Great Escape: That's better

@Jamesthegill has just alerted me via the magic of Twitter to this, by @BeALittleBrave, which is the 2015 Great Escape line-up with the same criteria as applied to the Reading bill:

It can be done (and it's a much more interesting collection of acts. And not just because there's no Limp Bizkit on it.)

Reading 2015: It's so boy-boy

This from Viv Albertine's Twitter feed:

On the right, the Reading-Leeds bill announced so far. On the left: the bands with female members.

Two days with not a single woman on either the main or second stage. One stage without any women at all.

It's a pretty poor show.

Gordon in the morning: No, don't tell me more

It's not just the big splash story on the Bizarre site this morning, but it gets the full "by Gordon Smart, showbiz editor" byline.

What revelation could be worthy of such attention?

Erm, that Wayne Rooney quite likes Grease.

Still, it allows Gordon to attempt to force some gender warfare down our throats:

That's a schoolboy error, Mr Rooney. It's a film for teenage girls.
[...]
All of those years sharing a TV remote with Coleen must've affected his mind.

Bizarre HQ will raid the Christmas party piggybank and send him the Die Hard and Rocky box-sets immediately.

Because, naturally, that's what boys watch.

Bookmarks - internet stuff: Sissy bounce

The New York Times introduces its readers to sissy bounce (even dusting off the phrase "gender bending" in the process):

And then something remarkable happened. The crowd — just about evenly divided between men and women — instantly segregated itself: the men were propelled as if by a centrifuge toward the room’s perimeters, and the dance floor, a platform raised just a step off the ground, was taken over entirely by women surrounding Freedia. The women did not dance with, or for, one another — they danced for Freedia, and they did so in the most sexualized way imaginable, usually with their backs to her, bent over sharply at the waist, and bouncing their hips up and down as fast as humanly possible, if not slightly faster. Others assumed more of a push-up position, with their hands on the floor, in a signature dance whose name is sometimes helpfully shortened to “p-popping.”

Erykah Badu: My tush? You couldn't handle my tush

Any suspicion that Erykah Badu's naked-on-the-knoll video was merely a publicity stunt designed to try and restart a career which had been sat for a while on the hard shoulder will now melt away as she tells Vibe it was actually just a political statement:

The singer also received backlash simply for disrobing in a video; online commentators suggested she was using sex to sell her music.

Badu scoffed at that notion, though.

"I look at some other videos. I'm not naming names, because I don't want that to be mentioned. There is the thing with sexuality," Badu told Vibe. "I'm naked for 13 seconds, and these people are naked the whole time and gyrating and saying come 'lick on my lollipop' and 'suck on my cinnamon roll' and, you know, suggesting sex. People are uncomfortable with sexuality that's not for male consumption. Could be 'cause I did it in public too. Do you think people would have been complaining if I had on high-heel shoes?"

Her protests are only slightly undermined by her whipping her clothes off for the cover of the Vibe as well. I expect that's there's some subtle point I'm missing.

Placebo: First encounters

New-ish Placebo drummer Steve Forrest nearly set himself up for a sit com moment thanks to a scant knowledge of late 90s British androgopop:

Yes, he tells my paper from Sydney, Australia, where Placebo were touring recently, he even thought lead androgynous singer Brian Molko, 37, was a girl.

He recalls: "My tour manager played a Placebo CD and I said, 'This chick's cool. She has a really good voice'."

It was only later, when Forrest met Molko in person, that he realised Molko is a guy.

... and only then after two or three weeks, when he realised he peed standing up. It says here.

You'd have to think that Molko would probably be flattered and delighted if someone thought he was an actual girl. Providing it wasn't an ugly girl.

Gordon in the morning: Not by popular demand

Lady GaGa seems to be tiring of the story that she's a hermaphrodite, prompting Gordon to once again run a video where it looks a bit like she's got a penis.

Watch it below to decide for yourself...

A couple of seconds of a lumpy skirt shot from an awkward angle. That's certainly all the evidence I need to judge a complex question about gender identity.

She also said in a recent web blog: "I have both male and female genitalia, but I consider myself a female."

I think that might have been "laughing it off", Gordon.

It's not clear why Gordon is so exercised by this question, unless - having run so many pictures of GaGa for his readers to look at (indeed, to look at themselves silly over), he has a strange worry at the back of his mind that he's looking at a man.

Dizzee Rascal, meanwhile, is less than impressed with the Olympics building work. He's said that it's doing nothing for the people of East London and all it has done is turned the place into a massive "building hole". It's an important question - the Olympics were pitched as being as much about the area as some sort of national pride, and if it's not delivering, then we need to be asking why. And it's lucky that someone from the area who is able to articulate the issues is willing to break ranks from the 'smile, it's for your own good' approach.

But is he being taken seriously?

Dizzee’s rap for Bonkers Olympics

Apparently not.

And with Robbie apparently back on the hero side of the Gordon Smart board, we're in for a lot more of this sort of thing, where James Corden gives his opinion on the new record. He likes it, but then he apparently also thought those Horne & Corden scripts were worth turning into a television programme to show to people.

Still, it gives another chance for Gordon to push the album:

Yesterday I gave the exclusive first review of his comeback single Bodies.

It's a cracker and on course for the No1 spot after it is released on October 12.

Blimey - Gordo is somehow getting sales figures for eight weeks' time?

You'd have thought the discovery that Corden and - god help us - Phil Taylor had also had exclusive first listens (before Gordon's self-trumpeted first listen, by the sound of it) might have given pause. But, no, endorsements is endorsements:

The Power gave the album top marks too.

And if it's good enough for Taylor, Corden and Moyles, it's good enough for me.

Evidently, yes. But isn't that a bit like praising food by saying "if it'll do for Kentucky Fried Chicken, it'll do for me..."

Mr & Mrs Sting must pay for discrimination

The chef sacked from Sting and Trudie Styler's employment for the sin of being pregnant has been awarded nearly £25,000 in damages. The tribunal commented that Jane Martin had surprised them by seeking a low level of recompense:

In his judgment, the tribunal chairman, James Simpson, stated that the level of compensation for Miss Martin's hurt feelings was set after that amount was requested by her legal representative Michael Norman.

He said the tribunal panel had expected the claim would have been much higher.

Mr Simpson added: "The tribunal was therefore surprised when Mr Norman, for the claimant, suggested the figure of £10,000 and that the claimant was not seeking aggravated damages or costs."

Lake House Estate, the company through which Sting and Trudie had employed Ms Martin until she had been so maddeningly female, have been given leave to appeal against both the judgement and the level of the award.