NO, that's NOT talent! There was more to John Lennon than being able to badly strum a B Minor on an acoustic guitar. The way some of the contestants on Fame Academy are being described - granted, by the self-aggrandising presenters - you'd think they had stumbled upon a ragbag carnival of brand new British musical genius. Those who were shoved centre stage by the show's producers had the guitar playing ability of disabled horses after their hooves have been dipped in porridge. And all of this faux-pride, this self-righteous 'Look, we're abusing real musicians rather than drama students with toothpaste grins' is to differentiate Shame Academy from Pop Idle (a.k.a. ITV's Well of New Ideas For Programmes Is Drier Than Saddam Hussein's Flower Beds) - the show that at least has the lack of integrity to shamelessly manufacture their manufactured pop acts. I bet the producers of Fame Academy genuinely believe theirs is the better programme because they make a point of choosing monkeys who've limply strummed their way through dog-eared copies of the Westlife songbook. "But they write their own songs!" I hear you cry in a vain attempt to justify the unjustifiable. Songs? Do you really think David Sneddon is a worthier pop star than Gareth Gates just because he cobbles together songs with the aesthetic appeal of an abattoir floor? There was a young, spry and photogenic woman on Wednesday's show, cross-legged on some lawn, suspiciously unscratched guitar in hand, strumming her way through the kind of insipid, tuneless bilge that Tori Amos could fart when she was three. "I've been writing songs since I was five," she opined. Well, my mate Ron Hammersley has been painting and decorating the homes of Mold since he was 15 - is he the new Michelangelo? These programmes cheapen music. They cheapen the effort that some people, truly talented people who aren't simply drawn by the flickering glow of televisual fame, go to. So, where does that leave truly, truly brilliant, wired and inspirational bands like The Crimea? They played an outside broadcast I did from Cardiff last Sunday night. Davey, the singer, is thrillingly unphotogenic - an orthodontist's wet dream - with a battered, tremulous voice that couldn't be further from the mid-Atlantic, clichéd mannerisms of every wannabee that will be trooped in front of our screens for the next few months. The Crimea's songs are distilled from life, not ambition - fired by a need to express and make sense of the world, not simply to become famous in it. May the god of your choice praise them; I know my god is pogoing his ass off. So, instead of watching Lame Academy tonight, check out some of the downloads at The Crimea's website www.inaudible.co.uk - and, if you're still in need of some glamour and escapism after that, hunt down a biography or documentary on the life of Jayne Mansfield, and find out what happens to people who lust after fame for fame's sake. | 
