BY REQUEST

Boyzone (album)

If you’re a fan of Boyzone and you don’t want to know the score, look away now. Right, that’s all the devotees gone, let’s get down to business. The marketing bods behind Boyzone know exactly what’s needed to make it big. Firstly, manufacture a band designed purely to dethrone Take That. Start off with kiddiepop (get them hooked young and they’re yours for life), this will guarantee you Top Five singles to start with, but a teenybopper band can only survive so long. Luckily, your biggest rivals suddenly self-destruct (and in some style too) and the entire market is yours. Hurrah! Now though, it’s time to grow up and there’s no room for dancey stuff when you’re realigning your target audience. Ballads it is then. With Radio 2 and friends on board, Number Ones are a mere formality. They duly arrive and guess what? The vast majority are slowies. Surprise, surprise. Oh yes, this is a slick operation alright, but like a glass of slightly-chilled bleach, the whole thing leaves a grim taste in the mouth. Still, if you want to know how to move from kiddiepop to granniepop and increase your fanbase in the meantime, this is exactly how it’s done.

EVERYBODY’S FREE (TO WEAR SUNSCREEN)

Baz Luhrmann

"Do one thing every day that scares you" drones the boring American bloke about halfway through this dull, monotonous, almost certain Number One single. That got me thinking. How about realising that England Cricket World Cup top you bought for thirty quid last week has suddenly lost all its appeal*? Or that within a couple of weeks of buying this single, you’ll be so sick of it you’ll be ready to burn the offending article?

*The reason for this was that despite being the host nation, England still went out at the very first stage. We invent sports, that doesn’t mean we have to be any good at them.