CHILLING WORDS FROM AVRIL LAVIGNE

Speaking from her orbiting spaceship, Avril Lavigne has laughed in a curdling fashion and told us puny humans that by buying her first songs, we have condemned ourselves to a lifetime of her music:

"I didn't ever expect to sell as many records as I did with my first record, but, because I've had success, I think I'll always be around with my music," she said. "Because I've had success, now I have the opportunity to make music for the rest of my life."

Any lingering sense you might have had that it was possible to place Lavigne's entire intellect in a matchbox, and still have room to make a nifty bed for a mouse will be dissipated as we join Avril - freshly arrived in Mexico - to talk about the prospect of singing in a language other than English:

"I'll probably stick to English. I understand it a lot better," the 20-year-old singer, who was born in Canada, said before a recent performance at the Mexican capital's Palacio de los Deportes. "It's the main language, a lot of people understand it."

Yes, English is, erm, the main language, whatever that means - it seems Avril's probably reluctant to take on another language until she's got the hang of this first one. To be fair, her claim that "a lot of people understand English" is probably right when it comes to her songs, which aren't exactly complex works of construction. And, from a British perspective, it's nice to see someone from another nation celebrating the pigheaded monoglotism which runs through our dark, damp souls: why bother learning another language; the foreigners can learn ours?

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