WHAT THE PAPERS SAY, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, JONI MITCHELL IS BARKING

Never made it into our Sugarbabes section, Mitchell, 66; can't stand that octave-swooping soprano, those weird, jazzy time signatures and odd tunings, pissing on summer lawns, it's not for me, although Big Yellow Taxi rolls along nicely.

Anyway, she's been closeted away for a while and  declining interviews, due to an illness which, if it's real, sees her enduring multi-coloured Bob Dylan fibres erupting from her skin, which only she can see  and which  keeps the  mad old diva at home but in a rare interview with the LA Times she complains that she suffers from Morgellons syndrome, a rare skin condition. It's a controversial diagnosis – many doctors deny that Morgellons is real, calling it delusional. "[It's a] weird, incurable disease that seems like it's from outer space," Mitchell told the Times. "But my health's the best it's been in a while. Two nights ago, I went out for the first time since 23 December."

"Garbo and Dietrich hid away just because people became so upset watching them age, but this is worse," she said. "Fibres in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer – a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year."

"In America ... [doctors] send you to a psychiatrist," Mitchell explained. "I'm actually trying to get out of the music business to battle for Morgellons sufferers to receive the credibility that's owed to them."

Madonna is a stupid slapper, continued the toothy Canadian  and Bob is a plagiarist, she writes her own songs and he steals his from other people. "We are like night and day, he and I," she scoffed. "Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception."

NO, NO. NO, IT AIN'T ME, BABE