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'Alice Cooper is dead' hoax

The great Alice Cooper mystery - was he killed by an accident with the guillotine which forms the climax of his current mammoth American show or did he die in a car crash? - was solved this week when his record company announced that it was all a hoax, and Alice was indeed alive and well.

It all started last Thursday when RM received a phone call from a "reader" who said that he'd heard the news on the radio, of Alice's untimely end driving to a concert. Warner's said they hadn't heard anything, but they received a torrent of phone calls from papers and anxious fans.

The plot thickened when the BBC, who'd also received a lot of calls, denied that they'd ever broadcast the story. Rumours, meanwhile, were running rife through schools and offices - the story which seemed to be most common was that Alice had accidently beheaded himself on stage.

By Tuesday, it was announced that there was no truth in the rumours. One music paper, however, had printed a poker-faced spoof review of Alice's "death" last week. Was there perhaps the merest suspicion that the whole grisly affair had been stirred a little for valuable publicity? "You never know, do you?" said a Warner spokesman.