Singer George Michael has returned home to the UK after leaving hospital in Vienna.

News that Noel Gallagher is to take his brother to court reminds us there are few more dispiriting sights for dedicated music fans than seeing their heroes on the way to hearings. Trussed up in unfamiliar shirt and tie combinations, they look as uncomfortable as ex-lags at job interviews. It is bad enough when artists attend divorce proceedings or face the beak for falling asleep at the wheel, but far worse is when they have brought the suit (legal, not sartorial) themselves. Any dealings with the legal system are bound to make the protagonist look petty-minded, venal or underhand.

Taking fellow bandmates to court is usually a mistake, says Chris Mugan

"I'm totally winging it," George Michael admits. Justifiably, the "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" singer has the "jitterbugs". It's been a turbulent couple of decades and this is an emotional, confessional gig.

George Michael split from boyfriend Kenny Goss two-and-a-half years ago.

Given that he (allegedly) recommended Andy Coulson as Tory comms director, and (allegedly) invited James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks to his 40th birthday party, you may be surprised to learn that George (né Gideon) Osborne is said to be intensely relaxed about the imminent publication of ministers' meetings with media execs.

Beverley Knight's survey of British soul highlights from the 1980s reminds one of what an underrated era that was, too easily overlooked in deference to the genre's US roots. Comparisons are inevitable – and if "Southern Freeez" here sounds like Britain's own "Funky Nassau", there's no shame in that, nor in Knight's version of Junior Giscombe's "Mama Used to Say" coming across like the UK equivalent of a Jam & Lewis casual funk strut.

Wolverhampton's finest revisits some favourite home-grown soul from her youth, making a strong case for her argument that this genre always gets overlooked when the media gets nostalgic about the 1980s and 1990s.

George Michael will record a new album with a "collective" of gay musicians, aimed at a young gay audience, as an apology for the homophobia that he believes his turbulent private life has inadvertently generated.

I'm sure I speak for men of a certain age across much of Middle England when I say a warm "welcome home" to returning English Rose and fourth best Bond Girl Jane Seymour. The California-based actress is back in Blighty working as a royal wedding correspondent for US show Entertainment Tonight.

Guillemots have never been short on ambition, and Walk the River opens accordingly, with trepidation and expectation wrapped up together in the title-track's foreboding intro riff, as Fyfe Dangerfield sings of "backing out of the race".