And so, just when you thought - okay, hoped - they’d buggered off for good, back come Oxford’s most fantastically annoying band with a new single and absolutely no radical change of direction.

We’ve said it before in these pages but the unavoidable, perhaps unbelievable, truth is that within Holy Roman Empire lurks more than a mere germ of pop genius. Their characteristic style - great pop done brilliantly badly - is the complete antithesis of so many style-over-substance muso bands. From the likes of ‘Benazir Bhutto’ to this mock operatic, fake Mexican synth-pop anthem, coming on like Marc Almond reincarnated as a skid row tramp, HRE just can’t help backing a winner every time. Oh sure they’re often so out of tune they’re off the scale, their lo-fi sometimes plumbs previously unknown depths and most of their tunes will eventually have you reaching for the nearest Black and Decker power tool just to try and dislodge them from your cranium, but isn’t that what shiny, happy pop music is meant to be about? It’s no different from Billie Piper shouting “Cos we want to!”, bar a few million pounds worth of studio production, singing lessons and image makeovers.

Holy Roman Empire are a very silly pop band. We wouldn’t want them any other way.

Dale Kattack