The Dark Knight

The clocks go back this weekend.  This, as per, will cause an awful lot of brow-beetling and gnashing of choppers - most of it from yours truly, sadly.  It's a real emotional size nine to the knackers, this shift back to winter.  Yes, the mornings will be brighter, but who gives a stuff for that?  You're on the way to work anyhoos, so it might as well be raining down tongues of fire for all I care.

The real problem is the afternoons and evenings.  It will be gloaming like a mofo when I take my late-ish lunchtime stroll.  That's a heart breaker.  It's the first hiatus of the working day, and already the sun has fcuked-off over the horizon to shine of the Aussies.  Like they need more vitamin D.  And of course by the time you're actually released from commercial bondage, it will be pitch black.  The urge then is to hibernate, but this can be disastrous.  If you give into it, you'll do nothing with your meagre free time until April.  You might as well be a Labrador.  No, one must fight this - using stimulants, sex, whatever.

In other news, I read on the BBC web site earlier that Lady Gaga recently bought a £24m luxury home in Malibu, which hasn't improved my mood any.  I think I've made my feelings on LG clear before now, but, in essence, I believe her to be little more than a boot-faced Madonna for the Poundstretcher generation.  Her music stinks.  There, I've said it.  The dunce army that laps up stuff like the X-Factor of a Saturday night nebulously try to defend her (ahem) oeuvre by repeatedly pointing out that she plays the piano and composes all her own material.  Let's deal with those two scintillating observations, shall we?

She earns her crust in the music business.  In years gone by, having some musical training, allied to a deal of natural musical talent used to be the minimum requirement for a jobbing musician.  And is she a virtuoso pianist?  No, she fcuking isn't.  She's no Elton John, is she?  Years ago, you could walk into any pub in the east end of London and find at least a brace of functionally-illiterate cockneys who could play the piano at least as well as she can.  Anyone with two hands and enough time can master the piano to a reasonable level.

On the second point, I must hold my hand up and admit that, yes, she does compose all her own material.  Unfortunately, all that material is incorrigible shite.  Artless, wanton, self-aggrandising aural chewing-gum for the kind of people who cried when the Princess of Wales died, but who would happily stop in the street to watch, with ghoulish glee, the victim of a road traffic accident thrashing around in the gutter, as he tries in vain to reinflate his chest cavity.

Where does she get off buying a £24m pound house?  It's a fcuking outrage.  If popstars were paid according to their talent, she'd be sharing a flat with the Chuckle Brothers.  It just as well the music business doesn't work this way.  I wouldn't wish that on Barry and Paul.  They've done nothing, as we go to press, to deserve that.