As if the Hip-Hop Weekly/Source dust-up wasn’t enough, No Rock&Roll Fun alerts to another music-mag legal battle raging this week. From the U.K. Online Press Gazette:

A rock band tour manager launched a High Court libel action [Monday] against Kerrang over a claim he was caught masturbating when he should have been at work. Mark Stickland, 36, says he was portrayed as a “sexual deviant” in a January 2006 edition of music magazine Kerrang!

He wants damages, including aggravated damages, from publishers Emap Metro, which says the allegation was true.

The article, Filth Pigs, warned readers to “prepare to be disgusted” by the “sickest interview ever” with metalcore band Bullet For My Valentine. It included a comment from drummer Moose about the Bridgend four-piece’s tour manager on its German dates in December 2005 – a position held at the time by Mr Stickland although he was not named directly.

Asked if he had ever been caught “w******”, Moose was quoted as saying: “Never, I’m too good at it, but we caught our tour manager pleasuring himself in Germany two weeks ago.

Several follow-up questions: Are they really still publishing Kerrang! over there? Could there be a less-cool drummer name than “Moose”? And since when is this guy’s behavior considered “sexual deviancy”? As any at-home blogger knows, masturbating at work isn’t a crime–it’s a damn near birthright.
Tour manager sues Kerrang magazine over masturbation claim [Online Press Gazette]