(With apologies to Bill Hicks unless it was Dennis Leary, in which case, well, still apologies to Bill Hicks. Yes.)

Ladies and gentlemen boys and girls, a defining moment in the history of pop music has thusly arrived. I have found a new pop star for us all to hate.

I was getting a bit fed up with hating Phil Collins, and I sometimes get the feeling that I don’t hardly hate him no more except out of habit. So I have been feeling somewhat directionless of late, but yesterday I found myself at my mam’s house, with nought on the TV but the Commonwealth Games and Hayley Mills in a musical comedy about not living in Boston. Having bested the mysterious and elusive “Everyman” who sets the Observer Crossword, I turned to the colour supplement. Needs must when the devil drives. Yes, so bored was I that I sat there and read an interview with the main guy out of the band Coldplay. The name rang a bell, weren’t they that dreary bunch who came on halfway thru last week's Top Of The Pops and brought everyone right down with some sad and miserable feeling-sorry-for-yourself magnum opus type of deal………..?

NB I always watch Top Of The Pops as I am Postmainstreamist and I prefer the most ridiculous poppy numbers to the indie wuss music that sometimes creeps on there.

Pausing only to reflect “Coldplay; what a shite name”, I began to read the musings of 25 year old Chris Martin, lead singer blokie with the above-mentioned equipe.

I have never come across a more miserable sad sack of suicidal shit in all my born days, and I went to Art College. This fellow makes Morrissey seem like the late Charles Hawtrey.

The interview is conducted by one Ted Kessler, who used to write for NME when it was any good, as did I. I will not share the majority of the interview with you (you can read it here if time happens to have stood still and you're waiting for everyone else to start moving again) but it can be summarised thus:

He moans about writing successful songs, he moans about not writing successful songs, he moans about knowing Natalie Imbruglia. Did you know? I am in the Natalie Imbruglia family tree (first person to work it out gets a No-prize). Have you ever heard me moan about that?

At one point in the interview, Chris Martin (a smarmy-kid-you-hated-at-school name if ever there was one) states that he’s only lately had to come to terms with death. He bemoans the passing of his old friend, and I quote, “Jonty from Boarding School”.

PEOPLE OF EARTH! Punk rock is over and we have lost! We live in a world where members of rock bands can OPENLY BEMOAN THE DEATH OF JONTY FROM BOARDING SCHOOL!

Look, I’ll show you a picture of Coldplay: Then I’ll get all media studies on your ass.

There! Did you ever see a more uninspired-looking bunch in all your born days? What is the point of listening to people who look like this? You know what it’s going to be like, it’s going to be a bunch of "look at me I'm sensitive" bullshit with toy acoustical guitars all over it made by someone who BEMOANS THE DEATH OF JONTY FROM BOARDING SCHOOL IN THE OBSERVER COLOUR SUPPLEMENT (punk rock is all over and we have lost).

Presumably the one on the roof is the aforementioned Chris Martin, he is probably up there to denote his individualism. The other three are what the zenith of rock’n’roll cartooning, the mighty Great Pop Things would call “the ones out of Coldplay who nobody knows who they are”.

I think we should go for a Uri Geller moment here. I want each and every one of my readers to look at the picture above whilst masturbating onto a ginger biscuit. At the precise vinegar strokes, concentrate on the fucker on the roof while playing that “jump you fucker jump” record by Dudley Moore. This is cunningly planned public school hoodoo and I figure we can make it happen if we all pull together. Ladies, you can join in too, I haven't quite worked out how yet but nevertheless.

As for you, the ones out of Coldplay who nobody knows who you are, what have you got to look so fed up about? I mean it’s obvious the one on the roof is fed up because he’s written a great song about being fed up that everyone liked, and now he’s not sure if he can write another one, and that is making him fed up. Perhaps you are fed up because nobody knows who you are. Well being in a famous band and nobody knowing who you are must be a bit like being in a Philip K Dick book, but that's no reason to look like a dick. YOU ARE HAVING YOUR PICTURE TAKEN! Stand up straight and smile for the camera.

Presumably there are of outtake pictures where perhaps one of Coldplay evinces a wan smile like in those crappy Jane Austen books.

I went to see a band the other week, and they were the PRECISE OPPOSITE OF COLDPLAY. It is not very often that you go and see a band and are totally knocked out by the fact that they make you think “what the fuck is going on?” but that was what your humble Welsh Psycho scribe was like watching eX-Girl in the Legendary TJS .

I didn’t really know what to expect: I knew only that they were 3 nice looking Japanese ladies who dressed up in lovely outfits and claimed to be from another planet.

Claiming to be from another planet is always a good sign in a band, don’t you think?

When they emerged from their cocoon / sleeping bags and began to play like Can and sing like the Monkees, or was it Magma, or was it Magma and the Monkees at the same time…?…when they barked strange unison tunes along with sparse percussion….when they harmonised like a Yoko Ono duetting with another Yoko Ono…..when they encored dressed as frogs and playing “Sex Machine”.…..that’s when I began to realise that something pretty remarkable was going on.

Now you don’t need me to point out to you the main difference between these two band pictures; to wit: ONE HAS A RIDICULOUS TOY FROG STICKING UP OUT OF NOWHERE AND ONE HASN’T.

On EVERY level.

Now supposing we were doing one of those experiments where two Dutch hippies put a cat into a box and were too stoned to remember whether they’d let it out or not. This is Postmainstreamism I am talking about here. Supposing that you know nothing of Coldplay, and you know nothing of eX-Girl. You have nothing to go on but the two photographs reproduced above. Using these and these only, WHICH DO YOU THINK IS THE BETTER BAND AND WHY? Write 200 words on that by Monday morning and don’t go sending it to me.

EX-Girl say OUR HEARTS ARE STRONG FOR YOU AMERICA AND WE SEND YOU RAYS OF LOVE TELEPATHICALLY FROM THE PLANET KERO! KERO! KERO!

Coldplay say “It’s about defying convention and being who you are. And that’s me. “

It’s like Marcel Duchamp said about art and god, you cannot defy convention by being anti-convention. The only way you can defy convention is by ignoring it. You also can't defy convention by foisting the same old shit on people.

So there’s this Chris Martin fellow wittering on in the Observer Colour Supplement and I am thinking, as I often do, of one of my very pet hates, a thing that is definitely top 10 in my hated things list, alongside astrology, schoolteachers, and when that management wanker in Welsh Water told me off that time and I couldn’t tell what I was being told off for. Which is I BLOODY HATE PEOPLE FEELING SORRY FOR THEMSELVES IN SONGS.

I have noted this in a previous column, the one where I advocated that Massive Attack shoot William Hague dead, but I am growing increasingly baffled by the phenomenon even as I am noticing the increase of miserabilism in the early 21st Century……………..

1) I cannot understand why they do it.

2) I cannot understand why anyone wants to listen to it.

There are probably hundreds upon hundreds of things you can write songs about. And even if they run out you can make up stuff (some people already have, e.g. eX-Girl as mentioned above). You can sing about being the Monkees if you are the Monkees, and even if you are not. You can sing about trade unions the way Robert Wyatt does, you can sing about drainpipes like Vivian Stanshall, you can sing about trousers if you’re Gene Vincent, you can sing about how it’s not easy being green if you are Kermit, Sinatra or Van Morrison. You can sing about the Indomitability of the Lions Of Cameroon.

So why should anyone choose to sing about how miserable they are? And why is anyone else interested? Beats the hell out of me, though I have had it "explained" to me usually by people who miss the point and think I'm equating self-pity (operative word SELF) with general my baby done left me gonna-get-me-thru-this songs such as “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” and the deep blues of Muddy Waters.

EXHIBIT A: the sad boy out of Coldplay.

You mean if he didn't sing these songs he'd be WORSE?

I am still, at time of writing, utterly and completely baffled by this phenomenon. Of all the zillions of things you can write a song about, there is but one thing more boring than writing songs about feeling sorry for yourself and that is writing songs about how terrible getting lots of money for writing songs about feeling sorry for yourself and Joni Mitchell did that. I don’t know if Mr Chris Martin and his awful Coldplay band have written any songs about feeling guilty about writing songs about feeling sorry for himself (eat your heart out R D Laing), but he did an interview about it, which makes him a thought-criminal under the Rules Of Postmainstreamism and we should therefore hunt and kill him.

WE SHOULD HUNT AND KILL HIM because he needs to be removed from the wheels of suffering.

WE SHOULD HUNT AND KILL HIM because the notion that we are hunting and killing him will make him fed up.

WE SHOULD HUNT AND KILL HIM because his band should have released an album called The Worst of Radiohead.

WE SHOULD HUNT AND KILL HIM as a situationist act on behalf of postmainstreamism.

WE SHOULD HUNT AND KILL HIM because there are people who actually slag off good acts such as the Captain and Miles to try and make themselves look clever, and we need to start upping the ante.

WE SHOULD HUNT AND KILL HIM and record it and send it to the Wire magazine because it would be better than recordings of Herman Nitche torturing animals which they seem to like sometimes.

Come on chaps use that public school hoodoo to make him jump off the roof. You know it makes sense. .

If I ever meet that Coldplay bloke
I’m going to ask him to tell me a joke
I bet he knows a lot
The big bumberclaaat…

Well I couldn’t finish that, but I daresay he couldn’t either.

Colin B Morton is leader of the smugger than thou post-hipster riff Postmainstreamism. He appears as “male Satanist” in the movie Ghost World. His fave raves amongst the current crop of new bands are eX-Girl and the Residents. He is Bernie Taupin to Chuck Death's Elton John in the cartooning partnership Great Pop Things.