Chris Lowe has never revealed much of himself to his audience. As usual, he’s on stage behind his keyboards with his signature baseball cap pulled over his forehead and huge bug-eyed sunglasses covering his face. Even better for Lowe – one imagines - the Pet Shop Boys take to the stage for their first London gig in two years behind a giant screen projecting giant graphics.

Commencement address season has begun in the United States, when the great and good deliver university graduates into real life with uplifting aphorisms and positive-thinking platitudes.

For a man who has been through not just one fire, but two – heroin addiction and cancer – Dave Gahan is a highly dynamic frontman. And Depeche Mode effectively have a spare one of those, in the shape of Martin Gore. Both men, tonight, are exercising the right to bare arms. Beyond that, their styles are different: Gahan the tanned rock god in tattoos and Cuban heels, Gore the glamourpuss in blue eyeshadow, silver kilt and a star guitar borrowed from the Glitter Band.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that The Great Escape, the annual three-day gigathon for new bands and Brighton’s answer to Texas’s South-By-South-West, has grown too unwieldy for its own good. Certainly, the queues outside venues that snake all the way to Eastbourne offer little hope to the majority of seeing the year’s buzz bands such as The Strypes, Swim Deep or Parquet Courts.

Emmelie de Forest had been the overwhelming favourite among the 26 entries

“If you don't know it, just dance,” Andy McCluskey teases us before 1984's “Tesla Girls”, and the trim singer dances like an eager 18-30 holiday rep, pulling shapes, stretching out his arms and gyrating like an embarrassing, sozzled uncle at a wedding.

Coldplay's second album has been named the favourite album of all time by radio listeners. A Rush Of Blood To The Head triumphed in a poll of Radio 2 listeners which saw The Beatles placed at just number eight.

An artist's most avid fans are often their worst friends, relishing their pain and suffering from a safe distance.

“Animal” singer Conor Maynard will headline As One in the Park festival this summer, what is being billed as “the first credible large-scale gay festival in London for over a decade.”

Tales from the Water Cooler

In which suave synth duo Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson take things in a darker and heavier direction.

Tales from the Water Cooler

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” singer Bonnie Tyler will represent Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest 2013.

Eighties chart stars including Tony Hadley and Kim Wilde are to try to set a new world record for the world's highest gig.