Bye-O-Wolf

Blasphemic though it may seem for an alleged sports columnist, I'm not watching the Olympics. I refuse to. Officially it's as a protest against China's human rights record, actions in Tibet, aggression towards Taiwan, global warming culpability, nuclear testing profligacy and anything else we can pin on the little bastards before lunchtime, but in reality, it's because no-one born on the sunny side of the ditch can possibly stomach two weeks of Kiwi-centric Olympic coverage on TVNZ, watching breathlessly as the brave Kiwi hope finishes a plucky ninth in the dressage or the kayaking or the flower arranging or the rugby union or whatever other bumfuck-irrelevant sports Nuw Zillund seems to specialise in. Not to mention a complete and total lack of a NZ equivalent of Roy and HG to make any form of sense out of the cascading font of verbal diarrhoea which constitutes Olympic commentary on the best of days at TVNZ. 'Right, Fred, you're a commentator, yeah? What do you usually commentate on? Rugby? Good, you're calling the cycling road race. Good luck, and don't let the fact you don't know a fucking thing about what's going on prevent you spouting utter bollocks for the entire duration of the event. Toodle pip.'

So instead I'm going to talk about Wolfmother breaking up. Not that this is news; anyone who saw, heard or even heard of their shambolic, discordant performance at Splendour could have guessed things were on the cusp of going pear-shaped in excelsius deo. One review suggested 'drummer Chris Ross and bassist/keyboardist Myles Heskett were playing one show, while Andrew Stockdale fronted Andy Andy and the Andy Andy’s, an imaginary band more interested in the adulation of an intoxicated festival crowd than playing remotely in time with his actual rhythm section'. Oooh, feel the burn. Next day the press release (in itself an oxymoron) hit the streets annoucing the band's disintegration.

These announcements are always great fun as a drinking game; skol for every mention of 'artistic differences' or 'by mutual consent' or other bits of wank. The Wolfie presser is a particularly fine example of the breed. "Longstanding frictions"... "extended break"... "irreconcilable personal and musical differences"... "focusing energies on new projects"... In fact, everything short of the closer-to-actual-factual "Andy Stockdale got LSD (Lead Singer Disorder, a condition first diagnosed by Dr Edward Van Halen in chronic sufferer David Lee Roth in 1985) and the other two decided they'd rather play Kraftwerk-style electronica than churn through another year of touring with the insufferable big-'froed prat." Wolfmother will continue in name with Stockdale and an entirely new supporting cast - hey, it worked for Lemmy over the years - but it's hard not to see this as another case of band emerges, band records enormous fuck-off album, band gets huge, band disappears up lead singer's arse never to be heard from again. Or alternatively, in the case of the Darkness, band disappears up lead singer's nose.

What they really need - what might have saved one-and-a-half album bands like the Darkness from extinction - is some kind of publicity stunt designed solely to boost flagging sales of their dismal current album. Preferably as cheap, as tawdry and as mercenarily transparent as possible. Something like the Veronicas have pulled off by not only having half their head count turning up on the internerd with baps akimbo, but then organising a press call for aforementioned tween-impersonating twiglet to bound out of a very flimsy-looking hastily assembled Super A-Mart flat-pack closet and declare her undying love for flange, in particular that belonging to some vacuous pop tart from MTV Australia. Although reading the fine print, our Jess appears to have sworn off other forms of red meat as part of the deal. And it's not as if this approach is entirely gender-reversible - your man Andrew the Afro is unlikely to get much mileage shacking up with Andrew G - though imagine the potential for hair product sponsorship tie-ins.

The other problem with the tits-out lesbos-in approach - other than its inherent gender inequality - is that it doesn't really give you anywhere to go after that should your career really start to come to a spluttering halt. After that, there's only rehab or a celebrity sex video in order to get attention. Or, if you're Britney, all of the above. And while a celeb sex video between Thingy Veronica and The Other One might be moderately popular in some circles, we of course here at this august family publication couldn't possibly endorse the promotion of such a thing. The irrelevance-prolonging celeb sex tape is a tricky art form and one best left to the likes of Britney, Paris, Pam Anderson and... Kate Ritchie?!?!?

Oh THAT's wrong. That's deeply, deeply wrong. I know her career's gone a bit arsebag since she quit Home and Away after starting there as a drama-trained foetus 20 years ago, and things have to be grim for anyone to end up working with Merrick and fuckin' Rosso, but seriously... for Christ's sake, how far is this going to go? Who's going to be next? Alf Stewart? I don't want to see his flamin' mongrel, that's for sure.

Actually, if you want our prediction: it's always the former child stars. You heard it here first: Nikki Webster. As Beijing has shown, after the spotlight fades, life's not so great for annoying tykes famous only for lip-synching through Olympic opening ceremonies...

The Doctor is OUT.