Heavy stupidity

If you think Glastonbury is silly, click on the BBC News website and watch the clip of 2,000 heavy metal fans playing Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” in Stuttgart. This, as any fule kno, is one of the most over-rated songs in the history of pop music, plodding and portentous, opening with a mindless riff that has inspired generation after generation of Wayne’s World clones to pick up a guitar when it would have been much better if they had been forced into national service. Sour of me to say so, but sometimes the truth is ugly.