The Daily Tonic: Some Camels

Shortly after news of Michael Jackson’s untimely death broke, camera crews in LA were sent down to the corner of Hollywood and Vine to take pictures of Jacko fans paying tribute to their hero on the Walk Of Fame.

The papers all ran pictures of tearful fans lighting candles, laying down flowers and mourning at the star there. The only trouble was, that particular star belongs to someone completely different: an LA radio personality also called Michael Jackson.

The King Of Pop does have a star on the Walk of Fame, but his had been covered earlier that morning by a red carpet. Ready for the premiere of Brüno.

Across the country, studios in radio stations are furnished with special Obit Buttons, which are illuminated to inform the presenter of a significant death. Activation of this light was always an honour reserved for very few. The Queen Mum, The Queen, Prince Charles. That was it. Even Diana didn’t get a look-in.

Yet in some regional Heart radio stations the policy was changed briefly in early 2009.

So if you remember listening to your local station in March that year and suddenly noticed the tone of the music turning all sombre, chances are you heard the Obit Light flashing for Jade Goody.

If anyone needed a reminder that being a member of an enormously successful pop group doesn’t necessarily guarantee wealth and good fortune forever.

2009 was the year that S Club 3 (Bradley, Jo and Paul) were invited to switch on the Christmas lights in Mansfield. They weren’t the only attraction on the bill though.

According to local press reports, the other booking on the night was “some camels”.

Meghan Markle was very vocal about how little protection she felt she was afforded by the Royal family ahead of her departure. It’s easy to see why she might have expected the Firm to pull a few more strings for her.

Back in 2009, the Palace did everything it could to stop author Claudia Joseph from getting together an unofficial biography of Kate Middleton. Even after it was written and ready to be published, the Royals still didn’t give up on trying to stymie it.

Joseph’s book had a launch party scheduled at Chelsea nightclub, Raffles. But the morning of the party the club rang up to say the launch couldn’t go ahead because of a “burst water pipe”. So Claudia must have been very surprised to find pictures in the paper the next day of Chelsea players drowning their sorrows after being defeated by Barcelona in a perfectly dry looking Raffles.

“I have respect for broadsheet journalists because they haven’t succumbed to degrading themselves, to writing pidgin English with all these terrible colloquialisms, the phrasing of which is just, like, embarrassing” – Peaches Geldof

“If I could meet my mother and marry her, I would. I would be with my mother now, if she weren’t my mother, as sick as that sounds.” – Shia LaBeouf

“I’m not really a biscuit girl, but I used to love Nice biscuits – the ones with the sugar on. And I do like the occasional chocolate finger.” – Coleen Rooney

“What did I do to deserve eating arse?” – Katie Price

Here’s ten more tracks taken from the UK Top Ten in 2009. If you can remember any of the song titles, you get a point for each of those. And if you can remember which artists recorded them, you get another point.

That’s twenty possible points for identifying ten songs.

[How hard can it be?]

Rita Ora, auditioning for Eurovision in 2009
[Revisit on YouTube]

Max Clifford, uncensored, from the 2009 documentary Starsuckers
[Always worth a watch]

How do Minions reproduce?
[A MEL investigation]