All conversations are off-the-record, and if you want something on the record, you have to ask, and get permission.
If an administration official is willing to say something on the record, that's a story, because he pays a price if his claims are false.
Once such critic has been 50 Cent, who told a recent interviewer that Diddy is "not an artist", since "an artist would be someone who actually wrote something on a record".
He describes this as having taken music "out of time and into space", making it material – something on a record, a CD or in a computer, rather than a live performance that is not preserved.
The peers would prefer the government to table its own amendments with the same effect, and at the very least want to hear something on the record from the Lib Dem leader in the Lords, Lord McNally, giving some assurances as to what the government is doing to implement the Leveson report.
If your celebrity says something on the record like "I get the impression that in Africa people have sex far more freely than we do back home," you're going to have a hell of a time walking that one back.
Regina Belle: My assistant, Ivy Taylor told me that we needed to have something on the record that speaks to world issues.
