David Ford announcing his return causes an almost entirely unrelated rant

After the critical success of his debut album, my dear friend David Ford (below) is back with a new single in July, and, unlike a certain Ms Spears, he promises that his return will be more than just 11 minutes of lip-synching dressed like a King's Cross prostitute.Following my rant about the MTV awards (see my previous blog), I am still feeling rather cynical about the celebrity world, and the fact that Britney's big return makes the news headlines while people are bombing the hell out of each other around the globe has done little to banish my cynicism.

There was a time when Britney was the perfect pop star. She was aesthetically pleasing and a good dancer, and had a decent armory of songs to accompany her (utterly manufactured) schoolgirl innocence. But the bubble burst a long time ago when people realised that, rather than being sweetness-and-light personified and a great role model for her adoring teeange fans, she was in fact a taste-free piece of cheap-and-nasty trailer trash. Christina Aguilera had dethroned her long before the marriage/annulment/marriage/divorce/breakdown, and the world now watches her progress with the same morbid interest as when driving past a crash scene.

But still she decides to launch an ill-advised and poorly-conceived 'comeback', which has the production values of a school assembly, while the woman herself now has the sex appeal of, well, a bald, washed-up mother of two who couldn't handle rehab. It is a sorry sight. She has been quoted as saying how much she hates the glare of the media spotlight, yet surely this would have been the perfect time to give it all up. She could have taken her riches, retired somewhere nice and spent her days looking after her kids. It seems that, to some, fame is as big an addiction as any drug, and it looks likely that Britney will be forever remembered as a tragic character rather than as a pop princess, which is a genuine shame.

While we are on the subject of fame-hungry trashbags, you will of course have learnt by now that Paris Hilton has been sent to prison for 45 days for driving while suspended. I'm sure she will throw a few dollars at someone in order to dodge the punishment before her sentence begins, but if anyone needed the kind of wake-up call that some hard time in a prison cell will bring, it's her. I am putting money on the fact that she will come out of it a martyr to the brainless, and 'write' a book about it or something.

What is happening to our world? We are living in a time where people gain fame through having sex on camera or by getting drunk in the Big Brother house. Where are the intellectuals? Where is the decency? Why does misbehaviour from the likes of Spears and HIlton command so much attention?

Of course, I realise the irony in the fact that I am moaning about the publicity and attraction of such morons by blogging about them. It's a uncomfortable situation that I touch upon more fully below...