Here’s some shocking news: The Beautiful South split up yesterday after almost two decades of making music together – obviously it’s only shocking news because we’d more or less assumed that The Beautiful South split up ten years ago, but there you go.

So what do we do in a world where The Beautiful South doesn’t exist to sing us bleakly witty pop songs about modern disaffection set to Ikea-friendly tunes? Pretty much the same as we did in a world where the Beautiful South did exist as it happens, since nobody had really noticed the band since that song they did about fat people in 1998. But in case you’re worried that The Beautiful South split had no meaning behind it, comfort yourself with the fact that the universe will always maintain its cosmic balance no matter what, and that after Crowded House reformed it was left with no choice but to compensate by destroying another blandly inoffensive middle-class dinner-party band to maintain its karmic togetherness.