Strung Up

Now then. Madonna. Madonna, Madonna, Madonna. Where to begin?

My relationship with Madonna is a complicated thing. Where once I would sneer at her from the depths of my teenage obsession with Iron Maiden (I sneered at most things, actually, and it’s only by looking at some old photos that I now realise what a total twunt I looked. I still love Iron Maiden though. Yeah! Maiden rock! Etc, etc......), as I’ve grown older I’ve become able to look back with something approaching nostalgia at the old days. I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt (because of course, she cares about my opinion) throughout the pointy-bra phase, the weird-eyebrows-and-marlene-dietriech-references phase, the ooh-look-I’m-just-such-a-hippy-these-days-isn’t-it-all-fabulous phase, the cowboy thing, the geisha thing (with flip-flops and socks - nice) and most of her other incarnations. Her acting aside, she’s not such a bad old bird. I love the randomness of her attempt to reinvent herself as a genteel English rose, and it’s always nice to hear her accent veer wildly around depending on whether she’s giving a British or American interview. The thought of her writing childrens’ books is a bit weird, and you can keep the whole red-string mystical nonsense. But on the whole, me and Madonna are doing ok. Until I realised that I really can’t cope with the sight of that woman in a leotard for another second.

Okay, so I understand the need to reinvent an image according to current fashion. The whole eighties revival is, for some reason, in full swing (this is another thing I don’t get as, as far as I remember, the eighties were a fashion wasteland and were responsible for me being photographed in legwarmers and a batwing mohair jumper). The video for Hung Up was fair enough, for those who like their icons waving their arses around at an advanced age (see also Mick Jagger, although so far he’s spared us stretch gym wear, for the most part). But now it seems that Mrs Ritchie has decided, at the ripe old age of sixty three, that any public appearance must involve her showing me her scrawny inner thighs. And I don’t want to see them any more. Enough with the leotards already. Just. Enough.

So thank you, Madonna, for bringing us a back catalogue of polished pop. Thank you for being so laughably bad at acting that Keira Knightley has had a chance to become famous for coming off like Dame Judi Dench by comparison. Thank you for your endless wittering about Kabbalah, your odd choice of husband, those photos of you looking about nine hundred and forty seven in your tracky bottoms, your scary eyebrows and your just plain bonkersness.

But please, please, for the sake of my sanity, PUT SOME BLOODY TROUSERS ON, WOMAN.