Mark Ronson and the leaking material

At its best, Mark Ronson's Record Collection is a giddy, freewheeling scamper around planet pop. When you're not toasting Q-Tip with a cup of warm champagne, you're swapping hair gel with Simon Le Bon or taking stupid polaroids with The Pipettes' Rose Elinor Dougall.

In other words, it's a Gorillaz album without the massive superiority complex.

Despite Record Collection's generous running time and, let's be honest, the presence of a few stinkers (eg the useless-but-thematically-important Introducing The Business) there are plenty of quality tracks left over from the recording sessions.

Ronson premiered one of them on his East Village Radio Show last week. Brilliantly titled Taste of a Samurai, it was co-written by Cathy Dennis and Christian Karlsson of Miike Snow and features guest vocals from Jarina De Marco.

The song was considered strong enough to be part of the tracklisting as recently as August, when NME got an exclusive first play, so it'd be interesting to find out why it was culled at the last minute. I have four theories:

1) Licensing problems with the featured artists' publishers and labels.
2) Holding back a few tracks for the inevitable special edition.
3) Unfortunate similarity to dodgy racial stereotyping chart topper Japanese Boy.
4) The intro is totally ripped off Especially For You.

Here's a rip of the song from Mark's endearingly ramshackle radio programme - which is always worth a listen. You can subscribe to the show here if you like.

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Is this for real (Or is it just another dream)?

Hold on to your muffins, for Cathy Dennis is coming back as the nation’s premier ginger pop star.

You may remember Cathy Dennis for such 90s hits as Touch Me (All Night Long) and Too Many Walls - a song about an aborted building project in her kitchen.

But you’re more likely to know her work as a writer – she’s responsible for Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and Britney’s Toxic. Dennis also had something to do with the S Club Juniors, but she prefers not to talk about that.

Anyway, according to Music Week she’s recording an album and preparing to tour next year. Only she’s too shy to use her name, so she’s pretending to be something called Sexcassettes – which is the best pop group name since Captain Monty Trousers and the Hullaballoo Baboon Orchestra.

The record has been, er… recorded with Dr Luke (Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone), Greg Kurstin (Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Catch You) and Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen). This is a good sign.

Her manager, Spice Girls svengali Simon Fuller, adds that the album has “a real contemporary guitar feeling” - which is less encouraging.

Even worse is this recent shot of Dennis at an awards ceremony.

Nothing says “I’m madder than a mad march hare in a madhouse painting a picture of Michael Madsen on national ‘I’m mad’ day” than wearing your nightdress in public and topping it off with a bow tie. Or maybe two bow ties. It’s hard to tell.

Hopefully come the launch of Sexcassettes, Cathy will stop acting completely cuckoo, get a stylist and squeeze back into a catsuit – just like what she did on this TV programme back in “the day”. Yum.

Cathy Dennis – Touch Me (All Night Long)

PS I interviewed the painfully shy, but wonderfully sweet Ms Dennis in 2005. Read all about it here

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