So, ITV1 have given all their money away to wife beaters and rapists. This is the new way. As such, this essentially means you have to watch X Factor twice, because they can’t afford to make any new TV programmes. Thank god Kelly Rowland agreed to work overtime due to how much she believes in music. (Cocaine.)

Talk Talk have given stop-frame animation a go and simultaneously ired the entire board of the Academy Awards as a result.

This week we are visiting MANCHESTER. Although the show isn’t in chronological order or anything, so basically we’re just looking  at the bits they filmed in Manchester. Or at least ITV1’s edited version of Manchester, which involves a lot of day-glo and mystical interchangeable skies, apparently. Or Hogwarts, if you will. Due to the fact that ITV1 are not culturally familiar with the ’80s ‘Madchester’ scene, we must settle for gratuitous tracking shots of Selfridges over and over to fully understand where we are. Come to think of it, the true meaning of Manchester probably is £18 lip gloss.

And, being in Manchester of COURSE means we must have a chat about Gary Barlow. Because Gary Barlow is from Cheshire, which is an entirely different county. And Hitler was from Austria. And that’s what happens when you collect your primary sources of research from Bing.

Nonetheless, we are all treated to a delightful smorgasbord of everyone in Manchester being incredibly excited to meet someone who lives NEAR MANCHESTER. Kelly Rowland talks about all the lies Gary Barlow has told her about Manchester, coked out of her mind and having an amazing time as the backlog of Bez’ family tree try and touch the hems of her clothes. We wish we were Kelly Rowland. Gary Barlow sings Manchester’s national anthem ‘Manchester Na Na Na Na’. He also wears a waistcoat as he does this, presumably because he likes to punish people and hit women. You are watching ITV1 remember.

Our first contestants of the episode are two gay men who are gay and totally FINE with it. They are either called Kendal, or Kenco, or Ken Dodd, or Amazon Kindle. One of those.  They wear hats and have primary colours in their hair, and one or both of them is/are Grace Jones. So far, so ‘good’. Upon entering the big blue shiny stage where blasé dreams come true, the pair talk to the judges for a while about how stupid they are, and everyone thinks they’re brilliant as a result. The pair decide to give Lady Gaga ‘a whirl’, because avant garde pop music on mainstream television could work if we just dared to open our eyes a mid-quarter.

And then, in the world’s greatest tribute to Salvador Dali the world has ever seen (Because it certainly wasn’t THIS, was it?), the pair apply some lip gloss (TRUE MEANING OF MANCHESTER) before launching into their performance – much to the fury and downright odium of Gary Barlow. The cameras do NOT cut to Louis Walsh at that moment, which shows self-control and integrity. Perhaps if ITV1 had used those aforementioned traits more often, Show Me The Funny might have never made it to air.

Kendro, or Eoghan Quigg or whatever they’re called start singing their god-awful rendition of Lady Gaga. All the judges (Including Louis Walsh who has been judging talent show competitions for well over a decade) seem absolutely dumbfounded that two men could DARE to come on stage and sing vaguely out of tune.

Tulisa Cocacobanathehottestspotnorthofsavana honestly doesn’t know if they can make it as serious music artists, which is a really grave concern, obviously. About five minutes later however, she professes that she would ‘spread them on her toast’, which is probably the same thing that EMI said to The Beatles, so nothing to worry about after all.  Gary Barlow hates them with every fibre of his being, but that’s only because he’s a bit iffy about sodomy, so fair enough. They get through.

Ad break – Rihanna is still harping on about how amazing Capital FM is.

Meanwhile, the X Factor are STILL in Manchester. The replacement bus service must have been delayed again. A segment of absolutely no importance to a post-9/11 dystopia is then shown, where the judges are shown riding around in custom-made X Factor BUGGIES. LOL, the economy.

A couple more auditions just for the hell of it. And to make matters worse, these are integrated with what terrifyingly sounds like a dubstep version of Another One Bites the Dust, which is just incredibly unfair. Following this – a woman sings It’s Raining Men, despite the crippling menopause, and another man sings badly too, so we guess that’s fifteen-love.

Although there have only been a couple of subtly, evenly dispersed montages on the audition stages of the show this year, we hate to be killjoys, but this particular one gives us the mild desire to eat benign cysts for breakfast. It feels as if the montage will never quite end. Eventually, it does. Unless of course it never actually ended, and we’re now just hooked up to a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human popula- Oh no wait, that’s probably The Matrix.

Meanwhile, the nation’s prayers for a leopard print Indiana Jones style-incarnation of Mary Byrne were finally answered in the shape of Samantha Brookes. Good ol, down to earth Samantha Brookes and her eyebrows. God, those eyebrows. They look like they were designed by the same people who did the Olympics 2012 logo.

Kelly Rowland loves her so much that she threatens to crowd surf. Thankfully, she doesn’t, but we have to say it was pretty touch and go for a second there. All these spontaneous threats and jibes Kelly Rowland has been making lately… this sounds like the early stages of a chronic depressive episode rather than a job on the X Factor, if you ask us. One minute you’re laughing happily, next thing you know, you’re rolling in to the BBC at 5am trying to audition for Celebrity Fame Academy. Just a warning.

Samantha worries that her weight may be a particular grievance to her upcoming career as a pop singer.  The fact that she sings rubbish and has no taste or any knowledge on the correct curvature of eyebrows  is not addressed. Kelly, spokeswomen of female equality and advocate of first-wave feminism since 1792 announces to the universe that YES, Samantha has a size. And that size is Size ‘SEXY’, completely abolishing the whole prospect of anthropometry AND prejudice in one fail swoop. WE’LL HAVE WHAT’S SHE’S HAVING. In a clean syringe, if that’s alright.

Next up is a girl group called Twisted. MENTAL name, we know, but just go with it. By god, these women are wearing polkadot dresses just like they used to do in something mental like the 1950s! Like Kate Nash x 1000! INCREDIBLE. God, we miss The Pipettes. Now that Belle Amie are going through their neo-classical metal phase, Twisted are exactly what we need. This literally could not get any better. One of the singers, who is called Chrissie Pitt (which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter, but we just thought we’d be thorough.) – ‘reveals’ that she auditioned for the show as a soloist last year. Now this year she is back! With loads of retards in New Look’s 2008 collection, and a goth. The girls perform their ‘take’ on ANADELESONGANADELESONGANADELESONG, which involve some pretty amazing Katie Waissel-style ‘shoop shoops’ admittedly, but shockingly the judges don’t go for it, and want to see Chrissie Pitt sing on her own.

We wonder why that could be? Not because the whole thing has been scripted so that the other girls can fob off and the soloist can get some extra attention in the editing process for when she makes it considerably far to the later stages of the competition, surely? No, that’s a really insensitive thing to suggest. Definitely not that reason. The reason is of COURSE that she is simply amazing and brilliant and is definitely going to be the new Kurt Cobain, so let’s not hear another word about it.

Oh, and she sang ‘Forget You’ while her friends seethed through their tears at the side of the stage. How d’ya like them apples?

After the break, Dermot O Leary had the audacity to show up to his job half-way through the programme and said something insignificant about how some people like to sing and more words of that particular calibre. Intuitive, Dermot. Absolutely Magneto-esque.

Then we got introduced to Lascel Wood. But wait, there’s more! He is 20 years old, and from Brighton. As we will steadily come to learn, Lascel likes to mix things up. Even such trivial matters such as exchanging social pleasantries. For example, instead of saying “Hello”, Lascel would tend to say something along the lines of “Hello my name is Lascel and I am 20 years of age and I was in foster care” instead, which is such an amazingly snappy ice breaker, that he probably could have single handedly saved the Titanic. Alas, as it is. RIP, RMS Titanic.

Lascel has brought his estranged mentally ill mother with him to his X Factor audition today, which to some might seem a little gratuitous, but we personally believe that Lascel should be knighted for putting up with her on the Metrolink on the way up. Lascel morosely explains to the judges that his mother has been suffering from ‘Bi-polar’, which we thought was just the name of Kerry Katona’s dog or something, but turns out to be a very serious mental disorder, which is pretty embarrassing. But none of that matters anyway, because Lascel probably wouldn’t have brought any of that up had the judges not beat him to a pulp and practically RAPED IT OUT OF HIM, so fair enough.

Lascel sings a soul version of a Kings of Leon song, because Jo Whiley’s work will never be done. People generally think he sounds quite good. Even his sectioned, mentally ill mother can recognise a damn good treble voice vibrato when she hears one, so it’s win-win-win, as Lascel gets a standing ovation. Kelly Rowland ascends triumphantly from the desk with half her pant suit round her ankles, like the Monica Lewinsky that Britain never had. Lascel concludes that he feels emotional. We quite agree.

And on that note, we’re going to go and lie in our beds wide-eyed and alone until the second instalment which takes place tomorrow night. Yeah, really. You have to do this all again tomorrow. It’s fine though, because you’re lonely enough to do that.

X Factor Review Week 4, Part 2 continues tomorrow…

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Yoko Ono’s not a very nice lady, is she? First she split up The Beatles, then she was responsible for a series of musical abortions with the Plastic Ono band and now she’s going out of her way to sully the memory of her late husband by trying to grind as many shekels out of him as possible.

According to Jam, Ono has threatened to sue the owner of a Dundee pub which is dedicated to the former Beatle. Indications suggest that the ”singer” has had her lawyers send a letter to Mike Craig, the owner of “Lennon’s Bar”, that accuses him of copyright infringement.

Craig claims to have spent thousands of pounds on Beatles memorabilia for his pub which was opened in tribute to a member of one of world music’s most important acts. However, the letter from Ono’s lawyers is demanding that he removes all the memorabilia and changes the venue’s name within 14 days or he will face legal action.

After all, no-one but Yoko is allowed to remember John Lennon because if people are allowed to remember him and his contribution to the world in their own way then she would disappear in a puff of smoke and our editor Mof Gimmers would have no-one to fake retweets of.

The owner of ‘Lennon’s’ said: “It’s ridiculous. The pub’s been called Lennon’s for about five years, but the signs will be removed this week.” Before probably muttering “evil witch” or words to that effect under his breath.

Ono is famously litigious in her pursuit of a quick dollar. She has been involved in several legal disputes in relation to her late husband, in an effort to maintain her own ailing relevance. In 2006, she filed a £5.35m lawsuit against EMI and its subsidiary Capitol Records for “wilfully and knowingly under-reporting royalties.” She needs to be kept in hemp.

In 2008, meanwhile, it was reported that she sued the singer Lennon Murphyfor using the name Lennon as a performance name. Although the money-grabbing hippy later revealed that she had not sued the singer, her legal team did object after Murphy applied to the US trademark office for exclusive rights to the name Lennon for musical performances. Clearly those rights should be deferred to a dead man.

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Bickering, pointless rock penises – Pink Floyd – are complaining and moaning again. Despite being wealthy enough to buy several moons, they’ve been in a legal battle with EMI, only to sign-up with them again once they’d finished folding their collective arms and pouting so much that every surviving member now has pulled muscles in their many chins.

If you didn’t know, Pink Floyd have been in a legal battle with EMI and recently won a court ruling over a deal signed in the pre-download age regarding digital sales.

That’s really interesting isn’t it?

EMI, really doling out the excitement, said:

“All legal disputes between the band and the company have been settled as a result of this new deal”

Whooooop! Pink Floyd, who have sold more than 200 million albums, mainly thanks to people being curious about whether Dark Side Of The Moon is actually as good as Best Albums Ever Made polls claim (it isn’t), have been with EMI since the ’60s and have now signed a new deal which will last for a further 5 years.

In that time, they’ll release precisely zero albums and call each other horrible names on a weekly basis, until one of them dies prematurely, leaving them to make tributes about each other, saying “wish we’d never argued in the first place! How short and cruel life is!”

Of course, even though they’ve signed up with EMI again, they’re still sulking about it.

Acts like The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Queen and Radiohead have all left the label since it was taken over by Terra Firma who, in fairness, seem like a bunch of shark headed bastards.

Nick Mason told the BBC that he was “very fond” of EMI didn’t like “the gang known as ‘business affairs’ [who] have taken over the running of the company”.

“I look back with considerable fondness to the days when it was the entrepreneurs and individuals who actually ran these companies and created something that was about the music”

And let bands get away with releasing overly long stoner boner-fests like ‘Ummagumma’ or allow bands to write half baked lyrics like “bus stop rat bag ha ha“.

Announcing the new deal, EMI chief executive Roger Faxon shouted over the fleet of revving vintage sports cars, all set off by the surly surviving members of The Floyd:

“Pink Floyd are one of the most important and influential bands of all time and I know I speak for everyone at EMI when I say that it is a privilege to have the opportunity to work with them.”

Whether Roger Faxon likes Syd-era Floyd the best is still unclear, but chances are, no-one gives two shits. So that’d be that then.

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Regular readers may have noticed that, when it comes to competition prizes, sometimes we’re a bit on the rubbishy side.

No, no, it’s OK, we are. Or at least we were, because now we’re going to offer you possibly the biggest prize in hecklerspray history – a bundle of CDs, DVDs, T-shirts and goodness knows what else worth somewhere in the region of £200.

It’s all thanks to the wonderful people at EMI and their wonderful new website. If you want to win, then you’d better watch the video after the jump, hadn’t you…

To win this slightly gigantic packet of EMI goodies, all you need to do is watch the video below and answer the following question:

What colour top hat is the man wearing in the Blondie video?

To stand a chance, email your answer, along with a contact address, to Hello[at]hecklerspray.com with the subject line ‘Give me EMI stuff now‘. The competition closes at midnight on Tuesday May 12 when a winner will be chosen at random. UK readers only please.

Good luck and stuff, yeah?

If you’ve been waiting to hear what hot new pop combo The Beatles sound like, then you’re in for a spot of bad news.

Paul McCartney from The Beatles has announced that none of his band’s music will be available on iTunes for the foreseeable future because everyone is arguing over money. But Paul McCartney says he wants The Beatles on iTunes, EMI wants The Beatles on iTunes, and iTunes wants The Beatles on iTunes, so all is not yet lost.

Until then, the music of The Beatles is still available on something we’re told is called a Seed Ee, and you can put these Beatles Seed Ees into your computer and download them onto iTunes that way. But this Seed Ee-buying method does involve leaving the house, and that’s so old-fashioned that they may as well be asking to go into the woods and kill Beatles songs with rocks for food. What do we look like, bloody Luddites?

As we speak, The Beatles are everywhere. You can buy CDs by The Beatles, movies by The Beatles, books about Beatles, posters of The Beatles, soon there’ll be a videogame about The Beatles and if Paul McCartney has his way you’ll also be able to buy 14 unlistenable minutes of The Beatles pissing about on drugs. The Beatles are everywhere.

OK, not everywhere. Type ‘The Beatles’ into iTunes and you’ll be presented with the following albums:

* A Tribute To The Beatles by The Silver Beatles

* The Bornagen Beatles Play The Beatles Greatest Hits

* Butchering The Beatles – A Headbashing Tribute

* Lullaby Renditions Of The Beatles by Rockabye Baby

* The Bingo Kids Sing Beatles Hits For Kids

That last one, by the way, is so close to being a work of demented genius that if we don’t finish this post it’ll be because the overwhelming power of it hypnotised us and drove us insane and we had to throw ourselves out of a window to rid our bodies of its evil. But we digress.

The thing you don’t get when you search for The Beatles on iTunes is The Beatles. But this isn’t something that anybody wants, which is why The Beatles had been working with EMI and Apple to fix this issue in recent months.

Notice the word ‘had’ there. According to Paul McCartney, the talks are mired up in all kinds of red tape and it’ll be ages before everyone realises that nobody cares either way because they all borrowed their dad’s Beatles CDs and downloaded them onto their iPod about four years ago. Reuters reports:

We’d like to do it,” McCartney was quoted as telling the BBC. “We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. Last word I got back was it’s stalled at the moment,” McCartney added. “But I really hope it will happen because I think it should.”

Despite Paul McCartney’s caginess over the exact issues preventing The Beatles from being included on iTunes, we think we have an idea – iTunes wants a bigger slice of the sales, EMI wants a bigger slice of the sales and Paul McCartney is waiting for Ringo Starr to die so he can sell all the old Beatles albums under the new name Paul McCartney Presents: Paul McCartney And The Paul McCartney Four Sing The Hits Of Paul McCartney And A Couple Of Other Dead Blokes.

We’re only joking, of course. But The Beatles had better hurry up and get their act together – they longer they keep iTunes waiting, the more people will think that iTunes only included Ringo Starr’s solo albums in its catalogue because it actually likes his music. And that’s nothing short of a bloody insult.

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30 Seconds to Mars and their glorious leader Jared Leto had better check the back of their sofas for loose change.

They may have to resort to begging, borrowing or even stealing to get through this one – being sued by Virgin Records for $30 million isn’t the kind of thing you can get by simply by using the cash you carry in your wallet. Maybe they could sell their instruments and equipment – though this would of course mean they can no longer play as a band…

So in other words, it would be win-win.

But why such a huge amount? Well, according to Virgin, Jared Leto and 30 Seconds to Mars were contracted to provide three albums, but didn’t. Apparently this is worth that much money to the company, so they’ve gone and sued that movie star from the band to get what they think is rightfully theirs.

$30 million though? Crikey.

And it seems it isn’t just hecklerspray that thinks the figure is a bit – shall we say – ‘excessive’. In a post on the official 30 Seconds to Mars forum, Jared wrote these words with his fingers, and possibly toes:

“So, as you may have heard we are being sued by our former record company for the ridiculously oversized, totally unrealistic and pretty silly (but slightly clever) sum of $30,000,000. Insane? Yea that’s what we said too.”

But what was the actual story behind it? Well, Messr Leto wasn’t about to leave his legion of 14-year-old female fans in the lurch when it came to the legalese, going on in the post:

“We had been signed to our record contract for nine years. Basically, under California law, where we live and signed our deal, one cannot be bound to a contract for more than seven years. This is widely known by all the record companies and has been for years. In fact, so aware of it are they that they desperately try to make deals outside of California whenever possible. It is a law that protects people from lengthy, unfair, career-spanning contracts. This law also gave us the legal right to explore other possible opportunities.”

And not one to leave it with a short, concise explanation of the matter – nor, seemingly, one to avoid underhanded bitchy comments, that one from Fight Club went on about a feud with more point than his last one:

“Yes we have been sued by EMI. But NOT for failing to deliver music or for ‘quitting.’ We have been sued by the corporation quite simply because roughly 45 days ago we exercised our legal right to terminate our old, out of date contract, which, according to the law is null and void. We terminated for a number of reasons, which we won’t go into here (we’d rather not air any dirty laundry) but basically our representatives could not get EMI to agree to make a fair and reasonable deal.”

To be fair, being sued for $30 million is probably a good enough reason to get at least a bit bitchy, and it’s the kind of thing that will make you feel as depressed as if you’ve been forced to sit and watch Requiem for a Dream 17 times in a row. Yes – that bad. So it is understandable that some complaints would be aired.

Shockingly enough, EMI (the group that owns Virgin Records) countered with some statementage of their own, offering these nuggets up:

“EMI’s relationship with 30STM has been extremely rewarding and successful for both the band and the company. The hard work of EMI’s global team and of the band has resulted in sales of three million albums and singles, multiple awards and a growing, global fan base.”

To be honest, you’d think that if they were suing a band for such an incredible amount of money they’d bother to write the full name out, not abbreviate it like it would take too much of their valuable lawsuit time up. Anyway, it went from amicable and half-written to some of the usual ‘we’re not an evil major label, honestly’ gubbins:

“However, we have been forced to take procedural, legal steps in order to protect EMI’s investment and rights during contract renegotiations initiated by the band and management. We hope to resolve these matters amicably and put them behind us so we can continue working in partnership with the band to take them to even greater levels of success.”

While it isn’t very fair for a band to go back on a contractual obligation, it does feel a bit like EMI are saying ‘either they come back to us and release more albums, thus making us money, or we get $30 million out of them anyway. Not like we’re trying to hold them hostage or anything’. A bit, at least. We mean – he may have missed out an album, but he’s given his blood for this band – is that not worth anything?

Well, no, probably not. But still.

We’re not exactly fans of 30 Seconds to Mars at hecklerspray, nor do we care much about Jared Leto and his face (apart from that bit in Fight Club), but… well… thirty million dollars? Are they shitting well kidding?!

If EMI expected to make that much money from a new album then they either have a severely skewed view of the world or there are far more fools with no taste buying music in this world than we originally thought.

Thom Yorke is a happy soul – his hobbies include puppy-stroking and riding around meadows on a bicycle going "Wheeeee" – but EMI seems to have somehow done the impossible and made Thom Yorke a bit miserable.

Thom Yorke and EMI boss Guy Hands are in the middle of a war of words about why Radiohead left the record label. According to Hands, Radiohead wanted a £10 million advance for In Rainbows and control of their old albums, while Thom Yorke is claiming that the band just wanted to make sure their back catalogue was treated correctly. The emotional impact of this public bickering is thought to have already taken its toll on Thom Yorke, and has made him ditch plans for his forthcoming Europop collaboration with Same Difference from X Factor called A Very Merry Radiohead Party Fun Time.

As planet Earth's most sensitive wonky-eyed warbler, Thom Yorke feels things way more than you ever will. You know that time you were on a bus and the man sitting next to you coughed and didn't cover his mouth and you felt the cough-air touch your hand? You remember that you didn't think much of it afterwards? Well the same thing happened to Thom Yorke in the early nineties and he wrote The Bends about it. All of it. Ask him, it's true.

So just imagine the pain that Thom Yorke felt when Guy Hands, head of Radiohead's old record label EMI, spoke to newspapers about Radiohead leaving the company because they were being greedy and wanted £10 million to fit a stripper's pole, a foam machine and a constant supply of coked-out prostitutes in their studio, or something.

OK, that's not strictly true – Guy Hands said that Radiohead wanted a £3 million advance, a £3 million international marketing budget for In Rainbows, and the rights to a couple of old Radiohead albums that would have cost EMI £4 million in future earnings. And Hands says he couldn't commit to that deal, knowing that every penny that Radiohead got was a penny that KT Tunstall would miss, causing Radiohead to throw a tantrum and leave.

But Thom Yorke doesn't quite see it that way. Taking to the Radiohead website this week, Thom Yorke gave his side of the story:

we did not ask for a load of cash from our old record label EMI to re- sign. that is a L I E. The Times in the UK should check its facts before it prints such dirt. whAT we WANTED WAS some control over OUR WOrK and how it was used in the future by them-that seemed REASONAblE to us, as we cared about it a great deal. Mr Hands was not interested. So neither were we. We made the sign of the cross and walked away. Sadly. We are extremely upset that this crap is being spread about. To bedigging up such bullshit, or more politely airing yer dirty laundry in public, seems a very strange way for the head of an international record label to be proceeding. 

Obviously we're going to side with Thom Yorke here, for the simple reason that his crazy writing style makes us think that he's possibly left comments on hecklerspray before.

And anyway, what's all this fuss about in the first place? Radiohead leaving EMI has been the best thing for everyone – by releasing In Rainbows on the internet Radiohead became more relevant than they have in a decade, everyone got to buy In Rainbows for nothing and EMI has got more time to devote to Sheena Easton now. Everyone's a winner here. Especially Sheena Easton. And isn't that the main thing?

Read more:

F Y I_____ if you care – Radiohead