Village People are trying to shake down Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver's amusing promo for his American Road Trip series has upset The Village People. The trail featured Oliver dressed up in the same fancy dress used by the band, and this, they reckon, is a copyright infringement:

Anyone who thinks the Village People are little more than a fun-at-the-time 1970s disco band with hits including YMCA and In The Navy needs to think again. According to John Giacobbi, the British lawyer pursuing Channel 4 on their behalf, "the Village People are still a huge, multimillion-dollar global business."

The name and costumes are trademarked in the US, and hundreds of commercial requests are dealt with every year, said Giacobbi. There was, he said, no such request from Channel 4.

How on earth did 'dressing like a policeman or builder' ever get a trademark approval? It's fancy dress. I know 'copyright, trademark and patent law in the US is fundamentally broken' is hardly a new insight, but even so...

Channel 4 don't seem overly worried by the threats, anyway. Presumably they're happy that there's always the defence of parody to fall back on.

Rachel Ray: at least it's not Toploader

Rachel Ray's decision to hold an indie-meets-food event as part of SXSW hasn't exactly delighted all the world's music bloggers: there's a sense that a daytime TV celebrity cook shouldn't be turning up on the fringes of alt-rockery holding gigs.

Ray says she's not bothered:

I'm not aware about what blogs were saying about me," Ray told MTV News on Tuesday. "To be honest, I have five jobs, so I'm aware of what I have to do for them when we get up in the morning. But I don't see why we'd be out of place down there, when we're just fans of music who decided to put on a show. I guess if they don't like good music, and they don't like good food, they don't have to go."

To be fair to Ray, she's got a point - it's not like SXSW is exactly free from commercial influence anyway, and the appearance of Holy Fuck on the bill suggests that someone in the Ray organisation is happy to embrace something more than just the most Jay-Leno-friendly bands for the event.

We suspect, though, it's not Ray's personal choice, as her "I love indie, honestly" defence sounds a little like your younger brother trying to impress a girl rather than heartfelt love of Holy Fuck:

"My husband and I listened to a bunch of discs and picked our favorites," Ray explained. "We also have Sirius, so we're always listening to the Left of Center program, which is how we heard the Raveonettes. With a band like [Holy F---], I have to say that it was the name that got us listening. But we're glad we did. They're pretty good.

"And I don't understand why that's so surprising. I find it weird that they find it weird. People think I'm like this food robot or something, but music is a huge part of my life," she continued. "I'm a huge fan of rock music in general — all kinds. I like indie stuff, my favorite band is the Foo Fighters. When I first met my husband, he told me what he made for dinner the night before, and I thought, 'OK, well, he can cook.' And then he told me he had a band and I was like, 'Aw, jeez. I hope they're good,' because I couldn't deal with someone who didn't play good music."

"I've got quite eclectic taste, I have a satellite radio and a Foo Fighters album." So, maybe she'd have been more at home backstage at the Brits than down in Austin for SXSW, but still: indie survived Cookin: Jamie Oliver's Music To Cook By; it'll survive 30 minutes with Rachel Ray.

Britney pulls fat out of fire

Britney's quit that ill-fated restuarant deal. We're hoping this is part of an bilateral agreement with Jamie Oliver that he won't put out any more records.