Well if we don't mention it, no-one else is likely to. Happy Birthday Nic! May you get the best present you could ever wish for, namely the death of Chris Moyles in a painful, unpleasant way. Possibly involving cacti.

We hope you're well. We're fine and are currently ridiculously obsessed with the Ting Tings. Thank you.

Labels: Birthdays, Girls Aloud, Nicola Roberts, Ting Tings

All good things must come to an end. And so, as it turns out, do mediocre things, as we've decided to close the doors on Talent in a Previous Life. Please, try to contain your indifference.

We've been doing this site for almost four and a half years, which is longer than most pop bands last, and during those years we've covered all manner of pop events, backed various songs and artists who promptly failed to do anything whatsoever, blogged our way through three series of X Factor, two of Celebrity Big Brother, more episodes of Top of the Pops than we care to think about and written far too much about Nicola Roberts than is really healthy. We sat through the entirety of both Live 8 and Live Earth, even if we were the only people to do the latter, we've covered pretty much everything Girls Aloud have gotten up to since their inception, we've covered more lists than Schott's Almanac and stated 950 things about various people and things. We gave the world a number of slash fiction parodies, took on a fashion correspondent and came up with a number of ill fated attempts at regular features, some of which lasted longer than others before screeching to a halt in an ignomious fashion. In short we've written a hell of a lot of words since 2003 and some of them have even manages to be entertaining.

But, despite all that, we feel that it's time to bow out gracefully while we're still, if not quite at the top, not yet tumbling backwards down the hill onto the sharp rocks of indifference as we end up churning out material just for the sake of posting something.

However! As the Klaxons once sang, on an 18-30 I met Julius Caesar, Lady Diana and Mother Theresa. Or, slightly more relevantly, it's not over, not over, not over, not over yet, as we are widening our horizons with a brand new site, Thickipedia, with which we hope to provide a wealth of knowledge about the world, delivered in our the style you've come to love and expect from us. Well, expect anyway. In many ways it'll be the same jokes we always do, but delivered in a slightly different context in the hope that this gives them the sheen of originality.

So. Farewell then. We'd just like to thank everyone who has commented on articles, sent us tips and CDs and mp3s and opinions, e-mailed us to say nice things about the site or threatened us with misspelt declarations of violence after we said something nasty about one of your favourite bands, but most of all we'd like to thank everyone who's read the site over the last four and a half years. We may or may not have made you laugh, but we've certainly enjoyed trying.

See you at the Thickipedia. Good night.

Well, we were going to write something about the new Girls Aloud album today, but our copy has so far resolutely refused to drop through our letterbox. We are going to assume an innocent explanation for the delay for now, but if we here our postman walking down the street whistling future-pop electro anthems of incomparable genius then, frankly, there’s going to be hell to pay.

Instead, we shall turn our attentions towards the news that MTV has just launched it’s sixtieth - 60! - channel. Admittedly at least half of the sixty are time shifted “Plus One” channels, but even so this is still quite an impressive feat. It does, after all, take a certain amount of dedication and persistence to have that much airtime at your disposal and yet still use it for nothing more interesting than repeating the same episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen over and over again. The latest channel to join the family is MTV Arabic, part of MTV’s efforts to celebrate the world’s cultural diversity and local quirks by showing the same Hogan knows Best and Pimp My Ride style rubbish that the rest of the world sees, only with subtitles. But if that’s channel sixty, what are the other stations that MTV is pumping out to an increasingly disinterested world? Let’s have a look, shall we?

• Erm, TV? - Interactive channel in which a parade of androgynous types appear on screen and viewers are invited to text in and guess whether they’re a real woman or just a convincing transvestite.
  
• MTV+10 - Time shifted channel allowing those who were out doing stuff this time ten years ago a chance to catch the MTV shows they missed. Tonight, it’s 1997 and the powers that be still seem to find Tim Kash strangely employable.
  
• TMV - Special dyslexic version of the main channel.
  
• MTV Antarctica - Broadcasting a special mix of programs designed to appeal to an audience made up largely of penguins. Pingu features more heavily here than in other MTV demographics. Was original considered to be a really cool channel but support seems to be melting away, which is only to be expected in the current climate.
  
• DMTV - Edits down music videos to only show the participants shoes. According to the station’s charter they don’t have to be Doc Martins, but in practice this is all they’ve shown.
  
• NTV - Rubbish section of Noel’s House Party in which viewers were asked to suspend their disbelief and believe that a member of the public genuinely did not expect to be suddenly appearing on TV, having a chat with Noel Edmonds, despite the fact their TV had a camera on the top of it, there was a massive outside broadcast truck outside there house and that they’d been asked to sign a release form just thirty minutes before the broadcast began.
  
• MTV Germany - Dedicated to highlighting the best of German pop. And then broadcasts the same old American stuff for the remaining 23 hours, 55 minutes of the day.
  
• Gee! MTV - Nostalgia channel dealing entirely with the music scene of the fifties. Not to be confused with Gee-Gee MTV which only broadcasts jockey’s bemoaning the lack of horse racing related themes in modern music videos.
  
• Elm TV - Misguided attempt to rebrand Robert Englund, the actor behind Freddy Krueger, as a VJ. This aim was hampered mainly by Robert’s insistence on playing Dokken’s Dream Warriors, the theme tune to Nightmare on Elm Street 3, ever twenty minutes, before spending the next ten minutes declaring it to be the greatest song ever written before going on to explain in unnecessary detail why he feels this to be the case, which, at it’s most basic, boils down to the fact he’s in the video. This station replaced the old mtV station which Robert also fronted. And is also the geekiest joke we’ve ever written.
  
• Hem TV - Catering for an older, more mature, female audience, this alternates hop hop videos with advice on sewing. Most famous for it’s “From bitch to stitch” tagline.
  
• MTV Robbie - A station dedicated to Robbie Williams, filling its hours with Robbie news, Robbie videos, Robbie interviews and people just chatting about what they imagine Robbie might be doing right now. This station currently only broadcasts inside Robbie’s head.
  
• MTV Base - Essentially the same as normal MTV, only with more swearing and knob gags.
  
• MTVXXX - All nude version of the main channel. Recently taken off the air after viewers proved to be less keen on seeing Tim Westwood hosting Pimp My Ride without even a hint of bling than focus groups had originally indicated.
  
• MT Me - It’s output consists entirely of viewer-generated content, and even then only content that you, specifically you, generate. Subscription involves a special team of MTV engineers coming round to your house and fitting a high tech facilitator portal to your television, allowing you to take part in this new revolution in television. Suspicions that all they do is come round and fit a giant mirror to your TV are entirely correct.
  
• MTV Music - Experimental channel which broadcasts nothing but music videos all day long. Bosses don’t expect this format to catch on.

Labels: Lists, MTV, TV

Not dead, just hibernating.

Yes, it's been a while, hasn't it? And we'd like to give you some fantastic story as to why we've been somewhat lacking in the update department, but ultimately it comes down to three reasons; One, we've been very lazy recently. Two, we've been feeling a little disillusioned with the world of Pop recently, and Three, we've been very lazy recently. We realise reasons One and Three are identical, but it is very relevant, so we felt it deserved being mentioned twice.

Reason two on the other hand comes from the fact that we've been finding it hard to get enthusiastic about a music world where the British public can happily send what is little more than the sound of a tin of gloss paint committed to CD, also known as the new Leona Lewis single, to the number one slot and, as if that wasn't bad enough, demonstrate a genuine hunger and enthusiasm for the prospect of a Boyzone reunion. We're sure you'll agree that, regardless of all the good stuff going on in the background, and there is a lotta good stuff out there, it's hard to feel celebratory with that lot taking centre stage.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that we're pondering changing the focus of the site and going off in a slightly different direction, although we're not quite sure exactly where yet, hence our silence over the last few weeks. Although whatever we decide it'll probably end up being much the same as this but with a broader remit. Certainly we'll no doubt use the same jokes that we normally use, but they'll seem slightly fresher in a different context.

We're not quite sure when we'll 'relaunch' yet, as a stopgap measure we were planning on doing some coverage of Cerys Matthews in I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, but as so far she's done nothing more than stand around looking Welsh - which, frankly, is more than enough entertainment for us, but doesn't really lend itself to a lot of humorous commentary - there's not been a lot to write about. We'll keep an eye on things though and see what we can do.

Oh, and the headline for this piece? It relies on both the knowledge that Cerys is in the Croc Creek camp of I'm a Celeb and that she had a small vocal part on the They Might Be Giants track Cyclops Rock. See, this is why we need to take a break!

Labels: Boyzone, Cerys Matthews, I'm a Celebrity, Leona Lewis, Naval Gazing

Our look at Saturday’s X Factor is on its way but, as is pretty obvious and, indeed, regular, we’ve been overcome by a bout of laziness, but we have a good reason, and it’s not just that we’ve become addicted to the reruns of Whose Line is it Anyway on Dave, although that is a factor. No, instead it’s because we’ve recently got ourselves a guitar, with the sole intention of having some indie style hits. Well, we’ve heard the Enemy’s album so really, how hard can it be?

It’s a slightly bigger task than you might expect, so we’ve set ourselves the goal of learning The View‘s Same Jeans by Christmas time, after which we’ll change not a note of it, sing some slightly different words over it, claim it as an original song and we should easily get a top three hit out of it. It’s only fair, it is what they did to Cornershop‘s Brimful of Asha to get their hit, after all.

Our education is going well, though, our first song, currently entitled One Badly Played Chord is already better than anything The Pigeon Detectives have ever released. Certainly the adulation we’re receiving from our neighbours, who constantly bang on our flat’s walls in appreciation of our music, is giving us encouragement to keep going, although we do wish they’d wait until we finished playing before they offered up their applause substitute.

Giving that we now plan on living each day of our life like an international pop star, we’ve been taking an even closer interest in the charts and new release schedule than normal, and it’s safe to say that upcoming competition is pretty lacking. The biggest one is probably the new Spice Girls‘ track which is even more half arsed and unimaginative that we’d even dared to think. It’s for charity as well, so we can only feel sorry for the children in whose name this is being released.

Chico also crawled out from whatever rock he’s been lurking under to release Curvy Cola Bottle Body, a track which has caused the people behind the Oxford English Dictionary to order a mass recall of their reference work as they’re now forced to redefine the meaning of the word ‘awful’. His heart is almost in the right place, though, as this track rails against the trend towards slimming down to size 0, although it does ignore the fact that size zero doesn’t actually exist in the British sizing system, but size 4 isn’t quite as catchy a tabloid term. Unfortunately what Chico doesn’t realise is that by letting the world know that he prefers girls who are a bit curvier, every woman in the country is now desperately slimming down in the hope that they’ll never have to deal with his lecherous attentions.

We’re also not too sure about the new Girls Aloud track. But we’re sure it’ll prove to be a grower. Right? Right.

Labels: Chico, Girls Aloud, Guitar, News, Reviews, Spice Girls

X Factor was supposed to go ‘live’ last night, but apparently the unappealing antics of a bunch of thick necked is considered to be more important. Although it is, admittedly, quite hard to think of many occasions where the X Factor would be given priority. Anyway, once it does go live, we’ll once again be bringing you our weekly look at each show’s events, although we may be somewhat hindered this year as, despite having watched all the audition and boot camp shows, we have only the vaguest idea who this year’s finalists actually are, which is a testament either to the dullards who’ve they’ve got lined up this year or the poor state of our concentration skills. Still, it’s not like our ignorance on a subject has ever stopped as having an opinion on it in the past. Indeed, it’s practically de rigueur.

Anyway, as we prepare for what will undoubtedly once again be the year’s biggest demonstration of how charisma free the nation likes its popstars to be, we’d like to give you our X Factor Bingo Card of Inevitability. Simply print off and, as the weeks go by, score off the events listed below as and when they happen and, once you get either four corners, a line or a full house, feel free to throw it away. We don't particularly care.

Sharon attempts to flirt with a male contestant in a rather uncomfortable, vomit inducing way.	Contestant declares that they “Really want it”, unaware that that reasoning didn’t wash with Santa when they were a kid and it certainly won’t wash now	Louis likens a black performer to be like a “Young Diana Ross”, regardless of who they are, how they sound or, indeed, what gender they are.	Audience boo and cheer on cue like a pack of Pavlovian dogs	Family members of contestant are in the audience wearing cheaply printed t-shirts declaring them to be part of Team Whoever as if dignity is nothing more than a passing concern for them.
Louis attempts to flirt with a female contestant in a rather unconvincing way	Someone spontaneously decides to do a Westlife song that just so happens to be released on the Monday after the show’s broadcast	Contestant gets chided for not stepping out of their comfort zone and playing it safe	Simon Cowell forgets where he is and calls a contestant a cunt	A special guest mentor is declared as a legend for no better reason than they’ve got a greatest hits coming out
Dannii Minogue sits there, looking like a spare wheel	Contestant mimes picking up the phone and sending a text message, unaware that in sign language they’ve just questioned the virtue of the viewing public’s mothers.	Contestant gets chided for stepping out of their comfort zone and cocking it up	The judges entirely spontaneously decide to throw water over each other	Contestant starts crying when Simon Cowell throws them a vague crumb of approval
’Tension‘ is assumed to be the same thing as ‘Pausing‘	The studio audience reach such an unbelievable fever pitch of excitement at the events unfolding that they’ve clearly been starved of any sort of entertainment since the age of 2 to get so much out of some vaguely competent singing.	No-one mentions Steve Brookstein. Or Kate.	Louis will labour under the delusion that people will vote for anyone, no matter how awful they might be, simply because they come from their local area	The X Factor tour will be heavily promoted early on in the series, long before the audience gets a chance to realise just how poor a night out that would be.
Louis and Simon bicker tediously in a manner only one step removed from saying “I know you are, but what am I?”	Any contestant with a child/death sob story/child death sob story will wheel it out at every opportunity in a cynical bid to manipulate the emotions of the audience.	Losing contestant declares that we haven’t seen the last of them, safe in the knowledge that there’s at least one week’s worth of appearances on the Xtra Factor and This Morning lined up before we get to see the last of them.	Choirs are used by Simon like an emotional Mr Muscle, reaching the parts that the contestant themselves can’t reach.	Slowly but surely, the viewing audience lose the will to live and commit suicide by swallowing the remote control and suffocating

Labels: Bingo, TV, X Factor 2008

Is there anything more exciting than discovering what your favourite band’s latest release is going to be called?

Well, yes, clearly. Actually hearing the latest release for example, or going on a rollercoaster, or nearly getting knocked down by a motorbike, or picking away at a bit of dried up glue… the list goes on, and on. In fact, the only thing in the world that’s less exciting than discovering what your favourite band’s latest release is going to be called would be reading a list of every thing that’s more exciting than discovering what your favourite band’s latest release is going to be called, but as it’s the only news we’ve got to cover today we’ve gotta at least try and build it up.

Anyway, first to hit the - arf! - headlines are the Spice Girls, whose first single in, ooh, some years is going to be called Headlines. According to Geri, who has once again become the Girls’ de facto spokeswoman, by virtue of the fact that if anyone sticks a microphone in her general vicinity she’ll jabber away until she turns an unfetching shade of blue and collapses due to lack of oxygen. Not, of course, that lack of oxygen to the brain is generally something that Geri bothers about. And not, for that matter, that Geri requires a microphone to be in front of her to jabber nonsensically. But we digress. According to Geri, the single is “A big love song, a Spice Girls classic”, and it’s also the official single for this year’s Children in Need appeal, which means all know exactly what it’s going to sound like without even needing to hear it. If the video doesn’t feature long flowing dresses in soft focus then we’re a monkey’s uncle. And who wants to be related to Ian Brown?

Perhaps in an attempt to hint that Sunsilk isn’t all they’re claiming it is in the adverts, Girls Aloud have announced that their next album, out in the middle of November, is going to be called Tangled Up. Either that or Nicola is finally being allowed some input and has named it after the state of her favourite food, Pot Noodles. Either way we fully expect this to be the single greatest release of the year and you can look forward to our usual entirely biased, gushing and generally embarrassingly over effusive look at the album when it comes out. We may need to use a fractal representation of a star to indicate exactly how many stars we think it deserves.

Finally, assuming she doesn’t die, prolapse, or attempt to abduct her children, driving dangerously down the freeway, waving a shotgun and drinking moonshine before she has a chance to release it, Britney Spears is going to be calling her next album Blackout and not, despite what we’d been promised - in as much as the ramblings of a woman going through an alcohol enhanced breakdown on her website can be said to be a legally binding contract - OMG is Like Lindsay Lohan Like OK Like. To say we’re disappointed is an understatement. Indeed, we’ve hit such rock bottom with this news that our state will soon lead to someone calling their album OMG is Like Flum Like OK Like. Although not anyone that you’ve actually heard of. Or would actually care about. Blackout here presumably refers to the coverage Britney would prefer the tabloid media put her day to day existence of her, occasionally literally, car crash of a life under, although it possibly covers the fact that she’s suffered so many of them recently that the only way she knows what she’s been up to is thanks to the tabloid media that hounds her so. It saves her keeping a diary at any rate.

Labels: britney spears, Girls Aloud, News, Spice Girls

It’s Nicola Roberts birthday tomorrow! Not, of course, that you’d know this from the official Girls Aloud calendar, where they’ve listed this momentous, historic date as Cheryl‘s birthday. How rude! And if we were Cheryl we wouldn’t be in quite so much of a rush to be ageing so quickly. Anyway, we’re going out to celebrate tomorrow but not before we mark the occasion by scraping the barrel of our already exhausted stock of material and presenting The A to Z of Nicola Roberts:-

• A is for Articulate. Which she may or may not be. We never get a chance to find out. She could be articulated for all we know.
  
• B is for Background. Which is normally where you’ll find her lurking.
  
• C is for Carefully. Which is how you have to listen if you want to hear the contributions she’s made to their albums.
  
• D is for David Devant and his Spirit Wife. Whose near hit Ginger must be Nicola’s debut solo single.
  
• E is for Elfin. Of which Nicola’s features are comparable. And in the sense that with the lack of reported sightings of her, many people consider her to be equally as mythical.
  
• F is for Five. The number of members in the band. Not Four, as some people seem to believe. Although in a very real sense there are zero members in the band.
  
• G is for Ginger. The natural, default state of Nicola’s hair, although the natural, default state of Nicola seems to involve doing her level best to disguise it.
  
• H is for Happiness. An emotion Nicola isn’t famed for expressing.
  
• I is for Inspired. Which the decision to let Nicola have lead vocals in their cover of Teenage Dirtbag certainly was.
  
• J is for Jail Bait. Thankfully Nicola is now well into her twenties.
  
• K is for Kitty Cat. Please do not give Nicola a gift wrapped kitty-cat as a present. Not only does it distress the animal, but also Nic already has umpteen of these and has taken to throwing them straight in the bin, unopened.
  
• L is for Lead Vocals. Even though Lead Balloon is a slightly more common occurrence in this world.
  
• M is for Magazine Articles. Nicola loves doing these. Sorry, ‘reading’, not doing, reading.
  
• N is for No, No, No. Not only part of the title of Girls Aloud’s most recent single, but also the response she gets whenever she suggests having a more prominent role in photoshoots.
  
• O is for Outside. Which, judging by her paleness, Nicola doesn’t get to see a lot of, which adds credence to our theory that the other girls are evil and keep her in a box.
  
• P is for Poor Lighting. Occasionally employed by photographers taking solo shots of Nicola, which we assume is because she would otherwise outshine the other girls so much it’d be embarrassing for them.
  
• Q is for Quick. Which you have to be if you want to catch a glimpse of her in the band’s early videos.
  
• R is for Rude Ginger Bitch. Botherd.
  
• S is for Sarah. One of Nicola’s bandmates. It is definitely for Solo Lines.
  
• T is for Token. Which her presence occasionally feels like.
  
• U is for Underwear. Often used for hanging around the kitchen in. Mainly because Nic hasn’t been told where the photoshoot is so is doing her own anyway.
  
• V is for Vital. Because Nicola is vital to the band, it is also for her vital statistics, which are impressive.
  
• W is for Wedding. Nicola is apparently planning for hers, which some readers have e-mailed us to offer their condolences for, but we don’t mind. She can plan it as much as she wants. It’s the actual having of such an event which would upset us.
  
• X is for Xylophone. She sometimes gets given one to play with during recording sessions. It keeps her busy while the other girls are recording their vocals.
  
• Y is for Yes she is!. Which we find ourselves forced to utter after we tell people she’s our favourite member.
  
• Z is for Zebra. Nicola would never wear Zebra skin, but would look good in faux zebra shoes.

Happy Birthday, Nicola!

Labels: A to Z, Girls Aloud, Nicola Roberts

Just exactly how bad a mother do you have to be when Kevin Federline is considered to be a more responsible and suitable parent than you are? It's like weighing up all the options and deciding that you'd get the best medical care by appointing Harold Shipman as your local GP.

Labels: britney spears

The Sugababes have just scored their second number one with About You Now, surprisingly beating off Shayne Ward to claim the top spot, the surprise being that few people either knew or, indeed, cared that Shayne actually had a new single out.

We weren’t sure about their new track the first time we heard it, but its turned out to be one hell of a grower and, after repeated listens, we know how we feel about it now. Arf. It’s a catchy slice of harmonious pop, which is quite ironic given that harmony is generally the last thing that springs to mind when you think of the ‘Babes, second only to “Hit with the ugly stick” in its lack of relevance to their day to day existence.

In other music news Radiohead have announced that anyone who wants to buy their latest album - In Rainbows, a collection of unique interpretations of the songs of Rod, Jane and Freddy, available on the 10th Oct - will get to choose how much they want to pay for it, although it’s not yet been made clear whether you decide on its value before or after you actually listen to the thing. It’ll be interesting if this sort of pricing scheme - although can a lack of one really be called a scheme? - takes off, even if a lot of bands might suddenly find themselves bankrupt as many people start to cash in on the “I would only listen to X if you actually paid me to” policy. Gym Class Heroes, we’re looking at you here.

Also finding out how much people are willing to pay for their product, albeit via the medium of eBay and ticket touts, rather than the slightly more honest method which Radiohead are employing are the Spice Girls whose London gig sold out in just 38 seconds, and might have done so even quicker had they actually bothered e-mailing everyone that registered, like us, for example, whose inbox contains no news of how to apply for tickets, just news of roughly two billions pounds worth of prizes that we’ve won in lotteries we haven’t even entered and a surprising number of people who seem to believe that we’re in need of both penis and breast enlargement. Not that we really wanted to go to the gig anyway, as we’ve already said we think it’ll just be a bit of an embarrassment, dripping with irony and “Gosh, what were we like!” style japery, but it would have nice to have been able to confirm this first hand, rather than having to waiting for Victoria Newton to do so.

Labels: News, Radiohead, Spice Girls, Sugababes