5 Reasons Why... Gaga could do with a couple of months aboard the good ship Calm The Fuck Down.

1.       The whole ‘Isn’t Gaga a bit mad’ thing is wearing thin. Being slightly crackers was Gaga’s USP (see: the Kermit coat; arriving at the Grammys in an egg; having prosthetic horns sculpted onto herself), but now it all seems a bit forced and contrived. Frankly, she pales in comparison to the very genuine mental instability of ex-Corrs guitarist Jim Corr, who now splits his time between sailing and attempting to convince anyone who’ll listen of the veracity of any number of conspiracy theories. You name it, Jim believes it: that 9/11 was an inside job, that “Edwin Poots The Northern Irish Sickness Minister wants to chemically lobotomise the citizens of NI and dramatically increase cancer and sterility rates by adding Sodium Fluoride to the water supply”, that the government is artificially inflating the price of Freddos. Possibly it was the strain of having to be the ugly, boring one in the Corrs who got the piss ripped out of him on SM:TV every week which pushed him over the edge.

2.       The album artwork for Born This Way. “OK guys, I’ve got a vision for what the new album cover’s going to look like.” That’s great Gaga, shoot. “So it’s a black background...” Yep, good, black. Sleek, sophisticated, modern, understated. “...and there’s this motorbike...” Brilliant! Rock ‘n’ roll! Rebellion! This is going to be amazing! “...and then in the middle of the handlebars, we badly Photoshop a picture of my face.” Er... right. We’ll sort that out. “Oh, and can you make the actual title of the album look like something from the front of a straight-to-DVD sci-fi release? Cheers.”

3.       She might then have the time to have some ideas of her own. Picking up tidbits, magpie-like, from other artists is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody does it. Elvis Costello nicked his look wholesale from Buddy Holly. Paul McCartney took his head-wobbling ‘ooooh’s from Little Richard. Likewise, the little nods to Vogue-era Madonna were fun at the start, but just rewriting ‘Hey Jude’ (see ‘You & I’) and stealing Annie Lennox’s idea of dressing up as a man who looks a bit like Elvis simply will not do.

4.       Encroaching jazz-fusion horror. I doubt anyone who saw Gaga at Radio 1’s Big Weekend last year was thinking, “I’m bloody sick of ‘Bad Romance’, I hope she only does about 90 seconds of it and then wastes half an hour doing Nat King Cole covers clumsily customised to be about the royal wedding.”

5.       As this is the last print column, here are some other people I hate. Fred Durst; Phil Collins (divorced his wife by fax); Pitbull; Flo Rida; The Voice’s Danny O’Don’t-Know-Who-You-Are-Pal; Olly Murs; The Script; Mumford & Sons; The Courteeners; Viva Brother; Liam Gallagher; Jim Morrison; Frank Turner. And finally, if I ever get the chance, I swear I’ll kick David Guetta so hard in the groin that his cock and balls resemble the blade of a tiny shovel and two mini cheddars.