Girls Aloud: DS Party in Paris: Photos!

Quite possibly the best thing ever: Girls Aloud worked up a lickable sweat on stage at Nintendo's Paris bash. We were at the front.

The old format for success in gaming press trips - particularly of the UK variety where journalists demand more drink than anyone else - is no longer working.

What is needed is a paradigm shift in the way we think about press trips. When was the last time you actually played a press trip? We need something unique and unprecedented, that appeals to both veteran and novice journalists alike. We could show you the new formulae for how this press trip is going to be solved, but we won't for a simple reason - they really don't matter.

Right, anyway, that's quite enough pointless Iwata imitation. As you can see, at Nintendo's swanky European DS launch in Paris (see our full games coverage here), clever Nintendo marketing types had the common intelligence to wheel out all-dancing, all- er, -bouncing tabloid favourites - Girls Alound.

At the event's after-show party, the stage on which the likes of Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata had earlier spoken, became the platform for the popular UK girl band to bash out five or six songs - only one of which was sung live - for a rumoured fee of around £30,000.

And to be quite honest it was well worth the hurried scamper to the front of the stage twenty minutes beyond schedule. Although such performances at corporate events are notoriously, mercifully uncrowded (compared to, say, Britney at the L.A. Staples Center), we battled with raging teen boys in order to come away with these sexy shots.

It's worth adding that these chicks - particularly our favourite, Cheryl Tweedy (could you tell?) - look really, really amazing in the flesh, kind of like, perfect-looking, which is why we are never, ever going to see them or get close to them, ever again.

So without further ado, here are the photos of what could have been, had we been born just that little bit prettier, ourseves.

Adam Doree
Working out how much he can get for the mega hi-res versions of these pictures, which we'll NEVER put online. Ha ha haa!