No Rock And Roll Fun

CYNICISM WILL EAT ITSELF: Of course Pop Idol rejects end up working for McDonalds although, strictly speaking, not like this. A bunch of people who shuffled into the most peripheral of the nation's visions by being shit on New Faces have been snapped up to sing a song for the beef-pattyfying company. And they're going to stick the jingle out as a proper song. In America, they get Justin Timberlake; in Britain, it's a guy called Bananaman and a woman with a large chest who looks a bit like Jilly Goulden.

More worrying is that its starting to matter less and less how far you get in Pop Idol before you're allowed to run amock in a recording studio - at least Darius and that plump chap, Rik Whatsisface managed to scrape into later rounds; now it seems that merely turning up to queue for the first audition gives you a crack at making a proper record.