As another scribe noted recently the real sound of summer is of morons cheering mediocrity in muddy fields. So welcome to Fox FM’s second annual mega-bash, where the lumpen masses can gnaw on chicken drumsticks, scrounge free bottles of Dr Pepper and get excited about an endless succession of indentikit “pop stars” miming to identikit disco trash anthems before immediately forgetting about them because they are so utterly, generically, exactly the same (in a blandly pretty kind of way) that you wonder if human cloning hasn’t actually been going on for decades without our knowledge.

You’d expect little more from a local commercial radio station that actually seems to pride itself on its lack of interest on the cutting edge. “Yesterday’s music today” is their war cry. Leave your brain at home and CONSUME is the message. So what we get today is four hours of short PA’s from acts like the vapid N-Trance, former Hepburn singer Jamie Benson and new all-girl act Tymes 4, who, along with Honeyz, couldn’t look or sound more like Eternal however hard they tried (and believe us, they will try ever so, ever so hard to be semi-famous, however much they have to discard their dignity in the process).

Because celebrity is all and they might even get to present an obscure children’s TV show on some unwatched Sky channel when everything inevitably comes crumbling down around them. Christ, Jamie Benson even does a Bryan Adams song. Young is obviously the new old.

Don’t get us wrong, this isn’t some kind of perverted indie snobbery boiling to the surface. All types of music produce no-mark bandwagon jumpers and always have done. There are great pop moments to be had in the world of manufactured girl/boy bands: the first few Spice Girls singles, just about anything by Take That or All Saints; Sugarbabes’ debut single, 5ive stealing Public Enemy samples and many more. Today is all about the middle of the road toss that comes in its slipstream. Every single fucking act on today - and there are fucking loads of them - comes on, shouts “Hello Oxford, make some NOISE!” and then goes on to plug some new single or album (complete with release date)then waving their hands in the air like the front row of a Bay City Rollers gig before disappearing, like their souls before them, backstage to make way for a succession of gurning, grinning Fox DJs who have wet dreams about being one quarter as funny as Chris Moyles. And when all of this thrill-a-minute craziness isn’t going on, they simply show endless adverts for Dr Pepper on the big screens. Dr Pepper, the vilest drink ever invented - including gin - and a perfect analogy for the asinine musical piss that is being forced down everyone’s throats today.

Oh but then we get the real stars: the much-plugged Samantha Mumba; ressurected hairdressing disco goons Right Said Fred; Blue who hit the number 1 spot today with Backstreet Boys rip-off sludge `Too Close’; the divinely pretty Louise (who finishes with a cover of `Stuck in the Middle’, and not a hint of irony that it pretty much sums up the entire event); shite Aha-covering nobodies A1, and the mighty Steps who are only discernible from S Club 7 cos there aren’t as many of them. And they’re all rubbish. No point trying to make out otherwise. Today is the single most depressing day for music since Jay Kay walked past wacky hat shop “Headgear for Wankers” and a career in murdering Stevie Wonder songs was born.

Fox FM, Steps, Dr Pepper and the thousands of retarded morons that cheered them on all afternoon deserve each other. Let’s hope there’s plenty of room in hell, cos they’re sure as dammit going to need it.

Victoria Waterfield