Yet another boost for 9/11 conspiracists this week, as last year's instantly forgettable X Factor winner, Matt Cardle, emerged to promote his new single with the claim that the attack on the twin towers was an inside job. The official version? "Bullshit." Asked during an interview with the Big Issue whether Dubya's gang were behind it all, Cardle "nodded vigorously" before adding pointedly: "I don't want to comment!" Earlier he had declared ominously: "I've gotta be careful what I say."

He's doing a bang-up job, then. But I can't work out whether Matt is holding back because he fears reprisal from Simon Cowell's minions or from the neocons. If it is the latter, might I disabuse him of his paranoia? I don't want to go out on a limb here, but I think it relatively unlikely that an interview with the star-quality-free former X Factor winner might spark an emergency convocation in Dick Cheney's underground cave, in which rendering Cardle to some CIA blacksite is discussed, before Karl Rove concludes he should in fact be terminated with extreme prejudice, and Paul Wolfowitz spits on his comb before producing the suitcase of money to hand to whichever mercenary former Mossad hitman will be charged with silencing the erstwhile painter-decorator permanently.

However, if it is reprisal from the Karaoke Sauron's orcs of which Matt is terrified, I can offer no such guarantees. For cocking up their PR strategy, an eternity painting and decorating the mines of Mordor may well await him, and he had better start working up a humdinger of a survival song at his earliest convenience.

(Incidentally, soi disant 9/11 truthers are warned to save themselves the bother of trying to open Lost in Showbiz's eyes on this front. They should know that ALL emails and online comments from 9/11 conspiracists are printed out, ISP-traced, then bound into an a la carte target menu, which is placed in the goody bag handed to all Bilderberg attendees. Trust me, truthers: your life depends on your not taking this item seriously.)