Zavvi, latest high street victim, goes into administration

Zavvi, the music retailer formerly known as Virgin Megastores, has been placed in administration, adding further woe to an already miserable year for high street shops and music retailing.

Zavvi's website has been unable to sell anything since the collapse of the Woolworths-owned EUK distributor, Zavvi's main supplier. It has been reported that Zavvi owed a substantial sum to EUK. Administrator Ernst & Young have said they'll try to keep the chain running until a buyer can be found for the business.

In the same week as Whittard of Chelsea and The Officers Club folded and Woolworths' administrators began to close their shops, Zavvi's failing will leave even more shopworkers concerned for their 2009 outlook; the company operated 125 shops across the UK.

If Zavvi closes it would leave the record industry with just HMV, owners of Fopp and Waterstones, as the last major music chain selling their physical products on the high street. It's unlikely that pressure from supermarkets and the internet, in particular Amazon, will let up on the business, but the failures of Woolworths and Zavvi in quick succession should at least give His Master's Voice a breathing space.

In better news, independent record seller Rough Trade, celebrating its 30th birthday in 2008, reported its business growing by an impressive 7% year-on-year despite being caught up in the failure of the distributor Pinnacle earlier this month. If big chains failing offers hope to the likes of Rough Trade, perhaps there's some semblance of a silver lining to the gloom. Here's hoping so at least.

Russell Brand carries the can

Russell Brand has resigned from his BBC Radio 2 show following the furore surrounding his and Jonathan Ross's moment of (recorded, cleared for broadcast) madness involving an answering machine, an actor and Brand's rampant... ego.  "I got a bit caught up in the moment," he said in a statement that was signed off with "Hare Krishna".

Ross had already apologised for his "juvenile" behaviour and sent flowers to Andrew Sachs, aka Manuel from Fawlty Towers.  But over a week after the original broadcast on the station's The Russell Brand Show, which reportedly attracted just two complaints, the Mail On Sunday racheted up the temperature on the presenters with a front page splash.  Cue horror, outrage and even David Cameron and Gordon Brown weighing in with opinions.  Headlines across the BBC and beyond have been impossible to ignore.  Last we looked, over 18,000 complaints had been logged.

The final straw seems to have come today when the BBC's Director-General Mark Thompson was forced to cut short his holiday (the horror!) to respond to the whirlwind. His statement was unequivocal, and he announced that both presenters would be suspended from broadcasting across the BBC while an internal investigation was carried out into how the situation happened.

As well as the presenters' Radio 2 shows, this week's Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, which was to feature The Killers and Miley Cyrus, has been cancelled.

With Brand gone, will Ross ride the lightning and emerge into calmer waters?  It's certainly been an extraordinary set of events.  And the whole episode underlines the continuing power of the Mail papers in influencing events and careers. 

Latitude: day 1 - Ross Noble

Has just led a congo line of 2,000 odd people out of the comedy tent around the site with the aim of creating the longest queue possible at one of the vegan food stalls. He has then been carried on people's shoulders, tossed into the air and then, well, dropped. It was bound to happen... But still.

AOL buys Bebo

The third biggest "social networking" site, Bebo, has been gulped down.

Following News Corp's acquisition of MySpace, Microsoft's investment in Facebook and CBS's purchase of last.fm, AOL, part of media giant Time Warner, has reportedly paid US$850m for Bebo, which claims a global membership of about 40 million users.

So whichever social networking site you prefer, rest assured that a giant American conglomerate now supports your messaging, photos and events calendar.