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Madonna, and other acts whose schtick hasn't aged well

WHEN your career’s based on your shocking youth, it can make still flogging it around arenas as a sexagenarian tough. These acts are balancing age and dignity: 

5ive

In their heyday you could tell 5ive apart, like the eyebrow piercing guy or the gelled chipmunk. Today they have merged into a sort of homogenous Jacamo geezer blob and can no longer remember which of them appeared on which celebrity reality show. The singer and most generic one, Sean, is delighted they all look like him now.

Bob Dylan

Back in the 60s, Bob could get away with croaking into a harmonica like a frog that’s been flushed through the New York sewer system. Today the singing is worse, the guitarists have been fired, the tour never ends, the songs are unrecognisable and the only reason he’s still definitively identified as Bob Dylan is nobody else wants to be.

Guns N’ Roses

Once lithe, snakehipped and hopelessly addicted, they’re now clean, portly and still singing tracks that originated in a Hollywood shooting gallery. Axl Rose sounds like he has died in every festival VIP portaloo, and a resuscitated hulk with a top hat and rubbery mask looks like an e-fit of how Slash should look in 2026. But it is him.

Madonna

Time goes by so slowly, yes Madonna, but not as slowly as your spotlit face on Graham Norton is insisting we believe. She’s reclaiming the dancefloor again as if we collectively forget what clubbing and sex is for a whole decade until she reminds us, like an elderly mother warning you to keep a condom in your purse.

My Chemical Romance

Panto is old hat but draws crowds every Christmas, so maybe Gerard Way always knew his pompous goth operatics would be a perennial draw for the elderly. Parents who got bullied for wearing their marching band costume on mufti day are once again finding their people at gigs, now they’ve all been through miserablism-related divorces.

Rod Stewart

He was youing, macho, sexy. Now the young women who make up his backing band feel like they’re on stage to offer defibrillation, blood transfusions and to be emergency organ banks. But you can’t fault his commitment to being an undignified Rod tribute act, guzzling wine at the football and thrusting in hot pants so tight you can make out the Viagra in the pocket.

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England fans simulate effects of altitude with exhaustion and alcohol

ENGLAND fans now know, thanks to drinking through a game that began at 2am, exactly what it is like to be gasping for breath at 7,220ft. 

While the England team appeared to cope with the effects of altitude with aplomb, audiences watching at home close to sea level suffered shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness and also pissed themselves.

Nathan Muir of Warrington said: “The last isn’t a recognised symptom of altitude sickness, but there’s surely no other explanation.

“Technically I was only at 66ft, but what the experts don’t realise is that it can be experienced vicariously through the telly. And seemed to get progressively worse as the evening wore on, no matter how many medicinal cans I consumed.

“By 2am the game hadn’t even started, but all I had to do was stand up and the room was spinning. I kept greying out, which can’t have been exhaustion because I’d only been up 18 hours.

“I responsibly treated it with brandy, like Edmund Hillary did when climbing Everest, but it got worse and worse. By the time the game finished I’d been sick twice and my head was pounding. That altitude’s no joke.”

Muir’s line manager Eleanor Shaw said: “Nathan has left a message explaining he will not be into work because of altitude sickness. Well, half a message, then he starts singing Wonderwall.”

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