If you haven’t had a conversation on the internet at some point in your life about a fictional breakfast cereal then I’m not sure you should be allowed to own a modem. I mean, seriously, what have you been doing with your life?

“Oh but it’s such a pointless thing to do”, I hear you say, like a big idiot. Yeah? Well if it’s so pointless, how do you explain this?

That there is a cereal box mocked up by Kelloggs after Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess told his 21,000 Twitter followers that he’d like a rocky road flavoured cereal called Totes Amazeballs. And because people in the Kelloggs product design department apparently have a lot of time on their hands, they knocked a box together.

Whose conversations are pointless now, huh? Although it does occur to me that when we tweeted that we’d like our office to have a glass floor with sharks swimming under it, not one person offered to come around and install it. Not even Kelloggs.

Rapper A$AP Rocky has said that hip hop needs to ditch the homophobia so inherent in its lyrics if the genre is to survive. He doesn’t say anything about the misogyny. One step at a time, I guess.

He told Spinner: “I don’t give a fuck about your business. Man, if you’re gay we can be friends. If you’re straight, we can be friends. I’m not gay, I don’t plan on being gay, I don’t condone it and I’m not sayin I’m against it. I really don’t give a fuck and I don’t think anyone should care about what another man’s preference is… unless he’s interested, if you know what I’m sayin”.

Ah, the old ‘It’s fine as long as they don’t do it near me’ argument. A theme continued when Rocky moves on to the subject of openly gray rappers (or the lack of them): “I’m not saying that hip hop needs gay rappers or anything, but they need to stop being so close-minded because that will just cause the genre to fail. Look at pop. Pop doesn’t discriminate against people. Look at Lady Gaga, y’know what I mean? Who the fuck makes the rules for hip hop? Who the fuck dictates who’s cool and who’s not? Fuck you”.

I’m not exactly sure what he does mean about Lady Gaga, but it’s progress.

Another for the ‘when marine creatures attack famous figures’ archive now, to be filed next to that one about Shakira and the sea lion. And while Grammys organisers (and much of the record-buying public) may have forgiven Chris Brown his many, many moral misdemeanours, it seems the same can’t be said for a flock of seagulls, who dive-bombed the singer in true Hitchcockian fashion as he basked on Miami Beach this weekend. Well, that’ll teach him not to hit birds.

The gulls reportedly assailed the rapper – who last week received a henpecking of a different sort from his own disappointed mother – after he and his entourage fed them some chips.

Perhaps they were health-conscious seagulls, and would have preferred something fat-free. Perhaps Chris Brown appears just as heinous from a bird’s eye view as from the salient perspective of HelloGiggles writer Sasha Pasulka. Who can say.

As you’ll note from these photos posted on The Daily Mail site, Brown’s baggy shorts also fell down as he attempted to fend off the ravening fowl. That’s not strictly relevant to the story but, in the interest of thorough reportage, a vital detail nonetheless.

Jazz Mag FM, Jizz FM, Fucky Sensation, Darling They Seem To Be Playing Porn On This Jazz Radio Station – all the clever puns were circulating yesterday after it emerged digital jazz station Jazz FM played five minutes of pornography on top of its pre-recorded ‘Funky Sensation’ show on Saturday night.

What was apparently the soundtrack of an adult movie, and not some rather inappropriate studio activities (for 7.15pm, certainly), aired in the background as music played on the jazz station on Saturday evening, but high enough in the mix for everyone listening to notice, with many taking to Twitter to air bemusement, amusement or disgust.

Jazz FM quickly issued an apology, saying in a statement: “Unfortunately we had an unauthorised access to the live feed this evening which resulted in a highly regrettable incident. Please accept our profound and sincere apologies for any offence that may have been caused”.

Meanwhile ‘Funky Sensation’ host Mike Vitti was quoted by Radio Today as saying: “There was unauthorised activity and behaviour in the studio which we take very seriously and we will be taking the appropriate disciplinary action against the individual concerned. In addition I will apologise to the Jazz FM audience at the beginning of next week’s programme”.

Needless to say, the Radiofail website can be relied upon to show us what quality jazz-based radio with added porn sounds like.

So, comparisons have inevitably been made between Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj, they both being outspoken – and slightly odd – female rappers based in New York.

Having initially avoided the Minaj topic during an interview earlier this week on US TV show ‘Watch What Happens Live’, Lil Kim did then let slip her true thoughts on Nicki’s current single ‘Stupid Hoe’.

“I’m pretty sure I feel the same way everybody feels right about now”, she told host Andy Cohen. “If you have to make a song called ‘Stupid Hoe’, you must be a stupid hoe”. Ergo, Lil Kim considers Nicki Minaj to be a stupid hoe.

This latest comment has only served to intensify rumours of a feud supposed to have existed between the two MCs since Kim released her ‘Black Friday’ EP, thought to be a sarcastic play on Minaj’s own ‘Pink Friday’ album.

Meanwhile, when asked about Minaj’s baffling appearance at last week’s Grammy Awards, Kim kept things cutting: “Who? It just slipped past me. I don’t know with that one”.

Speaking of said Grammys performance, in which Minaj ricocheted about a stage bedecked in religious iconography, had a heart-to-heart with The Pope, and then was exorcised of her own gay male alter ego Roman Zolanski, all while sing-rapping new track ‘Roman Holiday’, Minaj offered an explanation (well, sort of) to ‘Good Morning America’.

Said she: “I wrote the song and envisioned it being in a monastery, because Roman gets shipped away there by his mother, who thinks there’s something wrong with him and in fact there’s nothing wrong with him being different…being eccentric. I wanted to show how ridiculous people look when they try to change someone just because they’re creative and different”.

So, even Chris Brown’s mother thinks the R&B thugster should learn to think before he tweets.

As previously reported, more than a few eyebrows were raised last weekend when Grammy bosses decided it was a good idea to give Brown two performance slots at the US awards show, despite it being only three years since he single-handedly made the Grammy brand synonymous with domestic violence.

Apparently for America’s pop establishment, providing you say sorry when your lawyers tell you to, and remember to sell some records at some point, you can beat your girlfriend unconscious in the street all you want, it won’t stop you being guest of honour, even while you’re still on probation for the crime.

Though not everyone in America’s music community was impressed by Brown’s Grammy appearances, the most notable critic being country star Miranda Lambert, who knows a thing or two about the impact domestic violence has on its victims, her parents running a shelter for abused women. She tweeted about the Grammys show: “Chris Brown twice? I don’t get it. He beat on a girl… Not cool that we act like that didn’t happen”.

Noting his critics’ unwillingness to forget that photo of a horrendously bruised Rihanna, bashed up after her run-in with then boyfriend Brown while on the way to a pre-Grammy party in 2009, the singer took to Twitter himself to write: “HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY NOW! That’s the ultimate fuck off! I’m back so watch my back as I walk away from all this negativity”.

That and other such tweets were later deleted, though not before some were grabbed by other media and bloggers. And once said media started to criticise the pop wife-beater for those responses, he returned to Twitter to type “DEAR MEDIA… Ur plan is not working. I’m not going anywhere so get used to me”.

Which sort of shows a fundamental misunderstanding by the R&B star of his critics, who don’t especially want him to disappear, just that he and the American pop establishment more publicly accept that his was a heinous crime that won’t ever be forgotten, and that therefore celebrating the man at the very event his violent actions tarnished when even his probation period is incomplete is, in many people’s eyes, inappropriate.

Anyway, to Mrs Brown, and according to Radaronline.com, the singer’s mother is increasingly exasperated at her son’s inability to show a bit of humility and remorse.

Radar quote a source close to Joyce Brown as saying: “Joyce is absolutely livid that those vile words and rants were posted on Chris’ Twitter page. She feels like people were just waiting for a negative reaction to what others were saying about him. She had begged Chris to just ignore it and she is just beside herself that after such successful performances at the Grammys and winning the award, people are now talking about this Twitter controversy”.

The source continues: “It’s time for Chris to grow up, and his mother told him that. Chris is his own worst enemy at times and she constantly worries about how he is going to react to stressful situations”. So, looks like those anger management classes, that Brown’s people were so keen to insist had done the trick, worked really well, doesn’t it?

Oh Adele, fancy telling Vogue you were planning on taking five years off before your next album, when you are planning no such thing. Get Ms Adkins in front of the Leveson Inquiry, I say. How is the press to regain any respect when pop stars go around telling untruths.

Following last weekend’s mega-Grammy haul for the British singer, many media picked up on something she’d told the US edition of Vogue in a recent interview, where she seemed to announce a long break from music to spend more time with boyfriend Simon Konecki. She told the mag: “I am fucking off for four or five years. If I am constantly working, my relationships fail. So at least now I can have enough time to write a happy record. And be in love and be happy. And then I don’t know what I’ll do. Get married. Have some kids. Plant a nice vegetable patch”.

But no such five year hiatus is really planned. A press rep said the remark was “off the cuff” and not intended to be serious, while Adele herself wrote on her blog: ”I’ve a few days off now, and then it’s the BRIT Awards here at home and then I’m straight into the studio. BOYYAHH! Five years? More like five days”. So there you go, it’s official, never trust anything Adele says. I have deep suspicions she’s actually going to take seven days off, just to throw everyone off the scent.

Anyway, also on that blog, Adkins has been recalling her big night at America’s big awards show, and her six Grammy haul. Says the singer: ”In between laughing my head off, welling up, needing to sit down and trying to maintain an open fire (which is pretty much impossible huh?!), I keep having flashbacks to Sunday night. The most incredible night of my life. Thank you to you all, I am so overwhelmed, it’s the strangest feeling. I have constant butterflies and goosebumps, it’s wearing me out but I love it. I’ve been sleeping a lot but the minute I wake up I burst out laughing and it starts all over again”.

Poor old MIA. After Madonna said that the British rapper’s brief finger flash during the recent Super Bowl halftime show was “such a teenager, irrelevant thing to do”, now her fellow guest during that performance has spoken of her “disappointment” in the incident too.

Minaj told Ryan Seacrest: “I’m a cuckoo lady too, but I would never be able to do it off the strength of Madonna. There are fines that go into these things, and I just thought: ‘Oh my God. I hope they don’t penalise Madonna’. Madonna knows the artist that MIA is and it was her decision to take the risk with all of us. We were kinda all firecrackers and she took that risk. She’s done some crazy things becoming the icon that she is, so I think that’s why she was able to forgive MIA”.

She added: “I love MIA and I don’t want to say anything that is the wrong thing, but me personally, I couldn’t see myself doing it, just for the respect for Madonna. I wouldn’t want any backlash to come back on Madonna”.

Speaking her Minaj being a “crazy lady”, what was that Grammy performance all about? “[My alter-ego Roman] wanted to show that not only is he amazing and he’s sure of himself and confident”, she explained. “But he’s never gonna change, he’s never gonna be exorcised. Even when they throw the holy water on him, he still rises above. That’s what was portrayed”.

If you’ve got no idea what she’s banging on about, then you’re just going to have to watch the Grammy performance for yourself (it’s hard to work out, but I think it might be brilliant).

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Jamie Oliver is building a restaurant in Manchester. There’s nothing particularly exciting about that. However, an operation to clear the site before Oliver’s builders moved in has unearthed a load of buried treasure. Actual buried treasure.

OK, this was stuff left in an old bank vault, but it’s still exciting. The building was previously owned by HSBC, and was an old Midland Bank prior to that, so finding a bank vault might not be that surprising, but it does seem that no one knew it was there. And you wouldn’t necessarily expect items to still be stored in it.

Items recovered, valued at over £1 million and some dating back as far as 1935, include jewels, gold, a lot of guns, and a stack of Joy Division and New Order master tapes. Which are all things you might think people would remember depositing in a bank’s safety deposit boxes and want back at some point, but seemingly not.

A spokesman for HSBC refused to confirm exactly what had been found, telling the Daily Mail: “Even if I knew exactly what was in those boxes I would not be able to comment on that for reasons of confidentiality. We cannot reveal the precise contents, but these are safe deposit boxes – there are bound to be valuables in there”.

Unknown pleasures, you might call them.

Colombian pop sort Shakira has suffered a vicious assault at the hands – or should I say, flippers – of a sea lion whilst vacationing in Cape Town. So moved was the singer by the incident, which seems specifically to have amounted to a scratch on her hand sustained while scrambling over some rocks, that she has posted up a “Special Report” on Facebook detailing exactly what happened.

The English version of the note (there’s also a handy Spanish version) reads: “This afternoon I happened to see some sea lions and seals. Suddenly, one of them jumped out of the water so fast and impetuously that it got about one foot away from me, looked me in the eye, roared in fury and tried to bite me”.

She continues: “I was paralysed by fear and couldn’t move, I just kept eye contact with it while my brother ‘Super Tony’ jumped over me and literally saved my life, taking me away from the beast”.

Shak later deduces that the attack was due to the sea lion (pictured here, poised to strike) mistaking the glare from her sunlit Blackberry for a fish, and thus trying to eat it… and her. And where were Dick Van Dyke’s heroic porpoises in all this, that’s what I’d like to know.

You too can read Shakira’s full report, which as per its title is very ‘special’ indeed, here.

M83′s Anthony Gonzalez has spoken about the decision to kick punk outfit Teenage Mothers out of their position as support band on the Australian leg of his current world tour.

Following their sacking, Teenage Mothers guitarist Raph Brous posted a lengthy statement on Facebook under the title: “Touring with M83, the meanest band in the galaxy”. He wrote that his band’s singer, James Kennedy, often inhales nitrous oxide on stage, but that the band had made sure M83′s team were aware of this before the tour began. Also, when just that happened at their first show, no one seemed to mind.

However, says Brous, 30 minutes before their set the next night, they were told they would not be allowed to perform and were forcibly ejected from the venue. They then flew to Sydney for the next show, but were informed when they got there that they were now off the entire Australian tour.

Brous claims: “M83′s tour manager claimed that we were ‘disrespectful’, because our lead singer inhaled a soda bulb onstage. So apparently M83 is a fundamentalist cult that requires abstinence from fun? Before the tour, I clearly informed M83 about our singer’s antics”.

He added that Gonzalez had said that the decision was made because Kennedy “looks like a junkie”. Brous hits back at that, though, by claiming that Gonzalez had asked members of Teenage Mothers to procure illegal drugs for him and his band.

Commenting on the dispute to in an interview with Triple J, Gonzalez said: “It’s hard for me to talk about it. I didn’t really like the way he behaved in front of my audience – offering whippets [nitrous oxide bulbs] on stage and almost setting the stage on fire. You don’t do that when you open for bands. I had tonnes of respect for all the bands I was opening for and I just wish the bands opening for me would have the same respect”.

He continued: “It’s not that I’m against punk and rock n roll, I love that. It’s just not professional… I mean this is my career we’re talking about and I want to make sure everything is under control and it wasn’t, unfortunately”.

Madonna’s never been one to worry about offending people, so when The Sun reported last week that she was livid that MIA had flashed her middle finger at the camera during her guest appearance on Madge’s Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, we were a little dubious. But apparently she was quite unhappy about it. So there you go.

Speaking to LA radio station KIIS-FM, Madonna said: “I didn’t know about it until I left. I was really surprised. I didn’t know anything about it. I understand it’s punk rock and everything, but to me there was such a feeling of love and good energy, and positivity. It seemed negative. It’s one of the those things, it’s such a teenager, irrelevant thing to do … what was the point? It was just out of place”.

Rumour has it that MIA herself claims to have made the gesture accidentally when nerves got the better of her. I’m not sure why anyone’s that bothered, for all this talk you’d think she’d run towards the camera screaming “FUCK YOU AMERICA, YOU CUNT!” rather than the half-second barely visible movement she actually did.

The Federal Communications Commission, which is in charge of handing out fines for such terrible things, has not yet confirmed if it is acting upon any complaints regarding MIA’s finger.

Since the first showing of any high-profile new music video has to be a big ‘event’ these days, it makes semi-sense that Kanye West and Jay-Z’s new ‘Watch The Throne’ clip, ‘Niggas In Paris’, ended up being projected in cinema-sized proportions onto the concrete façade of Shoreditch High Street Station in East London yesterday afternoon.

Though this was the somewhat limp culmination of an afternoon’s worth of hype and speculation stemming from this cryptic image, which circulated online and seemed to indicate that something ‘Watch The Throne’ related was taking place in the Shoreditch locale (actually, CMU HQ is in the middle of that photo, making us wonder if we’d accidentally invited Kanye and Jay round for tea and then forgotten to buy any biscuits).

As people speculated online as to what the cryptic message might mean, one of the more ironic rumours, as initiated by The Quietus, included that Kanye was set to perform at Chariots, the gay men’s spa across the road from Shoreditch Station. Chariots then began trending on Twitter. Silly Twitter.

After all that, the station side screening was always going to be a bit of an anti-climax. All the more so given the video actually premiered online before the open-air preview began. And talking of said video being on YouTube, without any further fuss – bar a warning that it contains potentially hazardous flashing lights – here’s the promo in question.

This beef really happened last week, but indulge me for a moment, please. Last Thursday, Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward issued a statement saying that he was unable to join the recently reunited band for recording sessions in the UK because he had not yet been presented with a contract he felt he could sign.

Maybe we should skip back a bit. Last year the original line-up of Black Sabbath announced that they were getting back together. It’s not the first time they’ve done so, but previously they’ve only played live. This time, they announced, they would be recording a new album, the first featuring the original line-up for 33 years. Suddenly the get together was elevated above previous reunions, and had a much better PR angle.

When it was announced that Tony Iommi had been diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, the band insisted the reunion would go ahead, adding that they would shift recording sessions from LA to the UK, where Iommi was receiving treatment. And though the possibility of touring was now uncertain, they remained adamant that they would play their headline set at Download Festival as planned.

Which made Ward’s statement all the more surprising. As far as anyone on the outside was concerned, the reunion was a done deal. But throughout all of this, Bill Ward was not even contracted to join in.

“At this time”, he wrote last week, “I would love nothing more than to be able to proceed with the Black Sabbath album and tour. However, I am unable to continue unless a ‘signable’ contract is drawn up; a contract that reflects some dignity and respect toward me as an original member of the band … Several days ago, after nearly a year of trying to negotiate, another ‘unsignable’ contract was handed to me”.

Clearly this is not the sort of statement anyone puts out without thought. It was, presumably, an attempt to force the band’s (or their management’s) hand in the contract negotiations. Though it was a move that failed. The next day, the rest of the band issued their own statement, saying: “We were saddened to hear yesterday via Facebook that Bill declined publicly to participate in our current Black Sabbath plans. We have no choice but to continue recording without him although our door is always open”.

Now, had they read Ward’s statement properly, they would have seen that he had far from “declined publicly to participate” in the reunion. In fact, he said: “I am packed and ready to leave the US for England. More importantly, I definitely want to play on the album, and I definitely want to tour with Black Sabbath”.

He also added, to defuse the obvious accusation, that he was not “holding out for a ‘big piece’ of the action (money) like some kind of blackmail deal”, just that he felt he was not being given proper recognition for his role in the band.

Indeed, without Ward, the whole ‘first album for 33 years’ thing was kind of out of the window. It may be that the “door is always open”, but will Ward want to take part now that the rest of the band have called his bluff? Is the reunion worth its salt without him? Clearly the rest of the band see him as an expendable member of the line-up, though many fans disagree.

What harm this will ultimately do the reunion, whether or not Ward rejoins, remains to be seen. If nothing else, such inter-band bickering highlights that they might not be doing the reunion thing just for the joy of being four old mates back together again, or just for the fans, but rather what’s in the fans’ wallets.

Whatever, most shockingly of all, yesterday afternoon Bill Ward’s personal Facebook page was removed from the list of pages ‘liked’ by the official Black Sabbath page. Oh, the humanity.

US site The Smoking Gun, which just adores bringing to light those outlandish demands famous music types tend to make on their tour riders, has set Super Bowl bird-flipper MIA next in its sights as the subject of an embarrassing rider-based revelation.

Seizing MIA’s present notoriety (following, of course, her controversial appearance during Madonna’s halftime Super Bowl set) as an opportune moment to release part of the rider from the Brit rapper’s 2011 tour, the site highlights reasonable requests (water, mixed nuts, and a ‘European’ cheese and cracker tray) alongside a specific requirement that there be three females, aged 20-25 and of “same height and body shape”, with “stage presence and groove to the music”, present at each venue

All your average celeb stipulations, apart from one other thing; the trio of extras must also appear “wearing full covered Burkas”.

This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone who has seen MIA’s stage show (or, for that matter, her new ‘Bad Girls’ video) though the fact that the Burka-clad extras are casually listed above requests for things like a “selection of quality chocolates (Ferrero Rocher)”, and “nice push soap and nice handsoap”… well, it’s jarring.

Read the rest of MIA’s rider here.

German fashion designer and Chanel Creative Director Karl Lagerfeld is feeling the wrath of Adele’s fans after saying the chart topping singer is “a little too fat”.

The remark actually came during a discussion about Lana Del Rey, with the 78 year old designer revealing he preferred Adele or Florence Welch’s music, but that del Ray was beautiful in her photos, and “looks very much like a modern-time singer”.

Back on Adele he said: “The thing at the moment is Adele. She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice”, leading to much outrage on Twitter, obviously.

Adele herself is unlikely to be that bothered what a 78 year old man thinks, of course, and besides, she has super-fan Dave Grohl to stick up for her. Saying he was pleased to be included in the same category as Ms Adkins at the Grammys, the Foo Fighters frontman told the Associated Press that Adele’s success pleased him greatly, possibly implying he was pleased the singer had sold so many records despite not being your stereotypical pop star.

Said Grohl: “I think she gives us all hope. She’s made an incredible record, and she’s an incredibly talented artist, so maybe it is true that the cream actually rises to the top. There’s a reason why that record is so fucking huge. It’s good. It’s inspiring when something legitimate gets recognized for what it is. It’s such a cliché, but it’s a huge achievement to be nominated”.

Noel Gallagher has said that that interview in the Mail On Sunday under the headline “‘It was all better under Thatcher’: Noel Gallagher on Britain’s glory days, turning his back on drugs and the end of Oasis” completely misrepresented his views.

In a blog post on his official website, Gallagher said: “There is a headline that implies that I am of the opinion that the years spent under the rule of that soon to be dead granny, Maggie Thatcher, was good for the soul. I’ve read the story and I must say it’s very misleading; any great working class art, fashion, youth culture etc came to be IN SPITE of that woman and her warped right wing views and NOT BECAUSE of them. Also for the record, on the day that she dies we will party like it’s 1989. Just so you know”.

Of course, that statement doesn’t address everything Gallagher was quoted as saying in the interview, which caused Mail journo Simon Lewis to write that “it’s starting to look like Noel Gallagher’s one of us”. Whatever his views on Margaret Thatcher, he still apparently claimed that there was no laziness or violence in Britain while she was Prime Minister, like that which now forces him to send his children to private school.

Everything was better under Margaret Thatcher. Everyone was happy. Everyone had a job or spent every waking hour trying to get one. Great art was made because of the Iron Lady’s sterling work as head of the country. She loved the arts, did Thatcher. Inspiring art was her most proud achievement.

These were sentiments, more or less, presented by Noel Gallagher in an interview with The Mail On Sunday at the weekend, which caused his interviewer Simon Lewis to write: “The things he’s angry about are the same things The Mail On Sunday’s readers are angry about. And the things he cares about, we do too. Older, wiser and rid of his brother, it’s starting to look like Noel Gallagher’s one of us”.

Lewis isn’t wrong. Gallagher echoed many a Mail article and rabid website comment when he said: “We were brought up under Thatcher. There was a work ethic – if you were unemployed, the obsession was to find work. Now, these kids brought up under the Labour Party and whatever this Coalition thing is, it’s like: ‘Forget that, I’m not interested. I wanna be on TV’. It was a different mindset back then”.

He added: “Kids now watch ‘America’s Hardest Prisons’ and want to be in a gang. They’ve no imagination. When I was sixteen I’d watch ‘The Godfather’, but I didn’t think: ‘Right, I’m going to go down the barber’s and get some protection money off him’. Our generation was more likely to go: ‘I wonder where the nearest acting school is? Who wrote that soundtrack? Who’s Francis Ford Coppola?’ It’s the de-education of the masses”.

Yes, those fabulous, non-violent, employment-filled 80s. Just in case you have a niggling feeling that Gallagher might be slightly wrong about some of this, the excellent No Rock N Roll Fun blog has been through and deconstructed the interview point by point.

Nicki Minaj loves London. That seems like a reasonable statement to make. I’m quite fond of it too. Although Minaj really loves it. Like, really, really loves it. She loves it so much that there has to be more than just the excitement of foreign travel at play.

“I was born in London in my past life, no one can tell me different”, she told Wonderland Magazine. And there’s more: “I probably was like a queen in London, I was probably the people’s queen that fought for lives… and I probably started off as a maid and then was just, like, really revolutionary and moved all my [followers] into the big queen mansion”.

OK, fair enough, I probably don’t like London as much as Nicki Minaj does.

Madonna hasn’t announced a tour to promote her forthcoming new album yet, but when she does you’d better be prepared to fork out for it if you want to see her. The singer has suggested that tickets in the US could cost $300.

Asked if she’d be making more affordable tickets available to fans this time round after high prices on her last tour helped her break at least two records for a solo artist’s touring revenue, Madge told Newsweek that she had no plans to drop her prices, saying that those who want to see her perform should “start saving your pennies now”. She added: “People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together, and come to my show. I’m worth it”.

And if it turns out she’s not, well, good luck trying to get a refund. You can read the full interview via this link, though be warned, she does bang on about Lady Gaga again. That’s becoming quite tedious now.