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So where do you stand on the Coldplay plagiarism debate? What do you mean what debate? Where have you been?

The story so far: as Coldplay releases their latest album, going straight in at No 1 pretty much everywhere, a Brooklyn band name of Creaky Boards accuses them of ripping off the title track, Viva la Vida.

It’s the kind of unprovable accusation that big bands must have to put up with all the time. The difference this time was that it was made in a rather brilliant video posted on YouTube – brilliant both because of the song the Creakys say was plagiarised (called, curiously enough, The Songs I Didn’t Write) and because of the singer’s moustache.

Coldplay denied the accusations. A spokesman insisted that the Coldplay track had been written and demoed seven months before the concert at which, Creaky Boards say, the Coldplay frontman Chris Martin would have heard the song. The spokesman also denies that Martin was even at the concert in question.

But Martin hasn’t done himself any favours with this promotional interview for the album in which he admits that Coldplay are “the world’s worst—but most enthusiastic—plagiarists as a band”.