Tip of the week -

Musky Dessert Inna Goldfrapp Porcini (000-1)

in the 7:77 at The Barchester Am Dram Brown Bullock

POP NUGGETS - with Wink Haslet

Girls Aloud - once a guilty pleasure for this correpondent, now more an institution. 'Biology' is less a pop song, more a 3 minute opus, with more hooks than Gary Barlow on a fishing trip to Peter Hook's private lake in Hook (it's in Yorkshire, OK?) It's the nu-pop 'Paranoid Android', doncha know.

So 'Top Of The Pops' has been booted off BBC1 with nary a whimper and dumped in the hinterland of Sunday early evening on BBC2 to battle it out in the ratings with 'Antiques Roadshow'. Nobody seems bothered that it features not only songs that are going down in the charts now ('cuz Jon Bon Jovi could be arsed to drag himself down to the studio so the least we can do is repeat the clip twelve times) but songs that went out of the charts thirty years ago. Still, some of the old ways haven't been forgotten - they've brought back an embarrassing middle-aged bloke to present every week, but instead of another cheesy DJ they pair him up with one of Pans People!
TOTP may be a fading anachronism now, but something of its ilk is needed now more than ever. In them olden days the 'Pops wasn't just a TV show, it was a cultural barometer and also an important part of family life. Everyone sat down together and the parents would moan about Snotty & The Nosepickers ('That's not music, that's just a noise! Is that a boy or a girl?') making the kids even more determined to go out and form a Gabba Grindcore band called Anal Shite because nobody understands them. Nowadays your parents don't need to sit down and watch TV with you because you've all got TVs in your rooms, and you needn't feel alienated because you can watch the Gabba Grindcore channel on cable and find fellow viewers on the chatroom. Mass media has swallowed up every aspect of popular and alternative culture, chewed them up and spat them back out in neat little homogenised nuggets.
Me, I blame the parents. Who else buys James Blunt records? Fuckers.

Does anyone care about Michael Jackson anymore? His lawyers can drag this thing on as long as they want, but all the while Jacko's cache of genius is eaten away by the two pronged dildo of public antipathy and the all-round colon-clenching sadness of his fans. I don't mean sad as in I just listened to that Latino manwoman sing the Roy Orbison song in 'Mulholland Drive' way, I mean sad in the way that David Essex and Cliff Richard fans are sad. Friendless virginal teenagers with borderline psychotic tendencies brandishing soft toys and placards, menopausal housewives with a pathological obsession, well meaning balding Belgians with tattooed eyebrows who look like they should be in a Sisters Of Mercy tribute band....Welcome to the future, Wackson. I think the best thing he could do now is own up to everything, plus maybe a mass murder or two, and at least he can enjoy the rest of his life as a cult figure like Charles Manson. As Oscar Wilde once said, 'There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is getting your tongue stuck in a bosun's rusty snuffbox.'

Regular readers to this section have been aware of my assertion that Rachel Stevens is one hideous moose who would do the world a favour by handing all of those divine pop gems to someone with more personality, charm and beauty... I take it all back. Yes, call me a shallow whooer if you like, but she seems far more alluring, even bearable since she acquired a lovely bob. Keep it up Rach - I don't think I could learn to love you, but the desire to strangle you has all but subsided.

McFly have a Gary Barlow! McFly have a Gary Barlow! You can't miss him, he's the podgy one with dodgy blonde highlights, and he apparently 'writes' all the songs. Not sure yet if that means he actually composes the words and music or just that he's the only one that can actually write.

WORLD TOP 12
BETTY BOO - 'Jet Sex'

ARCTIC MONKEYS - 'Mardy Bum'

WIGWAM - 'Wigwam'

GIRLS ALOUD - 'Biology'

SCOTT WALKER - 'Montague Terrace (In Blue)'

BEVERLEY WILLIAMS - 'Then There Was You'

JULIE LONDON - 'Mad About The Boy'

ROXY MUSIC - 'Do The Strand'

LE RENO AMPS - '1969'

KYLIE MINOGUE - 'Confide In Me'

JACQUES DUTRONC - 'Les Playboys'

APRIL MARCH - 'Sugar'