Why? Because Madonna plans to have two very special guests performing with her – Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. If Madonna pulls it off, it has the potential to be the messiest reunion in history – don’t forget that all three of them have had their tongue inside Britney Spears’ mouth at one point or another, with the possible exception of Britney Spears.

If you ask us, this reeks of publicity stunt. And not even a good one – if Madonna really wanted people to go to her show tonight she wouldn’t just stop at Justin Timberlake – she’d hire everyone Britney Spears has ever slept with. Britney and Justin? Pah. Britney and Justin and Kevin Federline and Adnan Ghalib and that guy Britney married for like half an hour? All voguing like their lives depended on it? Now we’re talking.

What do Madonna, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake have in common? Quite a lot, actually – they’re all successful popstars, for one. And they’re all keen on a spot of religious outrage – Madonna has pretended to be Jesus in the past, Britney Spears once seduced a priest on an album cover and Justin Timberlake is perhaps best known for his hit single I Did A Shit In A Bible.

Also, they’ve got a bit of a tricky history, sexually. Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were a couple for a number of years, Madonna and Britney Spears kissed with tongues at an awards show and Justin Timberlake managed to keep his dinner down while watching Madonna grind about in a manky pair of knickers on the set of the Four Minutes video – the nearest a boy like him can be expected to get to having sex with gristley old Madonna these days.

And because of that, if Madonna, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears ever got together, we’d expect the result to be completely unpleasant for all involved. Let’s just hope that never happens.

Actually, scrap that. It is happening. According to reports, Madonna has engineered a three-way reunion between her, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake at her concert at Dodger’s Stadium tonight. OK! reports:

On Wednesday afternoon, Ryan Seacrest called in to local radio station KIIS FM, and broke the news that both Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears will take the stage together with Madonna tomorrow night when she performs at Dodger Stadium as. “I couldn’t wait to tell you this,” Seacrest said. “If Justin and Britney end up on that stage with her [Madonna]… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like that before.”

Sounds good in principle, but we’re really just worried that the stress of the reunion will just bring out the worst in each performer. You know, Britney Spears could have a psychotic bald-headed relapse, Madonna could regress to her Body of Evidence days and – worst of all – Justin Timberlake could start thinking that he’s funnier than he actually is again. Gratuitous middle-aged nudity and harrowing mental trauma we can stand, but not an impromptu Timberlake stand-up set.

Also, let’s hope the promise of Madonna reuniting with both Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake is enough to get people to buy up the remaining tickets for tonight’s concert, otherwise Madonna will have to pull out another big reunion with someone from her past to make it even more exciting. And we’ve got a funny feeling that’d be Sandra Bernhard. Gree.

You are? Well have we got some good news for you! Phish – the defunct jam-band predominantly famous for a) having some ice cream named after it and b) totally soundtracking that epic hacky sack marathon you and your buddies had in your parent’s backyard one afternoon back when you were 28 – are reuniting.

Phish have announced three special comeback dates in Virginia for next March, their first since disbanding in 2004. We’ll definitely be attending the Phish reunion shows – it’s been too long since we last caught beard nits off a hippy after stumbling into the middle of a drearily self-satisfied drum circle in the carpark of an old WWF arena.

Rolling Stone once called Phish ‘one of the most important bands of the Nineties’ – recognition that puts them right up there with Kula Shaker, Sugar Ray and the band that did the theme tune to Friends.

But it’s easy to see why Phish received a title like that – more than most bands, Phish flourished because of the community behind them. Their meandering, overlong, improvised jazz fusion jam workouts were simply a soundtrack to huge open-air festivals where friends could meet, play frisbee, get ripped to the tits on stolen cough medicine and twirl around like cocks in a spirit of universal brotherhood.

So it was a bittersweet day when Phish announced that they were splitting up in 2004. True, it meant that you’d never get to see a group of millionaires in their forties play 20 songs in a row that all seem to sound exactly like the one that directly preceded it in a disused airbase any more, but at least the spirit of Phish would live on in that delicious Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavour and the crappy rave scene from The Matrix Reloaded.

Until now. Because now, you see, Phish are back. According to The LA Times:

The Vermont-based jam band, will reunite for shows March 6-8 in Hampton, Va., and is expected to announce additional performances for 2009. Rumors of a reunion have been heating up since… three of the four Phish members played together in July at the Rothbury Festival in Michigan. All four showed up last month and played at the wedding of their road manager Brad Sands.

Phish played at a wedding? We’re not sure how we feel about that. On one hand it’d probably be quite fun to see all your elderly relatives get so overwhelmed by the band’s elaborate jazz-rock grooves that they end up buying a bunch of laughing gas balloons from a hippy in the corner. But on the other hand The Squirming Coil isn’t exactly Agadoo, is it?

But still, we’re genuinely pleased that Phish are getting back together – and more pleased that their first shows aren’t until March. Because that’ll give you plenty of time to ditch your job at the law firm and dedicate your life to getting your beard long enough to put elastic bands in again. It’ll be fun.

But the biggest reason of all is because Take That reformed, giving billions of other ancient teenypop bands the idea to reunite, often with eye-cripplingly shocking results. But not all ancient teenypop bands – for example, tinpot twin-based growl-heavy 1980s boyband Bros have clung onto their morals and refused to reunite.

What's that? Bros have decided to reunite as well? That's great – back in the day Bros had a large, highly dedicated fanbase, so we're sure that they'll go crazy for the reunion just as soon as someone shouts news about it into their ear-trumpet. We're implying that they're all old.

Bros, for those of you under the age of 75, were a sensation back in the late 1980s. Thanks to their barbershop-model good looks, trendy clothes and irrational habit of going "Ooh-UGH!" six or seven times during every single song that they ever recorded, Bros were probably responsible for more adolescent knicker-wetting than cystitis and abnormally swollen prostate glands combined.

But don't worry if you can't remember what Bros were like, because they've decided to reform. Following in the ultra-successful reunions of the Spice Girls (who cancelled their world tour halfway through because they hate each other), East 17 (who didn't even get to tour because they kept punching each other in the face) and All Saints (who couldn't tour because nobody at all bought their album), Bros are the latest old semi-forgotten band to see if they've still got the old magic. BBC News reports:

"If we can make the numbers work and the venues work, then we're all up for it," said [Matt] Goss, now 39. He was speaking at the film premiere of his twin brother's latest film Hellboy II: The Golden Army. "Being in a band is like being a politician, you've got to make sure everyone is happy," Goss said. "But Luke, Craig and definitely myself – we're all up for it."

Oh, thank christ for that, the Bros reunion will be a full reunion – even the dark-haired one who wasn't related to anyone and nobody fancied is back onboard too.

Best of all, the Bros reunion isn't for strictly financial reasons, because all its members have gone on to forge highly successful careers for themselves since they split up. Craig Logan, for example, became Pink's manager, Luke Goss has starred in everything from Blade II to a forthcoming movie based on Tekken and Matt Goss had a song that got all the way to number 38 in the charts. They're all big deals in their own special, slightly underwhelming, way.

But the Bros reunion is bound to be a huge success, and maybe it'll be for good this time. It all depends on how quickly Bros get sick of playing When Will I Be Famous to half-empty halls full of shrieking ropey-looking middle-aged hen parties drunk off their knockers on WKD. Oh, who are we kidding? That never gets old.

Not too long ago the reformed New Kids On The Block made their first public appearance on the Today show. And after the shock of realising that they all still have fully-working sets of eyes and limbs subsided, we heard New Kids On The Block tell the world that "Music brought us back."

We presume that'd be Music O'Kneesmash. the famed Boston debt collection agent, then. Anyway, video of the New Kids On The Block Today appearance after the jump. 

Hey you! Are you a slightly odd woman in her mid-to-late thirties who can't stop living in the past because that's when you were popular and boys liked you and you didn't have a job and a screaming baby that you secretly regretted having since the moment you gave birth to it? If so, we've got some really exciting news for you – New Kids On The Block are back!

Yes, we know that you knew New Kids On The Block were back because you heard the reports and listened to the song and looked at the ropey new photo of them – but New Kids On The Block are back! They're really back! Talking and moving around and everything! 

It was perhaps the most poorly-kept secret since Jennifer Lopez's pregnancy, but New Kids On The Block made their first public appearance on the Today show this morning. Meredith Viera and the Today team kindly shuffled around their traditional swearing pensioner-heavy schedule and had the boys on to announce their new tour and album and, well, here's the new-look New Kids On The Block in all their balding, quietly-desperate glory… 

Quite the sight, huh? We especially like watching the New Kid On The Block who gets caught behind the other New Kids On The Block and keeps politely trying and failing to push his way forward. Foolish New Kid On The Block – doesn't he know that only Marky Mark's brother is allowed to talk?

Anyway, if you can't quite bear to sit through an entire video of some old men getting screamed at by some women old enough to know better, then here are the main bullet points of the New Kids On The Block reunion.

• The first reunited New Kids On The Block performance will be on the Today show on May 16.

• New Kids On The Block have been working on a new album since last summer and it'll come out in the autumn.

• They'll tour the album, but they want to focus on new material. Possibly because they're idiots who don't realise that they'll only be popular to drunk hen parties who want to screech along to Step By Step then go home.

• It's very clear that some members of New Kids On The Block really, really don't get on.

That is all.

Read more:

NKOTB Are Officially Back – Hollyscoop 

And if that's the case then their dreams have been answered, because New Kids On The Block are back!

After a few months of sly non-commitment, New Kids On The Block are expected to officially announce their reunion on Friday's Today show. And, as an appetite-whetter, New Kids On The Block have released the first group photo of the reunion. At least that's what we think it is – it could just be a page ripped out of Middle-Aged Weekend Father At A Court Appearance magazine that someone published as a belated April Fool joke. Who knows?

What with war and recession and global warming and Jessica Simpson's stinky piss, the world needs cheering up. And there's no group of people more likely to do that than New Kids On The Block. Not because New Kids On The Block are cool or good or anything, but because it will make the entire world briefly come together in a universal sense of brotherhood and think "Whew! It doesn't matter how bad things get for me, because at least I'm not in New Kids On The Block."

Quiet murmurings of a New Kids On The Block reunion started in January, quickly followed by a snatch of a new song. But then everything suddenly went quiet. We'll admit that part of us hoped that the New Kids On The Block reunion had come to a premature end, possibly because they all started punching each other until one was dead and the others had dislocated jaws. But more fool us, because New Kids On The Block are definitely back and raring to go.

All of them – Mark Wahlberg's Brother, Captain Dungaree, New Geek On The Block, Frankenstein and Generic Other are all set for their big comeback. And that's a comeback that starts on Friday's Today show, where the group will make their first joint televised appearance in an age – to announce a new album and tour to mark the 20-year anniversary of Hangin' Tough.

But Friday is, like, so long away! We want to see a decade of failure etched across their old faces now. Lucky, then, that Yahoo has published the first group photo of New Kids On The Block since before all of them had pubes, or something. And from the sight of it, you'd think that they've all spent the last 14 years hanging out in Marks And Spencer trying to land a job as a catalogue model instead of appearing on British reality TV shows with the skinny one from Little And Large.

What hints about the reunited New Kids On The Block can we glean from this new photo? Well, all five of them are wearing suits instead of ridiculous bandanas and nasty Michael Jackson-style leather jackets, so that probably means that they want to be taken seriously as mature singer-songwriters this time around. Plus four of them have their hands in their pockets, so it looks as if one of them may have become a pickpocket in the years since the band split up.

What else? Nothing. That's literally it. For other clues, we'll all have to watch New Kids On The Block on Friday's Today show. But we've heard one of them now has a voice like Estelle Getty from The Golden Girls and at least two of the others loudly whistle every time they try to pronounce a word with an 's' in it thanks to their ill-fitting dentures. 

Read more:

New Kids On The Block release first group photo in 15 years - Yahoo

That's certainly the case with Van Halen. After more messily aborted reunions than you could ever wish for, Van Halen finally hit the road in September to play their bad-haired, leotard-wearing widdly-widdly-woo hard rock music to as many middle-aged bad-haired nostalgia freaks as the possibly could.

Except it couldn't last and, with crushing inevitability, the rest of the Van Halen reunion tour has been scrapped; either forever or until the band feels the need to demonstrate its innate lack of personal and organisation skills in public again.

You know why bands split up? It's because they hate each other. And you know why bands reform? It's because they're greedy. And if you put a bunch of greedy people who hate each other on a stage and ask them to work together, it'll inevitably end in tears. It happened with the Spice Girls reunion just a couple of weeks ago, and it's happened with Van Halen so often that we can't be bothered to count any more. 

Van Halen is a band so opposed to getting along that it's been through four singers and a couple of bassists in its time. But to its fans, the classic Van Halen line-up was Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth. Two years ago a tour by that classic Van Halen was promised, but it didn't happen because they decided to replace Anthony with a boy called Wolfgang and Eddie Van Halen kept getting wankered on all the booze.

However, once he sorted himself out, Van Halen actually managed to properly reform – albeit with Wolfgang in tow – for their long-promised tour last September. And they were strong – playing their one song that everyone knows and some others night after night so well that not even an actual natural disaster could halt them.

Until now. The Van Halen reunion is off and, as UPI reports, it might be because Eddie's found the keys to the drinks cabinet again:

Although performances were lined up through April 19, TMZ.com cited unnamed sources as saying the band's hotel reservations are being canceled now that the rest of the tour has been scrapped. The band's last three shows were canceled as Eddie Van Halen is said to be having "issues," the report said. The rock icon, who spent time in rehab last year, has been in media headlines the last few weeks because his ex-wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli, is making the rounds to promote her new tell-all memoir.

Yes, there's nothing to turn a man to drink like a book by his ex-wife about how much he used to drink. But at least Eddie Van Halen's 'issues' didn't kick in for five months after the tour started, meaning that thousands of people got to hear Jump and then a bunch of other stuff that they jigged around to and pretended they knew so as not to let the band's feelings down.

And, if an alcoholic relapse did bring about this tour cancellation, then we wish Eddie Van Halen the speediest of recoveries, and hop he gets back to scheduling and then cancelling tour dates as soon as possible.

Read more:

Report: Rest of Van Halen tour scrapped - UPI 

Not really – every day is Pancake Day if you're American. In fact, Super Tuesday is when everyone decides which person they'd like to think about choosing as the candidate that might possibly end up being the President or something. And all of the candidates need all the help they can get.

Barack Obama knows this, which is why he got The Grateful Dead to reform in a show of support. So at least he's got the wizened old cheesy-toenailed hippy vote sewn up.

Nothing makes us want to be American more than the way they do their elections. The process isn't like it is here, where there's no big build-up and then everyone forgets to vote on election day because they're stuck on a particularly hard level of Guitar Hero and then spends the next five years grumbling about whoever won even though they're identical to whoever lost, oh no.

America loves elections so much that it spreads them out for years. Even though people have been banging on about the election for months on end, nobody even has the vaguest clue about who'll be running for president. But that changes today – it's Super Tuesday, when 24 states will be holding their primary elections and choosing who they want as a presidential candidate based on a complex algorithm centred around how red each candidate can make their faces go whenever they talk about immigration and who can do the best impression of Tony Soprano. 

Duking it out for the Republican spot is a man who looks uncomfortable around black people and some old bloke who for some reason we believe to only have one shin. But the Democrats have got to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It's a close-run thing so far, but Barack Obama has a secret weapon up his sleeve that he's been dying to let loose because, frankly, it smells like stale urine.

That's right – The Grateful Dead have reformed just to say how much they like Obama. Well, not all of The Grateful Dead, obviously – but all of the members who haven't died or sold their toilet at auction or both. Reuters reports:

Saying Barack Obama embodies political hope absent since Robert Kennedy was slain 40 years ago, three surviving members of the Grateful Dead rock band reunited on Monday for the first time in four years to back the presidential candidate."Every few generations a guy like this comes along," drummer Mickey Hart told a news conference a day before California's primary, in which Obama, a senator from Illinois, faces New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. "It seems like desperate times and we're desperate people."

It's thought that The Grateful Dead only reformed for Barack Obama so long as he promises to use his presidency to implement compulsory beard legislation and a rule banning songs from ending until they've fallen into a pointless nine-minute freeform wank jam that everyone gets sick of the second it begins.

But will a bunch of old men who smell like patchouli oil and the inside of Snoop Dogg's car manage to secure Barack Obama a Super Tuesday victory? Well, politics can be a very complex business and… look, we don't know, OK? We're way out of depths here and we honestly don't have a clue about any of it. We don't even live in America for God's sake. We just thought it'd be funny to mock hippies for a bit. Sorry.

Read more:

Grateful Dead and Deadheads reunite for Obama – Reuters 

And now for the bad news – the Spice Girls split means we're going to have to put up with five cack-handed Spice Girls solo careers again instead of one big group career that's easy to ignore.

Which we suppose means that we'll never hear from Geri Halliwell again. Maybe this is for the best after all.

According to the Spice Girls, friendship never ends. But we've learnt not to listen to the Spice Girls since Spice Up Your Life urged us to "slam it to the left if you're having a good time" – an instruction that resulted in a loss of blood, dignity and one long-term girlfriend while incurring us a hefty bill from a top hospital's penile trauma clinic.

Perhaps the Spice Girls should have chosen to call their last single Headlines (Friendship Does End, Actually, Probably Even Before The End Of The Tour) because that's much closer to the truth. The Spice Girls are splitting up again, and they're so keen to do it that they're even cutting their world tour short. According to MTV:

The Spice Girls have split up for a second time with rumours that it’s due to the group arguing. The band have cited ‘family commitments’ for the cancellation of tour dates in China, Sydney, South America and South Africa. Due to the group’s fractious past it’s unsurprising fans think they’ve been arguing. According to one press report Mel C and Mel B were behind the split telling the other three: “We’ve had enough.” However in another weekend news story Posh Spice told the News Of The World: “I've been thinking about this for a long time. I'm not in the music industry any more. I'm in the fashion industry.”

It's not really a surprise to be honest – the Spice Girls comeback wasn't as brilliant as anyone had hoped. Their single was a flop, they performed in half-empty arenas across America, Emma Bunton knackered her leg and the Spice Girls Tesco adverts were so brain-crampingly terrible that we're pretty sure they made us cry cerebrospinal fluid once.

The last Spice Girls concert will be later this month in Toronto, and then that'll be it. Each of the girls is at least £10 million richer and can go home knowing that they'll have to write four less Christmas cards come December. But what will each of the Spice Girls do following the split?

Well, Victoria Beckham has fashion career to take care of, which we think basically involves waddling around after Katie Holmes a lot and not eating. Mel B needs to have sex with her husband more, because her schedule says that he should have knocked her up and left her by now. Geri Halliwell has that children's book to work on, unless she ditched it because all that writing got in the way of only ever talking about herself all the time. Emma Bunton has a baby to look after. And Mel C?

Well, those houses aren't going to roof themselves, are they?

Read more:

Spice Girls Split - MTV 

But that's where you'd be wrong. The New Kids on The Block reunion is happening. The group couldn't be more serious about it happening. They're so serious that there's a brand new song on the New Kids On The Block website.

And you know what? The new New Kids On The Block song is actually really goo… no, we're just kidding. It's crap.

If any of you see Take That out and about on the street, be sure to poke them in the eye quite hard, won't you. Because ever since Take That reformed to vague success, every bugger's been at it, from the Spice Girls to Indiana Jones to Rambo.

And now New Kids On The Block have reformed as well, all the different reunions have been mashed together in our minds to the point where we have a recurring dream about New Kids On The Block wandering through the Burmese jungle and having their throats torn out by Rambo.

It's not a bad dream, just a recurring one.

Anyway, ever since the various members of New Kids On The Block - Mark Wahlberg's Brother, Jordan Whatshisname, Joey Thing and The Other Two – announced their reunion, it's been impossible to take it seriously, not least because we clearly remember a shambolic, drunk-looking New Kids On The Block in their last throes of fame on Live & Kicking in 1994.

But despite that – and despite a confusing denial of the reunion on New Kid Danny Wood's MySpace page – a brand-new New Kids On The Block song has appeared on the band's website. According to People:

The song (its name isn't revealed) plays over a promotional video for the band that says the Kids once had it all – a $1 billion in album sales, millions of fans, with music that "influenced a generation" – but then "walked away from it all." The video next teases the comeback, asking: "Are you ready?" 

Again, no. We're not ready. We'll have sandpapered off our skin and thrown ourselves into an acid bath before we're ready to watch a gang of men on the cusp of turning 40 dancing around in oversized dungarees singing cack-handed Paula Abdul rip-offs.

But anyway, the new New Kids On The Block song. Word is that all five bandmembers (Newies? Kiddies? Blockies? It's been so long) recorded the song in Florida in November.

We could go on and on about how the untitled New Kids On The Block song sounds like what Simon Cowell would force the winner of X Factor to sing if he wanted to write X Factor off as a bloody great tax loss, but we won't. And that's because you can hear the new New Kids On The Block song by clicking the link below.

Read more:

Exclusive Video - New Kids On The Block 

Yes, New Kids on the Block are rumoured to be coming back. That’s right; your favourite five heartthrobs – Jordan, Joey, Jonathon, Donnie and Donny – will be back in the flesh!  

Although, it’ll probably be more wrinkly, slightly saggy, muscle-tone free flesh this time around.  

New Kids on the Block, or as they’re also known by the convenient acronym NKOTB (it just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), have sent 30-year-old women all over the world searching for their Hangin’ Tough cassette singles since a recent posting on the band’s website which suggests a forthcoming reunion. No exact date listed for the comeback, but we’re sure it’ll be nicely timed with the coming of the Apocalypse.  

The band. comprised of Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight and Danny Wood, made their record debut in 1986, as pre-teen girls screamed and threw tear-soaked training bras at them during concerts. Since the group disbanded, each of the five members has gone on to find great success. And by great success we mean poor to mediocre attempts at music and film and melt into obscurity, providing things like VH1 with endless Where Are They Now? material.  

OK, OK. That’s not really true. Donnie Whalberg’s fame can really be pinpointed when you say his full legal name Donnie 'Mark Wahlberg’s brother' Wahlberg. There. That’s better.  

We know what you’re thinking. Will NKOTB change their name to Old Men At The Doctor Getting Their Prostate Checked, or Old Men On The Bankruptcy List (we seriously have a million of these. We could do this all day) to be current with the times? Probably not, because changing their name could mean they won’t have the same commercial success they did in the 80’s. Oh, wait, they’re not going to have the same commercial success that they did in the 80’s because these guys are neither new, nor kids, nor on any sort of block as far as we know.

The website also includes some nostalgic tidbits about the band that really have us fired up for what’s in store: 

"They rose from the streets of Boston," the site touts. "To become the biggest band in the world. They influenced a generation. They sold over 70 million albums and grossed more than one billion dollars.  Five multiplatinum albums, 10 top 10 singles, five number one singles. Then they walked away from it all. Millions of fans around the world await their return. Are you ready?" 

We fear that the question posed 'Are you ready?' is only rhetorical. Regardless of our thinly veiled, slightly sarcastic commentary on the return of NKOTB, we can’t help but scratch our heads and look at all of those record sales and wonder “why didn’t you boys listen to your mothers and save your money so you don’t have to hitch your wagon to the slightly depressing horse of band reunions?”  

We’ve just been through this reuniting garbage with the Spice Girls. We don’t need another reason to be depressed.  

Read More:

New Kids: Back On The Block? - Yahoo 

In fact, records show that every man, woman, child and animal on the face of the earth, living or dead, all tried to book a million tickets each for the Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London that's scheduled for next month. And such was the demand for Led Zeppelin tickets that a full Led Zeppelin reunion tour has long been rumoured, but always denied by the band itself. But now the cat might be out of the bag, because Led Zeppelin's support band has revealed that full comeback tour really is going to happen next year. And who have Led Zeppelin picked to support on such a colossal occasion? Pink Floyd? The Who? The Rolling Stones?

No. The Cult. You know. The Cult. They had that one song once.

We've had a busy few weeks as far as reunions go – first the Spice Girls got back together, then Boyzone… why any band would want to reform knowing that they'd be up against ageless titans like those two groups is beyond us, but still they persist. Like Led Zeppelin, for example.

If you thought that Led Zeppelin had just settled into a cushy retirement of fat royalty payments, topping fantasy supergroup wish-lists and getting a bit shitty with people on the internet, think again, because Led Zeppelin are back. And ahead of their strictly one-night comeback at the O2 arena next month, it's getting to be like the band never went away. True, to indicate their advancing years some of their lyrics have been changed – they'll be singing Stairlift To Heaven, Bloody Immigrant Song and The Song Remains The Same (It's All Bang Bang Bang These Days And It Hasn't Got A Proper Tune), plus when Robert Plant sings "When I feel you near me little girl, I know you are my one desire" in I Can't Quit You Baby, he could be referring to any woman up to the age of 55.

Anyway, in a roundabout way, what we're getting at is that Led Zeppelin have always said that their reunion concert would be a one-off to honour the memory of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Artegun, with rumours of a tour dismissed by Led Zeppelin themselves. But that doesn't seem to be the case any longer, thanks to blabby old Ian Astbury from The Cult.

According to reports, a Cincinnati club gig by The Cult on Saturday was punctuated by Ian Astbury letting the following slip to the four or five people who'd just gone into the venue to escape the rain:

"We'll be back next year. Because we're opening for a band you may have heard of … the name starts with an 'L' and has a 'Z' in it."

After a few seconds of frantic Countdown-style brow-furrowing – Liza Minnelli? Liz McClarnon from Atomic Kitten? Lorenzo da Firenze? – one unstoppable genius in the crowd screamed out "Led Zeppelin!" and to deafening cheers, Ian Astbury is reported to have 'nodded affirmatively and stuck his hand in the air triumphantly'.

In reality it was Liz McClarnon from Atomic Kitten that The Cult will be supporting all along, but Astbury didn't have the heart to let his fans down.

Oh, we're joking – as far as we know The Cult really are going to be supporting Led Zeppelin on their top-secret world tour next year. There's been no official confirmation from either The Cult or Led Zeppelin about it, though, so nothing's concrete. Especially for The Cult. Led Zeppelin won't be happy that Ian Astbury blew their secret plan before they could tell people themselves, so we'd be worried if we were him. After all, if the band can force a shark up a girl's mimsy just because they find her attractive, imagine what they'll do to a funny-looking blabbermouth like Astbury. 

And that's just as well, because last night that's exactly what they did. At the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in Hollywood last night, the world got its first taste of the full Spice Girls line-up singing live for almost a decade. And, weird World War II-inspired costumes aside, it seems as if the Spice Girls went down a storm and disappointed nobody. True, much of this was accomplished by the Spice Girls not stripping down to their Victoria's Secret underwear as a climax to the show – something that at least prevented everyone dying in that tidal wave of tears and vomit that we'd been anticipating.

There's nothing we can do to stop the Spice Girls comeback now, you know. After close to ten years of releasing solo albums to an increasingly apathetic world, getting knocked up by international footballers, international movie stars and the bloke out of Damage and failing to agree on a comeback more times that we could possibly care to count, the Spice Girls are back for a tour that starts in Los Angeles in 19 days' time before the girls zoom around the world shouting "Girl Power!" to groups of women in their early thirties who still don't really understand what it means – including a will-sapping 17-date residency at London's O2 arena.

But even if you can avoid the suffocating hype over the Spice Girls comeback tour, don't think that you'll escape that easily, either. You'll also have to contend with the Spice Girls Greatest Hits album, the unsettling new Spice Girls Children In Need video, the sofas that each of the Spice Girls are designing for a million quid a pop and the new Spice Girls Tesco advert, where Victoria Beckham gets to debut her highly-anticipated new acting style which involves yammering like a woman with a dangerously swollen tongue after visiting the world's angriest, most anesthetically-overzealous dentist.

And then there's Victoria's Secret. The Spice Girls have already agreed to only sell their Greatest Hits CD through Victoria's Secret in America, but last night saw part two of their nefarious lingerie-based masterplan take shape, as the girls performed at the televised Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at the Hollywood Kodak theatre.

Originally set to be headlined by Kanye West – who understandably pulled out after learning of his mother's death – the fashion show saw performances from will.i.am and a surely expectation-lowering duet between Seal and Heidi Klum. And then came the Spice Girls, enrapturing celebrity guests like Enrique Iglesias, Eva Longoria, Hilary Duff and Slash out of Guns N' Roses. In all, the Spice Girls performed Stop and new single Headlines while dressed as wartime floozies – and they apparently impressed Ryan Seacrest enough for him to declare:

"I'm in love with Victoria Beckham, which is probably an issue for David. They could have stood there and done nothing and I'd have been happy."

Having seen her in the Tesco advert, we expect that Victoria Beckham shot back with a well-timed:

"Blurbyblurblyblub blubbity-blub blub? BLUB!"

So consider the wheels of the Spice Girls comeback well and truly set in motion, and there's nothing any of us can do about it, except pray that part three of the Spice Girls' endorsement with Victoria's Secret doesn't involve a bras-out photo shoot. Honestly, we've already seen enough of Geri Halliwell to last us a lifetime. 

Yes, Boyzone – the most famous elderly Irish boyband after Westlife and Murtagh Fitzpatrick And The Clodpoopers – are reforming, but there's a hitch. Boyzone wanted their comeback single to be I Gave It All Away, a song written by inexplicably popular annoyance Mika – but Mika's not having it. That's a good thing, because when a band interprets a songwriter's work, the result is often a brand-new, unique piece of music spliced equally from each party's DNA like a baby – and we can all agree that a part-Mika/ part-Boyzone baby would probably end up looking and sounding a lot like the disfigured genetically-deformed mutant puppy from The Fly II.

Although the reunions of Take That and the Spice Girls have shown that there's definitely a market for cacky old past-it pop groups transparently trying to make a quick buck for as long as they can bear looking at each other for, the failure of the All Saints comeback and the East 17 comeback proved that it's just as easy for these comebacks to fail.

So right now it could go either way for Boyzone, the Westlife-inventing Irish boyband responsible for Ronan Keating, that bloke who used to be on Coronation Street, him out of Love Island, the one who looks like he's spent the last decade sobbing, The Other One and – to a lesser extent – Louis Walsh. This week Boyzone reported that they were reforming after what seems to be a painfully short amount of time. We would have reported it, but we were too busy crying.

But the Boyzone reunion isn't without its obstacles. And not the obvious obstacle, either – the obstacle of Ronan Keating being so completely punch-worthy that the other Boyzone members would be so busy thinking about slapping him in his stupid smug face that they'd never get any work done – but another obstacle. It's been reported that Boyzone wanted to use I Gave It All Away, a song written by infuriating one-hit wonder Mika, as their lead comeback single with a performance on Children In Need to promote it. However, Mika has refused to let Boyzone release it because he apparently thinks that Boyzone are 'too cheesy' – a little like Dr Harold Shipman chiding Fred West for being 'too murdery.'

The Sun quotes an 'industry insider' as saying:

"Mika wrote the song and made it available for other artists. Boyzone loved it. They thought it was perfect to launch their comeback so they recorded it and it sounded great – a certain No 1. Just like the track, Mika gave it all away. But then he took it back again."

While in the short-term this is an obvious win-win for all involved – because the end result of a Boyzone/ Mika hybrid would invariably sound like a gang of dullards trying to mimic a twelfth-rate Freddie Mercury impersonator with a keychange in the middle where everyone stands up, and almost certainly the very worst thing your ears would have ever heard – it might be worth taking all this with a pinch of salt.

Because, after all, Boyzone's manager used to be Louis Walsh – a man who'd happily feed any old bullshit to the press so long as he got a speck of publicity out of it – so the truth is probably that Mikey Graham from Boyzone just saw Mika from his cardboard box outside Woolworths and asked for some change, to which Mika replied "I gave it all away. Plus I need the money I do have for when people work out I'm rubbish and stop buying my records in a few months' time."

Or something.