cole may or may not have done are dominating the pop gossip agenda this morning, but that's in the hands of another writer.

Luckily, Gordon can keep himself busy with some pictures of Atomic Kitten in their knickers. We'd think there was a stench of desperation about a band who feel people are only going to notice their reunion if they dance about in push-up bras. (Actually, fair dos to Jenny Frost, who has chosen to dress a little more demurely.)

And while we're being fair, Gordon does have a cracking story this morning, with the news that McFly are trying to grow up:

The lads - TOM FLETCHER, DANNY JONES, DOUGIE POYNTER and HARRY JUDD - have decided the time has come to grow up and shake off the shackles of being a boy band.

Yes, they're planning to leave Island and get serious. Indeed:

They have instructed management to hunt out a new deal similar to the one PAUL McCARTNEY signed with coffee giants Starbucks.

We really hope that they're not expecting Starbucks to treat their demo tape like it came from one of the most famous musicians from the biggest group of all time. Indeed, they might want to lower their sights from Starbucks to something more akin to, perhaps, those Let's Eat people who have the trollies on trains.

Of course, being Gordon, he has to ruin a good story by shoehorning in a lousy pun:

I can just see the McFly boys sitting in their three-quarter-length trousers in Oz planning to “do a RADIOHEAD” and release an album on t’internet.

Boys, if you want to keep flogging millions of CDs, stick to what you do best.

The only way is down (load) from here.

The use of 't'internet'; the suggestion that what Radiohead did that was noteworthy was "releasing an album on" it - as if there aren't thousands of albums released on the web every week - and all just leading up to a weak pun. The warning itself is a good one, though.

John Lydon in character

Today's Daily Telegraph carries an interview with John Lydon, for which he appears to have turned up in character:

Today, he is swathed head to toe in a riot of red tartan - part shell suit, part updated bondage chic. His hair is short, orange and spikey, just like the old days. The teeth aren't looking too off-colour, although there are one or two missing.

The paper gives him an easy ride, even although the very idea of the Telegraph treating Lydon to a puff piece actually negates the whole 'he's still edgy, you know' point of the article; it's on a par with getting an OBE for services to Republicanism.

We're prepared for a nihilistic punk:

Lydon [...] fixes me with a glare which has lost none of its withering force down the years. "How do you prepare for telling the truth?" he asks, ominously.

So what's the righteous target for the 07 model of Johnny Rotten?

The first thing I saw this morning on TV," he cackles, "was a whole lot of your pop bands. McFly, hahaha. Is all that really still going on? It's all dippy and Blue Peter - done with sticky-backed plastic. And you've all rolled over for it. We didn't back then. What's wrong with you lot?"

Apparently, John, there's still a massive market for boys put into bands by controlling svenagllis bouncing through some hit songs with an air of pantomime rebellion. How many nights did you sell out again?

But that's not all he's got. New indie acts get a toothless sucking:

The Pete Doherty brigade get equally short shrift: "They're all got up like Sid Vicious, and poor Sid hadn't got a clue how to dress!"

Yes, Sid Vicious' trademark porkpie hat, nice shirt, cheap suit look. If Lydon cared, he'd have noticed that the Babyshambles look is more mod and ska than punk, but it's not like he's doing anything other than crashing through outrage-by-numbers.

He soon digresses into a lengthy tirade against the Blair/Brown axis, and the new stadium of his beloved Arsenal ("Now I have to sit with accountants and nice boys from Tring!").

Really? And whose shoulders would you expect an estate agent from California to be rubbing with, John?

The attention-grabbing refusal to attend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction is trumpeted as a victory:

We wrote them a note, a saucy little reminder: don't vote us into your museum, we're very much alive. They're trying to bury us, and make us into a safe commodity. Not possible. Won't work."

An estate agent telling the paper of choice for Home Counties retirees on the eve of his nostalgia tour that he can't be turned into a safe commodity. Fair enough.

Most interestingly of all, though, there's an attempt to force his appearance on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, into some sort of anarchist's cv:

Then, three years ago, in a characteristic effort to wrong-foot his detractors, he appeared on the TV reality show, I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, which he walked out of after 11 days.

"I did it because it was everything wrong. I could have ruined myself. Instead I just was myself, and I won. Anything to win? No! So I left."

It took eleven days of sitting round in the Australian jungle watching soft-porn stars and failed singers eating kangaroo testicles to work out that the programme was a bit of a circus sideshow? Wouldn't just reading the title have given a hint of that?

More to the point, Lydon's suggestion that he walked out on a principle because the show was "wrong" is something of a contradiction to his explanation at the time, which insisted it was because - having narrowly escaped being blown up over Lockerbie, he had the hump when ITV refused to tell him if his wife had shown up.

This isn't, we imagine, the last time Lydon will contradict himself in order to make himself seem more like the mythical anti-establishment figure the tabloids mistook him for in 1977. Let's hope it's the last time intelligent writers collude with him, though.

Burning balls of McFly

Last time they played GAY, as our Google figures constantly remind us, it ended with McFly naked.

They kept their clothes on this time, but Danny Jones did attempt to set fire to his testicles. There was very little damage done, though. As you'd expect.

Can you hear the sound of an orderly queue forming?

Tom Fletcher, out of McFly, has a secret desire: he wants to write for other bands:

I've got so many songs that aren't right for us. My publisher is always asking me to send stuff but I never put my songs out there and tend to concentrate on McFly.

Songs that "aren't right for McFly"? Can this mean Fletcher really knows two-syllable words?

McFly tours: the truth

Lil'Chris, who apparently hasn't yet worked out that he's being patronised for a living, has just got back from the McFly tour. They sound like, oh, such a laugh:

"McFly thought they'd take the mickey out of me and presented me with this plate of insects. I wasn't that scared and ate the scorpions, worms, crickets, caterpillars and some ants, but Danny ( Jones) was really scared to do it.

"The scorpions were crunchy, the ants bitter and like body odour. Danny ate some worms and ants then threw up on me."

"Tom (Fletcher) stole my wallet and Danny and Dougie (Poynter) photocopied my driving licence and the picture of me without a hat.

"They put 100 copies of it round the theatre we were in and left some custard in a condom in my wallet."

Chris is, what, seventeen years old, and McFly are even older. It's not entirely clear why they seem to have confused 'tour' with 'twelve year olds on an exchange trip'.

Please say it'll be a one-way trip

The thought of McFly being blasted into space is one to cheer the sould on a cold winter's morning, although the apparent plans to bring them back as well takes the edge off slightly.

They're supposedly going to do something linked to Richard Branson's supposed holiday-in=space company.

Even if the technology exists, and Branson's underwriters let him go ahead, this won't be until 2009 at the earliest, so it's quite a leap of faith to assume that McFly will still be a going concern by then. It's always dodgy planning to put musicians on spaceflights too far ahead of time - NASA had a terrible time explaining to Eddie Fisher why he lost his seat on the manned trips to the moon - but even if Branson was blasting idiots off into space tomorrow, would the very rich really want to be entertained by a band aimed at nine year-old girls?

Still, at least in space, nobody can hear you scream "they're a bit like a poor man's Busted, aren't they?"

McFly CD again

Yes, it's McFly - they've cross-dressed again for their latest video. It does seem to be any excuse to pull on a skirt with them, doesn't it? Playing a gig? Let's drag up. Making a video? Ooh, shall we wear dresses. Meeting with the band's accountant to discuss the VAT implications of shifting to a mainly digitally-delivered music model? Alright, but can you help me lace up this corset first.

We'd love to see McFly take the next step, and drop the pantomimic element of their trannying. Come on boys... you know you want to.

MCFLY TRY FULL-FRONTAL NUDITY

As the hawk their sub-Busted new single, Please Please, McFly have had to fall back on the old Duran Duran video trick of throwing in a spot of full-frontal nudity.

Unfortunately, it's McFly naked rather than anyone else.

Tom McFly explained this wasn't that unusual:

“I wasn’t at all embarrassed about being naked. We’re used to stripping off in front of each other.

“And we all know who has got the biggest package — me."

To judge from the stills, it might be true in a "in the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" sort of way.

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