Just for the record

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Though his subsequent releases have doubtless proved more profitable, the overwhelming sense of self-importance craved by such figures can't be enhanced by watching others take their once-hallowed place at the top of the hit parade. It's a tactic well known in the less rarefied finances of publishing, where sharp agents like Andrew Wylie and Johnny Geller always go for the largest advances in the certain knowledge that blind fear of losing the lot will keep their clients well served by their imprints. All these numbers are ridiculous, of course – abstract sums thrown about that might well prove miles from the real figures, much like football transfer fees.. Whatever the truth, EMI certainly considers Williams, a man who has not yet managed to crack the lucrative American market – not even with an album entitled The Ego Has Landed – as worth a huge punt. Once Myleene starts turning up to give piano lessons and Danny drops the milk off on their doorstep, singing all the while, their mother's pleas to concentrate on their schoolwork won't seem so hollow.