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Something like...THE ALBUMS CHART!

Oh sure, normally the Albums chart is about as exciting as getting wet paint to provide you with a detailed, step-by-step account of its own drying process, using only the medium of mime, but if you look really closely at this week's Top 40, and then let your mind wander a bit, a new and disturbing phenomenon begins to crystallise before your very brain.

Look at the Top 5 and see if you can spot it...

1: Mika - 'Life In Cartoon Motion'
2: Bloc Party - 'A Weekend In The City'
3: Fall Out Boy - 'Infinity On High'
4: Norah Jones - 'Not Too Late'
5: Amy Winehouse - 'Back To Black'

No? OK, let me help you...I wanna talk to you about tribal warfare. I wanna talk to you about KIDS facing off against each other, down in THE STREET, and preparing to bash the living crikey out of each other, just for the heinous crime of BEING DIFFERENT. I wanna talk about Mods vs Rockers, Chavs vs Hippies, Popkids vs Emos, Townies vs Indie Swots. Each tribe with their own music, clothes, attitude, weaponry, trouser-tightness...plus those all important dance-routines that they do whenever there's a fight brewing. We've all seen West Side Story, we KNOW what it's like OUT THERE...

But did you know there's a new crew making trouble? Did you know there's a fresh new gang heading for the RUMBLE SPOT? Did you know dark clouds are forming over the chart like...well...like dark clouds forming over a town which could do without any more rain, thank you very much? EH?

Look again at the Top 5. In amongst the Fall Out Boy and Bloc Party albums, there's the Mika album, which is sort of Radio 2-y, there's the Amy Winehouse album, which is sort of Radio 2-y, and there's the latest Radio 2-y album from Radio 2's favourite Radio 2-y songstrel...Norah 'Radio 2' Jones.

And she's not alone. A quick scan of the rest of the list throws up some worrying names...Phil Collins, Doris Day, the Beatles, Rod Stewart, Matt Munro...not one of whom could run a hundred yard dash without severe medical (and psychic) assistance, and all of them looking craggy and mean as they approach our young person bands with their coshes and zip guns primed and ready for use. Stop what you're doing, young Emo, untuck your tracksuit legs, you Townie, the Old Gippers are here.

Course, they're only the footsoldiers. The leader of the gang is a sharp-eyed madam with a voice that can kill a young person at 20 paces. She's a leather-throated, evil-hearted song KILLER with a disarmingly charming manner but a heart of PURE COLD SICK.

That's right, Lesley Garrett is BACK, and she's LOOKING FOR TROUBLE. She's singing a collection of old classics like 'When I Fall In Love' in her usual bellowing fashion, and as we know, that's like kryptonite to your average music-loving person of a certain (ie young) age. Oh! The carnage!

Frankly, against such terrible and grizzled forces, the View will become obscured, Snow Patrol will just drift away, Bloc Party will get hammered into a wall, and Fall Out Boy will have to run for their very lives, in case they end up as crawl out boys...

The only possible hope is if all the young gangs unite against our common foe, if we could one day see Chav fight alongside Rocker, and Indie Swot take arms and line up next to Emo, and then maybe, if all goes well, we can see off this threat to our musical way of life, and then maybe, go back to our age-old traditions of all slagging each other off and making sarcastic comments about haircuts. But it's not going to be pretty.

[stirring music] We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the bus shelter...