Anti-Blunt website faces the music over 'unauthorised' spoof

The creeping Blunticisation of Britain continues, and woe betide anybody who tries to stand in its way.

The powers behind James Blunt's ubiquitous ditty, "You're Beautiful", have moved to stop a small web company from running a parody of the song at www.eclectech.co.uk. "It was a reaction to the Emperor's New Clothes thing," its writer, Tim Gillespie, tells me.

Bucks Music Group has written to Gillespie, explaining: "It has come to our attention that... you have made an unauthorised parodied adaptation of 'You're Beautiful' entitled 'You're Gullible' (hereinafter referred to as 'the Unauthorised Adaptation')..." Unless the website desists forthwith, the music publisher will be left "with no alternative but to consider seeking a court order".

The music has been removed from the site, but fans can still throw tomatoes at Blunt's cartoon image, above right, and read Gillespie's spoof lyrics. But there is evidence that Blunt, left, is complicit in breaching his own copyright.

On his official website, weeks before the spoof was removed, his messageboard administrator wrote: "James was throwing tomatoes at himself on that site yesterday."

Naughty boy.

Prospects far from bleak for acting duo

Having come together in the final episodes of the BBC's Bleak House, Anna Maxwell Martin and Richard Harrington, left, are to continue acting as a couple, in Other Hands, by Laura Wade, at the Soho Theatre, London, next month. "I am thrilled to be working with Anna again," Harrington tells me, adding: "She's a good laugh - and we share a similar sick, warped sense of humour."

Maxwell Martin, who was nominated for an Olivier award as Lyra in the National Theatre's His Dark Materials, plays a management consultant, and Harrington her boyfriend, an IT technician. The couple are ignoring the crisis in their relationship and drifting towards other people, but find themselves linked to each other by a mystery paralysis resembling RSI.

Maxwell Martin tells me the play has fulfilled a recent career ambition. "Richard and I have great chemistry and I'm excited to explore a very different type of relationship," she says. "And most of all, I don't have to wear a bonnet."

Talking 'bout exaggeration

He may have been a prominent figure in the Sixties, but the veteran rocker Pete Townshend's recollections of the era can be prone to exaggeration.

The guitarist, right, has apologised for an interview in Mojo magazine in which he bragged about the antics of his Who colleague Roger Daltrey's cousin. "We had a following called 'The Hundred Faces' who were frontline Shepherd's Bush faces," he gushed. "One of them was Roger's cousin who killed six men in a street fight."

Now Townshend has reconsidered. A letter on his website reads: "Roger's cousin I spoke of in the piece was indeed a powerful, handsome and very cool White City mod, but the story of the six-man murder was apocryphal. I should not have repeated it. Roger and I look enough like Wandsworth Prison inmates on the cover of Mojo magazine as it is, without gilding the lily."

Knives out for Tory

As David Cameron's modernisation of the Tories continues apace, one leading member of the party old guard should watch his back. Allies of the new leader admit that the Cameron regime is rather keen to see the retirement of Sir Michael Spicer, chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee. "He's seen as an obstacle to change," explains one Shadow Cabinet source. "The party would certainly be happy for him to stand down as chairman."

Sir Michael, who organised the leadership contest, appears to have made enemies on the party's board. "Michael's certainly had his run-ins with the board, and has become increasingly frustrated," said one insider. "The gossip is he'll stand down later this year."

Sir Michael is in defiant mood when I call. "It doesn't come up for consideration until the autumn, and I would expect to stay."

Ladies' man Boris drives into trouble

Spare a thought for Boris Johnson, who was recently spotted turning up for a talk at Tesco in his Henley constituency in an eye-catching yellow Lotus Exige.

Unfortunately, the new shadow Higher Eudcation minister was not auditioning for a role in Pandora's "MPs and their gas guzzlers" slot, and the flash motor was not his. He was test-driving it for the men's magazine GQ, and attracting a spot of unwanted female attention.

"I heard a female voice and preened and levered myself out with a leer," enthuses the unlikely ladies' man. "Only to see my new girlfriend get off her disabled tricycle and say, 'Can I have a go? Before the war, we used to have such fun in cars like this.'"

pandora@independent.co.uk