Andrew Mueller has a great article in today's Guardian showing how Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four predicted the rise of the manufactured pop act:

Among the diversions manufactured for this irredeemable peasantry are "rubbishy newspapers containing nothing except sport, crime and astrology", which may remind you of something, and "sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator".

What better description of the Pete Waterman pop which now dominates our charts - and, by extension, our shops, restaurants, and lives?

The present is an anodyne ballad, battering a human eardrum for ever and ever. Orwell describes a fictional song called It Was Only A Hopeless Fancy as "one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles" - a description applicable to anything by Westlife.

So, that's the prolefeed sorted out, Fox News is doing a good job at bringing the Two Minute Hate into everyday life, and we're about gto go to war in the name of peace. Book your weekend away in Room 101 now to avoid the rush.