Today’s theme tune comes from the mighty O’Jays:
What they do?
They smile in your face…

A lot has been going on in the last couple of days, and I’d love to blog about it. However, discretion is the better part of valour, so I’d better not. How frustrating.

As Wittgenstein almost said:
“Wovon man nicht bloggen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.”

Or in other words:
“Whereof one cannot blog, thereof one must be silent.”

Frivolous Friday my arse.



Let’s do pop gossip and hairdos!

Pop Gossip.

1. You know that Spliff Club 7? Well now. They’ve certainly been living up to their reputation on tour this year, so I’m told (and my sources are impeccable). Why, hotel corridors at lunchtimes have been positively reeking of the stuff. Ain’t no partay like a Spliff Club partay, evidently…

2. You know that Johnny bloke who’s just joined top poppers Hear’say? The one who’s engaged to that Lisa who used to be in Steps? The one who got the Hear’say gig after a totally fair and open audition process (which just happened to gain a lot of publicity for the band at the same time)?

Yeah, him. Well now. Johnny was part of the Steps entourage on their farewell tour at the end of last year, staying with them and everything, like. And guess who made a special journey to see him one night for a secret discussion, well before the audition process was even announced? Surely not the lovely Suzanne from Hear’say? No, I must be misinformed.

Hairdos.

I was asking my hairdresser friend Ant this week about trendy hairdos. Since the early 80s are back musically, I wanted to know whether the hairdos were mounting a comeback as well. Oh yes, he sniffed, he’s actually beginning to move on from the whole New Romantic retro look now (all those undercuts do get a bit tedious after a while).

So what’s new, I asked? I could scarcely believe his reply.

Mullets.

Mullets are back, and they’re big news in the world of trendy hairdos. But of course, these aren’t strictly the mullets we know and love. Oh no. They’re carefully sculpted and layered, ironically “new” mullets, with all sorts of clever technical details, thus letting the cognoscenti know that you’re hip to the beat of the street, and not actually trailer trash at all.

It will be flat-tops next, you mark my words. 1987 here we come! Dig out those black MA1 flying jackets! Givin’ love inna Buffalo stance!

As a child, I was frequently bawled out for making simple errors – a poor throw, a missed catch, a breakage, a spillage, a misinterpretation of facts. To err, I believed, was not acceptable. In fact, it was humiliating - letting both myself and my family down.

And then, I became a computer programmer, and soon realised that a vast amount of code is devoted to error handling – user input errors, data errors, system errors. With this realisation came a major paradigm shift in my thinking. To err is OK. It’s normal – it’s even expected. What we have to do is anticipate the possibility of errors, and respond to them appropriately. This is the biggest lesson that I have learnt from working in IT. To learn it was a huge relief.

Honestly, I could spend hours at britart – window shopping, or just selecting a new image for my desktop. The selection is vast, and the quality is impressively high. There’s also a superb advanced search facility, which lets you select by price, medium, subject matter etc. Cityscape paintings up to £1000? Abstract prints between £500 and £1500? Landscape photography up to £500? The cover of the forthcoming Gomez album? It’s all here. Delicious stuff.

"On the web, everyone is famous to fifteen people."
- David Weinberger
(via Life As It Happens)

Of course, when I say that the Noughties have been the shittiest decade for pop music ever, I’m not being entirely fair. There are still plenty of good pop records knocking around. In fact, there are always plenty of good pop records knocking around. ‘Twas ever thus.

So, to redress the balance, here’s a quick list of 25 singles, all released this year, covering a variety of genres, and all worthy of praise in their own ways. Stick ‘em in your personal jukebox and see if I'm not right!

Lazy – X-Press 2
Shot Shot - Gomez
Moi…Lolita - Alizee
So Lonely – Jakatta
IOU © – Six By Seven
What About Us - Brandy
AM To PM – Christina Milian
In Your Eyes – Kylie Minogue
Addicted To Bass - Puretone
Dance For Me – Mary J. Blige
Get Off – The Dandy Warhols
Get The Party Started – P!nk
Point Of View – DB Boulevard
More Than A Woman - Aaliyah
Whenever Wherever – Shakira
Star Guitar – Chemical Brothers
Overprotected – Britney Spears
Hate To Say I Told You So – The Hives
Fell In Love With A Girl – White Stripes
Sex With Strangers – Marianne Faithfull
How The Hell Do I Explain? – Ben & Jason
Shoulda Woulda Coulda – Beverley Knight
Love Burns – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Watching Xanadu – Mull Historical Society
Brotha Part II – Angie Stone feat Alicia Keys / Eve

Is there anything I’ve missed? You tell me.

Finally, some fantastic news. The Throwing Muses have reformed! Kristin! Tanya! David! The other one! There’s a new album and everything! Rejoice!

When I started this weblog last October, it was more or less on a whim. I didn’t have any clear ideas as to what I was going to do with it, or even for how long I would stick at it before getting bored. I was barely aware of the existence of most other weblogs, and indeed only started paying them serious attention at the start of this year. In fact, much as I enjoy reading them, I sometimes think that there were advantages in working in ignorance of them – my own content was somewhat less self-conscious back then.

Less self-conscious, but also looser, more casual – sloppier, even. Since then, I’ve tried to set myself higher standards. This became increasingly true during the intensive 40 In 40 Days phase of the weblog, as I gradually became more confident in my abilities, and developed more of a unified writing style. Now that the project is complete, and I have had a couple of weeks to relax and catch my breath, I actually find myself missing the daily challenge which it brought, and hungering for something new which can test, stretch and hopefully develop my writing abilities further.

Fortunately, such a challenge is now imminent. I’ve agreed to take part in a web-based collaborative writing project, which is being assembled by Peter at Naked Blog. It’s broadly similar to what’s currently taking place at Chapters – a pre-selected group of writers take it in turns to add chapters to a novel. There are a few differences, though…

There are fewer writers. The chapters will be considerably longer. No more than one major new character may be introduced in each chapter. The chapters will be written alternately by male and female authors, with an equal number of each. Peter will start and end the novel with chapters of his own. With a pre-defined writing order, we will know exactly how far through the novel we are at any given time, which will help shape what we write – for instance, the author of the penultimate chapter will have to think about steering the narrative towards a conclusion. I hope that these differences may help us to avoid some of the problems which I feel have occurred during the Chapters project – which, despite some excellent writing, has sometimes lost its way in terms of plotting. No doubt we will encounter some fresh problems of our own, though.

As a child and as a teenager, I often wrote fiction for pleasure, and was told that I had a talent for it. Since then, I have written no fiction whatsoever. Having blogged randomly for nearly six months, and having completed an autobiographical writing project, I now feel creatively limbered up for the task ahead. However, I still have the comfort of not having to create a complete work from scratch – I can simply slot myself in to the writing which has gone before. For me, it’s the next logical step. It may be crap – it may be great – it may just be middling. It will certainly be tough. But it will also be HUGE fun.

Brick, the fantastic talent behind my wonderful Gillray-esque caricature, has launched his own website today: www.brickbats.co.uk.

The shadowy forces behind Popbitch have been outed at last.

Those bloggers amongst you who check Blogdex regularly may have noticed a strange new mirror site to this one: troubled-diva.blogspot.com, with the underscore replaced by a hyphen. This is because several people have now told me that they can't access troubled_diva.blogspot.com, as their browsers don't like underscores in URLs.

Once I've got rid of the banner ad (I paid up a couple of days ago, but it's still there), I'll stop publishing to the underscored URL and will move across permanently to the hyphenated URL.

But don't go moving just yet - I'm only updating the hyphenated URL once a day right now, so you'll miss out if you move too early...

Fave new blog of 2002: Hydragenic, which started up in January. A good piece about twenty year pop retro cycles. Nice clean design as well - if it wasn't such a ghastly word, I'd call it "impactful".

We middle aged folk always like to imagine that pop music was much, much better in “our day”. But is this really justified in the light of the evidence? (Carrie Bradshaw pen-sucking in front of laptop moment coming up…)

Which decade truly is the tops for pops?

To settle the question, let’s compare the top tens from this week in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002. For each comparison, the best song gets 3 points, with runners up getting 2 points and 1 point. At the end of the exercise, the decade with the most points gets to be Official Golden Age For Pop.

Hey, and you kids can play along at home, if you want to!

Alles klar? OK, off we go.

Number 10.
1962 – Cryin’ In The Rain – Everly Brothers
1972 – Meet Me On The Corner - Lindisfarne
1982 – Maid Of Orleans - OMD
1992 – Remember The Time – Michael Jackson
2002 – Shoulda Woulda Coulda – Beverley Knight

Aha. I thought this might be a problem. Some of the hits from March 1962 are completely unknown to me. Well, no matter. If I’ve never knowingly heard them in 40 years, then they can’t have had much staying power, and therefore don’t deserve any points.

All things considered, Lindisfarne were a grim band – but even grim bands can have one great moment, and this was theirs. Sounds like he’s arranging to hook up for a dodgy shag to me, which only enhances its appeal. Plus they appeared on Top Of The Pops beating a bass drum with a dead fish, which is really pretty damn cool, don’t you think?

So, 3 points to Lindisfarne, 2 points to Michael Jackson (I actually rated most of his singles from Dangerous), and 1 to Beverley Knight (not as classy as her wonderful debut album, but it will do just fine).

No, OMD really do get nothing – “Electricity”, “Souvenir” and “Tesla Girls” aside, I was never a fan. And let’s not forget – the composer of “Maid Of Orleans” is also the composer of Atomic Kitten’s “Whole Again”. I rest my case.

Sixties – 0. Seventies – 3. Eighties – 0. Nineties – 2. Noughties – 1.

Number 9.
1962 – Wonderful Land – The Shadows
1972 – Alone Again (Naturally) – Gilbert O’Sullivan
1982 – Golden Brown – The Stranglers
1992 – America: What Time Is Love? – The KLF
2002 – You – S Club 7

Guess what? I’ve never knowingly heard “You”. I can only hang my head in shame. “Golden Brown” is the obvious classic here. The KLF were onto their umpteenth remake of “What Time Is Love?” by then, and this was possibly the weakest version, but it’s still the KLF, ergo wonderful. And you’ve got to reserve some affection for Hank & The Shads, right? Right?

3 points to The Stranglers, 2 to the KLF, 1 to the Shadows.

Sixties – 1. Seventies – 3. Eighties – 3. Nineties – 4. Noughties – 1.

Number 8.
1962 – Walk On By – Leroy Van Dyke
1972 – Look Wot You Dun - Slade
1982 – See You – Depeche Mode
1992 – Thought I’d Died And Gone to Heaven – Bryan Adams
2002 – The World’s Greatest – R Kelly

A tough one, as two are good (Slade and Depeche), two are pants (Bryan Adams and R Kelly), and one is unknown (Leroy Van Dyke). I guess it’s unlikely to be an early version of Bacharach & David’s “Walk On By” – or maybe it is? Well, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt – and in any case, it cannot possibly be worse than Adams or Kelly.

A close call between Slade and Depeche, but Slade j-u-s-t get the 3 points. 2 to Depeche, 1 to Leroy Van Dyke.

Sixties – 2. Seventies – 6. Eighties – 5. Nineties – 4. Noughties – 1.

Number 7.
1962 – Forget Me Not – Eden Kane
1972 – Mother And Child Reunion – Paul Simon
1982 – Say Hello Wave Goodbye – Soft Cell
1992 – I’m Doing Fine Now - Pasadenas
2002 – In Your Eyes – Kylie Minogue

No contest – Soft Cell clearly have the classic in this round, and I will brook no argument with that. “I’m Doing Fine Now” was great when originally a hit for New York City, and although the Pasadenas covered it competently, they added nothing of their own to it. I have very fond memories indeed of the Paul Simon track. Kylie’s current hit is well up to scratch, as well. Paul or Kylie? Kylie or Paul?

It’s Paul. Soft Cell get 3, Paul Simon 2, Kylie 1.

Sixties – 2. Seventies – 8. Eighties – 8. Nineties – 4. Noughties – 2.

The seventies and eighties are now neck and neck, with a significant gap opening up before we get to the nineties. Can the sixties or the noughties mount a comeback? There’s still everything to play for…

Number 6.
1962 – March Of The Siamese Children – Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen
1972 – Got To Be There – Michael Jackson
1982 – It Ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It) – Fun Boy 3 & Bananarama
1992 – It Must Be Love - Madness
2002 – World Of Our Own - Westlife

The best record out of this bunch has to be Madness – but look! It’s a reissue! Great as it is, it had no business being a hit in 1992 – a sad reflection of the times etc. etc – so I’m not giving them the 3 points. No, that has to go to Michael Jackson – back when he was a sweet little genius. Westlife? Well, it’s certainly their least offensive single to date (being vaguely uptempo for once), and I really should encourage them in this - but still no points from me. I’m not a charity.

Jacko gets the 3, the Fun Boys get 2, and Madness get 1.

Sixties – 2. Seventies – 11. Eighties – 10. Nineties – 5. Noughties – 2.

Halfway through the contest, and the seventies have edged ahead. Come on, nineties! You can do better than that!

Number 5.
1962 – Tell Me What He Said – Helen Shapiro
1972 – Blue Is The Colour – Chelsea Football Team
1982 – Centerfold – J Geils Band
1992 – It’s A Fine Day – Opus III
2002 – How You Remind Me - Nickelback

Yikes. What a grim selection. Opus III was kind of alright, thanks to Kirsty Hawkshaw’s vocals and strange appearance – a proper pop star. I have railed against “Centerfold” on this site before, but it does have the benefit of a seriously catchy tune. Don’t know the Shapiro.

Which leaves football versus nu-metal, battling it out for the single point. Jeezus! How am I meant to decide? Oh very well, I suppose that the Nickelback track does have at least some semblance of musical merit.

Opus III win the 3 points, J Geils gets 2, and Nickelback scrape home with the 1.

Sixties – 2. Seventies – 11. Eighties – 12. Nineties – 8. Noughties – 3.

It’s all change at the top again, and the Nineties are racing back into contention. Atta decade!

Number 4.
1962 – Wimoweh – Karl Denver
1972 – Beg, Steal Or Borrow – New Seekers
1982 – Love Plus One – Haircut 100
1992 – November Rain – Guns N’ Roses
2002 – Something – Lasgo

I know that Guns N’ Roses have their supporters, but – “Sweet Child O’ Mine” aside – they’ll get no support from me. As for Lasgo – I’ve actually got something of a soft spot for its Ian Van Dahl-esque pop-cheese-trance tones, but if one is to be objective for a second, it’s shit. The New Seekers have the benefit of the mighty EUROVISION on their side, while Karl Denver earned retro-cool points when remaking “Wimoweh” with Happy Mondays on their “Lazyitis” single.

But of course, dear little Nicky Heyward and his merry gang win the day. “Where do we go from here? Is it down to the lake I fear?” Ah, such happy, happy times.

3 to Haircut 100, 2 to the New Seekers and 1 to Karl Denver.

Sixties – 3. Seventies – 13. Eighties – 15. Nineties – 8. Noughties – 3.

Number 3.
1962 – Let’s Twist Again – Chubby Checker
1972 – Son Of My Father – Chicory Tip
1982 – A Town Called Malice – The Jam
1992 – I Love Your Smile - Shanice
2002 – Hero – Enrique Iglesias

Enrique and Shanice really don’t stand a chance against the other three, do they? Three classics to choose from here – and did you know that “Son Of My Father” was an early Giorgio Moroder composition/production, a few years ahead of his success with Donna Summer? Well, you do now. The synthesiser is the giveaway – one of the first hit singles to use one, along with Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” from the same era. Such musical innovation lifts Chicory Tip just ahead of Chubby Checker, but The Jam are unassailable.

3 to The Jam, 2 to Chicory Tip, 1 to Chubby Checker.

Sixties – 4. Seventies – 15. Eighties – 18. Nineties – 8. Noughties – 3.

Can the eighties still be beaten? What if the last two songs from the seventies are classics, and the last two songs from the eighties are clunkers? Could such a thing happen? Are you on the edge of your seat with the tension of it all?

Number 2.
1962 – The Young Ones – Cliff Richard
1972 – American Pie – Don McLean
1982 – Mickey – Toni Basil
1992 – My Girl - Temptations
2002 – Whenever Wherever - Shakira

I see we have another “Madness problem”. The Temptations have the best record, but it’s stuck in the wrong decade. That’s twice you’ve let the side down, March 1992! Furthermore, my book tells me that “My Girl” was only a hit due to being the theme tune for a Macaulay Caulkin film. Boo! Hiss! Bad decade! Disqualified!

It may have been bludgeoned to death by buskers the world over, but “American Pie” is still a great record – and I don’t care what you say, that Madonna & Rupert Everett cover version rocked. So there. Shakira? Well, I’ve only heard it two or three times, but it’s really rather good – like a great pop record should do, it takes something horribly naff like pan pipes and makes them work. And the vocals are so ridiculous that they work.

Okay. So…Don McLean gets 3, Shakira gets 2, and Cliff gets 1. No, Toni Basil does not have ironic kitsch appeal.

Sixties – 5. Seventies – 18. Eighties – 18. Nineties – 8. Noughties – 5.

Oh. My. God. With one more round to go, we have a tie at first position. No, I haven’t been cooking the books to manufacture the tension. I don’t even know what the last five records are yet – they’re off my screen.

Shall we take a look together, then?

Number 1.
1962 – Can’t Help Falling In Love / Rock-A-Hula-Baby – Elvis Presley
1972 – Without You - Nilsson
1982 – The Lion Sleeps Tonight – Tight Fit
1992 – Stay – Shakespears Sister
2002 – Evergreen / Anything Is Possible – Will Young

Ha! “Wimoweh” returns, under a new name, and performed by a bunch of tone deaf models fronting a session band! Elvis turns in a classic, and then we have three big ballads slugging it out with each other. There’s no arguing with the merits of “Without You”, but what of Will? A great record, or just an “event”? As it happens, I quite like “Evergreen”. But not as much as “Stay”.

Elvis gets the 3, Harry Nilsson gets the 2, and Shakespears Sister get the 1. Sorry Will.

And so – the final scores.

Top decade – The Seventies – 20 points. Congratulations to The Seventies. A well deserved win.

Second – The Eighties – 18 points. An honourable performance, but just pipped at the post.

Third – The Nineties – 9 points. Well, 1992 was a particularly shit year for pop. If we’d chosen 1995 (the height of Britpop), things might have been very different.

Fourth – The Sixties – 8 points. Not so swinging after all, then.

And finally. The shittiest decade for music ever. Yes, of course it had to be. The Noughties – 5 points. Shame on you!

"You are living in a ghetto! You will die lonely!"There’s no doubt about it – Ian, the “radical boomer” host of Blogadoon, really is on a roll right now. If you’re not yet a regular reader, than right here is a very good place to start.

Maybe some day, Buni can be prevailed upon to tell the story of how he smuggled his mother into Heaven on a Saturday night, back when it still had a “men only” admission policy. Or can you already guess how he did it?

Hello, dear Google search requester. You’ve come here looking for info on the luscious, droolmungous, eminently sniffable Dermot O’Leary, haven’t you?

Well, you’ve been lured here under false pretences, I’m afraid. “Dermot O’Leary does the South Bank Show” is an amusingly inaccurate simile for this site, not a factual description of its contents. As if! The dumbing down of arts coverage on UK terrestial TV has some way to go yet.

However, dear Dermot fan, you can fret no longer. There’s a very thorough, pleasantly assembled, frequently updated and (most importantly of all) fulsomely illustrated fan site at www.dermotoleary.net, and I can only suggest you repair there without further delay.

You know that caricature I got for my birthday, in the style of James Gillray? You remember that rather dingy digipic which didn't do it justice? Well, Brick (the cartoonist) has kindly supplied me with a spanking new version. This is much more like it...

OK, so last weekend:

We went for an early evening pint with a journalist and a cheesemonger.

We watched the first in the new series of Black Books (great), followed by Frasier (up to scratch), So Graham Norton (Oh, Cybill!) and the Grammies (highlight – Bob Dylan, lowlight – Train).

We read the papers and went shopping.

We watched the end of the rugby (England/France) in the pub with a well oiled (and blissful) Lathbud, and felt like we had entered another parallel universe (all that shouting at the screen…is it really necessary, one asks oneself?)

We went for an Indian meal with the Village People.

I got asked to compile a groovy mix CD – for a dressage event.

K got on a plane to JFK very early Sunday morning, leaving me home alone till Wednesday.

I floated about the cottage to Boards Of Canada’s Geogaddi, then went all sixties hairy freakout with Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats.

I was introduced to someone with the same (Dolce e Gabanna) glasses as myself. They looked better on him than they do on me.

I upgraded to Blogger Pro. Not really very much in the way of useful new functionality, but the performance is supposed to be better, and I feel happier in myself now that I’ve given Ev some well earned dosh.

Dymbel and Dymbellina had me round for dinner. They’ve just come off the wagon after an alcohol-free month, so I treated us all to one of my birthday bottles of champagne (I plumped for the Veuve Clicquot). We swapped music, and I came away clutching three Ryan Adams bootlegs (all unreleased songs), including stuff from a concert in Leicester last May which I actually attended myself. We also decided to go and see Madonna, treading the boards in the forthcoming Up For Grabs at the Wyndhams Theatre in London.

Hello?

Are you still awake out there?

Well, quite. This is the problem. How much of anyone’s humdrum little lives do people want to read about? I mean – for most of us, the extraordinary rarely happens. So, do we just wibble on inconsequentially in the meantime?

(At this point, pause a moment. Imagine, if you will, that I am sitting in a beautifully furnished New York apartment, in so-far-out-it’s-in eighties retro garb, sucking my finger thoughtfully in front of my laptop, as the camera zooms in on This Week’s Big Question on the screen: So, do we just wibble on inconsequentially in the meantime?)

In the middle of a good article on the consistently engaging Secret Kings blog, I read the following:Round about the same time, Peter on Naked Blog told not one, but two stories which were anything but boring. One was fictitious and dealt with hydrogen bombs – the other was true, and dealt with the extraordinary incongruity of the current Miss World (gown, sash and all) wandering into his local boozer.

Peter was lucky last week – something decidedly non-humdrum and unquestionably blogworthy happened to him. In fact, it even ended up in the News Of The World. As for the rest of us, we just have to continue mining what we can from our lives. Last week was so staggeringly uneventful for me, that I even resorted to bitching about what I had for lunch – but thankfully, I stopped short of blogging my visit to the dentist (no fillings but my gums aren’t too great, so I’m booked in with the oral hygienist this week).

For those who run up against a complete Blogger’s Block, there’s always stuff like the Friday Five and its growing plethora of imitators. Alternatively, there’s now a site – topics.blogspot.com – which suggests several blogging topics every day (Most recent at the time of writing: “Are you a good samaritan? Or do you cross the road?”) However, such fripperies are most definitely not for me, thank you. Well, it feels like cheating, doesn’t it?

One thing though. However desperate I become for source material, and however lame I think my recent postings have become, I will never - never! - post apologetically after the fact. By my prose shall I stand or fall...

Besides which, I can afford to be unapologetic right now, as today’s stats have shot through the roof. I’ve been hovering around 70 to 80 visitors a day for a while now, but by the end of today, I reached a whopping 140 visitors (a new record for the blog).



And why do you suppose this might be? Has the world cottoned on to my gentle wit, my innate sense of style, or my ability to tug at the emotional heartstrings so dextrously?

Er, no, not quite. Shall I share the secret of my success with you? It’s really quite simple.

Johnny Vegas unabashed Room 101 Beauty’s Castle.
Jessica Garlick Come Back Eurovision.
John Davidson Tourette’s syndrome.

Yes – telly, telly and thrice telly. Sad, isn’t it?

To add a bit of interest, variety and - let's be frank - some direction to this here blog, I've decided to "theme" next week's entries by day. So, get yourselves ready for:

Meta Monday.



Tuneful Tuesday.



Writerly Wednesday.



Thoughtful Thursday.



Frivolous Friday.

I've just been reviewed by The Weblog Project, who (to my relief) have given me a score of 4 out of 5. If you want to read the review, then follow this link.

On the other hand - if you've just surfed in from the review, and you're wondering what's happened to the "40 In 40 Days Project" - well, it's all archived here.

Hearty congratulations to Jessica Garlick, who has just been selected to represent the UK in this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Tallinn. The song is called "Come Back", and for the first time in many a long year, it's a fully fledged, out and out, tub-thumping, breast beating ballad. It has an instant, timeless appeal (with shades of Sam Brown's "Stop" and even Carmel's "Bad Day"), and I rate its chances very highly indeed. The song was easily the strongest of this year's four "Song For Europe" finalists (as was the performance), and it duly romped home with over two thirds of the telephone votes cast.

Jessica was actually my favourite of all the female Pop Idol finallists, so I'm delighted to see her get a bit of recognition. Tallinn here we come! I've got my plane ticket and my hotel reservation (although sadly, no ticket for the final itself - they were like gold dust this year) - and now I can hardly wait.

You can download an MP3 of "Come Back" at Chris Melville's Eurosong site, or by following this direct link.