Is it me, or is indie rock getting bigger? Surely we can all agree that there is a lot of it about. In naked sales terms alone, dishevelled types with guitars have been shifting very nicely of late. Snow Patrol sold the most albums in the UK last year - 1.6 million - narrowly edging out Arctic Monkeys. The year before, Coldplay's X&Y led the sales chart.

These popularity contests so often used to be the preserve of pop acts, like Robson & Jerome or the Corrs; light entertainers with nice teeth. The national mood, it seems, has grown sombre, and now requires pianos and big, melancholic singalongs about chasing cars. Even more weirdly, pop is now the preserve of adults. Kids like the Kooks. Their parents buy Take That albums and have a secret thing for Girls Aloud.

Coldplay's X&Y, for instance, was a bit like A Rush Of Blood To The Head (the band's benchmark) injected with collagen. It was plump, sure and ambitious, but not a little hollow and vapid compared to their best work. EOTSA! Brian Eno - a key player in U2's success - is said to be working on Coldplay's next one: cue very, very large whooshy noises.

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Mary J. Blige, with a successful comeback, a best-selling album and a leading eight nominations, looks poised to emerge from the Grammy Awards as the night's big winner.

But then again, Mariah Carey was in much the same boat last year. And look what happened to her. Carey led the nominations in 2006 for her "The Emancipation of Mimi" album, yet won only in the R&B categories, not the coveted Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year categories. U2 was instead the big winner of the night, with five awards.

Are the Grammys trying to mend their reputation of being a sucker for chart-topping pop acts while overlooking "important" artists? Certainly, over the years they have been accused of being pitifully out of touch with music fans and music trends.

To wit: the Grammys started in 1959 but didn't have a category for rock and roll until 1962. The awards ceremony weren't broadcast on TV until 1971; and the most recent oversight: a hip hop album didn't win Album of the Year until 1999, when Lauryn Hill cleaned up.

Who did the Grammys reward in its formative years? Artists such as Henry Mancini, Glen Campbell, and Frank Sinatra. And Grammy members got excited about such new artists as Robert Goulet, José Feliciano, and The Swingle Sisters. (Single who?)

The Grammys presented a glimmer of forward thinking in 1965 when they handed out Best New Artist to a spunky little band named The Beatles. But it wasn't until 1968 that a rock band ever won Album of the Year. The Beatles' seminal "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" took it by beating out such old favourites as "My Cup Runneth Over" by Ed Ames, and "Ode to Billie Joe," Bobbie Gentry (Again, who?!)

It's not only the Grammys' questionable taste that angers many music fans; it's their confusing selection of categories. The Awards currently have 108 categories within more than 20 genres of music -- many of which blend together together.

For example, who defines what is Rock and what is Metal? (Metallica has won in both categories). What exactly is Alternative? (That award has been handed out to such polar opposites as The Beastie Boys and Coldplay). Why did it take until 1989 to offer a Rap category? And why in the world did DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince win it?

Award organizers were so uncomfortable with the category back in 1989, they handed it out during the pre-show ceremony, not the televised broadcast. Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince, Salt-N-Pepa and L. L. Cool J all responded by boycotting the show entirely. To try to keep up with the times, organizers do try to change up or rename the categories, some times less successfully than others.

The four big categories have remained the same: Album of the Year, Record of the Year (which goes to the best single of the year), Song of the Year (which goes to the songwriter) and Best New Artist. But other categories have just left us scratching our heads.

A Grammy was handed out for Best Disco Recording in 1980 -- and never handed out again. (For the record, Gloria Gaynor and her producers won for karaoke fave "I Will Survive"). Best Reggae Album began to be awarded in 1985 -- 10 years after "I Shot the Sheriff" and four years after Bob Marley died.

The Best Polka Album category began in 1986 (when someone must have noticed a surge of interest in polka). Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra has won it 15 of the last 20 years. Canada's own Walter Ostanek has managed to steal the prize only three times.

But of course, the Grammys' worst misjudgment of all time has to have been the awarding of Best New Artist to Milli Vanilli in 1989.

The pop duo was topping the charts with catchy if somewhat insipid ditties that we all now know they never actually sang. Four days after the scandal broke, Grammy organizers sheepishly retracted their award -- a first, and a move they thankfully have never had to repeat.

Here are a few other unforgettable Grammy moments:

* Jennifer Lopez's name become forever locked into the minds of viewers of the 2000 Grammys, when she arrived on the arm of Puff Daddy - as he was then known -- wearing a taped-on Versace dress cut down to there.

* Bob Dylan's otherwise unmemorable performance at the 1998 Grammys took a turn for the bizarre when a man with "Soy Bomb" scrawled across his naked chest leapt onto stage to dance before security whisked him away.

* Eminem's embrace of gay icon Elton John after their performance of "Stan" at the close of the 2001 Grammys was seen as a landmark by many -- and just plain cringe-worthy to the rest of us.

* Justin Timberlake apologized at the 2004 Grammys for the Super Bowl "nipplegate" fiasco one month before. Janet Jackson was notably absent from the show that year.

* When 2004's Best New Artist award was handed to Evanescence, 50 Cent, fellow nominee and odds-on favourite, leapt onto the stage and snatched away the trophy. A few seconds later, he handed the statue back to singer Amy Lee before gleefully leaving the stage.

* Metallica offered a mesmerizing performance of their song "One" in 1989 and seemed poised to win the first-ever Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance award. They were as shocked as anyone when flute-lovers Jethro Tull took home the award. (Metallica won the following year.)

* In 1991, many music fans were stunned with Nirvana's groundbreaking "Nevermind," album was passed over for Best Alternative Music Album in favour of R.E.M.'s radio-friendly "Out of Time."

* Sinead O'Connor became the first to refuse a Grammy after she was awarded Best Alternative Music Performance in 1990. She said she wanted no part of the awards show's commercialism.

* Christopher Cross became in 1981 the first performer to win the Big Four at a single ceremony: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. As the music legend goes, the advent of the video age was not kind to Cross in the following years and he dropped off the music radar.

More on this story here

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The biggest stars of the music world are gathering in Los Angeles for Sunday's Grammy Awards, while the business slides deeper into the abyss.

Every day brings more bad news for the $21 billion (10 billion pound) industry, which cannot work out how to get fans to pay $18 for a CD instead of stealing music from the Web.

Just this week, Grammy-winning jazz singer Norah Jones' much-anticipated new album opened at No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts, but its sales were less than half those of its predecessor three years ago.

Warner Music Group Corp. -- home of Madonna and James Blunt -- reported a worse-than-expected 74 percent slide in first quarter profits. And EMI Group Plc., home of Coldplay and Robbie Williams, laid off a number of U.S. staffers.

Still, don't expect the bad tidings to infect the Grammys, which begin at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT Monday) at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles.

"It's not really the time to say, 'We don't know how to sell albums anymore. Please help us,'" said Craig Marks, editor in chief at music magazine Blender.

This year, the leading nominees are R&B singer Mary J. Blige with eight nominations and California rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers with six.

Predicting the winners in any of the 108 categories is always a risky task. Last year everyone expected eight-time nominee Mariah Carey to be the belle of the ball on the strength of her successful comeback album. She won three prizes.

Blige was a surprise omission from the coveted album of the year race, where the Chili Peppers will compete against country trio the Dixie Chicks, pop duo Gnarls Barkley, rock crooner John Mayer and pop star Justin Timberlake.

The Dixie Chicks, with five nominations, are favorites for "Taking the Long Way," their first studio album since singer Natalie Maines stirred up a hornet's nest by criticizing President George W. Bush in 2003. The album's sales disappointed.

"For reasons having nothing to do with music, it never really got a chance to be all that it could be," said Rick Rubin, the album's producer.

A FIRST FOR NEIL YOUNG?

The 11,000-plus industry professionals who vote on the Grammys are supposed to favour artistry over sales. And the Chicks' album was hailed by critics for its sassy tone -- as summed up by the record and song of the year nominee "Not Ready to Make Nice" -- and musical adventurousness.

If Grammy voters are feeling particularly political, they could also honour Neil Young for his anti-Bush album "Living With War," which yielded three rock nominations. The Canadian singer/songwriter, who has never won a Grammy, recorded his state-of-the-union album in six days last year and quickly uploaded the songs to his Web site.

"No one has come out like him, or like Arlo Guthrie, and written about America and what it means to be an American," said Tom Araya, vocalist with hard rock band Slayer.

His band is nominated in the metal category for "Eyes of the Insane," a tune inspired by the true story of an Iraq war soldier who committed suicide shortly before he was due to return home.

In the closely watched race for best new artist, Blender's Marks predicted 27-year-old English singer/songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae would take the prize on the strength of her jazz-influenced self-titled debut album.

"She's a 'sophisticated' singer and artist, and that's the kind of artist the Grammys like to think of themselves as promoting," he said.

Source: http://today.reuters.co.uk

It's probably hard to imagine someone who's won two Grammys, dated Hollywood's hottest ladies and brought sexy back being a little, well, insecure.

But Justin Timberlake wasn't so sure of himself when he embarked upon FutureSex/LoveSounds, an album now up for four Grammy nominations, including a coveted Album of the Year nod (see "Mary J. Blige, Chili Peppers Top Grammy Nominations List").

For starters, he thought he had lost his voice — not in a medical sense, but in regards to knowing what (and how) he wanted to sing. "He didn't like his voice no more, you know what I'm saying? He didn't like what he was doing," producer Timbaland recalled. "I was like, 'Justin, what's going on?' "

Timberlake had felt "burnt out" after 2002's Justified — which is partly why he turned his attention to movies — and he felt a little lost when he walked into Timbaland's Virginia Beach, Virginia, studio. "I thought if I could put something together that lived up to the first record, I would have," the singer said. So the duo's first song together, "What Goes Around ... ," sounded a bit Justified, he admitted. "That's probably the closest to the last record that I got on this album." And when they were done, Timbaland started teasing Timberlake. " 'OK, co-producer.' He's giving me hell," Timberlake said. " 'What do you want to do now?' " So Timberlake responded: "Let's do something we would never do. Let's go far left and just see what happens.

"I think that's why I ended up doing 10 songs with him on this album," the singer added. "When you have somebody like Timbaland, who is so creative and yet finds a way to hone it all — Is that even a word? Hone? — I think that's why it just became a sound. ... We were conscious of the last song and trying to go left of where we had just been."

Timberlake combined R&B and pop before, but this time he started playing around with rock. "He was thinking about doing more serious music like Coldplay," Timbaland said. "I was like, 'How do we do that?' I mean, I love songs like what the Fray do; that's what I listen to. It's more meaningful to me. All the other stuff is nonsense. But I'm like, 'We can only do a handful of songs like that. We got to test the water.' Because, you know, he gained an urban fanbase, and we can't just lose it right away. We just can't go the Coldplay route."

And so the interludes on the album were born — as a way to see if the reprises, encores and preludes would irritate or intrigue Timberlake's fans. "We were like, 'Let the fans come back and say, "Yo, that song at the end of 'LoveStoned,' y'all should have made that a whole song," ' " Timbaland said.

Even though the interludes make it seem as if the album were highly thought-out, Timbaland said that it was never on paper — only in Timberlake's head. "He didn't write none of the album down," the producer revealed. "He just sits there, looks at the speakers, goes upstairs to get something to eat, comes back and goes, 'I'm ready. You ready?' 'My Love,' two minutes. Done in two minutes. And 'My Love' is real catchy."

Some songs took a little longer because Timberlake "wanted to sit in the booth and think of real clever stuff," Timbaland said. "He wanted to outthink himself." For "Losing My Way," Timberlake wanted to write in more of a narrative style, and when Timbaland heard it, he was astonished. "I was like, 'You wrote that one on paper, didn't you?' And he said, 'Man, you're crazy if you thought that.' "

The only song Timberlake wrote on paper for the whole album was during his Rick Rubin session, for "(Another Song) All Over Again." "I got him to write before we got into the studio, which is unusual for him," Rubin said (see "Rick Rubin Calls His Year 'Not Unusually Special'; Grammy Nods Tell Another Story"). "He's used to doing it the other way around, getting an existing track or working on a track and trying to create a song when a record is close to being done."

But during sessions with Timbaland, Timberlake operated according to his usual formula, which is to say, no formula at all. "There was no real formula to how we were doing it except that it was free-flowing," Timberlake said. "[Timbaland] sits behind the keyboard, and some of the guitar parts I would just put in or piano parts."

On songs like "Sexyback," Timbaland would just mess around with the studio modules, "looking like a mad man, a mad scientist," Timberlake said. "And he starts messing around with beats, and then I'll say, 'Oh, I like that one.' "

"And then I'll say, 'Look, that's it for the prequel. Do it like this, take that flow,' and he's like, 'OK,' " Timbaland said. "He hums it, and then he's like, 'I got it.' All it takes is one take and that's it."

Sounds like Justin found his voice after all.

As the Grammy Awards get closer, check out all the latest news on the show, the scene and the stars in our Grammy news archive. On the big night — Sunday February 11 — be sure to tune in to MTV at 7:30 p.m. for our "All Up in the Grammys" preshow.

The EMI Group, the British music giant, has been considering a plan to offer a broad swath of its recordings for sale online without anti-copying software, executives involved in discussions with the company said.

EMI, which releases music by artists including Coldplay and the Beatles, has discussed various proposals to sell unprotected files through an array of digital retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Real Networks and Yahoo, said the executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

EMI declined to comment.

It is far from clear that the company, which has tested the concept recently by selling a song from Norah Jones in unprotected form, will reach a deal.

But if it does, it would be the first of the four major music companies to distribute its catalog without software designed to limit copying. Because various online retailers use different forms of security software, known as digital-rights management, their services are not always compatible with all music-playing devices on the market.

The debate over the industry’s handling of the issue heated up this week when Steven P. Jobs, chief executive of Apple, which leads the market with its iPod and iTunes service, suggested that the music companies offer their music without anti-copying software.

Mr. Jobs’s stance drew catcalls from executives at several major labels — though some have experimented by selling a handful of songs in unprotected form, as EMI did with a single from Ms. Jones’s new album.

Reports of the EMI plan surfaced in Europe this week when music executive speculated that EMI was close to a deal with several online music services that went beyond the relatively limited experiments with non-copy-protected music that it had conducted so far.

Source: Various

David Bowie has been getting arty in the name of charity, designing a personalised mug for charity artwork project, Whatever It Takes.

The singer's artistic, personalised mug features a self-portrait and his interpretation of a symbol of hope conveys his message of 'Peace Thru Art.' Monies raised will be donated to Bowie's choice of charities, including Trade Plus Aid and Save The Children.

Bowie is a supporter of Whatever It Takes, whose aim is to "sell merchandise with a meaning." The charity gathers artwork from celebrities, each of them donating a symbol of hope, a self-portrait and a message of hope for the future. The artworks have been used to create clothing, tableware and ethical cosmetics. Symbols of hope have previously been donated by Coldplay, Paul and Heather McCartney, Queen's Brian May and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.

A Bowie mug is a bargain £9.99 and available online by clicking here

In other Bowie news, he is curating the first High Line Festival, in the neighbourhood of the disused railway park of the same name, in New York, this May.

Bowie will headline the large outdoor concert, his first show in New York since 2003. He will also be picking newer artists appear throughout the festival. He told Billboard last year, "I've been particularly excited about seeking out emerging artists and giving them a place in a festival that will also feature some very well-known names."

More details are expected to be announced soon.

Rare FM DJ Adam Freedman recently conducted his annual survey asking Rare FM DJs and listeners to determine Rare FM's unofficial Record of the Year 2006. No prizes, it's just for fun. In case you missed his two-part countdown of the Top 20 tracks, never fear, part one of the results is here, with part two due soon:

20 - Lily Allen - LDN

19 - Justin Timberlake - SexyBack

18 - Arctic Monkeys - When The Sun Goes Down

17 - The Feeling - Fill My Little World

16 - Black Eyed Peas - Pump It

15 - Nelly Furtado - Maneater

14 - The Killers - When You Were Young

13 - Editors - Munich

12 - Dirty Pretty Things - Bang Bang You're Dead

And for your own interest, below is the original 'shortlist', in alphabetical order.

1. AFI – Miss Murder

2. Arctic Monkeys – No Buses

3. Arctic Monkeys – The View From The Afternoon

4. Arctic Monkeys – When The Sun Goes Down

5. Arctic Monkeys – Who The Fuck Are The Arctic Monkeys

6. Babyshambles – Janie Jones

7. Black Eyed Peas – Pump It

8. Bob Sinclair – World Hold On

9. Christina Aguilera – Ain't No Other Man

10. Coldplay – The Hardest Part

11. Corinne Bailey Rae – Put Your Records On

12. David Guetta – Love Don't Let Me Go

13. Dirty Pretty Things – Bang Bang You're Dead

14. Editors – All Sparks

15. Editors - Munich

16. Fall Out Boy – Sugar We're Going Down

17. Fedde Le Grand – Put Your Hands Up for Detroit

18. Gnarls Barkley – Crazy

19. Gorillaz – El Manana

20. Hot Chip – Over and Over

21. Infernal – From Paris To Berlin

22. Jack Johnson – Upside Down

23. James Morrison – You Give Me Something

24. Justice vs. Simian – We Are Your Friends

25. Justin Timberlake – SexyBack

26. Keane – Is it Any Wonder?

27. Lily Allen – LDN

28. Lily Allen – Smile

29. Muse – Knights of Cydonia

30. Muse – Starlight

31. Muse – Supermassive Black Hole

32. My Chemical Romance – Welcome To The Black Parade

33. Nelly Furtado – Maneater

34. Nelly Furtado - Promiscuous

35. Nerina Pallot – Everybody's Gone to War

36. Orson – Bright Idea

37. Orson – No Tomorrow

38. Paolo Nutini – Last Request

39. Razorlight – America

40. Razorlight – In the Morning

41. Richard Ashcroft – Break the Night With Colour

42. Richard Ashcroft – Music is Power

43. Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Dani California

44. Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Snow (Hey Oh)

45. Rogue Traders – Voodoo Child

46. Sandi Thom – I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker

47. Scissor Sisters – I Don't Feel Like Dancing

48. Shakira – Hips Don't Lie

49. Sigur Ros – Hoppipolla

50. Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars

51. Snow Patrol – You're All I Have

52. Starsailor – This Time

53. The Automatic – Monster

54. The Automatic - Recover

55. The Feeling – Fill My Little World

56. The Feeling – Never Be Lonely

57. The Feeling - Sewn

58. The Fratellis – Chelsea Dagger

59. The Fratellis – Whistle For The Choir

60. The Futureheads – Skip To The End

61. The Killers - Bones

62. The Killers – When You Were Young

63. The Kooks - Naive

64. The Kooks – She Moves In Her Own Way

65. The Kooks – You Don't Love Me

66. The Ordinary Boys – Boys Will Be Boys

67. The Racounteurs – Steady As She Goes

68. The Strokes – Juicebox

69. The Zutons – It's The Little Things We Do

70. The Zutons – Oh Stacey Look What You've Done

More on this here

Pub has played host to Oasis and Coldplay

Bands including Razorlight and Klaxons have paid tribute to a legendary music venue that hosted early gigs by Oasis, Suede and Coldplay. The Joiners in Southampton, which has been a fixture on the national gig circuit since the 1960s, is now being celebrated in a BBC documentary.

First hosting live music in 1968, the venue has also seen live appearances from Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers and The Libertines. Klaxons bassist and singer Jamie Reynolds grew up in the area and has been performing at The Joiners since the age of 14. The band even played a warm-up show for the Shockwaves NME Awards Indie Rave Tour at the venue last week (January 30).

The programme is broadcast on BBC One South's 'Inside Out' on February 9 at 7.30pm (the region can be accessed nationally via digital receivers).

Further to our earlier news story, Technology giant Apple has reached a deal with the Beatles to end the dispute over the use of the Apple name.

Apple Inc will now take full control of the Apple brand and license certain trademarks back to the Beatles' record company Apple Corps for continued use. The two companies have been wrangling over the use of the Apple name and logo for more than 25 years. The legal battle over the trademark will now end.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the court dispute had been "painful". Mr Jobs said: "We love the Beatles and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks. It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future."

Apple Corps manager Neil Aspinall added: "It is great to put this dispute behind us and move on. The years ahead are going to be very exciting times for us. We wish Apple Inc every success and look forward to many years of peaceful co-operation with them."

The dispute dates back to 1980, when the late George Harrison noticed an advert for Apple computers in a magazine.

Download deal

Two settlements, dividing use of the trademark between technology and entertainment, have been put under pressure by the expanding scope of Apple Inc. In May 2006, Apple Inc won a High Court case in London over the use of the Apple name and logo on iTunes and the iPod music player.

A judge ruled that the technology company had not violated the companies' 1991 agreement by using its logo to sell music. The terms of the agreement have not been disclosed and it is not known whether the use of the Beatles' music on Apple Inc's iTunes download store figured in the deal.

The Beatles' songs are still not available on any legal download services, but this agreement could pave the way for their anticipated appearance on iTunes.

Source: Various

Coldplay's next release, a vinyl-only box set collection of singles, proves that this format will persist while CDs depart for that great big stereo in the sky.

Firmly rooted in a classic songwriting tradition, today even multi-platinum-selling bands such as Coldplay can seem stuck in time. But last week the big wigs at EMI appeared to consign them to the pre-Jurassic era when they announced that Chris Martin and co's next release would be a vinyl-only box set collection of 15 singles. "Vinyl?" I hear you ask. "Isn't that extinct?"

Unlike past-it music hacks, out-of-touch doomsayers and Steve Jobs would have you believe, the sticky black stuff still not only stalks the earth, but looks set to outlive almost all of its touchy feely contemporaries. Later-day critters, like the cassette and mini-disc, have already departed for that great big stereo in the sky, and the CD looks set to follow suit.

Yet vinyl, with its distinct tangibility and nostalgic charm, persists. Recent BPI figures show that sales of the seven-inch single keep on rising, despite the advent of digital downloads. In fact, EMI pressing 15,000 copies of Coldplay's The Singles 1999-2006 collection, perhaps the grandest endorsement of vinyl's enduring appeal yet, is certainly not the first.

Last year, vinyl box set collections of both contemporary (The Killers) and classic (The Jam) rock bands appeared on the shelves, as did those compiled from the vaults of the Motown and Trojan labels. Strange as it may sound, if you're not prone to wearing spandex tights and indulging in Spinal Tap-like air guitar playing of a weekend, the demand for Iron Maiden picture discs is currently such that the only UK pressing plant now capable of making them is full to capacity.

Later this year, we'll see a vinyl box set release of Queen singles, which should set new precedents still. If you're starting to think that consigning your dusty old record player to the scrap heap was, well, a bit hasty, you'd be right.

Of course, in terms of user-friendliness records can't compete with digital music files. They are bulky, impractical and expensive. Yet, as Observer music critic Sean O'Hagan, noted recently "people need things" and that music free of its context is strangely "ghostly, dismembered and intangible". As we spend ever more time absorbed in our computers, vinyl, especially seven-inch vinyl, doesn't just act as a beautiful object in its own right but also as a signifier that recorded music actually exists outside the database on your iPod, and in your head.

Fans who want to emotionally engage with their music, to collect rather than simply consume it, understand this all too well. As the music industry is starting to cotton on, they are at the forefront of a new, growing market to which releases like the Coldplay box set are a must-have.

Source: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk

He created the rom-zom-com with 'Shaun of the Dead' and breathed new life into British comedy movies. Can he repeat that success with 'Hot Fuzz'?

Jonathan Ross once remarked that Simon Pegg had a "head like a tennis ball". The description of his close-cropped yellow fuzz, complemented by fashionably unshaven cheeks on a perfectly spherical bonce was so accurate that it made me laugh out loud. Strange to relate, Pegg, whose stock-in-trade is making people laugh at him, was not amused.

In London, Pegg hangs out with a cool crowd, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, who invited him to be godfather to their daughter, Apple. Now he has come up with another British comedy movie called Hot Fuzz. As the title implies, it riffs around the perennial notion of comedy cops.

Read the full article here

EMI Music has announced an agreement with AOL Europe to run ad-supported music video streaming.

The deal will allow consumers to stream EMI music videos for free via the AOL portal. Consumers across the UK, France and Germany will have access to both new releases and content from the extensive EMI back catalogue.

AOL will also run editorial content such as 'Artist of the Month' and 'Breakers' to promote EMI artists including Lily Allen, Coldplay and Corinne Bailey Rae.Chris Kennedy, chief financial officer at EMI Music International, said: "The advertising-funded model is one that really appeals to a cross-section of music fans, and we're pleased to be able to link with AOL across Europe to offer consumers another way to engage with the music and videos of our artists."

Source: emimusic.com

It is now the done thing for climate-conscious companies and consumers, but carbon offsetting is by no means straightforward and its effectiveness is far from certain.

A romantic trip to Barbados would probably make most Londoners’ Valentine’s Day. And now couples can enjoy their visit to the Caribbean with consciences as clean as the water washing tropical beaches. Why? Because just £14 buys something very special – a holiday that promises not to harm the planet.

The company behind this attractive proposition is the UK firm Climate Care, which for relatively small sums enables people to offset the environmental damage of energy-intensive activities by funding clean-energy projects around the world. It prices carbon offsets, or “voluntary emissions reductions”, for a single passenger’s return flight from Heathrow to Barbados at just £14.16.

This is carbon offsetting. Of all the possible solutions to climate change none is perhaps more desirable, or less well understood.

The confusion is not without good reason. The market for offsets is highly fragmented, with prices ranging wildly from as little as $1 to about $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide. Firms dealing in offsets in the UK, the global centre for trading “carbon credits”, have grown in number by 60% a year since 2002. And these firms support a bewildering array of projects, from planting trees in Tanzania to building hydroelectricity plants in Bulgaria.

Price differences are less extreme in the compliance market for carbon offsets, where governments and companies trade carbon credits, or Compulsory Emissions Reductions, to meet emissions reductions targets under the Kyoto Protocol or the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme. CERs account for the vast majority of offsets purchased worldwide, whose total value was $2.7 billion in 2005 according to World Bank estimates, and the market is growing quickly.

The environmental argument for carbon offsetting is that it makes more sense to cut emissions where it is cheapest and easiest to do so – usually in developing countries. But concerns have been raised over the effectiveness of carbon offsetting as a way of tackling climate change.

For many campaigners, offsetting is flawed in principle since it gives the impression that people in rich countries need not change their lifestyles to halt global warming. A serious objection concerns the effectiveness of the voluntary offsetting market, whose lack of regulation or standards makes it far from clear whether offsets are actually having the desired effect.

The compliance market’s governing framework, the Clean Development Mechanism, is considered overly bureaucratic, with emissions reductions outweighed by high transaction costs.

These limits were exposed last year when it was revealed that plans to offset emissions from the 2005 G8 summit backfired. The installation of energy-saving light bulbs and fuel-efficient stoves in properties in Cape Town, South Africa, left the local council £17,000 in debt because of the spiralling costs of auditors employed to monitor the project on behalf of the CDM.

Reasons to be neutral

Despite embarrassments like this, going carbon neutral is fast becoming the environmental fashion for companies. For Kirsty Clough, climate change policy officer at WWF UK, “carbon neutral is the ultimate green claim”.

“Zero carbon” companies gain the reputational benefits of being seen to be green. Offsetting also offers them the experience of working with a shadow price for carbon, in preparation for future regulation. But companies should not make these claims lightly, says Clough. “It should really be the responsibility of companies to prove that the offsets they are buying are credible and actually have environmental worth.”

Mike Childs, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, suspects that carbon offsetting is allowing companies to appear green while providing little incentive to change their, or their consumers’, behaviour. “I think it’s being used as greenwash,” he says. He accuses energy companies and airlines, such as BP and British Airways, of being the loudest advocates of consumer carbon offsetting, as these industries stand to lose most from more environmentally friendly behaviour.

Childs is worried that offsets do not reduce emissions. He compares the planet to a running bath, full almost to the brim with carbon dioxide. To offset carbon dioxide emissions, by analogy, is to say: “I won’t turn off my tap. I’ll let someone else turn off their tap.” The reality, he says, is that we need to turn off both.

Pablo Ceppi, strategy manager at the Carbon Trust, a UK group advising businesses on how to tackle climate change, says: “If a company wants to go carbon neutral they need to first look into their direct emissions, then look into their indirect emissions and then offset.”

Francis Sullivan, environment adviser at HSBC, agrees that carbon offsetting should compliment other corporate strategies to reduce emissions, saying: “More and more companies are seeing this as a logical extension of their environmental management systems.”

Sullivan says anyone who thinks companies regard offsets as the answer to reducing carbon emissions is mistaken. The reason is simple: offsets are a permanent cost for a business, whereas energy efficiency measures are a permanent saving. HSBC spends ten times more money (about $50 million a year) on energy-efficiency measures than it puts into offsets.

BSkyB exemplifies this structured approach to reducing a carbon footprint. The broadcaster’s head of environment, Fiona Ball, stresses that offsetting is just part of the company’s broader strategy to reduce emissions.

In May last year BSkyB became the world’s first media company to go carbon neutral. But before then the company was already buying 100% green or renewable energy in England and Wales. “We offset what are currently unavoidable emissions,” says Ball. Nor does she consider offsetting a long-term solution: “In time we want to reduce our reliance on offsets.”

The great unknown

Companies wanting to go carbon neutral are advised to buy good quality offsets. But this is easier said than done. Just as the price of voluntary offsets varies hugely, so does the extent of the environmental improvements they deliver.

Many projects are still not externally verified. Some offsetters have no way of guaranteeing the reductions achieved by a project are in fact additional to energy savings that would have happened without the project taking place. And the selling of a single credit two or three times to different buyers – a process known as double counting – is not uncommon.

Jasmine Hyman, spokesperson for the Gold Standard certification of offsetting projects, says: “The voluntary market is a no-man’s land.” Companies need to know what they are venturing into.

Very serious doubts surround the pet choice of many carbon offsetters: tree planting. Extremely popular a few years ago, largely for its symbolic rather than environmental value, many offsetters are now moving away from forestry as their primary means of investing in carbon credits.

The Carbon Neutral Company, the UK’s largest offsetter, which began as Future Forests, typifies this switch. Forestry accounted for 100% of its portfolio two years ago. Now it makes up just 20%.

Trees act as “carbon sinks”, locking in carbon dioxide they absorb from the atmosphere – a process known as sequestration. But trees are also vulnerable to destruction and decay – something the band Coldplay learned recently when most of the trees on a mango plantation in India they were supporting, to offset emissions from their on-tour flights, died.

Jonathan Shopley, chief executive of the Carbon Neutral Company, defends his company’s decision to continue investing in forestry. Destruction of ecosystems accounts for about a fifth of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, he says.

This means “a carbon portfolio that commits about 20% to 25% of its offsets to sequestration is a good balance”. He also expects that within two years there will be insurance instruments in the voluntary offset market to guarantee the permanence of forestry sequestration projects.

Proving your worth

An even greater challenge for buyers of offsets, in forestry and other clean energy projects alike, is proving that the project could not have happened without their investment. For credits in clean energy projects to count as offsets, buyers must show energy savings made are additional to those under a “business as usual” scenario – a concept known as “additionality”.

But for this seemingly defining feature of carbon offsets there is surprisingly little definition of what additionality actually is. The criteria accepted as a basis for project additionality under the CDM are: it is not required by current regulation; it uses technologies that are not common practice; or it faces economic, technological or investment barriers and therefore needs offset money to start up.

To establish project additionality, developers and offset buyers must set a baseline from which to predict emissions that would occur were the project not to go ahead. To answer this essentially counter-factual question there are 60 approved methodologies for the CDM market alone. The difference between the baseline and the forecasted emissions from the proposed clean energy project will, in theory, establish the additional emissions reductions it will make.

A lack of standardised methodologies afflicts all aspects of the offset market. Many offsetting firms work to their own proprietary standards, most but not all of which are verified by a third party. An emerging favourite of campaigners is the Gold Standard, a Swiss certification scheme devised by 43 environmental NGOs and launched in 2003.

There are currently 60 projects in the Gold Standard pipeline, which admits only energy reduction or energy efficiency projects and requires high levels of community engagement from project developers to promote sustainable development.

Hyman says the Gold Standard is “like an organic label in a supermarket”. Its premium is increasingly popular in the voluntary market, where clients are beginning to demand greater assurance their offsets are of a good quality.

Room to manoeuvre

The UK government’s decision to introduce a code of practice for voluntary offsetters, announced in January by environment secretary David Miliband, responds to concerns over the sector’s lack of transparency. The voluntary code, which is the first of its kind in the world, will ask offsetters to provide clients with clear information and transparent prices for offsets.

These principles are welcome for campaigners and offset firms. But both are worried the new standards, if based on the terms of certified carbon credits under the CDM, may threaten the flexibility of the current voluntary market. Voluntary offsets, they argue, have a precious record of channelling money into small projects the compliance market fails to reach.

Voluntary offsets typically go towards small-scale, local community-based renewable energy projects, says Shopley. These are exactly the sorts of projects the high transaction costs of compliance with the CDM would rule out. CDM projects can also only take place in countries where “designated official entities” (DOEs) have been established to monitor energy reduction projects. India, China and Brazil all have DOEs. But many other less developed countries such as Thailand, and the majority of sub-Saharan Africa, do not.

WWF’s Kirsty Clough explains: “At the moment the CDM is very much dominated by projects in Asia, particularly in China because they have the infrastructure in place to do so.” She is concerned that the preference on the compliance market is for gas-abatement projects, such as the destruction of HFC 23, which are flooding the market with cheap carbon credits. “They might undermine the renewable energy or energy efficiency projects that are more expensive but in the long term move us down a more low-carbon trajectory,” she says.

Mike Mason, founder of Climate Care, says voluntary offsets can succeed where the CDM currently fails. He believes the voluntary offsets market needs to be regulated because “it is too difficult for consumers to work out what’s what”.

But this should be done in a way that does not discourage risk-taking of the sort impossible for projects funded through the CDM. “We have to reach the parts that CDM doesn’t reach. We have to be pioneers,” says Mason. He adds: “We should be able to take well-intentioned risks, and occasionally get it wrong.”

Getting it wrong appears to be all too easy when it comes to carbon offsetting. But as the offset market continues to mature, and its standards become more established, the quality of offsets available should increase. Yet, ultimately, the process of offsetting is not foolproof. Nor is it the answer to climate change, which can be more effectively tackled by companies and individuals first changing their behaviour.

In years ahead, funding for renewable energy projects should come increasingly from mainstream investment funds, not offsets. But for individual consumers, the idea of flying to a place in the sun without damaging the planet is unlikely to lose its appeal.

Football dominates the play on TV today, but cable TV channels and networks other than CBS are pressing hard to provide alternatives for viewers who just aren't that into gridiron goings-on, Prince or no Prince.

Will Ferrell, the former "SNL" star, is back again tonight. (Last night, ABC ran Ferrell's movie "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.") He joins Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson in the 2003 comedy "Old School" (9 p.m., ABC, TV-14, D, L, S), about a group of men approaching middle age who retreat to the responsibility-free days of college-fraternity life.

Coldplay gets an odd product placement during Andy's show on "Extras" (10 p.m., HBO).

Read the full US listings during the ballgame here

Arcade Fire aren't playing Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre from Feb. 24 to 28, as speculated on the internet on Friday, but it's a fact that frontman Win Butler got into a minor scuffle with security guards at a concert in England.

Arcade Fire did, however, play their fourth straight show in London on Thursday night, and Butler got involved in a minor dispute with security officials when he extended the group's concert in Porchester Hall by performing an encore in the venue's foyer.

Butler then reportedly led the band back into the hall to play a brief rendition of The Clash's "The Guns Of Brixton" to end the evening's entertainment, which was apparently taken in by Coldplay's Chris Martin (his second show this week), The Rakes' frontman Alan Donohoe and Glastonbury music festival organizer Emily Eavis.

Read the full article here

Gwyneth Paltrow is struggling to find a balance between family and work and wants advice from other actresses in the same situation.

The 'Shakespeare In Love' star is married to Coldplay singer Chris Martin and the couple have two children, Apple, two, and Moses, 10 months. The 34-year-old is slowly getting back to work and wants to call her colleagues in the industry to find out the how they handled the transition.

She explains, "I'm not going to work like I did before I had kids. I want to call Kate Winslet and say, 'Can you tell me how to do this?' "Or call Cate Blanchett and ask her to describe (her day) from 7 am on, and tell me what to do, because I don't know how to do this!"

LONDON • A new pre-registration system for music fans wanting to go to this year's Glastonbury Festival starts yesterday to ensure that every ticket features a passport-sized photograph of its owner.

"It's a much fairer system," said Michael Eavis, who owns the farm in southwest England where the festival has been held since 1970. "It means unscrupulous people won't be able to sell their tickets on for a profit. I assure you that your details will not be used for any other purpose."

Those wanting to register must fill in details available on www.glastonburyregistration.co.uk/ and return the form before midnight on February 28. However, even those who pre-register will still not be guaranteed a ticket, which will cost around £150.

Glastonbury began on Eavis's land in 1970 and grew from humble beginnings to become one of the biggest annual music and arts events in the world, nowadays attracting top bands and more than 100,000 revellers. Along the way it has also earned a reputation for being one of Europe's muddiest events: torrential rain and storms caused chaos at the last festival in 2005.

The event was not held in 2006 as Eavis decided to allow his farm time off to recover. Fans had to make do with a documentary film instead.

Headline acts in the past have included Coldplay, Oasis, Paul McCartney and R E M, and media reports have said that this year The Who, The Arctic Monkeys and Bjork will feature.

That species of star known as the celebrity altruist is a creature in whom the British comic Ricky Gervais seems to have absolutely no faith. The actors, directors and rock singers who give money to Holocaust foundations and adopt babies from impoverished places and expound before the United Nations General Assembly on the crisis of African debt — these people simply do not figure in his consciousness, one consumed by a brilliantly uncharitable view of fame.

“Extras,” midway through its second queasy, funny season on HBO, is Mr. Gervais’s deft essay on the vainglory of the well known. And it leaves you wondering, in the end, whether Mr. Gervais down deep imagines no real difference between what motivates Clint Eastwood and what drives Vanna White.

Each week Mr. Gervais — who writes, directs and stars in the comedy with his creative partner Stephen Merchant, with whom he also worked on “The Office” for the BBC — gets celebrities to appear on the show as themselves. Kate Winslet and Patrick Stewart showed up last season; Coldplay’s Chris Martin appears this Sunday in the taping of a public-service announcement, which he tries to exploit to promote his new album.

The celebrities are not meant to be playing themselves; not really. They are there to enact Mr. Gervais’s caricature, largely reprising the same dim, self-aggrandizing megalomaniac over and over. Every time they do, they seem to be inadvertently making Mr. Gervais’s point for him, because by getting in his game, they are betraying the kind of self-regard that leaves us assuming that they consider themselves exempt from his critique. Anyone who subjects himself to Mr. Gervais’s camera must believe that he does not belong to the class of arrogant jerks that Mr. Gervais is making so much fun of.

“How do I act so well?” Ian McKellen earnestly asks Mr. Gervais’s character in a forthcoming episode. “What I do is I pretend to be the person I’m portraying in the film or play,” he whispers. “You’re confused. Case in point, ‘Lord of the Rings,’ Peter Jackson comes to New Zealand and says to me, ‘Sir Ian, I want you to be Gandalf the Wizard,’ and I say to him, ‘You are aware that I’m not really a wizard.’ ”

Mr. Gervais’s character, Andy Millman, is an actor who had been making his living as an extra and has seen his fortunes change this season. An even greater misanthropy has accompanied the shift. Andy has managed to sell a workplace comedy to the BBC. He stars in it, and though the network suits have insisted it be stupider than he had ever hoped, he suddenly finds himself among the quasi-famous.

So when he complains to a boy’s mother in a restaurant that the boy is way too loud, without noticing first that the boy has Down syndrome, his tactlessness becomes front-page tabloid news. He is ultimately forced to have his picture taken with the child as he gives him an Xbox.

Andy has more money now, but he gives it away only meagerly, and merely for the purpose of small-scale image enhancement. When a homeless man recognizes him on the street, Andy gives him £20. When Andy asks the man what, hypothetically, he might ever say about the exchange to the press, the man responds, “I’d say, don’t ask Andy Millman for money because he’ll only give it to you begrudgingly.”

The new conceit — Andy as a real television actor — gives the show a sharper focus than it had last season and puts Mr. Gervais’s talents in the foreground more easily, giving him greater claim to Andy’s selfishness and diminishing his abjection.

Abjection, one of the show’s favorite themes, is now almost entirely Maggie’s to bear, and she bears more than a viewer’s comfort level can sustain. Played by Ashley Jensen, Maggie is Andy’s closest friend in the world of disrespected extras, a Bridget Jones without the wit, verbal range or ability to attract good-looking bad men.

She is a foil for all the big egos around her, pathetic, but in a different way, because she possesses ambition for nothing. And yet her apathy toward the actors she lets humiliate her leave them courting her approval: celebrities crave recognition even from those they denigrate or barely notice.

In one exceptionally funny episode a few weeks ago, in which Maggie is an extra in a period courtroom drama starring Orlando Bloom, she points out to him that women approach him only because he is famous. There’s really little else special about him at all. He disagrees: “They’re not doing it just because I’m famous. It’s my looks as well.”

He goes on to explain that other actors don’t get nearly as much attention: “I’ll tell you who gets ignored: Johnny Depp,” Mr. Bloom says. “On the set of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ the birds just walked straight past him: ‘Get out of our bloody way, whoever you are, we just want to get to Orlando.’ ”

Mr. Gervais wants to get to the world’s Orlandos, and also, subversively, at them.

EXTRAS

HBO, Sunday night at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant; Charlie Hanson, producer; Jon Plowman, executive producer.

WITH: Ricky Gervais (Andy Millman), Stephen Merchant (Darren Lamb), Ashley Jensen (Maggie Jacobs), Shaun Williamson (Barry).

Source: http://www.nytimes.com

A registration system for Glastonbury Festival tickets has opened.

The system - designed to stop touts - requires fans to submit a passport photograph to go on their tickets. Fans will be able to register their interest online or by post and those registered will be able to apply for the £150 tickets from 1 April. The Who, The Arctic Monkeys and Bjork are the only acts so far confirmed for the 22-24 June festival. Some 137,000 tickets will be sold to the public.

The registration website - www.glastonburyregistration.com - will close on 28 February. Forms can also be collected from Millets camping shops.

Organisers have emphasised registration does not guarantee a ticket, and that there is no advantage for anybody who registers early.

Headline speculation

Founder Michael Eavis said: "It's a much fairer system. It means unscrupulous people won't be able to sell their tickets on for a profit. "The people who buy the tickets on 1 April will be the people who are actually coming to the festival."

In addition to the confirmed acts, rumours have linked the Chemical Brothers, Eric Clapton, Madness, The Kooks and the Scissor Sisters with the festival, which will be the biggest in its 35-year history.

Organiser Michael Eavis has teased festival watchers by saying "the biggest band in the world" are due to perform. But he has denied it is U2, Radiohead or the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Thumbplay Inc., www.thumbplay.com, a leading online retailer of mobile entertainment content, today announced an agreement with EMI Music, one of the world's leading music companies, to sell music from EMI’s extensive portfolio of artists to mobile users.

Members who sign up for Thumbplay’s direct-to-consumer mobile content offering will have access to ringtones from EMI’s vast catalog of current and catalogue artists, including 30 Seconds to Mars, Babyshambles, The Beach Boys, Beastie Boys, Dierks Bentley, Bubba Sparxxx, Coldplay, Dem Franchize Boyz, Fat Joe, Gorillaz, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, OK Go, Pink Floyd and Keith Urban.

“EMI Music has a tremendous catalogue of well-known and up-and-coming artists and we are thrilled to offer this access to our members,” said Are Traasdahl, Thumbplay founder and CEO. “Coming off a very successful 2006, the agreement we have with EMI Music is the first of many new content agreements and product rollouts for Thumbplay in 2007.”

Thumbplay members will have access to ringtones from EMI Music’s extensive mobile catalog, including music from labels like Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Nashville, EMI Christian Music Group, EMI Televisa Music Manhattan and Virgin. Consumers can purchase content through both subscription and a la carte options, downloaded “over the air” directly to the consumer’s handset, and billed directly to the consumer’s carrier bill.

“EMI Music’s goal is to give fans a way to connect with its artists and enjoy their music whenever, however and wherever they are,” said Barney Wragg, Global Head of Digital, EMI Music. “Thumbplay is an excellent distribution platform because of its industry-leading customer service, credibility with consumers and innovative marketing efforts.”

Thumbplay has more than 50,000 pieces of mobile entertainment content under license including ringtones, wallpapers, games and text-based services and has gained broad recognition as a leader in the direct-to-consumer mobile content space.

About Thumbplay:

Thumbplay, Inc., www.thumbplay.com, is a leading online retailer of mobile entertainment content. The company aggregates, promotes and delivers mobile content directly to members via Thumbplay.com. The site offers ringtones, wallpapers, games and text-based services through a membership-based, community experience. Thumbplay members have access to their own personal library of content through Thumbplay’s content locker technology, ensuring they will always have access to their Thumbplay content. Thumbplay, headquartered in New York, was founded by CEO Are Traasdahl and Executive Vice President, Marketing Evan Schwartz.

About EMI Music:

EMI is one of the world's leading music companies, operating in 50 countries. Its EMI Music division represents around 1300 artists spanning all musical tastes and genres. Its record labels include Angel, Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Nashville, EMI Classics, EMI CMG, EMI Records, EMI Televisa Music, Manhattan, Mute, Parlophone and Virgin. For further information on EMI, please visit: www.emigroup.com.

As previously reported, the Paltrow-Martin family has purchased the last unsold River Lofts penthouse in the New York City area TriBeCa.

Fans were surprised about the purchase, as the family already has a home in the same area - but the New York Times now reports that they have appearently put their old 7,000-square-foot house on Harrison Street back on the market for a stunning amount of $14 million (after buying it for $8 million).

Gwyneth's publicist Stephen Huvane said of the huge amount that considerable work had been done on the house and adds: "I really doubt there is such a thing as 'celebrity value' at that price range. But I am not a real estate professional."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com [thanks Flying Sparks]

Norah Jones' Not Too Late becomes most pre-ordered album of all time on Amazon.ca

SEATTLE - Amazon.ca has announced that Norah Jones' third album, Not Too Late (pictured) has become the most pre-ordered album of all time on Amazon.ca.

Not Too Late will be released on January 30, 2007 and is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.ca for $12.97. Earlier this year, Amazon.ca began offering the critically acclaimed singer's throng of fans an exclusive first listen to her third studio album Not Too Late, with a never-before-seen performance of "Rosie's Lullaby."

Other past top pre-ordered albums on Amazon.ca include (in no order) Funeral by Arcade Fire; An Ancient Muse by Loreena McKennitt; X&Y by Coldplay [pictured]; Confessions on a Dance Floor by Madonna; Awake by Josh Groban; and three Il Divo titles The Christmas Collection, Siempre and their self-titled album.

Fans can still watch this exclusive video performance and pre-order Not Too Late by visiting Amazon.ca.

There has been enormous excitement surrounding Norah Jones' upcoming album.

"Our customers watched the Amazon.ca exclusive footage of Norah Jones singing 'Rosie's Lullaby' in record numbers, and they clearly liked what they heard making it the largest pre-ordered album in Amazon.ca history," said Peter Faricy, Amazon's vice president of music for North America.

As the Dryburgh lads partied into the wee hours, they revealed organisers of the Balado festival had been in negotiations with the band to headline the July festival.

Bassist and songwriter Kieren Webster said, “Playing T in the Park will be the highlight of the year — a lot better than getting to No.1 in the charts.”

Last year, the band were late additions to the T-Break stage for unknowns. A mid–afternoon slot in the often empty tent saw chaotic scenes as hundreds clamoured to get a piece of The View. The prospect of a return visit has only added to the feelgood factor surrounding The View at the moment.

Kieren said, “T in the Park last year was pure euphoria. Originally, we weren’t going to be playing, but when we did, it was electric; just mental.”

However, the boys have revealed that they’ll close the festival’s prestigious King Tut’s stage after saying no to the chance to play the main stage.

Frontman Kyle Falconer admitted the band had been offered the option of playing the main stage.

He said, “When we played T, we hadn’t had any press and the tent was packed. Bands like Coldplay could pull off a main stage gig but some just can’t fill that stage.

“So we’ve been offered the headline slot in the King Tut’s tent and we’d like that.”

Pete’s dad, also Pete, told the Tele today he was delighted the lads had passed up the opportunity to take on T in the Park’s main stage.

He said, “Pete had told us to watch out for an announcement, but we’re delighted to hear they’re playing the King Tut’s stage and not the main stage.

“It’s easy for bands to get lost in the midst of all those people, but it will be a great party and a really good atmosphere and the boys definitely deserve that after all their hard work.”

Brit funnyman Ricky Gervais may keep writing more episodes of his show, Extras, if he can get his idols, Meryl Streep, Dick Van Dyke and Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, on board.

Whether they will appear in a third series or a Christmas special is still unclear.

ABC-TV will air the star-studded second series next month, with hilarious cameos from Chris Martin of Coldplay, Orlando Bloom, David Bowie, Germaine Greer and Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe, sending himself up as a horny teenager.

Source: http://www.news.com.au

Ricky Gervais, who famously only made two series of The Office plus a two-part Christmas special, has indicated he may keep writing more episodes of his successful BBC follow-up show, Extras, if he can get his idols Meryl Streep, Dick Van Dyke and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on board.

Whether they will appear in a third series or a Christmas special is still unclear.

ABC premieres Extras’ star-studded second series in mid-February after Spicks And Specks, with hilarious turns from Sir Ian McKellen, Chris Martin, Orlando Bloom, David Bowie, Germaine Greer, Robert Lindsay and Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe sending himself up as a horny teenager.