Someone put him out of his misery...

Two televised concerts going head to head on UK terrestrial TV this evening. On BBC1, we had a Robbie Williams concert and on ITV1 we had Sir Cliff Richard. Robbie was performing songs from the Rat Pack genre, recorded live at the Albert Hall. Sir Cliff was performing songs from his new album Wanted in a TV studio somewhere.

You would imagine that Robbie, a 27 year old upstart with a boy-band background, would fare significantly worse than a veteran and much-loved pop-idol. You would be wrong.

The Robbie Williams concert, which I watched and enjoyed greatly, was in a completely different class to Sir Cliff's offering. Admittedly, the presence of a smashing big band on the stage with Mr Williams did a lot to help the sound, but the singer's performance was, itself, energetic and entertaining. Unless Sir Cliff changed his style of performance radically between  the start and end of his concert, the overall summary of his efforts can only be described in one word - insipid.

So, I think we have a choice this christmas. We can buy Robbie's Swing When You're Winning, or Cliff's Wanted. Given that I have decided that the latter album needs renaming (ideas below), I think you can guess my recommendation.

New names for Wanted

• Wanted for murdering some very good music
• Unwanted
• Straight to the bargain bin
• Straight into the bin
• Songs your granny thought would be better
• Quit while you're ahead
• The last thing I want for Christmas
• Mistletoe and Winos
• He got a knighthood for this?
• He's lost it
• Did he ever have it?
• Living dull

It's a shame that an album, which contains Somewhere over the rainbow, What a wonderful world and the like, has to be marked as shite - perhaps Sir Cliff should not have recorded it - he'd have saved a lot of bother all round.

17 November 2001
Ashley Frieze