There has been the vague, wet, typical outpouring of mild-ire surrounding an indie band allowing one of their songs to be used in advertising. It’s ‘selling-out’ apparently. And god knows, that’s the worst thing an indie band can be accused of, right?

And of course, there’s a terribly saccharine John Lewis advertisement that’s doing the Christmas rounds this year which features a cover version of The Smiths’ ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’.

Johnny Marr is at pains to point out that the song featuring in a commercial doesn’t sully the memory of the song at all and The Smiths haven’t sold out, actually. And you know something, he’s right to say that it doesn’t sully the memory of the band.

Marr took to twitter to answer disappointed Smiths fans (is there any other kind of Smiths fan?) and claimed that the memory of the group hadn’t been sullied at all.

He said:

Writing ‘Please Please…’ one Friday in ’84 is one of the best memories of my life. This ad has not sullied that memory one bit.

He went on to criticise the fans who had been…

“bitching and moaning whilst, wait for it, watching X Factor”

And Marr is absolutely correct in his assertion that the use of a cover of a Smiths song in a television advert doesn’t sully the memory of the band because, the point here is that we’re dealing with a band so gaspingly overrated, so mediocre from top-to-bottom that any use of their song doesn’t harm their legacy, rather, brings the fine reputation of John Lewis down.

That’s right. Lovely John Lewis who sell all those nice things are now associated with dismal, vacant 6th form poetry shot through faux-kitchen sinkery and a collection of faces so long that you could trip over their chins.

Poor ol’ John Lewis. Being lumped in with those talentless berks.

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Is Morrissey having a very public nervous breakdown? It certainly seems that way. See, at the moment, you can’t move for stories about him being wildly erratic and saying things which aren’t as considered as they once were.

Of course, The Mozfather has always been good for a quote and, indeed, regardless of the fact he has contributed to some of the most awful music ever cut to wax, he was always worth reading about.

However, these days he’s less a vinegary old tart with a razor sharp wit and more a bumbling idiot, dribbling out nonsense in a bid to get any sort of attention from the world. No, he’s not ordering security staff to strip-search the people of Middlesbrough for secreted meats, but comparing the savage killings in Norway to fast-food.

Basically, the former Smiths warbler has kicked up a large stink (almost as bad as vegetarian flatulence) after comparing the Norwegian massacre to the slaughter of animals for fast-food restaurant chains.

During a show in Warsaw, Moz allegedly said:

“We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead. Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried shit every day.”

This all comes on the back of a series of incredibly odd things (apparently) uttered by Morrissey. After stomping off stage in a huff because he could smell burgers, he also went and called Chinese people a “sub-species”.

He also once said:

“Killing a stag is like killing a child. What’s the difference?”

It really does seem like he’s in the throes of a nervous breakdown and, if we’re correct, this can only end in Mozza being found weeping in a square, naked and binge-eating raw meat while rubbing coagulated pig’s blood into his writhing torso while singing Baldhead Growler’s ‘Sausage’.

Can’t wait.

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STOP THE PRESS! Or update the gossip website really quickly or something! Swarthy Alan Bennett-wannabee Steven ‘Morrissey’ Morrissey is a bit grumpy about some things!

Anyone who has seen a recent photo of the stocky serenader would think the irony of his well-known vegetarian fizzog currently resembling someone who belongs behind the counter of your local butchers has annoyed him but NO! He’s grumpy about EVERY SINGLE THING THAT GIVES HIM ANY SORT OF A PUBLIC PROFILE EVER!

The utter WEAPON.

Firstly: his fans. They love him and they create websites dedicated to him, chief of which is morrissey-solo.com. What does he then do? Appear on stage wearing a t-shirt bearing the slogan “FUCK MORRISSEY-SOLO.COM”? Yes. In Bradford this week, of all places.

One irate user of said website responded by describing themselves as “a Mexican married to a white girl, who eats pussy not meat”, but we’re still trying to figure out how that might be relevant.

Secondly: the music industry. Did we mention that Steven ‘Morrissey’ Morrissey doesn’t have a record deal at the moment? Hmm. He explains:

“Not many labels want bands who have already made their mark, because their success is usually attributed to some other label somewhere else at another time.”

Yes, that’ll be it Steven. No-one wants to sign you for fear of being unfavourably-compared to the heady days of the Rough Trade recording label back in 1987 you tool.

Thirdly: the Smiths. Actually we might have to give this one to Steven. He played a load of Smiths songs during his overlooked set at Glastonbury despite the seemingly-endless spat with all former band-members, prompting ex-drummer (DRUMMER!) Mike Joyce to announce on twitter that he “didn’t like the cover versions”. Yes. We’ll let Steve-O have that one.

And the internet, which Stevie believes has “obviously wiped music off the human map”, unaware of the fact that the internet has allowed people to access his entire back-catalogue in less than a millisecond flat before disregarding everything after “Hatful Of Hollow”. And that’s being generous.

NEXT WEEK: “Morrissey Isn’t Fond Of That Funny Noise The Fridge Sometimes Makes.”

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You probably haven’t heard about the new Britney Spears documentary yet, because it’s only been everywhere all the time forever.

In fact it’s fair to say that so much of the Britney Spears documentary has now been leaked that the only new footage that’ll come as a surprise to anyone watching the whole thing next week is a three-second snippet of Britney Spears gazing into the middle distance and wistfully humming the theme-tune to Animal Hospital.

For instance, People magazine has now seen an exclusive preview of Britney: For The Record, and the most exciting bit left to review seems to be when Britney Spears starts crying and says of her life “It’s bad. I’m sad.” Bad? Sad? That’s the most eloquent you can be, Britney? Disappointing. We just expected something more profound from the poet behind “Womanizer womanizer/ You’re a womanizer/ Oh/ Womanizer/ Oh.”

If there’s one thing we hate it’s a spoiler. Honestly, when people told us that Bruce Willis was a ghost in The Sixth Sense, or that Kevin Spacey was Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects, or that Dumbledore is going to die in the next Harry Potter film, it really took the shine off our day.

So imagine how bummed out we were when people started blurting spoilers about the new Britney Spears documentary Britney: For The Record all over the place. We were furious! Apparently Britney Spears gets sad and cries a lot in it, which is absolutely the last thing we expected from a recovering psychiatric patient who’d had a high-profile mental breakdown, and now our enjoyment of it is going to be totally ruined!
We already knew that Britney Spears thought her life was like a prison sentence, only worse because never actually got to kill anybody and she still has to look after those poxy kids of hers (or something). But in case that wasn’t enough, People has seen a special preview of the documentary and seems determined to blab about it until its jaw falls off. Here’s what it said:

Spears takes topics ranging from her failed romances with Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline (“I never really faced it, and I just ran,” she says of divorcing him) to why she let “bad people” into her life. Her excuse: “Because I was lonely.”  At one point, Spears – whose father has permanent legal conservatorship over her affairs – bursts into tears while discussing her situation. “It’s bad,” she says. “I’m sad.”

As well as this brief rhyming extravaganza of unrestrained misery, Britney Spears apparently uses the documentary to lament of her loss of focus and control in recent years, how she isn’t cool any more and that she only agreed to be filmed because she didn’t like how she was being portrayed.

Which is good – judging by what we’ve heard about this documentary so far, if Britney Spears wanted to be portrayed as a hollowed-out constantly-sobbing paranoid depressive forced to perform against her will by a league of shadowy all-controlling authoritarians, then she’ll be super pleased with how it turns out.

In fact, Britney: For The Record might just go down in history as one of the most berserk marketing ideas ever. Two days after it gets broadcast, Britney Spears’ new album Circus is released, and that’s something that Britney wants to promote by being as uncomfortably miserable as possible on camera. What sort of circus is this anyway? One of those creepy European ones?