With that in mind, if we were Solange Knowles we’d get a little bit tetchy with people who compare us to Beyonce. No, more than that, we’d actually throw an embarrassing full-on sulky tantrum on television if someone even said the name ‘Beyonce’ within earshot of us. We would. We’d look like total bellends doing it, and it’d probably harm our career quite profoundly, but a little thing like that wouldn’t stop us.

Funnily enough it wouldn’t stop Solange Knowles either. A hapless presenter on a local Las Vegas Fox entertainment show happened to mention Beyonce’s name just before a Solange Knowles interview yesterday, and Solange threw an incredible schoolmarmish hoity toity “Mer mer mer” prissy little tantrum at her for it.

Video footage? Why of course there’s video footage…

Imagine living your whole life in Beyonce’s shadow. Literally. Imagine literally living your whole life in the actual shadow cast by Beyonce’s giant arse. Imagine dragging your vitamin D-sapped body to school every day, bones aching and muscles spasming, only to hear Beyonce inform everyone that they’re not ready for her jelly while at the same time your jelly’s gone a bit stale and plasticy because it was ready for ages but nobody wanted it. Imagine that. Imagine exactly that.

It’d be rubbish – and it’s precisely what Solange Knowles has had to put up with for years – which probably explains why Solange has turned into such a cow about it.

For those not in the know, Solange Knowles is Beyonce’s little sister. She’s an actress, but not as successful as Beyonce. She’s a singer, but not as successful as Beyonce. She’s a model, but… yeah, you guessed.

So when Solage Knowles does something of her own, she doesn’t want it crushed by an association with her more successful sister. That’s why, according to reports, Solange’s people banned the media from mentioning Beyonce’s name at any point during the promotion of her new album.

Which clearly didn’t get back to the presenter of the presenter of a local Las Vegas Fox entertainment show, who happened to mention the B word during an introduction to an interview with Solange. Want to know what Solange did? Of course you do – here you go…

Our favourite bit of that video isn’t the stroppy little tantrum, or the way that a producer had to wade in midway through to clear the mess up – it was the way that Solange Knowles instantly clicked back into PR mode afterwards, describing her new album in a flat robot monotone with all the fizz of a pensioner trying to sell a bag of dust to a hatstand. Superb stuff.

Solange apparently hasn’t issued an apology or an explanation regarding her little flare-up, but she doesn’t really have to – in fact, in Solange really wants to set herself apart from Beyonce, then she should probably do it by being as abruptly aggressive as she can to everyone she meets.

Alternatively she could try the whole ‘being wildly less successful than her sister’ angle. That works as well.

That is, unless a cosmetics company decide to make you white. Then you kind of fall down on part of that description.

It would seem that the make-up behemoths at L’Oreal may just be the types to force this kind of change on the young diva, with claims being made that Beyonce’s skin tone has been lightened for a magazine ad. The company dispute these allegations.

You know – ‘whitening’ things up to make them more palatable to the masses. They did it with every other element of black culture – the music, the clothing, the lingo – why not start trying to make black celebrities white too?

Okay, so maybe we’re going a bit overboard with it – but it’s Friday, and hecklerspray has some drinkin’ to get done. It’s maybe not as bad as that.

No, it doesn’t appear to be L’Oreal’s version of ‘ethnic cleansing’, more the result of a dodgy photo editing job.

The advert in question shows Beyonce after she’s done one of those hair dying things that girls seem to like so much – 100 per cent grey cover and all that. When the advert image of Bouncy is placed next to any other picture of her, it’s clear to see there’s something not quite right

She looks a bit Michael Jacksoned, frankly, with lighter skin and fairer hair. And it’s a bit frightening.

The claims – which began on everyone’s favourite website TMZ – were quick to be refuted by L’Oreal Paris. They said:

“We highly value our relationship with Ms. Knowles. It is categorically untrue that L’Oreal Paris altered Ms. Knowles’ features or skin tone in the campaign for Feria hair color.”

Which is all well and good, and it’s not like us to be disbelieving of a multi-national corporation like this, but… well – just look at the pictures. While it may well be true that the company had no idea they had ‘whitened’ Beyonce, it cannot be denied that she looks a lot more like a white chick than she normally does.

Which conjures up awful, awful, awful imagery of a possible Wayans Brothers sequel. Something surely not out of the question with the re-makery on show in Hollywood today.