I spent several days away from this thread and said I wouldn't read it. But I just did.

Somebody's been through it zapping the lies and ever-so-bizarre derogatory crap from the testosterone-fuelled brigade in full cry but left in all my ripostes so it looks like I'm yelling at Peter Hitchens on the telly with the sound off.

Now that the Moon-In-June battalion has entered stage left clutching faded blooms and nauseously-versed cards from the petrol station, I see once more a need which will doubtless be bayed at by said TFB to decry the folly of succumbing to being half a person and a mere item of paraphernalia at the behest of a crooner whose grasp of geographical detail is so scant as to claim that the pyramids are situated along the Nile. They're not. Don't believe a word of it.

I haven't a clue why TFB squadron leader Mr Rogers mentions 'c**ntry'. The topic is an English singer doing an outdated (and poor) 50s American pop song rather disinterestedly in a Yorkshire accent, and whether or not this might have any merit.

I say it doesn't: the song is crap musically and ideologically, the performance is poor on diction and musicianship (though not quite as bad as the Shrek one) and bears no relationship to roots, tradition or a sense of place. Someone has said 'it's just a girl (a girl?) singing a song. So what place can it possibly have in a forum supposedly devoted to musics which are indigenous to or rooted in the place where you are and which participants are invited to compare and contrast?

If Mr Rogers (and others) wants instead to discuss the sort of trash listed, there might be a scribbling board somewhere else where he can and he might like to seek it out.