The private-equity owner of EMI, Terra Firma, which urgently needs to generate revenue in order not to breach banking covenants with Citigroup next March, is pulling out all the stops - even though it has been widely noted that the record label is not exactly brimming over with hot new exciting releases.

Already EMI is pumping out a new CD by Coldplay, six months after the release of Vida La Vida. The new Coldplay CD is a collection of off-cuts, songs that didn't make the main album, which does not exactly set the pulse racing.

Now comes news of another EMI launch. The label has teamed up with drinks firm Diageo, brewer of Guinness, to produce "Guinness 250 - music from the TV ads, a special commemorative album featuring 17 of the most memorable tracks used to advertise Guinness".

City Spy fears this thrilling concept - you've seen the TV ads, now buy the album - may end up selling rather well, despite the fact it is hardly cutting-edge or a showcase for new talent. Graeme Rogan, EMI UK's Senior Director New Channel Development says: "Our aim is to proactively enter into strategic partnerships with global brands, such as Guinness and develop additional revenue streams for the benefit of all parties." It used to be called rock '*' roll, Graeme.

* SO President Bush has bought a new home in Dallas for $2 million. US comedian Jay Leno points out that the same house would have cost him $10 million five months ago. "Thanks to his economic plan, he got it at a bargain. The man is a genius," says Leno.

* GOOD news for Gordon Brown. According to the Bank of England's Andrew Sentance, the current recession does not mark a return to boom and bust after all. Why not?

"We appear to be experiencing a bust without having experienced a preceding boom," he says. Oh dear. So even the fat years weren't that fat then. Not such good news after all.

Playing hardball with Trib

THE Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, was probably going to go bust anyway. Real-estate tycoon Sam Zell took on $13 billion of debt when he took it private last year and it collapsed into bankruptcy this week.
But the demise cannot have been helped by the fact that, according to charges levied against him, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich threatened to withdraw substantial state aid to the firm in the hope of influencing the Chicago Tribune to stop running negative stories about him.

He had been allegedly using state funds connected to Tribune's sale of the Chicago Cubs baseball stadium as a bargaining chip to get the company to sack the Chicago Tribune's editorial board. Blagojevich was arrested yesterday on corruption charges. Blagojevich's precessor George Ryan is currently in jail for corruption.

* GILES Thorley was in typically robust form before the House of Commons business committee, indicating that MPs should not believe his Punch Taverns group is in crisis. Given Punch Taverns shares have collapsed 90% over the last year, Thorley is clearly a glass one-tenth full than virtually empty kind of chap.

Vital skills of splashing cash

LAST month, the Skills Secretary John Denham praised the Learning and Skills Council for their “vital” work, but the Queen's Speech announced that legislation will be brought in to abolish the quango and instead set up a new body called the Young People's Learning Agency.
The Government created the LSC in 2001 with 47 local learning and skills council branches. They reorganised it in 2003 at a cost of £53 million.
In 2005 they reorganised it again at a cost of £35 million. Now they are closing it down and starting again.

So that's where all the money goes.

* YOU have to hand it to the tobacco industry, they never give up. Here's British American Tobacco's spinner-in-chief Michael Prideaux responding to the Government's proposed legislation on tobacco display bans: “A ban on the display of tobacco products in shops is not justified because there is no reliable evidence suggesting it will lower smoking rates or stop young people from starting to smoke.” So if advertising cigarettes doesn't make people smoke, why do they spend so much money on it?

How you can share the Macca dream

AN enterprising Caribbean hotel group is letting punters pay for their luxury holidays using shares in moribund financial companies.
Elite Island Resorts will accept payment of up to $5000 per room in stocks and shares. And the neat trick is that Elite's boss Steven Heydt is taking the shares at their valuation on 1 July, before most of them fell out of bed.

A typical example, therefore, might be a break for a family of four in Antigua, much favoured by celebs such as Sir Paul McCartney. A seven-night stay at the island's The Verandah Resort would set you back $4445 in cash but cost just 25 Goldman Sachs shares and $70 cash with Elite.
Elite values your Goldman shares at their July price of $175 rather than the current $77 they change hands at on the NYSE. Spy suspects if the idea caught on here we'd get fobbed off with two nights in a Premier Inn in return for two million Royal Bank of Scotland shares...

* MORE travel news. As Mark Constantine, the founder of Lush cosmetics which has 600 shops in 44 countries, funded the protest which closed Stansted Airport, can we assume that he will only travel by sea during future visits to outposts of his business empire?

* WHEN housebuilders Taylor Woodrow and George Wimpey completed their merger in July of last year, shares in the newly formed Taylor Wimpey were changing hands at 377p, the company was a major player in the blue-chip Footsie 100 and it was worth £4 billion.
Last night, the firm was relegated even from the FTSE 250 with its shares trading at 9.9p, which means it is now worth little more than
£100 million.
Is it not time that chief executive Pete Redfern and chairman Norman Askew, the chief architects of the deal signed at the peak of the housing boom, stepped down?