Chablis Chic

Faced with the new austerity, I’ve traded down to supermarket own brand sawdust - ‘muesli’ according to the label - and BOGOF chipolatas; at 59p, containing 95% mechanically-recovered mad cow, presumably? Sacrifices made, so I can continue to indulge in little luxuries like the occasional thimbleful of half decent French wine, bought from a German discounter (clue: see pic) at a fraction of the price of its upmarket cousins abandoned chez Harvey Nics. It’s comforting to read that the super rich are also struggling; but even having seen a reported £7 billion evaporate from his fortune, I imagine Roman Abramovich could still afford to buy out Iceland - the supermarket chain AND the busted country - from the contents of his 4-year-old daughter’s piggy bank. I doubt if, like me, he’s following queen of Chablis Chic Kirstie Allsopp’s show, Homemade Home, learning how to make-do-and-mend like a Baron’s daughter on a budget.


Image: www.fanpo.com/spots/lidl

Ugh!

OK, it’s cold outside, so cosy is a consideration, but does this justify the footwear phenomenon that, like early adopter Sienna Miller, won’t go away? I’m talking Ugg boots, those Aussie clodhoppers that are capable of turning any woman under 5’10” into an Oompa-Loompa, and the shapeliest pins into something resembling the back end of a pantomime horse. With no sign of the craze abating - the new London flagship store is permanently besieged - and fuggs (fake uggs, see above) in every street market - Ugg is now targeting blokes too. NOT ON YOUR BLODY LIFE, cobbers! Angelina AND Brad in Uggs? The Pitts! And teaming his with a purple velours jogging ensemble, Leo Di Caprio could be mistaken for Tinky Winky. If you really must, http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eqSM-Z-aLXA offers a priceless video tutorial: ‘Don’t wear them with a bathing suit, PJs, Eskimo coat or to tropical beaches’ they reckon.. or within a mile of me, I say.

Chefebrities

You can’t switch on the box without their ugly mugs gurning out at you. Jowelly Jamie, HF-W and Gordon Gobsh***, that is. Now even hitherto-above-it-all Heston wants a piece of the pie, serving up a TV makeover of some motorway caff that owed more than a little to Ramsay’s well-worn routine. When Jamie was still the Naked Chef - a sight now likely to have me upchucking the chorizo and chick pea on ciabatta - their patter was mildly entertaining. Britain could not be allowed to exist on boil-in-the-bag-cod alone, after all. Nowadays their sheer ubiquity makes these serial airtime whores plain indigestible. What next? If reports about troubles in Big Sweary’s empire are to be believed, a new mutation: Jamie Saves Gordon’s Bacon. Somebody cull these kitchen nightmares now!

Jeanius?

Denim , back in a big way this season and worn head-to-toe (dig those denim spats!) should be about blue-collar utilitarianism. So how come poncey fashionistas like Roberto Cavalli insist on tarting up this most democratic of fabrics? For Muppets with more money than marbles, Balmain’s 1980s-style ripped jobs have about as much punk attitude as Ivana Trump. £1060 to look like an Eastern European hooker? Yeh, right! Denim should be about blue-collar utilitarianism. So how come poncey fashionistas like Roberto Cavalli insist on tarting up this most democratic of fabrics? For Muppets with more money than marbles, Balmain’s 1980s-style ripped jobs have about as much punk attitude as Ivana Trump. £1060 to look like an Eastern European hooker? Yeh, right! Soon to set up shop in London, Tom For, he of the curious forehead and perma-open plunge shirt (so alluring on an older gay gentleman, dontcha' think?), is flogging pre-washed men’s jeans in America that, to my eyes, look no better than what’s on offer at Primark. Complete with gold plated button, these $990 leg pulls look like the sort of slacks Donald Trump might wear to go buy Wal-Mart, assuming they come in ostentatious old fart size. Make my denim indigo dyed and shrink-to-fit in the tub like a Wyoming cowboy's every time.

IMAGE: denimblog.com

Sex And the City -Somebody Stop It!

So SJP and Co have buried the hatchet (again) and the latest instalment - SATC: The Movie: The Sequel will soon be upon us -like some hideous Noughties fashion revival dragged out of Carrie's closet? Well, sorry Ms Bradshaw! There is such a thing as too much Sex, so... ‘not tonight dear, I have a headache’. What started out as a fabulous fling is fast heading towards Heather Mills territory - the tired old format really is on its last leg. Enough! I'm divorcing you before we reach SATC: The Movie XVII wherein Samantha the Saga Years in her Stannah Stair Lift shows us how reversing onto the latest rampant rabbit toy from her local adult store beats nookie with any coffin dodger boyfriend, and frail fashion freak Carrie gets crushed to death under Mr Big- and getting Bigger By The Day by the look of Chris Noth - a plot development the writers can have for free if they agree to implement it straight away. 


Image : www.grannypictures.com

Celebrity Endorsements

Back in Mad Men days - on the say-so of some sophisticate like Cary Grant - the whole world would have happily chain-smoked Camels ‘til the cows came home. But do famous faces still shift product? Perhaps we’ve grown cynical, but more likely, it’s just that certain celebrities lack universal appeal. ‘Let’s cater our cocktail party from Iceland, just like Kerry used to...’ - because bankrupt alcoholic is somehow aspirational down Acacia Avenue? Talk about Desperate Housewives! And any women I know would rather go commando than wear Armani knickers since all matchstick-and-melons Ma Beckham took to moping about in hers. Talking of pants, I hear Procter & Gamble have signed up Ulrik-ka-ka-kan’t-believe-she-needs-the-gig Johnson as the public er, face of their Always Envive incontinence range. For once, expect a flood of takers, although for her verbal incontinence at the BAFTAS, I'd have gone with Vanessa Redgrave.

UPS: Utterly Pointless Surveys

Scarcely a day goes without some marketing Muppet commissioning yet another pointless survey. Headed ‘Research shows...’ these only state the bleedin’ obvious. A recent press release from a well-known tour operator includes the mind-blowing revelation that ‘money no object, 87% of Britons would rather holiday in the Seychelles than Skegness’ - the remaining 13% drawn to the Lincolnshire resort of last resort presumably polled on the streets of Psychoville? Based on yet more in-depth research, chewing gum brand Orbit Complete reports that ‘66% of men find women more attractive when they smile than when they wear make up’; the two being mutually exclusive, presumably? Placing David Beckham in the minority, they advise women looking for a date that most men don’t fancy pouters. Equally illuminating is the knowledge that smiley Louise Redknapp always carries a pack of Orbit Complete when she’s ‘on the go.’ Curiously unmentioned, my own research that shows 97.5% of men would prefer their dates never to chew gum.

Benjamin Button Syndrome

With cosmetic surgery seemingly a constitutional duty in Hollywood, is it any wonder its inhabitants are oft dismissed as ‘plastic’? Now it seems Tinseltown’s Dorian Grays - like Linda Gray, the perennially fresh 68-year-old -  are also putting their apparent ability to withstand the ageing process down to anything but the knife. Recent shots of a transformed Rupert Everett astound me; the greying, craggy features that had hitherto lent the actor a slightly raffish, lived-in sexiness, replaced by a weirdly waxen head seemingly on loan from Madame Tussaud's. I’m reminded of an early Everett film - A Shocking Accident - for although the actor denies having surgery, how else to explain that fresh-from-the-embalmers,  cheesy-1950s-game-show-host look? Lines are fine: the life-lived-to-the-full, furrowed dial of the then octogenarian, Samuel Beckett, beats waxwork dummy every time.  

Image: yeeeah.com

Apps Fab

How did we function before techies came up with the ever expanding range of indispensable applications now available as phone downloads? Want to identify that mystery tune playing in a bar? Ask Shazam! Lost the TV control? Get Remote! Job interview? Consult iTie! - the clue-is-in-the-name nifty neckwear tutorial that is yours for £1.19; although best not to go for the ‘Pratt Knot’ if you’re up against sarky Suralan in the boardroom. Flashlight, meanwhile, turns your mobile into a torch - essential for when you’re left fumbling in the dark, struggling to connect your key with the front door lock. That’ll be because you disabled Blooterd - the monitor app that emits a piercing alarm when you’re approaching your lager limit. No such gizmo? It’s only a matter of time.

image: www.iphoneincanada.ca

Product Placement

A new government ruling is to allow product placement on TV. What fun if advertisers drive storylines! Here’s how I imagine a future episode of Corrie, for example: ‘Nice blouse, Eileen. So slimming.’ chirps Clare (wardrobe by Peacocks) Peacock. ‘TK Maxx - designer labels for less. Jason gave it to me for Christmas along with two cases of delicious new lychee flavoured diet Bacardi Breezer, a BOGOF deal at your caring sharing Co-Op down the precinct, now open until midnight. Me and Sean got so tipsy, I spilled some down my front but thanks to Vanish and a 30 degree wash in Persil Bio, it’s come up lovely.’ Cue loud bang. A blown out tyre sends Steve Sprite-large-fries-and-a-Big-Mac-donald’s taxi crashing out of control, pinning Clare against the front wall of number 11. ‘Typical! Should have gone to Kwikfit, not Kevin Webster’s’ snipes Norris. ‘Need a personal injury lawyer?’ as the immortal Blanche (RIP), pictured above, might have offered. ‘At National Accident Helpline  blah, blah, blah...” 

image : spin1038.com

A Right Shower

Could an apparent inability to predict anything much beyond the next five minutes explain TV weather presenters’ efforts to distract us?  Dazzled by her acid bright outfits and maniacal grin, who can recall what Carole Kirkwood just promised for ‘Eng-lind’ or ‘Scot-lind’? A tsunami might be headed for Wales but all we’re thinking is how Sian Lloyd looked better as a redhead and Lembit Opik? How could she? Freezing fog or fluffy clouds? Sorry, I was too busy trying to work out little Matt Taylor’s curiously hybrid accent and as for the cadaverous Daniel Corbett, he could be announcing Saharan sunshine but I’m cowering behind the sofa, hands on ears, fleeing the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Forecasting rain, giggly Tomasz Schafernaker , a weatherman with a nice sideline in beef-cake for the boys (as on his cover for gay mag Attitude, above) once threatened ‘a muddy sh**e’ at Glastonbury * and after their woefully off-the-mark promise of a barbecue summer, that just about sums up the Met Office’s prognostications.

Come Dine With Me?

When the pop-up supper club craze started, eating in a total stranger’s inner city squat, transformed for one night only into a borderline illegal restaurant, felt cool and original. Disillusioned with megalomaniac chefebrities whose chains bred like rabbits (before bunny became terrine in their kitchens), we were quite happy to pay some barking mad, amateur wannabe £30 to sling together a three course meal with entertainment - drag queens, poets, Bollywood dancers, burlesque, Elvis-aoke, et al - in their front room, as at Tony Hornecker's Behind The Pale Blue Door in Hackney (pictured) where I watched a fabulously exotic drag queen called Rozalla flip pancakes like a demented pyromaniac to a Beyoncé track -some compensation for nearly breaking my jaw on the toughest beef ever - never mind Wellington, this was more like chewing Crocs. Then came Come Dine With Me - unmissable TV wherein the hosts’ vegetable towers are inversely proportionate to towering egos and culinary nous that imagines a square desert plate dusted with chocolate powder the sine qua non of fine dining; it was,only circa Fanny Craddock. But when Virgin TV gets in on the act with Restaurant In Our Living Room, you know the trend has jumped the shark.. and shark, as any foodie will tell you, is so last century

Pinkcloverclub.com

Get on an altruistic tip by pimping your unlucky-in-love GBF. That’s gay best friend à la Stanford Blatch, Carrie Bradshaw’s mincing walker in SATC, flagged up by pinkcloverclub.com as an ideal candidate for their new free dating website for gay singletons; although in Stanford’s case, a Barneys carrier bag pulled over his homely mug might outweigh any amount of purple prose. Here, unlike other dating websites, the hopeful’s profiles are submitted by spin doctor pals. Hence, we learn (from his sister, Helen) that James (31) in Droitwich Spa is ‘a champagne quaffing, abitious (sic) and creative, smart cookie’ who is ‘very good at compliments and strangly (sic) addicted to cage fighting ..but not for the violence.’ So, he’s in it for the cross-dressing, then? Well, if it works for Alex Reid. So, if you’re, male, between l8 and 55 (his only criteria), James offers ‘free hugs.’ All hearts and flowers to Gaydar’s graphic poses, log on for a laugh and - who knows? the man of your dreams; Stanford maybe?

Shockings

That’s ‘shockings’ as in shocking stockings, but see also ‘shites’, as in shit tights. According to the style glossy posse, this season’s hot hosiery trend is all about patterns. Any bets, though, that the majority of well turned ankles at this week’s London catwalk shows will be sheathed in sheer nude or twenty shades of solid black? I tell you, it’s a wicked conspiracy by bitter, frigid, skinny mag hags to make their shaplier sisters appear utterly preposterous. Know that chunky lace swirl designs make anything other than anorexic pins look like thick bolts of upholstery fabric destined for a DFS sofa factory, while Su Pollard-style sparkly lurex brights are fine if you’re going for the Big Bird off Sesame Street look this autumn. Designer Henry Holland’s revolting ‘graduated’ numbers and ‘mock hold ups’ for Pretty Polly are plain plug-ugly, Betty ..and as for his alphabet tights, do those letters spell V-I-C-T-I-M?
House of Holland mock over the knee tights at www.tightsplease.co.uk

Urge Overkill

Urge Overkill
Remember them? Their cover of Neil Diamond’s Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon appeared in Pulp Fiction. The same track is blaring from my local supermarket’s speakers at 9 am on Sunday. Neither this nor a random segue into Nickelback, The Sugababes, U2 and - I kid you not - Suzi Quatro’s Can The Can is what we ever need to hear, bleary eyed, in search of a breakfast fix. Increasingly, it seems businesses can’t resist the Urge - to inflict pointless muzak; the result? Aural Overkill. Next door at the newsagents, Kiss-FM and jingly-jangly adverts on newly appeared plasma screens are locked in cruelly cacophonous competition while at dinner in a once sedate bistro, I can’t hear my date speak over the full 12 inch remix version of Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up played a disco-decibel level. Even the dentist is at it: is Barry Manilow’s Can’t Smile Without You an attempt at subliminal advertising? In the words of Deep Purple, ‘Hush!’

IMAGE: http://jonashley.files.wordpress.com

Box Set Bullies

 Best never to mention any blockbuster series you missed when it first aired on TV. Before you can say ‘Mad Men’, the box set of seasons 1 to 60 will be forced on you by well-meaning pals who’ll then systematically bully you to watch until you too become a die-hard fan. The reason I missed most of The Wire, The Sopranos and Dexter - all currently gathering dust and still goading me from the sitting room bookshelf - is that there are only so many hours in one lifetime and frankly, no matter how ‘genius’ the script or acting, I’ve got bigger plans for precious downtime than to spend it with a bunch of Baltimore, New Jersey or Miami low lives. Who needs annoying Friends like Joey, Rachel and Phoebe? And as for plane crashes on mysterious tropical islands, write me off as a Lost cause.

PC Tits

I say the PG Tips chimps - long since on the dole, no thanks to a bunch of silly monkeys/ animal rights campaigners - are more capable than the PC tits that sit on countless quangos set up at our vast expense. Does the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, for instance, really imagine that banning terms such as a black day ‘with its hierarchical valuation of skin colour’ is of pressing concern to sensible Ulster folk? With our finances deep in the red (apologies to any Sioux or Cherokee readers) what sort of madperson - that's as opposed to ‘madman’ which might disenfranchise 50% of the population - is paid to come up with this nonsense? I’m guessing the same sort of eejit - a term presumably OK on the grounds that it is omnisexual? - that would ban the use of ‘master bedroom’, ‘barmaid’, ‘white knuckle ride’, ‘leather pouffe’ and ‘tall story’ -  the latter, on the basis that Sandi Toksvig might feel short changed? I’d complain to the PM but worry that addressing someone as Mr Brown is inappropriate.  

Crocs of s***!

I’d be lying if I claimed to be shedding anything other than crocodile tears over reports that Crocs - purveyors of lumpen plastic footwear to mankind and George W Bush - is struggling in the jaws of recession; the US manufacturer’s share price is down a staggering 90% at around $3.50. Frankly, I’d rather inject an artery with quick-dry cement and risk a fatal clogging than wear these less-than-killer clogs. ‘Clogs’ - the very name conjures up images of naff 1970s prog-rockers and sturdy Dutch lesbians clomping around dam and dyke. ‘But they come in such cute shades.’ Really? Because Technicolor Smurf is a good look? Comfy? Try Gucci loafers! Driving up the autoroute from Marseilles, I thought the citizens of one Provençal town had seen sense and barred them. Orange: Fermé aux Crocs proclaimed a banner. A closer inspection revealed some wag had added the acute accent to a sign for a local wildlife park

Twitter -I don't wanna hear it

Twitterrhorrea is a condition common to fans of this absurdly popular ‘social messaging utility’, where people with bugger-all-to-say post cyber white noise. Will my life be the richer for knowing that big Shaquille O’Neal is ‘nervus’ to be in traffic court?; that Will Carling is ‘trying to resist a Kit-Kat’?; or that Alan Carr worries he’s caught ‘cystitus’ from wearing tights while cross dressing? The site has its uses, I suppose. Stranded, thirty-two floors up at members’ club Paramount the other night, waiting for a lift that refused to come, the date - seizing this hiatus as a chance to log on via her Blackberry - got the scoop: Incarcerated within that very elevator was prize (T)wit Stephen Fry tweeting live to the world about his plight. ‘C’mon, let’s hit the stairs!’
I am indebted to a mate who informs me Twitter is somewhere between your twat and your shitter. Quite!

Racy Reads

I’m intrigued by Little Black Book: a new collection of short stories ‘about black people in London by the mysterious Mr OH,’ it’s apparently for ‘adults who appreciate good literature and even better sex.’ OH, dear! Doesn’t such hubris commonly herald the embarrassing imaginary couplings of some frustrated soul whose beige mac isn’t necessarily a fashion statement - more knob than Nabokov? LBB comes courtesy of Authors Online, a business that offers to get undiscovered talent into print, although in the context of racy reads, their ‘Enhanced Service’ (£1525) could be something from a Carry On caper. Based on sub-Mills & Boon clichés such as ‘the door to her love slid open’ and ‘Donald was as smooth as chocolate going in and as slick as grease coming out’, I respect Mr OH’s desire for anonymity. A nom de plume for some literary colossus scared he be nominated for the Literary Review’s Bad Sex In Fiction Award? The competition is frequently ahem, stiff:  previous winners include hilarious w**k from AA Gill, Giles Coren and Sebastian Faulks. 



IMAGE: www.authorsonline.co.uk

Brangelinaston - The Who Cares? Tabloid Triangle

The world and its hairdresser may be agog over The Pitts but in the words of an A-lister with more charisma and sex appeal than the pair could shake a stick at, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ I find the curious case of Benjamin Button and his high maintenance (soon-to-be-ex?) spouse curiously unappealing, not to mention more predictable than the plot of Mr & Mrs Smith. With £200 million to divvy up between them if it all goes pear-shaped, the fees for any Hollywood star-in-crisis support system needed to get the poor lambs back on their red carpet feet will be loose change, and it’s not like the kids will go hungry if they split up. What’s deeply depressing is the certainty that speculative tittle tattle about dreich Jennifer’s part in the sad saga will increase fifty-fold; the only permutation untried, unless I missed it in Heat, is some Jen-on-Jolie girl action. Sadder still, an area the size of Sweden will be deforested to provide the newsprint to report this tedious media ménage’s latest twist. I know. I know. Now I promise never to mention Brangelinaston again.

What Bright Spark Came Up With This?

Aiming to replace a blown ‘hint of peach’ 60 watt bulb whose soft glow flatters even the most raddled complexion, I was - like the old bulbs now banned under EU law - incandescent to discover that  those ugly ‘eco-friendly’ coiled  compact fluorescent lights that will somehow save the planet are being forced on the British consumer. Fluorescent light only works if you think recently exhumed corpse is a good look and the shop-keeper’s alternative suggestion - the same bulbs in primary colours, as seen on outdoor Christmas trees - ain’t exactly sexy either. As they contain mercury and carry the do not dispose of in bin symbol, government body Defra advises taking used or broken CFLs to a ‘local authority civic amenity site.’ Brilliant! What bright spark in Brussels imagines the extra energy used by an old screw-in will outweigh the carbon emissions created when chauffeuring its dud replacement to  my ‘local’ dump three miles away?    

IMAGE: www.freakingnews.com

Style Rookie

Style mavens have been getting their Myla gussets in a twist over ‘tiny 13-year-old dork’ (her description) Tavi Gevinson, author of http://tavi-thenewgirlintown.blogspot.com/ - an insightful and frighteningly adult-in-tone blog about what’s hot/ what’s not in fashion. Courted by influential designers such as Marc Jacobs and Yohji Yamamoto and feted by industry bigwigs - she’s currently Katie Grand’s cover girl for Pop - should the self-styled ‘Style Rookie’ be hailed as fashion’s new spiritual guru (the Dalai Lamé?) or dismissed as a precocious brat whose parents should have packed her outdoors to play in Wal-Mart denims rather than fester in her bedroom pondering whether Balmain-or-Balanciega would work better for her Bat Mitzvah? Rocking a subversive 1950s Polish librarian meets Madame Cholet Womble look while coveting Ashish Topshop’s animal print hooker wedges, I sense, in her, a true fashion original. Will it be Anna or Tavi editing US Vogue’s next September issue?

IMAGE - fashionindie.com

The Final Countdown

It’s a macabre topic for a gloomy winter morn’ but if you haven’t already done so, isn’t it time you tackled the thorny issue of soundtracking your own funeral? Having curated the ultimate iPod library, why risk shuffling off to summat howlingly inappropriate selected by your friendly, local undertaker? Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On will appall your cred congregation. Check out music site wwww.aux.tv for inspiration. Even if 80s Swedish rockers Europe’s karaoke anthem doesn’t make their Final Countdown, old chestnut My Way - the Pistols preferred to Sinatra, natch - does. Other dead certs include Queens of the Stone Age’s Long Slow Goodbye, the Pixies’ Monkey Gone To Heaven and, strictly for the post-modern and deeply ironic corpse, the Spice Girls’ Goodbye. Top send-off is Joe Strummer’s Redemption Song although I’m tending towards Jim Morrison’s Light My Fire for when the crem' Doors finally slide open. How about Green Day’s Good Riddance, you say? Cheeky! 

image http://hearse67.tripod.com

Double Denim Disaster

It’s the fashion trend you hoped they’d never revisit: suddenly, the likes of Chloé, House of Holland, Jeremy Scott and D&G have rediscovered double denim. Yup teaming blue on blue and worn, as at Mulberry, with trailer trashy big backcombed hair a border collie might fancy, is the thing. Whatever arcane references the designers may cite as inspiration, I reckon a new DVD, Prisoner Cell Block H: The Edna Pearson Story holds the key. Could they be pining for ‘top dog’, (Queen) Bea Smith and the louche lags of Wentworth Detention Centre, setting for ‘Prisoner’, the so-bad-it's-addictive serial from Down Under? The Sheilas in the slammer drama was a TV guilty pleasure in the early 1990s and it seems their dodgy denim dungarees, slaggy slacks and criminal pinafores have inspired the revival. Wallow in nostalgia as fashion muse/ poisoner Edna’s story - hitherto shelved for legal reasons -unfolds over eight never before released episodes. Altogether now! ‘You used to give me roses. I wish you could again……’

3D Or Not 3D:

that is the question. Where do you stand on the new generation TV sets needed to watch films and live action such as the Premiership in 3D?  I’m sticking with my vintage 2D box, thanks; £2,000+ is serious wedge for the debatable thrill of experiencing balls that appear to fly out of the screen at you, and as for a 3D close-up of John Terry’s dubious tackle, foul! Introduced as a novelty back in the 1950s, it’s only thanks to recent technological leaps that 3D has finally become a viable proposition. But strip away the special effects and would the overhyped Avatar have had so much as a sniff at an Oscar nomination? Give me an engaging storyline with complex (non-blue) characters every time. Besides, if the requisite spectacle frames required ain’t Gucci, I’m not wearing ‘em! Still, some Hollywood stars might welcome the implications of the new technology, not that the likes of Vinnie Jones or Shia Le Boeuf’s performances could ever be deemed one dimensional. 

Charting Our Decline

Listening to the official UK top 40 on the radio recently, any lingering notion that Britain’s musical tastes are innately superior to the rest of the world’s was finally laid to rest. From the trend for identikit urban-lite via Glee’s God-awful Queen tribute and Blah Blah Blahnd Ke$ha to the trying-too-hard over-painted Lady whose formulaic poppy cock drives me GaGa -honey, that Lee McQueen (RIP) is more bad drag queen - it’s wall-to-wall Yank w***. When homegrown ‘talent’ gets a look in, it’s invariably a cash Cow-ell (JLS/ Alexandra /Jedward) or something equally lame like Marina and the (courtesy-of-Elizabeth Duke?) Diamonds’s Hollywood. Rewind a generation to February 1982 when, Shakin’ Stevens notwithstanding, Britannia ruled the airwaves with The Jam, The Stranglers, OMD, XTC, Soft Cell and The Human League all charting. Assuming ‘yoof’ drives the singles chart, I fear they’ve been slipped a sinister Mickey Finn in their burgers. How else to explain passive acceptance of this relentless diet of saccharine American junk?