Chris Martin's Good Idea

Coldplay took the opportunity of the Brit Awards to announce that they were going to split up. Well, not exactly, nothing so reliably final. They're going to go into hiding. "People are fed up with us," said the front man whose colourless name I've already forgotten, "and so are we."

Now, celebrities of all types, and this celebrity in particular, are notoriously chary of using the media to take the public's temperature. We media mislead and often lie - we do it on purpose, because we're bitter, because we always wanted to be pop stars. Broadly speaking, they're right - I, for one, would have loved to be a pop star, and I lie all the time, not only for money.

But pending an internet poll, or some new technology altogether, the public can't have its temperature taken any other way. There is no metaphorical thermometer you can shove up its metaphorical, sorry, down its metaphorical throat.

If there were, Chris Martin (I can remember it really - I was lying before) would know that the public divides into five central bodies. One fifth of it has never heard of Coldplay. My mum is in that fifth, though she has heard of the Arctic Monkeys. One fifth genuinely are jealous, and could never have liked you, even if you wrought the radical changes to the landscape of pop.

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