According to Billboard, Chris Brown has publicly apologized for the incident where he apparently hit Rihanna after a pre-Grammy Awards party.

In a round-about way, this seems to confirm that Brown was responsible for hitting his girlfriend. As you might expect, the statement was released by his publicist. This would be in large part to keep him away from the media and to limit the already substantial damage to Brown’s career. A number of advertisers and sponsors have now dropped Brown from their campaigns because of his new image as the poster boy for domestic violence.

The statement reads:

Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am over what transpired. I am seeking the counseling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God’s help, to emerging a better person.

Much of what has been speculated or reported on blogs and-or reported in the media is wrong.

I wrote last week on my Unreality Shout blog that I suspected the celebrity press were fabricating a lot of the reports around this situation. There’s certainly enough to confirm that there was an argument between Chris and Rihanna – especially after this statement – but still, claiming that he beat her with an UMBRELLA was just ridiculous.

Surely the situation is scandalous enough without making shit up? The celebrity press have once again proved themselves to be heartless vultures in the reporting of this incident. There’s obviously no such thing as sensitivity or tact in that industry.

In all honesty, I hope Chris gets help for this. And it goes without saying that he’s going to pay for his actions. Not only will this get dragged through the courts, but it’ll get dragged through the media and cost him more in damage to his reputation and loss of earnings. I’m sure it’s a sobering experience.

Yawnnn…every other music site seems to be writing about Boy George being sentenced to 15 months in prison for “falsely imprisoning Norwegian male escort Audun Carlsen”.

Yes, it’s a vaguely amusing story, especially if you imagine the dude being forced to listen to Culture Club’s greatest hits on repeat. But really, when was the last time Boy George had any relevance in music?

Is anyone else just a little bit curious to know how you can falsely imprison someone? And if they’re falsely imprisoned, how will they know they’re being held captive?

These are the kind of cutting edge questions we ask at Unreality Music. Now, let’s not waste valuable Internet space on this rather dull story…

Rumours abound that the members of Girls Aloud are pestering Nadine Coyle to commit to the group.

The News Of The World are reporting that Nadine has been giving priority to her business ventures in Los Angeles.

Dan Wooton says ‘Things have got so bad Nadine, 23, has now been told: “Commit or quit.”’

Anyway, without regurgitating what Wooton’s article says, the basic gist is that Nadine’s life is increasingly in Amercia these days, and she resents having to return to the UK for band business.

The upshot is that the other girls feel that Nadine isn’t committed to the group anymore.

I don’t want to say “I told you so.” But that’s mostly because I can’t find the place where I wrote about Nadine not being part of the group. There’s a quote from me somewhere on Unreality TV, which picked up on Nadine’s refusal to get involved in other Girls Aloud projects like the Ghost Hunting show.

But you know what? I think Girls Aloud could survive without Nadine. I’ve got nothing against Nadine, but ever since she declined to be involved in that Ghost Hunting show, I’ve felt that she takes herself too seriously to be in a pop group.

Maybe it’s time for her to step aside?

And in this case, I think the band could survive. Nadine isn’t the focal point of the group anyway. Sarah Harding has proved herself to be a decent singer on their last single. Cheryl and Kimberley are the eye candy/celebrity element, and Nicola..er…appeals to ginger fetishists.

So the question remains: will she commit or quit?

According to Leon himself, Simon Cowell is comparing him to Michael Buble and Robbie Williams. Excuse us while we roll on the floor laughing.

Simon is over the moon with my new album and has been saying I’m a cross between Michael Bublé and Robbie Williams. I’m like: ‘Calm down, Simon’.

Without wishing to be too scathing, we remember when Ronan Keating left Boyzone and modelled his solo ‘look’ on Robbie. It wasn’t very convincing. Nor is the idea of Leon being anywhere near as charismatic slash maniacal as the former Take Thatter.

The Robster, for all his faults, is a magnetic personality, not a slightly awkward Scot who wandered into a reality TV audition and kind of got lucky when everyone else forgot to bring their talent to the X Factor live shows.

No disrespect to Leon, but we’d keep the comparisons to major stars low key. At least until he’s had a hit that hasn’t been propelled by a primetime reality TV show. Eh?

If Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke was a fan of John Lydon’s work before, he won’t be after the altercation with Lydon and his roadies at the weekend.

The two men’s bands were on the bill for Spain’s Summercase festival on Saturday. The story goes that Okereke approached Lydon to ask him if he would ever consider reforming his 80’s band, Public Image Ltd. At that point, reports say Lydon “became intimidating and aggressive while his entourage responded with a racist tirade including the statement, ‘Your problem is your black attitude.’”

However, most of what we’re reading has been carefully crafted to suggest that while Lydon was present, he had no part in the actual physical attack on Okereke. The Bloc Party singer was left with “severe facial bruising, cuts to his face and body and a split lip”.

Lydon moved quickly to dismiss the reports of the attack, claiming jealousy on Okereke’s part, but that doesn’t explain why the incident was reported to the police by Okereke and corroborated by The Foals’ singer Yannis Philippakis. Nor does it explain how Kele “brought the trouble to [Lydon's] door”, since he’s a self-professed massive fan of PiL. Philippakis and Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson stepped in to help Kele during the attack, which was broken up by festival security.

In an official statement, Kele said:

“It’s not an issue of the physical assault, even though it was an unprovoked attack, it is the fact that race was brought into the matter so readily,” Okereke says in a statement. “Someone as respected and as intelligent as Lydon should know better than to bring race into the equation, or socialize with and encourage those who hold such narrow-minded attitudes. I am disappointed that someone I held with such high regard turns out to be such a bigot.”

Lydon responded with:

“When you are at a festival with bands who are jealous fools, lies and confusion usually follow. If they need publicity so badly, this is the allegation universe they run into.”

The artist further says that Okereke should “grow up and learn to be a true man. When you have achieved as much as I have, come back and talk to me. It’s a shame that the wonderful world of the media is riddled with nonsense like this.”

It’s not the first time the Sex Pistols singer has caused trouble at a gig. Recently, he upset Welsh singer Duffy when she tried to introduce herself at an awards ceremony in London in June.

Big fat celebrity pundit Perez Hilton has been taking swipes at Lily Allen lately. However, he’s obviously picked on the wrong gal, as our Lily has a direct line to the public via her MySpace page.

Lily blogged today about being upset by Perez’s latest blog post in which he claims she’s fallen out of favour at Capitol Records, and alleges that she smoked during her pregnancy and that her miscarriage was suspicious.

While she admits that she’s been partying and working hard recently, Lily claims much of what Hilton has written is completely made up and hurtful. She even goes so far as to point out the hypocrisy of Perez running anti-bullying campaigns on his blog as he paints the words “Has Been” over the top of a picture of her:

Perez …just writes things that aren’t true with no shame about it, and it’s sad. I read these posts on his website about anti – bullying campaigns and all these good causes, and while I used to enjoy reading his site it seems to me that recently he has become what he hates so much, a bully.

My feeling is that Perez picks on a particular celebrity in order to draw more attention to himself. And he’s been fairly successful at it too – he caused a major stir when he claimed that John Mayer was bisexual and had kissed him for five full minutes at a New Year’s party. Mayer, of course, completely refuted those allegations.

All I can say is, Perez holds a privileged position as probably the best known blogger in the world. If he continues to pull sensationalist stunts like this, he brings other bloggers into disrepute. It’s just a good thing that down to earth celebs like Lily Allen have blogs of their own and can correct the lies that people like Perez are putting out.

Do you think Kanye West takes himself too seriously? He’s well known for blowing up at award shows when he gets stiffed by the establishment in favour of other acts.

Anyway, he took exception to a review of his Seattle gig by Entertainment Weekly where they rated the show a B+.

The review is actually full of praise for Kanye’s performance, but calls into question the ‘conceptual hokeyness’ of the show, evidenced by a talking spaceship:

So, his only companion, the disembodied voice of his talking spaceship, Jane, tried some brownnosing: “We need the brightest star in the universe-you, Kanye! Only you can bring us home. You can glow in the dark.”

To which, Kanye got a little emotional and responded in a fiery blog post:

Ya’ll rated my album shitty and now ya’ll come to the show and give it a B+. What’s a B+ mean? I’m an extremist. It’s either pass or fail! A+ or F-!…I make art. You can’t rate this. I’m a real person. I’m not a pop star. I don’t care about anything but making great art. Never come 2 one of my shows ever again, you’re not invited and if you see me…BOW!!

I don’t know how serious these outbursts are, but they are entertaining! For my part, I think West’s one of the most gifted performers of his generation. Yes, he has an ego to match his abilities, but you’ve gotta love the dude for his sheer brilliance.

Well, it looks like Mrs Fielder-Civil – otherwise known as Amy Winehouse – has been getting busy while Blakey’s been ‘incarcerated’. The Sun is reporting that Amy’s been involved with two blokes recently – an American photographer called Blake Wood, and her manager’s assistant, Alex Haines.

Allegedly the relationship with Blake Wood only lasted a couple of weeks, but from what I’m reading, Amy and Alex Haines are currently an item.

It’s funny, but I don’t see a sudden wave of public sympathy coming toward Fielder-Civil any time soon, despite him being the wronged party in all of this! I think the national opinion of the guy is that he’s a world class douche*, and the sooner he’s out of Amy’s life, the better.

Anyway, no sooner have they announced ‘Amy’s New Love’, the tabloid press are working overtime to prove that Haines is every bit the party animal Fielder-Civil is. Frankly, those reports seem to be scraping the barrel a little bit.

I could comment more on this, but it might be wiser to see how the situation pans out over the coming days. I seem to remember that Blake is due to be released from prison shortly, and I can only imagine that sparks might fly given the public humiliation of his world-famous missus cavorting with other men.

* stronger opinion edited out

It seems the British justice system could no longer allow Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty to remain at large. And no, not because he might release another album.

It’s because Pete repeatedly failed to show up for probation hearings among other things that weren’t disclosed by his manager, Adrian Hunter.

Doherty was jailed on 8th April for a period of 14 weeks. It isn’t certain yet if he’s going to appeal the sentence – certainly being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure might make it easier for him to keep his appointments at court.

What does look certain is that his touring schedule for the coming months is going to be thrown into jeopardy. He’ll miss his gig at the Royal Albert Hall and the Love Music Hate Racism concert as well.

There’s also a huge question mark over whether Doherty will be out in time for Glastonbury, but I’d imagine Jay-Z will be more than happy to step in and fill the slot…

Why? Well pop-fans, it’s because her boyfriend Freddie Fuller suffered a machete attack on Christmas Eve. It’s not the first time Freddie’s been in trouble and caused some negative press for Amelle – last year he was accused of raping her sister.

It’s well known that the Sugababes are not the most loyal girl group, given the unclear circumstances under which original members Siobhan Donaghy and Mutya Buena left.

So it isn’t a big leap to imagine that Amelle’s job might be on the line as the stress starts to affect her performances. She apparently had her microphone turned down at the New Year gig they played at the O2 Arena with Take That.

I’ve always maintained that Amelle isn’t crucial to the success of the group, that she’s basically there to make up the numbers. But it must be a strange point in the lunar cycle or something because I’d feel sorry for her if she got booted out because of this.

Yikes, compassion. What next?