But that’s not going to happen. None of the Barenaked Ladies – not the one who looks like Kevin Bacon, not the one who looks like a weather-damaged Backstreet Boy, not even the schlubby fat one who seems to have dipped his chin in dogmuck – are going to jail. And especially not Steven Page, even though it looked like he might for a while.

After being arrested for cocaine possession back in July, Steven Page from Barenaked Ladies has been staring down a jail sentence. Yesterday, though, he avoided that fate – but only if he promises to go to rehab and stay clean for six months. Stupid courts, everyone knows that when you’re letting a Barenaked Lady avoid jail, you’re supposed to slip in a clause banning them from ever making any more bad music ever again. Idiots.

We’ve all got it so wrong. Look at any classic drug movie of the last 30 years – what have they been missing? That’s right, a soundtrack by Barenaked Ladies.

Imagine how much more powerful the final scene of Scarface would be if it was accompanied by the sound of Here Come The Geese, the final track from Barenaked Ladies’ new kid’s album Snacktime! And you can’t deny that the bit in Requiem For A Dream where that heroin addict’s arm gets all withered and diseased would have been about a thousand times better had there been a fat Canadian man in the background wittering on tweely about Chinese chickens. Don’t argue with this, it’s fact.

It’s fact because Barenaked Ladies are possibly the most rebellious drug-splattered rock and roll act of the last century. Or because Steven Page, the Barenaked Ladies singer who most resembled a tearful Hello Kitty-fixated Games Workshop Saturday boy, got arrested for cocaine possession in July. One or the other.

Despite initially trying to fight the charges, Steven Page has since decided to cut a deal with the courts whereby rather than going to jail for five and a half years, he just has to plead guilty to a lesser charge, stop taking drugs for six months and go to rehab instead, as E! Online reports:

“I’m grateful…for this opportunity to further prove myself as a productive and law-abiding member of society,” Page, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession, said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to the next six months as a period of healing and growth.”

Alright, steady on Steven. You’ve avoided a jail sentence, not won a reality show. Besides, if we were you we’d probably not concentrate on the growth part of the growth and healing so much, if you know what we mean. We mean you’re already quite fat.

Still, at least we know that these next six months will be an interesting time for the future of Barenaked Ladies. Because, Jesus, if One Week was their peak of their mind-expanded drug music, we can only guess that their clean-up album will be almost unimaginably shit.

Actually that might not be true – we don’t like Barenaked Ladies nearly enough to listen to one of their terrible songs – but they do have a song called If I Had $1,000,000 and, since the band’s singer Steven Page was arrested for cocaine possession this week, that scenario would probably make the most sense.

Or maybe it wouldn’t, because Barenaked Ladies have posted a message on their website saying that Steven Page will fight his charges to the ends of the Earth. Or until he’s convicted, sent to jail and used as a violent masturbatory tool by the entire prison population as a twisted revenge for his song about Chickedy China The Chinese Chicken. Whichever one happens first, basically.

When it was first announced that Steven Page from Barenaked Ladies had been arrested for cocaine possession, we were a little perplexed. Usually drug-taking in the world of music is synonymous with acid-fried 20-minute psyche-rock freak-jams, not twee little acoustic ditties about relationships that only girls and weirdos like.

But then it all started to become clearer. If you were in Barenaked Ladies, you’d want to be wrecked off your shit on drugs all the time just to numb the pain of your day job, wouldn’t you?

In this respect, Steven Page is lucky that he was only arrested for cocaine possession – most men in his position would be ramming industrial quantities of rhino tranquiliser up their arses 24/7 just to forget that they were responsible for that dreadful One Week song.

But that’s assuming that Steven Page is guilty of cocaine possession, which we shouldn’t do because Steven Page says he is absolutely innocent of everything. According to a statement left on the Barenaked Ladies website:

“Many of you have probably read or heard press accounts about Steven Page’s recent arrest in New York state. Steven has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and the validity of the charges against Steven will be strongly contested. While this is happening, it’s business as usual for Barenaked Ladies. We will continue to perform and look forward to heading into the studio later this year to record a new album.”

What? Business as usual? Jesus Christ – what needs to happen to get Barenaked Ladies to split up? Alcoholism? Bestiality? Dead prostitutes turning up in their sheds? Just tell us, for the love of god, and we’ll try our hardest to make it happen.

Anyway, at least now that Steven Page has declared his innocence over his arrest, Barenaked Ladies won’t have to worry about people not buying their new kid’s album Snack Time because they’re morally outraged. If they don’t buy it, it’s because it’s really quite rubbish and a waste of their precious wages. Business as usual, then.

And now we might have been proved correct. Steven Page, the guitarist and singer of twee, humourlessly chirpy Canadian folk-rock one-too-many hit wonders Barenaked Ladies has been arrested on suspicion of cocaine possession.

That’s right, kids, it looks like Barenaked Ladies are on drugs. Steven Page’s arrest has put us in a thoroughly bad mood – we can’t believe our heroes of the awful late-1990s acoustic radio pop scene are involved in drugs. Oh, say it hasn’t spread! Promise us that Sugar Ray are still clean! Look us in the eye and swear that Lyte Funky Ones don’t chase the dragon!

We’d imagine – because we’re assuming that their fans are idiots – that Barenaked Ladies are often quizzed about their 1998 song One Week. Quizzed on things like: “When you sang ‘Chickity China the Chinese chicken/ You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin’/ Watchin’ X-Files with no lights on/ We’re dans la maison’, what inspired that?”

Turns out the answer was probably a bloody great pile of cocaine.

In what could go down in history as one of the least likely drug arrests in history, Steven Page – the one from Barenaked Ladies who looks like Russell T Davies‘ primary school photo, the one from Barenaked Ladies who looks like he’d start crying if you got too close to his collection of magic cards – has been busted on suspicion of cocaine possession. Newsday reports:

The 38-year-old was visiting Christine Benedicto at her Fayetteville apartment and the two got into an argument. Police found Benedicto’s car parked on the sidewalk outside the home and went to investigate. They found Page and another woman at the kitchen table with cocaine. Page, Benedicto and the third woman all face drug charges.

According to the manager of Barenaked Ladies, Steven Page has been charged with his crime and must return to court tomorrow.

We’re worried for Steven Page, we really are – he carried Barenaked Ladies through that one song of theirs that anyone can remember from a decade ago, he really sodding did.

If he goes to jail for this the band could split up under the pressure, even though most people already probably assumed that they’d split up some time ago. What would we do then, apart from continue with our lives in exactly the same way as we did before while quickly forgetting that the band ever even existed? Huh?

Hopefully Steven Page will get help for his apparent drug problem, because it’s a slippery slope. First you think you can control it, then the next thing you know you’re babbling nonsensical, self-indulgent words to nobody in particular and… oh bugger, we’re a decade late with this advice, aren’t we?