Gossip (That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore)

That Stranglers song about Caroline Coon - "London Lady"?

All three songs are about me

Get around, don't you?

all i know is that william, it was really nothing was supposedly written about billy mackenzie

...who in turn wrote a song years later called "Stephen, You're Really Something."

How about 'Mr Writer' by The Stereophonics? Erk...

I once wrote a song with the working title of 'Ben Clancy is a Crap Shop' if that counts...

'Crap Shop' = phrase of the week.

Ohh, I know this, I know this.

Rumour Has It that the journalist in question in TJIFA was none other than J*n S*v*g*.

As to the other section of the question, I know plenty of cases of journo + popstar, sitting in a tree. Twice it happened to me. But on neither occasion could my seducer really be called a popstar in The Charts terms.

Suzy: We wants names! Urgent and Key! ( Unless you're a stickler for that privacy stuff, bleh )

"journalist in question in TJIFA was none other than J*n S*v*g*."

WOW!
Akchully... it makes kinda sense. S'funny cos I've recently been reading S*v*g*'s Smiths & Moz bits in his book 'Time Travel'. Never put the two together though. Hmmm...

sub-thred mutation!!

suzy ain't telling , so WE MUST GUESS!

1. Mark E. Smith
2. Kid Creole

Sav'n'Moz: *NOT* convinced (I'd have heard). But I shall set the old-skool manc-punk gossip massive into hive-like evil activity...

Felt's "She Lives By The Castle" was written about Sarah Cracknall of St. Etienne.

Well, I don't see the other writers who post on here saying which (d)alliances they've had. Suffice it to say that I wasn't recruited from the fan base (unusual and problematic as a result in both cases) it definitely wasn't career sex, I'm still fond of both of them, yada yada.

My gossip source for Moz was friendly with Parlophone pink mafia at the time; heard it from JS' subsequent love interest.

I've coupled with journos and musicians, though not at the same time. One of them was a proper chart star for a while. Still talks to me, though.

Actually, a certain magazine's music editor is after me at the moment, I think. Help!

But Dickon, is said editor worth it? At very least you might get some fun stories out of it. ;-)

Not that anyone is really interested, but I'd just like to clarify that I haven't slept with Mr Clancy.

He really is a crap shop, though- I tried to get some crisps out of him and pff! impossible.

I think suzy's popstars are:

1)Rick Wakeman 2)Miles Hunt

(no offence meant, suzy, just in case you suddenly get an urge to hit me very very hard)

I shagged a few pop people. In my experience, female pop musicians are moderately more up for it, in the sense of exploring possibility, than their civvy-street sisters, but they're no better in bed, with one notable exception who shall remain nameless. The worst musical shag I ever had was not really in the pop game at the time, but is now doing fairly well. No names, but she's unrecognizable with her make-up off (that's not a clue or anything, by the way). I've also turned down two shags from pop singers, but amicably.

Of course, the worst part of musician-writer relationships (Mary Ann Hobbs and Miles Hunt, Andrew Eldritch and Jennifer Nine, Chris Roberts and Darling Buds woman, Simon Reynolds and Woodentops woman, woman out of Lush and Ted Kessler, Sade and Robert Elms, and on and on) is the doubled gossip. You get gossiped about - lied about, more likely - if people are curious about your lifestyle or if they have some bitchy problem with you. The potential for this within that particular sphere is obviously colossal. Plus, of course, many of your friends and acquaintances will be musicians, journalists and the people who hang around musicians and journalists, who're notoriously bitchy and who also have, in many cases, a national outlet for their shitstirring. I'll personally never forgive the lady journalist who pressed my ex on nonsensical rumours that at the time of our dalliance, she, the palest and photographed woman in the music press, was being beaten up by me. Strangers know too little of your character to doubt juicy gossip, I suppose, and why should they(I don't know that Michael Jackson is a paedophile, but I sort of assume he is, like everyone else)? Gossip is gossip; shit happens, especially around shit people. But printing this stuff, even as rumour - "Some people have said..." - is deadly. Especially when you do what all good journalists are told to: have the lack of taste and lack of foresight to ask people about all sorts of subjects they'd rather avoid, then write up the sneering stonewall that ensues with an element of manufactured mystery..."refused to discuss"...

Then, with both the subject and the "reluctance" (dignified refusal) to discuss it fully legitmised by publication, every other article for a month in the supplements and glossies (written by hacks whose only background knowledge is the press pack containing the previous article) contains the same line: "a violent/abusive boyfriend she doesn't want to talk about". A subject they never brought up during the interview, partly from cowardice, partly through fear of losing a nice snippet of dirt. People kid themselves that they can read between the lines of journalese, but things like this are only visible to the journalistic eye. They're not even tricks, they're so embedded in the structure of journalism in this country that if they ceased to exist the whole thing would come down with an expensive clatter (all those mags full of tat, all the showbiz exclusives about boring people, which directly fund the news desk, etc. etc. et bloody cetera). Can't be bothered to go on any more than you can be bothered to read on, but that's the basic anatomy of demonization, anyway.

That's partly why I've come to hate Popbitch, and why I can see that young pop fans in fucking Bedford or somewhere would love it so much. When you actually know half the people involved, or at least near- identical versions of them from a few years ago, the whole thing starts to look like a John Martin painting or something, the twisted faces of the doomed and wretched sluicing into the inferno under the booming, ominous clouds, wreathed in lava and something that looks like cocaine.

Suzy, I'm guessing Momus, because Occum's Razor says so.

I'm not a fan of Popbitch myself, though I do read it when it pops into my inbox - I just don't believe a word of it, unless they have a link to photographic (and therefore SCIENTIFIC) proof.

Um. Before this turns into an Anti-Loshun Hora club, and everybody starts to slag off popbitch and gossip in general, remember this. Given that commercial pop is defined by the importance it invests in image and celebrity. Now that's not a bad thing. Actually, its a good thing. An interest in gossip is part of what it means to be human: gossip is a natural function of human society.

Also remember that some people *love* to be gossipped about and actively court it - after all, why would Dickon publish his journals online, bleach his hair white, and join a band if he didn't want to be recognised and talked about. Remember what Oscar Wilde said about being talked about . . .

So yeah, Taylor, the pop industry and celeb journalism is a simulacrum of Bosch's Haywain. But its not like that's a *bad* thing.

i fucked meatloaf

From my web diary: Follow this gentle reader! If you study linguistics you will be taught to divide human spoken interaction into areas like commands, greetings, etc. In most empirical studies of what people talk about, around 70% of the content of spoken communication is classified as gossip (across both genders). People I've talked to about this want to deny this - why? I thought it was obvious, humans are social animals, and the main part of their interaction will be working out relationships ... anyway, there is this stereotype about girls gossiping more, obviously, but today after reading ILM I had the little insight that boys will often be name-droppers, only they will name-drop about social hierarchies they're not even part of, relying on the names of musicians for example, attaching themselves to words and social structures which have more power than the people they're exposed to locally ... boys know a lot more about power than girls ... why aim low and stick to people you've met? In fact, you could reconfigure this whole understanding of female gossiping by pointing out that the only difference is that the theoretical boy doesn't dare to gossip about people he's not sure are actually powerful ... If you read music criticism this way, it's immediately obvious that it derives a lot of its form from the familiar structure of 'gossip' ... especially obvious is that it's filled with names, the construction of a complex set of relationships, measuring and remeasuring people's importance, discovering and evaluating their secrets ...