Media hype and the mechanics of gossip are our themes this issue. I’m joined on the podcast by Lewis Morgan, who gamely soldiers through a sore throat and rum acoustics to talk about the great Meow Meow debacle (and its uncanny resemblance to this), why Kelvin MacKenzie is viler than your average tabloid hack and how Lewis’ erstwhile employers managed to get Clarkson’s goat. The playlist, meanwhile, kicks off with a diptych of tracks about shock, awe and news media from Wire’s first LP before wallowing in a mire of prurient gossip and petty scurrilities: who is RTX’s Jennifer Heremma beefing with on You Should Shut Up? Did Missy Elliott’s relationship with Tweet extend no further than cutting the odd weirdly homo-/autoerotic duet? Was Aidan Moffat’s ex right to say he’d misconstrued her diary?
God gets a look in too; Darling Nikki is the track that got Mrs. Al Gore in an unholy flap and led to the introduction of the ‘Tipper sticker’ (Prince, meanwhile, would have God consign him to hell for his lowdown tomcatting ways on the last track of his next LP) while on Diamanda Galas’ hysterical ‘You Must be Certain of the Devil’ it’s impossible to tell whether Galas is horrified at the approach of the rapture or ecstatic at the rise of Lucifer. She gets almost as emotional as Glen Beck on the 4th of July.
