Popstars: Darius to collaborate with Tom Verlaine?

Pop Stars will debut in Canada on Sunday. I can't wait. It's both car crash fascination and the pure spectacle of it all that are sucking me in. I like that the music industry isn't even trying to sell us the sad, old line about these bands being friends at all. They're out of the closet as manufactured radio product, and that's fine by me.

This is a copy of an Australian show that was on early last year. If it's anything like it was here it will be quite fascinating. The excuses that the managers come up with for not choosing the ugly/fat/spotty girls are always interesting.

Of course when the group ("Bardot") finally coalesced the managers didn't want to seem domineering in front of a camera so they ended up allowing the girls to make a lot of the decisions. Which of course = instant disaster. Bardot's first single came out while the show was still running and was consequently huge, but the moment the show ended they flopped utterly.

I saw the first episode and it was amusing - then I missed the second one and couldn't be bothered with the others. Part of me was into it, part of me just felt it was like those bits on childrens' TV where they show you how biscuits are made - I like biscuits, I don't care how they're made.

As I understand it Tim I've missed the social darwinism bits and we're now on the five airheads bickering bits: certainly now there's no horse-scaring members in the group the tabloids are interested. Both the Star and the Sport had Popstars front covers yesterday - admittedly these two dailies are the absolute bottom of the heap in sales and editorial terms but hey, it's fame.

Kym Marsh on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, two hours ago: you know what? This woman has been set FREE! Like being careful, being appropriate, doing everything Nigel-right and squeaky-proper for [xxx] weeks (that is, if you ignore fat-is-a-feminist-issue and her whole glad-to-be-a- single-mom campaign) and now - when the public says yes to the tune of (a) the fastest-selling debut single of all time and (b) only the third debut single ever to be number one three or more weeks in a row [maybe i just made that statistic up: but it is something like that] - she happily turns into Steven Wells on borderline-watershed TV. Talks about dogs menstruating and - very swellsian segue here - getting knobs in mouths: she doesn't care; she knows she's untouchable. It was one of the rare actually-funny episodes I've seen anyway, cuz Johnny Vegas cut loose and demented also (Daphne and Celeste were funny last year, obviously, but that was as much as anything because they pissed Mark Lamarr off SO MUCH and SO BADLY). But - is it just me - it's kind of exciting too: use the fact that you been made idiotically famous in no time flat to say and do whatever you WANT? This is Hendrix on the Lulu show again, isn't it? I mean, Lulu's way cooler than Lamarr et bloody al, but you see what I'm saying? What Frank Kogan calls a "free lunch"?

Or is it me that's demented?

I was wrong about Popstars (viz. vaguely dismissive post above) - I didn't think they'd get this big and I didn't think it would be this interesting. What's interesting I guess is not that theyve become famous so quickly but that theyve reached the stage so quickly where there is no difference between their fame and their supposed career. I mean when the Spice Girls initially became famous, or the Beatles, it was because they released records which people liked, whereas with Popstars the records being liked are kind of a side-effect of the fame. Which isn't to say they're liked any less genuinely.

And then certain people get to a point where there's no real space separating the records and the fame - the actual release of records becomes both necessary for the idea of the star and irrelevant to the actual starness (cf Madonna) and this is sort of what Popstars have got to.

Is this making any sense? Damned lager.

Have to agree with Mark S - What a programme - Kym + Johnny stole it bigtime. It was interesting when Darius was on to see his self - mockery winning over the audience. I find it hilarius that Pete Waterman kept popping up on TV saying how much he hated Popstars.