Gordon in the morning: The victimless crime

There are victimless crimes. There are even crimes which create more people who are better off than they would otherwise have been.

The theft of Will I Am's penisesque sports car has given us all a breathing space, it turns out:

Now it turns out a number of rough demos were stored in the motor, and the sneaky thieves have started releasing them on the internet.

Will's so determined to give fans a polished, finished product - he's postponed the album's release for a month to give him time to write new songs.

The Voice judge took to Twitter yesterday to vent his frustration and announce the delay.

In a series of posts, he wrote: "I'm trying to finish #willpower... & now because of all the leaks I have push (sic) the album back to make new songs...

"When songs are incomplete and your valuables were stolen and people leak your unfinished material... I have a right to vent.

"My car was stolen & my bag with my hard drive & music was in it... my car was found, but my bag wasn't & now they're leaking songs."

Will I Am got his car back, and we've got a breathing space without having another slew of Am songs dumped onto us. If they find the people responsible, they'll be getting five pounds from the parish box, surely?

Seriously: it must be frustrating for the Big I Am to have lost his work, although it's a bit bemusing why, if these are only rough sketches of the songs he feels he has to junk the whole lot and start all over again. It's not like when you buy a song you might not have heard another version of it before - perhaps live, or as a session track.

What makes it odder still is that apparently the car was stolen outside a listening party for the finished album a month or so ago.

So if the worry is that the demo versions might trump the finished versions, why not just get the apparently-ready-to-go album straight out there?

The other strange question is what sort of chump thinks 'I'm going to play my album to execs and friends tonight, so I should probably dig out the rough demos and leave them lying around in my car when I do that'?

A cynic might wonder if the listening party was a bit of a flop, the tracks failed to be embraced, and the missing car gave a chance to construct an elaborate story to cover junking the disappointing first attempt and Will being sent back to the studio to see if he couldn't do better.

Nah. That would never happen, would it?

And while we're looking at the great smouldering kitchen...

US readers are being told to get ready to panic:

Yes, while the rest of use thought it was a question of shuffling out after a bit of a grease fire in a kitchen, for US Magazine, it was the second Great Fire Of London.

Will.i.am: You and me both, mate

It turns out that Will.i.am is sick to death of the lyrics to My Humps.

It's only taken six years for him to catch up with all other sentient life on the planet, then.

Will.i.am not iTunes fan

Ridiculously-named-and-punctuated welcome-outstayer Will.i.am is warning people about iTunes and the potential capacity for evil therein:

"Believe me, I love Apple...but iTunes shouldn't be the answer," said Will.IAm in his keynote address at the Grammy Foundation's 13th annual Entertainment Law Initiative Luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "[For artists], it should be the scariest thing in the world."

Will.I.am described the plight of the modern musician as "like selling echoes" and pushed the need for young singers and songwriters to become experts in computer science so they may better benefit from a fast-paced marketplace.

To be fair, we've got little to go on other than a brief gloss in the Hollywood Reporter, so perhaps he did stand up his comments on iTunes a little more solidly; from this, though, it's clear that Mr Am has long since crossed from the artists to the side of the Incumbent Music Industry. iTunes shouldn't be any more scary than WalMart; in fact, because it's open to much more catalogue and will deal with anyone, it's a lot less scary than WalMart. Surely?

The idea that selling music is like selling echoes is quite an acute phrase; but suggesting that computer science is the answer sounds more like a bloke who has recently signed on with Intel trying to justify his salary rather than a considered opinion.

The point about a warm digital world is that musicians and customers shouldn't need to know anything about computer science, unless they want to. It should be like a car - easy to pick the one you need, easy to drive and reluctant to fail. If every musician needs to be able to solder a motherboard and code an online store, that's a failure of technology.

The DIY ethos is brilliant, but nobody ever thought you should take nightschool lessons in how to maintain a photocopier before you started a punk fanzine.

Understanding the marketplace; loving the software: yes. But being a computer scientist? Nice but not essential, surely?

Gordon in the morning: Will I Aint

Gordon's henchman Sean Hamilton has met up with Will.I.Am. And Billy sobbed like a teenager on the third pint, because nobody wants to have the sex with him:

I was always the homie, the friend, rather than the lover.

"I'd have a crush on a girl and she'd say, 'I don't know, Will, I see you as my brother'."

I think we've all been around long enough to know a nicely wrapped 'not if you were the last man on Earth' when we hear one.

But Am isn't unattractive, he's got a bob or two, and he dresses quite well. Why would women find his advances the moment when they reach for the bargepole? What do you say, Will, that tanks your chances?

"I'm not a gold digger, I'm a boob digger. I like boobs."

Ah. Stuff like that would probably do it.

Gordon in the morning: Booth, hiss

There's only one story in the big-box-at-the-top of the Bizarre homepage this morning, a we're at war style proposition. What can it be?

After changing out of her stage clothes into a red mini dress, Cheryl - who split with love rat hubby ASHLEY COLE in February - joined Will [Mr I.Am] in the DJ booth and didn't leave his side for the rest of the night.

The pair cuddled and danced together in full view of the other guests but were careful to keep people guessing about the full extent of their relationship.

They were cuddling and kissing but "kept people guessing"? What do you mean, Gordon? They didn't shag each other up their respective chute-holes in the nightclub?

Still, 'Cheryl and William in a DJ box' is enough for The Sun to have a punning attempt at the nature of their relationship:

Will and Cheryl have decks

'Decks'? Do you see? I suppose we should be offering up a silent prayer of thanks they didn't go with 'drops his needle in the groove'.

In other Girls Aloud non-news, Gordon senses something's up:

MORE trouble could be brewing in the Girls Aloud camp.

SARAH HARDING missed bandmate Cheryl Cole's gig to see GRACE JONES just across town.

Yes. If you don't go to every single gig your bandmate does, and choose instead to see a one-off date by a living legend, it's clearly some sort of snub. Clearly.

Won't someone please think of the ordinary Chinese?

Interesting watching those banking large cheques from the Chinese government trying to justify taking part in their marketing campaign. Latest to flap in the wind is Will.I.Am, who clearly isn't going to turn down a big payday just because the money is coming from a repressive government:

The star called the recent crackdown in Tibet "messed up", but asked whether it was right to "punish a whole country".

"If America really wants to make a difference, it should stop importing China's products and pay back its debt," he added.

Aha. So, it would be wrong to "punish" a country by not letting them hear his music (is the whole country going to his gig, then?) but it'd be better to not buy their stuff - presumably, then, forcing ordinary Chinese out of work is, in Will.I.Am's crazy world less of a blow to them than not getting to hear about the super-rich in one city turning out to hear a Black Eyed Pea gig.

"They have all this Chinese boycott stuff - they want to boycott the games," he said, "but do the people get punished when they have nothing to do with what's going on?"

He hasn't quite understood how cultural boycotts work, has he? The idea is to remove legitimacy from a regime by stopping treating it like it's a normal nation doing normal things. We don't know if Mr. Am wants to spend some time reading about the powerful effects of the sporting and cultural boycotts of apartheid South Africa, if he ever gets a chance between balancing his pocketbooks.

"If you boycott China, when do they boycott America for what we're doing in Iraq?" he added.

Well, yes. That would kind of be the point, wouldn't it?

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?

It turns out, yes, Will.I.Am is delighted to turn the other cheek.

Michael Jackson's comeback: remember why he went away?

Michael Jackson has something of a problem. Since all he's done in the last, ooh, twenty years is get accused of being too close to young boys, promise benefit records that never materialise, gone to court more times than Virgina Wade and run out of cash, he needs to re-establish himself in the world's hearts.

He's decided the best way to do this - not to mention the laziest way - is to rework a track from back when the world used to treat him with respect. Rather than as the punchline to a "nose falling off" gag.

So he's reworked a song from Thriller. Unfortunately, he's chosen to rerecord The Girl Is Mine, the clunkiest, biggest stinker on that album. Yes, The Girl Is Mine. Only with Will.I.Am in the Paul McCartney role.

This is going to be followed by a whole album, comprising of remixes of Thriller. Remixed by the likes of Akon - a young man following the footsteps of Jackson, of course. With the embarrassing sexual misunderstandings involving children.

So, Jackson is taking his one, unquestioned achievement, and having it mucked about with. Nothing says "I have ceased to mean anything" than needing a Kanye West remix to even get a slot in the racks at FYE.