Mind-numbing Melua

Katie MeluaThis is hard to believe, but the warbling Georgian that is Katie Melua releases her new album on Monday.

First, before you disappear immediately, this is not a plug for the album. Far from it. And anyway, I very much doubt that anything I say will stop her third offering hitting the top of the charts next Sunday.

I guess I’m still baffled by the popularity of her. She’s apparently the biggest-selling female artist in the country and the question I have to ask is: why?

Among the least obvious attributes are her bland, monotonous voice, equally uninspiring songs and older-than-her-years attitude. Come on, we’ve all wondered what the difference is between 22 and 17, haven’t we?

Sure, she’s a nice enough girl and, funnily enough, she wasn’t beaten with the ugly stick when she was born, but that alone shouldn’t mean she has maintained a career beyond her 2nd album, should it?

What on earth do people get out of her music? “There are 9 million bicycles in Beijing…” – well, whoopee, what a great premise for a song.

And possibly the biggest crime she committed was duetting with Shane McGowan from the Pogues a couple of years ago on a new version of Fairytale In New York. Kirsty MacColl would have been spinning in her grave!

X Factor’s inverse racism

Emma ChawnerI finally caught up with Saturday’s latest instalment of the nadir of primetime TV, that is The X Factor last night. Something lodged in my brain and was then provoked further after reading Clair’s great piece on her Urban Woo blog.

Now, I know that Emma, the rather large girl who made the headlines of the desperate tabloids, couldn’t sing, but it always amazes me that black people who are ‘larger than the average bear’ are never treated to the same sort of ridicule on these auditions.

Is this because the X Factor producers are terrified that they’ll be had up for racism, or are black people allowed to be big, because they have ‘huge voices’?

I don’t know the answer, do you?

Urban hunters

Yeah, yeah, I know foxes are now practically dying out in rural areas and are taking over towns and cities, but that still didn’t prepare me for the surprise I saw the other day.

I was walking to the station at around 8am. It was bright and I was going along a pretty busy main road.

Suddenly, I looked to my left and about 10 feet away, in the open was a fox, crouched (can a fox crouch? Hmm, well it sounds good) over a dead pigeon that it had obviously killed.

The thing is, it’s no surprise to see foxes in the city any more and it’s clearly not a surprise to see one scragging a pigeon. I guess I’m just amazed at the brazen-ness of foxes now.

I mean what next? Perhaps, they’ll start to dress up in hoodies and hang outside off-licences in gangs, brandishing sticks and frightening teenagers with their sharp teeth.

Maybe they’ll get fed up hunting for their supper and they’ll queue up outside Waitrose, desperate to be first in line for the latest delivery of Gressingham ducks.

The mind boggles…