POP P.i.X

Article no. 1: the Sugababes. How I hate seeing that word in print. Who the hell spells ‘sugar’ like that anyway? Does one partake of suga in one’s tea? NO! One does not. But the production line that brought us multi-talente… only joking, multi-pierced Mutya Buena (most recently spotted touching a shepherd’s pie through the wall on Shooting Stars) and the one who had her ginger-in-a-girl-band crown well and truly nicked by Nicola from Girls Aloud, has now given the line-up’s only original member the boot. A jam tart to anyone who knows which one that is.

Now for a sentence you won’t read every day. With the aid of a Maths GCSE and an online calculator, I think I’ve unearthed some kind of Faustian pact. The average lifespan of a Sugababe *shudder* is now a truly pathetic 6.66 years and, da da DAAAAA!!!! 666 is the number of the devil! woooOOOOOooo! Perhaps this goes some way to explain the reason that a girl band (insert Kanye) wid da the most moronic moniker of ALL TIME are still going strong after ELEVEN – read it and weep – years. That’s eleven, in case you hadn’t heard me the first time. Eleven years, or - to link two entirely unrelated news snippets in a style the News of the World would be proud of - one-third of Stephen Gately’s life.

I don’t need to tell you that this month’s pop column was brought to you through mounds of Kleenex - and no, not that sort of Kleenex. I’m mourning not only the end of the original Sugababes line-up, but the untimely demise of my favourite member of Boyzone. I cried when he came out - and looking back I’m mildly embarrassed, not by the tears but by the total malfunction of my 13-year-old gaydar. Somebody really needs to get that fixed. Anyway I’m into Take That now, soz.

And talking of men with dubious sexual orientation, I’ll bring this column to an end with the results of this month’s MikaWatch. I haven’t seen him yet. God knows I’ve tried. Mika? Je t'adore. Call me.