So, ITV1 have given all their money away to wife beaters and rapists. This is the new way. As such, this essentially means you have to watch X Factor twice, because they can’t afford to make any new TV programmes. Thank god Kelly Rowland agreed to work overtime due to how much she believes in music. (Cocaine.)

Talk Talk have given stop-frame animation a go and simultaneously ired the entire board of the Academy Awards as a result.

This week we are visiting MANCHESTER. Although the show isn’t in chronological order or anything, so basically we’re just looking  at the bits they filmed in Manchester. Or at least ITV1’s edited version of Manchester, which involves a lot of day-glo and mystical interchangeable skies, apparently. Or Hogwarts, if you will. Due to the fact that ITV1 are not culturally familiar with the ’80s ‘Madchester’ scene, we must settle for gratuitous tracking shots of Selfridges over and over to fully understand where we are. Come to think of it, the true meaning of Manchester probably is £18 lip gloss.

And, being in Manchester of COURSE means we must have a chat about Gary Barlow. Because Gary Barlow is from Cheshire, which is an entirely different county. And Hitler was from Austria. And that’s what happens when you collect your primary sources of research from Bing.

Nonetheless, we are all treated to a delightful smorgasbord of everyone in Manchester being incredibly excited to meet someone who lives NEAR MANCHESTER. Kelly Rowland talks about all the lies Gary Barlow has told her about Manchester, coked out of her mind and having an amazing time as the backlog of Bez’ family tree try and touch the hems of her clothes. We wish we were Kelly Rowland. Gary Barlow sings Manchester’s national anthem ‘Manchester Na Na Na Na’. He also wears a waistcoat as he does this, presumably because he likes to punish people and hit women. You are watching ITV1 remember.

Our first contestants of the episode are two gay men who are gay and totally FINE with it. They are either called Kendal, or Kenco, or Ken Dodd, or Amazon Kindle. One of those.  They wear hats and have primary colours in their hair, and one or both of them is/are Grace Jones. So far, so ‘good’. Upon entering the big blue shiny stage where blasé dreams come true, the pair talk to the judges for a while about how stupid they are, and everyone thinks they’re brilliant as a result. The pair decide to give Lady Gaga ‘a whirl’, because avant garde pop music on mainstream television could work if we just dared to open our eyes a mid-quarter.

And then, in the world’s greatest tribute to Salvador Dali the world has ever seen (Because it certainly wasn’t THIS, was it?), the pair apply some lip gloss (TRUE MEANING OF MANCHESTER) before launching into their performance – much to the fury and downright odium of Gary Barlow. The cameras do NOT cut to Louis Walsh at that moment, which shows self-control and integrity. Perhaps if ITV1 had used those aforementioned traits more often, Show Me The Funny might have never made it to air.

Kendro, or Eoghan Quigg or whatever they’re called start singing their god-awful rendition of Lady Gaga. All the judges (Including Louis Walsh who has been judging talent show competitions for well over a decade) seem absolutely dumbfounded that two men could DARE to come on stage and sing vaguely out of tune.

Tulisa Cocacobanathehottestspotnorthofsavana honestly doesn’t know if they can make it as serious music artists, which is a really grave concern, obviously. About five minutes later however, she professes that she would ‘spread them on her toast’, which is probably the same thing that EMI said to The Beatles, so nothing to worry about after all.  Gary Barlow hates them with every fibre of his being, but that’s only because he’s a bit iffy about sodomy, so fair enough. They get through.

Ad break – Rihanna is still harping on about how amazing Capital FM is.

Meanwhile, the X Factor are STILL in Manchester. The replacement bus service must have been delayed again. A segment of absolutely no importance to a post-9/11 dystopia is then shown, where the judges are shown riding around in custom-made X Factor BUGGIES. LOL, the economy.

A couple more auditions just for the hell of it. And to make matters worse, these are integrated with what terrifyingly sounds like a dubstep version of Another One Bites the Dust, which is just incredibly unfair. Following this – a woman sings It’s Raining Men, despite the crippling menopause, and another man sings badly too, so we guess that’s fifteen-love.

Although there have only been a couple of subtly, evenly dispersed montages on the audition stages of the show this year, we hate to be killjoys, but this particular one gives us the mild desire to eat benign cysts for breakfast. It feels as if the montage will never quite end. Eventually, it does. Unless of course it never actually ended, and we’re now just hooked up to a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human popula- Oh no wait, that’s probably The Matrix.

Meanwhile, the nation’s prayers for a leopard print Indiana Jones style-incarnation of Mary Byrne were finally answered in the shape of Samantha Brookes. Good ol, down to earth Samantha Brookes and her eyebrows. God, those eyebrows. They look like they were designed by the same people who did the Olympics 2012 logo.

Kelly Rowland loves her so much that she threatens to crowd surf. Thankfully, she doesn’t, but we have to say it was pretty touch and go for a second there. All these spontaneous threats and jibes Kelly Rowland has been making lately… this sounds like the early stages of a chronic depressive episode rather than a job on the X Factor, if you ask us. One minute you’re laughing happily, next thing you know, you’re rolling in to the BBC at 5am trying to audition for Celebrity Fame Academy. Just a warning.

Samantha worries that her weight may be a particular grievance to her upcoming career as a pop singer.  The fact that she sings rubbish and has no taste or any knowledge on the correct curvature of eyebrows  is not addressed. Kelly, spokeswomen of female equality and advocate of first-wave feminism since 1792 announces to the universe that YES, Samantha has a size. And that size is Size ‘SEXY’, completely abolishing the whole prospect of anthropometry AND prejudice in one fail swoop. WE’LL HAVE WHAT’S SHE’S HAVING. In a clean syringe, if that’s alright.

Next up is a girl group called Twisted. MENTAL name, we know, but just go with it. By god, these women are wearing polkadot dresses just like they used to do in something mental like the 1950s! Like Kate Nash x 1000! INCREDIBLE. God, we miss The Pipettes. Now that Belle Amie are going through their neo-classical metal phase, Twisted are exactly what we need. This literally could not get any better. One of the singers, who is called Chrissie Pitt (which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter, but we just thought we’d be thorough.) – ‘reveals’ that she auditioned for the show as a soloist last year. Now this year she is back! With loads of retards in New Look’s 2008 collection, and a goth. The girls perform their ‘take’ on ANADELESONGANADELESONGANADELESONG, which involve some pretty amazing Katie Waissel-style ‘shoop shoops’ admittedly, but shockingly the judges don’t go for it, and want to see Chrissie Pitt sing on her own.

We wonder why that could be? Not because the whole thing has been scripted so that the other girls can fob off and the soloist can get some extra attention in the editing process for when she makes it considerably far to the later stages of the competition, surely? No, that’s a really insensitive thing to suggest. Definitely not that reason. The reason is of COURSE that she is simply amazing and brilliant and is definitely going to be the new Kurt Cobain, so let’s not hear another word about it.

Oh, and she sang ‘Forget You’ while her friends seethed through their tears at the side of the stage. How d’ya like them apples?

After the break, Dermot O Leary had the audacity to show up to his job half-way through the programme and said something insignificant about how some people like to sing and more words of that particular calibre. Intuitive, Dermot. Absolutely Magneto-esque.

Then we got introduced to Lascel Wood. But wait, there’s more! He is 20 years old, and from Brighton. As we will steadily come to learn, Lascel likes to mix things up. Even such trivial matters such as exchanging social pleasantries. For example, instead of saying “Hello”, Lascel would tend to say something along the lines of “Hello my name is Lascel and I am 20 years of age and I was in foster care” instead, which is such an amazingly snappy ice breaker, that he probably could have single handedly saved the Titanic. Alas, as it is. RIP, RMS Titanic.

Lascel has brought his estranged mentally ill mother with him to his X Factor audition today, which to some might seem a little gratuitous, but we personally believe that Lascel should be knighted for putting up with her on the Metrolink on the way up. Lascel morosely explains to the judges that his mother has been suffering from ‘Bi-polar’, which we thought was just the name of Kerry Katona’s dog or something, but turns out to be a very serious mental disorder, which is pretty embarrassing. But none of that matters anyway, because Lascel probably wouldn’t have brought any of that up had the judges not beat him to a pulp and practically RAPED IT OUT OF HIM, so fair enough.

Lascel sings a soul version of a Kings of Leon song, because Jo Whiley’s work will never be done. People generally think he sounds quite good. Even his sectioned, mentally ill mother can recognise a damn good treble voice vibrato when she hears one, so it’s win-win-win, as Lascel gets a standing ovation. Kelly Rowland ascends triumphantly from the desk with half her pant suit round her ankles, like the Monica Lewinsky that Britain never had. Lascel concludes that he feels emotional. We quite agree.

And on that note, we’re going to go and lie in our beds wide-eyed and alone until the second instalment which takes place tomorrow night. Yeah, really. You have to do this all again tomorrow. It’s fine though, because you’re lonely enough to do that.

X Factor Review Week 4, Part 2 continues tomorrow…

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Since John and George died, there’s been something of a tussle over who can be the funniest remaining Beatle. Paul McCartney is just too wacky to be properly funny, so that means, by default, Ringo gets the crown, right?

Well, sadly for Ringo, he seems to be suffering from an onset on dementia.

Of course, our Ring’ became something of a laughing stock when he warned us all with ‘peace and love’ not to send him any more gifts (how can anyone top those paintings Marge Simpson did of him?). Then he went and vaguely slagged off Liverpool. He’s priceless isn’t he? Well, now he’s slagging Paul McCartney off. Next, we assume he’ll be pissing on Lennon’s grave.

First of all, Ringo is claiming that The Beatles were lucky to have him as their drummer. And he’s right to say that as he was the best man on Merseyside to man the drumstool at the time (and, contrary to popular belief, remained a really great drummer throughout the Beatles’ career).

He says:

‘Within Liverpool, I was a lot more well know than them. Rory and the Hurricanes (Starr’s former band) were big shots in the city. We had the suits. That was our claim to fame. The Beatles were lucky to get me. It wasn’t just that I was a big shot; I was a cool drummer.’

All well and good, right? Everyone knows Ringo was better than Pete Best. But what’s all this about Macca?

Well, Ringo is still touring with his (pretty awful) All Starr Band. He keeps asking Paul to join them but alas, as one of the greatest living songwriters on the planet, he’s always busy.

This obviously sticks in Starr’s craw.

‘Every time I ask him to tour with the All Starrs, he says he is too busy.’

Then, Ringo goes a bit mental.

‘We’re as close as we want to be. We’re the only two remaining Beatles, although he likes to think he’s the only one. I actually think it’s people on the outside who perceive Paul as thinking he’s the only member left, when actually it’s me. I am the last remaining Beatle.’

Paul is dead man, miss him, miss him…

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Since Catherine Zeta Jones got swallowed up by Hollywood, she stopped being that kinda cute one from Darling Buds Of May and became a husk of a human. It seemed like there was something wrong with her, like Katie Holmes when she married fruitcake Tom Cruise.

Well, turned out there was! No, the Thetans hadn’t mangled her mind with alien talk (well, they might, but there’s nothing much to suggest that currently), rather, it turned out she’s bipolar.

And now she’s got something wrong with her, Michael Douglas – who kept knocking on death’s door for a while not too long ago and is probably a bit put out that his wife is hogging the sickly spotlight – is grinning and all proud of his wife who is approximately a millennium younger than he.

Of course, someone being bipolar is pretty grim isn’t it? We shouldn’t poke fun really because… well… in fairness, we have no idea what being bipolar means. All the bipolar people we know take tablets and can be found down the pub quite frequently.

Either way, our ignorance hasn’t stopped Michael Douglas praising his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones for seeking help. You should totally seek help y’know? That’s the thing to do. Help. Help is good.

We’re talking about The Beatles LP aren’t we?

Apparently, Catherine Zeta Douglas Adams spent five whole days in Connecticut’s Silver Hill Hospital receiving treatment and then put her feet up with her family in a holiday home. That’s nice isn’t it. If you are bipolar and don’t have a holiday home, we suggest you camp outside the Zeta Jones holiday home. She won’t mind. She’s an ambassador for bipolarisers or whatever you’re called.

Douglas said:

“It takes a lot of courage to seek help and I am proud of Catherine for doing something positive about her situation. It’s onwards and upwards for us.”

Zeta-Jones called on fellow sufferers to seek help:

“Don’t suffer silently… it is worth it”. This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am one of them”

Nothing about the holiday home or Beatles LPs, but y’know, it is all implied, right?

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Punk tart, Iggy Pop,  has revealed that he was approached to be a guest judge on American Idol, which of course, would have been an absolute hoot! Think about it. His boiled racehorse body and impossible teeth, glowering from behind a desk while someone sings ‘I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll at him.

Of course, there’ll be those amongst you who think that Ig sold out when he did those car insurance commercials. While they are undoubtedly bad, they’re nowhere near as awful as some of the bands he played with in the ’80s.

And so, prime Stooge to appear on a pop contest on television? What’s the kicker?

Well, Iggy appeared on American Idol, on-stage, gyrating and kicking out all kinds of jams while performing Wild One, which only served to show that an aged man still has more balls than 99% of most young stars and, most importantly, is completely unembarrassable. That’s why we love him, see?

And his new LP is going to be a softer, more gentler Ig (as seen on his last album when he decided to sing in French with a jazz backing), covering The Beatles and Fred Neil.

“There are no rock songs. I’ve been doing American and French (songs), mostly ballads”.

As for American Idol?

“I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the band they put together for me, and they were good to work with. It was a very specific participation, very limited, and I kind of liked it that way. I went and did my thing, basically. I don’t know what to say about it, exactly, except I didn’t know what to expect, I had a good time and actually enjoyed singing the song and enjoyed the audience.”

And it appears that the makers of the show approached Ig to be a judge on the programme.

“There were two phone calls…I wasn’t sure I was interested or available. They called me…I was curious and we spoke a couple times, and that was as far as that went.”

“I don’t think I could’ve done the right job for them on that particular show. I think Steven (Tyler) does a really, really good job of it.”

The simple fact of the matter is, beneath that swarthy veneer, is a man that is simply too nice to be a sneering critic on a talent show.

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Ah! Ringo Starr! Currently the fourth most intelligent Beatle. Yes. We realise two of them are dead. Even the ghost of Lennon wouldn’t be so daft as to warn people with peace and love about sending him shit to the afterlife.

Yet this isn’t a bad thing. It’s because Ringo Starr is so insultingly stupid that he’s so great. In The Beatles Anthology series, all the best one-liners were his. He swore like nobody’s business and showed off a variety of spectacularly dismal waistcoats and mullets. What a guy!

However, we would like to see his house knocked down please because he’s an ungrateful swine.

Like slagging people’s mums, never knock somewhere you don’t live. It doesn’t matter if you once resided there, you can’t slate somewhere if people still call it their home. This is especially the case if you’re in Liverpool.

Liverpool is a tough city and those that live there will fiercely defend it to any naysayers. In private, they’ll slag it off ’til the cows come home, but they’re allowed because they’re scousers, plastic or otherwise.

So when Ringo Starr kinda shrugged his shoulders on the Jonathan Ross show and pretty much said Liverpool was a bag of gash, there was uproar in Merseyside.

How dare he?! He soon buggered off to America or the Home Counties or whichever glitzy craphole he lives in now! How dare he have the front to sneer at the place that helped to propel him to stardom?!

He’s thick, y’dummies! Of all the Fabs, he was the one most likely to say “Liverpool? Too wet, too cold and full of scrubbers, said Thomas”, right?

So he won’t give a monkeys that his birthplace is getting demolished will he? Sod him if he does. It’ll serve him right for sneering one off down that long, famous snout of his.

9 Madryn Street, in Dingle, is probably going to get hauled down and redeveloped which has seen fans who presumably don’t live in the area, and thereby, don’t need a place to live in Liverpool, campaigning to save the building. Yeah! That’s what Liverpool needs! Sod people living under a roof! We want a Ringo Museum where we can look at a 1950s kitchen while a man sings ‘It Don’t Come Easy’ down the stairs while wearing half a parsnip on his nose!

Council leader Joe Anderson says:

“The community in that area have been waiting for 11 years to have these houses demolished and believe they have waited long enough”

Chairman of the campaign to Save Madryn Street, Philip Coppell, disagrees and says:

“Number 9 is a priceless tourist resource that the city would be mad to destroy.”

Of course it is Philip. And people really love his ‘Goodnight Vienna’ LP just as much as they enjoyed listening to She Loves You and Ticket To Ride.

That said, this is pretty cool.

Oh forget that!

Sod it. Pull it down. hecklerspray will help if you want.

You hire the skip and we’ll bring the lump hammers.

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Great songs can be spoiled by awful production and bad songs are made unbearable with awful sound. There’s millions of them out there, all making your ears’ life a misery and doing their best to make you wish you were deaf.

Some of the greatest, most forward-thinking producers have been responsible for awful sounding records. The picture to the right should give you a clue about one such chap!

And so, the folks behind the ASUS Sonic Master campaign asked us to have a think about some dreadful sounding records, which saw one hecklerspray writer being thrown into the street with a copy of ‘Pet Sounds’ and the imprint of a size 10 in his posterior.

See, what got us thinking about dreadful records was the fact that this new ASUS Sonic Master laptop has been designed with music in mind. Good news for music enthusiasts… bad news for anyone responsible for the list of music below as with louder, clearer speakers, you’ll be able to hear every single glaring mistake.

Of course, it’ll be a dream if you have a well-produced record, like the Vengaboys debut album for example.

Before we start listening to badly produced records, you can play with the ASUS Musicbox site and send your chums some silly e-cards. Go to the Musicbox site and choose one of six music characters and upload your ugly face into it!

Now, let us check out some badly made tunes that could very easily shown up by the ASUS Sonic Master.

1. River Deep Mountain High

What happens when you get a whole host of brilliant instruments and turn them into soup? You get Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound at its most gloopy and impenetrable. Obviously, Tina’s performance is wonderful, but the rest of the record sounds like it has been recorded in a corrugated iron bomb shelter. Spector clearly peaked with ‘Be My Baby’.

2. Rolling Stones ‘Exile On Main Street’

‘Exile’ is arguably The Rolling Stones’ greatest album (okay, ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Let It Bleed’ ain’t bad either), but weirdly, it is also the worst recorded. The whole album is covered in a layer of sludge, the bass is often mixed so badly it sounds like leaves on the line and vocals dip in-and-out leaving you unable to work them out and… for the fan of the enthusiastic amateur, this is a dream, but for those that want a cleaner sound, this must be hellish in places.

3. Sly and the Family Stone ‘There’s A Riot Goin’ On

What happens when you promise girls a singing gig on your album in exchange for sexual favours? Well, if you’re Sly Stone, you gleefully accept those favours and then wipe all the recordings of the girls who sang and thereby ruin the tapes making your final recording very muggy indeed. Or so the legend goes. Of course, the production has its own charm and the album is an absolute classic, but you can imagine some studio jerk weeping over this ‘imagining how good it could have been…’

4. Velvet Undergournd & Nico

Don’t get Andy Warhol to produce your record, okay? You may well invent the punk aesthetic for generations to come, but seriously, you won’t hear most of what’s going on and, importantly, the loudest, heaviest group at the time will occasionally come across like weeds.

5. Hips Don’t Lie

Shakira and Wyclef’s dreadful pop-monster is one of the worst production jobs in music history. The whole backing track and Wyclef’s voice all nestle in with each other very nicely, but then, POW, Shakira’s voice comes along twice as loud as everything else and sounding for all the world like it has been recorded in a different room, in a different country, on a different planet. So separate is Shakira’s voice is that it sounds like she’s turned her back on the rest of the song!

6. The Beatles ‘Let It Be’

Oop! Here’s ol’ Phil Spector again, taking a pretty enough Paul McCartney ballad and covering it in so much syrup that one listen will give you instant toothache. Props also need to go to those awful stereo mixes of a whole bunch of Beatle LPs that made it impossible to share headphones on the back of the bus. We’re looking at you ‘Revolver’.

7. Iggy & The Stooges ‘Raw Power’

When David Bowie was given the task of producing Iggy and the Stooges ‘Raw Power’, someone really shoulda told him that he need not bother turning up. The best way to record The Stooges is to stick all the faders up to 10 and then go for a smoke. However, in Bowie’s hatchet job, he squeezed all the life out of the band leaving a record full of great records bordering on weak. In later years, Iggy Pop would remix the whole thing (as below), turning everything up to 10 as nature intended.

8. Husker Du’s ‘Flip Your Wig’

Take one thunderous band and stick them in a recording studio and then, magically, take the nuts off everything they record and make the drummer sound like his tap-dancing on a biscuit tin. Shame.

9. De La Soul ‘Three Feet High And Rising’

Deep funk and cartoon rhymes made for one of the greatest LPs ever made… however, once Prince Paul had done a fine job in the studio, someone decided to print the LP on vinyl so quiet that the static hum of your speakers was likely to drown out the music. Mercifully, this was rectified on the singles and remasters.

10. Anything by Kenny G

Do we really need to explain?

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10. 20 Footballers who really look like women. Be sure to hoot at the Arsene Wenger one – BF

9. What happens when you can’t read the lips of The Beatles properly is very, very funny.

8. Apart from being computer games, there’s a link between Mario and Space Invaders that you’ll never be able to unsee ever again. Sorry. – CannotUnsee

7. Australia’s Next Top Model makes the most royal of boobs on their live show. Watch the video at Amy Grindhouse. It is astonishingly toe-curling.

6. Get a friend to take acid and lock him in a cupboard. Record him. Make an animation of him talking about balloon hands and saying “LIGHTHOUSES RULE”. – Video

5. Stonehenge Boy killed by early Daily Mail readers – NewsArse

4. Like robots? Like wrestling? Want to see the two combined? God bless Japanese people for making our daftest of fantasies come alive – Video

3. Want good advice? Advice that isn’t too flowery, but rather, peppered with the F word? – GoodFuckingDesignAdvice

2. World War I officially ends this weekend? How? Weird, but interesting and true – Telegraph

1. Twilight fans get tattoos. Twilight fans look tragically dim – Geekologie

Britain has always had a fascination with music from the Caribbean. After the Empire Windrush signalled the arrival of a more modern, vibrant and much cooler Britain, it wasn’t long before Britons were bowled over by Lord Kitchener’s calypso and his orchestra.

Kitch’ returned the favour, going so far as to sweeten us all with the wonderful ‘London is the Place for Me’. Lord Beginner swiftly followed with an ode to that most English of sports – cricket – before delivering a damning indictment on racist attitudes with the ace ‘Mix Up Matrimony’.

Along with this new and exotic music, the culture of the Caribbean grew in popularity and cemented further with the birth of the Notting Hill Carnival in ’59 which painted on much needed vibrancy in a Britain still coming down with a dose of the wars.

However, it didn’t take long for all this music to turn ugly, with the British deciding that this Caribbean music looked too easy – so easy that we could do it. And so, cod-reggae began to take its first horrible steps.

While a number of white artists tackled calypso, the first notable dross from these shores was Bernard Cribbins with his ‘Gossip Calypso’, which paved the way for the likes of Peter Andre and, most recently, Alexandra Burke with her wearily catchy ‘Start Without You’ which goes as far as sampling another favourite cod-reggae track of us Brits, ‘Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday’ by Boney M.

Cribbins’ Caribbean flavoured track came out in the same year as Jamaica earned independence and, to be honest, on hearing that you wonder if they felt if it was all worth it. With freedom comes great power… and novelty records it seems.

A few years later saw Millie’s mighty ‘My Boy Lollipop’ hitting the British charts, riding a wave that included Prince Buster and later, John Holt, Ken Boothe, Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff. From these great moments in British chart history, one of the most awful sub-genres, loomed. Calypso required huge bands and great skill, but reggae was much easier to recreate to the ears of the uneducated. Reggae sounded like two chords, a jaunty bassline and required a singer to pipe “dat” instead of “that”, just like Robert Mitchum did on his charming, but ultimately peculiar Calypso LP.

However it was 1968 that really doomed us all to a world of faux-reggae and lolloping-ska and we look toward The Beatles, specifically, Paul McCartney and his dreadful tribute ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’, along with the cheekier b-side ‘You Know My Name’. This opened the floodgates for a British obsession with a tawdry by-product of all things reggae. Marmalade managed the impossible by making ‘Ob-La-Di’ even weaker and taking it to number one.

Before long, we had 10cc’s ‘Dreadlock Holiday’, Led Zeppelin’s agonisingly dismal ‘D’yer Ma’ker?’ and unbelievably, Paul Nicholas with his shocking ‘Reggae Like It Used To Be’. The late ‘70s and ‘80s didn’t let up either. 2tone and punk made a reasonable fist of recreating the energy of the genre in its own cack-handed little way. Before we knew it, Boy George’s Culture Club where hamming it up with ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?’ which sounds like something from a Lilt commercial.

Of course, it was around this time that UB40 started to peddle their woeful version of version. After making some great British equivalents, they slowly drifted into the arena of the sickly and wan, fading into a horrible stadium beige, producing howlers like ‘I Got You Babe’ with Chrissie Hyde, who despite being in one of the most overrated groups in history, probably flagellates herself daily to cope with the memory of making such a vapid record. Sonny Bono probably crashed into that tree whilst skiing on purpose after hearing the abomination.

Yet still, the British public lapped it up. Homegrown artists couldn’t produce cod-reggae fast enough, which saw millions of people guzzling up Boney M records like gulls around a trawler. Even Blondie delved into reggae with their take on ‘The Tide Is High’, which of course, was later taken on by Atomic Kitten, signposting that the British obsession with reggae-lite wasn’t going away anytime soon.

Then came the ‘90s, which saw cod-reggae really getting the hooks into the British public, with records so awful that a recent government report stated that 9-in-10 British adults felt the need to to mince their own ears throughout the decade.

Possibly.

The big guns of pop-cod-reggae rolled out hit after hit, soundtracking the dry heaves on the waltzers. Ace of Base’s ‘All That She Wants’, ‘The Sign’ and a cover of Aswad’s ‘Don’t Turn Around’ sold hangarfuls, while Peter Andre gave us the flaccid pectoral muscle that is ‘Mysterious Girl’ which was in turn, unfathomably bettered (in terms of really butchering the reggae sound) by Eastenders’ Sid Owen, again with an Aswad cover, this time, ‘We’ve Got A Good Thing Going’.

Such was the world’s obsession with cod-reggae, even Jamaica fell for it, producing the utterly dismal Chaka Demus & Pliers and Inner Circle with the dubious ‘Sweat (A La La La Long)’. Then Snow came along to provide a chorus that has quite possibly never been sungalong with properly by anyone other than the artist himself and Mark Lamarr(apart from the “licky boom boom down” bit).

And just when you thought it was over, along came the Vengaboys with their brand of Euro-reggae, with gaspingly terrible tracks like ‘We’re Going To Ibiza’ and ‘Uncle John From Jamaica’.

Terrible these tracks may be, but there’s an insatiable appetite in Britain for cod-reggae. Lately, X Factor winner, Alexandra Burke, provided yet more reggae-lite, even going to the lengths of sampling Boney M, to make the whole thing fold in on itself. ‘Start Without You’ has currently been at number one for a whole fortnight (okay, that’s not a huge amount of time in comparison with some of the big guns in the pop annals, but still) showing that the British appetite for watered down reggae is as huge as it ever was. Even the woman currently sat on pop’s throne – Lady GaGa – got in on the act with the package holiday friendly ‘Alejandro’.

It goes beyond the pop charts too. Like tins of Del Monte fruit chunks, we see cod-reggae in the most unlikely of places. The QI theme tune feels like it ought to be a piece of playful classical music, instead, we’ve got this car-crash hybrid of classical and cod. The genre has managed to make its way into cookery too. The first place you’d naturally look toward is Levi Roots, but nothing he ever did matches the abject misery of Jamie Oliver‘s ‘Lamb Curry Song’.

So why do we keep lapping it up? It’s not like there isn’t a wealth of ‘The Real Thing’ out there. Britain embraced Toots and the Maytals, Althea and Donna, Horace Andy (mainly for his work with Massive Attack, granted), Desmond Dekker and the like, but nothing captured the imagination of the British public quite like Ace of Base did. Even reggae’s most famous son, Bob Marley, only hit paydirt with an intentionally ‘whiter’ sound (although it is something of a stretch to suggest Marley was an exponent of cod-reggae, but it sure would be fun to argue that as the case down the pub on a Friday night).

Comparatively, it didn’t take Brits long to fall head over heels in love with hip-hop. Wu Tang Clan and Jay Z hold as much sway as more commercial artists such as 50 Cent and Kanye West. After stumbling around cod-hop like ‘Holiday Rap’ by MC Miker G and DJ Sven and comedy records like Liverpool FC’s effort in the late ‘80s, it didn’t take long before we all embraced Run DMC, Eric B & Rakim and De La Soul and started to roll around in genuine article.

Yet somehow, we’re still avoiding Real Reggae. Bounty Killer may well have guested on a No Doubt track and Basement Jaxx gave us ‘Jump ‘n’ Shout’, but for the most part, Caribbean music is kept at arm’s length in favour of something more bubblegummy.

And that of course, is entirely the point. We’re a nation with a sweet tooth. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall may want us to care about free range hens and MOJO magazine may want us to embrace the back catalogue of John Martyn but really, the collective ‘we’ seem to prefer chewing penny bubblies and chomping in-time to the latest cod-reggae summer hit. Or, in the case of the latest leak, Rihanna‘s new Christmas single, which reeks of cod. Even the festive season is getting on-board. There is no escape.

Reggae has always been a simple genre to dissect, and it’s this reason that people still want to dance to Carly Simon’s ‘Why?’It’s access to an imagined holiday where you can still smell the coconut in the sun cream… and, in the case of Jamie Oliver and Sid Owen, you can still taste the sangria vomit in your mouth too.

So with such throwaway pleasure, could you argue that cod-reggae is the most pure form of pop music around? It’s upbeat and catchy and, most importantly, devoid of the cynicism that has crept into every other genre to date.

What a chilling notion.

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Okay America – you may have given us rock ‘n’ roll, jazz and punk… but really, you’re not as good as we Brits. Seriously. America is rubbish compared to what we produce. Oh, you gave us hip-hop as well. Thanks for that. We really appreciate it.

But we’re still better than you.

It’s true and we’re going to prove it to you without any trace of irony. Seriously. By the time America reads this list, there’s a very good chance that they’ll take a long look at themselves and seriously consider never making another record ever again. Oh, and you invented country music too. Ta.

Anyway, here’s a completely fair face-off competition which British music slays America.

1. The Beatles – The Byrds

Go listen to Ticket To Ride Americans. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s the blueprint for The Byrds first half a dozen LPs. Sure enough, The Fabs stole the rhythm ‘n’ blues sound from American artists, but lets be honest here, you lot didn’t give a shit about it ’til the Beatles took it back over to you. You screamed your little wigs off at John, Paul, George and Ringo, but couldn’t quite muster up the energy to fawn over the artists the Fabs aped. The Beatles’ short stay in music influenced everything you did and when they disappeared, you were at a loss and ended up giving us The Eagles in return. Hardly fair now is it? Even your greatest son, Elvis, felt threatened by The Beatles, which of course, didn’t bother our Fabs one jot.

2 Rolling Stones – Aerosmith

Hot on the heels of the Fab Four were our rascally Rolling Stones. Again, nicking licks from US rock ‘n’ roll left, right and centre, The Stones wouldn’t have ever written a decent song without your help. However, it took a bunch of sour faced limeys to really show you how great American music was. In fact, the best showcase of American music came from the very English Stones. The Stones took rock ‘n’ roll, soul, country and R&B and threw it to you all like scraps to dogs and you lapped it up. You still do! And in return, you gave us lame Stone copycats, Aerosmith – even down to the flappy lipped lead singer and rake-thin axeman. Seriously lads, give it a rest, eh?

3. David Bowie  – Bob Dylan

You may think that this is a strange comparison as Bowie didn’t exactly make the same type of music as Dylan, but these two have more in common than you think. Basically, each of these dishonest old tarts have employed the falling masks throughout their careers to reveal a new, shape-shifted artist. Bowie went from mod, to acid-folker, to glam, to krautrock, to cocaine pop… and then went shit. Zimmerman went from folkie, to wired-rocker, to faux country-gent, to born again Christian to… and then went shit. What’s more impressive about Bowie is that each change in his career has been radical and interesting. Look at Dylan and country, folk and rock ‘n’ roll all share a similar quality. It wasn’t until his ill-advised rapping in the ’80s that he really tried something new, beating our Bowie by nearly a decade to an embarrassing flirtation with black digital music (‘Little Wonder’). Therefore – Bowie is miles better.

4. Cliff Richard – Elvis Presley

Sir Cliff has given the world loads of ace records – ‘In The Country’, ‘Move It’, ‘Dynamite’, ‘Devil Woman’ and the like. He also starred in a load of dodgy films, just like your beloved Elvis. However, while Presley grew fat, got addicted to all manner of prescription pills and started hanging around with Grand Wankbag, Richard Nixon, our Cliff found Jesus and started playing tennis. Basically, because tennis is better than Richard Nixon, Cliff wins on away-goals.

5. Led Zeppelin – Jimi Hendrix

Led Zep were so cool that they didn’t bother releasing singles. Jimi Hendrix meanwhile, admittedly one of America’s greats, needed to come to England first before anyone took any real notice of him. Further proof that the UK is superior to The States. Jeez! Look at the facts! You had Jimi under your noses and you were all listening to Simon & Garfunkel! When it came to excessive blues licks, Jimmy Page knocks poor ol’ Hendrix into a cocked hat. Zep pushed and pushed, incorporating strings and Moogs and Jimi sloped off and made a bad soul record as The Band of Gypsies.

6. Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac

The UK version of Fleetwood Mac had it all. It had the best guitar players and the biggest drug-fuckery. The US version pretty much survived their bouts with cocaine, reuniting every-so-often to play AOR for men and women in slacks. The UK version of Fleetwood Mac pretty much disintegrated in a cloud of weed smoke and melted their brains with super potent acid dished out by weird German cults. The tunes were better too.

7. Pink Floyd – America Doesn’t Even Have An Equivalent

Ah. How America must look on enviously at our beloved Pink Floyd. Psychedelic pioneers turned grumpy space-rockers… America doesn’t even have a Pink Floyd equivalent. We’ll keep The Floyd and you can keep Shania Twain.

8. Elton John – Billy Joel

Billy Joel is so rubbish that he had to remind us all what he did in song-titles like ‘Piano Man’. Elton meanwhile, churned out killer song after killer song, leaving America wondering why they never valued singer-songwriters like Harry Nilsson more. Again, America needed Britain to show them what they were good at before they took it on-board. Elton has a better collection of wigs too.

9. Sex Pistols – The Ramones

Okay America, you win this one easily. The Ramones are a vastly superior band to the schlock bollocks of The Sex Pistols. In absolutely every respect, The Ramones are better than all British punk bands of the late ’70s. But wait! America didn’t really take to The Ramones and they first broke big in England. That means, by sheer fluke, we win this round too! Sorry about that.

10. Mark Morrison – Michael Jackson

An easy one this. Basically, Michael Jackson may have sold a million squillion records to the world and done the odd moonwalk for us. Sadly for Mike, his entire back catalogue (Jackson 5/Jacksons included) never matched the utter majesty of Mark Morrison’s ‘Return of the Mack’. When Jackson got in trouble with the law, he looked like he was about to cry all the time. When Morrison got in trouble with the law, he was so laid back that he sent a lookalike to the bar in his place. Mark Morrison wins this round easily! Hell, he’s better than every single soul record ever made in America.

Disagree with this article? Think America is easily better than the UK in musical muscle? Think we should have had a Dizzee Rascal – Wu Tang face-off? What about Crosby Stills and Nash? Do you think that Kraftwerk beat all UK and US groups? Slag us off in the comments.

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Some of you will have gone to V this year, or Reading. Or the Glastonbury one. A few of you might even have been to all of them. You probably had a great time. After all, what’s not to love?

You got those middle management guys staring into the middle distance nonchalantly twirling fire on a rope as if that suddenly makes them at one with the earth. You’ve got loud HR workers chewing their own mouths off in the dance tent. You might even have found yourself in the reggae area, desperately attempting to hold down a gush of puke having mixed a brewski with a marijuana joint. Festival season – it’s just brilliant.

But before you pull your dreads apart and return to civilisation with tales of how great Blur were, or how Dizzee Rascal is totally blowing your mind right now, take a deep breath and scroll through our top five list of the greatest live performers ever. Prepare to be amazed…1. Ian Brown

A humble northern gentleman, Ian Brown likes to let the music breathe. Hence, the intros to songs tend to swirl around teasingly for at least seven or eight minutes, as he strolls back and forth across the stage, counting the beats to check that he comes in at just the right moment. And when he does, the sweetness of his vocals – which sound almost exactly the same as getting told off by a tired bus driver – somehow drown out the rest of the music. It’s like being underwater, and hearing the sound of dolphins. Brain damaged, slow motion dolphins.

2. Amy Winehouse

These days, with all your Twitters and Face Face, it’s important that an artist interacts with his/her fans. They need to make these screaming maniacs feel that they’re part of the show at a live gig. Bono does this by wandering through the crowds, randomly licking people’s faces to make them feel special. But no one can quite beat the Amy Winehouse method, which simply involves a couple of deft jabs with the elbow, then a full lunge with a closed fist. Preferably into a teenage girl’s smiling happy face.

3. Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan famously angered his loyal following when he stopped playing the guitar-plus-drum-on-back-plus-symbols-on-knees instrument, instead hiring actual musicians to play the bits that he had once done himself. The upside of this was that the music bit sounded much better live. The downside was that without a one-man-band to marvel at, the audience was forced to listen to his singing voice properly for the very first time. The results of this were not good.

4. Wu Tang Clan

Rap music at its most lethal can be a thrilling experience. But, then, on other occasions, it can look like a dozen men lolloping around on stage with towels covering their faces, all grunting slightly out of time. It was a common problem for the teenage hardcore grime crew, Blazin Squad, and it even effects old timers like the Wu-Tang Clan. Thankfully in the above clip they’re performing in Paris, so no one in the audience will really understand what’s going on.

5. The Beatles

From about 1966 onwards, The Beatles became exclusively a studio band, which meant that audiences around the planet were robbed of their blistering live shows. Shows that could often include Paul McCartney half-heartedly inviting a very reluctant George Harrison to sing a song, before all groaning wearily into their individual microphones in unison. Like the Wu Tang, the above clip is totally forgivable, as they were in Japan at the time.

This was a guest blog by Josh from Interestment, and jolly good it is too.

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Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney has revealed his decision to avoid voting in the recent European Parliament Elections, as a protest to naughty governmental shenanigans.

The ‘annoying sounding one’ from the pop legends told of his choice to abstain in an interview with The Independent, saying his decision came about as a result of the ongoing expenses scandal.

For those not in the know: the people in charge of Britain spent a great deal of taxpayers money on personal items like houses for ducks.

HOUSES FOR DUCKS.

It’s enough to make anyone mad – and it clearly did, as voter turnout was a pathetic 30 per cent. But now at least those of us who chose to avoid it have a spokesperson for the ages. A man who is as timeless as his face. One who can unite us and help us to speak with one voice.

Speaking to the lovely lefty Indie, Bionic Commandette‘s ex-husband said:

“I didn’t vote in the last election. All that expenses rubbish has made me disillusioned with British politics.

“I didn’t feel comfortable using my vote to get any of them in power. All of them seem to be up for ripping off expenses and making themselves as powerful as possible and I don’t want a part of that.”

Now – not that we’re ones to judge, of course – it could be said that this sets something of a poor example to the masses who are still influenced by Liverpool’s favourite son, Jason McAteer… sorry – Paul McCartney.

Why? Well – maybe – because of the fact that, just possibly, the idea of abstaining from voting can leave the door open for more extreme, normally marginalised parties to get their foot in. For an example, see the BNP. In these most recent elections. That just happened. That Paul McCartney didn’t vote in.

So basically, it’s Paul McCartney‘s fault that the BNP have two seats in the European Parliament.

First Wings, now bringing about the new dawn of fascism in Britain? Thanks Paul. We’re not going to forgive you easily this time.

Fancy playing the drums as badly as Ringo Starr?

Well, now you can, thanks to a new video game which allows you to sing, strum and drum along to your favourite Beatles tracks – and Octopus’s Garden.

The Beatles: Rock Band was officially launched by Sir Paul McCartney and Starr at the start of E3 in Los Angeles and will be released in September.

They were even joined by Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the wives of the dead half of the Fab Four, John Lennon and George Harrison.

Macca said: “It’s a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out.”

For those of you who have never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero, it is basically a game where you and your mates can pretend you are actually musically gifted by hitting buttons on plastic guitars and drums.

The Beatles: Rockband

Ever modest, Starr announced: “The game is good and we were great.” ‘Were’ being the important word there.

McCartney showed just how much he was involved in the making of the game, by adding: “Whoever would have thought we would have ended up as androids?”

Mind you, having seen the game played on stage, it does look pretty good. Thankfully, Yoko did not feel the need to have a go.

The remaining Beatles’ surprise appearance came at the start of a formidable line-up for the Xbox 360.

Trailers for Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza 3, Final Fantasy XIII, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Joyride and Halo 3 ODST, among others, all looked pretty impressive, but the star of the show for us was Modern Warfare 2, which is due to be released on October 11 and simply looks brilliant.

Even more exciting was the news that Metal Gear Solid is coming to the Xbox. However, there is no release date for Metal Gear Solid: Rising.

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6 - Oh, the law. You’re funny – Trutv

5 - The world’s oldest dog is younger than Lindsay Lohan. Dogs are crap - MSNBC

4 - Why Barbarella died. Also, thank goodness Barbarella died – Movieline

3 - Iron Man 2! It exists – Paphotoshelter

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