All the glitters is not platinum

This happened a week or so ago, but I think it bears retelling.

Chris Gentry, who was once in Menswear, bought a platinum disc online, and posted a picture holding it, with a humorous note saying Nuisance had finally gone platinum after all these years.

Digital Spy picked up the story, and ran it as FACT.

Now, Digital Spy you could perhaps forgive for not spotting it as being a bit unlikely. Johnny Dean, however, you would have thought would have spotted it was all a bit of a giggle.

After all, he'd have been told how many copies the record would have sold, right?

Um... unfortunately, Holy Moly reports that although he had that information, he decided to believe the Digital Spy story rather than the more likely-sounding facts:

But lead singer Johnny Dean was less sceptical. A “source close to the band” tells us he immediately began to enquire as to the whereabouts of his missing money, making accusations of mismanagement, believing himself to be the victim of a great rock ‘n’ roll swindle.

Now, to be fair, it's not implausible that that could have happened - labels and management and accountants have done worse in the past.

But surely more implausible is the idea that there were over quarter of a million copies of any Menswear album in existence?