Sean Combs changes his name all the sodding time. In fact, since you woke up Sean Combs has gone by the name of Diddy, Doddy, Doo-Doo, Danglebum, Dinkledrawers and Rao Maldeo Rathore.
With all this prolific name changing, it was only a matter of time before Sean Combs stepped on someone's toes. And now it's finally happened – Diddy has been banned from calling himself Diddy in the UK because a man who once remixed a Blondie song 12 years ago is already called Diddy. Undeterred, Sean Combs is still planning on releasing his new single Come To Me in the UK under the assumed name Barry Manilow, since he's mostly sure that nobody by that name has ever existed.
By rights, Diddy – the Sean Combs Diddy, not the other one – should be the happiest man alive right now. After finding out that his girlfriend was pregnant, Diddy then discovered that he was actually going to become the father of twins, a fact which seemed to please him because it meant he could call himself a "champion" with even less irony than ever before. However, it would be deeply unlike Diddy to do anything without something going wrong – witness the book deal that Diddy couldn't be arsed with or the plane he was in that got struck by lightning – and so, while his personal life seems rosy, Diddy's professional career has hit the skids – in the UK at least – and all because when Sean Combs changed his name from P Diddy to Diddy he neglected to remember that there was already a Diddy living in the UK. BBC News reports:
The rapper, also known as Puff Daddy and Puffy, agreed to pay more than £110,000 to settle out of court with Richard "Diddy" Dearlove. Dearlove, best known for his dance remix of the Blondie hit Atomic, had used the name since 1992. "I'm really happy and relieved," Dearlove told the Guardian newspaper.
Oh come on, don't play dumb, you know who Richard "Diddy" Dearlove is – apart from his Atomic remix, which we're fairly sure we've never heard, Richard "Diddy" Dearlove also had a storming 1997 hit Give Me Love, which hit the heady heights of number 23 in the charts. Anyone? No?
And now that the name Diddy is the exclusive right of some bloke who nobody has ever heard of, Sean Combs must invent a new name for himself in the UK for his forthcoming Come To Me single and subsequent album, or else not bother releasing it at all.
We know exactly what you're thinking here, and we agree completely. Also, we'd like to add that anyone who can coerce the Duchess Of York into similarly suing Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas has our full backing. Anything that means we don't have to hear that rubbish London Bridge song any more.
Read more:
Rap Star Loses Diddy Name Rights – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]