King beats Queen

We're still scratching our heads about last night's Channel Five programme, Battle of the Popstars - Live. Did anyone really bother to spend good money (35pence a throw) voting time and again in increasingly pointless pairings of bands? Come on... who's better? Blur or Kylie? Answer now, dammit.

The closest thing we got to an upset was when Queen beat the Beatles in the semi-finals, thereby preventing the final round pitching Elvis against the mop tops - which seemed to be the inevitable consequence of the format. Elvis beat Queen, of course, thereby meaning after two hours we were told that Elvis was the best pop star ever.

In order to help people decide who to vote for, there was a smattering of punditry for each artist - although, frankly, if you need to be told who Kylie Minogue is, your vote for best pop star ever isn't really going to be an informed judgement. Mind you, if you don't have the ability to offer an informed judgement, chances are you'd have been appearing in the programme anyway, which bulked out the talking heads with the likes of a Cher impersonator, Molly Parkin and Emma Jones. Jones managed to show excatly how she landed the editorship of Smash Hits by offering the observation that Robbie Williams is the only person who ever made a successful career after leaving a boyband. Presumably she's never heard of Justin Timberlake. Or Bobby Brown. Or Rona Keating.

A curious and time-wasting concoction then, which we suspect had little purpose other than to raise some cash for Channel Five. We're a step closer to wanking for coins on terrestrial TV turning into a reality.

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