Cheryl Cole In Number One Not Really Shock At All

This young lady is called Cheryl Cole. She is a member of a pop group that was formed on a TV talent show. That group has had a few years of success and she is now a judge on the X-Factor. Last week she sang her debut single on the show in front of 13 million TV viewers. Today it is number one in the charts.

Miss Cole, unusually for a modern famous person, seems quite nice. She's got a very strong geordie accent (that's from Newcastle in northern England) and despite the fact that she's married to a footballer and has been voted this year's sexiest woman in the world, she seems fairly normal. But that doesn't detract from the fact that her single was unmemorable, the performance over produced and faintly ridiculous and that she seems to be hoping to copy Kylie Minogue. Who in turn seems to have spent much of her career trying to copy Madonna.

But of course she was featured centre stage on the most popular show in Britain, and not only that, Simon Cowell commanded his nation (and let's face it, he could probably raise an army these days) to make her number one. And duly they did. Let's be honest, he made Robson and Jerome number one, so getting the nation's sweetheart, Cheryl Cole there was easy by comparison. In fact, given his inexplicable Midas touch I imagine he could put Heinrich Himmler in a boy band and still sell some records.

Anyway, the point I am badly labouring here is simply that we live in an age where marketing is much more important than quality. These days rather than improve things we merely re-brand them and pretend they are something else. Rather than fixing stuff, we decide that it'd be much easier to try and fool the general public. Thus marketing, PR and advertising are what governments now turn to to win elections, not policies. Barack Obama was young, handsome, dynamic, and looks good in shades. Do we remember what his policies were ? I can't and I followed the election like a nutter. 'New Labour' came to power by pretending they weren't at all like those nasty 'Labour' people. And so on.

Now I know I'm being a cynical old grump about this and that many people just accept it. But when you see what Ben Elton called the 'reality gap' between what you've been sold and what you've ended up with then we see the danger. As for Miss Cole's performance I remember nothing about the song, the words, its name or what it was about. I do remember however a lot of dancers, expensive costumes, special effects and a top that revealed Miss Cole's bosoms. Oh hang on, maybe that was the point ? LOOK AT THE TITS AND IGNORE THE SONG !! If so, then they succeeded.